Last friday

Last Friday I was swimming in the pool of the ICU gym just to get some exercise. I was pushing myself and I felt with some satisfaction that I was getting somewhat woozy as I stood on one side of the pool to rest up a bit. As soon as I got woozy the wind picked up and started to rattle the windows pretty hard, a fraction of a second later things inside started to fall down and that was when I realized that I was not getting woozy and that there was no wind but that there was a major earthquake, one nothing comparable to the ones I had experienced so far. I was swimming with two other guys and by chance we were all at the same side of the pool hanging on the side and listening and watching very carefully at the building and the noises it makes. The water in the pool started to get wild and waves started forming and splashing over the side of the pool against the walls and in the other pool. I was in the corner and had decided to put one hand on each corner to hold on just in case. I was not panicking just extremely concentrated. My threshold for panic was reached a few times though, when the earthquake got more intense and the noises of the building and the shakes of the earth came in a faster succession and were therefore more overpowering but it never went over the border to full panic mode where the single thought of being outside rules your entire being. But I felt safe in the water and in the simple and low construction of the pool building. To my right I could see one guy with a look of awe and suspense on his face and the other with a look of genuine terror; I believe my face resembled more the one of the first guy. Minutes after the earthquake the body of water still did not come to a rest and it was still moving after I had found my goggles and we could leave the pool. While changing there was a pretty big and long aftershock which scared me, “another one?”, but it was just an aftershock and it did not get more intense.

In Canada House, my dormitory, people were gathering and exchanging stories about their experience and there was a overall positive mood and a sense of silliness about one’s own terror. This was before we knew about the tsunami and the problems with the nuclear facilities in Fukushima which has made this earthquake and ensuing tsunami one of the greatest disasters to ever have hit Japan. Over the weekend it mostly has been following the news and not going outside much, everything in Tokyo was cancelled, but restaurants and shops were still open so we ate out in the neighborhood a couple of times. Power cuts were planned for one part of Tokyo at a time which also made it more difficult to go by train since these did not work sometimes and this in turn made that most offices were not open. Luckily though the complex of the ICU was build for a military purpose and has therefore its own water and electricity supply so we did not have any power cuts. There was one particularly big after shake (I am actually not sure of these are considered after shakes or earthquakes in their own right) that almost made me run out in my boxer short with the jeans that I hastily picked off the floor in my hand and the sound of a lot of naked feet running over the tiles in my ear at 5 in the morning. But a Japanese housemate that was just walking down the hallway said it was nothing to worry about so I turned around and went back to bed, and it did turn out to be nothing to worry about. By Tuesday however, the shops were running out of supply for certain goods and the problems with the nuclear plant were, and are, still not under control; it suffered 3 explosions and a fire so far. Together with an ever growing concern of my family and friends for my safety made it wise for me to relocate to Hiroshima (about 1000km. from Fukushima) where I am now writing this.

I am not sure what to make of me running from a potential nuclear disaster to the historic site of another one but at least here I will learn a lot about the power of the nuclear. Since a lot of people are cancelling their trips to Japan I was able to get a good hotel for a bargain price and from here I can see the ‘Peace memorial Park’ and right on the other side of the river is the ‘A-Bomb Dome’, both are there to remind us of that fatal morning of 6 august 1945. The bomb exploded almost vertically above the ‘A-Bomb Dome’ which made that it was somewhat protected from the flattening power of the blast and it is still standing today as a big skeleton and a grim reminder of the potential destructiveness of nuclear power. My thoughts go out to the men and women working right now in Fukushima to prevent such a disaster from happening today.

Some items running out



Improving the isolation of the house



Atomic Bomb Dome

Story in imagery

Kansai is beautiful with its old temples and movie like feeling streets. Autumn in Japan is beautiful with the warm sun, clear sky, and brightly colored leaves. So enjoy these pictures and your holidays!

a Weekend in Tokyo

I would like to share with you my weekend, which was loaded with “Japaneseness” (a term actually used by Japanese academics). It started Friday night with the first earthquake I consciously experienced. It was not a heavy one and at first I thought someone was shaking his leg until it got to a point where the whole earth was somewhat shaking and I had to conclude that it was an earthquake. Except for me and the other gaijin (non-Japanese person) in the room everybody else was unfazed and continued undisturbed with whatever task was in front of them. On seeing my face one of the Japanese exclaimed: “welcome to Japan!”.

