Wakaremichi

Really the last post!

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 13:13:00 +0000

My new blog is here!

No more sushi...

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:14:00 +0000

No more sushi...

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 03:12:00 +0000

My last post

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Tue, 04 Dec 2007 14:27:00 +0000

I have been in Japan for two years. I have done things I never thought I was capable of doing. I have met people I never dreamt of being able to talk to two years ago. A world has been opened for me. But it has become normal. Futsu. I am used to life here. This will be the last post I will make on this blog.

Even after 2 years, sometimes it suddenly occurs to me that I am in Japan. I will be doing something completely normal, like doing laundry, cycling to work, or looking at Mount Fuji from my room. Things I do every week. Things of which I forget the value sometimes. Sometimes there is this sudden moment of realization. That I am actually a world away from where I was born. That none of the people around me speak my language. That people don't normally eat with knife and fork here. Things I take for granted now. Things that have become normal, but should never loose their special value. There is a great value in everyday life, and as it becomes normal people ten to forget this.

Being happy with what you have, or actively being unhappy and looking for new things. Many people do neither. They just don't care. Ninety percent of the time I am one of these people. The other ten percent of the time I spend either finding the value in my current situation or exploring possible futures.

Some things just take time. Rhetoric I hear from old people. So sad that it's true. Sometimes things do start to make sense after a year, when you can't seem to grasp the picture right now. Some tasks that I set upon myself were very difficult, but when I think about doing the same thing again right now, at this very moment, I would do it right. I would not make a mistake. In many cases, failure is a requirement for success, and I did always have to learn the hard way to truly understand things.

As a stoic Dutchman, the only way I can look at my life is as a gambler. Sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. Maybe I didn't maximize my profit, but the end result is not bad. Not bad at all. Maybe it's time to invest in something new.

My new blog is here. It's bigger :)

Mind occupation followup

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sat, 01 Dec 2007 11:46:00 +0000

A while ago I wrote about discrimination against foreigners in Japan. I've got two interesting followups on this. The first is an article in the German newspaper Spiegel, about the fingerprinting only for foreigners that will be introduced at the end of the year, and the flat-out rejection of foreigners at some establishments around Japan. The article is in German, but I'm sure Google translate can make something out of it if you can't understand. I normally don't go about reading German newspapers, but the author of this article happens to be sitting a couple of desks next to me at work, so it piqued my interest.

Last time, I reported that I was always treated quite nicely by the police whenever they stopped me while I was cycling. Well, today was finally the day that they checked me out o_0. I was cycling to the supermarket in the dark without a front light, and I forgot to turn on my rear light, and I happened to have the bad luck to ran into a policeman on the way. He stopped me and asked me about my light. Then he asked me about the registration information of my bicycle (the bike has an ID number which is linked to your personal data), and only after that did he check my 'alien registration card', which all foreigners in Japan possess. Seems like normal procedure to me, and I really did not feel that I was treated unfairly compared to Japanese people, although I have to say that I did make a show out of it to explicitly show my Asahi Kasei Security Card while looking for my bicycle registration papers in my wallet :D.

Everything seemed to check out, but when the policeman was just about to let me go on my way (without a fine for driving without light!) he checked the registration number one more time, and he found that the number was off by one! Mine ended with 10, and the registration was for a number that ended with 09. It took a couple of seconds for me to realize what this meant until I figured out why the numbers didn't match. When I bought the bicycle I bought it at the same time as Kamil, who bought exactly the same bicycle as me. I'm pretty sure now that the seller messed up the registration details and mixed up the registration numbers and forms for our bicycles >_<

At the time this happened it was 5PM and just getting dark. I just woke up actually, and I wasn't really in the 'Japanese mindset' yet, but I managed to explain all this to the policeman, who called the main police office to confirm it, and my story checked out, fortunately. Kamil, if you're reading this, I need your bicycle registration stuff next time I see you!

The end of the world as we know it

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 14:56:00 +0000

There's a party in my tummy!
So yummy! So yummy!

