Still and quiet feline form,
In the sun, asleep and warm.
His tail is limp his
Whiskers drooped.
Man, what could make
This cat so pooped?
Wow, gotta start writing earlier so I don’t forget stuff… It has been a busy week since the last time I blogged. And yes, once again I filled my quota for meeting random older men this week. But that’s later on!
Friday was a bit uneventful, I stayed in and relaxed. It was nice. I played video games and chatted on MSN… mmm Playstation emulators. Early to rise Saturday morning, I was off to have fun and excitement in Osaka! I met with Keith and Tyson (a fellow CJP member) at Tennoji station, and we decided to check out the Umeda Sky Building. Very cool looking building, you can go up a great glass elevator 35 floors, then take an escalator (which has nothing beneath it) up another 4 floors. Not a bad view from up there, unfortunately the view from the roof is a bit obstructed (you’re not allowed at the very edge). Got some ok photos though. We ate in the basement… udon and sashimi and other stuff.
Next we were off to meet Tongxin and Boon-hau. After a quick stop at Daiso (100Yen Shop (Dollar Store)), which has the super annoying MIDI music I hear in my office on Thursday afternoons, we went to Tongxin’s flat to wait for Boon-hau. Tongxin has quite a nice place, with her own bathroom! Plus a little loft area above her livin room. I’m jealous.
After Boon-hau arrived we went to the shrine right near Tongxin’s place. She’s been here a month and hadn’t been there yet. There was quite the path behind the temple, we decided to hike it up there. Took us about two hours and 15 bug bites for me to get up, boy was I hurting the next day! Allergic to mosquitoes sucks, I just hope I never get stung by a bee. And it was hot too, we were really hoping for a vending machine on the top… since they have vending machines everywhere. On a side note, climbing up Fushimi Inari shrine is quite the hike… and yet they have cigarette vending machines halfway up. So if you’re out of breath and really need a smoke :P. Anyway, we were outta luck, but we got a good view of Osaka from the top.
It took us way less time down… maybe 30 minutes max. After a quick stop for popsicles at Tongxin’s we went to an isakaya for dinner. The outside was quite interesting, it was shaped like a pirate ship (niiice). Inside, we got the top floor entirely to ourselves, it was pretty early, and the owner/waiter person was quite nice, helping us with the menu. We order drinks, and he explains some of the stuff on the menu. We end up getting… let me think. A Pirate Salad which is mostly various sashimi, yakisoba, okonomiyaki, yakitori, and Tyson decides it’s a fine time to order a plate of horse sashimi. Yes, that’s right… I had to try some just to say I had. Very interesting texture and flavor, I don’t know how to describe it. Not bad tho, but expensive.
Anyway, the owner guy saw that I was very quiet and polite, and wanted to be specifically my friend. I shook his hand and said Ok! He was also impressed that I sat in seiza position for the entire meal. Not many people can pull that off apparently (least without hurting themselves), but I have no problems with it. But you all know I’m not exactly normal anyways. So yeah, obviously my friends wanted me to get my picture taken with him. Yes, I know I’m not looking at the camera, but there were 4 cameras going off at once and I had no idea who was going when. We get a group picture too, but not on my camera, sorry. After I head back to my place in Kyoto, and made shower curfew by literally a minute! Which was very lucky, after the sweating and the bugs and the sweating.
- - -- --- ----- -------- ------------- ---------------------
Onto Sunday I guess… after spending half the morning deciding whether I should bother goin out or not, I decide I might as well… so I get to the grocery store and decide to get food and go home. It was very hot, and I figured studying my Japanese would be the most useful way to spend the day.
That was until I talked to Anton, who wanted to go exploring and practice his mad Photography Skillz in Kyoto. So I headed down to Takanohara first, so we could go Yukata shopping. Unfortunately for me, they only had one style left for guys’ yukatas, so Anton got his, and I’m going back to get mine tomorrow (Got it! Picture up later!) when they get more stock in. So after we head to downtown Kyoto.
So we get off at Shijo station and walk through one of the back streets looking for a place to eat. Not finding anywhere cheap we settle for (yes Erin, it’s true) Wendy’s. It was not bad, got a bacon cheeseburger, nice to have something familiar. And mmm bacon. So then we check out the Gion area, against my better judgement (still scared of the English prof). Not too lively for a Saturday night, I imagine it’ll change this weekend though! Mmm, Gion Matsuri! But I’ll discuss that later.
Heading back to downtown we saw the ultimo in cool. What the hell, my Word 97 has the word Ultimo (which is apparently a suburb in Sydney!) but not popsicles, or terraform, or Wendy’s! Anyway, Ultimo in Cool! Yeah, we see a large old American car (sorry, don’t know my cars, couldn’t tell you what kind). Anton stops to take a picture, and the driver, a young Japanese guy, sees us, and turns on the hydraulics! Didn’t expect to see that in Japan! A few minutes later we see another guy that had pimped his ride, with lights all around, and a laptop mounted on the front playin some American hiphop (sorry, don’t know my American hiphop, couldn’t tell you what artist). He was wearing a red jacket with a leopard print on It I think? Oh yeah, his ride was a bicycle!
So we decide to check out the river. There’s an area right beside the river, and at the time an amateur jazz band was playing. We take a few pictures and walk down a bit further, where there’s girls in yukata and guys not in yukata lighting off some fireworks! They start talking to us. And by us I mean Anton, since I’m inarticulate in the ways of Japanese. Oddly enough I can understand waaaay more than I can speak, while Anton claims the opposite for him. Anyway, after talkin for a bit, we part ways, and we head back up to downtown, passing by a Jamaican guy playing the drums.
We got drinks at a vending machine. Anton got a fruity rainbow drink outside a place that sells… Canadian whiskey, among other things. And then we went in search of pizza. Not having any clue, we ask a guy at a convenience store if there’s a pizza place nearby, and he says the closest one is a 30 minute walk. Then I start thinking… I kinda know where we are, and I thought there was a pizza place maybe 15 minutes away max. So I start leading the way, only to get to the exact store I was thinkin of 2 minutes later ><. Dunno what the guy at the convenience store was thinking. Anyway, it sure wasn’t Pizza Hut, thin crust, no grease, I was kinda disappointed. Oh well.We head back home, I’m always a fan of making shower curfew, so people don’t have to smell me.
