Friday, September 30, 2005

First Pass at Tokyo

Since I just got back from a long week vacation filled with temples and shrines, I wasnt ready to start sight seeing of traditional Japanese stuff just yet. But I decided to start tackling Tokyo's major city spots.

I started with
Shibuya. Shibuya is this one of the many GIANT shopping/nightlife areas that contains tons of department stores, restaurants and the world's busiest Starbucks. It also contains one of Tokyo's busiest nightlifes. It remains busy until the last train at midnight everyday. It was actually kinda difficult to shop for men's clothing. In all the department stores Ive been to, there are like 6 floors of women's wear and 1 of men's. I'm not complaining cause I'm not a big fan of shopping and I cant afford the department store stuff anyways. It also has a huge HMV with different floors devoted to different genres of music. There were actually a classical music floor and a jazz music floor. It was quite exciting to find a floor devoted to my all time fav music genre. I spent almost an hour there just sampling and listening to Japanese-made jazz music.

Shibuya
Festival passing by the streets in Shibuya
A shot of the Shibuya main intersection from the worlds busiest Starbucks

So during Ana's birthday, I took Ana out to a restaurant in Shibuya called Alcatraz (named after the famous high-security prison in San Francisco) located in some basement. The elevator down was uniquely designed like the Tower of Terror in Disney World. It was a very Halloweenish restaurant. Its basically this jail and evil/mad/psycho-doctor themed restaurant where when you enter, the hostess and the waitresses, dressed as nurses, handcuffs you and leads you to your jailcell. Throughout our meal they put on many acts, like mad doctors running around, sirens, speakers broadcasting creepy messages, etc... At one point this mad doctor with a clownmask came running toward our table with two dildos in his hands. It startled Ana.. hahahaha. The food was kinda questionable.. warm caesar salad made of cabbage??? hmmmm... yeah... In reality, only the Japanese could do such perky restaurants like this.
Alcatraz theme restaurant for Ana's birthday

During the last weekend I went to the Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art where there was an Egyptian exibition that was brought over from the L'ouvre in Paris. The exibition was in French and Japanese so I had to rely on my French to actually understand stuff. hahahaha. But overall it wasnt too exciting cause we see a lot of this stuff in museums in Canada so it doesnt wow me at all.. The Japanese seemed to be wowed and amaze with it... well they get wowed by a lot of things.. hahahaah. I went to other parts of the museum with neat paintings and sculptures. I really enjoyed it. But sadly I got sick by the time I left. I felt a cold coming on.

Tokyo Metropolitan Museum of Art


Monday, September 19, 2005

Exploring Yokohama

Since I actually live in Yokohama, I decided to explore it first before Tokyo. The day after the Radwimps concert, Tsuji took me to the area around Yokohama station. The Yokohama area is absolutely GORGEOUS. Yokohama has one of the largest ports in Japan, so it has a stunning harbour front. So Tsuji and I went up the Yokohama Landmark Tower (a skyscraper). It has the fastest elevator in Japan (750 m/min) with an amazing 360 degree view of the city from up top. On a good day you can even see Fuji mountain from afar. Of course its not as tall as the CN Tower, but the Japanese landscape is much nicer to look at.
Yokohama Landmark Tower
View of Yokohama city from The Yokohama Landmark Tower (taken with my horrible cellphone camera)


Yokohama station shopping centre

So a week later, I decided to go explore Yokohama on my own. I really didnt know what to do so I just randomly explored. Then I found the Motomachi shopping street. It was quite amazing. A ton of name brand stores. And of course my fav, the Gap and the Japanese version of the Gap, UNI-QLO. But I didnt spend too much time shopping. I had two goals, buy new running shoes and replace my earring that finally broke after so much travelling. Afterward, I stumbled onto Yamashita Park. It had an absolutely breathtaking and romanting boardwalk along the Yokohama port waterfront. The buildings had a European taste to them so it gave this part of town a bit of a flare. Considering it is a historical port city, Im not surprised at its European influence. At the end of this breath taking walk takes you to Yokohama Chinatown, the biggest Chinatown in Japan. All my Japanese collegues tell me how Chinatown is sooo cool. I went and I was like meh... whatever... basically it was filled with overpriced food and stuff I can get back at home in Toronto or Taiwan for like a tenth of the price. For example a small dish of noodles costs 1200 yen ($12 US). I can get the same thing in Toronto for $5 Canadian. So I spent like a total of 10 minutes in Chinatown. hahahaha.

Yokohama Chinatown
Motomachi shopping street
Harbour front Yokohama



Red Brick Warehouses now transformed into cool little shops and cafes
Chinatown after dark
Overall Yokohama is a stunning city. Has a lot of character. If I were to move to Japan, I would defintely live here in Yokohama. There arent much more interesting areas of Yokohama other than here, so basically I'm done exploring Yokohama. But I will defintely come back to enjoy the relaxing atmosphere.

Sunday, September 11, 2005

Federal Election... Japanese style

So today was the infamous Japanese federal elections. Coincentally its held on the same day as the 9/11 anniversary. Well, for those of you who don't already know, this election was called because the lower house in the Japanese legislature rejected Prime Minister Junchiro Koizumi's proposal to privatize the postal system here in Japan. Since he had a majority government, some members of his own party had to rebel and dissent and vote against it in order for it to have failed. Koizumi said screw all of you and called an election. He and his Liberal-Democratic party (the right of center party here in Japan) coalition with a few other parties ended up winning an even larger majority taking almost 3/4 of the lower house eating away at some seats of the main opposition party the Social Democratic party (the left of center party). So he basically can do whatever he wants now. This election victory gave Koizumi sweet revengean and an excuse to tell his dissenters and opposition "I told you so.. dont mess with me". HAHAHAHA.

