Just wanted to point out the addition of that "thing" over there on the right (or upper right, depending on when you see this post...) to the site. Yep, "BalvigRealtime": A DIRECT link between my brain and Ze World through the magic of Twitter, Google Maps, TinyURL, TwitPic, my iPhone and some nasty php regular expressions. Using my phone's GPS and camera capabilities I will from now on be able to do little "mini updates" to the blog, whenever I get the urge, regardless of where I might be in the world. (Everyone: "Boooh, way to be the LAST PERSON ON EARTH to get on the Twitter bandwagon")
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Came back from Denmark late August but although technically autumn was knocking on the door there was still enough summer left to go on two trips to Osaka/Kobe and Izu respectively. The trip to Osaka was once again partly work-related while the trip to Izu was pure relaxation spent at a ocean-side hotel with a large pool and complimentary hula-dancing (!)
This must be one spectacular toilet for it to have such a prominent sign...Never found it though. Hm.
Summer vacation. Yey!
Yup, those are my orange Goofy underwear from Tokyo Disneyland. Does that make me famous?
Denmark
Yes, the first part of August offered some much-needed vacation time and a chance to return to Dane-land. Not much to say about that except it is always an utmost pleasure to be a tourist in your home country, inspite of the random "reverse culture shocks" that inevitably occur. I managed to take a whole lot of pictures which I just spent the past hour filtering through causing no small amount of home-sickness! Ack! To the emergency licorice cabinet!
May! Spring! Springediringding! Oh, yes spring must definitely be one of the best seasons in Japan, of which there are FOUR (a fact believed by many Japanese to be unique to Japan...strange but true!). May begins with "Golden Week", the annual 4 national holidays that everyone looks forward to and leaves Tokyo more or less abandoned as people go abroad on speed vacations. 2 of the 4 holidays often fall on Saturday and Sunday, which really does make you wonder about the choice of the word "week", but in any case having some time off is nice and I used the opportunity to go on a trip to Osaka and also visit my colleagues at my company's Osaka branch.
As summer approached, temperatures soared and saw some wonderful days of being able to chill out in Yoyogi park, the 540,000 square meter green haven located in the middle of Tokyo. This in turn let to an unexpected encounter with THE BASKETBALL MAN (erm...)
A large part of June/July was however spent trapped inside the walls of a giant corporate prison...A time best forgotten really, and thus I won't dwell on it here. In fact, I have already succeeded in erasing most of that time completely from my conscious memory and so will probably only give up any information pertaining to the events that occurred if subjected to some sort of regressive hypnosis or extreme torture. Which...ironically more or less describes the whole unfortunate affair pretty well. I DID however find this one picture in my collection, which proves, I suppose, that I did actually manage to have fun now and then:
April! "Mounichion" as they used to say in Greece. They also used to wear togas and eat grapes. Or was that in Rome, hm. My knowledge of history is vast and impressive. Another thing I am sure was impressive was the random apperance of me and a couple of co-workers on Japanese television, banging away on a "wadaiko" Japanese drum as our participating in a trial lesson in something called "Taikobics" coincided with the appearance of a television crew from Asahi TV (...I think it was??)
April is the time for my company's yearly "Company Trip Camp Extravaganza!", last year taking place in Roppongi, downtown Tokyo (the "camp" part is not to be taking too literally). Thus, the people in Osaka came down to Tokyo for a few days of work talk and serious meetings (like the one pictured above).
The beginning of the month also saw a visit from Denmark in the form of The Magnus whom I met at Tokai University. Jeg sagde tommelfinger til dig.
Working in Ebisu (or not...)
Having just gotten used to our new surroundings in Ebisu, February and most of March ended up being dominated by a barrage of meetings away from the office at a certain major client of my company (things were going to get much worse though...)
Thankfully there was still time to enjoy the blossoming sakura and the obligatory flower-viewing picnics (which I believe I actually managed to write a post about!)
February also marked the half-year anniversary of finally having returned to Tokyo and living in my new apartment in Denenchofu, the spacious inside of which is pictured above. I guess I never really mentioned the move on this blog, probably because of how much hassle the whole thing was, but in any case I am pretty happy with the area I am now living in.
Sooooo...not having updated this blog for quite some time now and having gone through 2007 with a less than impressive number of posts I realize it is perhaps time to catch up. Thus, in this multi-part series, I will over the coming days make an attempt to get what happened in 2007 out of the way and hopefully finish in time to do a few posts in 2008 as well (no promises, meheh). Mostly this will be a chance to sort out the (digital) stacks and stacks of photos I have taken over the year and maybe also silence the hordes of fans who while desperately screaming for updates spend hours a day at this page clicking the refresh button over and over to see if something might have changed (I am sure they exist, the Google analytics data must be wrong somehow).
