Full House

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My apologies for causing some of you anxieties and withdrawal symptoms by not keeping my weblog up to date. It's been more than 10 days and that really has been the longest ever. Never realized how many do read my weblog.
Thank you all for the mails expressing concern about my well-being and yes I'm OK Just didn't have anything interesting to say. I know that sounds odd coming from a person who thinks that he always has something (interesting) to say......

Left friday for Fukuoka to pick up Paul on saturday morning at 08.00 at the airport and arrived just in time. After a delightful train journey arrived here at around 11.15 and met Pim's Dad, Peter Paul, on the way to the dorm. Bart and Gijs' family are arriving today too and they will go on a tour of Japan next thursday.
Paul Janssen, being Paul Janssen, decided that since it was Queen's day the room needed decorating with small flags !!!

This weekend is "Tall Ships Weekend" here and basically it is a smaller version of Sail 2005 in Amsterdam. But some great Japanese ships are here like the Nihon Maru 日本丸 and the Kaiwo Maru 海王丸 . They are all lit up so perfect for pictures. Alex asked for a free poster which is now our one and only decoration in the living room of appartment 501.

Organized dinner for my friends in Nagasaki in an area called Shianbashi, the redlight district here full with wonderfull places to eat, . Once again a "Nomihodai", drink all you can with food thrown in as well. Great but just a little too much to drink, I'm afraid.
Just for your info from left to right.: Yang Xiang a.k.a. Shanghai Tony, Akitaka and Mai from Nagasaki, Alex, Diana and her new love, Mitch, Saul from DC and Aki (my tutor) from Nagasaki.

伊王島

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Wednesday is my day off during the week which basically means studying in the library or at home but today together with Alex and Anja, a friend from Amsterdam, we ventured out to a delightful small island called Ioujima 伊王島, about a twenty minute boat ride from Nagasaki harbour. You can buy a combined ticket for the ferry ride and onsen together for 980 Yen.
After a wonderfull walk beside the sea we arrived at a small man made beach with just us on it. made sand castles, walked in the surf and just lazied around. All the while the sun was shining brightly with temperatures well above 23 degrees.

Went to this onsen where the outdoor baths 露天風呂 look out over the sea all the way to Nagasaki ..... wow!! Had the best curry udon ever (must have been more than a liter of in a huge bowl) filled with tender chicken pieces and drank a tasty beer. Then the rain that had been predicted for the whole day but just never materialized started all of a sudden so we had to run to the boat and made it back home safely. Definitely a thing to do when visiting Nagasaki, folks!

Skype seems to become more and more of a hype. Since I started out last september with just Tobi in Dehli and Karen in Geneva as contacts, I now have about 35. Well I guess you can't beat a good working and free product. Paying for phone calls will be thing of the past... mark my words!

Toilet

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As you probably know the bath rooms in Japan are basically undersized (definitely for tall Dutch folk) and made out of one plastic mold. That also means that the components are not the sturdiest one can imagine. When we arrived here in October our toilet seat was broken but taped together with a tape more durable than the toilet itself. But alas, that too came to an end. About a month ago it broke and suffices to say it's no longer a pleasure sitting there. Went to the caretaker, kanrinin 管理人 of the building two and a half weeks ago but so far no luck. She claims that she needs to order it via the internet...no you cannot just buy it in a store; dimensions, colour and other specifications have to be in order. She then proceeded to put some non-matching white tape around it as a make do solution. I ask her every monday where the seat is but the answer as always is : it's difficult, isn't it! 難しいね. I wonder if we will ever get a new one before we have moved back to Holland.

The draw for the new appartment had put us in place 52 (right now 47) for one and place 3 (now 2) for the other appartment we wanted. The people before us have now 72 hours to respond and if not than maybe we will hopefully be the proud owners of a new appartment. Have just no idea how many applicants there were but it there must be lots. There must have been thousands if you consider that there are about 50 appartments and at least 50 applicants per appartment .. and they're not cheap either. We must be a rich nation......

Had a small drinking binge last night with Mads, Rudy (both in suits!),Pim and some newly acquired Japanese friends... and guess what no hang-over!!! The picture is a little fuzzy but so was the evening......

Suzy

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Once in a while I get a little uneasy when the image of Suzy pops back in my mind. Suzy used to be a stunner in her days, a well sought after model in the sixties. She came from a small German village close to Frankfurt and had moved to London in the beginning of the sixties. Unfortunately life became too confusing and like many of her generation she became a total junkie. By the time I met her in 1975 (she used to live next door to my friend Alfonso in Inverness Terrace in a tiny dirty room, living of soup that she heated up in the can itself on a small electric stove) she couldn't have sunk any lower. She was pleasant when she wasn't too incoherent or had "gentlemen friends" over but most of the time you just couldn't communicate with her at all.
As one is getting older the frightening images of how one could end up surface so now and then. I know that I'm not in her position, eventhough I eat mostly soup and live in a tiny room here and feel quite lonely at times. But I cannot help wondering how close people sometimes are in just losing it all in a matter of minutes; something happens in their head, they make a succession of wrong decisions and voilá there's no turning back.
There must be so many folks out there who travel that god forsaken path while the rest of us just think that life is naturally good to us or more to the point should be good like we''re sort of entitled to it.
It just scares me...... but I do count my blessings every day and do consider myself a lucky guy.

