30/06/2007 23:05
another hot day. but oh so different. today i had to get up pretty early (compared to my usual standards), at 8 am. scheduled was a visit to yokohama`s zoo. i didn`t spend the day with my host katou-san, instead i went with another guy, hayashi-san. he is the one who my father`s friend got in contact with and he planned and organized my entire stay here. in other words - he`s the man! and he`s got a cool goatee. we drove on the subway for about an hour and got off at a station where we were supposed to meet a young guy. i don`t know the exact relation, but his father seems to be with the ymca or something. anyway, and here comes the awesome part, this guy has lived 14 of his 20 years in berlin. he`s supposedly better in german than in japanese (well, i can`t place his japanese skills which were higher than mine by a lot, but judging from his german i hope that`s not true). his name is keisuke btw... so he came and i spoke my first real german sentences (guten tag, dankeschoen and oktoberfest do not count) since almost a month now. and what can i say, it was kinda hard. i really wasn`t used to german sentence structure etc. anymore. it`s hard to describe the felling, really, but it took about half an hour to get back into normal conversatory german. anyway, keisuke was nice and we had a lot to talk about. the zoo was tough because of the heat, even the animals couldn`t be bothered to leave the shade or move or whatever animals are supposed to do in a zoo. i saw an okapi thoug, apparently the zoo`s most famous animal, and some strange kind of llama-horse-zebra hybrid model. keisuke and me asked hayashi-san to go to a game center and we played there for a little while. awesome stuff like time crisis 3 and house of the dead. then we left for some small branch of the yokohama ymca, where a staff member showed us around and we watched some kids practice karate. in the evening we went to a kaitenzushi place (remember, the kind where the food comes on moving trays and you take it off as it passes you by). now i`m back at the house and are once more doomed to speak japanese only. it`s nto that bad, though. 23801. and 30 name cards.
Samstag, 30. Juni 2007
Freitag, 29. Juni 2007
day 26 - addiction strikes once more
29/06/07 23:22
back from a pretty long day. today i went to the ymca in the kannai district of yokohoma. katou-san brought me there, but i spent most of the day with a woman from the ymca who is called itou-san. i was supposed to see a bit of what they are doing there. in the beginning there i was to watch a kindergarten group. that was really amazing. this group was englishspeaking! and they weren`t just kids of foreigners, they were genuine japanese kids. kids of 5 years, speaking better english than 90% of their country`s population, seriously. that one kid really cracked me up. he was making himself an armor suit out of cardboard, complete with scabbard, sword, belt and crown. when i asked him what kind of outfit that was supposed to be (oh, speaking english, the joy!), he answered "THIS - IS - SPARTA!". I kid you not! he knew all about 300 and king leonidas and he really liked the movie. you know, i`m not a big defender of youth protection and all that shit, but letting a 5 year old watch 300 is a bit too much, in my opinion. still, i couldn`t stop laughing.
then i had lunch with itou-san and met some foreign students, who take japanese language courses at the ymca. 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, that`s the way to learn a language... we joined them for a lesson in grammar (woo, learned something new) and after that we went downtown. i had requested to go shopping a bit, and we ended up at a tower records store. tower records is a name you`ll want to remember if you ever make it to japan, because their stores are so awesome. the bands are listedin romaji and are as easy to find as in any european store and the selection is huge and awesome. godspeed, silver mt. zion, king crimson, ... you name it, they have it. i left the shop with considerably less money than i entered it with and i`ll have to spend the rest of the holidays on a tight budget i suppose. in the evening we went to a restaurant, where to my surprise a board meeting of the y`smen east japan region took place. i was kinda underdressed with my tourist t-shirt. and then the most surreal event yet took place. it was almost at the end of the dinner, everyone had eaten a lot (and some also drunk a lot i guess) and this one woman announced, that she had studied a german song and would like to sing it. she stood up and sang the german national anthem. well, a nice gesture, but she sang the first verse. of course a japanese wouldn`t know, that the first two verses are more or less banished here, but still, picture the setting. me, almost hawaii-style among 30 old japanese guys and women dressed in suits, one woman in the middle, singing "deutschland deutschland ueber alles!". i almost expected the others to stand up and do the hitlergruss. strange. didn`t tell anyone about it though, hehe. 23671.
