I haven't posted on my blog for such a long time that I don't even know where to begin. Almost 1 year ago (on August 26, 2010) I wrote the first post on my blog:

It's less than a week to my departure and 6 days from now, I will be landing at Narita Airport, Tokyo (Japan) after flying from Ljubljana (Slovenia) accross half of the world.

I am prepared and ready to leave home town and take this opportunity to get a lifetime experience. And only 19 hours and 15 minutes over the clouds separates me from arriving to this wonderful country, whose language I don't know and whose culture I don't understand... only to start learning... fast!

And now it's coming to an end. 

This Friday was my last working day at SANYO Electric and very soon I will be finishing the Vulcanus in Japan 2010/11 programme and fly back home. I still haven't had the time to process everything I experienced and learned or to reflect on all things that happened to me during this wonderful year.

I spent the first four months learning Japanese in Naganuma school of Tokyo. You can play the recently published promotional video below. If you look closely, you can see me coming out of the main entrance of the school at 00:26 :). 

I've written extensively about my experience during the first four months, the school and Tokyo. Some of my most popular posts include:

• This is my place
• Flashes of tranquility
• Why Japan sucks: Rules are Rules
• Looking back at the first 4 months in Japan

While some people were not satisfied with the school, I am grateful for the added pressure and interest that they showed in us. They pushed us to the limit and over, but I could not speak Japanese if it weren't for the intensive program that was prepared for us. Thank you Ishikawa-sensei, Yatsu-sensei and all the other teachers! 

After the New Year I moved to Hirakata-shi, a small city in beautiful Kansai area between Osaka and Kyoto, to start my internship. I continued to study Japanese at Hirakata Japanese Language Volunteer Association for the next six months. I finished the lessons at the beginning of June. On the photos below you can see me with my sensei Hosoe-san and the others.

On my last day I brought a few small things from my country and gave it to her as a present. After all, she had been teaching me Japanese one-on-one for nearly half a year, without charge. Nobody at the Volunteer Association got paid. Teachers there were mostly older people and they enjoyed company of students, who appreciated their help and their time. So giving my teacher a few small presents was the least I could do. Still, it not only surprised her, she felt really bad for not having a present for me in return. She insisted that I give her my home address. I didn't realize at that time, but after two weeks I got a package - really beautiful Japanese wind chimes (or garden bells), known as "furin" in Japanese. The kindness and generosity of the people I experienced here during my 1 year stay in Japan is really incredible. Just today I was relaxing in a sauna after my training, when a Japanese man spoke to me. We chatted for about 5 minutes - he asked me where I am from and what I'm doing in Japan and after he learned that I had an internship in SANYO, he told me that he had been working for Panasonic for the most part of his life (he's retired now). At the end he wished me good luck and thanked me for the conversation. Unbelievable!

I found a very nice salsa club in Kyoto and have been going to dance there most Fridays. So I met a lot of people and made quite a few friends (I guess people who dance salsa are great, no matter where you go :)). One of my friends invited me for a picnic at the lake Biwako. We had a really great time! We swam in the lake, ate and drank, laughed a lot and even danced salsa a bit. Lovely afternoon!

In this video I'm teaching my friends how to make a toast in Slovenian. By the way, in Japanese one says "kanpai". 

My colleagues from SANYO have prepared a farewell party for me and Flavio. We were working at the same department and are both Vulcanus in Japan 2010/11 participants. Naturally, we went to izakaya and had a wonderful evening. We ate a lot of different food, from sashimi, sushi, salads and even to french fries and chicken:). No alive fish this time! One of the times we went to izakaya, we ate ikizukuri. It's a special preparation of sashimi (raw fish), where the master chef cuts out the meat of the fish, avoiding the heart, so the fish is still alive when served. The meat is then sliced and put on the same plate as the fish, "creating" the shape of the original fish back again. It's kind of scary to have still alive fish (moving, opening mouth) on the plate. I put a photo of ikizukuri from that party as the last photo in album below. 

