Winter breakout

After two very warm and sunny weeks, winter has broke out in Tokyo again. It`s chilly which is not much fun considering the poor heating system that is generally available. It`s basically the aircon that is also used for winter, imagine how efficient that could be besides eating up energy like crazy. It`s partly snowing, partly raining outside, so no incentive for long walks, but rather a cup of warm tea at home.
I took this very scenic shot in Shinjuku. A snowy morning in Tokyo`s skyscraperland. Made the place look almost magic in those black-white colors.

Rush hour

A lot has been written about Tokyo`s rush hour trains, but actually being on one of these trains is an experience not to be missed and one that is not for the faint-hearted. You get the best idea of the so-called rush hour if you board a train of the Yamanote line, Tokyo`s central lifeline, at a major station, ideally Shinjuku, the world`s busiest train station.
The station is like a stream at peak times. Don`t try to walk against the current, you`ll drown. The number of people at Shinjuku in the early morning and early evening is incredible and the rules of politeness do not always apply, there is a lot of pushing left and right. Certainly make sure you have your ticket or Pasmo card ready at the gate, considering the number of people being channeled through those gates makes fumbling for your ticket more than a minor offense.
Despite the masses in the station there is space for little food stalls and shops that sell breakfast and lunch boxes to the hungry office worker. So before pushing their way through to the gate people try to grab something at one of those. Again - do have your money ready if you plan to do the same...
At the gate you are expected to wait in neat lines in front of the train doors. That orderly system gets somewhat corrupted at rush hour, due to the sheer amount of people lining up.Once the train arrives the line disolves quickly anyways as people are pushing their way onto the train. And yes, at major stations on lines like Yamanote there are guards that push people into the train where necessary, as you might have seen on tv already.
Once on the train try to grab a handle (don`t even dream of a seat). You can`t really fall because the train is so packedc, but still. Surprisingly some people still manage to sleep - standing and "hanging" on a handle or read or play Nintendo games. But if you`re unlucky you were one of the last to board the train and then your nose will be pressed flat on the window for the upcoming ride.
Once at the destination the challenge is to get off the train. Even those who do not need to get off are usually pushed out and need to board again with the masses at the next station. Finally being at the desired station may feel like a victory for those who do a rush hour ride just for "fun", but except for those lucky individuals, the same s... starts all over again going back from work and the next morning and... Welcome to "Groundhog Day"!
P.S.: The pictures do not show a real rush hour, just an averagely busy late afternoon and not one of the major lines either. It`s simply too stressful to take pictures at rush hour and as long as I can avoid it I don`t take rush hour trains at all.

Electronics paradise

After my laptop kindly broke down right after my arrival in Japan, I needed to do something asap. Running some checks on my laptop, I found out that the hard disk had become unreadable and after checking the error code on a couple of internet forums, I deemed it a waste of money to call HELL helpdesk. So off to Tokyo`s electronics town Akihabara.
Akihabara is known for two things: cheap electronic products and "Otakus" - freaks who are usually dig porn manga. Spending time in Akihabara soon results in a headache, it`s flashy with neon lights in every possible spot and loud to drive you crazy. In front of every store some guy is shouting out the latest offers on electronics, lcd screens showing commercials and then endless beeping, beeping, beeping from whatever appliances that are constantly running. Nothing for weak nerves, really.
I was originally looking for a netbook with English operating system, for obvious reasons. There are only a handfull of export oriented stores that do sell those. It turned out that the choice of models for the English language models is very limited, to about four, two of which were some Chinese brands I had never heard of in my life and would not consider buying. The prices were rather steep compared to the Japanese models and it turned out that it only included a trial version of Office for 60 days and the permanent version would cost quite a bit in addition. Nothing attractive at all. What was interesting was that the new target customer group are the Chinese. There was Chinese speaking staff in the stores and quite a few Chinese tourist groups shopping for electronics.
It turned out that the only place in Akihabara where I could get a cheaper, brand notebook was in some Indian guys` shop on a corner. Just that the models on offer were a couple of years old...
I finally went to the more quiet "Bic Camera" store in Shinjuku and ended up buying a Japanese language Acer netbook for a pretty decent price. They even found a shop assistant who was willing to try his best to consult me in English (it was more a J-inglish conversation).
I had some problems setting the thing up at home then and it would have taken me a while to translate all the kanji (Chinese characters), but what do I have Japanese collocators for? Tomoko and Jun were nice enough to do it for me and now all I have to struggle with are the Japanese language programms... It`s quite funny, not necessarily convenient, but ok for now. Please excuse me if all of a sudden a few Japanese characters appear in the text - it means I hit the wrong button :-)