The next day I visited the Ghibli museum. Ghibli, for the ones who are not familiar with it, is the movie studio of which Miyazaki, a living legend in Japan, is a part and that makes anime (spirited away, my neighbor Totoro, and many more). The museum was somewhat small and not much of a museum in the traditional sense of the word but it gave you a good experience of the magic that makes for Ghibli’s succes. The ticket for example, was a little cut from a movie, and the entire building seemed to fit in a world normally only realized in Ghibli movie. The most interesting part of the museum was a room that copied the residence of Miyazaki: it felt as if what he say in his head had to surround him: drawings were tagged to the wall to a point where it was hard to actually see the wall, and a wide variety of odd objects filled the space. It was necessary for him transform his room in an extension of his newest brainchild so that upon entering his team knew how the movie had to look and feel. In the week leading up to this visit I watched about 7 Ghibli movies by the way, and they all were a delight.

Afterwards some of us decided that it was time for sushi and we sat down at one of the places where plates of sushi pass you on a little conveyer belt and you take whatever speaks to you. The taste was good and at 120 yen a serving I ended my diner with a big stack of plates in front of me. A visit to a typical Japanese manifestation of a hobby gone to the extreme was next on the agenda. The neko café (neko (ねこ) means cat) caters to the Tokyoite that finds it impossible to live without a cat in his life but is contractually forbidden to have one in his apartment. For 900 yen the hour we had access to room with about 8 cats spoiled to the bone. Most of them slept the whole time and were not interested in the toys continuously shoved in their face by the clientele that wanted to play with them. For an additional fee, however, one of the cat lovers got all the attention since he now had a small box of cat candy. This man was a regular for about nine years and told us tourists in a distinguished way how he knew all the cats from back when they still were kittens. While leaving I remembered the cat my family used to have and how this experience in no way is the same as actually owning a cat. But better than nothing I guess.

Sunday I went to visit Tim, a Dutch friend I met at the UVT. He is in Tokyo to study humanoid robots and he showed me around Waseda university during its festival. But first we went to his laboratory where his robot was being worked on. The lab is somewhat removed from the main campus and is open 24/7 and 365 day a year, simple, and no nonsense. With advanced software and simple tools a team of about 10 guys work on their passion almost nonstop, with sleeping bags under the desk to prove it. The lab, to me, was a manifestation of the Japanese work spirit. The downside of this spirit is that the Japanese team members have to have lunch at the literature department if they ever want to see a woman, at all. But, that is a problem that they are working on since after the army and the care industry, the sex industry is the most interested in humanoid robots. And, as I was explained, that industry only needs robots for simple and repetitive motions so they will come in the near future and be affordable.

And finally, a tortoise wearing shoes.

So there you go, a weekend in Tokyo.

Registration for entering Alien

Writing a blog on what you have done your first month, well actually just over a month now, in a foreign country can take from 15 minutes to a couple of hours. So to start me off I will go with what people from back home are most curious about: the culture shock. I am not sure exactly what the diagnosis for a culture shock is but I guess Japan is a place where every Westerner will inevitably get one. What I have experience is not a shock though, it is more a constant friction with your environment. After the time-consuming process of getting registered and settled you will still find that it is impossible to gain momentum, a flow if you will, resulting in never getting around to what you want to do and everything taking you much longer as you want them to take. This is to be expected but practically impossible to prepare for. If all these tiny frustrations start creeping up on you and start to get the better of you I think you will experience something that I would call ‘Culture Disgust’, so no Culture Shock. After all, the Japanese are humans just like you and me. I guess you have to go live with monkeys or otters or something to experience a Culture Shock. Anyway, considering myself to be a positive person and these frustrations to be challenges I am certain I will keep my taste for Japan.

Second question that people ask me is about the differences and similarities between Tilburg and Japan. Big similarity is that all students have bikes. Big difference is that you can only buy new bikes, which are all tiny, have to be registered, and are difficult to park legally. Luckily somebody offered me their bike for free. For free because it is an absolute piece of crap to Japanese standards, to Dutch standards it is an ok bike, just particularly tiny. Big difference is that I am now illiterate. On top of that I do not recognise any of the products in the supermarket. More than once I desired to open the package and see what was in their or maybe even to get a little taste. I never did, but every time I hesitated it reminded me of the open packages in the ‘Aldi’ and ‘Lidl’. Those new immigrants must feel just as I do now not knowing the alphabet and not recognising the products. Another big difference is the price of food. A pepper 1⁄4 of the regular size will cost you about a euro. I mostly eat eggs and toast. Also, there is not a coffee drinking culture over here. Instead, people just fall asleep everywhere: in the bus, train, library, menza, etc. It is not uncommon to find everyone fallen asleep on their book in our study room. Student life is very different from the Dutch: if the Dutch one is ‘gezellig’ the Japanese one would be ‘orchestrated’. No spontaneous meeting places, instead people have to meet through club activities (tennis, soccer, music), tsukimi’s, and other types of organised happenings. At parties there is usually no music, a scarcity of alcohol, fluorescent lights, and food. Enough alcohol to get the Japanese drunk though, which is a source of great fun (see photo), but you basically will have to bring your own.