back from a pretty long day. today i went to the ymca in the kannai district of yokohoma. katou-san brought me there, but i spent most of the day with a woman from the ymca who is called itou-san. i was supposed to see a bit of what they are doing there. in the beginning there i was to watch a kindergarten group. that was really amazing. this group was englishspeaking! and they weren`t just kids of foreigners, they were genuine japanese kids. kids of 5 years, speaking better english than 90% of their country`s population, seriously. that one kid really cracked me up. he was making himself an armor suit out of cardboard, complete with scabbard, sword, belt and crown. when i asked him what kind of outfit that was supposed to be (oh, speaking english, the joy!), he answered "THIS - IS - SPARTA!". I kid you not! he knew all about 300 and king leonidas and he really liked the movie. you know, i`m not a big defender of youth protection and all that shit, but letting a 5 year old watch 300 is a bit too much, in my opinion. still, i couldn`t stop laughing.
then i had lunch with itou-san and met some foreign students, who take japanese language courses at the ymca. 5 days a week, 5 hours a day, that`s the way to learn a language... we joined them for a lesson in grammar (woo, learned something new) and after that we went downtown. i had requested to go shopping a bit, and we ended up at a tower records store. tower records is a name you`ll want to remember if you ever make it to japan, because their stores are so awesome. the bands are listedin romaji and are as easy to find as in any european store and the selection is huge and awesome. godspeed, silver mt. zion, king crimson, ... you name it, they have it. i left the shop with considerably less money than i entered it with and i`ll have to spend the rest of the holidays on a tight budget i suppose. in the evening we went to a restaurant, where to my surprise a board meeting of the y`smen east japan region took place. i was kinda underdressed with my tourist t-shirt. and then the most surreal event yet took place. it was almost at the end of the dinner, everyone had eaten a lot (and some also drunk a lot i guess) and this one woman announced, that she had studied a german song and would like to sing it. she stood up and sang the german national anthem. well, a nice gesture, but she sang the first verse. of course a japanese wouldn`t know, that the first two verses are more or less banished here, but still, picture the setting. me, almost hawaii-style among 30 old japanese guys and women dressed in suits, one woman in the middle, singing "deutschland deutschland ueber alles!". i almost expected the others to stand up and do the hitlergruss. strange. didn`t tell anyone about it though, hehe. 23671.
Donnerstag, 28. Juni 2007
day 25 - more temples. always more.
28/06/07 17:02
to continue where i left off yesterday. i met most of the rest of the family in the evening. everyone but the university student, who apparently came home quite late. the father is a professional contrabass player in the tokyo symphony orchestra and has been pretty much all over the world. he also speaks a little bit of german and he has a nice dictionary kind of thing, with useful phrases for japanese people who visit germany: "how much is a single room for one night?" "japan has a strong economy" "this policy is a waste of our tax money" (no kidding). today i went to the nearby city of kamakura with katou-san. it is famous for its temples and shrines and there were many tourists there. the biggest number of europeans/americans i`ve seen so far. most of the time you don`t see any, which means that you will always wherever you go stand out in a crowd (even more so, if you`re bigger than the japanese). when i walk by another westerner, i feel the strong urge to greet him or at least nod in his direction, as if we were part of some underground group, it`s really weird. anyway, we met two friends of katou-san, both pretty old, too, at kamakura and walked around the city. it was another of these too-hot-to-be-pleasant days. they made me buy a fortune telling at one shrine and it was probably as bad as fortune tellings go, hehe. i should be careful what i wish for, i should get rid of my partner, i am spending time with a wrong person, if i get sick it will take a long time to get better, i`m too reckless and will lose money if i don`t pay attention and so on. anyway, now i`m back here at the pc and listening to my cds.
