The bare-bare thing

 

I’m not talking about the music I listen in the train (which helps me wake up) but the fact is that they play some music at work in the morning. My work isn’t supposed to start until 8:30 but I usually arrive at 8:15. By that time all the office is dark and there are already some sleepy people clicking the keyboard keys.

At about 8:10 some relaxing melody begins. It has a combination of faint classical music with some bird sounds.

Once this song finishes it is exercise time! So another funny music starts and some guy gives instructions about exercises. Fortunately you don’t have to do exercise, it depends on how much group pressure is applied on you. I my case no one in my two teams takes exercise, so it is ok for me. But poor Gerardo is in a very sporty team. They are the only ones in all the big office who actually do some exercise so he has to follow them. It is usually very stupid, some stretching and upper body worm-up. I must take them a video but I think I am not supposed to do so.

When it finishes the Omron Song begins (I don’t really know if it’s the Omron Song but Nan is pretty sure). It is like some kind of hymn, a strong voice is singing proudly and some chorus accompany it. Trumpets and drums marc the melody and when it finishes another melody begins. This new melody hasn’t got any lyrics and it reminds me of some military song. It is plaid by flutes and drums and when it reaches its climax a whole orchestra joins it. Everyone knows this melody and when they can sense that the end is coming they all leave what they are doing and stand up ready for the “bare-bare” thing.

The “bare-bare” thing is a kind of ritual they have to start working. They all stand up and look at the boss in one side of the room. Then from the speakers it comes a voice that says some phrase and then everybody repeats it. After three phrases the spokesman says “IIO!” and everybody bows and we can finally start working. People usually mutter those phrases (even so no one is completely silent) but especially my college, Okuda-san shouts. It seems that he really feels it. I don’t know exactly what they say but they say something like “working today for a better tomorrow”. Again, say hello to Big Brother…

They have this “Ware-Ware” ritual every single day except for Friday. I was quite surprised because on Friday no one was getting up (but me). The reason they gave me is that it is a way to break the routine and prepare for the weekend. They are so simple!

Trip to kill monotony…

Today they took us to the working part of the factory. I usually work in the office or else in the laboratory, but today they took us to visit the manufacturing building. Here I could see how precise and methodical they are, I knew already, but I was still shocked.

The first thing is how clean they are. When you enter the factory you should take out your shoes and wear some kind of sandals. You should step on some sticky (and quite dangerous) layer on the floor to clean the dust from your sandals (even if you know they are clean). Then you go to some machine which measures your static electricity (yes, really) and tells you if you are able to enter. Depending on your clothes you might not be able to enter and you should change them (or take them out). And then they have a weird sandal cleaning machine: you should step on some grill and a brush will brush your sandals, also applying some water. Then you step out to some other platform to dry. They do this often if they think they have their sandals dirty.

Then there is also their working approach. They must have some kind of license to work in different departments. There is a big board where all the employees’ names are displayed in their license group. After that there are some hanging papers where each worker evaluates his workday and writes a “mark” up to five. I took a quick look at the marks and all the numbers were 3 or 4, not many fives. This is funny because they always do overwork like 3 or 4 hours, so I suppose that if they wrote 5 it means they worked until morning or something like that. Then there is another big board with photos of some employees. They told us that it is the prize for a good job, some kind of “employee of the month” but prizing them for good or hard work. We asked if they have some kind of economical reward but they told us that “being on the board is enough”. I guess it’s enough for their pride.

The last funny thing I saw was that on the corridor they have a machine that measures your pace. They encourage people to actually walk faster to improve productivity. You should get a walking speed of 100 (I suppose it is a percentage). My Chinese friend tried first, he walked normally, a bit faster than usual maybe and he got a poor 75%. Then they told me to try. I usually have a fast pace and I used this “happy day average speed” (and trust me, I was happy that day), I didn’t want to cheat and walk faster on purpose. I got a 90% (quite good though), so imagine how fast they have to walk with those tiny little legs of theirs. Then Gerardo tried… I think I have told you about his speed many times… now was the time to prove it! He got a hilarious 46%. Then the machine did something (as though it couldn’t believe a human being could be so slow) and changed the value to 75%; there is a proof that machines also have feelings.