Here's some more funny stuff on youtube:

Guy having a party in his tummy too

Stormtrooper in Tokyo

Darth Vader and stormtrooper in Tokyo

Good luck and Tetris

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Tue, 27 Nov 2007 13:57:00 +0000

Have you ever played tetris? You must have? Do you know the feeling when bad bricks keep on piling up and you can't make a line, and just before your screen's full exactly the right bricks come out and you clear out the entire screen? This is what my life feels like right now. People are being so nice to me for no reason! I especially have to thank Shieri and Alvaro who have been spoiling me recently lately with a lot things ^_^.

My holiday is planned! I'm going back to Holland for Christmas, and I will spend some days traveling around Europe with Kamil before going back to Japan. It's a crazy and busy trip and I'm sure I will enjoy it a lot. It's an expensive time too, and I need to spend a lot of money on traveling and stuff. It feels good though.

In fact, I decided to order a new lens for myself yesterday. After taking pictures of the monkeys last weekend I really found that I reached the limits of my zoom lens, so I ordered a new Canon 70-300mm IS lens. It should be quite good ^_^

It seems that whenever I feel like my luck changes for the better someone else's luck changes for the worst. Is there a fixed amount of luckmatter (luckions?) in the universe? If one person gets it, it goes away from someone else, perhaps. And if there is, would you feel bad if you took much luckmatter for yourself? I wonder.

I haven't really looked through the monkey pictures closely yet. I've deleted the blurry ones, but I haven't really selected the good ones yet. Guess I'll try to make time tonight, but it's already 23:30 and I have a lot of work to do tomorrow :'( Work really does limit my creativity. I was gonna get started on Google's Android too, but my job is taking all of my processing power where programming is concerned...

Het contact met de wereld compleet verloren

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 05:38:00 +0000

Vandaag las ik een nieuwsbericht waar me de mond van open viel. Blijkbaar is de gemiddelde Nederlander 'immuun' geworden voor ellende. Men ziet zoveel (al dan niet humanitaire) rampen in het nieuws dat iedereen het maar negeert. Veel mensen willen geen ellende zien tijdens hun avondeten en daarom zappen ze maar ergens anders heen.

Dat is niks verwonderlijks. Waar me letterlijk de bek van open viel is dat de hulporganisaties nu via 'sluwere campagnes' toch de Nederland proberen te raken met het leed van ver weg. Blijkbaar is het niet voldoende voor de gemiddle Nederlander om rustig zijn avondeten te eten zonder zich zorgen te maken over de arme kindertjes in Afrika. Nee, hij moet zich schuldig voelen, en hij moet nog meer geld doneren aan goede doelen, en de overheid moet nog meer belastinggeld spenderen aan goede doelen en het helpen van mensen in nood.

Rot nou toch even gauw een heel eind op zeg. Hoe arrogant een land ben je als je zo denkt over andere landen? Je bent compleet gestoord als je je schuldig voelt bij je avondeten als je een arm kind in Afrika ziet, en je bent een gevaar voor de samenleving als je denkt dat jij hongerlijdende Afrikaantje op de TV van mensen die zitten te eten wilt serveren om meer aandacht voor al het leed te vragen.

Natuurlijk zijn er mensen die honger lijden, en natuurlijk is er veel ellende in de wereld, maar is het dan aan 'ons' Nederlanders om de wereld te verbeteren? Rot op. De wereld wil niet geholpen worden, en zeker niet door een stel arrogante Europeanen. Neem wat je kan krijgen is het motto, en elke ontwikkelingshulp zal goed gebruikt worden. Maar het is niet alsof die landen zichzelf niet kunnen redden. Zij bestaan al net zo lang als wij, en ze zijn er nog steeds. En de ontwikkelingslanden zijn juist de landen die heel wat beter met de aarde kunnen omgaan dan wij. Daar kunnen wij wat van leren.

Ik kan me bij god niet voorstellen dat mensen zich schuldig voelen omdat ze 'niet genoeg doen' voor al die mensen die diep in de ellende zitten. Iedereen doet wat hij kan, en wij zouden ons trots moeten voelen dat we überhaupt hulp geven. Het is een soort wedstrijdje aan het worden tussen de rijke landen: degene die het meeste geld en resources kwijt kan aan de arme landen wint. Zo werkt het toch niet... Wat geeft ons het recht om te besluiten dat we nu maar eens de arme mensen in één of ander kutlandje moeten verwennen met wat lekkers. Ga er lekker zelf wonen ofzo.