Anyhow, without further ado I give you the first chapter in what will undoubtedly turn into an incredibly exciting series of SUPERPOSTS attaining new levels of awesomeness never seen before on this blog.
January: History repeats itself
Work-wise 2007 began the same way it ended, with a move to a new office in Ebisu, just one stop away on the Yamanote train line from our previous office in Shibuya.
Although our time in Ebisu was short (we moved again soon after), I think I will always remember the psychedelic sunsets often visible from the large office windows around closing-time. Also need of mention is the...erm..."eccentric" owner of the building who, living just a floor above us, would come down at random moments and start yelling and screaming about something or other (although he would always politely chit chat about my bicycle when bumping into him in the morning!)
Looking at my cellphone camera picture archives it seems January was also the month were I came across this sign in Shibuya:
...which I am fairly certain depicts Deborah, an old classmate from my Japanese studying days at Naganuma school, summer 2002, shown in the middle of the photo below (from which I am suspiciously absent):
Also, on a geeky note I spent a couple of days of winter vacation dabbling with Ruby on Rails. It changed my life and I have never looked back since (programmers will know what I'm talking about and either agree or disagree passionately).
Hmmm....that's it for January I think! As you can see, you weren't missing out on much ("Oh my god! Please tell me more about that sign you saw in January!") but there it is! Food time now. Curry style.
Well, it doesn't actually look much like the shot above here anymore and I guess it is a bit late to upload these pictures taken about a month ago at a park in Tokyo, but here they are nevertheless. Although Japanese winter does bring blue skies and fresh air I still prefer sweaty, muggy Tokyo summer with its 30+ temperatures and beer gardens (although I will probably start saying the opposite sometime around July next year).
My office that is! Last Saturday we packed up and moved shop to a brand new office in Nihombashi in downtown Tokyo within convenient (?) reach of the emperor's palace. Although I am not too thrilled about the longer commute and extra being-squashedness courtesy of the super-crowded Ginza subway line I am sure I will learn to like the place just like I did with Ebisu, Shibuya and Hiroo before it (wow, we move a lot...)
Bonus: Gratuitous shot of me making an inspired (but failed) attempt to look cool before speaking at a seminar my company did in early December:
Sometimes we even do work there.
I am pleased to announce that Tamagawa river has seemingly fully recovered from September's typhoonarific onslaught. Last weekend I went down to the riverbank area and was pleased to see a flurry of activity and feel the smell of barbecue in the air once again.
To top things off, the following day Tamagawa celebrated its recovery with a psychadelic lightshow that literally had people stopping dead in their tracks trying to figure out whether doomsday was upon them or if there was any other reasonable way of explaining why the sky was suddenly on fire.
It is typhoon season in Japan again and although being cyclone-slapped is a yearly occurence that you kind of get used to, the last one to hit Japan did do some damage to my neighbourhood, as nearby Tamagawa river flooded and swelled up to nearly twice its usual size. What is shown in the picture above used to be a playground that was usually a hub of activity as families and friends gathered on weekends to barbecue. This particular part of the riverbed ended up being completely submerged in water and is now more or less deserted as residents wait for the area to be reconstructed.
After talking about it for months and months (years?) I finally got around to getting myself a bicycle. I think what ultimately convinced me to go and buy one was my recent trip to Denmark (pictures are on the way...) where I rediscovered the joy of pedalling. I've also gotten myself a map of Tokyo and am now spending weekends figuring out the chaotic maze of roads and alleys that make up Japan's capital. Yey!
Bonus fact: Japanese bicycles have the brakes set up the opposite way of Danish bicycles. The right lever controls the front brake, the left controls the back. Forget this at your peril!
Went on a spontaneous trip to (the base of) Mount Fuji this Sunday. Spent the day bicycling around Yamanakako Lake and playing Uno. "Wow! How exciting!" I hear you say, so go ahead and take a look at the small photoset of pictures I took on the trip
Cherry blossom season is here...and has pretty much passed already, as the beloved pink flowers of Japan have a frightenly short life span and are often used as a metaphor for the life of samurais - blooming for a brief period and then falling at the very height of their beauty. Whether the tough and hardened samurais of medieval Japan were happy being compared to something as frail and pink as the sakura flower I do not know. Anyway, I have added this year's batch of sakura shots to my cherry blossom photo album so have a look!
We started a new blog at my company about 2 weeks ago where my co-workers and I post about various job-related/unrelated stuff (mostly in Japanese). I have added a feed of my postings to menu on the right so you are always up to date on my incredibly interesting EXJ-related musings.
It's Fake Monday today (first day of the week after a "3-day holiday") and some kind of artificial additive is needed to get through the day. Granted, a Java Chip Frappucino hardly contains any caffeine, but it seems to do the job for me (that, an orange juice and a can of randomly bought blue soda)