Fujisan

I took this picture just a few seconds ago, right after sunset. Its the view from my window. As usual my camera didn't get the colors right, but it might give you an idea of what the real thing looked like :-)

Danke!

Danke an alle die mir letzte Woche Interviews gegeben haben! Ich hab schon angefangen die Ergebnisse auszuwerten und find sie total spannend. Ich hab dank euch eine Menge gelernt. Und es war schön wieder daheim vorbei zuschauen und alle wieder zu sehen :-)
Ich werd noch ein paar Interviews in Tsukuba machen, und dann fang ich mit der Verlosung der CDs an :-)

Übrigens, ich hab jetzt etwas Neues im Blog: die Liste der Lieder die ich zuletzt gehört hab. Jetzt wisst ihr nicht nur was ich so mache, sondern auch was ich grad für Musik hör :-)

Falls ihr am Computer Musik hoert, probiert vielleicht einmal last.fm. Ausprobieren kann man es direkt auf der Webseite ohne was zu installieren. Wenn man aber will, dass sich das System Entscheidungen merkt, dann zahlt es sich aus sich gratis beim System anzumelden. Wenn's einem taugt kann man dann (gratis) ein Program runterladen mit dem man dann verschiedene nette Sachen machen kann.

Meine nächsten zwei Monate werden chotto stressig. Ich muss einiges abschließen bevor ich im März Urlaub geh. Es sind kaum noch 7 Wochen bis ich hier fertig bin mit der Arbeit, wahnsinn wie die Zeit verflogen ist! Ich werd vielleicht nicht mehr so oft dazu kommen etwas zu berichten. Mitte April bin ich dann übrigens wieder in Wien, wenn auch nur für ein paar Tage, in diesen werd ich dafuer keinen Stress mit Interviews haben :-) Danach fahr ich Gwen in Nizza besuchen)... und danach wird's spannend (noch ist nichts fix) :-)

Ansonsten... das Wetter ist herrlich (sonnig, blauer Himmel, angenehm warm, frische Luft), die Arbeit macht im Moment auch besonders viel Spass, und vorhin war ich grad in Karate, sehr fein! Ich werd morgen wieder hinschaun. Da bekomm ich dann auch endlich mein Dogi (Trainingsanzug), bin schon sehr neugierig! In Japan ist es scheinbar üblich, dass man seinen Namen ins Dogi hineingestickt bekommt. Bei mir gab's leider ein Missverständnis. Ich heiß jetzt "Eriku" beim Karate, knapp daneben ;-)

Aja, und einen wunderbaren Jetlag hab ich auch grad. Ich bin heut ohne Wecker um 7h aufgewacht! Mal schaun wie lang's noch so bleibt :-)

Also dann! Danke nochmals fuer all die Hilfe! Und bis bald hoffentlich :-)

Pictures

I got back from Vienna last Thursday. It was great! Here are some pictures (sorted chronologically).

Painting Christmas presents at made by you:



Dinner at Christian's place:



Dinner at my parents' place:



Singing Christmas songs in Kobling:



Rekawinkel:









Rome:





This was one of the strangest tour guides I ever experienced. Here Roberto (our tour guide) is trying to show us pictures in a book while we are standing in the Colosseum. The group had a size of almost 40 people. We waited about 20 minutes to get in, and only spent about 10 minutes inside.



At the Vatican we randomly ran into the Pope's blessing of the New Year. The Pope is standing at the window of the building in the background. He hung a rug outside of the window so people would know which window to look at.



We also (randomly) ended up in the New Year's mass. The one thing I'll probably never forget is people using the confessional (Beichtstuhl) to make phone calls on their cell phones.

Happy Christmas and New Year

Christmas here is different but somehow similar. The Christmas songs in the shops as well as the decorations are far less obtrusive than in Vienna. Even in the main shopping streets of Tokyo there is far less Christmas kitsch than in the relatively small shopping streets of Vienna. It's such a pleasure not to be overexposed to Christmas before it actually happens!

One of the few noticeable things are the "I believe in Santa Claus" hats the cashiers wear in Kasumi. Which seems a bit odd to me because I'm sure they never have believed in those stories. However, I've been told that some are actually teaching their children to believe in Santa Claus (which makes me wonder if the children are just pretending to believe so that they can get their presents and make their parents happy at the same time).