Het is die arrogantie die zo typerend is van Europa. Zo heeft elk continent wel wat ellende. Misschien moet Afrika maar eens wat hulp sturen naar Nederland, om de mensen van hun arrogantieprobleem af te helpen. Kijk eerst eens naar jezelf voordat je anderen probeert te 'helpen'.

Monkey trip!

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 16:48:00 +0000

And what a trip it was indeed ^_^. Onsen, monkeys, lava, Japanese culture and oranges... All in all it was a great trip. And a chance for me to get some photographic exercise, because I haven't been going on too many far away trips recently. I can honestly say this it felt great to get out of Atsugi with friends for a couple of days. It was a really welcome change from everyday work. As for the pictures, I shot about 750 pictures for the first day o_0. I've kind of sorted them, but no post-processing yet, so I"ll give you a (very) small preview first. More later :)

Holidays are coming....

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Tue, 20 Nov 2007 13:19:00 +0000

And what an interesting time it is indeed.

There are a lot of things going on in other people's lives. My friends are studying, looking for jobs, planning holidays, dealing with personal problems, thinking about the future, trying to be more independent, talking more to me, talking less to me.

And I'm still the same.

Am I happy? I don't even have to think to answer this question. The answer is no. Objectively speaking, there are a lot of people who have a life unimaginably worse than mine. I don't like to compare myself with others. And my life was unimaginably better last year around this time.

But that's nothing new. I knew this was going to happen. I can deal with it. I'm calm now. And cold, as you can see from the picture. Winter is really coming. It's good for me to talk to the friends I made last year, and it's nice to see them move on with their life. In hindsight everything is clear. I observe people moving towards some goal, and when they finally reach it I realize that it was so obvious that they had been moving purposefully towards that goal all along. And then I wonder, is anyone observing me? And towards what goal am I moving?

Are you stupid if you believe in something? I know my attitude towards religious people is not very tolerant, but that's not because I question their beliefs. I question that some people give themselves completely to a religion, and trust without doubt. But at the same time, I am one of these people. I never considered myself religious, but I think I am closer to a priest than to a scientist, even though I don't believe in god. I believe in science. Blindly. Just like religious people believe in Christ or Buddha or Mohammed or whatever.

The 'blindly' part's the bad part, I guess. A rational mindset is one of my highest goals in things that I look for, but I pursue it blindly, and I discard this goal when I find something I can believe in, no matter how unrealistic it is. Science is not the only thing I believe in. Just as religious people find faith in believing tales of god, I find faith in believing in myself, and that the world can be right again, as long as I believe.

The holiday season is coming. I've become more cynical since last year. I wonder what Marco would think of me now o_0. Haha. The good and the bad thing about believing in a higher purpose is that things of a lower purpose no longer matter to you. Yet it is these things that are a certainty, and that will prove to be important to you in the future. Don't forget about that, and trust yourself. Amyko's life motto has been adopted by me, and I will prove that by trusting myself I can be happy.

Messy christmas and a hairy new year? We'll see...

Youtube vids

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:47:00 +0000

I added a link to some youtube video's I've uploaded. You can find them here. So far there's some time lapse videos and a clip of me and Kamil cycling down Sakurajima ^_^

Here's some shots I made a couple of minutes ago from my balcony and my front door. Yes, I can see Mt. Fuji if I turn left. But then I'd have to look away from my PC screen. We don't want that.

You're doing it wrong! (warning, this is about cheese!)

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 06:13:00 +0000

Yesterday I went with Wendy and Youngki to Shuzenji, an onsen place in Izu. It was a very enjoyable sightseeing trip. We visited some temples and weird theme park that had a British/Canadian village o_0. I am not going to talk about this at all :D Maybe I'll post pics later. First, I'm off to rant a little about Japan!

Right after the second world war the Netherlands were liberated by the coming of Canadian and US soldiers, who brought with them chocolate and cigarettes. Old Dutch people still remember this and always talk about how good the chocolate and cigarettes tasted that the soldiers brought with them. At least until they become senile. After today I am creating a situation in my mind where some country invades Japan, after which the Dutch liberate them, and introduce proper cheese to the Japanse people. Damn.

