First Communion

Well, as you have probably noticed, I have been off for almost a week now. The reason is I have been to Spain on holidays. Siento no haber llamado a nadie, pero es que me puse malo nada mas llegar... joer...

I arrived in Valencia and met my brother there. As you probably know, the prestigious sailing America's Cup is now being held in Valencia. That was quite obvious once in the city... The airport and the harbour have been linked by subway, all the shops are selling sailing articles or official garments, the teams driving nice cars in the streets (I saw people from Lunna Rossa) or a nice boat in the city hall square:

After one day there, I travelled to my home town, Almansa, 'coz my brother was receiving First Communion on Sunday. For me, it was the first time I was going to church after becoming agnostic... hehe...

Well, the celebration in the church was nice... for me, it was useful to ratify I don't like it... At least, my brother was happy and we could have some family pictures, which are always nice.

After that, we made for a restaurant to take the typical huge lunch after first communion. There, everything was so nice... I could meet many people in my family after several months and we were joking and laughing all the time. We could even manage to make my grandfather sing some old-fashioned traditional songs. Que crack! Fue la hostia cuando el tio se lio a cantar! De el se puede esperar cualquier cosa... Here you are some sample:

Finally, on Tuesday morning I flew back to Amsterdam and went to work at ESTEC... but to the daily routine. It was nice to go home. It always is.

Tokyo

And as a homage to this city and country I like so much... this video found in www.kirainet.com. Menudo blog que tiene tu hermano, Aitor!

These videos are impressive! The choice of the images is good and so is the music... two masterpieces to show different parts of the city...

Photo Scavenger Hunt

Today, one year ago, I set foot on Japan for the first time. I had left Strasbourg after a very nice year and made for the country of the rising sun, where I was to stay for 3 months. Behind, I was leaving many good memories, parties and friends from ISU.

I was thinking about that and checking my photographs from last year when I came accross the pictures we took during the ISU photo scavenger hunt. Some of these photos are so cool! Basically, we received a list of crazy things to be done and we received points if we carried them out. Some of these things are:

1. Fighting karate with random people in the street.


2. To drink up a bottle of milk in a supermarket.



3. To take a beer with a baby and his brother. Check the baby's hand ;-)



4. To wrap up one of our team mates, Jie in this case...



5. To get a group of more than 20 people pointing at the sky



6. To get naked in the main square (Place Kleber) and walk around... I put this one in small size for obvious reasons... hehe...

Sleeping in Tokyo

Many people think Japan is a very expensive country. As always, it depends. From my point of view, it is not. It is true that buying fruit, meat and fish in a supermarket can be more expensive than expected but, on the other hand, you can eat very very cheap in a restaurant. If you have a meal in Yoshinoya (famous restaurant chain) or in any ramen shop, it can be really really cheap (around 3 euros).

For staying over night, it is the same; it depends on your choice. I was living in Tsukuba, in Ibaraki prefecture, around 70 km North of Tokyo. When I wanted to sleep over in the city and stay the whole weekend there, there were many possibilities. Naoko told me most of them and I must acknowledge her expertise ;-)

I will present all possibilities (except normal hotels and youth hostels...) in order of decreasing price:

1. Ryokan. This is a traditional Japanese hotel and the nicest option. You can sleep on a futon, talk to the owner of the house or have a nice bath in a typical Japanese bath. It costs around 50 euros per night and many people can stay in the same bedroom for the same price.



2. Capsule hotel . This is quite interesting. It is like a 1x1x2 m3 space in which you can sleep. It has radio, TV, etc... Normally, there are several floors in the hotel and one is a typical Japanese bath. The price is around 25 euros and you will be asked to leave in the morning. Girls are not admitted in some capsule hotels.



3. Manga cafe (Manga kissa). This is my favourite option. It is basically a manga library in which there are isolated rooms (around 2x2 m2) with TV, computer, internet, Play Station... You can also read manga and have all the free drink you want. You can also order some food and in some cases there are showers and even washing machines and lockers. They were in the news because many young people are living in these places... actually, if you take the night pack (6 or 8 hours) you only pay around 7 euros. In some cases the sofas can be extended and a comfortable bed created.



4. Yamanote line. This is the hardcore solution if you don't have money, you are drunk or something is wrong with you. Yamanote line is a train line in Tokyo which is a complete circle. To complete the circle it takes more than one hour. Therefore, you can stay there for as long as you want and get off in the same station where you took the train. In that case, it is just 120 yen or so. This is less than 1 euro...

Japanese TV shows

In Japan, it is quite nice to have a TV at home. You may not understand what they are talking about, but sometimes you don't need to understand to have fun. Do you remember Takeshi joo (Takeshi's Castle / Humor Amarillo)... many TV channels broadcast similar shows in the evening. Japanese like having fun... that's clear... and they like shows in which people are scared out or physically punished...

This video shows an example of some TV show in which comedians are in a library and the one that gets the X gets some kind of punishment. However funny, sometimes is too cruel...



This second sample is part of a series in which comedians can't laugh no matter what they are done or what they see. I was watching this show last New Year's Eve...



