Takoyaki-Party!!!!

Takoyaki Party !!!

Today, Maruta-san invited many people and me to a Takoyaki-Party at his home. If you don't know Takoyaki, use Google because I cannot explain it well :D
Nevertheless, we had a really tasty and interesting dinner for some hours. Now I can do Takoyaki on my own .... theoretically :D Practically were my Takoyaki a disaster and it was said that I cannot stay in Japan if I cannot make proper Takoyaki ;)


After this we went to the Bon-Matsuri (use Wikipedia!), a kind of buddhistic festival. At this time we just watched the festival a bit, especially the traditional dance, called "Bon Odori". Because it was pretty early when we left, some of us wanted to go into a Karaoke club. So we went to Yokohama and searched for a proper location. Unfortunately, we couldn't decide for one because it seemed that all of them were so expensive that we could also go in a bar and drink there.

Bon Matsuri - Part 1

So what did we do? Option 3. We bought some drinks in a kombini and just sat down outside of the train station on some public seats. Because after at least half an hour of searching a Karaoke bar, we didn't want to spend more time on searching a restaurant / bar. The next 2 hours, we had some nice talks and a very smooth time. Normally this isn't a common night activity in Japan, but hey, who wants to do something common? ;)

It was a nice evening, thanks to all who were there and especially Maruta-san who invited us into his house :)

P.S.: The ownership of all fotos has Taka-san ^^

Karaoke and Purika - again :D

Today I went to Shibuya for the first time. I went together with six people, it was more or less spontaneous ;)

At first we went to Purika. You probably heard of it before :) If not, these are little booths were you can take fotos together with your friends. Afterwards, you edit them together (e.g. adding of smilies, text, etc.) and print them out.

Our "session" was a bit special, because the girls borrowed some outfits in the Purika Shop and dressed up ^^ Because of the right of privacy, I cannot write anymore details about it ;) Just saying, they looked really cute and gorgeous :D

After 2 hours(!), we went to a Karaoke Club. It was really fun as usual :D But I also noticed that I have to train more because I cannot really sing the high tunes ;) The last trains from most of us were at 23:50 at the station, so at our way home we had to hurry oO But nevertheless, it was a great evening and I thank all of you guys who went with :)

P.S.: Unfortunately I didn't took any photos. maybe I will rob some from Facebook later :D

Rain in Yokohama

Rain is really something different from Germany. Everyone who witnessed a rainy season knows what I'm talking about ;) But today was even for me something new. As you can see, there were no dark clouds. I mean okay, for rain that isn't necessary but we also had thunder and storm. And the thunder sounded like it cracked right above us :D Doesn't that mean there have to be dark clouds? Is it physically possible? Questions over questions ... ;)

View outside of my workspace

Kamakura - The city of temples

At first, sorry that this post came so late. The last weeks were a bit more exhausting and after a while, you find more activities than writing in your blog. You know that feeling, don't you? :D
So let's start:

Okay maybe my guess with "city of temples" isn't true, because other cities have more. But for me it is this one, because here I saw for the first time temples in Japan ^^

So what did I do the whole day? Watching temples and nothing else? Pretty much. Was it boring? No way :) I often heard before that temples and shrines are two of the things you see in nearly every single place of Japan. Maybe that's right and I will try to see as many as I can in my short time here. Because I believe everything will have something new :)

The morning started early, because a long day awaited me. I travelled together with Moritz-kun, a German fellow who already stayed in Japan for over a year. After arriving at Kitakamakura station, we went to the nearest temple, Engakuji. It's also one of the temples which is often described as a must-see. Normally, I don't give a damn about advices from strangers but with this huge amount of temples in one place, I followed this advice. And it was worthy ^^

Question for Zelda fans: Why did I took this picture? ;)

Engakuji was a good start, because it wasn't so big and it is very beautiful. I think it's even more beautiful in spring when the cherry blossoms (sakura) are blooming. Because the picture of Sakura trees, which is displayed at the towns temple map near the station, I suggest this. And Kenchoji is at best in autumn when the leafs of the maple trees getting red. This is something some people in Japan told me already.

awesome how they built these statues :)

Kenchoji was really exhausting because the area is huge and you can go more into the mountains. There is also a hiking path where I will walk in future. Maybe autumn? ^^

There was also a funereal ceremony when I was there. It was very quiet and peaceful. Then, after a short break, we went into the mountains. At least a bit :D At the highest point, a Japanese man talked a bit with us. It seems when you speak German in the world, you get attention ;)

After a bit smalltalk, he also recommended the hiking path, but we were already tired from the little hike to this point and the burning midday sun. So we walked back to the temple.

