成程 (Naru Hodo) - IC in Japan^H^H Cote d'Azur ^H^H USA

Explorer Tour to Seattle

2008-07-30T19:22:00.000-07:00

To keep us interns happy, Sarah organized an "Explorer Tour" to Seattle. The first stop after crossing the longest floating bridge in the US (or even the world?) was the Seattle Arboretum. Btw. it is already the second bridge. The first one sunk and the lake is too deep to salvage it. That was also the reason for a floating bridge in the first place: The lake is too deep to anchor concrete pillars...

Anyways the Arboretum is gorgeous and we were told that it is the start of a connected system of parks stretching for miles.

Including various forms of wildlife...

Even wildlife that is considered a pest elsewhere like beavers (notice the gnawed tree in the middle).

After an extended walk through the amazing park we visited downtown Seattle and learned that Seattle burned down in 1889. It was rebuilt one story higher then the previous city in order to solve various problems, foremost problems with the sewer system during high tide... As this happened fairly quickly, most buildings simply moved there entrance to the first floor. At some places you (read tourists) can still go underground.

After a quick drive-by of the first Starbucks store ever (besieged by countless tourists) ...

we stopped to get an overview over Seattle and the famous Space Needle...

... before we went to the ship canal locks to watch the fish ladder.

The pictures do reality no justice however. The Salmon are huge and glittering and just impressive to watch as they swim by :D. I definitely need to go diving again. But maybe not in that cold water with those huge Salmon around... :P

Oh and we came by a bakery that has almost real bread :D.

Rubys Diner and Bridal Trails

2008-07-27T18:15:00.000-07:00

As it was Sunday, we planned to go out and have great breakfast at some fancy restaurant. After a thorough internet search we decided to go to Rubys Diner.

After you enter you are instantly teleported 50 years back in time. It is difficult and probably impossible to capture the impressions, but you just have to simile instantly. Everything matched the idea you get from old movies (or that scene from back to the future) perfectly. From seats, old bicycles on display to the dresses of the waitresses (who were actually friendly and helpful unlike the people on Friday). There was even a model train running on his tracks right under the ceiling. If someone told me about the place I would have considered it quite cheesy, but in reality it was really really cool and I will definitely go there again.

Even the menus were brought back from a long forgotten past :D.

Unfortunately we arrived late so they didn't have breakfast anymore (1 p.m. is a little bit late for breakfast :D). The waitress girl assured us, that their breakfast is probably the best breakfast you could get in the whole state and joined us in being sad: Apparently she had planned to take a break to get breakfast herself, but couldn't as the diner was packed full with guests. So we changed our plans and I had the "Classic Ruby Burger Combo" with a handmade Oreo-cookie-fantasy milk shake. It was great and probably had one million calories.

Therefore I went for a run around Bridal Trails. Which, as the Yoga teacher girl promised, is indeed a great place to run around. It is like a jungle in the middle of the city. No real ways and paths, just little trails going left and right and up and down and all the time you need to star alert and jump over roots and horse droppings and dodge branches from the trees. Simply great :D.

Company Picnic

2008-07-27T16:16:00.000-07:00

Thanks to our almost perfect arrival time, the next big company even was right on the next day: The company picnic. Imagine a farm in the country side with really nice nature. Green grassland, a little lake, a mountain overlooking everything.

Now add 5000+ people, quite a few attractions and food booths. Not exactly what I expected from a"picnic" but kind of interesting once you overcome the first shock :). They did't let us onto the "KrakenSlide" (apparently we are "too old"), but we raced RC-cars, rode a mechanical bull, climbed the wall and and made fools of ourselves by volunteering for a "stage hypnosis show" :D.

A popular thing on the same stage was the "Rock-A-raoke": Like with Karaoke you sing while reading the lyrics on a small display However here you do not sing to music from a record but with your very own rock band :D.

Apart from all the entertainment there was, of course, a lot of free food and I tried a lot of it. Most food was ok (meaning I ate it but didn't go for seconds) but the burgers were great. Really great :D. On a funny side note, the sanitary cubicles are called "honey buckets" around here. Not exactly what I would connect with a honey bucket :P.

Wine down and Clubbing - not so much... :(

2008-07-25T21:32:00.000-07:00

It seems like we arrived here at the right time. Today was "wine down". I.e down in the basement was wine and food for all the researchers to meets and talk :D. We met some other interns and finalized the plans for our clubbing tour. Our target was the trinity club in Seattle and we managed to get onto the guest list (i.e. trading our e-mail addresses for free entry) :).

So we went there, freshly showered nicely dressed, found a parking spot nearby and made it into the queue just in time. The free entrance offer was valid until 11 pm, which is a reasonable time to start the party, as the clubs will close around 2 am. Everything was fine until we had to show our IDs...

I don't exactly look like 20 anymore, but apparently the local regulations require the clubs to check the ID and I don't mind them checking my ID. What was not fine, is that the personal at the entrance refused to accept any ID other than a Washington state driving license! Come on! I understand that it is convenient to put that ID into a electronic reader, wait for a confirming "beep" and let people enter. What I do not understand is, that the staff was unable to look at my official German ID and read the text field that says "Date and place of birth" in plain English (and a few other languages)! Talk about declining literacy... :(.
Apparently we "non-resident aliens" can get some similar Washington state ID. But it will take quite a while... and even when we have it, I don't think we will try to go back to Trinity club...

As the evening was over before it started we decided to make the best of it and went into the bar next door. Imagine us in our nicely ironed button shirts entering a place like the dark biker bar from dusk till dawn to anticipate how we felt...
The security guard with all his tattoos was almost scary, but he had a very friendly simile (with some missing teeth), was helpful and could actually read and understand our IDs :). Much to our surprise the place was filled with our fellow interns from Macedonia, India and Israel, drinking beer and being equally frustrated by their failed attempts to enter trinity club :). So after all it still became a nice evening.

First day

2008-07-22T11:26:00.005-07:00

Today we got our legal introduction (quite scary stuff) and I still don't know what I am allowed to write, but apparently there is a special website in the intranet informing about the legal requirements of employees blogs. After legal we finally got (a part of) our badges and met with our future boss(es) to talk about projects and ideas they have. Quite impressive people. Its almost scary to be there :).

After a very very long day I dropped into the gym to try one of the Yoga classes. Quite different from the style I am used to. Using props, different sequences and postures, no adjustments and comments on the details of postures, and in general too much focus on "entertainment". Probably you cannot do what I would like in such a gym environment with people (with very different physical abilities) dropping in and out every lecture...
However the teacher girl is nice (and instructed me do some extra poses to prevent me from getting bored ;-) ) so I think I will stick with her class. The location of the gym is just too convenient (the next "real" yoga school is a one hour drive away!) and without a class I will become too lazy to practice ;-). As a bonus the girl gave me some tips about places to go running: "Redmond watershed" and "bridal trails" sound interesting and I will check them out on the weekend.

NEO, cars and working out.

2008-07-21T11:54:00.003-07:00

Today we had our first day at the little company starting with M. I don't know what I am allowed to blog about it, as we get our introduction from the legal department tomorrow, but I think it is OK to say that the first one and a half days are spent with NEO the "new employee orientation". This means that all people starting that week come together and are told about how things work around here. It was quite a bit a of (rather boring but necessary) information to digest but we got free food and the girl doing the presentations was amazing to watch. Not exactly my type, but she had complete control over the rather large crowd all the time and made them keep attention despite the boring topics. Really impressive and I wish I could have that kind of presentation skills back home for giving lectures ;-).

After NEO we finally got our "mid sized" rental cars :D. I expected a rather small car, but boy was I wrong. I got a Pontiac G6 GT, and this thing is huge. I have no idea about its actual power, but wikipedia tells me, that the smallest(!) engine has around 180 horse powers :D. Too bad the speed limits are 35 to 45 miles per hour (55 or 72 km/h)... ;-)
So far the low speeds allowed me to keep the gasoline consumption at 20 miles per gallon (12 l/100km) according to the board computer but gasoline is comparably cheap at UST 4 per gallon (0.67 EUR per liter). Oh, and the units at the super market are even more confusing ... ;)

First thing we did with our new mobility was of course to go shopping (for large steaks) and visit the local gym to fight all the junk food we already ate ;-). I think the gym tries a bit too hard to appear exclusive, but is is rather close to our flat and has two 50m swimming pools :D. After all that sitting around (plane, NEO, ...) I went for a quick run on a treadmill - at nine minutes per mile, just to demonstrate another wired unit of measurement around here. After that we met with Diego, one of our future coworkers and a good friend of Quirin on the parking lot and talked about cars (he has an Audi A3)... ;-)

Arrived in Seattle

2008-07-20T11:24:00.002-07:00

After some 10+ hours in the plane and feeling like a canned fish, we are finally in Seattle. At least I was able to use the time to watch 3 children movies and read half of my latest Christopher Moore book ("A Dirty Job"). Its not as good as "You Suck: A Love Story" but both stories interconnect and there are incredibly hilarious moments :). Using the airport express shuttle we went to our apartment without any problems. Everything just worked perfect and we have WiFi a huge fridge and a swimming pool. Overall I am very impressed with the work of the relocation specialists.

On the downside I lost my digital camera in the express shuttle :(. I will try to call them but in the meantime I will only be able to post pictures from the mobile phone...

Anyway. We unpacked and went for a walk to the nearest supermarket to buy dinner. This is an almost impossible task as there is way too much variety to choose from. Think about two 50m aisles of potato crisps alone...
On our way back we dared to cross a road without using the pedestrian traffic light. The button didn't work anyway, as we learned on our way to the supermarket and the traffic on late Sunday afternoon was very low. Just when we finished passing the road we were scared by a cop turing on his police horn for a brief moment and informing us to "Use the traffic lights in the future. Thank you!" using his car mounted megaphone from about 100m away... Quite wired :/.

Out into the world again :D

2008-07-16T11:59:00.004-07:00

After sitting around in Germany for over one year (except for a little holiday trip, a conference and partying with Jose and Guillaume in Paris - see picture with lower back of Notre Dame :P), the time has come to get some fresh air again.

This time I will go to Seattle, Redmond to be exact and do a three month internship at the research branch of a small local company starting with M ;-). It is great to see how all the paperwork for getting J1-Visa finally worked and just in time we are ready to go. We means my college Quirin (Q) and me (IC).

Obviously the first thing to do when you go abroad is having a farewell party with your friends. As we were quite busy having that party, cooking and eating Chili, drinking beer, eating Tiramisu, ... we didn't take pictures and the only one available is one of the empty beer barrel on the next day. There are lots of "mirco breweries" in the Seattle area, but you never know ;-).