I've been told that in Japan Christmas is a very important time of the year for couples (and not the family, like in Austria). And there are a lot fewer presents than in the US or Austria. Also New Years Eve seems to be a very quiet celebration which is spread out over several days. Unfortunately I'll probably never experience it myself though... but Rome should be nice too ;-)

Other than enjoying the last days before returning home I've been busy with work (as usual, and it's going really well as usual too), and I've been practicing Karate. In Karate I started using the Japanese numbers when it's my turn to count out loud. I still need to practice getting the order right, especially in the range from 4-8 I tend to get the order messed up if I'm trying to concentrate on the movements of different body parts and at the same time yell out a number in the right rhythm. Sometimes I also mix in both versions of the same number (e.g. 4 is "yon" and "shi"). I have a hard time not laughing at myself when I notice that I did it again, I wonder how the others manage not to change the expressions on their faces.

When we did Katas today (which I really enjoy) anyone who would have been watching us must have thought there is a hidden camera somewhere. Not only was I always delayed, but I was also completely clueless on what to do. It was great! :-)
It seems that they practice Katas on Saturday mornings, so I guess in the future I'll be getting up earlier on Saturdays than I do on weekdays.

I wonder how long I'll have the newbie bonus in the class... and what will happen once I don't have it anymore. Everyone else is sticking exactly to all the rules, the whole practice reminds me of the mechanics of a clock. Every movement is exactly precise, unlike Capoeira there is no informal chat between exercises, everyone is very serious. Unlike Capoeirea you don't hear people talking about "scarita" and "atsui" all the time. ("It's so hot in here and I'm exhausted..") I miss Capoeira a bit, if I'm lucky I'll get a chance to play a bit in Vienna. Oh, and I should mention that after class everything changes. People smile, chat, laugh, drink beer, go out for food or Karaoke... they are extremely nice people.

This is probably my last post before next year. It's been a great year, and I hope yours has been great too.

Engrish

Japanese Engrish is somehow special. Basically there are two popular styles. The more widespread style is the design-style: Engrish words are used as design elements for shop windows, advertisements, t-shirts, etc. It is particularly popular to chose words with several meanings, and concatenate them in very creative ways. The second style is the babelfish-style. This style is only popular in areas with tourists such as Tokyo. It is used to translate important signs and to entertain tourists.

In addition, to make things even more interesting, sometimes the words are first translated into Japanese katakana, and then back to the Roman alphabet. (There is no "L" in Katakana.)

Angela pointed me to www.engrish.com. I think I should start taking more pictures too :-)

Tea Ceremony

I finally got the chance to participate in a tea ceremony. It was a lot more impressive than I expected it to be. At first it seems very simple and plain, but it is full of important details. There is a lot of beauty in the simple utensils, and the tradition has a very interesting history. If I'm not mistaken, politeness and respect play a very important role in the ceremony. There seems to be an infinite number of possibilities to be rude. Some people spend a life time studying the ceremony. One thing I learned for sure is that it is not really about tea. Strangely it reminded me of Karate somehow. Maybe because of the way we were sitting, bowing, and the precision of every detail. Most likely it was the precision of even the smallest movements that reminded me of the Katas in Karate. It was fascinating! I'll probably be adding pictures to this post later on.

Reasons to Celebrate Calendar

In German there is a saying that you have to celebrate when it happens. ("Man soll die Feste feiern wie sie fallen.") For example, you should celebrate your birthday on the day it is, and not a week later! (Buxi!)

Anyway, parties are great, and the fact that we only have one birthday a year shouldn't limit the number of parties we celebrate. So what I am looking for is some web service where I can enter a date and get a list of good reasons to celebrate. For example, someone special was born, or something wonderful happened, the more reasons the better. (And of course it should have some smart filtering system to remove stuff I'm not interested in.)

Furthermore, I would like to be able to personalize the "reasons to party" calendar with personal events in my life. Some of these I might even be willing to make publicly available (such as the first time in my life a teacher locked me out of a classroom).

If anyone knows of such a service, please let me know! Maybe it would be possible to adapt the Wikipedia "what happened today" service somehow?