Home sweet home

The living area, note the low ceilings, nothing like Singapore condos. And no hanging paintings on the walls.



New TV set in the living room... strange how it's become Nicole's favourite room. Maybe it's the heated floors...



Mei in the kitchen whipping up dinner, the kitchen comes with a dishwasher, which is getting abused as I write.



Managed to get the bed into the bedroom.























Entrance way to Gotenyama House... looks like a bunker, or the entrance to NORAD. I know I'm putting my foot in it, but this place is designed to take the Big One... shit, I've screwed us all.











Inside reception area with concierge service, they're really really helpful booking taxis, dry cleaning etc... once you learn japanese.

Nicole

On a recent trip to Akihabara, she seems pretty pleased with the TV we bought... any TV we bought.

That all important Alien Registration Card

In order for a alien to open a bank account, get a credit card, sign up for a handphone, basically the simple necessities of life, you need an alien registration card (ARC).

To get the card you need to head down (I suggest teleportation, it's so much faster) to your friendly neighbourhood district office, in this case Shinagawa, where, surprise surprise no one speaks a word of english. Once you get through the usual language issues (with lots of sign language and repeating english words loudly till they suddenly get it) and fill up your form, you get a letter telling you to pick up your ARC in a couple of weeks.

Two weeks isn't that long, I hear it takes up to two months to process the alien registration card if you're from a different solar system and if you're not from the Milky Way, forget it...

Anyway, this card is your life. You need to carry it with you all the time, should the police (or Men in Black) decide to stop you for a random alien check... note to self: do not raise alien antenna on forehead near policemen.

With this card, you can live amongst the humans and experience all the fringe benefits and comforts of life they do, produce this card at a bank and magically, you can open a savings account, do note foreign currency accounts only apply to Earth money; head to the nearest DOCOMO and with a snap of your 8 fingers, you get a handphone. It's like never having left Mars.

Gee whizz! I can't wait till February 5th when I get my card!

GOD is in the details

As fun as my job is, one thing that gets-my-goat is a typical meeting run by the Japanese. So far I've been lucky to be in meetings with lots of gaijins, these meetings pretty much run the usual way and we leave on schedule. Having been lucky, I've also had the joy of experiencing a couple of Japanese meetings...

A typical japanese meeting involves asking everyone in the room their opinion... and I mean everyone. If the tea lady came in with her geriatric husband they would be asked "what do you think?"

An example of what I mean...

Do you think this font is too bold?
Kagawa-San, what do you think? Iijima-San, what do you think? Uchida-San, what do you think? Takama-San, what do you think? Mark-San, what do you think?

"I think you guys are nuts" Now, here's where it pays to have a good translator, she would re-interpret my exact words to fit within Japanese parameters, "I think you should decide amongst yourselves".

Do you think this red is too red?
Kagawa-San, what do you think? Iijima-San, what do you think? Uchida-San, what do you think? Takama-San, what do you think? Mark-San, what do you think?

"I think open heart surgery is more enjoyable at this time", my diplomatic translator would say, "That red is the colour of passion."

Can we try moving that picture 3mm?
Kagawa-San, what do you think? Iijima-San, what do you think? Uchida-San, what do you think? Takama-San, what do you think? Mark-San, what do you think?

"I'd like to move to Afghanistan", my lovely translator would reply, "A move of 2mm would be better."

And so it goes, a one hour meeting can take two-and-a-half hours. At the end of the meeting, in most cases, nothing is decided...

Oh... and they like to schedule meetings at 7.00pm.

Scandinavian DIY furniture...

Ahh, how we took for granted the small and convenient size of Singapore, these days, making plans to go somewhere in Tokyo, one has to plan properly way in advance.

No more spur-of-the-moment decisions to pop around and pick up a ubiquitous GOØFÜNBLOB lamp from Queensway Ikea...

MISSION: GET TO IKEA
Sunday January 20th, 2008

8.30 am
Wake Up

9.30 am
Ask concierge for directions to Ikea
(yes, we live in a rather posh place that has a concierge service, so no riff-raff please...)

10.00 am
Katsudon breakfast at Shinagawa train station

10.30 am
Board train (tokaido line) bound for Tokyo station

10.40 am
Arrive at Tokyo station
(realize the train to IKEA is on the Keiyo line, which is half a kilometre away, WITHIN Tokyo station)

10.55 am
Arrive at track 4 Keiyo line, breathing heavy, wait for train

11.00 am
Board train, doze off after 10 minutes...

