Music: Black Milk
Mood: Nervous

PS. No more pictures (by me) until I get proper editing software, so that will be Saturday!

Oh man what a weekend! Nah I’m kidding, I did not do all that much this weekend, I did find an apartment, bought a camera and went to Yufuin! Let’s start with the most important! The camera, I went to a mall on Saturday to buy a camera, I had already done my research (with thanks to Eelco), I had been playing with the thought of buying a camera for awhile and decided now was the time, a good, relatively cheap camera became available.

I bought the Pentax K-X with a 18-55 lens, and a 55-300 Lens. Motives for buying the camera, were simple, it was the price, using it is relatively simple, it looks cool, is good a night photography and it comes with two lenses (other cameras just get you the body for the same price). This gives you an introduction of why I went to Yufuin.

(Next paragraph is full camera talk) I went to Yufu for the sole reason to play with my new camera, hehe. The place itself is not that special I think, it is a typical touristy Japanese town. It’s got a lot of character, but that’s spoiled by the amount of people in the town and the silly amount of stores selling the same stuff. But I came there to take pictures, and so I did. Took some nice ones I think, and a lot of blur! The effects I want to get out of my camera is going to take me some time a tripod and macro lens! I might buy a little tripod, but I am definitely not going to buy a macro lens at this moment. So I am going to settle for a Raynox 150, for doing some light macro work. I also went out tonight, after reading a lot about night photography, to shoot some pictures of the street in front of the house.

I think I managed to get a couple of nice ones out of it. Well that is for a first try, without Photoshop to work with. Oh yea Also found an apartment! It’s a nice place, LeoPalace in the middle of town, does not cost me as much as I thought, it’s got everything I need in it, fridge, washing machine, internet, futon, TV, microwave all I need is some chopsticks and an iron, and I’ll be set! I’ll get some pictures of the place up later. I will be moving house on the 23rd.

Listening to: Joell Ortiz

(edit: Added some pictures!)

The fun stuff continued the next Saturday, I went to a festival introduced to me as a Yamamatsuri in Nakatsuka, and this was one of the best festivals I have been to yet. It all took place in the small town of Nakatsuka, after arriving a little bit late we were immediately welcomed with the enthusiasm that I am starting to get used to here in the south. Everybody is extremely friendly, and I think foreigners are not that plenty down here everybody wants to talk to you. The usual questions come up, “do you like beer?” “Where are you from?” “What beer is from Holland”, man talk! So after drinking a beer, it was time to carry the mikoshi. This was quite fun, since I am not really prepared to carry a real mikoshi I got to help carry the Kids Mikoshi, don’t think that means it would be light. Thing is still damn heavy, it is just the real Mikoshi, are even heavier. It was a fun night, during which one kid asked me whether or not I was Japanese, I of course said Yes and somehow she did not believe me, hehe. But since I had to go see the boss the next day, at around 11 it was time for me to go home and sleep, which was kind of a shame because the people I had met that night were all super friendly and I would have loved to drunk some more with the people there.

The next day was another busy one, leaving at 10 o’clock to go see my Sacho(boss) speak at a fair for Ryugakusei(International students). The speeches themselves were really hard for me to follow but I managed to get most of the story and it was quite interesting. Sacho talked about how hiring exchange students in the past helped him out in the past, and how it is still helping him out, because one of them is running their sister firm in China, and the other one is my internship supervisor! Quite interesting, however this event was not for me, but more for people with a better grasp of the Japanese language. There were a lot Chinese and Korean people in the audience and only a few westerners.

After listening to the speeches at the fair, Umeki San, Tsuru san and Yamaguchi san and me went to see the monkeys on Mt. Takasaki.

Man this was awesome, it was not quite as wild as I had imagined, but there definitely monkeys there, and I could have taken one to Riverside if I had wanted too. They were really cute too, lots of tiny monkeys, playing in the puddles.

After seeing the monkeys, we went to the Umi tamago, man that was a lot more fun than I thought it was going to be. I guess it has been a while since I last visited the Dolfinarium (I think the last time was when I was about 10 years old?). But it was a good time, I keep getting surprised by the sheer size of animals, for examples sea lions are just these huge creatures, really cute but at the same time they are a bit scary because of their size. I played some catch with dolphins, this was definitely a highlight for me. The dolphins would toss me the ball and I would toss it back, I guess that is a simple explanation of catch, but the fact that it was with dolphins made it super cool.