- - -- --- ----- -------- ------------- ---------------------
Muuuuuchos other stuff new. Work is going much better recently, I’ve got a lot more to do. Monday was brutal, with the meeting lasting nearly 3 hours. But afterwards I actually got some work done! I’ve actually been fairly busy since Friday, measuring tooth impedance and graphing the data. I actually find it fairly interesting.
Wake Up Neo. The Matrix Has You.
So I finally downloaded Skype yesterday. I’ve been talking to my parents a bit on MSN, and I have a webcam, but unfortunately their microphone isn’t working. Doing my research on USB connections I think I know why that is, but anyway. So I figured I’d phone em. I was talking to my mom on MSN before I called, then as I called I typed "Ring Ring"… assuming she’d get the point and answer the phone. But nooooo… so the answering machine picks up, and I say "Ring Ring"… still nothing! My mommy is funny. Was nice to call home though, talked for 45 minutes, and it cost me a whole 75 pence! I expect compensation when I return.
Hmm, future plans… Gion Matsuri on the weekend, sounds like Anton’s place is gonna be absolutely squished to the max. The festival should be quite fun. I’m thinking of going to a concert on Saturday though… mmm Coldplay. Just gotta figure out how to buy a ticket. Going to get my Yukata tomorrow, then me and Anton are going to an isakaya with Uncle Masa (which we did, was alright, nothin interesting to tell really).
Pirates comes out a week from Saturday, definitely gonna see it the first day! I hear it broke some major records, rather impressive. Then that Sunday we’re thinking of goin surfing in Wakayama.The following weekend is a five day weekend for me, company holiday! I’m thinking of going down to Tokyo for a few days, since I haven’t been yet. So if anyone is able to put me up for a few days, let me know, that’d be excellent!
Then the next weekend is Byron’s first week in Japan! Then the next weekend is Obon week, with a potential Okinawa trip in the works, or a super massive rock concert if that falls through. Then the next weekend is Fuji-san!!! Wow, that’s a month and a half of fully booked weekends ahead!
I’ll probably post this in the morning, got pics to upload first, and links to add, and other stuff. Like pie. And my online photo album will be up soon I hope. Depends on the lack of sleep this weekend!
Showing posts with label Kyoto. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kyoto. Show all posts
Friday, July 14, 2006
Wednesday, July 05, 2006
As You Gain Experience, You'll Realize That All Logical Questions are Considered Insubordination
So you don't know where you're going but you want to talk
And you feel like you're going where you've been before
You'll tell anyone who will listen but you feel ignored
Nothing's really making any sense at all…
Mondays are difficult. Let me explain:
Imagine you’re 8 years old and your parents are having a dinner party… everyone’s dressed fancy and talking with big complex words and you can’t understand anything. After standing around bored for 2 hours, someone asks you a question, and everyone goes silent and turns to look at you, expecting an intelligent answer…
Or perhaps another example… Imagine being handcuffed to a chair, being forced to watch Ultraviolet in Portuguese, followed immediately by The Horse Whisperer in French.
Anyway, it’s not fun, but unavoidable I guess. 2+ hour meetings, all in Japanese. But it’s better than Friday afternoons… I still can’t tune out that evil evil accordion music.
I’ve been studying lots for Japanese, but while I know the rules, it’s hard to actually put em to use. I’m thinkin a good idea is to get some Japanese Manga (graphic novels) and practice that way, learning sentence structure, etc. I need to work on vocab too. I’ll get better eventually I hope, I still got 9 months to practice.
Work’s been going a bit better though. They have me working with tooth impedance and I feel semi useful. It didn’t take me long to do the work, so I killed some time by making a fancy excel spreadsheet, which got mad at me when I tried to input a formula that was waaay too big for it. I don’t blame it, the formula looked like the Horrendous Space Kablooie. And then I showed my supervisor who thought the numbers it generated were too low, even though I explained to him that I chose example numbers at random since nobody gave me actual values yet. Maybe tomorrow…
Edit: Got the data myself after confusing the guy next to me, and it seems to work in my table. My supervisor thinks there may be a problem with the calculations/data, some of the numbers weren’t what he expected. But they do match my calculations, and I’ve quadruple checked my calculations, so… I was supposed to meet with him to discuss the data, but we all know what happened there.
Oh yeah, apparently the guy who’s been directing my main project quit over a week and a half ago. Which explains why I’ve seen him once in the past three weeks. But it doesn’t explain why I still haven’t been told he quit! What the heck do I do now? Gah!
Hmm… have I described my office yet? There’s lots of buildings at my work, including a sales office, the R&D building (where I am), and various factory buildings where the manufacturing takes place. The cafeteria/main factory building looks kinda like an old firehouse, all red brick. Like a normal Japanese office, everything is quite wide open, no cubicles or anything. Which actually makes it seem way more cluttered; you are able to see papers and binders and files piling up everywhere. I’m in the project area, off to the side a bit, which is nice. But it does mean I can be easily forgotten about. And I’ve already discussed the music in my office o.O.
Pirates are cool.
You lucky bums get to see Dead Man’s Chest two weeks before I do. I’m jealous. The Kraken looks awesome.
I guess I should talk about my weekend at some point… On Friday I had my welcoming party. My section at work went out for Okonomiyaki, it was quite good. Afterwards the younger ones in our party went to a nearby bar where we met up with the some of the other guys from the company. Quite a nice little bar, we had a room at the back to ourselves, where we sat on the floor by a low table of course. I couldn’t understand much of what was going on, but it was still pretty fun. Nice to see my coworkers outside of work, makes me feel I can relate to them a bit more. And I’m very glad about the lack of Karaoke!
