Spring is here!

The Sakura (cherry blossom) has begun! And thus starts the most beautiful time of the year in Japan. The whole city is talking about nothing else but Hanami, a much-loved Japanese activity which basically involves two elements. Sakura and booze. Whilst filling oneself with liquor, one gazes at the beauty of sakura trees and ponder on the meaning of life while quoting classical Japanese poetry. Ok maybe the last part not so much, it's basically just the boozing and looking at blossom. But once you look at the pictures below, you see what all the fuss is about. It is absolutely stunning and Tokyo has a pinkish hue.

For the rest things are going well. I've integrated well at Canon and I've been working on quite useful and rewarding things lately which means I'm moving up in Canon-society (the first weeks were a bit like 'robert here go stare at these numbers for the whole day while we have meetings all day'). I'm having fun and my collegues are very relaxed and have all worked at at least two continents and know how the world works. Also, I've been strategically forcing my collegues to speak as much japanese to me as possible, which is sometimes hard since their English is pretty good. But sometimes for the sake of content we sometimes still switch to English, which is fine as it's still a bit hard for me to understand processes of 'static electricity loaded onto paper when exposed to laser beams and then attract negatively-loaded toner which is then tranferred via conveyor belts and finally fixed with ceramic heaters etc etc.' in Japanese. I know, I've let you all down.

For the rest it's all a matter of getting used to the strictness of the work environment. Start 8.15 and when the big-ben bell sounds through the speaker at exactly 8.30, the colleagues around me stop talking and do not communicate until lunch. After lunch, same bell, same story. And walking around or getting coffee is not really appreciated unless you are already on the way to do really essential things such as going to the toilet, or the copier. Culture shock, as in holland the most interesting gossip is told around coffee machines whenever someone feels like spilling their guts. For the rest, interesting people here. The IT-guy came up to my desk at Canon last week and confessed to me that his 5-day work week at Canon was just a 'side job'. His real job was being a magician during weekends. He proved it to me by doing a cool trick with merely two elastic bands.
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Being a good samaritan, the rest of the week is spent partying and hanging around in parks listening to indie bands, or tanning at artifical beaches, watching irish st. patrick day parades with Japanese in leprichaun outfits, drinking chili-pepper soaked vodkas at small bars, ordering unidentified things on menu's on a daily basis, going to ghibli museum, being abducted by rich chinese women at naka-meguro who want to be my tour guide, going for ice-cream at Ice-cream city near Piazza Maccheroni (a kitch plastic indoor version of Rome's Piazza Navona).

Will try to keep out of trouble!
Robert

At the extremely-popular-hard-to-get-tickets Ghibli Museum with my Japanese friends I met back in Beijing

Evenings in Tokyo: one of the memorable dinners with my JPP-buddies

Non-leprechauns were also allowed to show their stuff at the yearly St Patricks day parade

First Days at Canon part 2

This second day was again busy as hell. A summary.

from 8.30 to 11am
Canon schedule: address change for foreign registration at city hall
Realization: we were done in 5 minutes, which left us over two hours with our supervisor to kill time at a temple somewhere until our next appointment.

from 11pm to 12am:
Schedule: arranging Canon pass at canon HQ
Realization: again done after 5 minutes. Had to kill time with supervisor with cappuccino and food until 1 pm (lunch was 12 to 1).
1:00 to 2:00
Canon Gallery official tour

2:00 to 3:00
kill time at canon gallery playing with binoculars and high-end camera models

3:00
I finally got to meet the people of my division. They seem great. Naturally I had to do an introduction again today. ("he can speak japanese!"). I think I made a good impression and they seem to have been looking forward to greet a new trainee. They're even arranging a welcome party for me friday evening.

4:00
Home. Dead tired, as you may expect.

Seeing the HQ of canon was shockingly magnificent and everything I imagined it to be. I won't put in too much detail as it is not allowed, but it's a whole little corporate campus paradise where the grass is green, the buildings are superdeluxe, as is the restaurant and the (free) hyperclass fitness and swimming center for its employees... yay!