Last year in December Panasonic bought 50,2% shares of SANYO, thus becoming an owner and SANYO joining the Panasonic Group. During this year there was a lot of restructuring. I remember seeing people working in the rooms next to our department in January, but when I left in August, those rooms were empty and dark. Also, a couple of people I knew from Kozenji office were relocated to other SANYO subsidiaries. From next year on, SANYO brand will cease to exist and the products will be rebranded as Panasonic. 

During my internship I had the possibility to go to Kasai Green Energy Park, a newly-built factory in Hyogo prefecture with the world’s largest battery system (1MW Mega Solar System and 1.5MWh Lithium-Ion Mega Battery System). Since the project I was working on was connected to GEP, it was very interesting for me. 

A while back I took a walk at 5 in the morning. Interesting enough, I saw an older couple picking up trash, cleaning the park. Also, I saw a dozen of other older people in their sneakers, walking, running or exercising in that park (at 5 in the morning). 

Which brings me to the next point. The difference between the gym I used to go to back in Slovenia and the gym here is that 2/3 of the people in the gym here are 50 or older. Some of them are much older, as old as 70 or even 80. I was discussing this with another Japanese and we came to these conclusions:

• Japanese population is getting older. There are a lot of older people, who have money and a lot of free time. Japanese must retire at the age of 60, so there are more and more older people.
• Work culture in Japan in different. In many cases it is considered normal that people show commitment to the company by staying in the office until dawn. Also, younger employees want to be embraced, so they try to put a lot of hours in. It is important how much/how many hours you work. Probably even more important than the productivity you achieve during that time.
• For many people, work is only life they know. Also, Japanese men are not so good in using their free time. Probably a majority of working Japanese men have one common free time activity - going on drinking parties. 

I think that is also part of the reason why we foreigners are interesting to them. Usually we have a lot going on. I had a lot of activies outside of work: gym, japanese lessons, swimming, salsa, trips... just to name the most regular ones. Different social norms, I guess.

There is, however, one thing I particularly like. Every time a new staff member starts his/her shift in the gym, he comes around the room and greets each person individually with a deep bow. The first time this happened to me I was listening to the music on my iPod and didn't understand what was going on. Does he want something from me? Why did he just bow to me? But I kept watching and then I saw what it was about. Being a customer in Japan is just great. No Western title "Mr." can beat Japanese title "sama", reserved for gods and... yes, customers.

Another izakaya evening, this time with Fujiyama-san from Human Resources, who was most helpful in dealing with all the birocracy when coming to SANYO and also at the time of the earthquake.  

Just a few days ago, Makito-san and her husband from swimming course invited me to have a dinner with them. Later, our swimming coach also joined us and we had a fantastic evening together!

Why so many Japanese practice golf swings is beyond me. But you can see people in daylight, practicing their golf swing with an imaginary golf club, like the man in the photo I took below. Look closely and you will see that he doesn't have a golf club in his hands.

In the beginning of April, for about a week, whole Japan turns heavenly white. Cherry blossom viewing or "hanami" in Japanese is a popular activity. People go see beautiful cherries together, have a picnic under one or just enjoy the beauty of those innocent cherries. One doesn't even notice all those cherry trees until they start to blossom. It's gorgeous! Check those pictures and video I made below.

Japanese don't swear. I don't even know any Japanese swear words. I remember an izakaya night with some Japanese guys, our age, and we asked them to tell us some swear words. They were looking around and since we were not alone in the room (there was another party of people at the next table), they didn't want to tell us. After those people left the room, we pushed again. "Come on, nobody will hear you, it's just us. We really want to know." Funny enough, the guy was too embarrased to tell us any swear words, but he told us that he can send us the PDF version he has. A funny memory:). Especially since when I think of the European languages, the first thing I learned were probably swear words.

