09/07/07 15:27
the last day of my journey. i'm on the plane right now. this morning i got up early, had breakfast and shaved for the first time in a while (my recharger didn't work in japan). then i threw away most of the superfluos stuff, filling one large plastic bag and taking about 3 or 4 kg of weight from my baggage. mochizuki-san came to the hotel to send me off. my trunk was checked in, coming to 24.4 kg (and probably another 10 in my backpack) and it was no problem. i spent my last yen on sunglasses, a coffee and a donut, now i've got about 40 left. then i got on the plane (3 empty seats again, awesome!). it took off as planned and there haven't been many things to report yet. but my movie screens works this time and there's like 4 or 5 films i want to see, so i'll be busy! the prestige - how great is that? best film i've been to recently.
19:13
what the hell!? james bond is shown in a cut version. no poisoning of his drink. i bet they'll leave out the torture scene too. sucks!
19:40
oh come on. "the job is done. the bitch is dead." was the coolest line of the movie. way to ruin a film, pg-censorship-mafia!
25:48/18:48
i'm back in europe! milan airport. i've got more time to waste than i had on the way to japan. my watch has been set back to middle european time. i managed to get in some sleep after casino royale (i wasn't really eager to watch movies that i hadn't seen before, unawarely missing half of the story because someone deemed it inappropriate for the airline guests). boarding for the plane to düsseldorf begins in one hour. my hand luggage is too heavy to run all around the airport so i think i'll read a little bit.
21:02
i am on the last flight of this journey now. the plane to düsseldorf took off about 20 minutes late. there are only 15 people or so on the flight. i'm feeling a little tired right now, it is, after all, 4 am in japan) but i am also glad to get back home. i'm listening the the flower kings' devil's playground. i thought it would be nice for the last song to be the same as the first, and this is one extraordinary piece of music. not all is the same as it was five weeks ago, though. while these were certainly very busy and eventful days, they were also days of insight. i think i am ready to move on now.
T H E E N D
Samstag, 14. Juli 2007
day 35 - back to the roots
08/07/07 later...
the last full day in japan. i left the yoshioka's house in the morning. mz baggage was still very heavy because of all the stuff that i hadn't thrown away yet. we drove to the yokohama station (which is probablier easier to reach from setagaya). i boarded the nozomi shinkansen (the fastest one) and the ride to osaka took barely more than 2 hours. i was picked up by kitamura-san and ueno-san (remember, they picked me up on day 1). i was looking forward to get to the hotel and relax a bit, but they wouldn't be japanese if they hadn't already made plans for the day. so i had to go shopping for a souvenir (i told them i already had enoug), i had to eat takoyaki although i wasn't hungry and so on. the usual deal, hehe. we went to the planetarium which was interesting, but i didn't understand the japanese explanations and fell asleep in the comfortable chair. in the evening they had a small farewell party for me. to my surprise not only osaka's mochizuki-san came, my host families from himeji and kyoto were also there. fun! after that they brought me to the hotel and i had my own private farewell party, walking around the airport at night and enjoying my last private moments.
the last full day in japan. i left the yoshioka's house in the morning. mz baggage was still very heavy because of all the stuff that i hadn't thrown away yet. we drove to the yokohama station (which is probablier easier to reach from setagaya). i boarded the nozomi shinkansen (the fastest one) and the ride to osaka took barely more than 2 hours. i was picked up by kitamura-san and ueno-san (remember, they picked me up on day 1). i was looking forward to get to the hotel and relax a bit, but they wouldn't be japanese if they hadn't already made plans for the day. so i had to go shopping for a souvenir (i told them i already had enoug), i had to eat takoyaki although i wasn't hungry and so on. the usual deal, hehe. we went to the planetarium which was interesting, but i didn't understand the japanese explanations and fell asleep in the comfortable chair. in the evening they had a small farewell party for me. to my surprise not only osaka's mochizuki-san came, my host families from himeji and kyoto were also there. fun! after that they brought me to the hotel and i had my own private farewell party, walking around the airport at night and enjoying my last private moments.
Samstag, 7. Juli 2007
day 34 - the hate!