The Japanese love to wrap. And wrap again. And again. If you buy candy, the cashier puts the box of candy in a plastic bag for you. Even if you don't want it. Then, when you open the cardboard box, you will find the candy inside is wrapped again in a large piece of plastic. When you open this piece of plastic, you will find that the individual pieces of candy are again wrapped in tiny plastic cases. WTF!? And it's not only candy, they do it with everything. Even cheese. I have proof:

The picture above is a collection of weird cheeses I found in a mysterious supermarket hidden behind some big warehouses. As you can see it is wrapped thoroughly. Each piece of cheese is tiny! Inside there was the best cheese I've eaten since August: Goude with pieces of Italian saucage inside. Delicious. But there were also some monstrosities inside which I fear to describe here. Cream cheese chocolate. Cream fruit and rum. Actually, the cream fruit and rum was reasonable, but it is NOT CHEESE!!!. Yuck.

Today I was feeling a bit bored, and instead of doing something useful I decided to try to make a ham-cheese baguette, just like the ones my mother used to make at home. I strolled around Atsugi looking for anything that could come remotely close to the Dutch ingredients we used to use, but I failed miserably. I ended up with a baguette that was too big, disgusting synthetic plastic cheese and tasteless ham. I give thanks to Kamil who left me his oven when he left Japan. This is the first time I've used it :D Here's how it looked after baking it in the oven.

It may be hard to see on this photo, but the cheese refuses to melt properly because of some disgusting synthetic layer surrounding the cheese, which kind of looks like plastic. Damn you Japan! Get some proper cheese, dammit! The cheese stuck to my throat and I nearly died.

So ends my cheese experiments. Bottom line: the only way to get good cheese in Japan is to go to nice restaurants or specialty import food stores.

Bonus: have you ever seen an American dog in a microwave? Here's one:

Japanese call this 'thing' an American dog. It's basically a hot dog's sausage wrapped in batter. Also, Japanese sausages are smaller, as this Japanese hot dog proves:

That's all. I love Japan, but some things I guess they will never learn...

Google! Eindelijk!

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 01:31:00 +0000

Eindelijk heeft Google de vertaalmachine uitgebreid met een Dutch to English en English to Dutch optie. Het zou eens tijd worden! Een taal is pas een taal als hij ondersteund wordt door Google :P En de vertaling is nog redelijk goed ook. Niet perfect, maar wel ongelofelijk veel beter dan dat brakke babelfish.

Dus bij deze: gebruik voortaan Google translate om mijn blog te vertalen, want het werkt ^_^

This blog to English
This blog translated to Dutch

感謝　(kansha)

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Thu, 15 Nov 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Kansha. Japanese for gratitude. Who to thank for things if you don't believe in god? Yourself? Can't thank yourself for making the sun rise. I guess I'll thank the universe then. Thank you, universe.

Today I made a time lapse movie of the sunset at work. I put it online at youtube. I was a bit pissed off after I saw the result, because the weather was hazy all day and the sun was too bright for most of the movie. The camera was pointed too much to towards the sky as well. As I started to become more pissed off, I suddenly realized how lucky I really am, and how I often fail to notice that recently. It put me back in my place, I guess.

Only four years ago. I was a student in a local university in my province. I had a crappy digital camera, didn't know anything about shooting photo's, and coming to Japan had never even occurred to me. Not to mention the fact that I was geeky, living at home, and never went abroad without my parents.

Fast forward to now. I am 23. I have been living in Japan for 2 years. I have grown enormously, as a person and as an engineer. I enjoy traveling by myself, doing crazy trips, taking pictures with a DSLR, and enjoying spending time with international friends. My workplace is great. I work at the 22nd floor of a huge skyscraper without any other tall buildings around. The view is spectacular at clear days. I can see Mount Fuji every day from my room on the 5th floor and my working place at the 22nd floor. How many people can say that they've even seen mount Fuji once? I am lucky.

