A sunday in Shibuya

Hi Friends,
Since I still had a cold this weekend, I just went for a little walk in Shibuya, a part of Tokyo, which is quite popular with the young people. Here are some impressions of the young fashion in Shibuya:



Please click the photo and take a closer look at the beautiful GTA-Truck ^_^!!!


That's right! It's a smart Roadster!!! In Germany, it is nothing special, but in Japan, it is a rarely driven car.

I've seen that movie poster quite often, since I arrived in Tokyo. The title is "幸せのちから", which means "The strength of happiness". The original title is "The pursuit of happyness". I find the poster very intriguing. It has such a positive aura... I really want to see that film ^_^, but the cinema is very expensive here!

Now I'd like to show you the inside of the japanese game centres! The older machines cost only 50 Yen (ca. 0,33 Euro). The newer ones cost 100 Yen (0,67 Euro). As you can see, the japanese game centres are very cheap when compared to Germany. And, of course, they've got the newest games available ^_^.



The good, old street fighter game is still played in Japan!!!

As you can see, there are all kinds of games. The old man in the pic plays Shôgi, a japanese chess game!

Now here's a game, I'll definitely play some day. It is a typing game played with keyboards!!! They also have a new version of "Typing of the dead"! Now I just have to find someone, who can type as fast as me or even faster...

You can also find some Mahjong machines in every game centre. It seems to be quite popular...

Well, Mahjong was for the old generation, now here are the games for the really young generation ^_^!

The newest evolution in game machines: You play this game with some kind of trading card, which you place on the game field in front of you. There are so many of these trading card game machines for all kinds of games. Strategic War games, Action games, Football games, Quiz games, etc.
And here's the clue! You can play these games with ten or twenty people at the same time!!! As you can see, everyone has a small monitor in front of the machine. But in the background, there's a great monitor for all players, where you can see the actual game action!

Well, here's the absolute best game available in Japan. It is a mobile suit gundam simulator. A "gundam" is some kind of great mecha (robot). In this game (you play 2 vs. 2), you are the pilot of one gundam and you are sitting in a "COCKPIT"!!! You don't have a simply monitor and some buttons in front of you, instead half of the cockpit is the monitor and you use your whole body (arms and feet) to control the gundam, so piloting this thing seems to be very complicated. As an outsider, you can watch the fight of the four gundams at another monitor.

Hi friends,
I've got a really bad cold at the moment, so I'm not writing very much. But I just have to show you the pics of the Tsukiji-fishmarket, which is the biggest fish market worldwide. They handle 2000 tons of seafood EVERY DAY. This is 11 times the volume of New York City's Fulton Fish Market, which is the largest seafood market in North America.

If you think, this is the whole market, you are wrong. This is just a fragment of the whole market. There are different areas for all kinds of seafood and purposes.

Here's a tuna from Sri Lanka. Very fresh. For one piece of tuna, you are paying around 15.000 Euro. Quite expensive, isn't it?


This is the auction for the fresh tuna. Since they have their own technical jargon, even my boss and Miura-san couldn't understand them. They spoke really fast. It sounded like a complete different language. Here's a very funny video from one of the auctions:




Here we have schock-frozen (ca. -40C°) tuna from the Mediterranean Sea. The price for this tuna is even higher than for the other tuna.

This is actually a picture of the new movie "SAW III: The horror continues at the Tsukiji-fish market..."

Here we have a nice pic of the Tsukiji-fish market from above. The warehouses seem to continue endlessly.




Just some nice pictures of the Tokyo-Landscape.

Afterwards, we ate breakfast at a Sushi-Restaurant near the fish market. It was quite expensive (my boss invited us), but it was the best sushi I ever ate. I've now experienced, that the taste of sushi can be totally different according to the sushi-chef and the sushi-ingredients. If you go to a bad sushi-restaurant, the sushi might only taste like wasabi to cover up the freshness of the fish. But if you go to a really good sushi-restaurant, it could make you cry about how tasty it is.

So today, I've experienced a lot about the fish market and sushi. But since I've got a really bad cold and had to wake up very early (4 o'clock a.m.), I'm dead beat by now.

皆へ、 please take care of yourselves,

Matthias.

Hi Friends,
this sunday, my boss and Ms. Miura showed me and Kati some new sides of Tokyo. First, we've been to Asakusa taking a look at the Sensoji-temple and the thundergate (雷門）。


I'm very happy, that I can finally introduce to you from the left to the right:
1. My boss and CEO of Eishin Foods, Mr. Murakami (I call him "shachô", which means boss)
2. his Son-in-law Sato-san
3. with his daughter Akane(-chan)
4. Kati (who works together with me as an intern)
5. and Miura-san, my direct superior.
Like you can probably guess from the photo, they are all very warm and kind people.
I think, I am really lucky to have met them. (Ich glaub, ich bin ein wahrer Glückspilz ^_^).


Here's a nice picture of me, Kati and Akane-chan. It didn't take long and I was called "onii-chan" by Akane, which means big brother ^_^.