Saturday was supposed to be a sleep day, but Vincent, Boon-hau and Tongxin came down to Kyoto for the day, along with Boon-hau’s friend. We went for lunch at Kyoto Station. The actual train station seems to be a tertiary function of the station. The primary function, is of course, shopping. The escalator goes up 11 floors, with nearly everything you could imagine… tons and tons of clothes, a floor just for sweets and gifts, a supermarket in one of the two basements... The top floor is all restaurants. The secondary function is as a tourist attraction. From the top of the station you can see the entire southern half of Kyoto, perhaps the northern half too, I didn’t explore enough, but it’s pretty cool. Next time I’m there I’ll take photos. And then, I guess, it’s also a train station… A fair number of foreigners around Kyoto Station too, but I guess that can be expected.
After lunch we took the bus to the Golden Temple. Quite pretty, but long bus ride. Slow too… for the first half hour we coulda walked faster than the bus. The temple itself is covered in gold leaf, so it’s quite neat. The area around the temple was nice too, lots of trees and a little lake. But the area felt too much like a tourist trap I think, there were nearly more foreigners than Japanese there. I enjoyed Fushimi Inari much more.
We headed towards Silver Temple after that, but unfortunately it was closed when we got there. Tongxin bought 2 cheap flute thingys from a vendor and we toured down Philosopher’s Walk for a little bit. After we went to Gion, and I left the group just before dinner. I was going to meet David at the pub where he hangs out, but I was a bit delayed…
Two minutes after I left the group, an older man (yes, apparently it’s not just Anton with the OMLGP) starts talking to me. He asks where I’m from, how long I’ve been in Japan, then says he’s an English professor, and he’s writing a Japanese-English dictionary. He then gives me a handful of pages of his dictionary and asks me to proofread them… on the street… on a busy street… on a Saturday night… I’m too polite for my own good, I read a few pages, gave him a suggestion or two, then said I had to go, I was running late.
Now, you’re probably thinking this is rather odd (almost on par with some of my other experiences), but I was completely prepared for this, and the coincidence of it nearly made me burst out laughing. Dave had told me earlier that he had had two encounters with the same guy years earlier, who asked him to proofread pages both times. And another past intern at my company has met him too! So Byron, be prepared! He’ll be lurking, waiting for you.
Last night I had the strangest dream…
Where everything was exactly how it seemed…
Before I forget, why not turn my blog into a dream diary! And by that I mean, let’s annoy you all with the insanity that goes on in my head every night. So I was sleeping outside (in my dream), I forgot why, maybe I missed curfew and got locked out. When I woke up I was being eaten by tick beetles (an imaginary bug, think tiny beetles that dig under your skin and give you lime disease). Then I was outside a bar in England battling against O-ren Iishi from Kill Bill. And then I was concerned about the batteries I was chewing on. I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Then I realized, well, when you eat electronic devices you’re eating the batteries inside them too, and that works fine! So eating the batteries separately should work too, they’ll just join with the electronics in your stomach! That was the justification I remember in my dream.
Ok, take the blue pill and return to the Real World, Link. Don’t worry everyone, I’m ok now… until I go to sleep tonight. Dreams as weird as these are rather common for me, it makes sleeping rather interesting. But some nights the craziness is a bit overwhelming.
I’m surprised how normal it is to me that everyone (including my friends) calls me Link here. I mean, it’s a cool name and all, but the concept of being referred to by your last name takes a little adjusting. Though some of my friends forget that Link is not my first name… " ‘Link Brett Adam’… Adam? That’s a weird last name!" ><.
Oh yeah, Sunday I met up with Vincent and Anton at Kyoto Station. We were gonna go back to the dining bar nearby that I wrote about before, but unfortunately it was closed. So we went to a little ramen shop nearby. It was quite good, a little weird with the music from the 50’s playing…(once again, I was expecting to hear this kinda music in Japan. I really did my research before coming here). We went for dessert at a café, it was quite good as well, mmm aisu kokoa and chocolate cake. Explored Kyoto Station, and then Vincent had to take the bus home… Anton and I returned home as well.
What else can I write about? Hmm, bought a fancy new camera. It is half the width of my old one, and lighter too. Plus the screen is four times bigger and picture quality is much better. So now I have incentive to take more pictures, and Anton will be happy cause I won’t be stealing his all the time. I will also be setting up an album on Picasa, I'll let you know when it's up. So you'll get to see all the pics instead of just the ones on my blog.
My Alien Registration Card is ready, but the ward office closes before I get off work at night, so I gotta find a way to pick it up. Maybe I can make a mad dash during lunch.
I finished phase IV of the kitchen cleanup project. Phase I was the fridge, which had a healthy layer of grime on the inside. II was the garbage can, which we could smell from our dorm rooms. III was the dish drying rack. You’d assume that since clean dishes are going there, that it would be clean, and not have a nasty black coating on the bottom. You’d be wrong. IV was getting rid of the year of grease and miscellaneous foodstuffs on the stove, wall, pipes, shield for the pipes, and everywhere else. Byron owes me one. Maybe he can bring me candy from Canada. Maybe yes…
Reading the news this morning has made me a little bit uneasy. Missile test-fires very close to where I’m living can never be a good thing… I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Anyway, another long blog so I should probably wrap it up…Further blog posts as events warrant. Farewell!
And you feel like you're going where you've been before
You'll tell anyone who will listen but you feel ignored
Nothing's really making any sense at all…
Mondays are difficult. Let me explain:
Imagine you’re 8 years old and your parents are having a dinner party… everyone’s dressed fancy and talking with big complex words and you can’t understand anything. After standing around bored for 2 hours, someone asks you a question, and everyone goes silent and turns to look at you, expecting an intelligent answer…
Or perhaps another example… Imagine being handcuffed to a chair, being forced to watch Ultraviolet in Portuguese, followed immediately by The Horse Whisperer in French.
Anyway, it’s not fun, but unavoidable I guess. 2+ hour meetings, all in Japanese. But it’s better than Friday afternoons… I still can’t tune out that evil evil accordion music.
I’ve been studying lots for Japanese, but while I know the rules, it’s hard to actually put em to use. I’m thinkin a good idea is to get some Japanese Manga (graphic novels) and practice that way, learning sentence structure, etc. I need to work on vocab too. I’ll get better eventually I hope, I still got 9 months to practice.
