Me, myself and I – Page 3 – w00kie's ramblings

Home for Christmas

I’m back home, in Paris, for Christmas week. It’s the 1st time I come home since I left for Japan 2 years ago (I had an 18 hour stopover once in early 2006 on my way to a business trip in Czech Republic but it doesn’t really count).

It really feels strange to be back in the motherland. First there’s the obvious culture shock: I wasn’t even off the plane when the pilot announces over the PA system that there are abandoned luggage near our gate’s conveyor and we’d have to wait 15-20min for the police to “secure the premises”…

where's the bomb squad?

So we were 35min early, no biggy still 20min ahead of schedule when this hurdle clears up. We’re finally let off the plane, but then right before getting to immigration, a security gate blocks us for no obvious reasons. Again we wait, 15 minutes, no information from any airport staff, and when finally we’re let through I check the time and it’s exactly the time we were supposed to land. I guess it would’ve looked bad on the record to let people out early.

Anyways, enough with tales of the great efficiency of Paris’ Charles de Gaulles international airport. Worse than that for me is walking on the streets of Paris or taking the Metro and listening to all the meaningless conversations around me. It irritates me to unfathomable levels.

I can’t help it: living in Japan, you develop a superhuman capacity to spot your own language from great distances (kind of like Spiderman’s danger detection spider-sense). But when I’m back home, this ability backlashes and I go into sensory-overload, unable to tune-out or ignore the dullest dribbles of conversations in my vicinity.

It’s hell on earth, and I find myself seeking the soothing sound of Japanese tourists’ high-pitched 「すてき！！！」 and other exclamations in front of Notre-Dame…

80cm of fresh snow

I was in Kagura Saturday for a my second day snowboard of the season. We left at 5:30AM to get there by 7AM, get dressed and catch the first ropeway car up the mountain. I was snowing big flakes the whole day, no wind. Deep powder everywhere, leg-deep out in the forest where we spent the whole day, almost Hokkaido-good.

The station reported 80cm of fresh snowfall over the weekend. It really looks like the start of a great season!

Surf or Study

Sunday December 2nd is for many of us in Japan the dreaded day of 日本語能力試験 – also known as JLPT or Japanese Language Proficiency Test. But this weekend is also the start of what looks like the best ski season I’ve seen since I’ve come to Japan.

Trying out my new snowboard gear on 130cm of snow in Kagura or studying for the ２級. It’s a tough call…

Japanese Credit Card

Sunday as I was going to the old apartment to give back the keys, I had the nice surprise to find both my JLPT convocation and my Flying Blue VISA credit card. Nice surprise since I was rejected twice by the Japanese VISA company and I was starting to lose hope. The situation was getting critical as I am now paid exclusively in Yen on my Japanese bank account and all my French credit cards will turn up dry soon.

As with a lot of things here, VISA and Mastercard credit cards are not handled by their global mother companies. They are a separate entities that barely have ties with the rest of the world. A good example is trying to use your overseas Mastercard in a Japanese ATM, even though it has the Mastercard logo which should indicate compatibility, it will not give you any money unless you use give it a real Japanese Mastercard. A subtlety that has left countless tourist sleeping under a Tokyo bridge…

In the same way, foreigner have a great deal of problems obtaining a credit card in Japan. I’ve seen many a story of people with very good situations getting rejected dozens of times by these companies while the average Japanese has 6-7 cards in his wallet. They fall victim to this apparent fear that the gaijin is always here for fun, temporarily, and will definitely accumulate mounds of debts and leave the country without word in 6 months.

Anyways, now I’m safe, I can give in to Japanese consumerism and buy tons of gadgets, all the while accumulating Air France mileage to fly away from this godforsaken country, leaving all my debts behind me like the white-faced barbarian that I am…

Weirdest dream

As my moving in date approaches I’m getting all the preparations done, canceling utilities contracts and setting up new ones, packing, etc; all of this stuff is racing around my head 24/7 and lately I started having really weird dreams.

I remember one vividly from last week. I was showing off my new apartment to my friends. Inside, it was the same really cool apartment as the one I’m moving into in real life, with the same price, but the dream one was not out in the boondocks, 20min into Saitama from Ikebukuro: this one was in 松濤, a very cool neighborhood just behind Shibuya where 2 of my very rich expatriate friends live. The problem is, a 60m2 apartment in a brand new building over there is nowhere near ¥140.000 a month, I guess it would be more around ¥600.000 and that would still be cheap.