07/07/07 24:05
i admit it, i`ve got "the hate". i`ve had it for a few days now and it`s been getting worse. i don`t have it anymore, i think, or i wouldn`t be adequately distanced to write this. i might use swearwords in an abundance though, to recreate my thoughts at the respective moments.
to have "the hate" s a term that my friends and me use to describe the state of mind when you are generally annoyed, angry at just about everything and get pissed off at every tiny thing that doesn`t agree with you. really pissed off. i blame the fifth week and the sickness and whatever for it, should have gone home after four. anyway, until the afternoon i was pretty upset today. if by 4 o` clock someone had offered me to take me home this instant on the condition that i could never ever return to japan i might have agreed. although it isn`t exactly japan that i was pissed at. it`s rather everything japanese, everything to do with these people argh leave me alone goddamn it!!
i`m not tired! i`m not fucking tired! even if i were tired i wouldn`t be telling you! it`s none of your goddamn business anyway, go away and leave me alone (but please let me sleep in your house, k?).
having said that, my host family told hosokawa-san (with whom i would be spending the day), that i was interested in manga. maybe she told him that i loved loved loved manga and anime and everything otaku because that`s what he seemed to think. having the hate i was naturally pissed off by the fact that she told him that i liked manga (even though it`s true), so i didn`t want to go. of course i didn`t enjoy it at the manga shop (which was quite nice, but then again, how fun is it to look through stacks of manga without having the money or the baggage weight to spare for it). so i told them that i wanted to go to a record store. record stores always calm me and this one (a hmv this time) did too. even if i don`t have the money i can spent hours there. i didn`t have hours this time since we were (as always) on a tight schedule. about 10 minutes in he told me that i should pick three cds and he`d buy them for me, yay! you don`t say no to such an offer (actually i did say no, but he insisted)! i picked some relatively cheap ones, don`t want to be an asshole, and that was ok. then we went to have lunch and on the way i talked to hosokawa`s daughter and another guy. re-enter the hate. really, i cannot stand this damn talking anymore. fucking stupid questions, always the same, always annoying me aRGHFHDSGDSGff. what kind of job does my father do. (now, being calmed down, i suppose that is quite the normal question...) i don`t know. i know the name of the job in german but can`t explain it. i don`t know the english name. and i don`t know how to say that i don`t know in japanese. what kind of buildings do we have in germany? what the hell!? what kind of buildings do you have in japan? what is this bullshit!? big buildings? small buildings? brick buildings? wood buildings? pick your goddamn favourite. what part of germany do i live in, near the rhine? half the country lives near the rhine. do i ask you if you live near the sea!?
and then, after lunch, the glorious climax. kabuki. japanese traditional theater. 2 hours (i suppose, it felt longer) of... traditional japanese theater. which involves a lot of people sitting around on the stage, singing antiquated japanese (that even the japanese don`t understand) in high falsetto voices (since the femle characters are played by men, too). a lot of screaming and crying and squeaking and other ear-numbing noises. not involving much movement. accompanied by weird instrumental avant-garde atonal whatever-music and a guy commenting on what`s happening in some kind of vocal performance. i was tormented. my head hurt. i didn`t know what the hell was going on since there was no discernible story from the acting alone and even if there hadn`t been all the noise i wuldn`t have understood a word of it. i tried not to fall asleep since that might have made the wrong impression on the people that most likely paid a shitload of money so that i could enjoy this cultural event. i had my eyes closed most of the time though. somewhere in the middle i started to count reeeeeeally slow and i got up to 520 or so before the show ended. when i got out i noticed all the people returning their earphones for the english translation and commentary. yeah, english! thank you for not mentioning this, host family! i mean, even if al swearengen himself had commented on this performance i cannot imagine that i would have enjoyed it in the least. my ears are permanently damaged anyway.
after that, the hate had grown so much, that i basically didn`t say a wod for the next 30 minutes. then we arrived at yet another ymca where we met some youth members that were preparing for a convention in thailand. things got better then and have stayed good so far. we had dinner, i talked with people my age (yay), we drank beer, awesome. i got back here, my last night in tokyo. we talked a little, i wasn`t even pissed off anymore when they asked me if i was tired (yes), and i went up to th computer to listen to my cds and type this. tomorrow i`ll go back to osaka where i`ll stay in the hotel at the airport. so most likely this is my last entry that i`ll publish in japan.