to continue where i left off yesterday. i met most of the rest of the family in the evening. everyone but the university student, who apparently came home quite late. the father is a professional contrabass player in the tokyo symphony orchestra and has been pretty much all over the world. he also speaks a little bit of german and he has a nice dictionary kind of thing, with useful phrases for japanese people who visit germany: "how much is a single room for one night?" "japan has a strong economy" "this policy is a waste of our tax money" (no kidding). today i went to the nearby city of kamakura with katou-san. it is famous for its temples and shrines and there were many tourists there. the biggest number of europeans/americans i`ve seen so far. most of the time you don`t see any, which means that you will always wherever you go stand out in a crowd (even more so, if you`re bigger than the japanese). when i walk by another westerner, i feel the strong urge to greet him or at least nod in his direction, as if we were part of some underground group, it`s really weird. anyway, we met two friends of katou-san, both pretty old, too, at kamakura and walked around the city. it was another of these too-hot-to-be-pleasant days. they made me buy a fortune telling at one shrine and it was probably as bad as fortune tellings go, hehe. i should be careful what i wish for, i should get rid of my partner, i am spending time with a wrong person, if i get sick it will take a long time to get better, i`m too reckless and will lose money if i don`t pay attention and so on. anyway, now i`m back here at the pc and listening to my cds.
day 24 - yo! kohama...
27/06/07 18:22
i`ve arrived in yokohama. so far i haven`t seen much of the city though. i left atami this morning and took the train (not a shinkansen this time) to tokyo. katou-san, my next host, picked me up at the station and we took the subway to his house. he is an elderly man, close to 80 i suppose, but still quite healthy for that age. apart from him, his wife, another woman (don`t know the family relation there), his daughter, her husband and their three kids (middle school, high school, university) live in the house. his daughter`s family is still at work/school. Japanese school goes always into the afternoon and is followed by school club activities which means that kids will usually get home late). the other woman seems to be mentally handicapped (due to my work during the last 9 months i`m quite good at picking this up now), though i don`t know how exactly. there is no further schedule for today, so i`ve got quite a bit of relaxing ahead of me. 14439.
i`ve arrived in yokohama. so far i haven`t seen much of the city though. i left atami this morning and took the train (not a shinkansen this time) to tokyo. katou-san, my next host, picked me up at the station and we took the subway to his house. he is an elderly man, close to 80 i suppose, but still quite healthy for that age. apart from him, his wife, another woman (don`t know the family relation there), his daughter, her husband and their three kids (middle school, high school, university) live in the house. his daughter`s family is still at work/school. Japanese school goes always into the afternoon and is followed by school club activities which means that kids will usually get home late). the other woman seems to be mentally handicapped (due to my work during the last 9 months i`m quite good at picking this up now), though i don`t know how exactly. there is no further schedule for today, so i`ve got quite a bit of relaxing ahead of me. 14439.
Dienstag, 26. Juni 2007
day 23 - one (comparatively) short entry
26/06/07 "late. later than expected."
after yesterday`s drunken madness, i will keep this entry short. it was a pretty short day, after all. in fact i even overslept. i was woken by mrs. aoki at 11:35 (lunch was due for 11:30), and i had to hurry to get dressed and everything because we needed to leave the house at 12. i was to meet atami`s mayor (even if it`s a small city that`s dreadfully official, don`t you think). he only had 10 minutes to spare though and we talked a little bit, while we were photographed by the local press and some ten other people sat there doing not so much. the mayor is the biggest japanese i`ve seen so far, at least 1.90m. he/the city gave me a fan as a present. then we went to the atami museum of art. it was a great building with a nice exhibition of french glass art etc. after that we went to yet another cd shop (hey, i`ve got to get rid of these yen somehow, i`m not exchanging them back!). the problem about japanese cd shops is, that it`s hard to find the artist you`re looking for. they`re sorted by japanese alphabet (a, i, o, e, u, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so, ...) and on the side of the cd`s the names are only given in katakana instead of the roman alphabet. if you can`t read katakana you`re definitely lost, if you can, it just takes damn long. and you have to be good at guessing. the mars volta are "za maasu uoruta". iron maiden are "aian meeden". i don`t even want to know what 65daysofstatic are. it`s a pain. in the evening we went for our last dinner here in atami. tomorrow i`ll leave for yokohama.
btw, w-kun (:P), how was the festival?