So how could I find such an apartment for such a dirt cheap price? Well that’s what I start explaining to my friends when we get there (I’m still in the dream here) and I tell them that there is no front door and that we have to come in through the windows…

I found an apartment

After waiting a week for an answer from the owner to the real-estate agent, we finally called him up yesterday and were told the apartment was ours.

my new apartment in Shiki

Now all I’ve got to do is have my company sign all the papers and we can set a date to move-in, hopefully by the beginning of November. I will be living in a 60m² 2LDK apartment on the 6th floor of a brand new building 2-minutes from Shiki station on the Tobu Tojo line. That’s 20minutes from Ikebukuro by express and 37 minutes from where I take the company’s bus in the morning to get to my office.

Shiodome Park Hotel – 33rd floor

Since my girlfriend is in town and I have tons of vacations to take before the end of my contract, I organized a special night out in Tokyo with her last week. I’m such a romantic guy…

First we went for drinks and dinner at her favorite restaurant: T.Y. Harbor Brewery in 天王洲アイル. It’s a Californian cuisine restaurant in a sort of hangar (not the old crummy ones, the cool ones that they transform in loft apartments and hype designer offices) right on the canals of Shinagawa. The place also brews it’s own beer in big vats behind the bar. Dinner is a bit expensive at 5-8,000￥ per person but the food is really delicious and the portions are big.

Then we headed to our hotel: the Park Hotel Tokyo in 汐留メディアタワー. I had booked a room with a special plan guaranteeing a window facing straight on the Tokyo Tower. We had a little scare as we came in the room at 12:05am and as I opened the curtains I couldn’t find the tower: they had turned off the lights! I was really pissed… As my girlfriend had forgotten some cosmectics at home, we headed down to the combini at B2 level and as we came back we had the good surprise to see the Tokyo Tower had been lit back on. I took some cool shots of the view, check them out on my flickr page.

Bed town

This Saturday, my girlfriend arrived in Tokyo to look for a job, pass some interviews, etc. She’ll be staying at my place for 2 weeks or so, hopefully enough to get a good feel of the current job market.

So this Sunday, we went to Kawagoe to scout out the place and see what kind of apartments we can find over there. It’s a big town, 300K inhabitants, very lively and only 30min from Tokyo. I’d be happy to live there. But after talking with a real estate agency, we were told it will be hard to find a newish apartment close to the station there and we’d better check out Fujimino for this.

Fujimino is one station down the line, 5min closer to Tokyo on the express train. I had never stopped there before, but always saw the tall apartment buildings, 20+ floors, all around the station. We came out and walked a little bit around, and apart from a couple of conbinis, a McDonald and a little 24/7 mini-market around the station, the town barely has a dozen shops.

The town is so dead and empty that, as I came out of the station in the village I live in, I thought it was really lively (something that would never have crossed my mind the day before). The real estate agent said it well: Fujimino is これから, the question is “will I be there to see it?”.

Next weekend, I’m going back to Kawagoe to really see some apartments. I’m hoping I’ll find an older mansion that had a renewal not so long ago.

Preparing for snowboard season

Last week I took a day off work to go apply for my visa renewal in Shinagawa (hoping for 3 years this time). I love spending, every year, 2 1/2 hours listening to kids shout and cry, waiting for my number to come up, and 5 minutes of effective work with the immigration officer.

After that was done, I headed out to Jimbocho / Ochanomizu to meet my friend Germain who was going to help me out buying my first snowboard and related accessories. There is a street there that is lined with snowboard, ski and surf shops. I love this place…

View Larger Map

Here’s what I ended up buying:

my new gear for this season

Snowboard from K2
Flow bindings
Boots from Burton
Big snowboard bag with wheels for taking the plane to Hokkaido

All of that from last year’s collection and between 50% and 65% off. ¥75.000 well spent, now I’ll probably be on the slopes every weekend this season to make it worth my while…

I signed!

This morning, after almost 2 weeks of negociations between HR, my boss and I, I signed my employment contract at Valeo Thermal Systems Japan.