The big aquarium was filled with fish from seas from all over the world. They really thought about the presentation of the aquarium and you can view it through a giant glass wall, which even extends a little bit into the floor. There were a lot of beautiful fish, and I kept laughing as my co workers asked which fish were good to eat!

So after watching fish all day, everybody felt like eating sashimi for some reason. We went to my new favourite restaurant and ate until we could not eat anymore.

So this was another weekend full of activities, contemplating whether or not I should take a break next weekend, or just keep on trucking. There is still a lot of things I want to see and do here in Kyushu, anyway I’ll keep on posting over here!

 On the follow Monday I was introduced in the traditional Japanese way by giving a small speech about my self, my hobbies, my hometown and until when I will be staying with the company. And afterwards it was time for my introduction interview. This was conducted entirely in Japanese; I somehow managed to understand everything and realized what I am going to be doing here. I will be basically be doing whatever they tell me to do. Haha. This means the day to day business of the company, I will be shown around and work in most of the departments helping in which ever way I can with my limited Japanese but fluent English.
My goals during my stay here are simple but very hard. I want to improve my Japanese reading and speaking ability, as well as understand more about the Japanese way of running a company which I believe is very interesting. I am very glad that I went the usual route of going to a Japanese University first and then to the internship, because even though my Japanese is limited now, it feels like it is a million times better than it was in February. I am able to answer and ask my co-workers a lot of questions in Japanese, this hopefully will enable me to fit in the company really smoothly.
The people in the company are all very nice and for some reason very interested in Holland, so it is easy to talk to them about Dutch or European things. Plus it seems that a lot of people here have not been to Tokyo or want to reminisce about Tokyo, so I can talk about that too. But besides that I think am willing to try and do a lot of things, for example I want to climb a mountain whilst I am here! There are some hiking enthusiasts at the company so that is a bonding factor. Other than I am pretty much down for what ever, I love drinking and playing soccer so I plan to do those things here too! Even though I try to adapt myself to the Japanese culture I will also try to be myself, I am able to function in  Japanese society, but am still so very Dutch. I think being Dutch is a quality when you use it with good measurement.

Current mood: Excited and Coffee is keeping me awake for the ride

So I think that is a day off well spent, however it is not over, that day it was Respect Elders Day, basically it is the Japanese people visiting their grandparents and parents. It was a good time, eating some Sushi and Udon. But feeling kind of like an intruder, even though everybody was as nice as I could expect anyone to be, I was hindered by the fact that they love baseball and I have no feeling towards that sport whatsoever. I still had a good day though.

This Saturday I set out to grape picking with people from work. I thought that was what were going to do that day, get in some overalls and pick grapes. But we also visited a farm called Ooga Farm, I am not sure whether that was just the name or a Japanese way of saying Organic farm. But never mind that it was a beautiful garden with access to a beautiful natural beach. It also had a lovely greenhouse, filled roses and herbs, the smell reminded me of my granddad, not that he smelled of greenhouse (well sometimes he did…), but he had one in his garden too.

The lunch we had this place was just out of this world, I had the chicken, which was delicious, it came with a minestrone soup, a nice salad and bread! It had been a long time since I ate some fresh brown bread. And the bread combined with delicious olive oil was just drool ~

After this feast we set of to find a grape picking farm, because the one we wanted to go apparently was closed today. We were lucky enough to find another one in the area, the owner of the farm told us the story how he went from being a salary man to being a grape farmer. It was quite an impressive story about him moving out of the city driving around the mountains to find a suitable place for his farm, building everything from scrap with his bare hands. For a second I thought, hey this might be something for me, but then I realized I liked comfort and a conbini within a half hours drive.

 I did not really have a clue what it was going to be about. But it came down to cutting down a pre bagged, bag of grapes hehe. It was still a good time though. I got to know my co workers a little bit better. After the grape pickings we went to a nice onsen in Beppu, called Shibaseki Onsen. That water is hot damn, but it feels so good. The water in the onsen was a lot whiter than I had seen before, afterwards my skin felt like a babies behind.

From the onsen on went to eat some Curry also in Beppu. I had the Thai Curry which was just delicious and spicy, kind off reminded me of the curries Eelco made in Rotterdam. The vibe of the shop was a good one, the interior really hit it home for me. I like these family restaurants, the woman working the front of the store whilst the man is cooking in the kitchen.