i admit it, i`ve got "the hate". i`ve had it for a few days now and it`s been getting worse. i don`t have it anymore, i think, or i wouldn`t be adequately distanced to write this. i might use swearwords in an abundance though, to recreate my thoughts at the respective moments.
to have "the hate" s a term that my friends and me use to describe the state of mind when you are generally annoyed, angry at just about everything and get pissed off at every tiny thing that doesn`t agree with you. really pissed off. i blame the fifth week and the sickness and whatever for it, should have gone home after four. anyway, until the afternoon i was pretty upset today. if by 4 o` clock someone had offered me to take me home this instant on the condition that i could never ever return to japan i might have agreed. although it isn`t exactly japan that i was pissed at. it`s rather everything japanese, everything to do with these people argh leave me alone goddamn it!!
i`m not tired! i`m not fucking tired! even if i were tired i wouldn`t be telling you! it`s none of your goddamn business anyway, go away and leave me alone (but please let me sleep in your house, k?).
having said that, my host family told hosokawa-san (with whom i would be spending the day), that i was interested in manga. maybe she told him that i loved loved loved manga and anime and everything otaku because that`s what he seemed to think. having the hate i was naturally pissed off by the fact that she told him that i liked manga (even though it`s true), so i didn`t want to go. of course i didn`t enjoy it at the manga shop (which was quite nice, but then again, how fun is it to look through stacks of manga without having the money or the baggage weight to spare for it). so i told them that i wanted to go to a record store. record stores always calm me and this one (a hmv this time) did too. even if i don`t have the money i can spent hours there. i didn`t have hours this time since we were (as always) on a tight schedule. about 10 minutes in he told me that i should pick three cds and he`d buy them for me, yay! you don`t say no to such an offer (actually i did say no, but he insisted)! i picked some relatively cheap ones, don`t want to be an asshole, and that was ok. then we went to have lunch and on the way i talked to hosokawa`s daughter and another guy. re-enter the hate. really, i cannot stand this damn talking anymore. fucking stupid questions, always the same, always annoying me aRGHFHDSGDSGff. what kind of job does my father do. (now, being calmed down, i suppose that is quite the normal question...) i don`t know. i know the name of the job in german but can`t explain it. i don`t know the english name. and i don`t know how to say that i don`t know in japanese. what kind of buildings do we have in germany? what the hell!? what kind of buildings do you have in japan? what is this bullshit!? big buildings? small buildings? brick buildings? wood buildings? pick your goddamn favourite. what part of germany do i live in, near the rhine? half the country lives near the rhine. do i ask you if you live near the sea!?
and then, after lunch, the glorious climax. kabuki. japanese traditional theater. 2 hours (i suppose, it felt longer) of... traditional japanese theater. which involves a lot of people sitting around on the stage, singing antiquated japanese (that even the japanese don`t understand) in high falsetto voices (since the femle characters are played by men, too). a lot of screaming and crying and squeaking and other ear-numbing noises. not involving much movement. accompanied by weird instrumental avant-garde atonal whatever-music and a guy commenting on what`s happening in some kind of vocal performance. i was tormented. my head hurt. i didn`t know what the hell was going on since there was no discernible story from the acting alone and even if there hadn`t been all the noise i wuldn`t have understood a word of it. i tried not to fall asleep since that might have made the wrong impression on the people that most likely paid a shitload of money so that i could enjoy this cultural event. i had my eyes closed most of the time though. somewhere in the middle i started to count reeeeeeally slow and i got up to 520 or so before the show ended. when i got out i noticed all the people returning their earphones for the english translation and commentary. yeah, english! thank you for not mentioning this, host family! i mean, even if al swearengen himself had commented on this performance i cannot imagine that i would have enjoyed it in the least. my ears are permanently damaged anyway.
after that, the hate had grown so much, that i basically didn`t say a wod for the next 30 minutes. then we arrived at yet another ymca where we met some youth members that were preparing for a convention in thailand. things got better then and have stayed good so far. we had dinner, i talked with people my age (yay), we drank beer, awesome. i got back here, my last night in tokyo. we talked a little, i wasn`t even pissed off anymore when they asked me if i was tired (yes), and i went up to th computer to listen to my cds and type this. tomorrow i`ll go back to osaka where i`ll stay in the hotel at the airport. so most likely this is my last entry that i`ll publish in japan.