Work’s been going a bit better though. They have me working with tooth impedance and I feel semi useful. It didn’t take me long to do the work, so I killed some time by making a fancy excel spreadsheet, which got mad at me when I tried to input a formula that was waaay too big for it. I don’t blame it, the formula looked like the Horrendous Space Kablooie. And then I showed my supervisor who thought the numbers it generated were too low, even though I explained to him that I chose example numbers at random since nobody gave me actual values yet. Maybe tomorrow…
Edit: Got the data myself after confusing the guy next to me, and it seems to work in my table. My supervisor thinks there may be a problem with the calculations/data, some of the numbers weren’t what he expected. But they do match my calculations, and I’ve quadruple checked my calculations, so… I was supposed to meet with him to discuss the data, but we all know what happened there.
Oh yeah, apparently the guy who’s been directing my main project quit over a week and a half ago. Which explains why I’ve seen him once in the past three weeks. But it doesn’t explain why I still haven’t been told he quit! What the heck do I do now? Gah!
Hmm… have I described my office yet? There’s lots of buildings at my work, including a sales office, the R&D building (where I am), and various factory buildings where the manufacturing takes place. The cafeteria/main factory building looks kinda like an old firehouse, all red brick. Like a normal Japanese office, everything is quite wide open, no cubicles or anything. Which actually makes it seem way more cluttered; you are able to see papers and binders and files piling up everywhere. I’m in the project area, off to the side a bit, which is nice. But it does mean I can be easily forgotten about. And I’ve already discussed the music in my office o.O.
Pirates are cool.
You lucky bums get to see Dead Man’s Chest two weeks before I do. I’m jealous. The Kraken looks awesome.
I guess I should talk about my weekend at some point… On Friday I had my welcoming party. My section at work went out for Okonomiyaki, it was quite good. Afterwards the younger ones in our party went to a nearby bar where we met up with the some of the other guys from the company. Quite a nice little bar, we had a room at the back to ourselves, where we sat on the floor by a low table of course. I couldn’t understand much of what was going on, but it was still pretty fun. Nice to see my coworkers outside of work, makes me feel I can relate to them a bit more. And I’m very glad about the lack of Karaoke!
Saturday was supposed to be a sleep day, but Vincent, Boon-hau and Tongxin came down to Kyoto for the day, along with Boon-hau’s friend. We went for lunch at Kyoto Station. The actual train station seems to be a tertiary function of the station. The primary function, is of course, shopping. The escalator goes up 11 floors, with nearly everything you could imagine… tons and tons of clothes, a floor just for sweets and gifts, a supermarket in one of the two basements... The top floor is all restaurants. The secondary function is as a tourist attraction. From the top of the station you can see the entire southern half of Kyoto, perhaps the northern half too, I didn’t explore enough, but it’s pretty cool. Next time I’m there I’ll take photos. And then, I guess, it’s also a train station… A fair number of foreigners around Kyoto Station too, but I guess that can be expected.
After lunch we took the bus to the Golden Temple. Quite pretty, but long bus ride. Slow too… for the first half hour we coulda walked faster than the bus. The temple itself is covered in gold leaf, so it’s quite neat. The area around the temple was nice too, lots of trees and a little lake. But the area felt too much like a tourist trap I think, there were nearly more foreigners than Japanese there. I enjoyed Fushimi Inari much more.
We headed towards Silver Temple after that, but unfortunately it was closed when we got there. Tongxin bought 2 cheap flute thingys from a vendor and we toured down Philosopher’s Walk for a little bit. After we went to Gion, and I left the group just before dinner. I was going to meet David at the pub where he hangs out, but I was a bit delayed…
Two minutes after I left the group, an older man (yes, apparently it’s not just Anton with the OMLGP) starts talking to me. He asks where I’m from, how long I’ve been in Japan, then says he’s an English professor, and he’s writing a Japanese-English dictionary. He then gives me a handful of pages of his dictionary and asks me to proofread them… on the street… on a busy street… on a Saturday night… I’m too polite for my own good, I read a few pages, gave him a suggestion or two, then said I had to go, I was running late.
Now, you’re probably thinking this is rather odd (almost on par with some of my other experiences), but I was completely prepared for this, and the coincidence of it nearly made me burst out laughing. Dave had told me earlier that he had had two encounters with the same guy years earlier, who asked him to proofread pages both times. And another past intern at my company has met him too! So Byron, be prepared! He’ll be lurking, waiting for you.
Last night I had the strangest dream…
Where everything was exactly how it seemed…
Before I forget, why not turn my blog into a dream diary! And by that I mean, let’s annoy you all with the insanity that goes on in my head every night. So I was sleeping outside (in my dream), I forgot why, maybe I missed curfew and got locked out. When I woke up I was being eaten by tick beetles (an imaginary bug, think tiny beetles that dig under your skin and give you lime disease). Then I was outside a bar in England battling against O-ren Iishi from Kill Bill. And then I was concerned about the batteries I was chewing on. I thought maybe it wasn’t such a good idea. Then I realized, well, when you eat electronic devices you’re eating the batteries inside them too, and that works fine! So eating the batteries separately should work too, they’ll just join with the electronics in your stomach! That was the justification I remember in my dream.
Ok, take the blue pill and return to the Real World, Link. Don’t worry everyone, I’m ok now… until I go to sleep tonight. Dreams as weird as these are rather common for me, it makes sleeping rather interesting. But some nights the craziness is a bit overwhelming.
I’m surprised how normal it is to me that everyone (including my friends) calls me Link here. I mean, it’s a cool name and all, but the concept of being referred to by your last name takes a little adjusting. Though some of my friends forget that Link is not my first name… " ‘Link Brett Adam’… Adam? That’s a weird last name!" ><.
Oh yeah, Sunday I met up with Vincent and Anton at Kyoto Station. We were gonna go back to the dining bar nearby that I wrote about before, but unfortunately it was closed. So we went to a little ramen shop nearby. It was quite good, a little weird with the music from the 50’s playing…(once again, I was expecting to hear this kinda music in Japan. I really did my research before coming here). We went for dessert at a café, it was quite good as well, mmm aisu kokoa and chocolate cake. Explored Kyoto Station, and then Vincent had to take the bus home… Anton and I returned home as well.