Today was another fun day! I went to the zoo! And this zoo was cooler than all the ones I have been to before in my life! You ride around in a bus, with a some food on a tray and you are actually allowed to feed the animals! It is called African Safari in Beppu it is really a good place to visit if you are in the Beppu area. It is amazing how close the animals get you. This is the closest I have ever been to a Lion, I doubt I will ever get much closer than this. To be quite fair, I do not want get much closer than this. Other than that I was made to play with some tiny dogs, they were cute, but I was wearing my Sunday clothes and these hairs man, they are just messy haha. Still since I was this oasis of peace amongst loud kids, the dogs liked me and all wanted to sit on my lap…

Oh and I also did some work, starting next week I will be doing presentations on the Netherlands in Japanese. I must say I am quite excited and hesitant, because I feel my Japanese is getting worse after school, but I will ganbarimasu it!

I also got to do something different from translating, reading a marketing report in Japanese. This basically meant putting everything in Google Translate (My new best friend) and reading the English that comes out of that. Still an interesting assignment and I hope my findings help the people involved.

Mood: Tired, but kinda relaxed

Music: Tim Roscoe DJ Set 21-07-2010

PS. Kangaroos are really big from up close!

The people at the work are all really passionate about their work; they have that typical Japanese mentality of coming to work early and going home late. They make me feel bad for going home at the time I was assigned to come home at hehe…. I should not feel bad I know but I still feel for the people working late, it is real contagious though, everybody is working hard, so I work hard too, or at least try my hardest.

Yesterday we went drinking with everybody from the office, to say goodbye to one of the employees and say hi to the new intern! It was really nice seeing everybody in a different environment than the workplace. And one stereotype about Japanese people is just true; they can not drink at all! Had a good time, just adjusting to the work rhythm and speaking Japanese all day, makes me tire so easily.

As for the home situation at the moment, I feel quite happy staying here for another couple more weeks, but after that I really want to have my own place. The host family is really nice. I just want a place for myself, closer to the city and to my company. Because the commute takes about 40 minutes by bus now, which is just a pain.

I also did some fun stuff! Climbed a few mountains, by car that is! Mountains are amazing, seriously. View is amazing.

  A lot of stuff happened obviously since the last time I wrote a blog post. First of all school ended, which is kind of a shame because I had a good time this semester, met a lot of great people and am going to miss them during the remainder of my stay in Japan. The riverside crew was a cool assortment of guys, how they managed to put us all in the same building I do not know but it was a good move on their part because we had a lot of fun!

But even the Riverside gang had to end I guess because we all had to move out by the tenth, some of us overstayed our welcome just a little bit, but I don’t think it’s going to matter much. At the end of it all I was getting kind of paranoid about the cleaning crew coming to clean my apartment for the next tenants to occupy the room. So that made me move out and move to Eelco and Simon’s new place in Iogi, which is not a bad flat besides the bad internet and the train coming by every 5 minutes or so. It sort of reminded me of the time me and Eelco spent in Tokyo before going to Obirin. We went clubbing a few times which is always a good thing. Except for the hangovers, which are killing me nowadays haha.

Sleeping on the kitchen floor in a non-air-conditioned room, was slowly getting the best of me though. So I was trying to get out of that place as much as I could and spent it with Tomomi before I had to go to Tokyo. We did a lot of fun stuff together, walked around Kichijoji and Shibuya (We went to this very lame museum on energy conservation). But the places that stood out more were Atami and Odaiba. Atami is a nice sea side town famous for its onsen. They certainly are there a lot so we could not pass up the opportunity to enter one. Onsen means hot spring, and that’s the best way to describe it I guess, It’s a hot bath that comes from a natural source. It really feels good. After the onsen somebody decided to walk to a temple. It looked a lot closer than it was and ended up climbing a mountain for 3 kilometers, it was fun but it was way to hot for that kind of stuff. Once we got to the temple, it was kind of a let down but the view from the top of the mountain was superb.

I already went to Odaiba once with Eelco, but this was in March and in September it is a totally different place. You feel that there is more of a beach atmosphere and get a nice island feeling. We stayed in Odaiba pretty much all day, riding a boat in the Tokyo Bay, eating some good Chinese food, watching the new BECK movie, and at the end of the day we watched the view onto Tokyo, which was really beautiful.