Playing with businessmen

Today I missed my train to work. It wasn’t too bad because I always have this backup train I can take, but then I should walk faster on my way from station to the factory. So I pulled up my sleeves, set up my i-Pod with quick music and rushed taking over the slow businessmen that don’t need to worry about being late because they are probably managers.

I was walking taking advantage of my long legs when I noticed that there was a fast businessman in front of me. He was moving quite fast even though he was quite small and skinny (and I’m the one who’s saying it).

Over his bald head he was wearing these big headphones, and that seemed to be the source of his energy. He was holding a big black suitcase, like the ones mafia men usually tie with handcuffs. I had him a few meters ahead and was striving to catch him. 

We reached the fifteen meter slope we always have to climb and he was still on the lead. The surprising thing is that while going up this slope I noticed that he was walking on the small floor bricks that are on the edge of the pavement. This was more dangerous than what it seems since just in the edge of these bricks there is a canal for the water all along the pavement, so if he missed he would at least get wet or twist an ankle.

 The bastard was challenging me… like boasting for his leadership. That was too much for my Basque pride ：－）

So I decided to take action. It would be fun to play with this sneaky little Japanese on my way to boring work. Just before this slope I used my gai-jin invulnerability to make a shortcut walking on the road and taking over him, for which I had to boost while going up (tiring). So I started walking just in front of him (since I knew that he was walking on those sidewalk bricks) and started lowering my pace. On the one hand I was tired by taking over him and walking up, but the truth is that I just wanted to see what he’d do in that situation. I could feel him coming close to me, just behind me. I was just on his way and I was lowering down his rhythm; I could feel his frustration growing. I knew he wasn’t going to push me or anything, come on, he’s Japanese. The only solution would be to get off the sidewalk bricks and take me over. But he didn’t it seemed that I wan the first round.

Then we got to the top of the slope and I perfectly knew that he’d try to leave me behind so I turned to overdrive and rushed. He followed me closely but as we were walking on a narrow bridge, doing “slalom” amongst slower businessmen I didn’t leave him any space. Oh yes! Second round seems to be mine.

When we got out of the bridge he used a special technique: he actually started jogging! I don’t know if it was fair… I would’ve waved him the black flag. Fortunately there were two schoolgirls five meters ahead who would lower his pace again. He reached the slope down and started strolling forward swinging his suitcase dangerously. This was my opportunity, since I have longer step and can take more than one stair at the same time. But when I was approaching him again he hopped and started jogging down. Quite dangerous again since this way is usually quite slippery but he didn’t fall (unfortunately).

Oh, he had cheated twice. I finally gave up. I was already sweating before even starting to work so I decided to take it easy. I could follow him with my stare, dodging businessmen few meters away. Suddenly he started stretching his arms and swinging them while he was walking. Then he started walking lifting up his knees too much. And in the end, in the last street we have to walk before getting to the factory, he was walking with exaggeratingly big strolls. I think he wanted to get the Guinnes record for walking along that street using the least steps. It was so funny because no one seemed to care. That is a good thing about Japan, no matter what you do, no one cares or no one would look at you in a weird way.

I might miss my train on purpose tomorrow… I’d like to take the second round…

Right hemisphere day…

Click the link and skip to the minute 2:10.

Today was going to be another boring day. The thrill of working in a new exciting project had been left behind like the rushing business men trying to catch the last train. I was in the wagon listening to music looking forward to passing this Friday as quick as possible to enjoy my two-day vacation. At this point I realized that it was quite sad that the only entertaining thing I had in my mind was the will to accelerate time until work ended, so I tried and focused to think in some good memories. Standing in that rocking train amongst silent strangers I closed my eyes and teleported my mind back in time. “Will this be a normal boring day or should I make it one of those days? I was about to open Pandora ’s Box…

I was isolated completely from the surrounding environment. My sunglasses and my untidy hanging hair masqued my giggly expression. My i-Pod whispered me in the ear as suggesting me situations to think of. I could notice the thin bliss of the air conditioner waving my hair and making it tickle my cheeks. This was the prelude, the ritual I needed to boost my right hemisphere of the brain and have a creative, artistic and imaginary day.

In these kind of days some thought may crawl into my mind and cling there like a louse. Sometimes it is really pleasant because I might be thinking of a story or cool scene that I might develop. I have had these kind of days lately and I usually released my dream-creature by writing it in my laptop.