Madrid

2007-02-18T07:16:00.000-08:00

As Spain is close to here, at least a lot closer than Germany, I decided to visit Jose in Madrid. Traveling is cheap nowadays, especially if you book a bit in advance and order via internet. So I took a TGV, the French version of Shinkansen, which was not at all fast on the coast track, to Marseile. This is the closest airport where the cheap airlines depart and while we have an airport in Nice, flights from there are a bit pricey.

My flight was with Ryanair, and I was seriously impressed by the efficeny and quality, especially considering the price. They even arrived 10 minutes early :D.
I got picked up by Jose and we drove to our first stop, his flat to dump luggage and have dinner, a pizza we grabbed on the way there. After I was introduced to Carlos, his 'really relaxed' flatmate :D, we went to a small club to have a few drinks. Instead of the party we expected, we found a small concert with two Spanish guitars, a Bass and a singer. Joder, those guys were amazing guitar players and liked their job. For one song they appeared to fight for the singing girl, throwing musical attacks back and forth :D. I liked it a lot.

Next day I went exploring Madrid. After the rather quiet Sophia-Antipolis (so quiet that I started playing golf) Madrid was a real living city (third or forth biggest in Europe after London and Berlin) and sparkling with life :D. Well Saturday moring at 10 o'clock it is just starting to sparkle but it is for sure more live than in Sophia Antipolis... As tourist, the first place to visit is Porta del Sol with the emblem of the city, the Bear with the tree.

Wandering through the streets I found the first ham (Jamon) shop of the day: "Palacio del Jamon" the palace of ham.

As it was the first time a saw all those Hams hanging around in all their beauty, I was quite impressed. The pricetag was impressive as well... :D.

While I could not afford a complete ham, I bought a piece of bread with a few slices :D. Second breakfast ... :D

Not wanting to eat my first Jamon Iberico on the run, I sat down on a bench in front of the nearby Royal Theater building. Note that the tourist signs are in Spanish, Englisch and Japanese :D.

The crumbs of the pretty fresh bread attracted a lot of small, fearless birds. Without taking particular interest in me, they jumped between my feet and had their second breakfast right there.

The next stop after breakfast was the Royal Palace, Palacio Real. This is also where I realized, that the 'Real' in Real Madrid, the famous football club, stood for Royal and had no connection to 'real' as the english word :-P.

Walking along the outside of the palace to find the entrance, I noticed that Spanish policemen du their duty on police scooters :D.

Soon enough I found the entrance and entered the palace.

The first room on the visitors tour was the kings room. It was a bit dark, to prevent the colors of the carpets and paintings from bleaching, so the dark statues are difficult to recognize on the picture.

Every room had its own characteristic style. Different colors, patterns...

But almost every room had a really impressive painting on the ceiling, depticting some group of gods or angels watching us mere mortals walking around below them.

There was even a 'Asian' room. However it used very bright colors and apart from a few painted cranes I could not find any connections to Asian art and style and frankly don't think it earns it's name. But for sure it had a different design than the other rooms...

The next stop was Plaza Mayor, built in the style of the "Habsburger" so it looks a bit different from the usually white palace buildings, maybe bit like Vienna.

According to the 'Top 10' of things to do in Madrid as a tourist, you have to go to Plaza Mayor and drink a Spanish 'Mahou' beer there. Knowing the duties of a tourist I went to a Tapas bar and ordered such a drink. I managed to do this without knowing a word Spanish (well the Spanish words I know would not be helpful ordering a beer) or resorting to English :D.

After runing around Madrid for some hours, even with my second breakfast, I started to get hungry a bit. Time to go to 'Puerta de alcala' and meet with Jose and Rafael for lunch. Spanish people have a shifted schedule, so time for lunch is 15 o'clock. As the weather was embarassingly nice, we got some sandwiches, similar to the one I had for second breakfast :D, and walked through 'Parque de El Retiro' to eat them near a rectangular lake.

Madrid has several museums and according to Rafael the 'Centro de arte reina sofia', is the best one, including the building.

According to Jose, Rafael is an artist and knows what he is talking about, so I spend the afternoon walking throught the modern art of the Reina Sofia center. I know nothing about art, but the building is quite wired. In a interesting way. Aparently they put a new roof on top of a existing building. Same goes for the art that was on display there. Quite wired, but for some reason I liked it. There was a white image, just with some curvey black lines and a few bright red dots, but for some reason it made me smile :D. Same goes for a lot of the other images and sculptures there. By accident I found out that I like the paintings of a guy called Salvador Dali. Apparently he is quite famous ...

After a long day walking through Madrid, I met with Jose and we returned to his flat. Which was invaded by friends of his flatemate, Yousef and Felipe for a game of risk. I managed to conquer Australia and hold Africa for a round, but in the end the combined power of North and South America, under the comand of Joses flatmate ruled the world...

Dinner consisted of pizza again and Yousef demonstrated how to effordless cut it without a knife.
Beeing strengthened by our meal, we searched the internet for the best place to party and finally decided to go to the Pacha as it promised the prettiest girls and decent music. Both turned out to be true, once the pary started around 3:30 in the morning. Did I mention the shifted schedule of the Madrilenos? :-D anyway it was great :-D. My personal hero was a incredible cool, seriously overweight guy in a suit, maybe in his late 40ies dancing on the table usually occupied by pretty girls and drunken wanabees. My honest respect to this guy! :D

Most of the next day was spend recovering from the previous night. As we came to life at the evening, we decided to do the craziest thing imaginable. Go ice scating in the middle of Spain :D.

Jose managed to even top this, by going ice scating in a suit :D.

The next day was my last day in Madrid, so I just walked the streets to store some of that life and energy for the quiet time in France ahead of me. As it was Monday morning the life in the street was quite energetic and on almost every crossing were people in yellow wests, keeping the traffic flowing. They appeared to be quite effective.

I used the time to stop by the 'Museo del Jamon' the ham museum. The number of hams on display was insane and I bough a few slices to eat with my coworkers back in France.

Final stop before entering the Metro to the airport was 'km 0' on Porta del Sol, the starting point of the Spanish road system. It is quite worn and difficult to find unless you get detailed instructions how to find it like the ones Jose provided :D.

Snowboarding in Isola

2007-01-28T05:55:00.000-08:00

After the SIGRAPH submission deadline passed, the general tension in the lab returned to normal levels (actually most people were catching up sleep and did not appear at the lab for the rest of the week). Finally we were able to find time for a quick skitrip and headed towards the mountains saturday morning at sunrise.

After little more than one hour we arrived at "ISOLA 2002", the clostest place that actually had snow in this warm winter, beeing up to 2400 m high and minus 10 degrees cold. The road that led there was pretty impressive. I definitely have to go there again in summer with my motorbike and make a lot of pictures. I am sure the road alone will be worth the trip.

Despite Isola being one of the few places with snow, there were only a few people so we had the well prepared slopes mostly for our self.

Freeclimbing

2007-01-21T05:32:00.000-08:00

As the golf coure will not start again before 27th of January I searched for new things to do. Apparently there is a INRIA climbing group and AGOS installed hooks and handles to various buildings. To ensure safety there is also a supply of ropes, carbines and climbing shoes.
Last Thursday I had my introductionary climbing and it was very nice. I guess I will become even more fun, once my fingers build up a little more strength to hold on to the small grips :D.

Galette des Rois

2007-01-09T05:43:00.000-08:00

In France there is the tradition of "Galette des Rois" (Cake of royals?). I didn't get all of it, but my understanding is as follows:
On January 6th, the day of remembering the holy 3 kings, people bake a special cake. The "Galette des Rois", with some (hard) object called "Fève" hidden inside. Rumor has it, that it was a ring in the orignal cake, but due to a lack of rings in medival times common people usesed a hard bean instead. Nowadays small figures made of porcelain are common.
The person who will find the Fève will have luck for that day/year.

The mother of a coworker prepared such a cake for us poor researchers and lucky me found the Fève :D.

In order to give more people a fair chance to find a Fève, these cakes can be found during all of January and even the labs restaurant resorted to replacing most deserts with Galette des Rois. I ended up with a second Fève so this has to become my lucky year :-P.

As I found out later, an alternative version of this tradition is, that the lucky one will be king for a day (including a golden paper crown) and will nominate someone as his queen. Preferredly a wealthy girl as the lucky royal couple is supposed to treat their unlucky friends to the next cake...

Playing Golf...

2006-11-26T08:57:00.000-08:00

...is pretty much all I can do at the moment. The last two days the weather was pretty bad (for local standards) and with rain and wet roads I did't feel like touring around a lot.

The Golfbag I borrowed from AGOS (the "social assistance office" of INRIA :P) is a bit old but the clubs are good (for a bloody beginner like me) and it was accompanied by a artificial "putting green". Which I can use to play in my room and was fun for exactly 7 minutes... ;-).

I also bought a golf glove, apparently an essential tool for every golfer :P. Looking around in the sports store, this is also about the only affordable item ;-). It is only for the left hand (although my right hand hurts), tight and made of artificial leather. Lets' see wether it improves my skills :P.

Today the weather tried to make up for the last two days, so I finally could try "my clubs" and the glove on the driving range. A part of it has a roof, but I am not crazy enough about golf to play during rain :D.

I got a bucket full of small yellow range balls went on my small square of artificial green and played them. The yellow signs are 50m, 100m and 150m. My hitrate improved to maybe 90%. However this tells you nothing about the poor quality of the hits :-(. Both in terms of distance and direction. Some of the balls just rolled down the hill.
But it was fun and I discovered, that there is no strength/speed needed to get the balls far. As soon as I slowed my swings down, to maybe half my initial speed, everything felt a lot more natural and the balls still flew to the same distance :D. The bucket was empty too quickly :D.

Sunday ride to the mountains

2006-11-12T12:12:00.000-08:00

One of the nice things about France is, that some shops are open on Sunday morning. Which is especially useful after the holiday we had yesterday. After a pretty crowded visit at the local supermarket I grabbed my hiking boots and went for a ride towards the mountains.

At a place called "Gourdon" (I think. My map is not very precise) things already looked very rocky.

But 758 meters is not the best the local mountains can do and my Q wanted to ride a bit more anyway after standing around for almost a week and being degraded to a mule for shopping...
Right beside Gourdon is "Gorges du Loup". According to my tiny French dictionary it can be translated as "Canyon of the Loup" (where Loup is the name of a small stream).

As you cannot see the canyon on the picture above, I went closer and indeed found the incredibly beautiful entrance to the canyon. Not only for the looks, but also very nice for riding a bike :D.

The way went on, curve after curve, and the Q was in her element. When we finally decided to stop, we were at a place called "Gréolières les-neiges", apparently a of ski-ressourt and the end of my map :P.