after yesterday`s drunken madness, i will keep this entry short. it was a pretty short day, after all. in fact i even overslept. i was woken by mrs. aoki at 11:35 (lunch was due for 11:30), and i had to hurry to get dressed and everything because we needed to leave the house at 12. i was to meet atami`s mayor (even if it`s a small city that`s dreadfully official, don`t you think). he only had 10 minutes to spare though and we talked a little bit, while we were photographed by the local press and some ten other people sat there doing not so much. the mayor is the biggest japanese i`ve seen so far, at least 1.90m. he/the city gave me a fan as a present. then we went to the atami museum of art. it was a great building with a nice exhibition of french glass art etc. after that we went to yet another cd shop (hey, i`ve got to get rid of these yen somehow, i`m not exchanging them back!). the problem about japanese cd shops is, that it`s hard to find the artist you`re looking for. they`re sorted by japanese alphabet (a, i, o, e, u, ka, ki, ku, ke, ko, sa, shi, su, se, so, ...) and on the side of the cd`s the names are only given in katakana instead of the roman alphabet. if you can`t read katakana you`re definitely lost, if you can, it just takes damn long. and you have to be good at guessing. the mars volta are "za maasu uoruta". iron maiden are "aian meeden". i don`t even want to know what 65daysofstatic are. it`s a pain. in the evening we went for our last dinner here in atami. tomorrow i`ll leave for yokohama.
btw, w-kun (:P), how was the festival?
day 22 - one long entry
25/06/07 24:21
today was the day in atami that i looked least forward to (or: that i feared the most, to be honest). the schedule was:
morning: diving
evening: y`smen meeting with speech.
as some of you might know, i`m not a big fan of speaking in public. in fact, it goes as far that i`m trying to avoid such situations as much as possible. well, the y`smen pay for just about everything here so i guess i`m kinda obligated to speak whenever they want me to. this was my initial image of what today would be like.
well, what should i say. it turned out to be my best day here in atami so far. this morning we left the house at about 10 am to go to atami harbour. the diving was to take place on the island of hatsushima, 20 minute away by ferry. the ride over went smoothly. the island itself was quite small, and its 100 inhabitants seemed to live by the tourism. there even was a school over there. we had to wait about an hour for the diving instructor and i read a good portion of murakami`s "wind-up bird chronicle". then we (aka aoki-san and me) had to change into the diving suits. it would be an understatement to say that it was a tight fit, but i got in alright. i was positively frightened by that point. i`ve never been more than an everage swimmer and i could barely move in that suit. plus i`d have to wear an o2-tank. and i knew that as a diver you had the water pressure to reckon with. you`d have to "blow your nose"/clear the ears, whenever you got deeper. pressure balance or whatever. i had once done this in a swimming pool (you know, holding your nose shut but still trying to breath out of it with all your power till your ears go -POP!-) and it hurt like hell. anyway i didn`t want to admit that i was afraid, so i figured i just might go through with it. aoki-san turned out to be just as afraid as me and bailed out, said he couldn`t do it. great, he wanted me to go alone, thanks for boosting my confidence. i swallowed my fear, however, and went in. i had practised breathing through the mask for a minute, when we were outside, and it worked alright. the pressure thing went fine, too. the diving itself was nothing but amazing. under the sea there really is another world. we swam deeper and deeper, through algaes etc. and it was great. there were fish everywhere. the small kind. i guess you never realize this when you go swim in the ocean, but a few meters under the water there are thousands of fish. we swam around and around, the instructor always leading me (and making me feel safe) and i saw lots, swam a little bit with the fish swarms and so on.