Also, (completely off-topic) Coming back home today we discovered there is a monstrous supermarket two meters away from the dry cleaner where we already dropped off some clothes yesterday. This is shocking as we have been looking for these kinds of obvious signs of civilization but could only find 'mom and pop stores' and had to walk 20 minutes for the nearest supermarket which is now reduced to 5. How could we have missed this.

And continuing the story of yesterday; I only scored two business cards today. I'm losing my touch.

First Days at Canon

@Shimomaruko, march 3rd, 2008

I haven't written anything these last few weeks and there is much to tell about for example the trip we made to Kyoto last week and the week in Tokyo before that, when Vincent (friend who came over from Holland) was in town. I'll write about that soon, but first, some recent developments....

Two days ago It was time to say goodbye to the Asia Center of Japan, the hotel in the heart of hip Aoyama where I where I stayed during these past two months. Now that the Kansai Trip is over, the final (and largest) part of the JPP Program is about to begin: the 5-month internship at Canon.

Consistently, the day before yesterday I moved from hip Aoyama the day to the small suburban town of Shimomaruko, 40 minutes west of Tokyo, where Canon's dormitory is located.
It's more roomy than my room in the Asia center, even with own washing machine and dryer. I am on te minus 1st floor, which means a tropical view of a high concrete grey wall one meter behind my window. Oh well, at least they made a concrete ditch let some light in; I feared the worst when I was suddenly ushered to take my bags to the -1 basement floor. Although the futon I sleep on is hard and furniture is scarce, I think with some work I'll be able to make a home out of it for the coming 5 months.

I had my first day at Canon today, together with Sjors, a fellow JPP-student -and recently, neighbour- who will be doing an internship at Canon as well, but at a different division.
We started the day at the christian time of 8.15, which will be the normal time to start the day these coming 5 months. (In return, I will not be expected to work much later than 5 pm). So we were escorted upstairs to the HR division and before being able to take off our coats we were introduced to the division and to us were whispered the well-known 4 syllables that referred to an activity that we had to do sooner or later on the day: 'JI-KO-SHOO-KAI', an obligatory self-introduction speech of about 1 or 2 minutes in Japanese (hm so this time it turned out to be 'sooner' rather than later). Still shocked by this sudden event, Sjors and I were taken to a room where we but on the were educated on the history of Canon, the company's keywords (kiiwaado) for doing business, and also many educational and promotional movies. We were educated by the general manager, mr. Kasamatsu, who gave us two a special treatment by giving us private lessons talking in Japanese which he luckily tuned down a bit for foreigner ears (later on we attended the exact same story in a lecture hall where he lectured to the normal Japanese trainees who also had an introduction that day, and was suddenly unintelligable. The confidence in the level of my Japanese which I built up being able to understand everything Kasamatsu san said to us privately before, was broken into pieces.

Also, we were given a manual with useful hints such as:

'please don't be late',
'during working time, your time belongs to us',
'don't think about your private live after five during office hours',
'don't blow your nose with a loud trumpeting noise',
'take a bath every day'

After lunch we had to do yet another Jikoshookai in front of a bigger audience. I'm getting used to it, but it's not my favorite I must confess. Will probable have to do another one on thursday when I start with real work at my division: global accounts marketing department of business office imaging products (simply: want-to-sell-copymachines-to-foreigners-division).

Although Canon is a global company, in many divisions a european face still evokes (mostly positive, but cliché) reactions, such as:

- "Man, they are tall!"
- "Wow, the foreigner knows how to use chopsticks!"
- "Your Japanese is really good" (after us having said: 'konnichi wa' (hi))

The people at Canon seem friendly and what I can judge in one day, I'll think I'll have a good time here. It was a good day. I also broke my previous record of amount of received business cards during one day. Four.
For a culture that basically revolves around business cards this is a bit disappointing. I'll try harder tomorrow.

Lesser Known Tokyo

@Tokyo
6-13 feb

Now that I have been here for a while, the feeling of having to rush to be able see as much as possible in the shortest amount of time (a feeling that I often get when visiting a country as a tourist) is subceding. Also, Having seen many of the more obvious spots of Tokyo, lately I have spent some more time in more 'local' areas of the city. And still, in these local areas, there is so much to see! Tokyo seems to be getting bigger each day and more and more interesting neighbourhoods keep popping up.

