Category: Me, myself and I

Cerulean Tower – 34th floor

Last week, since my girlfriend was moving, we had no place to stay in Tokyo for her last night (after the movers took everything and we gave back the keys). So since she didn’t exactly looked forward to the idea of staying at my place, Saitama being far from romantic, we looked for a hotel.

Her ex-company had a special Christmas hotel package going on and since she was still technically an employee, we got to book a night in a City-view room of the Cerulean Tower Hotel in Shibuya for a very decent ¥20.000

We ended up getting probably one of the nicest room of the hotel: 34th floor (top non-private-suite floor) with view of Fuji-san. I had to whip out my camera.

cerulean tokyo view on flickr

Funny thing: the guy with the room next to ours had ordered a call-girl, she rode the elevator with us going up, stopped in front of the door, checked the email order on her keitai and her skirt and fuck-me boots before knocking and entering…

New year hiatus

Sorry for the lack of updates. I was at my girlfriend’s in Tokyo for over 2 weeks (without internet) to help her move out. She quit her job that was going nowhere and went back to her parent’s in Hiroshima. It’s going to be hard, changing from a mid-distance relationship (we saw each other only on the weekends) to a long-distance one.

Anyways, here are the notable events of my new year vacations:

  • I wanted to go to a temple at midnight, but it felt so cold outside and nice and warm inside that we ended up just drinking champagne at a friend’s recently-moved-in apartment. Fun was had, that’s what’s important.
  • I went to Meiji-jingu on January 4, there were still thousands of people there. Also, half a dozen weird people (including a 12-year-old gaijin girl) were standing around the entrance of the shrine with big signs reading:

JESUS LIVES, HE IS OUR SAVIOR
or
PRAISE THE LORD
or
JESUS CHRIST DIED FOR OUR SINS

meiji shrine for new year

  • I finally got a Wii, a colleague found it while shopping for PS3s with his son and bought it for me. Thanks again Morikawa-san!
  • I went to Takashimaya in Shinjuku and bought some cornichons, then ate them with baguette and rillettes for new year. It sure beats the hell out of KFC xmas chicken and Toshikoshi Soba, even though I paid ¥1400 for the smallest bottle.

All in all I had a pretty nice time for my second New Year in Japan. Let’s hope for many more to come!

No Wii for Christmas

Second raffle, same time, same place. This time they had 52 units up for the taking and 254 people showed up. A friend of mine had come to help me out, giving me a second chance to get one.

But of course, since I’m officially cursed, they ended up calling all the numbers around our tickets, but not ours. So finally it’s been 3 weeks since launch in Tokyo and I’m still desperately looking for a Wii.

Still no Wii

This morning they had a raffle for 30 units at my local 7eleven Holdings’ Itoyokado (that’s a department store). I got there at 9:45, grabbed a ticket and came back at 10:30 for the results.

They had distributed 74 tickets that were supposed to count only for 42 units since families were supposed to have one ticket for each person but only take one Wii. But of course, it got out of hand and none of them would give away their tickets if they won. One chick redeemed 4 winning tickets… Of course, with my luck, I got nothing… Bastards…

I’m officially cursed

That’s it, it’s official, the verdict has been given: I’m cursed.

Today at lunch time we went out with a friend to an electronics shop deep deep in the countryside, 15 minutes away from the factory where we work, hoping to score a Wii so we could play some Wii Sports goodness for a week before he leaves for a business trip in Europe and me in China. We had the perfect target, almost 30min by car from the nearest train station, they had to have some stock left.

We park the car next to the entrance, not many people buying TVs or fridges at 12:15 on a Monday. I go straight to the games corner, spot the Wii display and check out the little holders where they have the cards you bring to the counter to get your machine… All empty…

That’s when I turned around and to tell my buddy and I saw a mother and her 6-year-old daughter holding a Wii card in her hand.

I missed it by a couple minutes. Meanwhile I see reports all over the japanese blogosphere of people just stumbling on mountains of Wiis, lying there for the taking…

Onsen nation

Next weekend is a 4-day weekend (well, it is if you take two days of since my company doesn’t care about official holidays). My girlfriend and I wanted to make a little trip, so we did what any japanese would do, buy a travel magazine, most of which selling you a one-night trip to an onsen.

Jalan - a travel magazine specialized in Onsen

You see, heaven for a japanese is a nice view, good food and a hot bath; and anyone who’s come to Japan and tried an onsen knows it ain’t a bad ideal. So all those magazines come out every month full of hundreds of onsen hotels where you can spend a night (rarely more, as prices are prohibitively high) soaking in your private bath watching the stars, eat traditional food (usually fish) and sleep in a nice futon.

