I will start at the beginning. On my second day in Tokyo I met up with Sakiko and several of her friends among which two of them had just gotten married the same day. We met up in Marunouchi, the area where both the Emperor and I go to work (Novo Nordisk has its office right next to the Emperor Palace - absolute prime location in Tokyo). We had a nice dinner and everybody was very friendly and open towards me. I would like to use this opportunity to tell that Japanese people are quite similar to Danish people. At first they are a little reserved and distant, but once you peel away that outside layer (usually after a few rounds of sake) they are actually really nice, open and firendly people. To my big surprise their humor is also pretty close to ours, which means that ironi works to a large extend here in Japan.
Two weekends ago I went to see traditional Japanese firework. Fireworks are very common in Japan during the summertime and usually they end in August. However, due to the March earthquake and Tsunami a lot of the planned fireworks were cancelled or postponed, which meant that I got a chance to go to one. I was told by some of my Japanese friends that I should wear a male kimono called "Yukata", so in order to respect the Japanese traditions I invested in a Yukata. Wearing a Yukata in the metro and on the street was a little weird and I felt that people were staring at me all the time, but I was determined to follow the Japanese traditions. However, when I finally arrived at the venue for the firework I was very surprised to see that I was almost the only male person wearing a traditional Japanese outfit. Despite the fact that I stood out in the crowd (being the only tall light haired person wearing traditional Japanese clothing) it was a very good evening where we sat near the lake, watchinga very "kidei" (= beautiful) firework, while eating sushi and drinking vodka red bull :-)
A good way of spending a Sunday is to sit in the sun and listen to Jazz music. That is what I did on Sunday the 9th of October in Yokohama. I also got a chance to try out the big Ferris Wheel, eat some very delicious food at the restaurant "Bills" (famous Australian chef) and enjoy the more relaxed atmosphere in Yokohama. I also tried what is know as "Purikura", a very entertaining version of a passport foto booth. It works like this:
1) First you enter a booth with a lot of flashing lights and some crazy fast paced Japanese pop music. You choose what effect you would like to add to your fotos. This could for example enlarged ears or eyes as we chose. Then you pose for the in camera in any way you like while the fotos are taken.
2) Once the foto session is over you enter another booth, where you can decorate the pictures with all kinds of glitter and glamour. You only have very limited time to decorate the fotos, which forces you to be spontaneous. You can see the result from my session below:-)
A common thing here in Japan is TGIF. Every friday after work I go out with my colleagues to celebrate the start of the weekend. This past friday we went to Coopers, where they serve MEGA pints (2.5 liters of beer in a large glas) and pub style food. After two very enjoyable hours at Coopers we went to 300 JPY bar and as the name indicates everything costs 300 JPY (or app DKK 21).
The following Saturday I had my first English for Japanese language exchange session. My super cool colleague Kodaila-san had hooked me up with one of his friends, who wants to learn English. We met up at a restaurant accompanied by Kodaila-san as translator and another girl to keep him company when he was not translating. It was pretty akward in the beginning, where we mostly used sign language and one word sentences. If any of you have seen the Rise of Planet of the Apes you have a pretty good idea about how it went down :-) Luckily we had a lot of Sochu (Japanese liquor) and it all turned to be a very entertaining experience. After the dinner we went clubbing until 4.30 am in the morning and instead of McD we ended the night with a very delicious noodle soup and 1 hour of Super Mario Bros 3 gaming :-)