But unfortunately today this soft melody came to my mind, it reminded me of the times when I was on holidays this summer. I recalled this precious moments that might pass imperceptible and seem not very transcendental at that time, but when I look back now they seem to be worth a Lifetime. Why oh why did you Pink Floyd have to make such stupid yet such profound songs?

I remembered my friends, going out with them, with no other worry than having a nice time. No pressure for studies since we were on holidays. The only think we had to work at was managing our time before we had to go back to class again. Time seem to stand idle like a painting, seeming as though we had just finished that course, and then, one day comes when you realize that you have to count your few left weekends before having to buy the books again. No one told you when to run… you missed the stating gun…

These sad and depressing thoughts are following me during all the day like that sticky smell of soy sauce always accompany Japanese food. Fortunately today’s work didn’t require much concentration and I could afford having one of these melancholic days with my stare lost and using the 90% of my brain resources in these bitter memories.

When I thought I had had enough I tried to take them out of my mind and focus more on my work, but it was impossible. As I said I had opened Pandora’s Box and now I couldn’t close it. I decided to give a try to my method of transferring my thoughts to physical terms. So I starting writing this post hoping to ease my pain. Do I feel homesick? No, that cannot be me. I made this to myself so I guess that doesn’t mean that I feel homesick but that I have made myself feel this way, like a Ninja controls his feelings (yeah, this definitely sounds cooler).

When it was lunchtime I joined my friends and for the first time on this day I laughed. This made me remember that there is no point on wasting time thinking about those past moments, it only makes you waste more. Now I have to concentrate on my friends here, because I will only see them for a few more weeks.

The time is gone, the song is over, thought I’d something more to say…

Japanese talking manners v1.0.exe

I had to learn to speak to Japanese people. I think that now I have a quite good level at it but still I find it quite hard sometimes. I am not talking about their level of English now, but about our cultural differences.

Usually when I am travelling to a foreign country I try to open my mind to a new way of talking, like in Rome. I become more understanding and think twice before taking any weird conclusion about something they might have said to me. For instance I avoid making jokes of people. Usually I would say something funny about the person I am with, trying not to hurt his feelings and smiling so that he knows I am joking. But not here, unless I know the person very well I try not to joke about them and direct those jokes to me instead. But then I obtain the opposite effect and instead of them laughing about my joke they try to console me. For instance if I tell them some stupid situation they would laugh but then they would tell something like “don’t worry, that’s normal, you are not so stupid” or something like that.

I am also avoiding boasting (it’s really tough for me you know that). Unless I am with my close friends I never boast. Instead I get a more submissive position and say “thank you, I feel flattered” even if they don’t understand what I am saying (I bow to make my point more clear). My Chinese friend is really surprised of how I always boast with him, I think that by now he is getting that I am not really serious about it (or am I?).

One thing I noticed during my first days about Japanese people is that they can’t say “No”. Every time you ask them if it would be proper if you did something and if they think it wouldn’t, they don’t tell you “No”. It is a cultural matter, in their own language they would go around and around and in the end you could reach the conclusion that they mean “No”. But they can’t do that in English because they don’t have such level so I usually have quite funny situations…

For instance the other day in Osaka we took this boat trip (I told you). As there wasn’t anything interesting in the outside to take photos I thought that I could take one to all of us. We were all sitting in some tables and it would be great to have taken a photo now that we were all in the same place. So before taking action I thought it would be more polite if I asked one of the Japanese that came with us if it would be ok if I got up in the boat to take a picture. Suddenly his face changed looked down, touched his chin and started grunting… he just couldn’t find the words! I was getting nervous; “Come on it’s a yes/no question!”. I tried to test him and pushed him a bit more repeating the question. In the end he was overwhelmed and he had to fight with his internal cultural morals and answered “I don’t zink so”. It’s really funny when they do this because they smile, they tilt their head slightly to the left and show you their open hand as though they were afraid if you were going to strike them back.