What else can I write about? Hmm, bought a fancy new camera. It is half the width of my old one, and lighter too. Plus the screen is four times bigger and picture quality is much better. So now I have incentive to take more pictures, and Anton will be happy cause I won’t be stealing his all the time. I will also be setting up an album on Picasa, I'll let you know when it's up. So you'll get to see all the pics instead of just the ones on my blog.
My Alien Registration Card is ready, but the ward office closes before I get off work at night, so I gotta find a way to pick it up. Maybe I can make a mad dash during lunch.
I finished phase IV of the kitchen cleanup project. Phase I was the fridge, which had a healthy layer of grime on the inside. II was the garbage can, which we could smell from our dorm rooms. III was the dish drying rack. You’d assume that since clean dishes are going there, that it would be clean, and not have a nasty black coating on the bottom. You’d be wrong. IV was getting rid of the year of grease and miscellaneous foodstuffs on the stove, wall, pipes, shield for the pipes, and everywhere else. Byron owes me one. Maybe he can bring me candy from Canada. Maybe yes…
Reading the news this morning has made me a little bit uneasy. Missile test-fires very close to where I’m living can never be a good thing… I guess we will just have to wait and see what happens.
Anyway, another long blog so I should probably wrap it up…Further blog posts as events warrant. Farewell!
Thursday, June 22, 2006
How Am I Supposed to Write My Blog When I'm Trapped on the Ceiling? It's Impossible.
Explorers are we, intrepid and bold,
Out in the wild, amongst wonders untold.
Equipped wit our wits, a map, and a snack,
We're searching for fun and we're on the right track!
- Watterson
Continuing on where I left off, I stayed at Anton’s Saturday night, along with Vincent and Keith (and anton was there too). Somehow I got cold during the night, so I slept on the floor underneath my futon… I’ve had better sleeps… I’ve had worse too though, stupid mosquito.Eventually we all woke up, and decided to go get breakfast.
Anton’s Old Man Luring Gaijin Powers (OMLGP) benefited us again! We were discussing plans outside a coffee shop, when an older gentleman came out to usher us in, saying what a great place it was, and to come in and eat! Only he wasn’t an employee, he was a customer! Turned out good though, toast, hard-boiled egg, ham, potato salad and ice coffee (I still don’t like coffee, bleh).
Next on the agenda was climbing to the top of Fushimi-Inari. Anton was sick last time, so I was the only one to have been there… We climbed to the very top this time, which took us quite a while, since we took some detours, but it was fun. Once again there were high schoolers doing endurance training on the stairs up the mountain. Anton got some very good pictures, here’s one or two:
We came back down and went to get some food. Anton and I got the same thing. Anton asked what it was, and he thought the waitress said fox o.O… When he asked her again, "Is this fox?" she confirmed that it was indeed! No, kidding, she laughed a bit, and said, no, no, it’s tofu. So yeah, cold tofu and noodles in a very sweet broth, wasn’t bad, but quite different.
By this time it was time to head to Kyoto Station, Vincent’s bus was leaving at 4. Only Keith’s ticket got stuck in the ticket booth! So Anton and Vincent went on ahead, I stayed with Keith. We hopped on the next train and went to downtown Kyoto, hoping to cross over to the subway line and take it down to Kyoto Station… only we weren’t really sure where the subway line was (I take responsibity for choosing the route). We walked for about 15 before we found it, then met Anton at about 4:15… he was waiting for about 25 minutes, he took a much much shorter route not involving getting lost in downtown, and made me feel rather dumb, but oh well.
So Vincent departed from us, and we continued on our adventure by going exploring around Kyoto Station. We pass by a large hotel, and Anton sees an attractive Japanese Policewoman. He asks to take her picture, but she seemed hesitant… and eventually said no. There were a lot of cops around, and it probably wouldn’t look too good for her. So we move on, then start thinking why there’s so many cops… at least one on every street corner! I suggest some sort of famous person passing through soon. So we pass by another cop and ask him, turns out I was right, in an hour a Japanese prince was to be passing through.
Not wanting to miss an exciting opportunity like that, we decided to hang around for awhile. Keith and Anton figured this was a good idea to do something that would be considered illegal in Canada.
I should also mention there was a cop standing about 6 feet away at this point. We also saw a Japanese tour guide, even in Japan they have their flags to direct tourists.
So went back to where the prince was passing by, and met a good looking Japanese girl. Anton of course asks for a picture, that seems to be his favorite Japanese phrase :P. They take a picture of us too on their fancy phones. And we got pictures of the prince too, he passed by with quite a large escort.
Kinda reminded me of the one scene in Kill Bill, with Lucy Liu in the anime scene as the assassin on the roof… I mention this, and we look up. Sure enough, there’s cops on the roof for security purposes.
So we go back to visit the policewoman, where, after waiting for her for about 15 minutes (she did tell us to come back after the prince and she’d let us take a picture), we got some of her posing for us.
At this point it was about time for Keith to head home, so we took him back to the station and found a good route for him to get home. Sounds like he had some good luck on the train! Anton and I went wandering around looking for a place to eat.
Anton’s OMLGP worked again, only not in a good way; an older man came up to talk to us, asking if we wanted to take his picture. Anton does, then takes one with me in it as well. Then the man tells us he’s homeless, and if we had any money, since he posed for us. Anton tells him we don’t really have any to spare, since we’re students, so he left us… Wow, we really seem to draw attention to ourselves, I’ve never heard of any panhandling in Japan, not to mention such creative panhandling.
Dinner time, we pass by a little sign saying dinner bar, and some stairs leading down, and Anton and I, the adventurous type, go right ahead down. We’re greeted by some very cute Japanese girl waitresses, who seat us right away, then the owner comes to talk to us. He gives us a sheet of paper, explaining that he’s very happy we have come to visit, but that he can’t speak any english besides "Hello" and "I love you"! He was extremely cool, he was palm reading at other tables, managed to tie a piece of wire into a knot inside his mouth, and was wearing a Tom and Jerry sweater! He also showed us the notebooks he had collected… All the foreigners that come to his restaurant he has sign a page in his book and write/draw whatever they want. He’s had people from all over the world, a lot from Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia.
