-¡Capitán! ¡Perdemos altura!
-¡Preparen los torpedos de protones!
Bombaaaaaaaaaaaa!
Éste es el trono del capitán de la nave estelar Toshiba RDC. Está calentito y hasta tiene un chorro de agua que va directo a Tuano. ¿Quién demonios es Tuano? He de confesar que ya no soy virgen, lo he probado y me gusta.
El trono real de Toto-san (o señor Roca, pero aquí todo es de la marca Toto)
Before arriving in Japan I look at the location of my Japanese apartment in Google Earth I found that it was next to this big “park”. Looking at the kanjis that appeared in Yahoo! Maps (
Well, the other day I went there and it was impressive because it was also the first Japanese temple that I visited. It is good to live near to such a beautiful place. You can just walk around these magnificent buildings and forget your troubles (or you can also use it as an excuse to make your friends come to your station to visit you 
).
By exploring some paths I got to this zone. I guess I was not allowed to be here because I had to jump a small fence 
but I think the photo deserves the small risk (a couple of Buddhist monks do not impress very much, do they?).
I entered inside this big building (removing my shoes of course) and went to the souvenirs shop, where I bought some nice cookies. I ate them while drinking some tea (which is for free) and then I decided to explore the rest of the floors. I don’t know if I was allowed to do it, but I did it 
(nobody stopped me because I did not find anyone).
Let me show you this big bell located in a small hill next to the temple. When the new year comes they toll it 108 times, with the purpose of freeing us from 108 terrestrial desires.
You can see some more photos as always in my FlickR account.
Hoy me he puesto a leer frases de Nietzsche y me encantan. El filósofo alemán, no apto para mentes cerradas, ha sido malinterpretado por ignorantes y mentes superficiales. Su poder cayó en malas manos, como lo hizo la energía nuclear. Pero no por ello debemos prescinidir de su sabiduría, más allá del bien y del mal.
“Lo que no me mata, me fortalece.”
“La palabra más soez y la carta más grosera son mejores, son más educadas que el silencio.”
“El hombre, en su orgullo, creó a Dios a su imagen y semejanza.”
“Para llegar a ser sabio, es preciso querer experimentar ciertas vivencias, es decir, meterse en sus fauces. Eso es, ciertamente, muy peligroso; más de un sabio ha sido devorado al hacerlo.”
“Olvida uno su falta después de haberla confesado a otro, pero normalmente el otro no la olvida.”
“¿Es el hombre sólo un fallo de Dios, o Dios sólo un fallo del hombre?”
“El hombre sufre tan terriblemente en el mundo que se ha visto obligado a inventar la risa.”
“Negar a Dios será la única forma de salvar el mundo.”
“La demencia en el individuo es algo raro; en los grupos, en los partidos, en los pueblos, en las épocas, es la regla.”
“Toda convicción es una cárcel.”
“Lo que me preocupa no es que me hayas mentido, sino que, de ahora en adelante, ya no podré creer en ti.”
“La potencia intelectual de un hombre se mide por la dosis de humor que es capaz de utilizar.”
“En el amor siempre hay algo de locura, mas en la locura siempre hay algo de razón.”
“No hay razón para buscar el sufrimiento, pero si éste llega y trata de meterse en tu vida, no temas; míralo a la cara y con la frente bien levantada.”
“Hay que volver a la muchedumbre, su contacto endurece y pule, la soledad ablanda y pudre.”
- Friedrich Nietzsche
Today I will show you my room and I will speak about Toshiba’s dormitories. So please, come in! Doozo ohairi kudasai!
To be honest, I’m very happy with my room and with the dormitories. No so happy with the location, the places is beautiful but a little far away from the metro (15 minutes). However, I’m next to the impressive Buddhist temple of Soji, which I will describe in my next post about my neighborhood (and when I’ll visit it! I just have alien opinions). But without a doubt, the worst thing are my neighbors (not you, Slawek, Zoltán and Björn, and anyone who replies my konnichi wa). They are workers like me, mostly Japanese, that probably their home residence is elsewhere in Japan, but now that there are working for Toshiba, they live here. There are some young people but not the most part of them. C’est pas Paris, mes amis et amies Erasmus, c’est pas Bûres-sur-Yvette, vous me manquez! The rules of the dormitories are also very inconvenient for me: no place for party (non, c’est pas la fête!), not allowed to smoke in your room (smoke detector), no guests from 10pm to 7am and if you don’t enter for a day into the building they call Toshiba (they suppose that you are lost). I don’t like to be controlled, that’s all, but for now these rules does not affect me negatively (I have gone out on weekends and spent all night in Tokyo with the Vulcanus people and nothing happened. Of course that I arrived in the first train so maybe that is ok). Kobayashi-san is the responsible of the accomplishment of these rules. The poor man works every day from 6:30am to 22:00pm (I guess that with pauses) but he is there from Monday to Sunday. He does not seem very friendly but I know that he is a good man, I have made him smile a couple of times (of course he does not speak English).
