Tomorrow my new job starts!

Tomorrow I will have my first day of work at C. I am very excited about it!
I am also a little worred about it---I have to prepare so hard.... Currently I am preparing my self-introductory speech (in Japanese). Also I am learning the names of my co-workers by heart (not easy for me to remember Japanese names...). Finally, I still have to wrap all the presents.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

High Tech

3 examples for the high-tech stuff that can be found everywhere in Tokyo:

1) Cell phone shield: this prevents other people from seing what's going on on your cell phone. How does it work? See the explanation of my shield:


2) How to make foreign friends: with the playstation mobile, it is easy to make foreign friends. Check out the lovely advertisement (especially illustration 3 is hillarious):



3) Robot shop: recently, I took a walk in my neighbourhood. To my surprise I found a robot shop. This is hard to believe, but true: housekeeping robots are sold there!

Kinugawa Onsen: Preview

Last weekend I have been with 4 friends to Kinugawa Onsen (what is an Onsen? read it here). It was a realy nice trip!! We also went hiking. I will describe it in more detail, when I have all the pictures (hurry up Sebastien!!).
For now, just some preview pictures :-)

Party on Monday

Wow---my 4th posting for today :-)

On Monday I was at a really cool party. There were lots of guys there who work at Sony CSL, so I was able to get some nice contacts and have interesting discussions! There were also lots of beautiful girls (design students), but I was not in the mood for them. Still, it was a delightful view :-)

One of the coolest guys I know (Ivan) was DJing at the party. It's unbelievable, he is an outstanding researcher (see e.g. his book on 3D User Interfaces), still he is a really cool guy. I am not sure whether there are that many researchers who are also DJs, haha!

Later that evening I was quite drunk (like everyone at the party...). Then, I was talking with a guy, we found out that we are doing very similar research. He had a SIGGRAPH paper last year. I knew neither him, nor his research :-(

It's very funny... Let me illustrate this by an example: let's say two sportsman are talking to each other:

A: So what do you do?
B: I play tennis.
A: Wow---this is also my sports!
B: Great!
A: You know, last year, I was Wimbledon finalist. (That's what having a SIGGRAPH paper means for a researcher...)
B: Wow---maybe I should have known you.

I felt a little stupid, but I guess it was ok :-)

Learning how to write

Currently I am learning how to write in Japanese. It's very hard for me. I am now using textbooks made for pre-school children :-) See the image below for the subtle balance of the characters (I especially like the big illustration on the left showing the invisible balance-lines).

Hiroshi Sugimoto

Yesterday, I have visited the most beautiful art exhibition I have ever been to. I was thinking carefully about this statement---it really was. The artist was Hiroshi Sugimoto. I would describe his work as surreal photography---every photo is beautiful, however, it feels to me something is wrong with them. A feeling I also have when looking at Edward Hopper's paintings.
Additionally, the whole exhibit seemed like one big art installation. Every room was carefully designed to match the photographs. Wow---my heart is still beating faster when I think about it.

The poster for the exhibit:


Some photos from the exhibit:





Finally, on the way to the exhibit, I saw a poster announcing a German-Japanese art festival. It even contains the mouse from "Sendung mit der Maus", haha!

Okonomiaki

Recently I had Okonomiaki for dinner. Once again, I am impressed by the breadth and quality of Japanese cuisine.
Do not let the photos fool you---it tastes much better than it looks :-) A cool thing about Okonomiaki is that you prepare the food yourself. You are sitting at a hot plate and cook the food---there are even hourglasses supplied to keep the appropriate time for cooking!

Hokusai

I got myself a conversation partner to support my struggles with the Japanese language. We wanted to visit an exhibition of Hokusai last weekend. It turned out that the waiting time was 1 hour, so we decided to go to a pottery exhibition instead. It was very enjoyable!



The waiting line for the Hokusai exhibit. The last time I have seen such a big line was when the MoMa in New York reopened.


Recently, I had some very interesting food!
A maron pastry (the same type is very popular in Hungary):

Sashimi:

Ice fish:


Last sunday, there was a marathon in my neighbourhood:


An interesting ad, playing with the Japanese characters for my neighbourhood (Shinagawa):


Shinjuku at night:


After I finished unpacking my things, I had a huge pile of trash.
I temporarily stored some next to my apartment door:


The biggest part of my trash I put on the streets so that it will be picked up.


I thought it might be confusing for the trash guys, since I put everything in Nissen (=IKEA) boxes, so I wrote Trash in Japanese on the boxes ;-)

Posting comments

Dear readers,
you can write comments to the entries of this blog! At the end of every post, there is a line like this:
"posted by streamblogger at 7:40 AM 0 comments links to this post"

If you click on "0 comments", you can leave a short message.

Please leave a comment, it encourages me to do further postings :-)

Thanks and cheers!

Japanese Ikea

Today, I have spent 13 hours (without a break!!!) assembling the furniture of my apartment. Oh no, my apartment is not that big ;-) Instead, the assembly turned out to be quite complicated since the instructions were written in Japanese :-(
Everything went fine, except for the earthquake protectors for my shelves---they do not fit in, since my apartment ceiling is too low.... I hope there will be no strong earthquake.... I guess I will only store non-fragile stuff in my shelves!

Now it is 1AM and I am finally relaxing a little. I am drinking a glass of Sake and listening to an old song: Regulate . I used to listen to this song when I was 18. Wow, time passes so fast!

Today I have asked my Japanese neighbours for help, since I could not understand the controllers in my apartment. The heating system and the water supply have very sophisticated control panels, they even have speech output! However, I have no clue what it means .... Guess I am lost in translation ;-) The explanations turned out to be quite complicated, since they do not speak English... However, I managed to understand the most important functions. Means, I have warm water and a warm, furnished and cozy apartment now!

Lots of pictures

Finally, I have some time for a biiiiiig posting :-)

Saturday, I have visited a Buddhist temple, together with 2 French guys. One of them (Sebastien) does very interesting research, basically he is trying to create clothes that contain invisible computers that help with intercultural communication---very cool! Here are the pictures from the trip:










After sightseeing, we went to a Tofu restaurant, where we had incredible food.



Sunday, I had some time to take a walk in my neighbourhood (Shinagawa):



Some funny signs:





Soon, Sin City will be screened in Tokyo. Here are some ads for the movie (with my favourite character: Miho):



Can you believe this---near to a very busy station, someone has locked his backpack to a rail.
However, the backpack is not locked.... Sometimes, Japan feels like another planet to me!


Food here is most of the times fantastic! My first disgusting experience was to find a bug in my cup of tea---I left the restaurant immediately!


I am doing my laundry the Japanese way: hanging the wet clothes on a pole in front of my window. Since I am scared of heights, this feels always a little scary for me :-(