Als ich dieses Bild hier geschossen hatte, wollte ich eigentlich nur das umgedrehte Hakenkreuz fotografieren, was ein Symbol für Tempel ist. Überraschenderweise hat ich erst beim Übertragen der Bilder festgestellt, dass sich ein Dragonball-Charakter im Bild versteckt hat (für alle, die Dragonball kennen ^_^). Findet ihr ihn?



Und hier der Beweis! Gundam lebt! Die Serie ist zwar uralt, aber in Japan so beliebt wie noch nie, was man vor allem in den Spielhöllen immer wieder feststellen kann.

After our little shopping trip, my boss invited us all to lunch. I think, he wants me to taste all the different kinds of food, that the japanese cuisine has to offer. So today, we ate sukiyaki!!!
I forgot to take a picture, so here's one from wikipedia:

A short explanation: Sukiyaki is a dish, which is cooked in a nabe (Eintopfgericht). There are many ingredients, which are cooked in a tasty sauce (consisting of soy sauce and other things). But the best ingredient is the very thinly-sliced beef! It was really tasty!!!
After our great meal, we met with Arafat, who came to Tokyo to visit a friend of his. Akane-chan soon found another "onii-chan" ^_^.



This pic was shot in the Edo-Tokyo-Museum. The museum is really big. I think, I've only seen half of it.

Here's Arafat and Akane-chan ^_^.


Another cute pic of Akane-chan ^_^.

The Edo-Tokyo-Museum is right next to the national sumo hall...


And the last pic. Actually, this is a little older. But I simply had to show it.

Keep genki and take care of yourselves,
Maze.

If you work from monday till saturday, you'll really learn to appreciate the sunday. So here's my new album with pics from Tokyo Dome, Ueno Park, Ameyoko and Ginza. Please enjoy it.

Ueno, Ameyoko, Ginza

At Monday, I went for a walk along the Sumida-River. I don't know, how long it took me to get from Nihonbashi to Asakusa. It must have been around two hours, but I wasn't exhausted at all, since I had the feeling of discovering a new site of Tokyo every ten minutes. This city has so many facettes and changes so rapidly, that you might never be able to discover them all. Please enjoy the pics:

Sumida-River and workplace

Erkundung von Hakozakicho

Heute hab ich mal die nähere Umgebung abgecheckt. Normalerweise bin ich schon von einem 2minütigen Spaziergang platt. Ich dachte ja immer, dass es an meiner physischen Verfassung liegt, aber scheinbar bin ich doch nur zu faul. Mit der Kamera bewaffnet war ich von 9 bis 14 Uhr unterwegs und hab immer wieder tolle Motive zum Fotografieren gefunden. Der Grund, warum ich um 14 Uhr wieder nach Hause musste, war nicht etwa Müdigkeit (obwohl ich wegen des Jetlags in der Nacht keine Minute geschlafen habe), sondern die Akkus, die ich leer geschossen hatte. Und die Ersatzakkus waren ebenfalls leer :-(
Die beste Auslese möchte ich euch natürlich nicht vorenthalten. Hier also mein Blog-Album:

Apartment + Hakozakicho

Ankunft in Japan

Hi Leute,

ich hab mich also doch noch durchgerungen, wie zehntausend andere Idioten meine Umwelt und Freunde mit langweiligen Blogs zu nerven, die eh keiner liest ^_^.

Hier nun meine Ankunftsgeschichte in Japan, die beinahe bereits in Hamburg geendet hätte, da die Leute von der Sicherheit eine nicht identifizierbare braune Masse auf ihrem Scanner sahen. Ich hab mich schon gewundert, warum der Sicherheitsmann erst mal den Typen vom Bundesgrenzschutz rief, um ihm beim Durchsuchen des Koffers zu helfen. Nach dem 2. Scannen (sowie zahlreichen Verhören und Folterungen) gestand ich, dass ich lediglich aus Versehen die Karteikarten statt des C4 in die Tupperwarenbox getan hatte...

Die Leute in London waren dann interessanterweise sehr viel unfähiger als ihre Hamburger Kollegen und haben mich nach nur EINER Kontrolle MIT der als Karteikarten getarnte Bombe passieren lassen.

In London hiess es dann erst mal 4 Stunden warten, und was macht man da am besten? Ein Sonnenbad natürlich...






Auf dem Weg zum Gate hätte ich dann beinahe meinen Flieger wegen dieser tollen Antiquität verpasst:



Für die Flugzeug-Fetischisten unter euch, die immer wissen müssen, womit man denn geflogen ist (ich weiß es nämlich nicht...):




Am Flughafen in Narita wurde ich von den beiden sehr netten AIESEC-Damen Manami und Kazumi abgeholt, ohne deren Hilfe ich am Anfang echt aufgeschmissen gewesen wäre. Sie sind beide gerade 20 geworden und werden deshalb an der Volljährigkeitsfeier nächsten Montag (08.01.) teilnehmen (ein nationaler Feiertag, übrigens).








Bin jetzt aber zu müde, um weiterzuschreiben. So viel für den Anfang:

Orientierung in Tokyo hab ich merkwürdigerweise kein Problem mit, obwohl man Straßennamen vergeblich sucht. Wieso bloß verirre ich mich ständig in Hamburg, komme aber bestens in Tokyo zurecht? Dominic erwähnte die Chaos-Theorie als Begründung...