I miss you so much!

I miss you so much :’( How can I remember the great times we had at the company… The fun we had at lunch time, especially on Tuesdays and Fridays. You made my week interesting. I lived only for you. I miss you so much, I don’t think I can survive without you. Please come back to me. THAI BENTO PERSON, WHERE ARE YOU!!?!?!?!

Hmmm… This might need some explaining for people not familiar with my daily routine Every day for lunch there are several things we can eat. The first option is cooking something yourself and taking it with you to the company. Since I’m a lazy pig that option has never been tried before. Second option is a restaurant, like Sukiya for curry or a ramen or sushi place nearby. Third option is bento, boxed lunch. There are several cars that come out at lunch time just for the sake of getting hungry Japanese people to spend money on their overpriced and crappy food. That usually includes the gang at Asahi Kasei too. But on Tuesdays and Fridays there used to be a special surprise: Thai bento! The Thai bento car has various bento’s that you don’t usually see in Japan for lunch, and the tastes is in most people’s opinion much better than the average bento. Unfortunately that means that you have to stand in line for your food, sometimes 10 to 20 minutes. That’s why we always leave work 5 minutes early

Anyway, unfortunately for poor us, the Thai bento guy stopped coming a couple of weeks ago, and my life has been hell since then. Without green curry to eat there is no point in life for me anymore, and I might as well give up my job and my life here. I think I will go to Thailand, so I can eat Thai bento every day. Goodbye and sayonara…

Chagrijnig

First times

When you come to Japan there are so many first times. My first time to go to Asia. My first time to eat sushi. My first time to live by myself. My first time to wash my own clothes, and make my own food. Lately I haven’t had much new first times. I prepared a proper meal for the first time a couple of weeks ago, when I got a lot of meat and vegetables from someone. That was nice.

Another first time happened last thursday, and I’m sure many people reading this, especially those living in Japan, cannot believe this, but until thursday I had never cooked rice before! :O That’s right, I’ve been living in Japan for more than a year and I have never cooked rice. For every meal that I prepared myself I used microwave rice or no rice at all, or I ate somebody else’s rice. So thursday that same someone who gave me the meat and vegetables showed me how to cook rice. In the end we completely forgot about it and only found out about the result of my rice-cooking attempt long after the meal was done, though… But thank you

But the last first time I want to talk about, and in fact the reason I am writing this post for my blog right now, is the fact that I am in a manga cafe in Shinjuku right now :X In other words, tonight was my first time in missing the last train to Atsugi :’( :’( Meh. Quite a first time. Let’s hope I don’t have to do it again. The Japanese keyboard at this manga cafe sucks. Ah. A manga cafe is a place with lots of small rooms, think only chair, desk, PC and TV, where lots of creepy Japanese people hang out the whole day to read porn comic books and watch porn movies. It’s also the cheapest place to hang out and have a nice, relaxing, private seat without having to go to a hotel. Free drinks all night, and the chair is great. But my own room would still be a lot nicer…

Let’s switch topic and talk about a ’second time’ then. I signed the contract that binds my evil blood to Asahi Kasei for another half year. I will stay until the end of july at least. It means I get to delay the tough decisions in life for another half year, so I’m kind of happy with that. Just kidding though, I really like the job here, and I am very happy with my situation here, even though I complain from time to time. This place feels like my home and I will have a hard time letting go next year. Another second time: the trip back home in december will be my second trip back home since I came to Japan. The first time was like coming home after a long journey. Will the second time be like that, or will it be like leaving my home to visit my family? I guess I will find out.

Can’t sleep! How am I supposed to sleep sitting up straight in this stupid chair? I always have sleeping problems. I cannot sleep in the train or bus, I have trouble sleeping in the plane, and it takes a long time for me to fall asleep. Tomorrow is going to be interesting. Since we are in Tokyo anyway we are going to try some sightseeing. But we have to get out early from the manga cafe because we pay by the hour and if we stay longer it will be more expensive. The ‘we’ is me and Canadian Matthieu by the way. Us two and Ning Ning had dinner this night at Shibuya and we missed the last train going back to Hon Atsugi from Shinjuku. Ofcourse Ning Ning does not live in Atsugi anymore so in the end it was just me and Matthieu who were left helplessly alone on the terrible streets of Shinjuku. Fortunately we managed to annoy some Japanese people by asking where we could find a manga cafe, and finally we were pointed in the right direction. End of story.

Three more weeks. The Netherlands. Jolly good.

Het regent zonnestralen

Leuk liedje is dat. Mijn favoriete Nederlandstalige nummer.

Ik begin me af te vragen voor wie ik deze blog nog bijhoud. Is het voor mijn ouders, die ik elke week bel? Of voor mijn echt goede vrienden in Japan, met wie ik elke dag of elke week wel contact heb? En of mijn ‘niet zo goede’ vrienden mijn blog bekijken dat interreseert me eigenlijk vrij weinig. Ik kom tot de conclusie dat ik mijn blog bijhoud voor twee groepen vrienden: mijn vrienden in Nederland met wie ik weinig contact meer heb en mijn vrienden die eerst in Japan waren, maar nu weer zijn vertrokken naar iets nieuws.