Japanese dinner, an attempt

I am now trying to cook my own food at home instead of eating out. Should save me some money and I do have a decently equiped kitchen at my disposal now.

Japanese meals usually don`t consist of one big plate with a dish, but several small bowls and plates containing "tapas" type of food, a little to pick from everything. Should be healthy and balanced because you get to eat a lot of different ingredients and do not eat too much of anything. I am trying to do some stuff that I have seen at restaurants or canteens. The dinner on the picture is tofu with soy, grated carrot and cucumber, then a bowl with gyoza, dumplings with meat and a mixed salad and of course green tea. Doesn`t it look nice?

Of course this is pretty simple. The salad was pre-washed and cut, so just had to do the dressing, grated some carrot and cucumber on top of the tofu and the gyoza were - I admit - deep frozen and just put in the microwave. Well, I`m beginning and want to move on. I`d like to try to do a ramen and also roll some sushi. I`ve already made Okonomiyaki back home in Switzerland and it turned out really good. Watch out for more from the cooking studio...

Anti-hijack checkpoint

The Japanese airport authorities don`t beat around the bush talking about airport security controls... Anti-hijack screening checkpoint, great description!

My crib

In the tradition of MTV`s "My Crib", I`d like to present you my new home here in Tokyo. I stayed in the youth hostel at Yoyogi Park for the first few days after arriving. Although it`s good value since you get a single room for the price you`d normally pay for a private room, it felt a bit claustrophobic soon since the room was small and I had a lot of luggage with me. So I startet researching shared home agencies and beside "Sakura House" from which I rented last time, I found "Create Shared Houses", a smaller agency that is not so much catering to foreigners. It turned out that you get more spacious rooms for less money there. And the service was really good too, the lady helping me spent almost an hour showing me pictures of different available rooms, giving advice on transport and right the next day I could have a look at the most promising-looking place and moved in the next day.
The house is located in the North-West of Tokyo, in the Kita-ku ward. It first looked a bit far, but considering that it`s linked to a major fast railway line, it`s better located than the last place, plus it`s slightly cheaper (which is dearly appreciated considering the very strong Yen) and more spacious. My room even has a little balcony and there is lots of light in it, the furniture is functional enough and the common area is pretty spacious too. It`s situated in a quiet residential area and you don`t hear trains too much either although it`s close to the station. My collocators are two Japanese and a Korean girl, so good opportunity for practising the language. They do speak pretty good English though, so if it gets tricky explaining something in Japanese I can resort to Shakespeare`s language still.
I have moved all my stuff in now. I had left some stuff back in Tokyo last November and brought two big bags plus hand luggage, so there was a lot to carry over. I managed to do it in two runs, completely overloaded in a rush-hour train (the first time) which was pure horror. But it`s done. I went to Muji in Shinjuku and IKEA in Saitama prefecture to buy some storage boxes and decoration and now my room looks pretty nice. Not sure how long the plant is going to survive though...