It’ll be a first for me, sleeping at the onsen, so I’ll be sure to make a detailed report of my experience when I come back.

Wii Pre-orders

Wii comes out on December 3I just received an email this instant from Amazon. Here’s what it says:

『Wii』 予約受付日のお知らせ！

11/17（金）より、予約を開始いたします。購入ページへのリンクは、受付予定日（時間は未定です）にゲームストア にて表示されますので、ご確認ください。
注文数が確保できる商品数を上回った場合は、注文のキャンセルをさせていただく場合があります。その際はＥメールでご連絡いたします。

Which basically means that Amazon opens their pre-orders for the Wii tomorrow (no info about the exact time though). Now I’m torn between waiting in-line in the cold at BicCamera on the day of launch, Saturday December 2, or getting it on internet and running the risk of getting it one week late (I’ll probably be in China on a business trip the week just after launch and will not be able to receive the box from Pelican Delivery).

ああっ、どうしようかなぁっ！

1 year in Japan

1 year in JapanToday was my 1st anniversary of coming to Japan. It’s been a great year for me, I really feel like I’ve accomplished a lot of things and it makes me feel great. I met a lot of great people here, had a lot of fun and learned a lot.

One regret I have is that I haven’t had the time (and the financial resources) to travel around Japan as much as I would’ve liked. My “new year resolution” will be to correct that and visit the country outside of the Tokyo area. I’m already starting by planning a trip to the onsen in Izu with the girlfriend in the coming weeks. More about it will come soon…

So here’s to 1 year in Japan, hoping for a lot more to come.

7 TV Shows of the moment

For the past 2 and a half weeks I’ve been leaving work between 10PM and 11PM every night. This is why I’m not posting so often, I don’t do much outside of work, except for watching my weekly TV shows downloaded from bittorrent.

So I might as well talk about my current viewing list. These days I watch these shows every week.

Returning shows:

  • Lost: slow start for the 3rd season, I hope their just using these first episodes to setup something good
  • Prison Break: 2nd season is kind of messy compared to the first one, we lost the whole “Everything is planned and tattooed on my body” aspect of the show from the first season, but conspiracy theory part is getting bigger and bigger and I love it
  • Stargate SG1: it’s getting pretty lame, but after 10 seasons of watching this show I just can’t get myself to stop [in recess right now]
  • Stargate Atlantis: what can I say, I’ve got a Stargate addiction [in recess right now]
  • Nip/tuck: I didn’t even know they were doing a new season after last year’s finale, but it’s still alive and kicking, even more crazy sex than before (the part with Dr. Troy fucking a mother and daughter together in the first episode was totally awesome)

New shows:

  • Heroes: really slow start for this one, I almost dropped it after the 2nd episode… I’m so glad I didn’t, it gets exponentially cooler every week. I love the 2 japanese characters, they’re hilarious and the best part is that I can now understand 90% of what they say
  • Jericho: follow the people of Jericho, Kansas, when one day all the big cities in the US get nuked at the same time. Cool conspiracy theory stuff coming up, I can’t wait to know more.

I usually keep the Lost and Jericho episodes for watching during the train ride to Tokyo on Friday night and back on Monday morning. It’s just the right length, and watching it on the Powerbook on my lap is relatively comfortable even in crowded trains.

One last thing, for 24 fans, you should check out the season 6 trailer, it looks really cool. I can’t wait for January for it to start again.

Switching to English

I’ve decided that from now on I’ll stop writing in french and switch to english. There are many reasons for that:

  1. More and more of my friends here in Japan feel left out because they can’t read my blog. That language barrier is a bitch…
  2. I love being read by a lot of people and I feel like the growth of this website is is held back by limiting myself to the french speaking community.
  3. As much as I hate hate accents in the french language, I hate even more not being able to type them when I want. It’s ok at home since I brought my Powerbook from France but everywhere else is just plain frustrating.
  4. I used to feel more at ease writing in english than writing in french, but since I moved here and have been systematically lowering my level of speech to get understood by most Japanese, I feel like I’m losing my abilities. I tend to write mostly straight to the point emails and presentations in english at work, so to have more free-pen exercise (such as dribbling on and on about my life) can’t hurt in stopping the slow crumbling of my english proficiency.

I know I might lose quite a few readers in this move, but to hell with it, you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs. However, I do hope most of you will keep on reading. I’m gonna try translating previous entries but I doubt I’ll have the willpower to do them all.