Another thing they cannot say is “I don’t know”. I suppose that saying this would mean for them like a failure, something dishonourable. My workmate Okuda-san showed me the laser cutting machine. It was so amazing, and as I am an engineer (have it in my blood) I can’t avoid asking questions. I asked him some things and at first he didn’t seem to have understood them. It could also be that he didn’t know the answer but as he didn’t tell me he didn’t know I persisted. If he told me he didn’t know I would just let it be, that’s ok, but as he seemed not to have understood my question I still continued asking. In the end (after 5 minutes of muttering) he produced his mobile phone an started clicking some buttons. I asked him what he was doing and told me that he was going to look for some laser engineer. So I realized he didn’t have a clue but that still he was trying to answer me even if it would mean waking up the president of Japan. I feel all this very dignifying, but come on, it is not practical.

The way they show if they understand is very funny. When you are talking to some Japanese guy, no matter how fast you speak that he will always nod (sometimes mutter) and look very interested in what you say. But then comes the time when you reach the end of your reasoning and ask a question. So at this point they can either remain silent as though you didn’t finish or either say “yes”. Either ways they haven’t understood a word of what you’ve said. So eventually you learn that at the end of your reasoning you shouldn’t ask “is it correct?” or “Do you think that’s ok?” because if their answer is “Yes” you are never sure if they really meant it. So lately I have improved my skill and I ask “what do you think about this?” instead. There is no way of dodging that one >:]

Then there’s also the negative question stuff. So when you ask them some question in a negative way their answer is the opposite of what you understand. So if you ask them “I shouldn’t I do it?” and if their answer is “Yes” then you have a problem. Because if they say “yes” they mean “Yes, that’s correct, you SHOULDN’T do it. This is a tough topic to me because I often use this type of negative questions and you can really get into trouble since you understand just the opposite of what they mean. I always have this problem with Nan the Chinese guy, since their grammar is similar and commit the same “mistake”. At least we can easily understand each other and we explain what we mean, so it is ok. My most common phrase with him is “Yes what? Yes-yes or yes-no?“.

And finally we reach the last straw! Happens really often to me that I ask my colleges at work a question with two possibilities: “do I do this OR that?”.  And their answer is “Yes” !!! I don’t know what they mean with this; if they don’t understand the question, if I can do either of them, if I can do the second thing… Really complicated… at least I am working my patience… I think that when I come back I will talk in English more with my mom and won’t mind so much her talking speed.

Welcome Party!!!

It was my first day at work. I am referring to the fist day I came to Kusatsu, my definite workplace, not the first day I worked since I doubt you can call what I did “working”. I met my official trainer, Minobe-san, a smilly but serious looking guy. He explained very very briefly what I was going to do during my internship (briefly meaning “not very deeply”, not meaning “shortly” since their average talking speed is 4 words per minute). He told me to brose in the internet the topics I was going to touch during my work so that I would know something about it at least (I think that it was just to keep me busy). So I had a quite boring wikipedia-day.

When the day finished the new trainees’ trainers took us to have dinner. “Welcome dinner” they called it. So the three trainers, 2 colleges of them and three of us (the trainees) went to a restaurant 10 minutes far from the factory. It was one of those typical Japanese restaurants I have told you before, and their speciality is “okunomiyaki” (or something like that), which is some kind of omelette, basically beaten egg with anything you can imagine in (better not to ask what was actually in).

So we ordered beer. It was Tuesday but I thought I coul manage just one beer, why not, after all I was drinking with my boss and as long as I didn’t drink more than him I would be safe. Well that wouldn’t be a problem for me since by the time I had my second sip he was ordering a new beer pitcher! So the atmosphere calmed down and we passed from having a boss-employee relation to some more friendly one.

I was enjoying the dinner and he was enjoying the beer and the more he drank the more fluent our conversation became. This doesn’t mean that he spoke a better English, but when he couldn’t find the word he needed he just said it in Japanese, so we understood each other just as usual but at least wasting less time. No matter what you said that they would burst into laughter, you could even talk about the extinguishing races in the world that they would nod and laugh.

When we were talking to some other trainees some days ago they told us that they always do it: when they are drinking they always have to talk about women. The key question they always do is “how do you like Japanese girls?” in the beginning is a bit shocking because you think… what the hell do you mean with “how”? And of course even if we were three new trainees there, they had to ask that question to ME first. “Do you like “pretty” or “beautiful”?” I was more and more confused… I was about to go 50% when my Mexican friend Gerardo helped me and told me that with “beautiful” they meant “hot”. As you can see they don’t think in any other thing.