We order a beer each and our meals, Anton got Tuna and Mushroom Spaghetti, I got Grilled Chicken. Anton was also quite happy about the seating arrangements, he was facing the two cute waitresses. We chat with them too, find out their names and what they do. The food was quite good, and we even got dessert (Sesame Ice Cream, since it was the waitress’ fave ^^). Anton got one of their emails, so that they can practice their english together!
Time for me and Anton to head home, we go back to the station and take the Keihan line home. Another adventurous weekend complete!
- - -- --- ----- -------- ------------- ---------------------
Ok, so I'm combining two posts together just cause there's a lot to write about, and I'm four days behind on the Kyoto one, so please forgive the length...
Music in Japan Part 2 - If I Wanted American Music I Wouldn't be in Japan!
Music in Japan, as I have mentioned, is a mixed bag. A lot of what you hear wandering around is very old American music that you don’t really need to hear (Funkytown), or just downright bizarre (Accordion music at work, or the Midori theme song that was written by the Devil and sung by Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light).
However, the actual bands (least the 4 indie bands we saw on Saturday), were really good! I guess being in a band isn’t exactly a well respected career in Japanese society, where everyone is expected to fit in, so if you’re going to be in a band, you had better be good. But then again, I've only heard 4 bands so far... gotta check out Tokyo before I make a professional opinion.
I don’t particularly like the American influence however. In general, I much more enjoy Canadian and British music than American (with a few exceptions), So like the second band’s whole "What!" thing really worsened their songs… and the fact that they did it every single song, well… I think it would be better for the bands to find their own style, rather than trying to copy the United States, but maybe that’s just me.
If It Ain't Broke, It Doesn't Have Enough Features Yet!
Shoes are loud! I got dress(y) shoes to wear at work, but they’re extremely loud and clunky. I can hear myself coming a mile away. And I can hear other people from half a mile. I quite enjoy walking completely silently at all times, and find it funny when I can sneak up on people, so this is fairly annoying… ah well.
The person beside me at work likes to talk to himself. Normally I would find this annoying, but he has a very cool voice. It sounds like Vincent Valentine! Check back in a few weeks to see if it’s still cool though, or whether I'm annoyed yet.
I’m not the newb anymore. I got called to a meeting yesterday, where my boss introduced the new guy! Though to be fair, I haven’t seen him around since, so maybe he’s in a different department? And either way, I’m still the lowest on the pagoda, since I don’t speak Japanese very well (or English either, for that matter).
Also, I got paid! (I hope… I should probably double check that…) Hurray, now I can buy a big screen tv and a stereo system and the pet gecko that I always wanted! Or I could save it for travelling to Tokyo for Canada Day!!! Wooooo!!!
14A Alert for the next paragraph!
Hmm, I’ve received multiple requests (from the same one individual) for confirmation that there was some scary equipment at the Onsen. So, to clear things up, I shall describe! Lucky all of you! Here goes… if you have long hair, it could get caught in the equipment that cycles the water. That would be scary. Burning yourself with the hairdryer equipment, also scary. I guess if you were very very clumsy and slipped while showering you could manage to strangle yourself with the shower equipment? Ok, enough! I’m out of ideas, and it was lame, but my point is, I wasn’t considering your feelings and I’m sorry I didn’t take notes of what I saw in the Onsen. Maybe next time…
I Like Maxims That Don't Encourage Behavior Modification
Onto more attractive topics, Anton and I got our cell phones yesterday, though I won’t post my email or phone number on here for obvous reasons. We looked around for Vodafone since we heard they were cheapest, but the only one we saw was closed, so we went to AU. We got a family plan, which worked out quite well, but we were in the store for an hour, signing all the paperwork and activating the phones. Rather fancy though, if I get a mem stick (Stupid Sony and their expensive Duo sticks), I can play music on it. Haven’t looked into what else it has yet.
Umm, afterwards Anton was pretty hungry, so we went into the Tomato Cooking Club and faked dumb, asking if it was a restaurant (obviously not, but there were girls our age inside, so, yeah, you know…). Nothing much came of thatthough. After asking a few random peopleon the street for a good place to go, we found an isakaya (Japanese pub). A very loud group of girls and guy was beside us, Anton wanted them to invite us over, but they never did. He even tried to get the waiter to ask how old they were. Crazy Foreigner.
Both of us were too tired to try and decipher the menu, so we asked the waiter to bring us whatever. (Note to others: while in Canada, this may be an ok idea, since you’re unlikely to get much weird, in Japan it’s a different story. But being the brave adventurers that we are…). So yeah, first dish was sashimi, which was quite good. The second dish, mmm some sort of shellfish! This did not look appetizing to me, and I wouldn’t have considered eating that in Canada, but I haven’t refused to try anything yet… It was squishy… Last dish was some sort of pasta with peppers, sausage, and asparagus, quite tasty. We pay the bill and leave the bar. Once again, too late to head back home, so I crashed at Anton’s for the night.
Not an overly eventful night, but the Tomato Cooking Club, the oyster things, and Anton acting like a dumb foreigner like myself to get a family plan kept up our adventurous streak.
Anyways, heading home from work now, where I have the night to prepare for the inevitable Accordion Afternoon. Next blog after next adventure!
Out in the wild, amongst wonders untold.
Equipped wit our wits, a map, and a snack,
We're searching for fun and we're on the right track!
- Watterson
Continuing on where I left off, I stayed at Anton’s Saturday night, along with Vincent and Keith (and anton was there too). Somehow I got cold during the night, so I slept on the floor underneath my futon… I’ve had better sleeps… I’ve had worse too though, stupid mosquito.Eventually we all woke up, and decided to go get breakfast.
Anton’s Old Man Luring Gaijin Powers (OMLGP) benefited us again! We were discussing plans outside a coffee shop, when an older gentleman came out to usher us in, saying what a great place it was, and to come in and eat! Only he wasn’t an employee, he was a customer! Turned out good though, toast, hard-boiled egg, ham, potato salad and ice coffee (I still don’t like coffee, bleh).