I’m hired for 3 years in a position slightly higher than I had before. I’m staying on the same project and on the same team but I’ll drop all the basely technical stuff and focus entirely on functional definitions and architecture of the application we manage.

It’s a big relief for me as I will not have that pending visa expiration constantly nagging me and I can start thinking of my longterm life here in Japan.

It also means I’m gonna start paying taxes… It sucks… I guess the universe has to balance itself, to each action a reaction.

You broke my watch!

Yesterday I went to Tokyo to buy back the sunglasses I had lost on a snowboarding trip some time back. On the way to Omotesando, I dropped by the Swatch store in Shibuya to get my watch bracelet widened – something about drinking too much beer and putting on weight…

So I show my watch to the chick at the counter, tell her it’s too small and pull out the extra pieces I had brought with me. She takes the watch and starts disassembling the battery and checking the charge, showing me it’s good. I think “ok, this must be standard practice” and watch her as she struggles to put back the battery, scraping the shit out of it with a mini-screwdriver. Once it’s back together, she shows me the ticker that is not ticking any more and tells me proudly that it’s broken and she can’t repair it so I should buy a new one…

WTF? I start telling her that she fucked up, it was moving before, she broke it. After making a big ruckus, the store manager comes out and I have to explain again with my broken japanese. The girl is almost crying, the guy finally understand what happened and start apologizing profusely. Apparently, the chick didn’t unserstand what I had asked her and thought I came because something was already wrong with the watch.

He ended up calling all the Swatch stores in Tokyo to find me the same watch, but since it would take at least a week to get there, I finally chose a new one on the spot and left with it for free with all the staff bowing and seeing me out with a few dozen 申し訳ございません.

Sometimes I cook

And sometimes it ends up being pretty freakin’ good… Gotta satisfy my french food craves.

Worst dream ever

you'll get the noose! I had the worst dream ever yesterday night. To put it back in context, the rainy season just started here and it’s becoming unbearably hot and humid, 蒸し暑い as they say it here, but I hadn’t turn on my aircon in hope of pushing back the inevitable surge in my electricity spendings.

So the dream started with me killing a colleague of mine around 6 months ago and repressing the memory. But as people around me start asking questions: “Where did he go? No-one heard of him for months?”. Memories begin to rush back. That’s when I woke up tossing and turning in my sweaty sheets.

But the problem when you wake up in the middle of the night because it’s too hot is that you’re still half-asleep. So I couldn’t shake off the dream and as much as I tried telling myself none of it was true, I kept asking myself what if it was real? The police would come sniffing around. Did I hide the body well enough? I should go back to check the grave. But no! The police might already be following me! I’m gonna end up in jail and get the noose!!! (they hang killers in Japan)

I barely slept 2 hours that night. Now I don’t care about the bills, I’m turning on my aircon tonight…

Surfing in Shonan

I’ve got a new hobby. One of my friends with whom I went snowboarding in Hokkaido this winter lives in 湘南 in a cool house 300m from the beach, right in front of 江ノ島.

Since the last month I go surfing there almost every weekend. I can check the weather / wave size on Yahoo! Weather and hop on a train. I got my mother to send me my wetsuit from France by mail, so all I have to pay is the ¥3,150 daily rental fee for a longboard and off I go riding the Pacific’s waves.

Additional flash

Sigma EF-500 DG ST You never see a photo taken with the flash on in my flickr photostream. That’s because I hate flashes, and my GR Digital‘s flash in particular: it burns everything.

So yesterday, as I was on a day-off and had nothing else to do than watching season 2 of House M.D. and browsing flickr, I got to contemplating buying an external flash like the ones you pt on big SLRs. My camera has a shoe for it and it would let me swivel the flash up to bounce on the roof for a softer effect.

I got my eyes set on a SIGMA EF-500 DG ST as is recommended by my camera’s manual. It goes for ¥16,000 on kakaku. I’ve talked with a friend of mine though, he pointed out that the flash with batteries would weigh around 500g, considerably more than the 200g of my GR.

I can’t really visualize like that what it would feel like to have such a bulky contraption sitting on top of my slim camera. I’ll try to drop by a shop in Akihabara or Shinjuku and find a nice salesperson to let me have a try…