By the end of the dinner (I was going to write “the end of the night” but it was only nine o’clock or so) my trainer and the others were quite drunk. Well, specially my trainer. We said goodbye and headed home to sleep and be ready for the next day. I doubted if Minobe-san would make it at half past eight the next morning… but he did it! I couldn’t notice much tiredness on him; he must be used to it. The funny thing is that after a few minutes he told me that that night we would have our “Welcome Party”, it seemed that he didn’t have enough.

This “Welcome Party” was bigger than the previous one. We were about 20 people having dinner in the restaurant. This time a new trainee joined us (Adam from Poland) and despite I wanted to sit next to some good English speaking people, they made me sit next to some complete estrangers. I exchanged a few words with them and I was surprised that their English was better than what I expected (not good enough though). Then the atmosphere heated up. They brought sake apart from the beer and they made several cheers or “Kanpai!” as they say here. I was prudent and didn’t try the sake since my mom told me it was “dangerous” (I start to speak like Forest Gump). But my friends fell into the temptation and finished making a drinking contest between Mexico and Poland (obviously the Polish won by far) (hey, they have to win something sometime or another!).

The thing was that on the other table there were the foreigners talking in English and having fun and I was stuck with those estrangers exchanging not more than five-word phrases. In the end I saw that there was some free place in the other table and swapped. I don’t know if they would have found this a bit rude or anything. This wouldn’t usually bother me except for the fact that I eventually learned that those guys of my first table were some of the Omron’s big bosses. Ooops…

Anyways, this night was much more intense than the previous one, there was much more alcohol than on the previous one (I don’t know how many pitchers of sake they drunk) and we went home much latter than in the previous one. When we got out of the restaurant we realized how drunk my trainer was. He couldn’t take that stupid drunken grim out of his face. I was about to ask someone if they would help him home when he approached a bicycle… It resulted that he lived an hour by bicycle from there and he came riding it so he would have to take it. Not only this, but also he climbed ON the bicycle and tried to ride it. It was so scary! You could see his body trembling and rocking while he was riding forward and at the same time looking back waving us goodbye and laughing. You could see his front wheel perpendicular to his moving direction, making big S on his trajectory. I followed him with my eyes fearing for his life (at least there weren’t many cars at that time) and just before I was going to loose the view angle he bumped against a big street flower vase. He laughed back and continued his way. If I had been a believer I would have prayed for him to get home safe and sound.

He told me he was married, and I can imagine how he must come home in the evenings. He reminded me to Sinchan’s father and Nobita’s father and now I understand that in those series it was quite normal for the family man to get home drunk.

The next day he was late… and had a terrible face, he is human after all.

Lunch time Kids!

I usually take a big breakfast before coming to work. It is not really a very BIG one but at least I eat until I am full. But as always happens working boredom makes you hungry, and by 11 o’clock my stomach starts grunting (just like Japanese people when they think). But lucky for me at 11:45 it’s lunch time. You might think it’s too early but for me it is just the perfect time. You can hear a midi-type melody and then everybody gets up and heads to the canteen.

In my factory there are more than 2000 people working, so that the canteen can not hold such a crowd. The solution for this is dividing us in three groups and having different schedule. I’m in the first group and we have 45 minutes until we have to go to work again, time when the next round comes to have lunch.

The food is really good. You enter and you have a kind of display cabinet with some of the day main dishes inside. Behind those dishes there is a logo of one “restaurant” so once you have chosen the dish you take a tray and wait in the queue for the food. There are several lines from where to take the dishes (one for each “restaurant”), something like in the airports. You can take whatever you want, apart from the main dishes there are also side dishes. Every dish has a sign with its name, prize, weight and even energetic amount.

Once you have your food you head to the cutlery and drink zone. Here you take your chopsticks (or fork and knife for the clumsy gai-jins) and your glass (I always take 2 glasses because I hate having to get up to refill it). There’s free hot and cold green tea to drink, as everywhere.

Then you take a place with your colleges and start eating. By the time I sit my friend Nan has almost finished his meal. He is a Chinese eating machine, really fast with the chopsticks (now I understand why in Chinese restaurants they serve you so quickly). I usually sit with my trainee friends and other good English speaking colleges. It is supposed that you can sit wherever you want but everybody has his common place. It’s like at school!