English with Obama

In Japan there is a huge market for English training. Most want to learn English, most have tried it for years already - with very little success. I had a good laugh recently when I saw one of the social ads on Facebook advertising an English learning method with the label "developed in Japan". C`mon guys, "Made in Japan" is a quality label for many goods. But English training isn`t cars or electronics or healthy food or fashion, it`s something that Japan has hardly any competency in. Everyone learns English for 8-10 years and the only people who speak decent English worthy the name, are those who spent time abroad. I reasonably judge Japanese English teaching methods to be some of the most inefficient on the planet. Yes, English is difficult to learn for Japanese, but so is Japanese for me and I`d be ashamed if after 8-10 years of Japanese classes I wasn`t pretty, pretty fluent in it.
Now the latest craze in the English training market is "Learning English with Obama". The booksstores` foreign language section heavily advertise books and CD ROMs that teach you English through Obama speeches. So what they did was pretty much burning Barack Obama`s campaign speeches and of course the inauguration speech on CD, print fancy looking booklets with the text in written, an English-Japanese vocab section and a pretty Obama picture on the cover and sell it in countless educationally valuable volumes. My favourite is probably the "inauguration speeches over time". It brings the office freshman`s thoughts of Obama and another couple of former US presidents closer to the Japanese learners` community, back to the Gettysburg Address. I am SO looking forward to seeing what kind of English skills this new method will result in... But at least the Japanese are as always fashionable with the Obama mania.

Back in (Tokyo) town

So, this is after a 3-months break that this blog becomes alive again. Meanwhile I`ve travelled to Kiwiland, spent some more time in Australia, did a stopover in Bangkok and then spent a few weeks in Europe, at my mum`s place and spent a few days around New Year`s in Wroclaw, Poland to visit my friends from Fukuoka, Anja and Joanna and also finally had the chance to visit (snowy) Dresden which was just as great as I`d imagined. I had to stay longer in Switzerland than planned, so I had to skip going back by Transsib overland and instead booked a BA flight.
Now I am back in Tokyo and starting to settle in again. I have to say that the first few days here were not too spirited. I was extremely tired and I spent Monday basically sleeping for 24 hours. Even the next days I felt the urge to go to bed at 6pm, which is strange because timewise it`d be much earlier in Europe.
Besides jetlag I was struggling with some other issues. My laptop`s hard disk crashed. It had announced itself earlier, but I hoped the thing would make it another couple of months. I run all the system checks in the backup menu to see what the exact error was. I checked the result on a couple of IT webforums and the unisono answer was that calling DELL support for that kind of error is a waste of money, they can only sell you a new hard disk. Considering that I don`t have the old set-up CDs anymore and would need both a new Office Package and the hard disk, this would be expensive. So I decided to buy a new webbook instead. It was annoying anyway, except for expensive internet cafes I was cut off for a few days and had one more headache...
I stayed in Yoyogi youth hostel for a few nights. It`s pretty decent considering that you get a single room for the usual price of a dorm. But the room was super small and with all that luggage I brought it was claustrophobic. I checked Sakura House again, the agency that I rented from last time. I finally found something with another, smaller agency that does not so much cater to foreigners and you therefore get larger rooms for less.
The last thing I was still annoyed about was the fact that I haven`t managed to get the trainee visa. I had a marketing internship lined up before I came, but the company told me I had to organize the visa on my own. It`s a bit strange, because generally the company that hires you needs to sponsor your visa and apply for the documents in Japan. It was a German company and they obviously know how to get visa for Germans, but the situation seems to be a little different and also this visa type is generally only for students and fresh graduates. Now I was told that since I didn`t manage to get the visa (which isn`t surprising if you lack the necessary documents), they will look for someone else for this particular position. But they encouraged me to keep on trying to get the visa and then they`d hire me for another internship position. We will see, but I don`t see a good chance to get the visa after what I`ve heard at the Japanese embassy in Berne, unless I`d enrol as a student somewhere. But first of all it`s mid-semester, so no chance to enrol now and I would also have to pay the semester fee right away, so that is no option. I will keep on looking for a job of course.
Anyway, apart from all the above trouble I am now in my new place and ready to start my life in Tokyo again.