Freitag, 6. Juli 2007
day 33 - is it just me or are these thread titles getting longer?
06/07/07 23:34
today i basically spent the rest of my money. we started the day with another tourist trip into tokyo. it took about one hour riding on various subway lines (the system is pretty good and not so hard to understand, but it still takes time to get from a to b in this moloch of a city). today`s place of choice was a part of the city called odaiba. some years ago, instead of odaiba there was the sea, tokyo bay to be exact. i suppose you`ve heard about these expansions. the district is full with big office buildings and such stuff. we visited two museums, the first being on japanese maritime history (with models of boats) and the museum itself being in the shape of a boat. the second museum was japan`s innovation and science museum or whatever (miraikan), and it was quite interesting. they had a lot of experiments etc. which one could watch and they had some cool robot who could catch balls that were shot in his direction at fast speed. we went for lunch to a chinese buffet restaurant. this was once more a confirmation of how tightly japanese are bound to their schedules. they need a schedule for everything. i`ve got several schedules for my entire stay, schedules for the visits to the single families, schedules for days during these visits, train schedules so that i will get out at the right station and so on. today they obviously made the schedule "go to museum one. go to museum two. eat at restaurant x." the facts that noone had ever been at that restaurant, that i had no expressed any wish to particularly go there, that it was quite a bit away from our location and that we passed like 20 other fine restaurants to get there didn`t seem to matter. the schedule must be kept.
another nice example for this was during my first week. i had my schedule for the week sent to me while i was still in germany and it was pretty tight. they had written that i could answer them with any wish to "change" the schedule. so i asked them if i could visit the family where i had been two years ago. when i came, the schedule had not really changed at all. it was the same, just with an additional point "visit family, stay over night", which added even more stress.
to get back to the buffet restaurant, and this is just a fun fact: the japanese name for these kind of restaurants is "baikingu", meaning: "viking". don`t ask me why (ask wikipedia)... well, in germany those places are also known as all-you-can-eat-restaurants and a horde of people really trying to eat all they can might give off an awesome viking impression...
in the evening i had asked to walk around the area near the house for like 2 hours and i think that this was the first time that i have been walking anywhere alone in over a month! i took the train to shinjuku (oh, what a rebel i am!) and paid my last yen (well, there are about 900 left) for yet another cd at the awesome tower records store they had there (sure enough i had planned my act of civil disobedience by obtaining the store location on the internet, bwahaha). because going to shinjuku takes like half an hour i didn`t have too much time there, but it looked really nice and crowded and busy.
here i repacked my baggage, leaving all the stuff outside that i`m gonna throw away on my last night (i don`t want to seem ungrateful, but i got so many presents from all kind of people that i just don`t need) and it was 24.9 kg. the restriction is 20, but airlines are known for allowing up to 5 kg over that, so i think i`m gonna take my chances with that. all my books and manga are in the hand luggage, which only amounts to 7kg in total. i`m disappointed at myself. (i think i had 26 and 13 kg respectively, two years ago). 29076.
today i basically spent the rest of my money. we started the day with another tourist trip into tokyo. it took about one hour riding on various subway lines (the system is pretty good and not so hard to understand, but it still takes time to get from a to b in this moloch of a city). today`s place of choice was a part of the city called odaiba. some years ago, instead of odaiba there was the sea, tokyo bay to be exact. i suppose you`ve heard about these expansions. the district is full with big office buildings and such stuff. we visited two museums, the first being on japanese maritime history (with models of boats) and the museum itself being in the shape of a boat. the second museum was japan`s innovation and science museum or whatever (miraikan), and it was quite interesting. they had a lot of experiments etc. which one could watch and they had some cool robot who could catch balls that were shot in his direction at fast speed. we went for lunch to a chinese buffet restaurant. this was once more a confirmation of how tightly japanese are bound to their schedules. they need a schedule for everything. i`ve got several schedules for my entire stay, schedules for the visits to the single families, schedules for days during these visits, train schedules so that i will get out at the right station and so on. today they obviously made the schedule "go to museum one. go to museum two. eat at restaurant x." the facts that noone had ever been at that restaurant, that i had no expressed any wish to particularly go there, that it was quite a bit away from our location and that we passed like 20 other fine restaurants to get there didn`t seem to matter. the schedule must be kept.