That were the bad things. Now the good ones! I love my room, every day gets nicer with the small complements that I buy. I always liked the idea of something vulgar or mediocre that turns into something fantastic. Rather than something fantastic that always remains fantastic. That’s my life, I’m just a mediocre person trying improve myself every day, sometimes doing things that maybe were not meant for me, but that I can prove that I’m capable of doing them. Mmmm that reminds me the film Gattaca. Sure I’m not the only person of that kind. Well, back to my room. I show you some photos and this is the link to my FlickR account, where there are some more.
As you can see is not very big but is much better that the one at Paris (la habitación es 10 veces mejor pero ¿¡dónde está mi Pauli, mi Laila, mi Fran, la meua Neus, mi Luisa, mes allemands, tout le monde!?). I have air conditioned, a heater, lot of places to put my staff (wardrobes and shelfs), a bed (not a futon), a desk, a small balcony,… and now I have a fridge! Cold beer forever!
Another important thing is that I have my own bathroom in the room. Is much more comfortable to get a shower in your own bathroom than in one shared by 20 people in the other side of the corridor. And of course, mr. Roca, that here is called Toto-san by what I see in the cistern. But this is a subject that deserves a full post…you will give the reason.
About the small details, I have a very nice but small magma lamp (マクマラムプ). Its movements are very very hypnotics and is something that I have always liked.
Another thing that I have bought are two Mr. Speakers (de caballero), wood imitation (I hate that) but the sound is really good for their price (there where some another ones much more fashion, but more expensive and worse…damn! They were more fashion!)
So this is my workstation!
Finally, I’m in Japan, land of samurai, earthquakes, skirts and sushi (not in that order). The travel by plane was very boring: 14 hours without talking and without almost sleeping is a lot of time. But there were the emotion, the spirit of adventure, the challenge of the unknown, the absolute need of everything going right, the intention of do not remake previous mistakes,… Of course, the last one was impossible to achieve.
Volando voy volando vengo
On the plane they gave everybody a paper which you had to fill with your visa data and some questions like if you have ever been a guilty in your home country or how many money in cash were your wearing in that moment. Entering food is not allowed but they did not find my “bocadillo de jamón” xD.
Once in the airport I called one of my new colleagues in Toshiba (東芝) to tell him that I had arrived to Narita and that I was going to Yokohama (横浜) by bus (I got some coins for the phone call by buying the bus ticket). When I met my new Japanese friend I realized for the first time that I was going to have communication problems in Japan. They do not speak much English but this is normal, they don’t need to (just like in Spain). Everything is in Japanese and there are not a lot of gaijins here at all. In my neighborhood you can stay for days without seeing an occidental guy. And of course, if you have to apply for a bank account or a an Internet connection you’ll have problems. I’ll write a post about Japanese bureaucracy with the kanjis for name, telephone so if someone goes to Japan it may results useful.
Well, my colleague was more hungry than me so, instead of going directly to my dormitory we went to have lunch in a Japanese fast food restaurant next to Tsurumi (鶴見) station (one of those where you select and pay in a machine at the entrance what you are going to eat and then you sit in the bar). I love these restaurants, not for their quality (they are not bad neither!) but for they price and because of the fact that you don’t need to know Japanese. Even if you want to learn it, like me, you will realize that is not like going to England without speaking English; they ask you for things that you have not thought about or you don’t know even that they exist, so the understanding can be difficult. One example is the hanko. In Japan, nobody signs documents, they use the hanko, some kind of seal with your name in katakana handwritten by you. That was one of the first things that I did with the help of my colleague. Like a lot of other things, it would be impossible for me do it alone.
da-ni-e-ru
After some shopping (the dormitory was completely empty) , we went to have dinner in a sushi restaurant very nice in my neighborhood. Such a good sushi! For less than 9€! During the dinner we drunk hot green tea instead of water. I thought it would be awful but I liked a lot the combination of the bitter tea and the sushi.
When we finished, my partner went home and I, instead of going to my dormitory, decided to go Tokyo for a couple of hours (in 30 minutes I can be in the very center). More specifically to Akihabara because I wanted to buy an adapter for the plug of my laptop. Explosion of lights, land of exceeds and consumerisms. Sometimes I feel myself in another world. But other times you look at the people and you see them using the same dressing style that in Europe, having the same expression, laughing in the same way that you do with your friends. In this moments, I feel like if I were inside a dream, being in Europe but with all the people having oriental faces.
There are still lots of things to tell, thousands and thousands, starting from my dormitory (that is on itself a world). But this would be another day!
 ¡Esta guitarra la ha inflado el mismo diablo! |
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Daniel Almendro |
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