A curious thing is that even if there are female workers (a quarter of the workers I would say), they don’t mix with the guys. You can perfectly see the distinction and the female grouping. Sometimes I feel I am watching an animal documentary. This is something really weird and the reason they gave me is that Japanese guys are very shy…

Once you have finished (or more accurately, once Gerardo the slow Mexican guy has finished) you take your tray and head out. To pay you put your tray in some special table where there is a machine that detects which dishes you have taken and tells you how much you should pay. Then you insert your prepaid card and the prize is discounted. And that’s it. I always eat a lot and never pay more than 700 yen (about 4.3 euros). 

Men/women toilets

 

I went to some IAESTE event on Sunday at my first weekend in Kyoto. It was a good opportunity for meeting other people working here and for visiting Osaka. Almost everybody that came to this event was working for Omron (my company) but not in my same city, in different places.

We went to the aquarium and in the afternoon we went to some nice castle in this city. Really talking it wasn’t a good chance for visiting Osaka since they didn’t take us to the most typical places there, but it was more focused for people that had already visited this city or lived close to it so that they could do something new.

Anyways, people were great! I met lots of people of different nationalities and also some Japanese. I noticed that these Japanese had a very good level of English, and that’s precisely the reason why they get into IAESTE, to improve their English. Only a few of these students were related to technical careers and what’s more, fewer had the intention to travel abroad for an internship.

After a quite crappy boat trip (the idea was ok, but the boat didn’t have good windows so you couldn’t take good photos) we headed to have dinner. It was a typical Japanese restaurant you should eat on the floor with the typical 20cm high table. It looked quite fancy since we had our own small room separated from the rest by thin wooden walls. It is usual for Japanese restaurants to have this kind of more private rooms and can be separated only by some hanging cloth. It gives you a warm feeling of privacy and intimacy and it is much easier to talk without caring of other clients. For this reason Japanese restaurants remind me quite of a labyrinth. No matter how close you are to the exit or how small the place is, it is all small corridors and so you lose your orientation. I have had some trouble while coming back to the table after going to the toilet in places like this.

In these restaurants you should be barefoot. When I entered I took my trainers and took them to a small room with lots of drawers where you should put them. It was quite embarrassing for me to take out my trainers after a hot day of walking, but as everyone was doing the same my smell would be camouflaged… :P

As for the waiter, you usually have a button that you press to call her; we call it the “sumimasen” (excuse me) button. So as soon as you press it the waiter comes and crouches next to you (would never talk to you in a higher level) and after a wide smile and lots of bows, she would bring you what you ordered.

They brought us a lot of food; typical Japanese food. This was my first contact with it… oh my god!!! How I ate! Everything was delicious! It was though nothing could feed me up, usually in Bilbao I get full easily and don’t eat much, but not here! I usually eat double of what I eat back home… and still I’m probably losing weight (don’t worry mom). This is due to their healthy way of cooking. And then again it was not very expensive… now I cannot remember, but I don’t think we paid much more than 1000 yens (6 euros).

I also tried Japanese beer. Better than I expected actually, I didn’t think of Japan as a beer country. And after some beer it was toilet time! So I had this expedition to the toilet… hard to find it; “toire wa doko des ka?” is the magic phrase. But don’t expect a straight answer to that… I will explain Japanese instructions in some other post but just tell you that it’s better to use intuition than other thing. I finally got to some place with two doors one in front of the other, and as it was quite separated from the kitchen I supposed it would be the toilet. But instead of the typical men\women drawings there were some artistic kanjis. So I didn’t know where to enter! I was doubting whether to try one at random、 but I am not a big fan of the 50% of probabilities. So I waited a long time in the middle of the corridor with lots of waiters going past me carrying big beer pitchers (I won’t forget that, I think they were doing it on purpose) until finally someone got out of the men’s toilet. Hurray!

When you enter a toilet in some place you are supposed to be barefoot, you usually have some special toilet flip-flops. That’s quite thoughtful since you’ll never know what you can find in some toilets.