Finally, a prank in which a guy is told he has been contracted by one of the main TV companies in Japan and that a taxi is waiting for him to go immediately to that company. The guy buys it and the fun starts... For you to understand a bit more, after a few crazy turns, the taxi driver tells the guy to put on the seat belt because they are using a shortcut. After that, you can understand by yourselves. The final remark is also quite funny. When the car stops, the taxi driver asks the guy for 660 yens for the ride.



My only concern about all these funny shows is that some day somebody will get really hurt... sometimes is too extreme... many of those pranks and crazy stuff would not be allowed in Europe for moral issues...

El Roto

One of the things I first do when I wake up is checking up the website of the Spanish newspaper El Pais to check El Roto's daily cartoon. This guy is one of the best cartoonist I have ever read. He is always very critical and in some cases extreme... but his cartoons have something which is priceless: they make you think. He comments reality from his point of view and tries to point out the main problems of our society and our world with very sharp intelligence and humour. For the Spanish speakers, here you are some samples of his great work. For the rest, I try to translate what is written in the cartoon. Keep on like that, el Roto!!

I don't know if I see everything more clear or just I am confused at a higher level.

Call destruction "PROGRESS" and nobody will oppose you

Bad news for patriots: all flags are made in China


But why do you vaccinate us dogs if hatred and rage are spread by humans?

What a mess! I have relocated my company and now I don't know where I've put it!!

Finland (...and II)

Some time ago I wrote a post called Finland (I) talking about my trip to visit Seppo in Oulu and Helsinki. If that post was called Finland (I), it is about time to wrap it up with a second and final post ;-)

In the previous post, I mostly talked about tourism and places I visited. This one is more about what I did. The trip to Finland was more about practising some snow sports and other crazy things like swimming in a frozen river when outside it was just 1 degree centigrade.

The first cool thing I did was snowboarding on a frozen lake being pulled by a snowbike. Kind of water skiing but with a snowboard and on ice.

Second cool thing: sliding down mountains or any slope. When we visited the Ice Castle LumiLinna, there were some wheel-type sliders in which you could have a ride down a nice slope with curves and everything. The second time I could feel the nice feeling of sliding down a slope without real control was when we took Seppo's sledges and went to some nice hills to try them. A video showing what that was:

The final and craziest thing I did in Finland was swimming in a frozen river. Finnish like doing it in the winter when the water it is very cold. They claim that is really healthy... What I can tell is that you feel alive when you go out of the water... At that moment, it feels like needles under your skin and you suddenly feel very warm inside... It is a pitty the ice and snow around the river were not recorded in this video, but I can assure to you there were some ice chunks around.

That was cold!!

Nanban

Some weeks ago I finished reading a book about Japanese history... It was quite interesting and quite new for me, as I think the history taught in Europe, or concretely in Spain, is too much Europe oriented... We think our history is the only one out there... but chinese or japanese history and culture are even older than ours, especially chinese...

Well, I was thinking about the names Japanese and Chinese gave to each other when they met for the first time... Chinese called Japanese Wajin 和人, which literally means Small People... and when Spanish and Portuguese starting trading with Japan, we were called Nanban 南蛮, which means Southern Barbarians. These Asian people liked making friends abroad! hehe

The term Nanban was initially used for people in South East Asia, but became attached to European (Portuguese and Spanish) when we arrived to Japan in the 16th century. The first sailors arrived at the southern islands in Japan, such as Tanegashima, and their manners were very rude and unsophisticated for traditional Japanese standards.

When I lived in Japan, the first thing Japanese said when I said I was Spanish was: wow, like Xavier!! For them, one of the most famous foreigners coming from Europe was Saint Francisco Javier... They were very surprised when I told everybody I didn't know who that guy was...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Xavier

Just another cultural difference... I will talk more about cultural differences in a future post.

Dark matter

Today, checking the space news as usual (I am kinda a space geek... for those of you who doesnt know ;-), I found nice news in www.nasa.gov. Concretely, the Hubble space telescope has found the first evidence of the existence of dark matter. As many of you know, visible matter in the universe accounts for only around 10% of the whole universe mass. The rest is just matter that doesn't glow... dark matter is just that... it is not some kind of exotic concept like dark energy... that is a completely different story.

Astronomers are still trying to find the missing mass (90% of the universe) and many possible sources of dark matter have been shortlisted: interestellar dust, neutrinos, MACHOs (massive compact halo object), WIMPs (weakly interactive massive particles)... Many are the theories and a lot of effort has been put in the topic. However, nothing has been unvealed yet. Nothing? Well, today the NASA/ESA Hubble space telescope surprised us with this nice shot:

As you can read in the citation, the dark ring around the galaxy cluster is dark matter, something which doesn't shine and which blocks the light coming from the galaxies. As a consequence, this is the first time ever dark matter has been visualized.

This piece of news is quite important in the science community but I don't expect to watch it on the news tonight...

Rafa Nadal

Yesterday, the great Spanish tennis player Rafa Nadal got his 76th consecutive win in a clay court and is very near the victory in Rome Master Series once more. With this number of victories he gets the record of the highest number of consecutive wins on the same kind of surface. This record was held by McEnroe until yesterday. McEnroe got it on synthetic court. Well, congratulations to Rafa! Now is time for Alonso to win in Formula 1!