Also, many of the neighbourhoods have some kind of theme, such as: Kanda, the 'book'-neighbourhoud, with the newest books on design, but also obscure anitique bookstores full of English literature of current topics such as the 12-band Great Sovjet Republic Encyclopaedia, collecting dust in a corner near old scrolls and maps of old Edo-Tokyo. Walking past literary cafe's and dusty books, the scenery suddenly changes sports: a whole neighbourhood solely filled with big stores selling snowboards, tennis rackets and sweaters.Then, turning the corner, I end up and Ochanomizu, a university area. Here the theme was: Rock. They dedicated the whole neighbourhood to the selling of used guitars and rare vinyl rock albums. Tokyo is big enough to dedicate a whole neighbourhood to a 'niche'.Feeling completely lost, I followed the river and after passing an Orthodox Russian Church (why shouldn't there be one?) I stood on the bridge and had no idea where I was. The streets were empty an as the sun set I took some pictures of the river. Then I a saw some lights around the corner. I suddenly realised it was the shop where I bought my mobile a few weeks ago. I turned the corner and was teleported to crazy, nerdy, crowded Akihabara 'electric city', full of streets where they sell anything that has a power plug.

Kagurazaka was also great. It's the old geisha quarter of tokyo and its tree-lined streets have a characteristic feel to it. Several minutes after arriving at Kagurazaka I discovered a small gallery, so I decided to go inside. I was welcomed by a lady in her sixties who was having tea with her friends in her own gallery. After having seen the paintings, she invited me to come sit down an have some tea, and of course, piles of questions came from the woman and her friends. She immeadeatly grabbed the chance to photograph this foreigner that had entered. After she discovered I was from Holland she showed me her Holland photo album and said she went there last year to paint. I asked her if she visits europe, on which she responded 'no, not very often. Just once a year or so.' Seemed like a good life she was leading, travelling around and painting.
A few days later she e-mailed me if I would like to join some of her friends for a home cooked meal. Unfortunately it was on wednesday during noon break, so I was at Ginza for my Japanese lessons. Nevertheless, until now, the Japanese people that I have talked to are very friendly and If we exchange mails, big chance that you are invited for some event or other.

In the same week we had an excursion to Taisei, where we were educated on what measures can be taken to prevent a building from being damaged during one of Japan's earthquakes. We were also given a virtual reality tour of several buildings with their new VR technology. Several days later we went underground, to visit an immense pipe where drainage water is collected during periods of high raiunfall to prevent Tokyo flooding. It was an amazing experience which the average person living in Tokyo would not have the chance to see.

Thus, again a week full of adventures. Now, the time of full studying at JNI is coming to an end and we're off to Kansai soon. But first, this week my friend from Holland is coming so it's gonna be even less sleep and more sightseeing this week. Looking forward to it.

On the Japanese version of 'Albert Cuyp'

Temple near Kagurazaka, Tokyo's old geisha quarters

Industrial urban hipness between Ochanomizu and Akihabara

Me and Uotani-san at her gallery

One of the many rock shops at Ochanomizu

Meanwhile, 60 meters below Tokyo...

Tuna Eyes

Saturday, Febrary 2nd, 2008

Although, the topic of this post might be interpreted as being poetic, in reality it is, well, not so much, as you will discover.

Had some coffee with Kaoru, who I randomly met in a Persian restaurant during lunch in a neighbourhood called yanaka (谷中）. She, her friend, three of my classmates and I met up at to have some coffee. We had a great time and moreover it was culturally and linguistically correct as we spoke (or attempted to speak) japanese constantly. It was a lot of fun and although our conversations were limited by the language, it was nice to meet up with some of Tokyo's locals. As it was saturday, all the coffee shops were extremely crowded, even in the low-key neighbourhood where Kaoru took us. We finally managed to get a table in the open-air, which in spring is nice but in winter maybe a bit too adventurous.