Only three months ago I was so happy, because I found some software that allowed me to take pictures through my camera automatically through my laptop. It was a great discovery. A couple of weeks ago I discovered the wonderful CHDK hacked firmware for my camera, which allows me to script photo shooting without the need for a laptop. I've been using this ever since, and it's truly great. I will have many chances in the future to make cool movies. No need to rush.
All I have now is gratitude. That sudden instant, where I realize: "hey, what the f*ck, I'm in Japan! What the bleep am I doing here!?!". It puts things back into perspective, and that is something I have been missing for a long time.

Mind occupation

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 11:20:00 +0000

Recently I don't give myself time to think. I work all day and when I come home I have so much things to do and to plan that I don't have 'free' time. That in itself is not so bad, but recently I am getting more free time at work after finishing a busy period. It kind of frustrates me that at home I don't have enough time to do what I want, but at work I don't have enough want to do with my time.

Anyway, I'm posting here because of two things. The first is an interesting article I found on Japan Times about how foreigners are treated by the police here in Japan. It talks about how foreigners can be stopped for no reason and are then asked to show their alien registration cards (or gaijin cards, as we all affectionately call it, even though gaijin (outside person) is a rude way of saying gaikokujin (the official way of saying 'person from outside the country')) for no reason. I have to say that it never happened to me, but I have heard stories from friends who had it happen to them. In fact, the police has been extremely friendly with me, now that I think about it. It happened to me several times that I was carrying something or someone that I was not supposed to carry on a bicycle, but the police never fined me, or even asked me for an alien registration card. They just told me that I was not supposed to do that, and that I should be more careful next time. The same thing happened to me once when my lights weren't working. I guess I'm the exception that proves the rule.

The second thing is Android. It's Google's new mobile platform, and they're promoting it heavily. They just released the Android SDK for their mobile OS, and they're awarding massive money for people who will develop applications for it, even before the OS has been released. I might try my hand at that if I can deal with getting more 'free' time at home. Actually, I have a game concept already half finished, which I could continue to develop for Android. But I need time and a will to program. If I'm programming for the company all day I don't have yaruki (やる気) to program at home. Anyway, the platform looks quite cool, a design I, as an object oriented obsessor, quite like. Take a look at it if you're interested: Android

Idealism?

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Fri, 09 Nov 2007 18:33:00 +0000

I initially wrote this post as a reply to MattQB's and Kamil's posts, but because it's 4 o'clock in the morning something slightly less coherent came out. It's my blog though and I can post what I want, even if it's crap :D I might be a slight bit blunt in this post. Not because I actually think like this, but because it helps me put things into perspective.

What is idealism? What's the point of it? Is it having some wonderful image of the world in your head? Having a goal to life for? Idealism is just seeing the world better than it really is. It's just something you want but you cannot get. Pursuing idealism just means that you have some goal in your life that you are working for.

So what would that goal be? Most people who are smart enough to know of the word idealism know that it might be nice to desire something 'higher' in life than just pleasing themselves. Be it helping children in Africa, donating money to charity, trying to save the planet, a higher goal is easy to pick. Just devote your life to it and start feeling good about yourself.

So what if you are not pursuing some higher goal in life? What if your goal is just something small, something easy to get? I guess we can't define that as idealism, then? It just means our ideals are different. A lot of my friends are in my field of work, and a lot of them are looking for a higher purpose or some greater good than just 'doing something with hardware or software'. I am not.

For some reason I cannot relate to some higher purpose. I cannot be a true idealist, because my ideals are not out of reach. I will move further away from my ideals if I spend a lifetime devoting myself to people I don't even know (for example). For my friends however, it's a different matter. If there is anything I can do to help them or to somehow make their life better, I would absolutely do it. Why? I don't know. Different ideals, I guess.

Life sucks without a goal. In my opinion choosing a 'higher' goal is taking the easy way out. Just helping people, doing something for humanity or for the environment, volunteer work, that just doesn't do it for me. There must be something more out there.