My living situation is excellent. I live in a dormitory on campus called Canada House (see photo) with my roommate Yuya (the guy in the middle with the fake moustache). And it is from them that I get the advice, help, and support I need to settle and live in Japan.

It is now about an hour and a half that I am answering the questions on culture shock and differences or similarities experienced and not experienced in my first month in Japan. Now off course I will not end this very overdue blog without promising that I will share more and more frequently my experiences in Japan with you. Talk to you soon, I promise!

Ps. the title of this blog is the name of a document provided to you upon entering Japan.

Sorry for the delay

I am sorry for the delay of my post. And even this post is just to tell you that I did not forget all about this blog and that I want to post on it, but that I did not get around to it. Yet.

I 2 big deadlines on monday, for the internet course from the UVT that I have to take and one for Japanese are about all I can take right now.

But my next post will be there next week.

Cu soon,

Pierre

Counting the days

By coincidence someone I met at the Tilburg debating society for students Cicero is also going to Tokyo from September until December. He studies humanoid robots at Eindhoven and will be living in a dormitory more in the centre than I do called Wakeijuku. This dormitory seems rather lively, but the inhabitants only need to adhere to 3 rules for the dormitory to remain liveable. The first rule is that greeting is obliged, it explains by saying that “Greetings are the basics of life to build up human relations”. It does not specify however if you need to bow, shake hands, or a simple “Hé” or hand gesture is enough. The third rule demands participation in the social activities. Nothing extraordinary so far. But the second rule is most fascinating to me: “follow the rules of community life”. The rule is this brief and the specification does not explain much. Which means that there technically are only three rules but one of which basically says: “Oh yeah, also follow all the other rules”. I think this anecdote goes to show how inherent to human nature the Japanese believe their etiquette to be and it doubles as a precautionary tale for anyone that is about to live with them: they will fail to mention a lot of behaviour expected from you since they only know and probably only can imagine one way of doing things.

But of course I am getting very excited to discover all this personally and the more stories I read from people already at their destination the more anxious I become too leave. Even though I am writing this from my room where some furniture still has to be moved to my parents place (I am pretty sure that some of the dust balls that came from under my coach could be seen from space) and I actually still cannot leave yet, however, the to-do list is getting shorter and shorter.

Next time I will write you from Japan!

Preparation

With most of the official stuff taken care of and a green light to go to Tokyo I can turn my attention to the fun stuff. But I do not concern myself so much with how to speak Japanese, but more with what to say to the Japanese: I try to cultivate myself in a certain way in the hope of making myself a little bit immune for the culture shock which will inevitably take place after touchdown in Tokyo, and also to connect easier with the Japanese. I read novels by famous Japanese writers such as Haruki Murakami, Soseki Natsume, Kenzaburo Oë, and Yukio Mishima. I watch movies such as Tokyo!, Strawberry shortcakes, and Air doll. I watch youtube channels such as TheJapanChannelDcom. And I try to find music that reflects how Japanese culture is received in Europe, such as vive la fete’s song Tokyo. But more important than this (off course futile) endeavor of trying to make myself immune to culture shock will be that by doing this I have some common ground and thus something to talk about with my new friends in my dormitory: since I read similar books and watched similar movies.

However, one of the peculiar things about the Japanese is that they have been living on islands for centuries isolated from the rest of the world. Throughout their history there were never immigrations into their territory to mix things up a little, and they limited foreign influence as much as possible, which resulted in them having just one correct truly unique way of doing things all the way down to the smallest detail of everyday life. Any deviation is frowned upon and results in the perpetrator being shun by the Japanese. Therefore my capability of doing things the correct way is greatly reduced to the one of a small child: I will have to start at zero and mimic the people around me to properly conduct myself in the social and private space, regardless of how many Japanese classics I read.

It is for this reason that maybe my best preparation for going to Japan is to watch and be inspired by this Japanese artist who is the eighth most subscribed to youtuber of Japan. Not everything goes as planned for him: he is struck by a terrible nose itch from the start to finish of this rendition of the song. He did not prepare everything to the last intricate detail: I am sure my Japanese will sound as his English. But he is not afraid to put his heart and soul out there, and, maybe most importantly, is not afraid to make mistakes and to have fun with it.

Enjoy