Equilibrium Instabilis

Hiking the Fuji-san from the 5th station is easy…but tired. You only have to put one foot after the other one about 500000 times and you are done. In the poster you can see the path to climb it and the way down.

This is something that you should do if you are in Japan in summer. A lot of Japanese people haven’t done it yet though. There are several ways of going to the 5th station. There are direct buses that leave from Shinjuku, or you can also go by train. If you go by train, use your favourite train route finder and use Kawaguchiko as you final station. From there you must take a bus to the 5th station itself.

5th Station

From here you can start hiking following the people. I think it is really really difficult to get lost (I would rather say impossible). About food and water…yes, take some, but you will find lot of spots where you can also buy it. And there is also a “nice” restaurant on the top of the mountain. It will look “nice” once you get there dying of tiredness (and you will)!

Next to the top of the Fuji-san

About the timing…the climbing from 5th station to the top CAN be done in 4 hours by a young man. Of course it can be done faster or slower. For the same person in the way down count 2-3 hours. Normally, people want to see the sun rise from the top of the volcano but you risk of do not see anything after a night of hiking if there are clouds. However, if you are lucky you will enjoy of very nice views of Japan!

Panorama from the Fuji-san

Another panorama from the Fuji-san

Do not forget that the Fuji-san is surrounded by five lakes, and you can take a nice picture of one of them from the 5th station before going back home!

河口湖 (kawaguchiko) or Kawaguchi lake

Last weekend I went skiing with my job partners in Toshiba　東芝. We went to the Rusutsu Resort (ルスツリゾート) in Hokkaido (北海道), the biggest island of Japan (in the North).

This place is next to the Yotei-san mountain (羊蹄山), very similar to the Fuji-san mountain but smaller (2000 m).

The Yotei-san

I really had a good time there, these Japanese people can be very funny, and they are always very very nice with you. The language is still a problem, when they start talking in Japanese between them maybe I could understand barely a 10%-20% of what they said, but I’m already happy with it. I think that three months ago I wouldn’t understand a single word.

They say that Hokkaido has the best sky slopes in Japan… but… I don’t know… for me the ones in Andorra are yet much better (and also they say that the Alps mountains are much better).

There were some foreigners in the slopes but most of the people were Japanese, as in everyplace in this country except of Roppongi. I have a video, skying down a slope that I will try to upload and link here.

After skying, dinner and ofuro time! Wow, the ofuro was so great! A big space with a big pool filled with really hot water. So nice after a cold day in the mountains…

We slept in the cheaper rooms of the hotel, japanase style rooms with tatami and futon (the whole was confortable).

About the food, the first night we had a really funny japanese style dinner with a lot of sushi, tempura, and beer! (Hokkaido is famous for the sushi).

Shinohara-san going towards the rest of the group

Everybody thinks that George Lucas’ Jedi knights are based on samurai warriors, and that their light sabers are similar to katanas. These poor fools have never been in Roppongi, which is a place in Tokyo where the dark side of the Force is very strong… you can feel the evil everywhere! Moreover, it is full of Sith warriors who try to stop you with their red light sabers! (I’m sure that what they really want is to take my rum!)

Aquí estoy yo, con mis cojones por bandera, luchando a muerte con el Sith del consolador luminoso.

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 (総持寺) I realized that it was a temple, not a simple park (and the zone in the bottom-left part is a cemetery, but this is cool! I can walk through a Japanese cemetery every night when I return from Toshiba! Creepy! Et c’est beaucoup mieux que celui d’Orsay).

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.

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!

With the COE in my power (finally) and the ticket for the 29th November, I face my last month in Catalonia, waiting the overflowing river of live to take me out to the other side of the Earth. I remember the day that I received the email with the announcement of the internship in Toshiba, and when I said to myself “What the hell! Let’s try it!”. One month later I got the job and suddenly my life made a 360º change. Everything turned around Japan and my journey. Maybe it was a mistake (someday I will know it), but at that moment I thought that it was time to unbalance the equilibrium of my normal life.

I have developed a Win XP program to help me learning new Japanese vocabulary and kanji. It simply asks randomly words from a text file, but it is being useful for me. If you think that it can be useful for you too, do not hesitate and try it! It is one of the few things that are free in this capitalist world.

http://www.webpersonal.net/ephevos

In the link above there are some others screenshots and the program itself.

乾杯!

Kanpai! is the Japanese expression for Bottoms up! or Toast!. Literally, it means Dry your glass and is very common to hear it more than once during Japanese dinners. There is nothing strange with kanpai… but instead of this expression, in Spain we use to say Chin-Chin! which means dick in Japanese. So it is always funny make a Spanish guy propose a toast in a Japanese enterprise dinner.