Army of statues?

You shall not pass! ;)

Next thing I knew is that we were at the graveyard. Nothing dramatic happened, we just wanted to see what kind of different place this temple had. Here I learned from Moritz-kun that Japanese believe more in ghosts than Germans and because of this reason they wouldn't take a photo at graveyards.

I hope every Japanese who reads this post now can forgive my behaviour. For me graveyards are peaceful and so beautiful places. Maybe ghosts will hunt me but more my own than the ones from strangers ;) And by the way, the view from the graveyard to the sea is awesome ^^

Tremendous and beautiful!

After this tour, we met with Yurie-san. She took us to a restaurant near Kamakura with delicious curry rice. Okay, we had to wait about 15 minutes before we even get in, but that is still short. Sometimes it can happen that you have to wait over an hour. When you really want to understand Japanese culture, you should remember that most of the Japanese people are gourmets. This is at least what I experienced so far. It's normal to get to another city just for one restaurant and its one special dish. That's the way it goes. And I am also someone who likes to experience new dishes, so it's not a big deal ;)

Just posing at the beach :)

Our last stations were all within Hase, another city near Kamakura. The first of these ones was the Great Buddha Statue which is about 13.4m high. You can also go in the statue but because it was very hot this day, we didn't do this. The statue is really impressing but it was a little disappointing that there was nothing else, like a sacral building. There was literally just this statue and a pair of big shoes which bring you luck if you touch them. Of course, I gave it a try. It cannot be bad to have a chance of divine help ;)

Big Buddha - Definitely worth a picture ^^

The temple of Hase or Hasedera, was our last temple at this day and the most beautiful one. From the beginning to the end, it's like a big garden. In Germany, you would have garden gnomes between the plants, here you have cool statues of warriors, buddhas and other mythical figures. Clearly better than garden gnomes :D

There was also cave where hundreds of little figures made of stone were standing. It was not easy for me because of my height but it was kind of mysterious, fun and really beautiful.

I can just recommend to go to this temple, it was the most beautiful one out of the three I visited today.

I want them in my garden :D

In Kamakura, you have a great view of land and sea. And because it was windy, we saw many sailers surfers. To make a long story short, we went also to the ocean.

At this point I have to really ask you guys, why would you go to the sea? Maybe there are some different reasons but the main point would be to swim a bit in the ocean, am I right? Until now I couldn't understand why my two companions didn't want to go swimming. I was in there and it was awesome.

The beach of Kamakura

Because of the wind, there were some pretty good waves. This is something I love about the sea. And the calm when you have the ears within the ocean and stare at the sky :)

Okay from August on the jellyfishes are coming more and more to the beaches. I was lucky and I didn't met one. Even Lion's Mane jellyfishes shall come, so they say. Actually this is a pretty good reason ... But hey, why not doing something foolish from time to time? You only live once :D

When it got dark, we went home. So another interesting day went to an end ^^

My theory:
Wherever you go in Japan, you find something German ;)

First symptoms of fatigue and routine?

Hello guys :)

I haven't wrote a post this week, so I thought there is time for a little explanation.
As many of you know, within a big trip, you always have this point when you ask yourself "What the hell am I doing here?". I was already at this point.

Don't get me wrong, the last weeks were full of things and people I got to know which I will never forget, in a positive way. Japan showed me already what living a different life can be. I also thought that I am open-minded to everything, but I saw that there are things I'm not prepared for mentally. And by overcoming them, I can broaden my horizon and get more aware of all the beautiful and interesting things in this world. This journey already shapes me, so my life will go another way than without this.

But my biggest "mountain" is the language. After one month in Japan, I have to say that I learned many words and can understand everyone way better. But still it seems I cannot proper communicate in Japanese for a long time. And that frustates me.
Of course, I have to speak more to learn faster but as many know, this is f*****g hard. Not only for me, I also notice a little bit of frustation at other people. And this is the last thing I want to do. Or maybe I am imaging, who knows.