Japanese and English are very connected. After Japan lost in the WW2, none other than americans had helped built this nation back to its feet. And naturally, at that time many americans stayed in Japan, especially in the years of the occupation. From that time on, U.S. and Japan are very closely connected (U.S. even has a military base in Okinawa), which affected the language. There are a great deal of English words in Japanese. Just a few examples: cofee becomes コーヒ(ko-hi), juice becomes ジュース (ju-su) and ice cream becomes アイスクリーム (aisukuri-mu). They are all written in katakana, a Japanese syllable, reserved for foreign words. Sometimes the Japanese pronunciation of the word is so strangely twisted, that it's impossible to recognize its English counterpart. Only after you get the meaning comes the "ahaa" moment, when you realize it's actually an English word in katakana. 

It's also funny that most Japanese think that all foreigners speak English. Sometimes they are surprised when I tell them that English is not the official language in Slovenia. It doesn't bother me though, however it could be a problem for a foreigner in Japan who doesn't speak English nor Japanese. He would have a hard time! Most Japanese learned English in school, but since the teaching method is very bad and inefficient (their own words), they are not able to speak English. In their wish that their children would be able to speak English, some parents go even that far as to pay a native English speaker to talk to the yet-unborn child during the pregnancy. A friend from Australia told me this, and the money is not bad at all, she said. (Most probably this is a very rare case, as I haven't heard of any other like it) While adult Japanese are more shy with using English, this doesn't hold for Japanese kids. They greet me all the time with "hello" or "how are you", just to practice their English a little bit. 

All in all, an amazing year. Now I am looking forward to go home, be able to hug my sunshine Katja again, see my family and meet my friends! 

Exactly two months have passed since my last post, where I wrote that I left Japan because of the situation at that time. Well, I have since returned to Japan and a lot has happened in those two months. The situation here in Kansai (area where I am living) is very safe and there is currently no reason to worry. Even though some Tokyo-based Vulcanus in Japan interns lost the internships due to the closure of their companies' offices, most are back in and around Tokyo and resume their internships. I can even see that, with exception from occasional news here and there, even international media has stopped reporting about nuclear power plant in Fukushima and Japan's earthquake and tsunamis. There are other, more pressing disasters to be conveyed to the peoples around the world. Japan will, however, feel the effects of the March 11 disaster for years to come. Even now, two full months after the incident, Japanese have still not brought the nuclear power plants in Fukushima under control (link), but they are aiming to do so in the next 6 months. With the Fukushima power plant gone, there is a lack of about 20% of electricity in Tokyo area, so the government is trying hard to see that people consume less and that industrial consumption is spread through the week. One of my friends just recently posted on Facebook that in his company, starting from July, they will switch weekends for Thursday and Friday. So, instead of going to work on Thursday and Friday, they will have 2 days off and instead they will need to go to work on Saturday and Sunday. I guess it makes sense as the peak demand is in summer.

I had an interesting incident at the airport in Frankfurt when returning back to Japan. I heard the voice from airport speakers tell my name and instruct me to see the officer at the Lufthansa desk. So I went there and the officer told me they needed to see my passport for a check-in (I already made a check-in in Ljubljana, but apparently they needed to verify it again). After staring at my passport for 5 minutes and typing something in the computer I got the feeling that something must be off, so I asked her what the problem was. She told me that my visa for Japan expired in November 2010 so they will not let me take this flight as I will be rejected at the Osaka airport. Good, now what? Well, Japan has a system, where they issue a visa with single number of entries and then once you come to Japan, you need to buy additional re-entry visa, which is actually just a small stamp with QR code and printed dates of eligibility. The officer before me was looking just at the original visa (which is very big and shiny) and not at those "patch" re-entry visas. Well I tried to explain it to her that I already left the country and came back AFTER November 2010, so I was okay, but she refused to listen to me. Only after I asked for her boss and explain it to him once again was I allowed to board the plane.

I believe I still haven't written about that here but soon after starting my work in January I bought myself a (used) bicycle. Then I needed to register my bicycle and I got a registration number, which I needed to stick on the frame. Interesting enough, as we don't have that in Slovenia. To be honest, I would never ride a bicycle like that back at home. Only old women ride bicycles like that, with big basket in front and all, but here it seems everybody owns one just like that. All Japanese bicycles also come equipped with metal lock on the front wheel. I've become very fond of it and I use it to go practically anywhere: work, shopping, gym ...