I also spent a lot more time at Tomomi’s house and obviously with her parents, they are really nice people, even though they made me cook dinner for them, so I whipped out Tim’s recipe for salmon pasta with broccoli, made it, and it was good luckily. It’s a good thing I like soccer, because all the Japanse people I seem to meet love it too so I can converse with them about something!

All in all it’s been a hot few months in Tokyo, but the Tokyo story ends here for now, because yesterday I packed my things and went to Ooita.

But before that I spent a night in Beppu, Beppu is a very interesting little beachside town. It all looks very old and there is a lot of vacant buildings all around. But the people at the Hostel in Beppu were ever so nice and helpful. I found a nice little family run restaurant/bar, they had some awesome spicy Gyoza and told me make it even spicier by adding Soy sauce with Karashi. I spent most of the night in that restaurant before going to another bar with some very nice and drunk Japanese guys from Tokyo I just met. The town really came alive at night with a lot of people in the streets. I drank way too much and that didn’t help me today.

Ooita is probably the opposite of Tokyo. The total travel yesterday and today took me about 8 hours to get from Tokyo to Oita, Oita is very close to Beppu, it take about 15 minutes. Oita is really the countryside but the city centre has a nice feeling to it, and has at least two big department stores and I found some other cool shops too. Obviously it is not as crowded as Tokyo but I don’t think that’s a bad thing at all. People here seem to take it a little bit more easy judging by the amount of benches on the pavement (there are none in Tokyo). But all the shops are there, except for a Yodobashi or a Big Camera, which is kind of a shame because those are good places to waste some time in.

But I didn’t come to Oita just for the fun. I also have to an internship here, I went to the company today and the people there were ever so friendly. Driving me to my host family. Which was a good thing because the suitcase I was carrying with me is just way to heavy. On the way to my host family we realized we had some time to spare, and as I had told them I wanted to climb a mountain in Oita, we decided to drive up the first mountain we saw. That was to fun I think I had my mouth open most of the time hehe, mountains are still a weird thing to me. The view from the mountain was really nice all the little lights made it a beautiful sight. 

After this I went to my host family, the people are very friendly, but I don’t really know if I want to stay here for four months. After living by myself for about 3 years now I kind of really like it and am considering finding an apartment somewhere closer to work and on my own. The kids of the family are all very nice the smallest one really enjoys my Nintendo DS and I watched Music Station with the daughter hehe(Matsujun was on!). Oita looks like a lot of fun, there is so much stuff I want to do so I made a list with things so I don’t forget. Once again I will try to update more.

(wrote this on saturday, pictures might come later if I feel like it!hehehe)

I am fun over here, living a lot more healthy then I was a couple of weeks ago, cooking my own food and using vegetables and stuff haha. Been doing a lot of working out and playing football. For some reason I have not been sleeping well at all in Japan. No matter how tired I am I always wake up at 5 o’clock in the morning which is just awful. I do manage to go back to sleep but it just messes with me.

Anyway this is it for now. Expect a bigger post soon.

Current mood: Tired but feeling good
Music : Reflection Eternal ofcourse…

We visited Kamakura on a nice Sunday. This is an area near Tokyo where they have accumulated a big number of shrines. The day started out with us all gathering at Machida station.

On arriving at kamakura we were greeted by our guides for the day. They were very friendly and properly guided us through the entire day. The first thing we witnessed was what seemed a simple road. But the road was build by the shogun to pray for the safe delivery of his first son. The road is special because it is very wide at the end and small at the beginning. This makes it possible to see down the entire road without much trouble.

At the beginning of the road, here is a huge Shinto temple. At this temple we purified ourselves and saw a 1000 year old tree that unfortunately fell over about a month before we got there. Still the temple itself was impressive especially the approach. It sits up top of a hill which makes it look even bigger than it is.

After seeing this nice temple we went to see 大仏(DaiButsu, Big Buddha), which really is big. This really impressed me especially after realizing that there used to be a temple surrounding him which got destroyed in a tsunami. We got to enter him and see how they constructed this big Buddha. With the help of a wooden frame they were able to make this big bronze Buddha in the 13th century.

After that we went on to see the Hase Dera, which is a very nice looking temple.  With a nice cave with a lot Buddhist gods which all stood for things like doing well in love and financial fortune.

Random Observation; In Japan it is either dry, or it rains all day