another nice example for this was during my first week. i had my schedule for the week sent to me while i was still in germany and it was pretty tight. they had written that i could answer them with any wish to "change" the schedule. so i asked them if i could visit the family where i had been two years ago. when i came, the schedule had not really changed at all. it was the same, just with an additional point "visit family, stay over night", which added even more stress.
to get back to the buffet restaurant, and this is just a fun fact: the japanese name for these kind of restaurants is "baikingu", meaning: "viking". don`t ask me why (ask wikipedia)... well, in germany those places are also known as all-you-can-eat-restaurants and a horde of people really trying to eat all they can might give off an awesome viking impression...
in the evening i had asked to walk around the area near the house for like 2 hours and i think that this was the first time that i have been walking anywhere alone in over a month! i took the train to shinjuku (oh, what a rebel i am!) and paid my last yen (well, there are about 900 left) for yet another cd at the awesome tower records store they had there (sure enough i had planned my act of civil disobedience by obtaining the store location on the internet, bwahaha). because going to shinjuku takes like half an hour i didn`t have too much time there, but it looked really nice and crowded and busy.
here i repacked my baggage, leaving all the stuff outside that i`m gonna throw away on my last night (i don`t want to seem ungrateful, but i got so many presents from all kind of people that i just don`t need) and it was 24.9 kg. the restriction is 20, but airlines are known for allowing up to 5 kg over that, so i think i`m gonna take my chances with that. all my books and manga are in the hand luggage, which only amounts to 7kg in total. i`m disappointed at myself. (i think i had 26 and 13 kg respectively, two years ago). 29076.
Donnerstag, 5. Juli 2007
day 32 - anniversary... mensiversary? (oh latin, where art thou)
05/07/07 24:23
one month ago i arrived in japan (has it really been that long?). today when i woke up the cold wasn`t any better. on the contrary, as i had feared, it had worsened and my throat really pained. so i gave in when they offered me some medicine (normally i try to avoid pills and such stuff whenever possible) and went back to sleep for some hours. i guess the medicine did help more or less, at least i didn`t really feel any pain throughout the day. as a replacement, i had a constant dizziness, nothing serious, but some kind of uneasy feeling. it reminded me of taking coffeine pills when you`re tired. you can`t sleep, but you`re not exactly awake...
anyway, we went for a bus tour through tokyo. the trip went to many of the places where i was two years ago on the one-day-trip to tokyo. first, the imperial palace and the park surrounding it, very nice. afterwards asakusa, a big temple with a huge shopping area around it. they sell all kind of merchandise including cool samurai swords, but i`m afraid i don`t have that much money left and getting the thing on the plane must be a bitch. apart from that we went to the television studios of nhk, one of japan`s biggest broadcasting companies. they had some nice exhibits and fake tv shows where you could be the actor etc. in the end we went on a boat ride on some river through tokyo (no idea what it`s called) and got back here. then we had dinner and right now i`m listening to the new bad religion album since i discovered that they have it on their myspace page in its entirety.
i`m actually looking forward to returning home, since the whole routine here is pretty tiresome. i think three and a half or four weeks would have been perfect, but maybe my spirits are just down because of the cold...
anyway, i`ll try to enjoy the final days here as all of this feels pretty much like a closing point to a big part of my life and once i get back i`ll have to start from the beginning, and i intend to change a few things. (dun-dun-dun)
one month ago i arrived in japan (has it really been that long?). today when i woke up the cold wasn`t any better. on the contrary, as i had feared, it had worsened and my throat really pained. so i gave in when they offered me some medicine (normally i try to avoid pills and such stuff whenever possible) and went back to sleep for some hours. i guess the medicine did help more or less, at least i didn`t really feel any pain throughout the day. as a replacement, i had a constant dizziness, nothing serious, but some kind of uneasy feeling. it reminded me of taking coffeine pills when you`re tired. you can`t sleep, but you`re not exactly awake...
