July 9, 2007 Walking to work

Although I sometimes am annoyed by the 15 minute walk from Amagasaki station to SBU, I am quite fond of the little back roads that get me there. Of course you could always take the main road and be run over by cars, but you do well with opting for the slightly longer trail of joined paths that lead along tiny houses, little garden areas, laundry lines, green spots... Sometimes, a dog will have his breakfast outside, almost every morning I am greeted by butterflies. Little purple and pinkish flowers dance along in the breeze, and sometimes I get the feeling that people start getting used to me passing there in the morning. I am polite and greet the older women that come my way and am greeted back with a smile. All types of people pass me, walking their dogs, riding their bikes with the mounted umbrellas protecting them from whatever type of weather we're having, or just generally getting towards their place of destination. If I get to work around the time that kindergarden starts, usually the kids stop for a second or two to look at that strange creature with the blond hair and the light skin (well, to them it's blond anyways, and my skin isn't exactly white either with that slight sun burn from Sunday).
Between the small houses, the towering building of SBU Bayer appears and, taking the last two turns to pass the miniture cars, I reach the bushel trees of Sumika.





Ready for another day of work :o)

July 8, 2007 Football, Fog and Foooooooood!

For the slow weekend I thought this would be, I am quite exhausted after today! Simon had invited me to join a football game between SBU and NEC (a technology company), and it turned out to be more than a friendly kick - they were actually quite competitive about the whole thing! So I didn't get to play myself, but that was probably a good thing, as it was blazingly hot outside and they were playing at high noon!

So I took on the job as fotographer:




Quite impressive at what velocities Japanese women can run over any kind of substance - e.g. grass - on high heels!

The kids were really cute, standing by the side of the field and screaming "otoosan, ganbatte!!" - Daddy, good luck, you can do it!!


Only downside of the match was that, as we didn't have very many players, almost all of SBU had to play the entire game - and NEC exchanged more than half of their players during half time. The result wasn't all that surprising: 4:1 for NEC...

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In the afternoon, I finally got to know Carsten. Axel, our neighbor in Germany, had prepared people in Japan for my imminent arrival on his trip to Osaka a week before I went to Japan - and he had introduced me to Carsten, who is working for Bayer Business Services in Osaka.

So today, we finally managed to meet for the first time - on the phone, he had sounded a lot like Wolfgang from Thailand, which already made him very symphathetic! He had the brilliant idea of driving up Rokko Mountain (a trip that I had wanted to do as well), and although the sight was pretty crappy, it was nice to be outside and to hear - nothing! (ok, I'll have to be realistic here - the noise of the occasional car going by didn't exactly fit perfectly into the mountain atmosphere) Up there, I noticed for the first time, how noisy it is down in the cities! And you could hear real birds up here! (In Japan you get deafened by fake bird noises - in the subway, at intersections (to indicate that the traffic lights are green), in commercials - Japanese seem to love fake birds...

Hankyuu Railway, one of the various train companies that coexist in Japan



And the aforementioned fog...

Carsten has been in Japan for about 9 weeks now and has to endure 3 or 4 more weeks, until his family will finally come to Japan. So, to be prepared for that, he had proposed to try out some restaurants to know where to take his family wehn they finally arrive! You can probably guess that I didn't have to think too hard about whether to take him up on the offer or not ;o)

We went to a wonderful Italien place in an Asian garden (mixed styles of Japanese, Chinese, a bit of Thai), very fancy, with amazing food and a great atmosphere. We could even watch a Japanese wedding take place in the garden, which was interesting all by itself. Carsten is very easy-going which made it absolutely effortless to talk to him! So our conversation jumped from Japan in general to wine to travelling, to family to food, to wanting to work in Barcelona.