After finding a nice place for the Q I went hiking. As before in Riva del Garda I made a picture of the local map to prevent getting lost :P.

After a while I stopped to sit on some stone, enjoy the view and have my lunch: A piece of bread and some dried sausage ;-).

The air was pretty clear and you could see very far. Everything felt a bit unrealistic as the human mind is not used to seeing that far. Unfortunately it is impossible to catch this with pictures. You need to experience yourself. As a poor substitute I created a Panorama (Clicking the following picture. You need Quicktime installed).
It was created from 26 images, 6 Megapixels each. The processing requirements nearly killed my poor notebook (36480 x 2880 pixels before conversion to QTVR :-P).

I took the same route back home. This time downwards...

Half way home needed gasoline. The tank of my Q definitely is too small. Unfortunately the situation on Sundays in France is even worse than the situation on Sundays in Italy:
Most stations I passed were closed and had no automated solution.

After riding very carefully for quite a while (to consume as few of the remaining gasoline as possible) I finally I found a very modern, automated gas station :-). It even had a multi lingual display with German as option :-). Just to tell me, in German, that I only accepts French credit cards! :-( No cash, no German bank cards, no German credit cards :-(.

However, French people are way nicer than French gasoline machines. Some other customer of that station understood my situation and gave me gasoline with his card in exchange for cash :-D. So I didn't have to spend the night in some canyon in the French countryside, only millimetres away from gasoline...
And I am finally convinced that getting a French credit card was a very good idea. I hope it arrives soon :-P.

Golf first try...

2006-11-09T04:56:00.000-08:00

My back hurts.

And my ego.

Playing golf is really hard and I start to have huge respect from all the old people playing golf. It's not only about hitting the ball (which is difficult enough) but also hitting it in the right way...

At 12:00 I met with Gisela, the person organizing the discount for INRIA members. She was waiting for me with a black Mercedes SLK to drive the two of us 300 meters to the golf course. I swallowed hard and thought whether it was a good idea to actually do this... I am way too young and way to poor to play golf.

At the golf course I relaxed a bit. There were actually young people, "normal" people and people with ordinary, dirty cars with bumps like it is custom in France... :D.

In the first lesson we were we were a nice small group: Two older girls, two boys and the golf teacher. By coincidence the other guy was German, worked for INRIA during his Master Theses and decided to stay to do his PhD here :-P. As he playes golf since March he was pretty good, but doesn't have his clearance, yet, so it will take some time for me to learn it.

At the beginning we tried high short range shots, using a "Sandwich", a very steep club. Goal of the exercise was to hit the ball under the ball and create a short high trajectory to have the ball jump over e.g. a hole filled with sand?!
The trick, according to the golf teacher, is to "glide over the lawn" so that the club is under the ball and shots it high into the air.
In reality you hit the ground too early and make a nasty hole into the lawn. Or you hit the ball with the tip of the club and the ball rolls into the bunker, laughing at you from there ... Or most of the time you don't hit anything at all. :-(

As you don't try to shoot very far, the swing is slower and I managed to hit the ball (or the ground) almost every third try. Maybe 5 balls behaved as avertised and jumped over the bunker. From a hole bucket with small yellow balls... :-}.
As I made quite some holes into the lawn, I now understand, why you need "clearance", before you are allowed to play on the real holes, not to destroy the lawn... :-P.

After collecting our bucket of balls we tried "range shots", i.e. we tried to kick the balls, placed on a tie as far as possible. To protect the poor lawn from the beginners, this area had protection matts made of artificial lawn :-P...
This was a completely different problem. Not only because we used a different club: a "7 iron". It is actually much harder to hit the ball if you want to hit it hard. I managed to hit the ball maybe every 10th swing... My final score was 2 balls from my bucket delivered to 100m... :-}.

So first conclusion: Much to my surprise playing golf is really hard. Not only difficult as in hitting the ball. I started sweating quite quickly.
On the other hand and even more to my surprise it appears to be quite a bit of fun. Everything is pretty quiet, fresh air, a lot of nature, the people are very calm and considerate (not to hit you with balls and warn you if some balls approach you from behind). You are pretty busy trying to hit the ball and if you actually hit it, you feel great :D. So I am looking forward to my next lesson. Maybe I will hit the ball every 5th swing :D.

Food :D

2006-11-08T08:48:00.000-08:00

As reqested from Jose, I will put some pictures of the gorgeous food online :P. The following shows our nice Cafeteria. When the weather is good (i.e. almost every day) we can have lunch outside, close to some sort fountain (it looks like a pool, but is only 20cm deep).

The first important choice is the desert. Ranging from fruit to fresh pieces of cake, including a terrific choloate cake :D (unfortunately not available today).

Followed by a varying selection of salad from a salad-bar.

Then you get one of two main dishes right from one of our friendly cooks. In case of e.g. things like steaks, the fry them right on spot :D.

Then you select the side dishes/vegetables to accompany your main dish. Today we were a little bit late, so there were only fries and zucchini left. (Fresh rice was beeing prepared, but we were too hungry to wait ... :-P)

Finally you choose a pice of cheese from a daily varying selection or the soup of the day. But I prefer cheese :D.

Here you can see the final result, that I will have the pleasure to eat. I fear I will grow really fat here :D...

Golf... :D

2006-11-07T00:42:00.000-08:00

The density in golf courses is surprisingly high. I guess 6 courses in a radius of 5km. The closest one is right across the street. Actually it is right between my dormitory and the lab.

Here in INRIA is a suborganisation called AGOS. I have no idea what it stands for or what it exactly does, but it organizes all kinds of interesting events. Yesterday in the lunch break we had a small Champagne Testing for free :D. In the basement of our lab, where the testing took place, is not only a Gym and a room with lots of machines but also showers and a noise isolated room there some amateur rockband goes crazy in the lunch break...
There will be a golf course on the golf course across the street starting next Thursday. Again I get a substantional AGOS + poor student discount (65 EUR for 5 lessons + one hole + rental golf clubs) and will give it a try :D. The nice weather and area are just too tempting. According to "Manü", one of my coworkers, it is very hard to actually hit the ball ... :P.

First weekend

2006-11-05T12:48:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went shopping for dishtowels and sheets for my bed. The lady in the tourist office (who wondered about my request for sheets, but could speak English :P) sent me to a supermarket called "Carrefour".

This thing was really huge. I passed by 73 individual cash registers until I found the entrance. And I didn't pass all the available cash registers...
After walking around in there for almost an hour I found my towels and sheets and went to cash register nr. 21 to pay. (Originally I wanted to use register nr. 23 :P but the lady siting there was shouting "Fermir!" and pointing a red light, so apparently she intended to close her lane).
All the people before me paid with credit card and the lady was quite irritated as I didn't hand her over a passport and credit card but a 50 EUR bill. Maybe getting a French VISA card (to arrive next week) wasn't a bad idea...

Somebody noticed, that I didn't show a picture of the outside of the dormitory, so here it is:

In the afternoon some dark clouds arrived and the temperatures dropped (read: 15 degrees :P). I wondered, whether it will get really cold here as well (there is only some tiny electrical heater in my room) and Germany already had snow...

But today everything was fine again. Blue sky, not even hints of clouds :D.

So I went to visit Fort Carre in Antibes. The similarity to the name of the supermarket is entirely coincidental ;-). The fort is right next to the sea so I needed to sit at the beach and just watch the water for a while, because the sea is just so incredible blue :D.

Then I entered the fort over a small drawbridge and went on a guided tour. I was told that the drawbridge was moved for a James Bond movie 30 years (?) ago for the last time (it is maybe 2 metes wide and between the top of the staircases and the door on the opposite wall).

The fort itself is an impressive structure as can be seen on this aerial picture from 1920.

And of course you have perfect view over the bay from the top plattform :-)

and the harbour.

A very clever trick of the French was to grow cacti at the wall. I am sure it made enemy soldiers think twice before attempting to climb the walls :P.

Arriving ...

2006-11-03T12:26:00.000-08:00

Yesterday morning I finally arrived at INRIA. Before that I managed to find the place where I will stay, "Residence Oxford", and managed to communicate with the caretaker who was a bit unwilling, so early in the morning, but very able to speak English ;-).

By the way most things have really funny names around here. My dormitory is located in "Rue Henry Pointcare", the one that leads here is called "Rue Albert Einstein", ... :P.

The dormitory is a brand new building (like most around here) and my room has a small bath room with a huge mirror (around the corner so it is not visible on the picture).

The main living area with a desk and a couch. It also functions as a rather small bed (80x190), but has a second mattress with movable feet underneath so I could increase the bed size to 160x190 if I would not be too lazy to do that every evening... And there is a small balcony with nice view on the parking spaces and some dirt hills. I assume there is another dormitory planned.

Around the corner (picture tanken from the desk) is the small kitchen area.

The view outside the other side of the building (i.e. not my window) is really impressiveand you can see the mountains and the golf course next door. On the other side I can see a colourful sunrise every morning :D.

Everything is very calm and quiet and the only person I could see or hear was the gardener of the golf course on his huge mower.

Then I went to the lab where I met my first co-workers: Emmanuel, Nicolas and Nicolas. Most of the other people were on vacation, as there was some deadline the week earlier and a holiday in this week. Later I met Aicha which takes care of most of the paperwork necessary for my stay and have me my INRIA badge :D.

I spend the rest of the day to get used to the computer environment (everything is in French!) and eat a very good lunch (which took more than one hour) in the really nice cafeteria, right next door to the lab.
The food is terrific (really no comparison to the stuff they call food in the mensa back home), has an affordable price (compared the restaurants in NIce) and as I am a student and by definition poor, I get a huge discount on top of that :D.

Today I met the lab head, a quite interesting person, and got a French bank account, to get a R.I.B. (some paper with all the account numbers, confirming that I have a bank account) which is needed by the landlord of the dormitory.
According to the lady in the bank (who spoke incredible good English) I absolutely need a French VISA-card for that account. Not only for paying but also to withdraw money from ATMs and learn my account balance... As the bank has some agreement with the lab so there won't be fees (unless I withdraw more money than I own of course) so it should be ok to get...

Daytrip around Nice

2006-11-01T12:04:00.000-08:00

Today, 1.11 was a holiday, so most shops and even cafes were closed. The only exception were the tourist places near the beach. (Read: 30 EUR a meal upwards)
So I went to Grasse (the city of perfumers, as I learned from the book "The Parfum") on my Q instead. There were soft hills like in movie, but they were covered by a way bigger city and not with colourful flowers as indicated by the movie. Also my nose was unable to sense any described fragrances. However there were many street signs indicating a lot of perfumers - which were closed due to the holiday.