aoki-san and me took the ferry back to atami, had lunch and went home for a bit. i prepared my speech for the evening, but since i didn`t know what to say it didn`t amount to much more than a minute. i put on my suit (with the tie) and we took a taxi to the hotel, where the meeting was to take place (oh am i gonna hate myself for this tomorrow when i`ll have to transcribe it) (edit: yeah, three damn pages, what the hell WAS i thinking!?). the atami club is one of the biggest clubs in japan with close to 50 members. i`d say that most of them were there. i got a special seat next to the speakers` podium. there were the usual introductions, the y`smen hymn, and then i was introduced. after that i held my wannabe-speech (i`m blah... been here for three weeks... very intersting... thank you very much). there was dinner and some more formalities that i did not understand. after that it got pretty interesting. the official party was over, but most of the guys _(including me) went to some kind of club/bar. now this is something which i personally like very much: getting out of the usual environment that i am living in and taking a peek into something completely different. the whole experience was totally unfamiliar to me. never had i been in such an etablissement (pardon my french). the interior design was cozy. sofas, soft and comfortable. the strange thing was, that the waitresses of the place were not just there to bring drinks. they were more like entertainers. they were all rather scantily clad and (i know this sounds like pervert talk -_-) one had to make an effort not to look under their short skirts. the whole thing seemed pretty shady to me, but maybe i`m just too conservative, i don`t know. i guess it was no unrespectable bar or anything, some of the guys even brought their wives etc. well, they kept refilling my beer (oh man, this entry keeps getting longer and longer) (edit: yeah, thank you.), and even made me drink whiskey at some point. the girls seemed to be enjoying themselves but i couldn`t help thinking of them as some kind of prostitues (lite?). anyway, we left the place at 10pm. i thought the evening was over, but no - we went to another restaurant (now only the aokis and me. we drank more beer and it was really fun since there was another customer who spoke a bit of german (aoki is fond of the language, too) and we talked about germany and in german and so on. the great thing about japan is that even when you decide not to hold back with your drinking and go at it the whole evening, you`re still pretty conscious in the end. yay for the genes! (11939)
today was the day in atami that i looked least forward to (or: that i feared the most, to be honest). the schedule was:
morning: diving
evening: y`smen meeting with speech.
as some of you might know, i`m not a big fan of speaking in public. in fact, it goes as far that i`m trying to avoid such situations as much as possible. well, the y`smen pay for just about everything here so i guess i`m kinda obligated to speak whenever they want me to. this was my initial image of what today would be like.
well, what should i say. it turned out to be my best day here in atami so far. this morning we left the house at about 10 am to go to atami harbour. the diving was to take place on the island of hatsushima, 20 minute away by ferry. the ride over went smoothly. the island itself was quite small, and its 100 inhabitants seemed to live by the tourism. there even was a school over there. we had to wait about an hour for the diving instructor and i read a good portion of murakami`s "wind-up bird chronicle". then we (aka aoki-san and me) had to change into the diving suits. it would be an understatement to say that it was a tight fit, but i got in alright. i was positively frightened by that point. i`ve never been more than an everage swimmer and i could barely move in that suit. plus i`d have to wear an o2-tank. and i knew that as a diver you had the water pressure to reckon with. you`d have to "blow your nose"/clear the ears, whenever you got deeper. pressure balance or whatever. i had once done this in a swimming pool (you know, holding your nose shut but still trying to breath out of it with all your power till your ears go -POP!-) and it hurt like hell. anyway i didn`t want to admit that i was afraid, so i figured i just might go through with it. aoki-san turned out to be just as afraid as me and bailed out, said he couldn`t do it. great, he wanted me to go alone, thanks for boosting my confidence. i swallowed my fear, however, and went in. i had practised breathing through the mask for a minute, when we were outside, and it worked alright. the pressure thing went fine, too. the diving itself was nothing but amazing. under the sea there really is another world. we swam deeper and deeper, through algaes etc. and it was great. there were fish everywhere. the small kind. i guess you never realize this when you go swim in the ocean, but a few meters under the water there are thousands of fish. we swam around and around, the instructor always leading me (and making me feel safe) and i saw lots, swam a little bit with the fish swarms and so on.
