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Japan Blog Study Tour

Arrival

A bit late but due to the lack of time I didn’t have had the time to upload any photos or write some other message.

10022008037 So after the flight to Tokyo, we boarded the flight to Osaka. Luckily this was a short flight because the plane was much smaller and much older (and hence, noisier). After we got to Osaka airport and collected our luggage, we walked to the bus that would take us to the hotel.10022008056  Besides the color, it was a decent bus and the driver knew how to floor it so after a short while we passed through the outskirts of Osaka and arrived in the Umeda area of Osaka where we found our hotel: Hotel Kinky.

The name is more exciting than the hotel itself as the rooms are rather small. Especially the 3-bed room I’m sharing with Luuk and Roald: the beds are so close together that we have to put the suitcase on the bed to be able to open them. Also the western style rooms have no closet (whatsoever) and nothing to hang clothes on except for 5 coat hanger hooks in the wall. As a comparison: one of us has a Japanese style bedroom which comes with towel hanger in the shower and a rack in the bedroom. On the upside we have a fridge which is kinda empty but at least it was turned on when we arrived.

Another source of humor is found in the fact that the TV has an English manual but its so dead simple that none of us need it to figure out how it works. However the thermostat and the water boiler are in Japanese with no indication what everything does. Right now, we managed to fire up the heating but boiling water is still a mystery.

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Japan Blog Study Tour

Good morning!

IMG_1355 Good morning Vietnaaaa… wait.. Japaaaaaaan! After some much needed sleep I feel much better. For starters the floor stopped rocking like the airplane did and I can stand up properly again 🙂

We found out that the room has a view: the building 1.5 meters across and the shower is suited for people below 1.20m in height. Which means we fold double in the damn shower to make it fit. Just like the slippers they put up for us: size 34 while we have 46++. And finally, the bathrobes, clearly not for us giants from the other size of the world.

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Japan Blog Study Tour

High up in the sky

While I’m typing this, I’m flying above Syberia somewhere at 36500 feet or 11125 meter altitude while flying at 927 km/hour (I need to get one of these engines for my car :-P). We still need to go 3181 miles which will cost us 6 hours and 41 minutes – gotta love in-flight information systems.

But lets start at the beginning, I woke up at 11 o clock in the morning with a steady 7 hours of sleep (needed to make sure I brought enough music and movies along for the flight and the stay in general, so I was up late). After getting dressed with a cup of coffee and a long shower I managed to recheck the packing list to make sure I hadn’t forgotten anything. By the time I was almost done, my parents and my youngest sister dropped in to bring me to the bus and to wave me off.

Once at the gathering point (its 14:30 by now), we found ourselves short one touring car. After a while the last people finally arrived and the bus finally showed up. Ofcourse the bus driver didn’t drive all the way up to the gathering point, instead he parked at the end of the street, making us walk to the damn bus. We finally headed off in the right direction: Schiphol Airport!

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Japan Blog Study Tour

Done packing

Well, I’m done. Not so much that I’m 100% sure that I forgot something but I already sacrificed some cookies, sugar (for in the cappuccino I’m bringing ;-)) and one of my books I bought for the trip to make the backpack close and the suitcase below the 20kg weight limit (no way I’m paying a fine for have too much luggage on the way to Japan, perhaps the way back it will be different…).

No more like I’m done with preparing for the trip – its been over a year now that we worked on papers, projects, working for companies to sponsor the trip, writing reports, taking Japanese lessons (which by the way pretty much slipped my mind before we even leave) etc etc. I’m just ready to go.

Its 2:30 AM while I’m typing this and I’m about to try to get at least 8 hours of sleep so I can stay awake during the flight and thus prevent jet-lag. But if someone called me and said: "we leave NOW" I’d be up and ready to go.

By the way, I don’t reckon I’m able to get jet-lag as I don’t have a biorhythm: I’m used to getting 9 hours sleep (give or take) and I swap day and night pretty easily. So the gut-writhing feeling everyone is describing as being jet-lag, is just one of my rough weeks 🙂 I’ll get back later on that subject to let you guys (my loyal readers *cough*) know if it worked out.

Right now, my borrowed laptop is humming downstairs, trying to squeeze as much music on my shiny new Meizu M6 (better than an iPod Nano and half the price, beat that Apple!). I kinda modified it a little by uploading the Chinese firmware which enabled the FM-radio and made the menus look cooler, but still, better than most other players.

Well, that’s it for now, time to get some sleep before the big flight.

Categories
Japan Blog Study Tour

Rushing to the finish

Its been a few days since my last posting because I’ve been so darn busy.

For starters, I managed to get my insurance policy in English so I can take it with me at all times like the travel guides suggest. Next I tried getting Yen from the local GWK as they have "all kinds of currency in stock". Yes, all except for Yen they mean.

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Japan Page Info

Photos

During my 4 week visit in Japan I made a lot of photos. Some might be of interest to everyone, some pictures might only be of interest to the participants or their relatives.

Note: if you wish to use any of these pictures you can email me for written permission. None of the images or photos on this website can be re-used without prior written permission of Berend Dekens

Please click on one of the images below to jump to the album for the specified week.


Photos from week 1

Photos from week 2

Photos from week 3

Photos from week 4

Update: I am currently uploading my collection of over 2700 photos. Most picturers that are OOF are removed but some others are still present

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Japan Page Info

Links

Ofcourse I’m not going alone to Japan and I’m also not the only one with a blog Laughing

On this page I will link to blogs from other people who are coming along as well as some other links.

Bonsai Blogs

Blog listing
Blog owner URL
Luuk Peters luuk.ontdektdewereld.nl
Roald Dijkstra roald.ontdektdewereld.nl
Michel Jansen micheljansen.org/blog/

 

 

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Japan Blog Study Tour

Anime music

After all is said and done… well I just had to post some anime music videos. I picked some soundtracks from my favorite shows and found the video clips. (I’m gonna be so broke if I find a music store in Osaka or Tokyo ;-))

For starters, lets begin with Origa. The song is called Rise and is the first opening tune for Ghost In The Shell: the 2nd GIG. Note that I couldn’t find a video clip of this song so this is the opening itself: {flv}demo/Origa_-_Rise{/flv}

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Japan Blog Study Tour

Posting offline

The problem with being handy with websites is the fact that you manage to find new stuff to do over and over again (especially when your are supposed to be working on other stuff ;-))

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Japan Blog Study Tour

Current music in Japan

I was toying with the video embedding earlier on and during the Japanese course I take suddenly the question arises what kind of music is popular in Japan. As I already had some names and links at the ready I decided to throw this mashup together.

Note that my Japanese still pretty much blows (sumimase, watashi wa aho desu) so I tried to get the current chart hits (but if I couldn’t find them I’d find something from the artist.