Akitaka and Mai

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I have two conversation partners here in Nagasaki, Kenichi and Akitaka.
As it happens Akitaka lives with Mai, another student who speaks not only excellent english but dutch also, having spend a year in Utrecht with a guest family three years ago. Well last night Alex and I were invited for dinner there. Alex brought a bottle of expensive wine and being Dutch I thought flowers would do nicely. Mai cooked a fab meal with specialities from her hometown Miyazaki. Chicken, crabs and maki rolls. This is all the more fabulous considering they live on a stamp and with just one (1) burner in an alcove kitchen to cook on.
A good time was had by all and way after midnight we grabbed a cab back.
This weekend I already have to start studying and doing my homework... not a chore I'm looking forward to but it's just got to be done.

My other conversation partner is a student (again) here at the university and studies physical therapy; basically a study to find out the best ways to help people who suffered a stroke etc. He is a fervent Kendo fan, the traditional Japanese sport with the wooden swords and takes part in regional championships as well. Since the Japanese do not like to go into the sun, Kenichi while on holiday in Phuket, Thailand, a couple of weeks ago and looking at all those europeans sunning themselves had a go at it but never thought to put any cream on.. well you can imagine the result. The expression used in Japan to describe that you look like a lobster is strikingly similar be it that they use another animal: a boiled octopus 茹でたこ.

Paul has left for Dhaka, Bangladesh to work for 2 weeks and will then come over here... yeah. Finally he too will be able to sample the delights of Nagasaki.

Today is the day that Paul and I will hear if we were lucky in a draw to be the new owners of a still to be build new and bigger appartment in Amsterdam...I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Incommunicado

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Lectures have started again as of yesterday and together with Alex, Kim, Mads and Pim (who only received 4 credits out of the 7 needed in the 1st semester) we have to try and get another 10 this semester. Seems like an impossible task but we choose the subjects without tests ( where ever possible) and one hour where you get 2 credits instead of one. The latter should also be the most interesting one since it's about Rangaku 蘭学 , Dutch studies. The study of the dutch physicians, astronomers and the like that came here in the 17th century and introduced new revolutionary techniques to operate on people, draw new celestial charts etc. Up till then everything was based on Chinese "science". A new generation of Japanese scientists came to be and a lot of dutch publications were translated into Japanese. We will follow lectures on the campus but also in museums and other interesting places around Nagasaki.
Today is the first day (after 4 days) that I am actually able to update my weblog since the traffic is so immense at the moment. Gijs has a new computer and together with everybody else downloading anime and god knows what else 24 hours a day, at least for me in the corner creates a breakdown in the system and therefore I am not able to Skype, open my mail or get on the internet. I hope it will improve soon as this is highly annoying.
On top of that it has been pouring down for the last couple of days and I mean continously. Got totally soaked yesterday coming home from the University.
O yeah... the good thing is I have wednesdays off. So a nice interlude to do something else than hang around the campus.

My friend Saul has started conversation class, Kaiwa, in our centre and he was very pleased to get in on a intermediate level but after yesterday's first hour he seemed rather dissapointed:

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"It wasn't quite kaiwa. I think I'm going to be subjected to gaijin japanese for 3 months. This is much worse than bad english. One participant spent five minutes introducing herself, and was totally unintelligible. And we applauded!"
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Well that's what Japanese people do......... applaud the effort. Wake up and smell the coffee!!

Busy, busy, busy busy

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In sharp contrast to my complete idleness here in Nagasaki (sleeping in, going to look at cherry blossoms, going to the onsen, leisurely dinners and chatting away over a coffee at Starbucks) at the moment before the lectures start again tomorrow, the folks back home are going through a "no time for nothing" period. Meetings all over the world, following small courses to improve on something or other, organizing other friends lifes, relationships breaking up, prospects of buying new appartments and on top of that still having to do the shopping, cleaning and ironing one self.
The old adagio "have a free evening next month on the 3rd, so let's meet then" seems to be back en vogue again.

Had to change my e-mail address on my mobile phone yesterday because of an over abundance of spam/junk mail that started about 4 weeks ago and increased to being send at every 5 to 10 minutes. I wonder how long the silence will last this time around.........

Hans, Pim and Marco are busy organizing their trip over here and it doesn't seem to go smoothly via their travel agency (I think you're better off doing it yourself) that cannot even organize a round the world ticket for them......... But they're coming and that's the most important part.

Had a stroll over a Buddhist cemetery where at the entrance the Kannon Buddha stands on top of a giant turtle to protect the place. The graves are certainly not poor men's graves, look very well kept and there are a lot of fresh flowers. Since it is situated on a hill top the view over Nagasaki harbour is absolutely stunning ( it'll better be if you have to be there for eternity!).

Tomorrow back to the University for our first orientation about the coming semester (which lectures we're going to have, what books to read etc.). I'm actually looking forward to it.

Sakura

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One of the biggest events in the whole of Japan is the "Sakura" 桜 season. The before totally barren cherry trees start to bud and bloom within a matter of days at the end of March through the middle of April, where the ones in the southern prefectures will ofcourse bloom earlier than the ones up north. People will go and see them with friends and family and even organize picnics and boozing parties in the evening in the parks. This is called "Hanami" 花見, where Hana = blossoms and Mi = to see. The colour is either white or a beautiful pale pink. Here in Nagasaki the best known place to go to is Tateyama Park 立山公園 , located up against a hill and close to the Suwa Shrine. But even the little park opposite our Student Hall is just crammed with these trees and the local residents have put up lanterns to make the place look more festive.

Celebrated Alexandra's Birthday last night with the well known Nomihodai in a place close by. Unfortunately it was absolutely pouring down when we came out so needed to take a cab home.

Today too...lotsa rain but things seem to be improving..... well, you know the saying: every cloud has a silver lining.........