To conclude, I’d like to say hi to my (mostly american and japanese) friends. I’m sorry it took so much time for you to finally be able to read about my boring life in my beloved ダサイタマ.

Disney Sea

Je suis alle a Tokyo Disney Sea ce samedi. C’etait vraiment sympa, vachement mieux que mes souvenirs de Euro Disney / Disneyland Paris / Disneyland Resorts Paris, enfin je sais pas quel est le nom officiel en ce moment, ca change tout les 2 ans.

la place d'Agrabah (Aladdin)

Ma copine avait trop peur de faire les attractions marrantes (ie. ジェットコースター comme on dit ici) donc je me suis venge en faisant le camera maniac. D’ailleurs avec Kurisu, nos copines respectives nous appelent le “camera club” maintenant…

Au final:

  • Attraction preferee: Indiana Jones
  • Pire attraction: 20.000 miles under the sea, la manette qui commandait le spotlight etait petee et c’est tout simplement chiant
  • Plus longue queue: Tower of Terror, d’ailleurs c’est pour ca qu’on l’a pas fait
  • Truc marrant: les gaijins qui jouent les characters des films de Disney

temple of the crystal skull

Et puis une petite vue de nuit du temple d’Indiana Jones pour la route.

@#!§様

Hier soir je devais recevoir les batteries de remplacement pour mon Powerbook suite au rappel de batteries d’Apple. Comme d’habitude, j’avais demandé au livreur de passer à 20h et il est passé à 19h30 alors que j’étais toujours dans le bus rentrant du boulot.

Donc j’arrive chez moi et voila l’avis de passage que je trouve dans ma boîte aux lettres.

avis de passage

L’appli de remplacement de batterie recupere mon nom depuis mon Apple ID et j’avais mis la cédille et l’accent à l’inscription. Les japonais doivent se dire qu’ils ont vraiment des noms bizarres ces gaijins…

Surf à l’eau

Le weekend dernier un typhon est passé sur le sud du Japon avant d’aller se perdre au nord d’Hokkaido en passant par la 日本海, vu avez dû le voir dans les news, 9 morts. Au passage, il a amené avec lui une masse d’air des tropiques et a nettoyé le ciel de tout ses nuages laissant un grand ciel bleu et un petit 30°C sur ma bonne chere plaine du Kanto.

Donc, inspirés par ce temps superbe on s’est dit avec des amis du boulot qu’une petite virée surf vers Chiba ou Shonan s’imposait ce weekend…

Typhoon number 14

Manque de bol voilà les prévisions pour ce weekend. C’est sympa l’automne au Japon.

Renouvellement de Visa

En ce moment je suis en plein renouvellement de Visa. Je n’ai recu qu’un visa d’un an a mon arrivee au Japon bien que mon contrat soit de 2 ans et que tout les autres VIE sauf moi et une autre fille qui vient d’arriver ont des visas de 3 ans.

Donc je telecharge le formulaire de visa renewal sur le site de l’immigration japonaise: 27 pages… Heureusement je n’ai que 4 pages a remplir pour un visa d’ingenieur, le reste etant destine aux visas etudiant, artistes, investisseurs, professeurs, entertainer. Ce dernier est pour les hotesses/putes/strippers. Toutes les questions sur cette feuille sont cachees, par exemple:

Applicable Criteria:

  1. Criterion 1-a
  2. Criterion 1-b
  3. Criterion 2-e
  4. …

Il faut un petit livret secret pour pouvoir traduire la question et ses reponses. En decodant un peu le questionnaire, il est probable que ce soit le type d’etablissement et les reponses doivent etre du genre bar a hotesses, bar a striptease, soapland, etc.

Donc pour en revenir a mon application pour etendre mon visa ingenieur, on me demande des infos precises sur mon entreprise. Bien sur, je suis incapable d’y repondre donc je demande a la fille des RH responsable de ca de me dire quoi mettre. Voila sa reponse:

  • Capital: 9,100,000,000 JPY
  • Annual Sales: 71,627,600,000,000 JPY
  • Number of employees: 1377 employees
  • Number of foreign employees: 10 employees

Alors le capital ca va, mais les sales annuels ca fait beaucoup beaucoup de zeros quand meme. En essayant de traduire ca en 億円 pour avoir un truc lisible, je montre ca a mon collegue japonais qui me dit que c’est equivalent au budget national du Japon!

Finalement, la fille s’etait gourree de 2 ou 3 zeros… Je vais probablement passer une journee a 品川 pour faire tout ca avec un nouveau re-entry permit la semaine prochaine si je vais pas en business trip en Tchequie. Que du bonheur en perspective…