Kanpai!

A Correfoc (Run fire!) is very important act in the Festes Majors of Catalonia. Basically, it is a walk through some of the town streets, carrying hundreds of sparklers that spin on the top of long spears, producing thousands of sparks that fall as a rain of fire.

Dance of the Devils

The Diables are the people who take part on them, the ones who dance under the fire with the company of all kind of dragons and fantastic creatures made of papier mâché. A special paint protects the dragons, but what does protect the devils? Well, Correfocs are opened to everyone (if you are in a Festa Major and you find a Correfoc you can put yourself under the fire at you own risk), but it is convenient to wear thick clothes made of cotton, a big hat, and a handkerchief for covering your face.

Catalan Devil

The first reference that we have of a diables group dates from 1150, in Barcelona, during the wedding banquet between Ramon Berenguer IV and Peronella of Aragon. The second one appears three centuries later, in 1423, also in Barcelona during the return of the king Alfons IV the Magnanimous. The first use of pyrotechnics dates from 1437, in Tarragona.

From that dates, devils got extended all along the Catalan Principality, specially in the area of Tarragona, Penedès-Garraf and Priorat. Only during the Franco regime this movement decreased, because of the prohibition of every manifestation of the catalan culture. Nowadays it has been completely restored, and there are hundreds of colles or groups of diables performing Correfocs in every Festa Major.

Diables in Granollers

20 years ago in Granollers, la colla dels Blaus created the first Diables group in the town. Today, the Correfoc followed by the Correaigua (Run water!) are two of the most popular activities of our Festa Major.

温泉

An onsen is a public bath with natural hot spring water, and its history and etiquette are closely related to the sento (communal bath house) . The essential difference between an onsen and a sento is that the water in an onsen must be volcanic spring in origin, even if reheated, whereas a sento may use ordinary heated water. The onsen plays an important role in Japanese culture, providing socially institutionalised relief from the pressures of the contemporary Japanese twelve-hour work ethic and a chance for Japanese to break down the hierarchal nature of society through the mutual nakedness of skinship. Essentially, the onsen should be the diametric opposite of everything in normal, hectic day-to-day Japanese life.

Here is where I would like to be at this moment

Ideally, they should be outdoors, use naturally hot water directly extracted from a natural volcanic spring, and they are often embellished with (or, in the cheaper varieties, replaced by) a wide variety of extravagant spa baths, artificial waterfalls and saunas. Onsen water is often thought to have healing powers according to its mineral properties and onsen often have several different baths, each augmented by the addition of different minerals or the composition of the tub.

In the mountains of Nagano, groups of wild Japanese monkeys are living in Jigokudani Yaen-koen. They are Snow Monkeys and have learned how good having a bath is.

“Mmmm, I start getting dirty”

Even though the monkeys seem friendly, it’s important to follow these rules when you find them.

• Observe the monkeys from the distance.

• Do not stare them in the eyes.

• Do not put your hands out or try to touch them.

• Do not show or give food to monkeys.

As I predicted in the last Tokyo post, more things have happened. Well, not exactly… the same problems I had have got worse. The delay for obtaining the COE will not be a few days but a few months. So that means that I will arrive in Japan in November or December. I hope Tokyo is nice in winter. At least that also means that I will be there in spring, for the Hanami (cherry blossoms party).

Ok, Ok, relax, count until ten, and try to figure out the good side of this fact. Now I will have two or three months of holidays that I will use for learning Japanese and applied mathematics, and for getting the state-of-art in robust speech recognition (se va a cagar la perra cuando llegue allí).

Goodbye, see you, I will be waiting for further problems.

As every thing I want to do, my trip to Japan is getting complicated. I need to get a certificate of eligibility in order of getting a working visa. They need me to send them some documents via standard courier (and this is slow) and then they will apply a form to the Ministry of Justice (and this is the slowest part). I had already bought an air ticket for the 30th August but my tutor asked me whether I could change my booking for a later one. I told him that I have bought an economic fare ticket which cannot be changed. Now I know that it is possible (paying 129 euros) but in his last email he said me that Toshiba will pay me a one-way ticket. I prefer them to pay my old ticket and get it changed.

Now that the money is not a problem, I realize that I wanted getting to Japan at the same time as the Vulcanus do. I am almost sure that I won’t participate in its first weekend in Tokyo. Starting a thing like this together will unite them very strongly and now it will be even harder becoming another member of the group (since I will be working from the very first day, and they will be learning Japanese during four months, together). That reminds me that I have to hurry!

Well, the first problem has been solved but I’m sure that more things will happen, because why should things be as easy for me as for everyone else?