aoki-san and me took the ferry back to atami, had lunch and went home for a bit. i prepared my speech for the evening, but since i didn`t know what to say it didn`t amount to much more than a minute. i put on my suit (with the tie) and we took a taxi to the hotel, where the meeting was to take place (oh am i gonna hate myself for this tomorrow when i`ll have to transcribe it) (edit: yeah, three damn pages, what the hell WAS i thinking!?). the atami club is one of the biggest clubs in japan with close to 50 members. i`d say that most of them were there. i got a special seat next to the speakers` podium. there were the usual introductions, the y`smen hymn, and then i was introduced. after that i held my wannabe-speech (i`m blah... been here for three weeks... very intersting... thank you very much). there was dinner and some more formalities that i did not understand. after that it got pretty interesting. the official party was over, but most of the guys _(including me) went to some kind of club/bar. now this is something which i personally like very much: getting out of the usual environment that i am living in and taking a peek into something completely different. the whole experience was totally unfamiliar to me. never had i been in such an etablissement (pardon my french). the interior design was cozy. sofas, soft and comfortable. the strange thing was, that the waitresses of the place were not just there to bring drinks. they were more like entertainers. they were all rather scantily clad and (i know this sounds like pervert talk -_-) one had to make an effort not to look under their short skirts. the whole thing seemed pretty shady to me, but maybe i`m just too conservative, i don`t know. i guess it was no unrespectable bar or anything, some of the guys even brought their wives etc. well, they kept refilling my beer (oh man, this entry keeps getting longer and longer) (edit: yeah, thank you.), and even made me drink whiskey at some point. the girls seemed to be enjoying themselves but i couldn`t help thinking of them as some kind of prostitues (lite?). anyway, we left the place at 10pm. i thought the evening was over, but no - we went to another restaurant (now only the aokis and me. we drank more beer and it was really fun since there was another customer who spoke a bit of german (aoki is fond of the language, too) and we talked about germany and in german and so on. the great thing about japan is that even when you decide not to hold back with your drinking and go at it the whole evening, you`re still pretty conscious in the end. yay for the genes! (11939)
Sonntag, 24. Juni 2007
day 21 - uphill from here
24/06/07 21:22
today i got up real early. 6 am something. not because i was eager to sniff the fresh morning air, but because the ascension of mt. fuji was supposed to take quite a while. as i wrote yersterday, the top of the mountain is still closed (unless you pring ice picks and spike boots etc.). it took a bit more than two hours to get to our starting point at about 2300 meters. it is the most popular starting point for tourists in summer, so there were hotels and restaurants and japan`s highest post office. the rain had startd by then, but only a little bit. we started walking and in the begining you could still see the surrounding valley. as we got higher and highr on the rocky path, the rain got heavier and everything became cloudy and foggy. we reached our goal, the seventh station (of ten) after about 2 hours. there weren`t too many people on the path, mainly due to the weather and the mountaintop being closed until next month, i suppose. so it was no woner that of the people who were there, a great number were foreigners. we met some guys from switzerland and a lot of chinese tourists. the japanese can afford to wait i guess. we could have gone one more station up the mountain, but aoki-san was pretty tired (well, he`s like 60) and i didn`t particularly mind because i was soaked by the rain. i guess we made a good 800 or 900m in height. the way down went faster, but by the end we could barely see farther than 10m ahead thanks to the fog. wisely we had brought spare clothes and enjoyed a dry ride home with a little detour to hakone, a nice village in the mountains. new prefectures: yamanashi and kanagawa. and i forgot nara prefecture in the last count.
today i got up real early. 6 am something. not because i was eager to sniff the fresh morning air, but because the ascension of mt. fuji was supposed to take quite a while. as i wrote yersterday, the top of the mountain is still closed (unless you pring ice picks and spike boots etc.). it took a bit more than two hours to get to our starting point at about 2300 meters. it is the most popular starting point for tourists in summer, so there were hotels and restaurants and japan`s highest post office. the rain had startd by then, but only a little bit. we started walking and in the begining you could still see the surrounding valley. as we got higher and highr on the rocky path, the rain got heavier and everything became cloudy and foggy. we reached our goal, the seventh station (of ten) after about 2 hours. there weren`t too many people on the path, mainly due to the weather and the mountaintop being closed until next month, i suppose. so it was no woner that of the people who were there, a great number were foreigners. we met some guys from switzerland and a lot of chinese tourists. the japanese can afford to wait i guess. we could have gone one more station up the mountain, but aoki-san was pretty tired (well, he`s like 60) and i didn`t particularly mind because i was soaked by the rain. i guess we made a good 800 or 900m in height. the way down went faster, but by the end we could barely see farther than 10m ahead thanks to the fog. wisely we had brought spare clothes and enjoyed a dry ride home with a little detour to hakone, a nice village in the mountains. new prefectures: yamanashi and kanagawa. and i forgot nara prefecture in the last count.
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