When it was time to go I was talking to my new friends so warmly that I forgot to take my shoes. I was going out barefoot! Not only this, but also I hadn’t notice it, someone had to tell me so. So I said “sorry, hang on” pretty embarrassed and went to the shoe keeping room. And there, and as though it was the most normal thing I reached the shoes and put them without realizing that I was still inside the restaurant. I should have waited until I was in the entrance to put them. Stupid gai-jin…

Gai-jin mode

Back to the first day I was in Kyoto… Once I had left my luggage in the hotel and taken a pleasant hot shower I decided to move my ass out. I wanted to get used to the Japanese schedule and so I shouldn’t go to sleep so early. So I got outside to the Kyoto Station to just walk around. I didn’t even take my camera so imagine how tired I was!

I was walking across the street half asleep and half mesmerized by Japan that it felt like I was in a dream. All narrow-eyed people walking pass me. I seemed to be some kind of alien. I could notice that they were piercing me with their stares for being this tall long haired gai-jin. I felt somehow the main character of the show, an exotic being that was visiting their civilization.

Now I see that being a gai-jin is not so uncommon. Maybe is not so common either, but the thing is that it is really easy to distinguish a gai-jin amongst the crowd. You just have to look for a non black-and-straight hair. And usually gai-jins here speak and help each other. Actually, that very same day while I was coming back to the hotel after my short and tiring walk another gai-jin stopped me in the street. She asked me if I could speak English and if I wanted her one-day bus ticket. I was pretty confused at the moment, I did not want her ticket since I didn’t know how it worked and wasn’t on the mood for taking a bus. She told me she was just leaving for the airport and that she wouldn’t use it again. Since it was my first day here I had my tourist-mode on, so I suspected she wanted to trick me or something, you never know while being abroad (world is tough). But then she smiled at me (as she was reading my mind) and she told me that she would give it to me for free, that I didn’t have to use it if I didn’t want to.

Now I have updated my tourist-mode with the gai-jin mode. Now I can trust all the tourists and Japanese people here since I know that they are really novel and they aren’t going to trick me. Actually it is more probable that a gai-jin would trick them than vice versa.

Kyoto Tower Hotel

I know it´s quite late (it´s already 4 weeks since then) but I want to express what I lived in this hotel before I forget.

Before coming I was quite calm about my trip to Japan. I left the booking of my hotel for almost my last week. My mother was all the time telling me that I should book some hotel and when I finally decided to start browsing for one in the internet she told me that she was going to a travel agency. Whatever…

The thing is that she booked me a room in Kyoto Tower hotel. The reasons were that I should rest properly to kill my jet-lag and that it was close to Kyoto central station so I´d find it easily. I think I already told you the story of my arrival to Kyoto so that I don´t have to repeat it.

When I entered the hotel I was all sweaty and smelly and dragging my luggage, looking like the typical youth hostel tourist. I approached the reception and noticed that the receptionist took a weird glance at me. It seemed that she was thinking “what is that wimp doing here?” . I noticed that she was quite surprised when I told her that I had a room booked there.

The hotel was quite fancy, although the room was really small according to European standards. I didn´t have any place to put my big luggage so I left it in the narrow corridor next to my bed. I had to jump over it every time I wanted to cross the room (there wasn´t any other place to put it really!). The funny thing is that every day I had my room cleaned, so that the cleaning guy must have also jumped over it.

There was something else funny about the cleaning guy and was that every day he changed everything that is usually for free in the hotels. So every day I had new shampoo, soap, and even toothbrush and paste! Something usual here is to have your own yukata in the room waiting for you. The yukata is like some robe for staying at home, very comfortable, in the end it´s a pijamas.

Another thing is that no matter how much toilet paper I used, that he would change the roll. Not only that, but he would perfectly fold the end. Also he had to roll the hair dryer’s cable around it perfectly. I couldn´t help taking a photo. You see that I was quite bored..

The first days I didn´t have much energy to do anything so I asked for internet. They gave me some kind of modem with a LAN cable. I took it up, set it up and looked for the telephone cable to connect it. But there wasn´t any! Before looking stupid back in the reception I remembered that I once read that you could have internet by electricity cable. And it´s like this (not common in all Japan anyways, just in this fancy hotel), I found it really surprising. I suppose that telecommunication engineers might find it common but it seemed to me like some cool Japanese advance.

That´s right the hotel was quite fancy, it was so fancy that it had always a taxi waiting in front of the entrance. Actually it was in the middle of the street occupying a whole lane, interrupting the traffic. But this is Japan, they take it easy!