As sun was too strong to got for a walk in my almost black biker armour, I went for a little bit of cruising towards the mountains and found bikers paradise. (Motorised as well as man powered bikes)
Almost no traffic, nice curvy roads running smoothly up and down the hills, perfect coating, blue sky, gorgeous views...

And of course mountains. I am really happy that I took my hiking boots to France :D. One small side road led to "Observatory de Cote d' Azur". I think this will be a nice starting place for a hiking tour.

An other very nice place to investigate on further tours is "Chateaneuf" and the area around it.

In the evening I sat at the beach watching a very colouful sunset and listening to the waves. As the beach is rather steep and made of big, round stones, there is a characteristic gargle when the water flows back between two waves. Very relaxing.

While the city lighted up around me, I learned some more French from my textbook: Apart from being able to count to 20 in French I now know that different countries have different gender and that this can be recognized by ending in an "e" which is not spoken... :-P.

Day in Nice

2006-10-31T12:38:00.000-08:00

Today I went for a long walk through nice. First stop was of course the beach. Not a white sand beach, but white and really big rocks.

The sun twinkled over the sea and was really strong, even though it was the last day of October. With green palms all over the place there was no sign of fall.

After that I went through the old town and found a nice market. A part of it was a huge flower market that reminded me of Grasse "the town of the perfumers" from the movie. As said town is maybe 1 hour by bike from here I will visit it tomorrow.

Other things offered were flawless vegetables.

And many many different olives.

Then I climbed the hill of "Parc de la Colline de Chateau" where one has a really nice view over "Baie des Anges", the sea in front of Nice, and was impressed by its nice blue colour.

On top of the hill was a small sports field and an old man was doing some elegant really slow and really impressive ThaiChi in the morning sun.
On the other side of the hill you could watch "Eglise Notre Dame du Port", the harbour of nice. One interesting thing to note is that there were cacti instead of trees growing at the hillsides :-).

After that I strolled through the city aimlessly, had a nap and started to learn some French from my textbook ;-)

Trip to INRIA, Nice

2006-10-30T11:30:00.000-08:00

With the very accurate description of the way I got from the people in the hotel, I quickly found the Skewed Tower. And did it right before the police could install their detour signs to lure tourist drivers to the huge parking spaces far away from the tower. They were just pulling them out of their trunks...
Luckily I found a spot, just large enough for my bike with the tower in line of sight :D.

I parked the bike and walked around like a tourist. In the light of the rising sun the tower looked really bright and of course I made my tourist picture :P.

I tried the extremely crowded SS1 towards Nice but it is one endless city area with stop&go and my air cooled Q suffered big time. So I took the expensive autostrada to Genova.

I didn't see enough of Genova to decide whether I like it or not. The hills are overcrowded with buildings and there are not many trees, what I don't like, but many different and old buildings. For sure it is interesting and I need to have another look at that city.
Traffic in Genova is really crazy. Apparently nobody cares about rules, maybe red lights are honoured if they shine for quite a wile. But everybody takes a little bit care of himself and much to my surprise it works and traffic flows. A strong engine and strong brakes help a lot...
The overall impression of Genova is that the city feels very alive. Much like an anthill. I blended the stream of motorised ants for half an hour without the slightest chance of finding a parking spot, gave up and returned to the "auto strada"...

Meanwhile the sun reached her full power. According to the electric signs on the auto strada, up to 29°C. So I stopped, removed the lining of my jacked and switched to my summer gloves :D
As I could see the Rivera from the highway I gave it another try near a place called Pietra, some 50 kilometres after Genova. The traffic was still lively, but at least there were little spaces between the villages. And those spaces were pretty much how I imagined my trip to be:
Nice curvy roads along the Mediterranean :D. Only some palm trees once in a while between me and the beach or the cliffs ... :D.

After a nice ride along the coast, frequently interrupted by towns with stuffed roads and traffic jams, but still nice for the most part, I finally reached France. I don't know what I expected of the "border" between Italy and France, but two small deserted white cottages and a few lines on the road were the only indication that I just entered a different country. A little bit odd and way to quick to realise it and take a picture ;-). At least some colourful village came into sight and invited me to take a picture. I think it is called "Menton."

The only obvious change from Italian traffic was that the roads appeared deserted. Way less traffic than in Italy. Maybe the fees for the highways in France are cheaper than in Italy :P.
Minor changes include licence plates that now had yellow background (at least the ones on the back of the cars. The one on the front still appear to be white?!) and the drivers paid more attention to speed limits and traffic rules in general. The closer I got to Nice the more the last observation faded away...
Also French cars appear to have more buckles and dents than the cars in Italy :P.

At 18:00 o'clock, after almost 10 hours on the bike, I finally reached my Bed&Breakfast hostel. And got a map of Nice from the owner, which would have had simplified finding the hostel in the first place ;-).
My first "French" dinner came from the local supermarket: Roquefort cheese, Cornicons and Cidre :D. I will sleep like a stone.

Trip to INRIA, Pisa

2006-10-29T04:19:00.000-08:00

With some help of the change to winter time I managed to leave Riva del Garda at 7:20 and headed towards Parma. As there was thick fog, I didn't see much of the Po-plains, that were described as rather boring to me. What I could see were lots of green fields with some trees and some sleepy cows (I suppose they were sleepy as they didn't move much).
When I reached Parma, most of the fog was gone and the sun came out. As I already was slowed down by the fog and I didn't want to spend a fortune for fees on the "auto strada" to move on quicker, I left Parma without searching for the famous ham and cheese.
As I am not used yet to the strange places Italian people put their street signs, of course I got lost. Lucky me. Seriously.
I ended up on a very small road with almost no traffic, winding its way through some mountains. If anybody wants to look on a map, I passed "Langhirano", "Corniglio" and finally crossed the "Paso die Lagastrello".
My Q loved that road. More so as she got bored by all those straight roads before. The over engineered chassis of the Q is truly amazing and makes you forget about all that luggage. I love it and never want to ride anything else :D.

With a big smile (and a little bit tired from all those curves) I stopped in a small restaurant at the side of the road. I would not have noticed if it weren't for the 20 motorbikes parking in front of it. Apart from a "small blue Yamaha R6" none of them had less than 1 Litre engine :D. Big Buels, Ducati and even an old MotoGuzzi.
While I was entering the restaurant, a herd of Qs joined the crowd. Maybe 10 of them and only Qs. Lots of GS, some KT but no other S like mine :D.

Again I was faced with an older lady, obviously the waitress, talking to me in Italian without taking time to breath. As she noticed that I didn't understand anything, she said something else and I heared the word "Coke", so apparently she asked me what I wanted to drink. Coke is not bad, so I ordered "Si, Coke".
After that she continued talking a lot and I understood "Salame". Food is not bad, I thought, and nodded. She continued talking something about "mista". I heard that before ("insalata mista" meaning mixed salad) and nodded again. She looked at me, wondering for a moment (without talking) and said something I didn't understand, but I am 100% sure it meant "Ok. You sit and wait. I (am the big mamma and) will decide what you will eat and it will be fine"...
I sat and waited.
A Coke arrived.
And minutes later some freshly fried bread(?)
And some Salami and two kinds of ham.
And a piece of cheese.
As Parma was still close, I assume it was Parmesan cheese and Parma ham. What ever it was, it was delicious.

After I eat up, I got coffee and paid. "un dichi" euros and I am quite proud that I understood that it meant 11 :D.

The only bad thing of the Q (apart from the hard seat, to which I get used) is the small tank. Shortly after lunch the gasoline low light lighted up.
After a long search I found a (automated) gasoline station, put 10 euros into the machine, pressed a button, went to the pipe indicated and noticed that there a was a small lock. And a piece of paper with some Italian text on it. Apparently it meant "Nr. 1 out of order"...
Thanks for telling me after eating my money :-(
As nobody was around to complain to, I put 5 euro in, tried with a different button and finally got some gasoline.

With all those curvy roads it became 17:00 o'clock until I arrived at my hotel in Tirrenia (just near Pisa) so it was getting dark and I was too tired to search for the tower. Maybe tomorrow morning.

In the mountains around Riva del Garda

2006-10-28T05:47:00.000-07:00

For some reason I woke up really early this morning (7:30). As the mountains were glowing really friendly.

As I haven't been climbing on a mountain for about two years and I stopped doing sports regularly in Japan ^^;; I thought, that small chapel in the middle of the mountain (500 something meters) would be a nice start to move a little again.

After a short walk through the sleeping city I started climbing around 9:00.

Much to my surprise I reached the chapel at 10:00 straight and was a bit faster then the recommendation of 2:00h...

After enjoying the view and sweating quite a bit, I decided to go a little bit further. The arrival of several noisy (of course German :P) tourists, aided in a quick decision...

The way got a little bit more difficult (especially for my sneakers ^^;;) but I just wanted to go a little bit further. The distance to the top was given with additional 3:00h, but I didn't want to go that far anyway without water, food and stamina...

After about one hour I found a sign promising water, solving one of my three problems...

And indeed it lead to a fountain of nice, cold and really clear water.

After a short refreshing break I went on and at 12:00 o'clock I reached the top. The last few meters were a little bit advanced, but no problem with the provided ropes and climbing aids ^^;;

The incredible view down on Riva del Garda was worth every drop of my sweat and pictures can not describe that impression at all:

I choose a different way down, but it was in the shadow of the mountain and pretty muddy. So no nice pictures as there was not much nice to see :P.
Down in Riva del Garda I bought a huge Gelato to treat myself to my accomplishment, went to the lake and put my feet into the really cold water.

To make everything complete here a pic of the mountain side with the chapel and the top marked.

And the "map" I used to find my way on the mountain...

Trip to INRIA, Riva del Garda

2006-10-27T05:54:00.000-07:00

Finally my trip to the south of France has started. Packed into thick protective clothes like a modern knight I mounted my Q. (Note to non bikers, BMW motorbikes are referred to as a cow made of rubber for various reasons. The German term is "Gummi-Kuh" so the shortcut "Q" (In German "Q" sounds like the word "Kuh") is used frequently).

Anyway I mounted my Q, made a farewell picture and rode off. Even with luggage for half a year, my Q is quite calm. The only complaint is, that the seat is quite hard...
After 6 hours I reached Italy. I really missed all those mountains.

So even if a geared up Q is not the ideal instrument to ride roads with lots of curves I gave it a try. And the Q did not let me down. With a wide smile I arrived in "Riva del Garda". As the name suggests it is right at the Garda lake :D. In the back of the village (actually quite a bit away) are huge, steep rocks. It is a really strange feeling if you walk though the roads and the buildings pass by, but the rocks don't move...