Right now, I don't really know if I can make it. Only because of my habit to never give up and walking straight forward in life, I am still here. But to give 100% and more, it feels like I am having not enough strength and motivation. Maybe the last thing let the first one occur.

So what to do? First, quit the whining and get up! Second, think about the reason why are you here. Hmmm ... good question. The real reason why am I here is still the same. Having a great time, life-changing experience and lots of fun. Nothing less and nothing more. But what does that mean?

I hadn't an answer until I watched my old videos from my time in AIESEC this evening. Some of you know, during my time in AIESEC I wasn't only the "Vice President of Communications", I was also in charge of making videos many times. For conferences, local interviews and reviews. Especially the video-review of my own time and another video from the time of my former Local Comittee President Josie reminded me what I experienced just because I tried and did many things, like leading a team or experimenting new ways to do marketing. And at this time, I had no plan, no experiences and no hint what I should do. And hell yeah, it was often frustrating because things didn't worked out! But did I quit or just leave things behind? NO!

So why did I do these things? Because I had fun with other people and I gave a damn about chances and fortunetelling. Life can be so simple :D
In which way does this helps me right now? The lessons is simple: You don't know what the future brings. How can I know if I will need an eternity to talk proper Japanese? Why shouldn't the time in Japan not be great, awesome and positive life-changing? How can I know?

So what will I change? Stop thinking about the negative results and just doing. If the journey will be a desaster, so be it. But I will go home with a smile, because I hadn't give up and this journey won't be a desaster. My goal to shape my mind in the right way by challenging myself doesn't depend on the result. It depends on my way! :)

Thank you for reading and I promise the next post won't be so dramatic :D
But wait ... How can I know what tomorrow will be? ;)

Akihabara - Between Manga, Action Figures and Electronic

Goods from "Danganronpa"

This time, I went with Yoshioka-san to Akihabara, the dream place of every Otaku / Nerd / Gekk / person who likes Japanese subculture ^^

One of the main characters

In this district of Tokyo you have a huge number of shops for anime, cosplay, manga (comic books), novels, goods from manga series, electronic and so on. So for me, my personal heaven :D

At first, we visited the Tokyo Anime Center. I researched about this place and from what I've read it sounded like a big building for anime presentations / museum for this stuff. Unfortunately it was just a room with a small exhibition for a anime series. Nevertheless it was very interesting to see art concepts from the animes and the games of "Danganronpa".
But be careful, the series is a little bit more violent and more for adults ;)

The proof: German is popular ^^

Until the late afternoon we visited many shops, e.g. animate (comic books, novels, anime, cosplay) and Toranaona (focused on mangas and novels).

One Piece was literally everywhere :)

Long story short: In the end I bought a DVD set of the anime "Katekyo Hitman Reborn!" and 3 Mangas of the current number one Anime in Japan: "Shingeki no Kyojin" (english title: Attack on Titans). Yoshioka-san was very kind and gave me at the end a Zorro action figure from "One Piece" as present :)

Streets of Akiba

 After this shopping tour, we went back to Yokohama to eat dinner with Maruta-san, his family, Moritz-san and Christian-san, another oversea student from Germany, in a chinese restaurant in (suprise!) Chinatown ^^
The last station for today was the Irish Pub "Hub" which I already mentioned in the last post :D

Over and Out! ;)

Short Trip to Ramen Restaurant and Irish Pub

Today I went with to of my co-workers, Yurie-san and Moritz-san, after work into the nightlife of Yokohama. Our first stop were at a Ramen Restaurant. This was my first time in a real Ramen restaurant.... and it was wonderful :)

Starting with the ordering process, it was special. You get a little formular where you make some crosses which defines your way of Ramen. From the hardness of your noodles, over the use of onions to the level of spice in your soup, you can select it.

Long story short: I have never tasted a better Ramen than in this restaurant. The noodles were soooo tasty and the soup was like a dream. The only bad thing about this is that from now on cup noodles will taste for me worse than before oO

After that we went the "Hub" two times, which is the name of an Irish Pub chain. Why two times? It wasn't the same pub and the last one was much bigger and had a terrace. And between these two we tried to find something else, but hey .... wherever you go an Irish Pub is always a good choice :D

Especially funny was the moment, when we ordered one liter beer in this high plastic can. But from the quality, I wouldn't recommend it. Therefore, I drank Guiness most of the time. And Caiprinha and Whisky :D Before I forget, you really have to try Japanese Whisky. I tried "Yamazaki" which is a Single Malt. And I can totally recommend this one :)

じゃあまたな！！！
(See you!!!!)