In the meantime, my sunshine Katja came to visit me and we have travelled around Japan for 16 days. We went to island Kyushu (southernmost of the 4 main islands), we visited a magnificent flower garden on a small island, called Nokonoshima (close to Kyushu's biggest city Fukuoka),

we stayed in a traditional Japanese hotel ryokan and enjoyed its superb onsen in a small mountain village called Kurokawa Onsen (direct translation would be onsen of the black river),

we continued our road to the peak of still active volcano Aso.

We also went to magical Beppu and viewed its 7 "Hells", hot springs for viewing rather than bathing, remains of an volcano eruption 1200 years ago with smoke and fumes with unexpected effects.We even cooked our dinner on hot spring steam, coming from beneath.

We took Japan's famous bullet train shinkansen to arrive at Hiroshima,

a city where the first atomic bomb fell at the end of the Second World War,

where we tried local specialties kaki (oysters), takoyaki and okonomiyaki. I must say that Hiroshima's okonomiyaki tasted so much better than Osaka's okonomiyaki! If you're ever in Hiroshima, give it a try!

We also went to see Miyajima with famous floating orange torii gate. Miyajima is a pearl! If you're ever in Hiroshima you should take half a day off and go to Miyajima. You won't regret it!

Of course we visited some Japanese gardens, of which the most beautiful one remains Shukkeien in Hiroshima.

The last day in Hiroshima there was a yearly festival called "Flower Festival" with all kinds of shows and performances going on and a lot of local food to try.

Of course we didn't miss seeing Kansai, with Osaka, Nara and Kyoto all being less than hour by train from my place. We went to see temples like The Golden Pavillion (kinkakuji) and Ryoanji temple, a famous Zen temple with a rock garden, of Kyoto, Todaiji temple (which is world's largest wooden building) with the biggest statue of bronze Buddha in Nara, soaked in an onsen at the top floor of an skyscraper in Osaka and went to impressive Osaka aquarium.

Kamakura

We decided to go to Kamakura, a small town some 50km south of Tokyo, bordered by mountains on one side and the open water on the other. It is easily accessed from Tokyo by train and it makes a nice one-day trip. It hosts a remarkable number of temples and shrines, some of which are as old as 1200 years, but which are all but overshadowed by the main attraction - Daibutsu - a 12 meters tall bronze statue of Great Buddha.

The first temple we visited was Tōkei-ji (東慶寺), located just outside of Kita-Kamakura train station. Giles Milton describes this temple in his book Samurai William, which I am currently reading (and which I recommend to all who would like to get to know the Tokugawa Ieyasu Japan through the eyes of first Europeans to sail to Japan).

"One of the city's strangest sights was a 'monastery of heathen nuns, being shorne, all the haire off their heades as the papist nuns are'. This was the famous Tokeyi temple, which had been founded more than three centuries earlier as a refuge for battered wives. Women who stayed for more than two years were considered legally separated from their husbands, and it was said that 'no man may take any woman out of that place by force.' Yet men, and even lovers, were free to come and go as they pleased, for the nuns 'hold venery nether sin nor shame, but live at their pleasure'."

The second temple we visited, Jōchi-ji (浄智寺), is famous for the moss-covered entrance. There is a graveyard inside, which I found very interesting. Purpose and content of wooden sticks with Kanji symbols in some graves still remain a mystery to me.

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As temples in Japan are nowadays tourist attraction people want to see, there is usually a small fee of about ￥300 to enter (~3 eur). Japan's two main faiths are Buddhism and Shintō. In contrast to Catholic churches', where the purpose is praying and worshiping, the purpose of Buddhist temples and Shintō shrines is safekeeping of sacred objects. 

What is even more surprising is that most Japanese are followers of both Buddhism and Shintō, which can be dazzling to Europeans, as we are familiar with exclusive monotheistic faiths like Christianity's this-is-the-only-true-religion paradigm. Shintō is the religion of this world and this life, whereas Buddhism is for matters of death. There is a saying that "one gets married in a Shintō shrine, but gets buried in a Buddhist temple."