I seriously had a great evening with loads of new info that I am sure will help me in the future ;o)

June 18, 2007 - Japan

Wow, once again I am surprised at just how quickly 13 hours can go by when flying!
I arrived in Japan! And it's a lot less alien at first sight than I thought it would be - the past half year of intensive Kanji studies now help a lot in recognizing signs, but everything is transcribed in English as well. There were only two things that caught my attention - the "French" toilets (look like little bathtubs in the ground) and the emptiness of this giant airport - we arrived in plain daytime, but the airport reminded me a lot of Stephen King's "Langoliers" - no one there besides the people from our flight! And airport staff of course, who spoke English very well. I had no trouble finding the travel info to get to Osaka and buying the tickets.

And now I am marvelling at the green scenery that's passing by outside, making up the outskirts of the 25-million people-molloch called Tokyo.
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I probably shouldn't render any judgments just yet, but so far I have the feeling that - at least by the looks - westeners are quite acostumed to the sight of the Japanese style - houses, plants, people look very familiar. Can't wait to learn more about the culture though, that's bound to be something to boggle your mind!

There are differences though - while looking out of the train window at the 13-story powerline (I don't think I've ever seen more than 5 or 6 lines above one another), a waitress came by pushing a cart with sweets to sell - I feel like on the Japanese Hogwart's Express :o)

Krass, aber ich kann's noch gar nicht fassen, dass ich jetzt 2(!) Monate hier sein werde! Two months!!!!!!! When I think back to the past summer in Barcelona and how much I learned in those 2 months... I can't wait! =)
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... I am absolutely flattened! I just shut the door of my about 15sqm room with balcony and sat down to think about what happened during the past 2 hours. Shinkansen, local train and taxi weren't a problem, there were always people that understood what I wanted from them with my crude mix of English and that handful of Japanese words that I know. So when the taxi guy dropped me off (complete with white gloves and a construction to open the passenger door "semi-automatically"), I was standing in front of Sumika Bayer, my working place for the next 2 months. Eric van Rijn, my contact person, came down immediately to salute me - and it turned out that he isn't in his 40s as I thought, but roughly my age, only with 7 years in total of living in Japan!

The whole team I got to know so far is exceptionally young, nice and smiley (and it seems like a real smile), and today I have already collected 6 business cards and bowed aroun't 150 times!

So during the past 2 hours, a group of 6 people ran around the apartment house with me, showing me around and absolutely taking my breath for what Bayer is offering me! I knew that they would pay me 5000 YEN per day, weekends and holidays inluded :o) And that they would arrange for accomodation for me. Furthermore they wanted to cover my commuting expenses.

But I hadn't expected this! In my new dormitory, I have a big room with balcony, a bed, a desk, a bunch of drawers, a washbasin, a giant wardrobe (begehbarer Kleiderschrank!) and an additional cupboard for about 20 pairs of shoes! Then I have a TV, a water boiler, a telephone line, air condition. There is a public washroom with a giant bathtub (you're not supposed to swim in it though) and also separate private showers. I think there are about 80 girls living here on 5 floors. We have a living room with television, a stepper to keep in shape, a vending machine for drinks, a code to get inside the dormitory, (for me there is no curfew as I am officially working), washing mashines, and the best of all - the canteen! They put breakfast in quite a human schedule, and guess what: all of it for me is freeeee (for me at least hehe)! I can eat as much as I want and Sumika is paying me 30EUR/day for that =)

Have I mentioned the shower gel, laundry powder, garbage bag, tea cup, slipers, toothbrush, soap, sponch, hairbrush and razor that came with the room as well? hihi

To finish this surprisingly wonderful day, Eric introduced me to 2 girls from Sumika who live in the same residence ~ Arima-san und Doro-san - and Doro-san knocked at my door an hour ago and invited me to come to eat dinner with her in the hall! Mizu soup (watersoup with eggs, veggies), rice with kaviar (or whatever kind of fish eggs), sardines, lotus roots, cellery, muschrooms, algae - extremely delicious!
And great chopsticks they have, too :o)

So what a day! Tomorrow I will check out the convenience store and the internet caf`e which Doro showed me on the map.

That's it for today! Goodnight to you all, I will collapse into a coma now and I know I will sleep veeeeeery well!!!! =)