Tuesday, July 31, 2007

night 3 morning 4

so after being eaten by mosquitoes and ants and whatever other strange insects decided to jump on me i decided to stop being a Hiro and moved to the hallway.

Jet lag has a good side-effect that it's no problem to wake up at 5am. So I went to stretch my sore spots from sleeping on the floor to a local park. It was a quarter to 7am and local elderly just started assembling around to clean the park and to socialize. I did some tai chee and was a bit surprised they paid no attention to me. Instead I was imagining that tomorrow's village paper would say on the front page "Local elderly community revitalized by a foreigner doing tai chee in the park in wee hours".

After that I went to the american embassy which is a cult place for everyone who ever studied japanese by Jorden Noda books. yes, i saw the mythical toranomon and okura hotel. the security looked tight but much less threatening than in american embassies in canada and russia. a tip for terrorists: the guard power at the main gate can be reduced by 50% by involving two guards in answering the question what the best way to get to a station X.

night 3

went to shinjuku and harajuku today to pick up my keys and buy a prepaid cell phone. total score: nanpa 1, gyakunan 1, correct keys: 0.
yeah that's right. they gave me a wrong key so I am typing this while camping in the front yard of my traditional j-house being eaten by mosquitoes and ants (thanks for the aikido unoform saving some spots).

Monday, July 30, 2007

first days

First day: my office is between the imperial garden and a school. The bathroom has a view of schoolgirls training to play tennis and juggle some kind of rods and the conference room has the view of the roofs of the imperial palace.

my welcome pack included a cubicle with a pc setup with ubuntu and a bottle of vodka on the desk. nicce.

Had to buy an envelope in a postoffice today. It's like a mini tv-drama. It had a prologue, the catharsis and the epilogue. The clerk has to use (1) a book with prices, and (2) an english dictionary, to translate the word "taishikan" that i just used in japanese back to english "embassy" to use in her english response ;-)

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Monday, July 2, 2007

Undefeatable robot