I’ve got so much things I want to do, and so little willpower for any… Going to the gym for example. I really should go, because my subscription will end in December. And I need to go on a diet. And we should make a movie. And I need to finish some work before I go to Holland. I need to renew my phone contract, I need to get new insurance, I need to buy stuff before I go back to Holland. It’s not a problem of time, it’s just that I’m lazy as hell lately and I don’t feel like doing anything during the week. And in weekends I’ve been busy doing fun stuff and canceling out my during-the-week-attempts at a diet…

Other than that there’s not much news. I’m still working at Asahi Kasei. Got promoted to technical advisor this month, I think. I’m not sure, because nobody told me anything and I’m still doing exactly the same work as I did before. They pay me more money now, so I won’t complain I guess. I’m looking for new options for next year. I already investigated the option of going back to Holland to do a master, but I need some more choices for next year. I’m quite sure I can stay at AK longer if I want to, so that’s 2 options so far. I’ve also sent my CV to ’some big company that operates in Holland and Japan’, for which I would very much like to work, since such a company can make me stay longer in Japan and still be useful for me when I return to the Netherlands.

Long weekend next weekend. Thursday is a national holiday and most people at work are taking a day off on friday to go somewhere for four days. I will not take friday off, so I will be one of the few guys remaining here for the weekend. I haven’t decided what to do yet. Maybe I’ll just stay at home. Watch anime, and/or study Japanese for a change. I might actually try to start learning it after one year. I don’t feel I improved that much since I came here, and my weak points are still the same..

Random quote of the day:
“Freedom is secured not by the fulfilling of one’s desires, but by the removal of desire.”
I don’t like this quote at all, but it does give me something very interesting to think about..

Entertaining yourself

What to do until going back to Holland? Now that I know I’m going back I’m kind of looking forward to it, and I”m waiting for it. In the meantime there’s still a lot of things I need to take care of, like renewing my mobile phone contract, taking care of insurance for next year, etc. etc. Annoying. Or 面倒臭い in Japanese: mendou kusai, which literally means: ’smells like trouble’. Nice expression.

Besides that I’ve started to watch the TV series Lost with some Chinese people. Interesting, but I can’t wait any longer for the next episode so I’m going to watch a lot of episodes tonight ^^. We’re still going to make a movie, but it’s proving to be a bit of a problem if the main character decides to leave… Meh. So the roles need to be shuffled around a bit. Anyway, we have one month before I return to Holland, which might not be enough for the whole movie, but it should be enough for some interesting, and more importantly, easy to shoot, scenes.

Besides this I am bored as hell and not very happy. So there.

“Meh”

I am NOT Superman!

I got my re-entry permit! It went a lot faster than last time, too. Last year I went with Jose and we had to wait for more than an hour before we got our re-entry permits. This time I went with Zach and we finished in 20 minutes. During that 20 minutes we went for breakfast, and when we came back it was our turn, so the timing was perfect Holland, here I come!

Meh, Holland. What the hell am I supposed to do there? Stay at home and sleep I guess. I miss my ’sleep until the afternoon and play games until 3 in the night’ rhythm from when I was still a student. Maybe I should go to university next year, I will be able to catch up on my sleep ^_^

Besides that I still have to decide what I’m going to do for the long weekend in the end of November. We have a national holiday on thursday, but none on friday, and I’m not sure if I want to use one of my paid holidays for friday, since I will have another shortage of paid holidays after my trip to Holland :’( I need more holidays.. Maybe I will go to Izu by myself for saturday and sunday of that weekend. Most of the guys will be doing stuff for all 4 days that weekend, so I will not be able to join them. Besides, I’ve seen most of the places that they want to go already.

It’s really getting colder here now. Sometimes. This morning it felt really cold and like winter, but in the afternoon and in the sun it’s still around 20 degrees celcius, and quite warm.

We are making a movie! It started as some silly idea, but it looks like we are really going to do it O_O. The script is just about finished, and most of the scenes are filled in nicely. There are some gaps but we can leave it to improvisation on the spot to fix those. All we need now is a camera, lots of props and clothes and people that are willing to cooperate

Something cool on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_cognitive_biases
There’s lots of interesting information there on how the human mind works, and how we tend to see things differently from reality, and misinterpret situations based on our own best interest. Quite interesting.

Amusing yourself

I booked the trip to Holland! I will go back the 16th of December, to spend a couple of weeks in calm and quiet Holland. At least it’s calm and quiet where I live. I’m not planning much, just going to relax and not think about Japan for a while. To me it feels more like a holiday than going home. By house and my work is here. I will have a chance to relax and get some proper sleep for a chance

It’s starting to get cold here. No more roof parties for a while. It’s still better than in Holland though. I’ve decided to change my life a bit here a bit. I could use a serious diet for a change, and I need to go to the gym more. And I really, really need to get a proper sleeping rhythm. I haven’t had a normal week since before September, when everybody started to leave Japan. I should really go to bed at a normal time each day, and have a good rest in the weekends. I’ll try to get it this month.

Work. I still have it. A lot. Enough to do for several years if I really want to. But not really in the mood to work a lot lately. My working pace has fallen a lot since I first came here. Partly my own fault, partly the fault of the situation at the company. When I arrived here a year ago I could sometimes sit in front of my PC only doing programming for the entire afternoon. Now there are lot more interruptions (right Kamil? ) and there’s a lot of different things I should pay attention to. It’s kind of hard to stay focused on one thing for a long time. I think this will improve in the coming months though, after the new people get more accustomed to the working environment. My ‘boss’ has a nice policy: Turn off email, messaging systems, put on headphones and ignore everyone from 3 to 5 in the afternoon. I should try that.

Fun stuff then: we are planning to shoot a movie Crazy idea, but some of us thought of a great action story which we would like to try to film in Atsugi. So far we only have a main actress, 3 actors, a cameraman and a very rough and stupid plot, but I think it could work. It’s not like I have much else to do in my free time here anyway We’ll see if we can make something out of this..