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After that we took the Daibutsu hiking course, which zig-zags through the forest and allows for an hourly walk with some interesting sites located on the path. I now regret that we did not stop to see some other shrines on this path, but at the time we wanted to come to the Great Buddha in time and were not sure how much time this would take us.

The Great Buddha (大仏) in Kamakura was cast in 1252 A.D., 500 years after the one in Nara. It is a 13 meters high statue lit from copper and weights 121 tons. It is hollow so the visitors can enter for a small fee.

I did not go in as I rather enjoyed the view from the outside and there was a long queue of people waiting to go inside. I was pretty impressed by its sheer size, because it is bigger in person than it appears in photos. Is it truly magnificent!

The last temple we visited was Hase-dera (長谷寺). I liked it better than previous temples, as it has buildings with beautifully ornamented roofs and is very big. The temple's roofs, which are curved upwards particularly impressed me and from being wary when I'd started out in the morning, I found instead I'd enjoyed the experience in Kamakura very much. The temple houses a magnificent 9.18 meters tall wooden statue of Kannon, the Buddhist Goddess of Mercy, but cameras were unfortunately forbidden in the temple so I could not take any photo. In one of the temple buildings there stands also almost three meter tall golden statue of Amida Buddha.

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Tokyo Gardens

I needed some quiet, relaxing time so I went to two gardens in central Tokyo.

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Since Kiyosumi Garden was on my way, I decided to hop out in Kiyosumi-Shirakawa Station and take a short walk to the garden. The surroundings are grey buildings, heavy traffic and neon lights. However, as soon as I entered the garden, I knew I will not regret to have made this trip. That such an exquisite spot sat in the middle of ordinariness was something that a random passerby would not expect. I found myself in a dream-like world, with green crystal lakes, green trees, stepping stone paths that are set in the water (磯渡り - isowatari) and beautiful fishes of rainbow colors. The garden is remarkably peaceful and tranquilizing. The birds sang their songs and on the nearby benches three Japanese pensioners just opened their painting boxes and started to paint a horizontal tree hovering over the green lake with their oil colors. In the distance, a house appears to hover over the water. Photos are worth more than a 1000 words, so please see the photos.

Still being dizzy from beauty of the last garden, I entered Hama Rikyu Garden. It had much more space than Kiyosumi Garden and is located in a much more prosperous district, giving one a pleasure of contrasting sights of beauty: beautiful garden with lake and bridges in the front and Shiodome's skyscrapers in the background. Spectatular!

After a while I sat on a bench and admired the Tokyo Bay for quite some time. Too soon, the voice from the speakers began to thank the visitors for coming and urged us to return to the gate, since the garden was closing, they said. I sat for a minute or two more, trying to absorb the last drops of peace, before hurrying out with other visitors. At exactly 5 o'clock, the gates closed.

Trip to Yokohama city

Last week I went to Yokohama city, which is just south of Tokyo. Former Vulcanus in Europe student Marie organized this trip, so many of us attended (18 people altogether). I liked Yokohama very much, as it is totally different from Tokyo. There are wide, open areas, where you can rest your eyes, whereas in Tokyo everything is so crowded. We went to 69th floor of the Yokohama Land Mark Tower, which is at 296.3m the tallest building in Japan. Land mark tower also possesses Japan's fastest elevator that boasts a maximum travel speed of 45km/h. It travels from 2nd floor to 69th floor in less than 40 seconds. Sky Garden at the top floor has 360degrees view and a café bar, so you can sit at 300m, drinking tea and enjoying the view. The view up there really is fantastic. I took some photos with my new camera, which you can see below in the slideshow.

Later in the afternoon we decided to go to China town to eat. Surprisingly enough, food there was more expensive than in normal Japanese restaurants of the same quality. But otherwise China town was nothing special, as it hosts a great number of Chinese restaurants (well the one where I ate was actually Taiwanese) and not much else.