So obvious

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 15:20:00 +0000

This turned out to be a word of advice, I guess. I'm not sure who I wrote this for in the end. Initially I wrote it for someone else, after talking to W&A&K, but it turned out to be a word of advice to myself too, I guess. Sit back, relax and learn from uncle Randy :D

Relax
I've found that I've slowly become way and way more relaxed. My personality changed a lot. I used to be uncomfortable in social situations, and I would try to look for things to say and to keep the conversation going, and think of interesting topics. These days I just enjoy relaxing and casually talking and sitting with friends. Of course there is this one person sitting next to me who is always on edge and nervous. Don't be so worried if there is a silence of 5 seconds. It doesn't mean that all the people there are not enjoying themselves. You don't have to 'fix' the situation. You don't have to make it better. Just relax, and be yourself. Nobody expects anything more.

Look (or don't)
Strange things happen. When you are so desperately looking for something, you can never find it, but when you are not looking for another something, sometimes it just finds you. I guess sometimes it's better to just not look that hard..

Decide
A person I know is worrying way too much about making choices for the future. In my opinion, she thinks too long and she cannot decide what she wants. I think it doesn't matter if your choice is made in 1 hour or 100 hours, the probability of it being the right choice doesn't change. If you and your rational mind cannot decide which choice is better even after 1 hour of thinking then there is either something wrong with your brain or something wrong with your choice. Find something else. Use logic, people! Think decisions through. After the first hour of logically considering your options you will find that it doesn't matter how much more you think about it. Changing your mind again and again will only make you unsure of yourself, so don't do it. Just choose.

Don't give up
A friend talked to me tonight. We talked about giving up. Do you think giving up is bad? I think it can be a good thing if you are able to give up on something you don't care about much.

Each person has their own morals and standards, and it's up to each individual to decide what they think is important in life, and how they judge other people. For me, my highest moral standard might be about giving up. I judge myself based on how I deal with giving up. I consider myself a failure if I give up on something I care about. This is my standard.

Never give up on anything that's important to you.

A cold day in Tokyo

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Mon, 05 Nov 2007 14:26:00 +0000

For many reasons! I caught a cold anyway, snot is making my brain move slowly. Here are some pictures from Yasukuni shrine, Rikugien garden and Odaiba.

Creepy dolls are creepy.

War veterans are old.

Kimono woman is Japanese.

Uhhh.. Flowers and shit.

This is Caesar.

This is a big fish, which is very big.

This is the TV building in Odaiba. Inside that ball is a matter-antimatter reactor.

And This Is Tokyo. TIT. This Is Tokyo.

More later

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 17:17:00 +0000

In reverse order and for your viewing please:

Weird weird weird

There girls undress and kids like it!

Cuckoo train.

Look at the dripping love burger.

I caught a cold :'(

CHDK Firmware for Canon G7

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:09:00 +0000

Take a look here: http://chdk.wikia.com/wiki/Main_Page.
It's called CHDK firmware, and it's an open-source firmware you can put on most Canon Powershot camera's, including the G7. It's great! I get to do a lot of cool stuff now, like:

Make RAW photo's
Create scripts, for example for making time-lapse pictures (don't need my laptop anymore, yay!)
Play Sokoban on my camera :D

It has tons more features so if you have a powershot camera be sure to check it out. Also, the site's complicated and you have to get some quirky binary from a weird Russian page to get it, but it works o_0

The silence before the storm

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Thu, 01 Nov 2007 12:29:00 +0000

Nothing to report. Really nothing. I can only hope there is a storm coming soon. I like storms. After a storm the world is clean again.

We survived

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 18:47:00 +0000

The typhoon went a different direction, as usual. The storm passed, and the sky is more clear that it has been for the past 6 months.

A typhoon is coming

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Sat, 27 Oct 2007 06:51:00 +0000

We may or may not survive

Two years ago...

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Thu, 25 Oct 2007 16:00:00 +0000

Translated from here, the Saturday on which I arrived 2 years ago.

----

I'm feeling a bit helpless right now, to be honest :( I've finally arrived, but I don't have internet and not even a telephone. The phone in my room was supposed to work, but there's no wire connecting it and I can't even find where in the wall the wire is supposed to go. My cell phone does not work in Japan (of course...) and pay-phones don't work for me either. I've tried to use a payphone to call abroad, but every number combination I try gives me line-busy tone. I'm kind of annoyed that I can't get in touch with my country in any way.