Maybe I am just too tired. I went to a small restaurant called "El Condor" to eat. I was completely unable to communicate with the waitress and felt a little bit helpless. For some reason I always wanted to talk in Japanese to the poor girl... :-}
In the end I resorted to good old communication by hand and feet and managed to order a huge pizza Capriciosa. After that I ate the best Spaghetti Carbonara on the planet in combination with a cheap but very nice red wine.
I think I will go there again tomorrow for the Spaghetti :D. Now I am stuffed and need to sleep as I want to explore more tomorrow...

Master Thesis at the Cote d, Azur :D

2006-10-12T04:48:00.000-07:00

My last exam in Japanese is done! Finally :D.

The next step will be the Master Thesis (German Diplomarbeit). I got the chance to do it in the South of France. I don't speak any Franch,yet, but I for sure will be forced to learn some quickly there :P. The place is called Sophia-Antipolis and the intitute is called INRIA an according to some pictures it is right between the Cote d' Azur and the south-west end of the Alps :D.

As I lack on the side of French geography, my French friend Guillaume provided me with a map:

Nintendo DS lite...

2006-05-22T06:43:00.000-07:00

Finally my long awaited Nintendo DS arrived and I started to play my first game in Japanese. The game I choose is 悪魔城ドラキュラ (Akuma shiro dorakyura - engl. title Castlevania). I heared that some people bought a Nintendo DS only to play Castlevania, so it has to be a really good game :-). So far (I am about half way through the introductionary dialog) I am quite happy with the story. It is rated for age 12, so I hope I will be easy enough so I am able to play it. The Japanesese words used in the game so far are ok, but it really should not get more difficult. Especially the small Kanji are difficult to read (and hence very difficult to lookup int the electronic kanji dictionary...)

相撲 (Sumo) Tournament

2006-05-20T02:26:00.000-07:00

Today we went to a Sumo Tournament, which was held in a special building, Ryogoku Kokugikan - Tokyo. Actually the tournament lasts for about two weeks and is held in a different place every 2 month: Ryogoku, Osaka, Ryokoku, Aichi, Ryokoku, Fukuoka. For more information, have a lookt at official Sumo website(in English).
At the entrance, visitors are greeted by larger than life images of famous Sumo ringers. But also in real those guys are quite large, both in circumfence and actual height.
They are quite popular in Japan. And even have ther own action figures and collectables.
Dispite their fame they are very "normal" and friedly, sympathetic people and it can happen that one of them just stands in front of you in the line to buy a bento (lunch packet) or a train ticket and chats with you.
The ringers have a very strict hierarchical structure and Sumo day starts in the morning with the trainees and lowest ranking Sumos. They have a time limit of 1 minute and less people come to watch, but that does not prevent the fighters to have some really serious fights (click image for video clip).
The fights take place on a ring under a roof, that is hanging from the ceiling and resembles a shrine. Originaly, some 1500 years ago, the roots of Sumo come from temple dances. Hence the roof. The stage is still considered sacred and common people should not enter. Before the actual fight the fighters clean themselfes and the stage ritually by washing their mouths by throwing salt.
Around three o'clock the high ranking Sumos enter the stage in coloful robes (actually only some cloth on the front) and are greeted by the enthusiastic crowd like popstars (click image for video clip).
For the final matches the huge hall is stuffed with people. The atmosphere is pretty dense and the Sumo have some very intense fights.

ice cream

2006-05-19T02:49:00.000-07:00

It is tradition among us interns, to go for a short break in the local convenient store every day around 4 o'clock and have a small snack there. Almost every time, the Japanese food designers surprise us with stunning new food creations like that really cute teddy bear ice cream... :-P

Arrival in Cairns

2006-04-27T00:05:00.000-07:00

The first stop on our tour was Cairns on the north-east coast of Australia, which is (one of) the most popular enry points for the Great Barrier Reef. We were a little bit worried, that the cyclone that passed by some weeks earlier would have destroyed the reef, but luckly there was still enough reef intact to be enjoyed.
The first view of Australia was overwhelming. Lots of nature and most buildings were less than four stories tall. Appearently this is due to some regulation in Cairns, as there are hills nearby and the planes sometimes have to use the airspace above the city for landing or take off. After the cold Japanese winter, all the rain in spring and all those airconditions, the tropical weather in Cairns hit us like a wall when we left the airport. The taxi driver told us, that it was autumn in Australia and we picked the best time to come to Cairns: The hot summer and all those nasty storms are over, but it is still nice and warm outside...
The first contact with Australians was also something we were not prepared for after a long time in Japan: People are extremely friendly (as are Japanese) and litterally jump into conversations with you (where as Japanese are very reserved). The first person to jump into us, was some female customs officer. While we were a little bit worried that we might have done something wrong (e.g. you are not allowed to bring food to Australia, as it might have devasting impact on the Australian wildlife. They made very bad experiences with imported rabbits in the past that drove the Wallabys nearly extinct...) the woman just wanted to have a firendly chat with us: "Hey mates, how's going?". She wanted to know where we are from ("Wow Japan, are you studying there?..."), what we plan on doing in Australia ("ah, diving, best place in the world to do that...") and after those "official questions" the conversation drifted into all sorts of small talk and where to get a decent "All English breakfast" in the airport. The breakfast was very nice btw...
From the airport we took a reasonyably priced taxi and got a first introduction to the place and Australia in general by the taxi driver. Our first stop was the Esplanade, something like "downtown" Cairns. As it was early in the morning, most shops were closed and apart from occasional joggers, most people were still sleeping. The center of the Esplande is a small park with an artificial lagoon.
Unfortunately this is necessary, as in summer the beaches are occupied by large numbers of jelly fish and no swimming is allowed in the sea. When the jellyfish leave in autum, one still might not want to swim at the beach, as from time to time crocodiles pass by... ;-)

But the people in Cairns managed to create a nearly perfect illusion. Only the small ine on the photo indicates, that the people in the artificial lagoon are not really in the ocean.
A very nice thing in the park around the esplanade were public gas barbecues where everyone can grill his steaks.

After that we checked into our hostel, the Calypso Inn. The rooms were simple but clean, the price reasonable and lots of friendly and interesting travelers from all over the world hanging around.

We went into town again to get our "dive medical", a health examination required to go diving in Australia, pay for the dive couse and the boat and get some dive instruction manuals.
Although it was autumn in Australia, the sun was still burning mercyless. At least for me and my white skin way more than I could handle. While the other three continued to explore the beach, I searched for a strong sunscreen and shadows to prevent beeing roasted to death ;-).
After sunset we explored Cairns "night life". The clubs are nothing compared to the ones Tokyo (there were many Japanese people, but it did not help much...). As we had to get up really early the next day to catch our boat, this was not too bad and we went to sleep early.

Australia in the golden week.

2006-04-25T23:39:00.000-07:00

The japanese "golden week" is a week with 3 holidays in a row. Some companies even close their offices for a week, as most Japanese people use the golden week to tke holidays and travel around. We decides to do the same and as prices for flights drasticly increase around this time of the year, we left a little bit earlier. Using four of our precious paid holidays (btw. in Japan holidays are also to be used in case you become sick and cannot go to work) we got a total of 11 days in Australia (4 holidays, 2*2 weekend, 3 golden week) :).
This is the first contact with Australian currency, just after exchanging money at Narita airport. Note the transparent security window under the number on the right, which I saw for the first time.

Yokohama Landmark tower

2006-04-20T00:43:00.000-07:00

Today I went to Yokohama to meet a friend. While waiting, I had a look at the Yokohama Landmark tower.

With its 70 floors it is the largest building in Japan (296m), is rather earth quake safe and has the fastest elevators in the world (750m/min).

For some fee you are able to go up all the way, but I thought it might be a good idea to do it during the day...

Lunch outside

2006-04-04T00:26:00.000-07:00

As the weather was incredible and the cherry trees were blossoming all over the place, we decided to not have our lunch in the cafeteria near the AXT tower, but mount our bikes and search for a nice spot to have lunch outdoors ...

... and found a really nice spot with some benches at a sports field near the river.

お花見 (o hana mi - flower watching)

2006-03-31T22:58:00.000-08:00

One of the most beautiful and famous things in Japan is spring, more specific the cherry blossom. Most Japanese want to visit parks during these days to enjoy the blossom, have barbecue and of coure consume large amounts of beer.
As it was a very sunny day, of course everyone wanted to go to a park. Our first goal, Shinjuku park, had a waiting line around 2 blocks, so we went to another park, whose name I forgot, but it was still very crowded.

Furtunately there was a lake in the middle of the park, where one could rent a boat.

Some of the boats were cheesy swans, but fortunately we managed to get a real boat. After we figured out how to use the boat (small vido clip) we enjoyed the cherry blossom from the water (click image for an other small video clip).

Finally I joined the Japanese people and took the most popular image of the world myself: The picture of a japanese chery blossom.

white day

2006-03-13T22:35:00.000-08:00

Today was white day. This means that men, that recieved chocolate on valentines day have to give (large amounts of) white chocolate back to the girls. As just a piece of chocolate would be boring, I tried to build a snowman with small white chocolate bricks - and failed miserably. Jose then tried to create a 3D snowman with some CAD software which also proved to be more difficult that imagined. So I resented to build an iglu and use a hair dryer to prevent the result from falling appart. Jose thought it looks like Osama Bin Ladens bunker or something, but I am quite happy with my iglu. Actually two of them :-P.

I went to office really early to place the iglus on the desks of the girls in question and managed to do so undetected. The girls were quite happy and had no idea where the chocolate things came from. At least until Hanjoong had a look at the cardboard I placed the iglus on and deduced that it probably came from me... Thanks Hanjoong!

春 (haru - spring)

2006-03-11T22:21:00.000-08:00

Slowly it is getting spring in Japan and the trees, most of all the cherry trees are beginning to blossom.
As there is not much to do at the moment, we go to clubs in 六本木 at the weekend and recover in 七沢温泉 the day after. This is the entrance to the actual pools (this is the entrance for man). Behind that door you get undressed, wash yourself sitting on a small stool, and slowly go into the hot water.

It is not possible to make pictures inside that area, as all people are sitting in the pools naked, but I found a picture at the wall to give you a short glimpse of what it looks inside.

New Pants :)

2006-02-26T02:33:00.000-08:00

After searching for trousers in a reasonable length without success for almost half a year, I finally found some in Aoyama, a store chain specialized on suits. Ususally they have trousers sorted by the cirumfence of the belly and some standard length. The idea ist to cut them so they will fit the customer...
As the daily ride to work on the bicycle slowly kills the fabric around the ass, I was quite happy to find some cord fabric pants in brown and grey, that, while beeing not the most beautiful pants I have ever owned, were long enough in their uncut state.