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After that Marie invited us to go to a party that some of her friends were throwing in Tokyo. I heard that it is quite difficult to get invited into a Japanese home, so I felt very flattered. Also, for me the party was great. I have finally been able to practice my Japanese by speaking to other Japanese people so of course I didn’t hesitate to talk to others. Some of them were former Vulcanus in Europe students (internships in European countries for Japanese) so there was also a common topic present. Everyone, who I talked to was very friendly and seemed interested in the conversation.

But this can be misleading as well, as Japanese people tend to acknowledge the conversation and the fact that they are participating in it by nodding, saying “ee”, “hai” or “soo desu ne”. It differs from our (western) expressions in that it doesn’t necessarily mean that they are very interested, they just show that they are paying attention. But I am not so skilled yet as to be able to distinguish between these two.

Things are coming to order

This week was very productive, as many things have been solved that will enable my 1-year stay in Japan. Things are coming to order and starting to stabilize here.

• My internet situation (I wrote about it in previous blog post) is now finally solved. I managed to sell the router to my friends Roberto and Diego and made a transfer of ownership of the contract. All in all this internet parade will cost me about 50€. I decided to go for another internet provider, UQ WiMAX and so far, I am pretty satisfied with it. I have 15 days to test it out for free and then decide whether I want to keep it or not. I already tried it at home and it is working quite alright. It’s far from perfect, though, but still it is much better than previous one.
  
  
  It took 4 hours to get all information regarding change of ownership and to actually make it. Also, the salesman needed to write everything by hand. You can see him writing on the photo
  
• I made a phone contract with Softbank for 2 years. So far it looks like the deal is pretty good. With the contract I also got a Japanese mobile phone, which is pretty basic, but for calling and texting it should be enough. I got some special (good!) deal because I will pay with my credit card first three months and then switch to Japanese bank account. I learned that you can get better deals sometimes if you pay by credit card. I can only guess why. After I made a contract a guy from the store asked me if I will want to charge my phone. Funny thing to ask. Well, if the phone was for free, I needed to pay for the charger (around 10€).
  
  
  Anyhow, now I have the phone and it's so much easier to organize meetings, trips and other activities. The first week when we had no mobile phones everything was a bit clumsy. For example, we decided to meet there and there at some time. Then, some people came on time, some didn't and those who came on time needed to wait for the others. But then how much time do you wait? 10 minutes? 30? 1 hour? With mobile phones this is not an issue anymore.
• Finally I opened my bank account at Sumimoto Mitsui Banking Corporation and got my bank card. Of course, my name on it is written in Katakana. I need a bank account to receive grants from EU-Japan Centre and scholarship from SANYO.
• I got my alien registration card. Yes, they call us aliens, not foreigners. Every non-Japanese citizen that stays in Japan longer than 90 days needs to apply for an alien registration card. I applied already the next day after I came to Japan, but it took them 2 weeks to process my application. If you don't get your alien registration card within 90 days of your arrival (because they reject your application or because you didn't apply at all) you must leave Japan, so it is a very important document.
  
  
  Kasukabe city hall, where I got my alien registration card
• And of course as I wrote in my previous blog post, I also bought a camera and iPod Touch. The latter became my irreplaceable companion and I use it every day.

Funny Japanese cars

Some Japanese cars are really funny, tiny, squarish-looking vehicles. Of course one sees also cars of normal shape, but just to give you an idea of what I'm talking about I made a photo gallery of these cars.

Japanese cuisine

So far I have tried many different dishes already. There are some very good choices, some less good and some that I absolutely dislike. Of course, every dish is accompanied by rice. Rice is, by the way, really expensive in Japan. Japanese people are very proud of their rice and say that it is delicious, thus also expensive. Also, you can see that there is soup with every dish. Their miso soups are just amazing and so full of taste! I am in love with them!

First three were taken in my dormitory and all the rest in restaurants.

So many people

There are so many people in Tokyo. It can get really crowded, especially at Shinjuku crossing or their subway. 300.000 people live in my home town Ljubljana and 13.000.000 in Tokyo metropolis.

Shibuya, at Hachiko statue during a day

Rush hour train at Kita-senju

Shibuya crossing at night