Next on the agenda was climbing to the top of Fushimi-Inari. Anton was sick last time, so I was the only one to have been there… We climbed to the very top this time, which took us quite a while, since we took some detours, but it was fun. Once again there were high schoolers doing endurance training on the stairs up the mountain. Anton got some very good pictures, here’s one or two:
We came back down and went to get some food. Anton and I got the same thing. Anton asked what it was, and he thought the waitress said fox o.O… When he asked her again, "Is this fox?" she confirmed that it was indeed! No, kidding, she laughed a bit, and said, no, no, it’s tofu. So yeah, cold tofu and noodles in a very sweet broth, wasn’t bad, but quite different.
By this time it was time to head to Kyoto Station, Vincent’s bus was leaving at 4. Only Keith’s ticket got stuck in the ticket booth! So Anton and Vincent went on ahead, I stayed with Keith. We hopped on the next train and went to downtown Kyoto, hoping to cross over to the subway line and take it down to Kyoto Station… only we weren’t really sure where the subway line was (I take responsibity for choosing the route). We walked for about 15 before we found it, then met Anton at about 4:15… he was waiting for about 25 minutes, he took a much much shorter route not involving getting lost in downtown, and made me feel rather dumb, but oh well.
So Vincent departed from us, and we continued on our adventure by going exploring around Kyoto Station. We pass by a large hotel, and Anton sees an attractive Japanese Policewoman. He asks to take her picture, but she seemed hesitant… and eventually said no. There were a lot of cops around, and it probably wouldn’t look too good for her. So we move on, then start thinking why there’s so many cops… at least one on every street corner! I suggest some sort of famous person passing through soon. So we pass by another cop and ask him, turns out I was right, in an hour a Japanese prince was to be passing through.
Not wanting to miss an exciting opportunity like that, we decided to hang around for awhile. Keith and Anton figured this was a good idea to do something that would be considered illegal in Canada.
I should also mention there was a cop standing about 6 feet away at this point. We also saw a Japanese tour guide, even in Japan they have their flags to direct tourists.
So went back to where the prince was passing by, and met a good looking Japanese girl. Anton of course asks for a picture, that seems to be his favorite Japanese phrase :P. They take a picture of us too on their fancy phones. And we got pictures of the prince too, he passed by with quite a large escort.
Kinda reminded me of the one scene in Kill Bill, with Lucy Liu in the anime scene as the assassin on the roof… I mention this, and we look up. Sure enough, there’s cops on the roof for security purposes.
So we go back to visit the policewoman, where, after waiting for her for about 15 minutes (she did tell us to come back after the prince and she’d let us take a picture), we got some of her posing for us.
At this point it was about time for Keith to head home, so we took him back to the station and found a good route for him to get home. Sounds like he had some good luck on the train! Anton and I went wandering around looking for a place to eat.
Anton’s OMLGP worked again, only not in a good way; an older man came up to talk to us, asking if we wanted to take his picture. Anton does, then takes one with me in it as well. Then the man tells us he’s homeless, and if we had any money, since he posed for us. Anton tells him we don’t really have any to spare, since we’re students, so he left us… Wow, we really seem to draw attention to ourselves, I’ve never heard of any panhandling in Japan, not to mention such creative panhandling.
Dinner time, we pass by a little sign saying dinner bar, and some stairs leading down, and Anton and I, the adventurous type, go right ahead down. We’re greeted by some very cute Japanese girl waitresses, who seat us right away, then the owner comes to talk to us. He gives us a sheet of paper, explaining that he’s very happy we have come to visit, but that he can’t speak any english besides "Hello" and "I love you"! He was extremely cool, he was palm reading at other tables, managed to tie a piece of wire into a knot inside his mouth, and was wearing a Tom and Jerry sweater! He also showed us the notebooks he had collected… All the foreigners that come to his restaurant he has sign a page in his book and write/draw whatever they want. He’s had people from all over the world, a lot from Europe, North America, Australia, and Asia.
We order a beer each and our meals, Anton got Tuna and Mushroom Spaghetti, I got Grilled Chicken. Anton was also quite happy about the seating arrangements, he was facing the two cute waitresses. We chat with them too, find out their names and what they do. The food was quite good, and we even got dessert (Sesame Ice Cream, since it was the waitress’ fave ^^). Anton got one of their emails, so that they can practice their english together!
Time for me and Anton to head home, we go back to the station and take the Keihan line home. Another adventurous weekend complete!
- - -- --- ----- -------- ------------- ---------------------
Ok, so I'm combining two posts together just cause there's a lot to write about, and I'm four days behind on the Kyoto one, so please forgive the length...
Music in Japan Part 2 - If I Wanted American Music I Wouldn't be in Japan!
Music in Japan, as I have mentioned, is a mixed bag. A lot of what you hear wandering around is very old American music that you don’t really need to hear (Funkytown), or just downright bizarre (Accordion music at work, or the Midori theme song that was written by the Devil and sung by Phil, the Prince of Insufficient Light).
However, the actual bands (least the 4 indie bands we saw on Saturday), were really good! I guess being in a band isn’t exactly a well respected career in Japanese society, where everyone is expected to fit in, so if you’re going to be in a band, you had better be good. But then again, I've only heard 4 bands so far... gotta check out Tokyo before I make a professional opinion.
I don’t particularly like the American influence however. In general, I much more enjoy Canadian and British music than American (with a few exceptions), So like the second band’s whole "What!" thing really worsened their songs… and the fact that they did it every single song, well… I think it would be better for the bands to find their own style, rather than trying to copy the United States, but maybe that’s just me.
If It Ain't Broke, It Doesn't Have Enough Features Yet!
Shoes are loud! I got dress(y) shoes to wear at work, but they’re extremely loud and clunky. I can hear myself coming a mile away. And I can hear other people from half a mile. I quite enjoy walking completely silently at all times, and find it funny when I can sneak up on people, so this is fairly annoying… ah well.