箱根　温泉　(Hakone Onsen)

2006-02-25T22:07:00.000-08:00

Today I went to 箱根, one of the most famous places for 温泉 in Japan, about 90 minutes by train from Atsugi. It town lies spread around a steep valley and most buildings are less than two stories tall.
As you can see in the picture, it was raining, but while sitting in really hot water, this is a pretty refreshing sensation. The Inn ("Yu No Sato Okada") was a little bit larger than the one in 七沢 and even hat a Finnish sauna.

Valentines Day

2006-02-13T20:29:00.000-08:00

Februrary 14th is Valenentines Day. In Japan this means, thanks to the advertisement success of the chocolate industry, that girls give chocholate to males they like. (Or small "giri" (tribute) chocholate to their boss and coworkers to show them that they don't hate them). For the males this implies to return the favour one month later ("white day") with more expensive chocolate or an expensive dinner, which might get complicated if you recieve more than one chocolate :-P.
The page linked above, appearently written by some disappointed guy, describes the situation a little bit sad but perfectly: "... Anyhow, men become gradually irritated when St. Valentine's day draws, because they must feel awfully awkward if they cannot get any chocolate on that day, as it indicates that they are not worth even for "giri" chocolate. However, once they receive chocolate, they have to endure another suffering anyway."
Although this tradition is on the decline, for some reason I got 4 chocolates :-D:

Snowboard weekend

2006-02-11T20:55:00.000-08:00

This weekend we finally went snowboarding. We left Atsugi at 23:00 and arrived the next day at 7:30 in the morning, perfect to get rental gear and get onto the slope. The gear was crappy and old (I would need a 1.80m snowboard, but the largest they had was 1.56m) but really cheap and sufficient for the rather flat slopes we had there. The snow was perfect, slopes were extremely well prepared and not very crowed, so everybody was happy with them for the two days we had to explore them. In the night to Sonday it even snowed so we had fresh powder snow :-P.
On Saturday there was some kind of festival and apart from electing "Miss Skiressort" they had some bingo game. Our Kasai-San organized 20 bingo cards and we were quite successfull, as we won the first (red wine, JinSouk), fourth (apple pie, Kasai-San) and 26th (apple jam, me) 35 (apple jam, YuHuan) :-)
After the first day of boarding we hat a very nice dinner. As it is very custom for Japan, part of the food (some kind of vegetable soup with chicken) was cooked by yourself right on the table.
The hotel was right next to the slope so we could board to the lift right from the entrance.
Sitting in hot water after a straining day of skiing is perfect for relaxing you muscles. Luckily the hotel featured an outside onzen :-P
It still needs to be cut propperly, but here is a first version of most of the usable video footage from the weekend:

First real sized 生ビール(nama biiru - draft beer)

2006-02-10T06:16:00.000-08:00

As my pre-predecessor returned to work at Asahi Kasei two weeks ago I am not the only German in the office any more. After work we went to Amataro, the only place in Atsugi where you can get beer in a decently sized beer mug. Appart from that mug that gives one the warm fuzz feeling of beeing at home, the picture below shows the various items present at a typical Japanese restaurant.
Left of the mug are the obvious chop sticks. On the right most edge is the standard set of seasonings (Soy souce, vinegar, spicey oil, red pepper (?) powder, red pepper pesto, garlic pesto and Gari (Ingwer)). Right of the mug is a small wireless battery operated buzzer to call the waiter (rarely used) and behind the mug is the digital, wireless menu. On the menu you choose, with the aid of pictures, what dish/drink you would like, press the order button and 5 mintes later the watier brings you your food.
It even has a build in function to calculate the amount of money per person if you want to split the bill amoung all participiants. In Japan it is very common to order and eat together, i.e. everybody can try everything, so that function is very usefull and even built into most japanese mobile phones... :-P

弦 (gen - strings)

2006-02-06T06:05:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately one of my guitar strings broke yesterday. I assume as the guitar was stored untuned in the shop and has been tuned again for each customer to try out, the strings were stressed a little bit too much. As strings are rather cheap that is not a big problem. I got new "recommended by Eric Clapton" strings :-P and Guillaume helped me to replace all strings with the new ones. Appart from beeing recommended by Eric Claption, they appear to be a little bit thicker (i.e. less painfull to the fingers) and sound a little bit better than the old ones... ;-)

雪だるま (yukidaruma - snowman)

2006-02-03T19:31:00.000-08:00

Today it snowed again :-). Last time somebody build a snowman, but it certainly lacked in style. So the other guy from Germany, Stefan, and me decided to show those people, how it is done properly :-P. While we were building the snowman, every once in a while, some Japanese looked out of their doors, propably wondering about the sanity of the foreigners, but we had a lot of fun and are quite proud of the result. :-P

Strange Things... Lobster Invasion

2006-01-29T06:26:00.000-08:00

Probably Chinese people develop a special sense for strange things, when living in Japan :-P. On our way back from chinatown I stumbled over something, which I belive to be an advertisement for a restaurant. Actually it looked like a christmas tree beeing invaded by a army of lobsters. The big guy on top appearently is the general and the mini swans give air support... :-P

Chinese Newyear

2006-01-29T04:01:00.000-08:00

New year is one of the most important festivals for Chinese people, but it is not on January 1st, but on January 29th. We went to Chinatown of Yokohama to see that event. In Chinese culture red is the color of luck and happyness and the dragon is the symbol of luck, so the streets were decorated with red lanterns and very pretty paper dragons danced through the huge crowd.
As everybody was hungry we went into a chinese restaurant and ate some kind of newyear special menu with 9 different chinese dishes. In china food often is served for the complete group, so we sat on a round table with a turnable wheel where all the food was placed on it. If you wanted some food other than the one in front of you, you just turn the wheel. Very useful. Some of the dishes had a rather scary consistency, but all of them tasted really good :-).
I was very fascinated by the "picture" at the wall of the restaurant. It was actually carved out of wood, played with perspective and the parts of the image actually were solid and sticking out of the image! Very impressive.
When we finished eating (which quite took some time) it has become night. While chinatown looked a little bit shabby during daylight, with wires hanging all over the place and the buildings a little bit grayish and clouded weather, the picture ate night looked completely different.
Especially the gates standing around all over chinatown loocked way better when beeing illuminated at night.

はちこ(hochiko) - Japans most famous dog

2006-01-27T17:35:00.000-08:00

This evening we went to 渋谷(Shibuya) with Alvaro and his Spanish class/friends.
We met at the statue of Hachiko, Japans most famous dog. It is said that the dog came to Shibuya station at 3 o'clock every day to meet his master, a University professor, after work and go home together. After his master died at work the dog continued to come to the station every day, waiting faithfully but unlucky for his owner. That way the dog became a symbol for loyality (which made people visit him for good luck and bring him food). After his death this statue was put at the place where he waited for years. Nowadays the statue is a famous meeting point for Tokyo's young people and in fact it was imposible to get a picture without random people waiting at the statue for their appointments. Of couse there are more detailed versions of Hachiko's story available on the internet.
After that we went to a "highlevel" :-P 居酒屋(isakaya), a place where you eat and drink with friends. The dishes are shared by all people and many foods are served in a pot or pan and you cook them together on a gas stove right on the table. As the food was very good (note: they served some kind of steamed squid filled with rice and it was probably the best squid I will ever eat) I was very busy eating all kinds of different stuff and only managed to make a picture of my plates while waiting for the first dish. Somehow they appear to resemble MickeyMouse ... :-P

ギター (gitaa) my new guitar

2006-01-24T07:08:00.000-08:00

As I could not bring my trombone to Japan due to size and weight restrictions, I live without custom made music for way too long. Recently I was playing guitar freaks V2 in the arcade with Jose. Basically there are combinations of three colored blobs falling down the screen and you try press buttons in the matching combinations and strike some switch to "shoot" them at the right moment. As everything is synchronized to rock music the whole affair is exremely funny, especially if you do it with two people playing at time. You can even connect with the "Drum Mania" drum simulator to do a happy threesome...

While leaving the arcade we joked about starting to play real guitars. Well at least it might sound like a joke to the uninformed. Very similar to the bleach beard Santa Claus thing...
So we looked around in various music shops under the guidance of our professional French guitar player, Guillaume. After we finished comparing different prices (and realizing that there are really freaking expensive guitars, costing more than a years salary), listening to Guillaume playing various models, I was ready to by a electro accoustic guitar (i.e. accoustic guitar with some kind of microphone inside) for about 17.000 Yen (about 120 EUR). It had a friendly blue color and although having a plastic back it didn't sound too bad, at least in combination with an amplifier. As it was appearently reduced from 36.000 Yen (about 250 EUR) it looked like quite a value for the price.

On my way to have a last look at the blue guitar, before buying it, I saw a really nice, black guitar standing around, trying to look innocent, which didn't quite work, as it was completely black, surrounded by lots of ordinary brown-yellowish guitars. Just standing there, beaming at me. After verifying that the pricetag was no illusion, I asked the sales person to tune it and Guillaume to play it :-)

I was quite a bit louder than the blue one without amplifier and liked the sound at the very first moment. As it was a little bit larger (as I am) and all solid wood, I could not resist. Did I mention that it is completely black and looks extremely cool :-P? I paid about 20.000 Yen (140 EUR) including a hard case and have the feeling that I made a very good buy.
After "playing" (i.e. pressing strings on the board, trying to make it sound like a G-chord) for about 20 minutes, my fingers are completely cut and hurting, so I will take a break make some pictures of the guitar. Anyway I still have to give it a name, that matches the coolness it radiates all around the place ... :-)

雪が降ってる (yuki ga futteru) it is snowing :-)

2006-01-20T21:16:00.000-08:00

Finally there is snow in Atsugi :-). It is very funny because Atsugi is about the same latitude as the north of Africa :-P. It is very cold at the moment but according to the weather forecast it will change into rain soon, so I took some quick pictures. Somebody even tried to build a 雪だるま (yuki daruma - snowman) :-P. Unfortunately it was already in a pretty bad shape when I took the picture (it is the small pile of snow left of the white car). I cannot wait to go snowboarding :-], but it is still two weeks until we go to Nagano... Meanwhile some Pictures / Video clips.