anyway, we went for a bus tour through tokyo. the trip went to many of the places where i was two years ago on the one-day-trip to tokyo. first, the imperial palace and the park surrounding it, very nice. afterwards asakusa, a big temple with a huge shopping area around it. they sell all kind of merchandise including cool samurai swords, but i`m afraid i don`t have that much money left and getting the thing on the plane must be a bitch. apart from that we went to the television studios of nhk, one of japan`s biggest broadcasting companies. they had some nice exhibits and fake tv shows where you could be the actor etc. in the end we went on a boat ride on some river through tokyo (no idea what it`s called) and got back here. then we had dinner and right now i`m listening to the new bad religion album since i discovered that they have it on their myspace page in its entirety.
i`m actually looking forward to returning home, since the whole routine here is pretty tiresome. i think three and a half or four weeks would have been perfect, but maybe my spirits are just down because of the cold...
anyway, i`ll try to enjoy the final days here as all of this feels pretty much like a closing point to a big part of my life and once i get back i`ll have to start from the beginning, and i intend to change a few things. (dun-dun-dun)
Mittwoch, 4. Juli 2007
day 31 - Saiyuki_LiveAction_07_(CHN)_(JPN SUBS).zip
04/07/07 23:28
i caught a cold. it started yesterday and it got worse today so it`s official. this sucks. so i went into the day feeling pretty shitty. i`m not even really that sick yet, but it usually gets worse over 4 or 5 days so the prospect of how i`m probably gonna be tomorrow was enough to make me feel depressed. we started the day by going to a tokyo ymca. in the last month i`ve seen more ymca buildings from the inside than most people have ever seen at all, i guess. it was not really different from any of the others. we had lunch. then we went to akihabara. akihabara is tokyo`s nerd quarter. when you see images of tokyo with thousands of people and big shiny ads all over the place, blinking and being generally noisy, that`s most likely akihabara. being there lifted my spirits a little bit, since it`s a fun place. a lot of useless crap, of course, but many interesting electronics and game shops. in the evening we were supposed to go to some theater performance of saiyuki. saiyuki is one of the most popular chinese stories and it`s really famous in japan (the main character is named son goku, i guess most people know that name ;P). before that we met with some more people, among them the norwegian boy from yesterday and had dinner. he didn`t use the chopsticks but asked for a fork instead. i`m not sure if he`ll get by with that attitude for five weeks. i mean, even if you`ve never done it before, it`s not that hard to learn how to eat with chopsticks. and the japanese love you for it, seriously. the theater performance was fun. the whole show is from china and only in japan for two weeks, so it was sold out (with tickets a 8500 yen = 50 euro). the play itself was in chinese with japanese subtitles shwon right and left from the stage. yeah, subtitles in a theatre...
the japanese subtitles were not such a great help to me, since i know maybe 300 of the 2000 letters you need to read stuff like that. but we got an english summary beforehand which made following the story pretty easy. there wasn`t that much talking anyway. most of the time the actors were dancing and jumping and doing all kinds of choreographic stuff, like an artistic circus performance. the entire time, there was something which one could call background music, though music was not always a part of it. most of the time there was just this weird ass noisy percussion. whenever an actor moved it went BOOM-CHING-CHING RATATTATA CHING!! you could record the stuff and call yourself an avant-garde percussion project, i suppose. anyway, i`m feeling better than i did this morning and i hope the condition will not worsen at least...