12.11 pm
Realise we have passed our station (Minami Funabashi), SOMEBODY wasn't keeping watch... she will remain nameless

12.45 pm
Back track and finally arrive at Minami Funabashi, the middle of nowhere, with a massive IKEA store right in the middle-of-nowhere. Realise it is a Mecca for the bored as we see streams of lemmings heading for the entrance.

12.55 pm
Shop till we drop, pushing pass Japanese heartlanders and the odd white gaijin...

14.00 pm
Queue up to pay, 56,000¥ for a futon bed and a couple of bins... sigh

14.25 pm
Grab a 100¥ hotdog, can't afford anything else...

14.45 pm
Head back to train station

15.15 pm
Catch the packed express train back to Tokyo station

16.00 pm
Arrive at Tokyo station, start walking back to Yamanote line track (half a klick away)

16.15 pm
Catch breath

16.25 pm
Take train back to Shinagawa

16.45 pm
Get off train and head to cabstand

16.55 pm
Take taxi home

17.10 pm
Arrive home

Later in the evening, realised we forgot to buy a GOØFÜNBLOB lamp... shit.

Blame Canada

Good news to all of Nicole's Grandparents, Godparents, Uncles and Aunties! She ACED her entry interview and has been accepted into the Canadian International School. God help CIS!

Ah! Canada that great, little country north of the US of A, home to maple trees and mounties, further known for (gimme a minute) ice hockey and ice fishing. A finer education one could not ask for... trust Mei and me, it's a much better school then the alternative, Sacred Heart School, the last bastion of an English imperialistic education, where young girls are 'finished' and taught to drink tea with a dash of milk and their pinkie sticking out.

In a typical Nicole moment, when asked at the end of the interview if she had any questions... one would have thought the interviewer (the vice-principal) meant a question pertaining to the school. Nicole, being Nicole, asks him "why does the sun set so early here in Japan?". Impressed the vice-principal had no choice but to spend 10 minutes explaining to a 5 year old how Japan is further away from the equator then Singapore etc, etc...

That’s my girl.

Mass confus... transportation

This is the tokyo train map. My office is in Meguro and we live in Gotenyama hills about a 15 minute jaunt from the Osaki train station, so only two stops to work. The rest of the masses can take up to 2 hours to travel to work and another 2 back, IF you can find your station... Let me tell you the train stations are just as confusing, luckily the larger stops are bilingual, but get to the suburbs and you're screwed.

Extra points if you can find Meguro or Osaki.

First 2 weeks in Tokyo...

Well I've survived my first 2 weeks in Tokyo. Still living out of my suitcase in a service apartment. At least it's warm and cosy, and only a 25 minute walk to the office. But on days like today, when the temperature is 3 degrees and a strong wind blowing, those 25 minutes seem like hours...

Japanese people are amazing, they have so much pride in their work. Went to Wendy's for lunch (yes, burgers...), was amazed to see when I unwrapped my burger it looked EXACTLY like the appetizing glory shots used instore... I mean the burger was a lovely grilled brown, the yellow cheese melted just right and the lettuce was perfectly green with the sliced tomatoes red and juicy. It was almost too perfect to eat... this is what I mean by pride in their work, making each burger perfect. Coming from Singapore, where they slap the meat and bun together and squash it into a paper wrapper... this place is amazing.

Civic minded too... while looking out the balcony over the weekend, a strong breeze was blowing down the street, with blustry gusts. Needless to say many parked bicycles were blown over... guess what? Strangers walking by actually picked up the bikes and set them upright! Blew me away...

Bad news is my wallet is getting lighter by the day, it is expensive here. Just going to the supermarket can set you back US$30-40 for a small plastic bag's worth of groceries. Forget going out for dinners, that'll set you back US$100 easily...

Mei and Nicole made it here safe and sound, they're now over at our new apartment cleaning it out and packing up the unpacked stuff (the movers arrived yesterday to empty out the 148 boxes we shipped up from Singapore), looks like we'll be moving in this friday, worse case saturday.

The apartment is cosy, feels a little smaller then it's advertised 1400+ square feet. Having said that, our bedroom is larger then our old place in Singapore... and you can wash and blow dry your ass in both toilets.

This simple blog seems like a good way to update my life periodically to everyone I know... let's see how long it lasts when the work kicks in...