The person beside me at work likes to talk to himself. Normally I would find this annoying, but he has a very cool voice. It sounds like Vincent Valentine! Check back in a few weeks to see if it’s still cool though, or whether I'm annoyed yet.
I’m not the newb anymore. I got called to a meeting yesterday, where my boss introduced the new guy! Though to be fair, I haven’t seen him around since, so maybe he’s in a different department? And either way, I’m still the lowest on the pagoda, since I don’t speak Japanese very well (or English either, for that matter).
Also, I got paid! (I hope… I should probably double check that…) Hurray, now I can buy a big screen tv and a stereo system and the pet gecko that I always wanted! Or I could save it for travelling to Tokyo for Canada Day!!! Wooooo!!!
14A Alert for the next paragraph!
Hmm, I’ve received multiple requests (from the same one individual) for confirmation that there was some scary equipment at the Onsen. So, to clear things up, I shall describe! Lucky all of you! Here goes… if you have long hair, it could get caught in the equipment that cycles the water. That would be scary. Burning yourself with the hairdryer equipment, also scary. I guess if you were very very clumsy and slipped while showering you could manage to strangle yourself with the shower equipment? Ok, enough! I’m out of ideas, and it was lame, but my point is, I wasn’t considering your feelings and I’m sorry I didn’t take notes of what I saw in the Onsen. Maybe next time…
I Like Maxims That Don't Encourage Behavior Modification
Onto more attractive topics, Anton and I got our cell phones yesterday, though I won’t post my email or phone number on here for obvous reasons. We looked around for Vodafone since we heard they were cheapest, but the only one we saw was closed, so we went to AU. We got a family plan, which worked out quite well, but we were in the store for an hour, signing all the paperwork and activating the phones. Rather fancy though, if I get a mem stick (Stupid Sony and their expensive Duo sticks), I can play music on it. Haven’t looked into what else it has yet.
Umm, afterwards Anton was pretty hungry, so we went into the Tomato Cooking Club and faked dumb, asking if it was a restaurant (obviously not, but there were girls our age inside, so, yeah, you know…). Nothing much came of thatthough. After asking a few random peopleon the street for a good place to go, we found an isakaya (Japanese pub). A very loud group of girls and guy was beside us, Anton wanted them to invite us over, but they never did. He even tried to get the waiter to ask how old they were. Crazy Foreigner.
Both of us were too tired to try and decipher the menu, so we asked the waiter to bring us whatever. (Note to others: while in Canada, this may be an ok idea, since you’re unlikely to get much weird, in Japan it’s a different story. But being the brave adventurers that we are…). So yeah, first dish was sashimi, which was quite good. The second dish, mmm some sort of shellfish! This did not look appetizing to me, and I wouldn’t have considered eating that in Canada, but I haven’t refused to try anything yet… It was squishy… Last dish was some sort of pasta with peppers, sausage, and asparagus, quite tasty. We pay the bill and leave the bar. Once again, too late to head back home, so I crashed at Anton’s for the night.
Not an overly eventful night, but the Tomato Cooking Club, the oyster things, and Anton acting like a dumb foreigner like myself to get a family plan kept up our adventurous streak.
Anyways, heading home from work now, where I have the night to prepare for the inevitable Accordion Afternoon. Next blog after next adventure!
Sunday, May 28, 2006
You Can Tell a Good Blog By Its Ominous Logo
Hurray, it’s Brett’s Blog! Yaaaaay! Umm, yeah, I have been procrastinating writing this, which is why it’s 3 weeks overdue. The objective of my blog: to chronicle my many misadventures on my exciting expedition to Japan.
For those of you who are unawares, I am travelling to Japan on a 10 month internship at J. Morita Corp. Many of you may think I am insane for taking on such an interesting and challenging… challenge… but I am here to tell you, you’re probably right. But… this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and overall it’s very much worth it.
My company is located in Kyoto, Japan. It’s about 2h by bullet train from Tokyo. Kyoto was spared from bombing during World War II, so there are a lot of historical and cultural buildings, temples, gardens, etc, so I feel very fortunate that I get the opportunity to live there. I feel a little less fortunate that my accommodation is a company dormitory… which means a room that’s about 120 square feet, communal kitchen and bathrooms… and apparently I have a curfew as well.
Though I haven’t been given very specific information about the job I will be doing, I know that it involves designing circuits for intra oral cameras (J. Morita manufactures medical and dental equipment.)
I will try to update my blog as much as I can. I don’t know how my Internet is going to work over there yet. I know it takes a month to get my own set up, but apparently it’s possible to use other (people’s) connections, and I’m sure there’ll be other places I can access the net.
I leave for Japan on May 28th, and arrive on my birthday, May 29th. For those of you I’m leaving behind in Calgary, so long suckers!!! And to my fellow Co-op Japan students, I look forward to seeing you all again in Japan!
For those of you who are unawares, I am travelling to Japan on a 10 month internship at J. Morita Corp. Many of you may think I am insane for taking on such an interesting and challenging… challenge… but I am here to tell you, you’re probably right. But… this is a once in a lifetime opportunity, and overall it’s very much worth it.
My company is located in Kyoto, Japan. It’s about 2h by bullet train from Tokyo. Kyoto was spared from bombing during World War II, so there are a lot of historical and cultural buildings, temples, gardens, etc, so I feel very fortunate that I get the opportunity to live there. I feel a little less fortunate that my accommodation is a company dormitory… which means a room that’s about 120 square feet, communal kitchen and bathrooms… and apparently I have a curfew as well.
Though I haven’t been given very specific information about the job I will be doing, I know that it involves designing circuits for intra oral cameras (J. Morita manufactures medical and dental equipment.)
I will try to update my blog as much as I can. I don’t know how my Internet is going to work over there yet. I know it takes a month to get my own set up, but apparently it’s possible to use other (people’s) connections, and I’m sure there’ll be other places I can access the net.
I leave for Japan on May 28th, and arrive on my birthday, May 29th. For those of you I’m leaving behind in Calgary, so long suckers!!! And to my fellow Co-op Japan students, I look forward to seeing you all again in Japan!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