Around 5pm we said goodbye to Kaoru and her friend and went on to have a very interesting meal. You see, after our early morning adventure at tsukiji during this week, Suzuki-san invited the whole group to come to his sushi restaurant near Tameikesanoo station to have a good meal. He made a special deal with us that he would make some of his specialties for a fixed, student friendly price.
What unfolded upon the table was above anyone's expectations, in a (mostly) positive way (this addition of 'mostly' will become clear soon).
First, to ease us into the meal, Suzuki-san served French cheese, carpaccio to start out with. But then a genuine fash carnaval began, and it started with a bang: the first specialty that arrived was braised tuna head.
And thus; one whole tuna head lay on the table. Suzuki-san told us this was a very expensive special dish that was hard to come by. The flavour was very good but there was one catch: aside from some nice tender 'foreigner-friendly' tuna meat, we all got a large portion of braised tuna-eye. Yes, tuna eye stew. You can imagine that getting accostumed to the feeling and texture of eating a cornea or optic nerve is somewhat challenging. Oh well, another meal to put on the list of guess-what-I-ate. Finally, everyone stood tall and ate their portion, so our culture-barbarian-gauge has dropped somewhat and for that I am happy.
And from then onwards, it was sushi paradise once again, It's unbelievable how Suzuki-san went out of his way to make this amazing meal, and such an amazing amount that he must have spent the whole day for us.

Afterwards he let a few of us 'wield' the sword he uses to prepare his maguro (see photo). And then, after our last tea, we gave suzuki-san a self made present containing a photo of suzuki-san and us, and some stroop-waffles, and some drop (licorice). I guess drop to him might be close to what tuna eye is to us ^_^. Thank you Suzuki-san!

It's a bird, It's a plane, no....it's the head of a tuna

Samurai Sjors-san

Tsukiji! (築地）

Friday, February 1st, 2008

This first day of the month was started early today. I was woken by the nice automatic-voice lady wake up call at 4 o'clock in the morning. I wondered why on earth was this brute disturbance of my peaceful sleep necessary? Then I remebered. The answer was cold and fishy. Today was Tsukiji Fish Market day and all the action happens around 6 am and somehow the Japanese fisherman refuse to hold it a bit later so that I could sleep a bit later. But they are forgiven.

So me and 3 classmated waited for the first metro to come at 5:08 and as you can see in the photo below, they were pretty much in the same state as I was. But it was going to be a great morning, as we were going to be accompanied by one of Tokyo's fine sushi-chefs, for whom the market was basically his home away from home.

I have never seen so much fish and tuna in one place (which is not very shocking as it is the world biggest fish market and my fish experience is limited to the sort that has vegetables and potatoes next to it). Before the auction started, Suzuki-san, our suchi-chef explained what you should look at when buying a tuna, while pointing at tunas more international than the United Nations, one coming from Spain, New York, South-Africa and Australia.

As the auction started, the buyer started raising hands and we had to stay on the side for a while with several other tourists. As I tried to make an overview picture of the auction, I acidentally raised my hand holding my camera. That almost cost me a whole tuna (around 10.000 euro) but luckily the auctioneer wasn't paying attention to me.

Afterwards we had to run some errands in the fish market because Suzuki-san had to get some ingredients for his shop. He was a steady customer and we were treated to coffee, tea and fish by his suppliers to keep us warm. The atmosphere was not unlike the collegues on the markets where my mom sells her clothing. Just a bit more fish on this market, though.

Afterwards we naturally ate some sushi nearby whiich Suzuki-san helped us order. Vast amounts of raw fish were eaten by us at around for breakfast around 07.30. I wouldn't trade my cereals for it every day, but I think it was one of the best sushi meals I ever ate. I will never be able to eat sushi in Amsterdam again, I think.

Asahi Shimbun (朝日新聞）

Wednesday, January 30th, 2008

An educative trip was planned for our group today. Asahi Shimbun, one of Japans largest Newspapers, opened up its doors. We were given badges and were escorted into a large office space where journalists were busy writing their new scoop of the day. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take foto's in the office; seen as a leftist paper, the office has been the target of several assassination attacks of right-wing groups and Asahi Shimbun therefore does not appreciate their staff being photographed. So I refrained from shooting them as well (with my Sony).
Next, two giant presses were shown in the basement, which can spit out an average of 60.000 editions per hour. There we were given a preview of this evening's edition which was not yet available on the street. The next room showed the packing and handling of the papers. We were allowed to shoot there, so at least we have evidence of having been there...