i caught a cold. it started yesterday and it got worse today so it`s official. this sucks. so i went into the day feeling pretty shitty. i`m not even really that sick yet, but it usually gets worse over 4 or 5 days so the prospect of how i`m probably gonna be tomorrow was enough to make me feel depressed. we started the day by going to a tokyo ymca. in the last month i`ve seen more ymca buildings from the inside than most people have ever seen at all, i guess. it was not really different from any of the others. we had lunch. then we went to akihabara. akihabara is tokyo`s nerd quarter. when you see images of tokyo with thousands of people and big shiny ads all over the place, blinking and being generally noisy, that`s most likely akihabara. being there lifted my spirits a little bit, since it`s a fun place. a lot of useless crap, of course, but many interesting electronics and game shops. in the evening we were supposed to go to some theater performance of saiyuki. saiyuki is one of the most popular chinese stories and it`s really famous in japan (the main character is named son goku, i guess most people know that name ;P). before that we met with some more people, among them the norwegian boy from yesterday and had dinner. he didn`t use the chopsticks but asked for a fork instead. i`m not sure if he`ll get by with that attitude for five weeks. i mean, even if you`ve never done it before, it`s not that hard to learn how to eat with chopsticks. and the japanese love you for it, seriously. the theater performance was fun. the whole show is from china and only in japan for two weeks, so it was sold out (with tickets a 8500 yen = 50 euro). the play itself was in chinese with japanese subtitles shwon right and left from the stage. yeah, subtitles in a theatre...
the japanese subtitles were not such a great help to me, since i know maybe 300 of the 2000 letters you need to read stuff like that. but we got an english summary beforehand which made following the story pretty easy. there wasn`t that much talking anyway. most of the time the actors were dancing and jumping and doing all kinds of choreographic stuff, like an artistic circus performance. the entire time, there was something which one could call background music, though music was not always a part of it. most of the time there was just this weird ass noisy percussion. whenever an actor moved it went BOOM-CHING-CHING RATATTATA CHING!! you could record the stuff and call yourself an avant-garde percussion project, i suppose. anyway, i`m feeling better than i did this morning and i hope the condition will not worsen at least...
day 30 - why go to paris if you can travel round half the goddamn world (and who wants to hear donald speak french anyway)
03/07/07 25:42
today i went to disneyland tokyo. i`ve never been to any other disnyland. well, it turned out to be a pretty ormal kid-friendly amusement park, but so what, it was fun. i went with some ymca members of my age. to get there we drove around tokyo on the subway. because it was a tuesday outside the holiday season it was empty for disneyland standards and we never had to wait for more than 20 minutes, even on the most popular rides. the day went by quickly and we met the youth chief hosokawa-san at 6pm inside disneyland at a restaurant. there was another group of 4 with a boy from norway. he arrived last week and is doing pretty much the same thing as me, staying until august. the difference: he doesn`t speak a word of japanese. that`s got to be tough. on the other hand he might not experience so many "oh he can speak japanese so i`ll just talk and talk and talk and talk abouth whatever the hell i`m talking about at this breakneck speed not noticing the look of incomprehension on his face, surely he must understand me, so why don`t i use some complicated words like nuclear vortex on the vertebrae of the sacrosanct conscious equilibrium. income taxes. declaration of independence. huh, are you tired?" - "no i`m not tired, i don`t understand a SINGLE GODDAMN WORD SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!!111oneone" moments. those are always very... precious to me. btw., when japanese pay for the day they stay for the day, so i got home by 11. and the disney parade music is frighteningly close to final fantasy vii`s golden saucer theme. 27301.
today i went to disneyland tokyo. i`ve never been to any other disnyland. well, it turned out to be a pretty ormal kid-friendly amusement park, but so what, it was fun. i went with some ymca members of my age. to get there we drove around tokyo on the subway. because it was a tuesday outside the holiday season it was empty for disneyland standards and we never had to wait for more than 20 minutes, even on the most popular rides. the day went by quickly and we met the youth chief hosokawa-san at 6pm inside disneyland at a restaurant. there was another group of 4 with a boy from norway. he arrived last week and is doing pretty much the same thing as me, staying until august. the difference: he doesn`t speak a word of japanese. that`s got to be tough. on the other hand he might not experience so many "oh he can speak japanese so i`ll just talk and talk and talk and talk abouth whatever the hell i`m talking about at this breakneck speed not noticing the look of incomprehension on his face, surely he must understand me, so why don`t i use some complicated words like nuclear vortex on the vertebrae of the sacrosanct conscious equilibrium. income taxes. declaration of independence. huh, are you tired?" - "no i`m not tired, i don`t understand a SINGLE GODDAMN WORD SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP!!!!!111oneone" moments. those are always very... precious to me. btw., when japanese pay for the day they stay for the day, so i got home by 11. and the disney parade music is frighteningly close to final fantasy vii`s golden saucer theme. 27301.
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