And the political junky that I am, I stayed up almost all night watching the election coverage. It was quite exciting.

Liberal-Democratic Party campaign poster featuring Prime Minister Junchiro Koizumi

Election coverage early on in the night with the two major party leaders on LCD screens. you can see the Liberal Democrats are already kicking ass.
Social Democratic Party Leader, Shakai Minshuto (the main opposition leader)
Some third party leader who was in a coalition with Koizumis LDP
Koizumi marking down at party headquarters the winner of a certain riding

Saturday, September 10, 2005

Radwimps Concert

On September 3rd, during the first weekend in Tokyo/Yokohama, Hamada (one of the two company freshman who lives with me at the dorm), Matsuzaki (one of the two females on the ITS team with me) and Tsuji (another co-worker from Nippon-Koei but different department) took me to a concert of a punk-rock band called The Radwimps in downtown Yokohama. The name at first sounded really corny but it grew on me.
The Radwimps (www.radwimps.jp)
Their new album: "Radwimps 2"

Before going to the concert Hamada lent me his Radwimps CD "Radwimps 2" their latest album. I was totally expecting something really cheesy but it ended up being really awesome. And when we actually went and saw them live at the concert, they were even more awesome. They sounded soooo good live. Rarely do bands or singers sound better live than they do on recordings. All the girls in the crowd were yelling "AKIRA!!!" (Akira is the lead singer of the Radwimps).
Hamada and I at the Radwimps concert
The mood of the crowd in the concert was extremely calm considering it was a hit punk rock band. There was a balcony where people were actually seated. Matsuzaki and Tsuji were seated up in the balcony. They had VIP passes of some sort. The bottom level were might as well have been sitting. They were all standing without any movement whatsoever even during the hit songs. Then you had the front of the bottom level where people were bobbing their heads and bouncing up down. There was only a tiny tiny mosh pit near centre stage (consisted of like 5 people hahahahaha). The craziness of rock concerts don't compare to the ones in Canada at all. I almost got my head knocked off two summers ago during the Finger Eleven concert in Waterloo with Shruthi. Then we all went for dinner. They treated me again cause they knew I was a poor student who cant afford extremely expensive meals.

Workterm at Nippon Koei

So I started work the day after I moved into the dormitory. Work in the first week was slow but really interesting. I am in the "Intelligent Transport Systems" (ITS) team at Nippon Koei. Basically my team provides engineering consulting for technology to improve in areas of transportation and transit. An example of a system is the "otaske keitai" which is basically a cellular phone/GPS system that is used to help senior and handicap citizens. If a senior/handicap individual needed help, all they would have to do is request for help through their mobile phone and the system will find in a database any other semeritans nearby whom are willing to help. Another one is the landslide prevention/notification system. If there are any landslide activities along a road, the system will detect it and inform drivers through display signs. These are just two of the many projects going on in our team. Fujitaka, whom is a former student of Kita-sensei (prof. Kita) from Tottori University, is my direct supervisor and one of the two managers of the team. Hamanaka is the other manager. Hamanaka is a complete riot. Hes one of those guys that joke around all the time and can really brighten up a room. Sitting next to me is Mochizuki. Basically my boss tells me to help Mochizuki with any work he has. And the rest of the ITS team include Matsuzaki (who took me to lunch the first day, shes amazing), Ishikawa, Takaishi, Suzuki, Aoki and Kuroda. Everyones really cool and theyre all relatively young (mid 20s to mid 30s).

My name tag

Work has been interesting. to get familiar with the projects, Fujitaka told me to write some comment-based reports about them and provide my ideas about the projects. He told me write them in Japanese, so it took twice as long for me to write these reports. But it turned out alright. He also got me started on GIS (Geographical Information Systems) training using ArcGIS software. I'm glad to be learning some new skills. Mochizuki frequently goes on business trips to Southeast Asia to do experiments with probe-vehicles and traffic management systems. So he has brought back a shit load of data for me to dissect and analyse.

So basically every lunch hour I go out to lunch with the men of my team. I two females, Matsuzaki and Kuroda, stay behind and eat with the rest of the females in the department/floor.

Okay so heres where I start ranting about a part of Japanese culture that ticks me off: the gender inequality. Its completely absurd. I thought it was bad in Japanese households, but its even crazier in the office setting. In Japanese culture when you go on business trips, you are suppose to bring back little treats for your coworkers. So from what I have observed, the men come back with the treats and they tell fellow female coworkers (of the same rank and status) to pass them out for them. Its completely stupid, just get up off your ass and pass them out yourself for heaven's sake. And, when the men need to photocopy stuff or fetch coffee for meetings they ask the women to do it for them too.

Anyways, my team went out for welcome dinner for me. It was a hoot. They were teaching me Japanese drinking games and I was teaching them the Western/Canadian ones. A lot of them are very similiar.... well they're universal so I wasnt surprised the Japanese play them as well. They kept asking me what I enjoy eating. And I told them, as I tell everybody, that I basically eat everything or am willing to try anything new. So they kept ordering these Japanese delicacies that usual foreigners would squeal about and I just kept eating them. They were shocked. Near the end of the party, Ishikawa started falling asleep. So we were decorating him with food that wasnt eaten.. hahahaha. They're all such a fun crowd.


Mochizuki (top) and Hamanaka (bottom left) pulling a prank on Ishikawa (bottom right) after he dozed off
Suzuki, Mochizuki, and Kuroda (from left to right)

Myself, Takaishi, Suzuki and Mochizuki