Note: The large tower is the place I work at. Click to see the Movie

Strange Things... 木の子バーガー (kinoko baaga) - Mushroom Hamburger

2006-01-03T20:41:00.000-08:00

Every once in a while Mac Donalds makes some special burgers. In Japan this means putting (a lot of small) mushrooms onto a double hamburger. It is a little bit unexpected but tastes very good. (Note: The mushrooms are the small things between the cheese and the upper bread :-P)

天皇 (tennou) - The emperor

2006-01-02T03:10:00.000-08:00

When the 天皇 finally appeared (I did not completely understand the Japanese announcement, but I think he was delayed due to a phonecall(?!) and he was very sorry for having us wait for him in the rain) everybody was very happy and waved the Japanese flags we got earlier around. It was a little bit like a Rock concert, albeit I had the impression that they were a little bit "wilder" than on a rock concert ;-).
As the crowd got quiet again after some minutes, the emperor held his traditional new years greeting speech. The only things I understood were something like: Happy new year, be happy and continue building a peaceful world ... :-).
After the speech ended, all visitors left the palace gardens as calm and ordered as they entered them. Maybe a little bit happier and quite a bit soaked from the rain... ;-)

皇居 (koukyo) - Imperial Palace. Second Try...

2006-01-02T02:23:00.000-08:00

As it was the last chance to visit the palace during my stay, I managed to get out of my bed pretty early and made the trip to Tokio station (about 90 minutes from Atsugi). The area was cramped with police and secret service people with wires hanging out of their ears, but security was expected to be high when large numbers of people are piped through the palace. I guess it was not only meant to protect the emperor but also protect the large crowds. There were even guards on horses, although the horse didn't feel too comfortable with all those people around...
Of course it started to rain when I reached the palace but unfortunately I had no umbrella. In contrast to my planings, the organisation of the 宮内庁 (kunaichou - imperial household agency) was typically Japanese - all details perfecty planned. Roads around the palace were closed so nobody had to worry about traffic. People offered japanese paper flags (for free) before you entered and offered to collect them again after leaving the palace so that no flags are littered around. Of course you could keep the flag if you wanted to ;-).
After a security check we were finally allowed to enter the palace, walking over the famous めがね橋 (Meganebashi - Eyeglass Bridge).(Quicktime movie)
A large stream of people was piped through the palace garden and up the hill towards the main building. Everything, i.e. the style of buildings, trees, etc. made a very tidy and planned impression. It would have been a very nice view, if the weather would have been better.
Finally we reached the huge square in front of the main building. Guards were standing on poles to fill it with people in a ordered manner, which, of course workes flawlessly. Fun thing to note: Even standing on their pole the were not much larger than me ;-)

鎌倉 (Kamakura) - visiting Hachimangu shrine

2006-01-01T02:22:00.000-08:00

Although it was really hard after the night in Ageha, I managed to get up around 2 o'clock, meet with HanJoong and JinKyuu and go to Kamakura. There we were supposed to meet Mayu and a friend of her and visit Hachimangu shrine together. We asked a friendly Japanese officer at the station, how to get to Kamakura, and he happyly provided us with all necessary information and even with a English tourist pamphlet describing the way. As we learned on our journey, it was the most beautiful route and not the fastest. In summer we would have been able to watch the see from the train but now it was winter and dark and just slow, so that it was half past five until we finally arrived at Kamakura, 2 hours late...
We found the two girls in the shopping road that lead to the shrine :-P and entered the queue in front of the temple together. As Hachimangu shrine is one of the most famous shrines in Kamakura, many people visit it on the first days of the new year. For security reasons only a few people are allowed to enter the shrine at a time while the remaining people wait behind a string.
In the building on the top of the hill you throw some coins into a box, clap your hands and say your prayers / wishes. After that you can ask for your fortune by pulling a bamboo stick with a number out of a box and recieving a piece of paper with some advices according to the number on that stick. If it is bad fortune, you also can attach the piece of paper to a special tree to leave the misfortune behind and in the case of a really bad misfortune (or just to be save) buy several different of lucky charms.

Newyear in Ageha

2005-12-31T16:08:00.000-08:00

For New Years Eve we asembled in Tokyo Docks to have dinner at a Hawaian Burger place with a nice view across the bay. Things to see include the Rainbow brigde (which looks similar to the golden gate bridge), Tokyo Tower (which is similar to the Eifel tower in Paris, behind the Rainbow bridge) and Lady Liberty...

After eating a way too large Burger we went to Ageha, the biggest club in Tokyo for the NewYear Countdown. Agha had room for about 6000 people that night. When we arrived there around eleven, 2000 people were already inside and another 2000 were waiting outside.
We managed to jump half of the queue by joining some friendly Spanish guys and paying their entrance fees in return (as we were 10 people jumping that was bearable tradeoff) but even that way we were just putting our stuff into coin lockers when the final 10 second countdown started. So we just celebrated where we were, drank the Champaigne provided by our French friends there and entered the bigest party in Tokio slightly late.

Southern Lights 05/06

2005-12-23T05:11:00.000-08:00

While walking around Shinyuku station, I learned that there was the "Southern Lights 2005/06" exibition :-). So lots of trees were covered with lots of colored lights. This looked quite nice with the incredible black night and made up for some of the disapointment over missing the emperors palace :-).

皇居 (koukyo) - Imperial Palace. First Try...

2005-12-23T04:20:00.000-08:00

Twice a year, the imperial palace is opened for public. It is opened on the 2nd of January for the traditional new year greeting of the emperor and on the emperors birthday. The current emperor happens to have birthday on the 23rd of December. As the emperors birthday is also a national holiday, I didn't have to go to work and decided to use that day to visit the palace. I left Atsugi around 3pm, as the previous night in Shibuya was quite tiring and I needed some time to get going. After getting lost in Shinyuku station when switching trains (Shinyuku serves around 3-5 million customers a day, so it is a little bit larger than your ordinary train station...) I managed to arrive at the palace at arround 17:45. Meanwhile it became completely dark. After arriving at the closed gates the friendly and slightly tried to explain me that everything was already over at 3pm... great :-}. But I will give it a new try on the 2nd of January! And I will be there right in the moring when it opens at 9am!
While beeing in Tokio and having nothing better to do, I used the time to make some pictures of Tokio by night.
The first picture shows the outer lake around the imperial palace and is taken from one of the bridges. The second one shows one of towers that guard that bridge.

Japan is a very busy country. Even on a national holiday, skyscrapers are built during the night:

Also the "ordinary" Skyline is really impressive at night. Unfortunately it is tricky to get that on a picture. This picture was taken near Shinyuku station.
While walking through the shops near Shinyuku station, I suddenly realized a very familar smell and found a shop selling "Plätzchen" and a real "Christ Stollen" for around 10 EUR :-). Woot! Like a real Christmas!

Invasion of Santas - Xmas in the Office

2005-12-19T01:10:00.000-08:00

As noted in the previous post Jose and me planned to bleach our beards. So we bought a "Smoky Silver" hair bleach color product. At least the image on the packaging showed a drawing of some guy with shiny silver hairs... Unfortunately having a really terrible smelling cream on our faces only resulted in a black beard!
This was quite the opposite color we intended and as it was quite late we rushed towards the nearest convenience store, trying to find some product to solve our dark problem. But much to our disappointment the 7eleven sold pretty much everything you might need for haircare including the "Smoky Silver" - except for some serious bleaching stuff... :-(
Not willing to give up we raced towards "downtown". As we left our room in a hurry (read: without propper clothing) the ride through the Japanese winter night was a quite cold experience, but luckily the drug store near the station was still opened. We bought two packages of the strongest hair bleach available and got some food on our way back. While the bleaching cream was working we watched "Shaolin Soccer", ate our Bentos and after two iterations all color (including the black color of the previous experiment) was removed from our beards :-).

Next day, shortly before lunchbreak we dressed in red robes and walked through the office, ringing some bells, wishing merry christmas to all our frightend japanese coworkers and giving them some sweets... :-)
After the japanese people recovered from the shock of beeing invaded by two Santas, everybody smiled and made pictures with their mobile phones ... ;-).

Outback - Australian Steak House in Japan

2005-12-14T18:50:00.000-08:00

After eating rice for a long time, it was time for a change. There is nothing wrong with rice. I like rice. But once in a while I dream of a real Steak ... :-)
So when the Italian suggested visiting a Steak House in 海老名 (Ebina), this was exactly what I needed :-). On the picture you can observe my Spanish compadre and me, drinking happily after having ordered a giant (i.e. 280g) steak. As you probably noticed, apart from having a really good time, we both have a lot of fur in our faces. The plan is to grow the beards until next sunday, bleach them and scare the Office Ladies on monday... ;-)

While waiting for our steaks we had a "deep fried flower onion" and french fries with bacon and cheese. Terrific.
After a very tasty salad with "blue cheese" dressing, the star of the evening finally arrived: A medium grilled streak with a baked potato:
To finish this great food orgy, we ordered a "chocolate tower" with vanilla icecream. For a cake in Japan this cake was gigantic! Note the size comparison with a 1000Yen note and the watch ;-)

健康診断 (kenkoushindan) - medical checkup

2005-12-08T05:34:00.000-08:00

Japanese companies feel a different responsibility towards their employees. Probably because it is common to work so long and hard that you neglect your personal health, there is a medical checkup (on company time/costs) required by Japanese labor laws. We Interns are no exception to that regulation. So our Internsitter ;-) led us to a nearby hospital.

The thing that distinguishes a Japanese hospital from the remaining world is, that there are carpets in the corridors and that patients are required to change their shoes for the provided slippers at the entry. Needless to say that my feet are a little to large for those ;-)...

Then we waited a short time to be piped very efficiently through 5 test levels covering: Measurement of size, weight and eyesight, EKG, a listening test, xray of the chest and finally a blood sample. After two hours without major loss of life everything was over and we went right into すきや (sukiya) to have our lunch :-).

Re-entry permit

2005-12-05T04:17:00.000-08:00

I am planing to visit Hongkong in January of the next year. For foreigners in Japan there is a little thing you should not forget: The re-entry permit. Without it you are not allowed to enter Japan again, even if you still have time left on your valid visa.
Thankfully the process is anoying but rather unproblematic. So four interns went up early to be the first in the line at the immigration office (we were number 3 to 6 :-P) and went to 新百合ヶ丘(shinyurigaoka) which is about 30 minutes by train from Atsugi.
Filling a japanese questionaire is a little bit frightening, but appearently we did everything right. After about 10 minutes I was 6000 Yen poorer but had my re-entry inside our passports.
We made it back to Atsugi and to the company almost in time. The sun was shining brightly and as reward for beeing only 5 minutes late, we saw the unloading of a Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren (infos) right in front of our office building :-D.

Gamma Ray - Heavy Metal in Japan

2005-12-02T15:07:00.000-08:00

I would't believe it, if somebody tells me, that there is a Heavy Metal scene in Japan. But it is there and alive and won't die anytime soon :-).
There is Jose, the Spanish Intern, who is a big fan of the Heavy Metal Band "Gamma Ray", which just happened to have their last concert in Japan right yesterday evening.