The room itself is a lot bigger than I expected (then again I was expecting nothing). The sleep/living area is about 3 by 4 meters, and there's a kitchen of around 3 by 2 meters. The bathroom is even smaller than the one at home :| Shower/bath combination, toilet, sink. All stacked up together.

The trip itself went smoothly. In Amsterdam there were clear signs as well as at Heathrow. I had to walk an annoyingly long way to the connecting flight terminal, and from there I took the bus from terminal 4 to terminal 1, which took about 10 minutes. After wandering around in the tax-free area I walked to my gate, which again took quite some time. Heathrow is quite big. The gate was full of people already and the check-in had a delay of half an hour. I must have been through 1000 metal detectors on all 3 airports I've visited, and it was only afterwards that I found out that I never took off my watch. Strangely enough the metal detector never gave a warning though. After that it was an 11-hour trial of trying to sleep and waiting. The flight information system didn't work, so I couldn't check where we were and how long it would take :|
Of course I was sitting next to some socially disturbed Japanese guy and behind an annoying English guy... Arriving at Narita was easy and the signs led me to the bus, where I was suddenly faced with a challenge to speak Japanese for the first time in my life :O. That didn't go so well. Understanding is okay, but asking how long the bus ride will take turned out to be quite a problem for a simple Dutch guy with a farmboy accent. Well, at least I made some people in the bus smile...

Some bad news was that I couldn't reach the person I was supposed to contact at Narita before the bus left. I took a chance and just took a bus to HonAtsugi, and fortunately Takako Nakazawa-san was there to pick me up. She was indeed a woman, as she pointed out to me before after I called her Mr. Takako Nakazawa in countless e-mails... *bumps head against wall* A mid-20s woman is quite a surprise when you're expecting a middle-aged guy. Together with her was a guy called Jason, who is doing the same job as the one I will be doing, but for the American English language instead. Me and my suitcase were then transported by taxi to the youth heim (all at the company's expense of course), where I met a German guy called Christian. Actually I already forgot his name, but they gave me a map of the office with the names of most people, and most Germans are not called Yamamoto or Onizuka. I think I can get along quite well with the 3 people I met so far. There's also some people from Korea and China, but I haven't met them yet. There's 2 Italians, but from my first impression they're keeping their distance so far. There's also going to be another Dutch guy, but that's going to be December.

Maybe I should have done some more research on the company before I came here. It sounds like a terribly stupid thing to say _after_ coming to Japan, but I actually only found at the Japanese customs inspection that I didn't know much at all about the company I am going to work for. The customs guy asked me for which company I was going to work. I told him, in my best-possible Japanse "Assaheeeeee Kass-ay". He looked quite surprised, so I asked him why he looked surprised, and I asked him if AK was a big company. He told me AK was one of the biggest multinationals of Japan :O Apparently I don't really fit in, cause otherwise he wouldn't look that surprised. Well, anyway, Bragging Rights++ (Y)

I got milk! Just picked it up from the 7-eleven, or as they say in Japan: se-hu-N (pronounce N very strongly) eee-rE-hu-N. Every single English word is garbled by their weird syllables. Apparently that's why they have trouble pronouncing MacDonalds, which sounds more like MaKuDoNaRuDzu. If you manage to pronounce that at lightspeed it might sounds like McDonalds. Ah yes, my power converter plugs don't work for plugs that have a ground line (is that what it's called in English?) added, which includes those I use for my laptop and usb harddisks :( Still 68% left.. Tomorrow is Sunday, so I don't think I can buy new plugs soon.

If I remember correctly someone will take me to the city center of Atsugi on Monday, to make a bank-account so I can make some yennies here. The center is bigger than I thought, not really a suburb of Tokyo, but in terms of size I guess at least as big as my hometown of Groningen. There's 2 skyscrapers close to here: one is the Mitsubushi (R2007: actually it's Nissan o_0) building, but it's not too high, and the other is the AXT Tower where I will be working :) It's really quite a large building, at least for my standards. I'll see if I can take some pictures of it tomorrow, if my battery allows it.