So we just had to ask our boss to leave one hour early (which he approved, as long as we make up the missing time) and rushed towards Shibuya.
We managed to miss our carefully scheduled trains, but eventually got there just in time: Buy ticket, buy drink ticked (which meant a whopping total of 7500 Yen!), stuff jacket into a coin locker (note: coin lockers in Japan eat the coins. 300 Yen in this case) and just manage to be inside the crowd then the warmup band (Stormwarrior) completed testing their equipment. :-) Phew.

It is a bit strange to see people in expensive suits together with long haired diehard headbangers wearing black shirts with some grinning deamon, at first, but eventually the loud music makes everybody equal :-)... For those who know "Rock im Park", imagine the alternate stage and equally sized equipment (i.e. several Marshall amplifiers and two of these huge speaker chains hanging from the ceiling) inside a room barely 2 times the size of the stage itself :-). For those who don't know Rock im Park, imagine quite a bit of noise inside a room the size of an average disco.

As the crowd didn't stop screaming after the gig was over, they threw in a total of 3 additional songs and finally the Stormwarriors, dressed in Yukata and their hair pinned up with chop sticks entered the stage again and both bands joined in happyly into an improvised gig.

(Sorry for the low picture quality, but I only had my mobile phone available).

"Unfortunately" :-P it was very late after the concert and we were way to tired to figure out how to get home, so we had some quick dinner at MacDonalds and entered the "atom", some techno club nearby, as a very thrustworthy japanese raver with white beard and white hear suggested.
The only drawback was a rather scary and rather huge girl (foreigner, of course ... :-P) that appearently had decided that we are somewhat attractive and she needs to have us both for dinner. Right now. So we tried to hide at first. Unfortunately this tactic proved to be unsuccessful, but we managed to explain her that we are not at all interested. And hastily added, that we are not remotely gay, as her (equally strange) male companion became watery eyes...
After that encounter she kind of managed to get hold of a huge black guy (one of the security guards, probably) and we could enjoy our night :-). The music was topnotch, the girls very beautiful and we had a really great time.

At five in the morning Jose wanted to go to Akihabara and have a nap in a manga cafe to continue his diehard weekend, but eventually agreed to return to Atsugi and die another weekend instead.
Propably this "conversation" describes the fun we had rather precise :-).

We witnessed the sunrise on a huge video screen (as the real one is hard to see with all the skyscrapers around ;-) ) and finally went home in a crowded train.

Japanese Size... A cucumber

2005-12-01T04:00:00.000-08:00

Compared to Germany, fruits and vegetables are rather expensive in Japan. After not having eaten a cucumber salad for nearly 3 months, I purchased a "value pack", containing 4 cucumbers for 199 Yen (aproximately 1,50 EUR). Compared to the "european" cucumbers in Germany, in winter mainly originated from Spain and the Netherlands, Japanese cucumbers are rather small. For size comparisons I made a picture with an ordinary swiss army knife :-P.

Apart from the size, they were very tasty :-)

夕焼け (Yuujake) - Sunset

2005-11-29T05:22:00.000-08:00

Today at around 16:15 local time I witnessed one of most impressive sunsets in my life. The japanese 夕焼け is composed from the kanji 夕 (yuu, evening) and 焼く(yaku, bake/roast). The later one is also used for an other very important japanese word: 焼き鳥 (yaki tori, "burned bird") is grilled chicken on a stick. Very delicious.

After seeing this sunset the kanji made a lot of sense. In the beginning it looked like the sky was burning a little bit, just enough to roast that deep hanging cloud.

As the cloud was quite dark already - not to burn anything - the sky only burned with little heat for about five minutes. But as the cloud wasn't well done after 10 minutes, the sky rather quickly switched to a bigger flame.

Sometimes reality is really impressive!

Strange Things... the tissue box

2005-11-27T21:00:00.000-08:00

Japanese people have a talent to make ordinary things extraordinary. Even a simple tissue box is treated as some bizzare object of art. I was told that there is a similar box (but different part of the human body) dispensing toilet paper ... :-P

Starcraft with the Koreans

2005-11-27T06:03:00.000-08:00

As Korea is probably the only country of the world where Starcraft matches are displayed on regular TV and people die due to excessive play of starcraft, we had a LAN-Game with our Korean starcraft overlords. It was great fun, but even playing 4 vs. 3 we were crushed most of the time.
It wasn't a complete desaster though. Master HanJoong praised our evolving skills by mentioning that our forces "were pretty annoying - some times" :-).

温泉 (Onsen) - Hot Springs

2005-11-26T03:04:00.000-08:00

Today I went to a japanese Onsen. These are the japanese equivalent to a Finnish sauna. But instead of sweating inside a dry wooden box you sit in hot water, often outdoors.
According to the Atsugi Help Site for Foreigners, 七沢温泉 (Nanasawa Onsen) is one of the hottest springs arround. Perfect for a hazy saturday afternoon :-). Also it is said to be one of the most alkaline springs arround, which is supposed to be good for your skin...

As the dresscode inside an onsen is identical to the dresscode in a Finnish Sauna, I only took a picture from the entrance of the onsen, but the Website of 七沢荘 (Nanasawa Shou, the name of the inn, Japanese only) has some unpopulated (and blurry) pictures of the inside.

From Atsugi it is only 25 Minutes by bus to get to Nanasawa. It is surprising how quickly the surroundings change. Atsugi is a medium sized city with around 300.000 people, lots of buildings and lots of concrete. Nanasawa onsen is located deep in the countryside. That means it is very quiet and there is a lot of nature. As it is autumn right now, I saw a lot beautifully deeply red colored trees, mixed with trees that are still green:

Sitting in a hot spring is very relaxing, but also very straining. I like it a lot :-).

Curry house of horrors

2005-11-25T06:44:00.000-08:00

This evening a bunch of fearless foreigners teamed up to visit the "curry house of horrors" in Atsugi. Actually it is just an ordinary curry restaurant, but apart from various "things" sitting in your curry or on top of your rice, you can order the spice of you curry in 10 differnet spice levels.
From 0 ("No spice at all, suitable for elderly and small childern") to 10. The explanations and comparisons stop at level 5 and the staff refuses to serve anything higher than level 5 until you ate level 5 - and survived...
Real men like our spanish compadre and the evil italian went for level 8 and managed it with ease...

...while we ordinary mortals desperately fought our level 5 curry. It was a long, hard fight, but eventually we managed to eat it completely :-).

After sucking on a lot of icecubes we went to a local arcade place and tried the wonders of modern japanese entertainment industry.
The most fun things were 太鼓(taiko) drums. You stare at an interactive TV that is playing a soundtrack you previously selected. With the aid of colored circles of various sizes it instructs you when and where to beat the touch sensitive drums synchronized to the music. It is a little bit difficult to explain the principle without seeing it yourself, but it is a surprising easy concept and it is amazingly funny. Especially if you play as a team. The main goal is to have fun and gain an acceptable drumming accuracy. Depending on the selected difficulty level you have faster and more difficult to manage combos and there is even a hidden "devil" mode. But it will be a pretty tough way to get there... ;-)

東京外国語大学 university festival

2005-11-19T06:59:00.000-08:00

Today we went to the university festival of 東京外国語大学, the tokyo university of foreign languages. A japanese friend of mine, Ruri, studies German there and told us about the festival.

As it is the university for foreign languages, there were a lot of foreign students and a booth for their home countrys, where you could try lots of different foods and drinks :-). Of course there also was a german booth with Bratkartoffeln, sausages and beer.

In Japan there are a lot of different, not at all bad tasting, beers available. Unfortunately they are different variations of 生ビール (nama biiru, Pils) only. So we were very happy, that the german booth had imported "Bockbier" and even "Hefeweizen"! Although they didn't have a propper "Weizenglass", but who am I to complain, finally holding a Weizen in my hands... :-P.

So we said Prost! to the Maus and the Elefant, and looked what the other countries had to offer...

After eating codfish and green wine from Portugal, spicy African meat on a stick and Korean food, we looked for other performances. Unfortunately we missed the performance of the university cheerleaders by half an hour, but witnessed a Hiphop dance contest, discovered japanese/spanish flamenco dancers and even a bellydancer show later on ... :-P.

After a very enjoyable day at the university we made a stop at Shinyuku, the central train station of Tokyo and visited the nearby "Korea town" as our Korean friends wanted to show us traditional Korean food.

Sitting on the floor was a little bit uncomfortable, but the food made it all up for me. As an appetizer we grilled meat on a small barbeque right on our table. The main dish was some kind of spicey soup with potatoes, fresh vegetables and some bones that was also cooked with a small stove right on our table. In case you wonder, what the bones in the picture might be, they are parts of a spinal cord :-}.

On our way back to the station, we stumbled into some sort of Jazz / Streetmusic event. There was smooth music like that bass-trumpet-drums combo:

And people like this solo drummer going berserk. I am sure, he had a lot of fun :-)....

(Hint: Click on the images to view a short Quicktime movie clip)

Zoidberg - Overlord and gardian of my harddrive

2005-11-13T16:05:00.000-08:00

Sometime during yesterdays visit in Ginza this nasty little octopus (蛸 - tako) started following me... Finally I gave up and decided to keep that guy.
As recently many harddrives die without reason, I employed him as Overlord and guardian of my harddrive... :-)

銀座 (Ginza) - The most expensive part of Tokyo

2005-11-13T06:08:00.000-08:00

On Saturday we went to visit Ginza. After visiting the Sony building and watching the latest gadgets Sony produced, we went to 博品館 (Hakuhinkan) a big toy store in Ginza.

Among rather familar creatures like (quite fat) owls (quicktime clip),

There also were stranger creatures like a small walrus, a real life sized Pyton or a stuffed bat.

We saw a lot of must have toys like remote controlled bugs, which are the latest and greatest for Japans younger generation. The goal is to throw the opponents bug onto its back, which is harder than it looks.

The older generation has its bugs fight interactively on a computer terminal. Your personal bug as well as its strength and size is stored on a electronic card. So you can happyly trade different bugs, train your favourite bug champion and have battles against the bugs of your classmates. I saw a rather unfair battle where one bug that nearly covered the complete screen simply ate his way smaller opponent... :-P.

We were also fascinated by the new input methods japanese videogames have. One particular device consists of a small camera and reflective rings that are attached to your hands. The camera detects your movements and translates them in to attacks of your virtual self. Not overwhelming precise but very funny and actually a little bit straining. Way better than just hitting some buttons on a keyboard... :-D (quicktime clip)

As chrismas is really close (only 40 days left!), the first chrismas trees were standing around in Ginza. Lots of candles and chrismas music included (quicktime clip).

Also the Ginza version of an angel was hanging around. It was kind of cool, but I always assumed that the wings of angels are located on their back ...