The youth heim is not really big; it's a 5 floor apartment building. 3 sides apartments and 1 side open (like this: |_|). My room is looking towards the West. Underneath my room there's a small playground, a road and then some greenhouses. The youth heim is only 1 street away from the biggest road in Atsugi (although I'm not sure if I'm talking about the city or the municipality then). I started off well here: I got the keys from Takako, but she wasn't there yet, so Jason, Christian and I took the luggage to my room. Before coming to Japan I have seen hundreds of anime series and studied the Japanese culture extensively, so it is no surprise at all to me that Japanese people take their shoes off at the entrance of the room. Guess what I did :{
Fortunately there was no Japanese person around. I hear they would run away if they saw that.

About the weather :( I arrive at the airport: sunshine. Get in the bus: cloudy. Arrive in Atsugi: dark clouds. Have to buy stuff after getting settled in: rain... I still don't know if the tap-water is drinkable, so I just bought some water from the sebun erebun. Water, and some other foodstuffs: chips (they even got pringles), instant noodle meals, bread (slices 3 times as thick as normal) and some stuff for my room. It gets dark here around 5:30 by the way :'(
I was talking about the weather with Jason and he told me that today was just about the coldest day since he arrived: 19 degrees Celcius. Temperates above 30 degrees are quite common in summer.

My room is not clean at all. It's certainly not dirty, but quite dusty. The walls and floors don't look new, but I guess that's what's to be expected from a room that's meant for interns. I don't think I"ll try to find a different room, the current one is big enough. The bed sucks though :'( I don't really wanna clean up, so I"ll do it tomorrow. That's why I'm typing this story right now, cause I don't have much else to do without internet or a phone. I'm going to try the pay-phone around the corner later. It appears that there's a trick for dialing international phone numbers, but I'm not sure if the trick that works on youth heim phones will also work on pay-phones.

There's some nice cars around here. Very nice Skyline's (R32,33,34), RX7's, RX8's, Mitsu Evo's and a lot of other stuff. Of course they also have Porsche's and BMW's (with the steering wheel at the wrong side). And of course the Vauxhall Astras, of which I have seen 5 or 6 already so far. The traffic is kind of slow-motion compared to Holland. Normal roads are 40 kph and highways are 80. This usually means a truck driving 75 kph on the left lane, a truck on the center lane driving 78 and a bus on the right lane driving 81. And everyone obeys the speed limit (R2007: no way, that's not true!). But this could have something to do with the toll system they have here. For each highway they have a small barrier which you have to pass to enter, where the money is substracted automatically from your account. I figure they could use this perfectly to check the speed... It's scary as hell though, the barrier, because the bus approaches it with a speed of around 20kph, and the barrier really only starts to open up when the bus nearly hits it. If such a thing ever breaks someone might get beheaded.

There, I feel a lot better. Even if you read this only a couple of days or weeks after this happened, at least I wrote about it.

---

o_0!!!!

Two years ago. Right after writing this I went out to find a phone booth. I couldn't make an international call, so I asked people at the conbini where I could possible find one to make an international call. They told me to walk further south along the road, and I ended up getting lost and finding AXT Tower. I couldn't find my way back though, because of the stupid tunnel, which appears to not go where I want to go.

So I went to a restaurant, told them in my crappy Japanese that I was lost, and asked them to call me a taxi. Which they did. I didn't have my address. I didn't remember my address and I didn't have it with me on paper! I just asked the taxi driver if he knew where the Atsugi youth heim was and he knew! In the two years that I've been here there has never been a taxi driver after that who knew how to found the youth heim. I guess I've always been lucky.

The third year approaches. I am thinking bigger.

Vierkante oogjes

noreply@blogger.com (Randy) — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 14:02:00 +0000

Wakaremichi

Really the last post!

No more sushi...

No more sushi...

My last post

Mind occupation followup

The end of the world as we know it

Good luck and Tetris

Het contact met de wereld compleet verloren

Monkey trip!

Holidays are coming....

Youtube vids

You're doing it wrong! (warning, this is about cheese!)

Google! Eindelijk!

感謝 (kansha)

Mind occupation

Idealism?

So obvious

A cold day in Tokyo

More later

CHDK Firmware for Canon G7

The silence before the storm

We survived

A typhoon is coming

Two years ago...

Vierkante oogjes

感謝　(kansha)