P.S.: Pics will come later. Unfortunately I can't take the pics from my mobile phone right now oO

Yokohama - Miniature Cities and the Sea

Soba in Japan is the best!

Today, I went with Nene-san and Noguchi-san, two employees at the company where I hang out from time to time, to Yokohama City ;)

Just me and a temple :D

At first, we visited a museum for miniature scenes, called dioramas. Because I liked building model aircrafts and ships as a kid, I wanted to see this. It's very lovely to see this little scenes with so much details. In most cases, you have to change your point of view sometimes to see every hidden detail.

Many figures are also so positioned that you can see them only from a fixed spot. Also inside the trains and houses are figures, so if you just look fast over the model, many things you won't be able to see.

After a short rest in a noodle restaurant, we continued our travel and went to Chinatown. It is like another world in the middle of the city. Because it was very neat and small, it reminded me also of Vietnam :) Here we saw just a few shops, a temple and (more interesting) the street life.

Streets Of Yokohama

Our last attraction of the day was a boat tour. The tour itself wasn't long but I got some interesting perspectives which you can hardly see from the land.

The other side of Yokohama

For example, there are many places for transportation and other businesses which are a visual contrast to the rest of the city.

So you can see that besides tourism, Yokohama is also a city of business, especially logistics over the sea.

Tokyo with Karaoke and Hanabi

Saturday I started luckily a bit later because the evening before was a liiitle bit tiring ;) Nevertheless I cannot sleep longer than 9a.m. in Japan. Until don't know why. Maybe it's early light from outside. So I started the day relatively unspectacular. But at 1p.m. the day started.

I've met with Maruta-san at Hodougaya-Station, the nearest train station. Together we took the train to Ikebukuro, a district of Tokyo. There we met two AIESEC members Maya-san und Yuri-san in a Karaoke Bar. Yeah you read right! I was finally for my first time in an original Japanese Karaoke Bar. As many of you know, the Karaoke Bars in Japan, are not an open space where everyone sings in front of everyone. You get smaller or bigger rooms which you rent for a specific time.

MC Maruta at the mic with the two fantastic singers Yuri and Maya ^^

It was really interesting to see this the first time. Like in many buildings you only have very neat corridors and stairways to get through the building. When I saw it from the inside, I realized how many space / individual Karaoke rooms or better said boths you can get in a very small floor. This alone was worth of seeing ^^

Crowd walking to Hanabi

So inside theKaraoke booth you can select your songs via a tablet and order drinks, food, etc. over a phone at the wall. And of course, you sing. From my time in school, I thought I was pretty good at singing, but after the first song I realized how bad my voice got rusted over the years oO So I have to practise more to get my angel like voice again :D

Döner!!!

Speaking of angels voice, no one of us had them, but you should hear Maruta-san singing. He was singing with such an energy and talent, it was really amazing. Again, I learned never to judge someone from his/her appearance. Not that I would have any prejudges, I just hadn't thought that he is such a good singer :)

After hours of singing which had felt more than minutes, we went to the train station to pick up other AIESECers and had to say good-bye to Maruta-san. From there we went straight to the Fireworks.

Awesome view at the river :)

Did I mentioned that one of the persons who we picked up was German? Lisa aka Elli is a fellow from Leipzig (aka hometown) who I talked before the internship via mail. So it was the first offline-meeting :D

So we went all straight to the fireworks. Did I said straight? As you already realized, there were some confusions abou the way, especially when we split accidentally. So I tried with Maya to find the rest.


Unfortunately it wasn't that easy and the fireworks already started. So we went to the meeting place at the river where other AIESECers already waited for us. There we watched a beautiful Hanabi.

After the end, we were found by the rest of the old group and so went all together home. It was really great to meet so many people, most of them from AIESEC St. Pauls, the nearest local comittee of AIESEC. And like most AIESECers there are really open-minded and funny people ^^

Fireworks in Summer are really the best ^^

Fireworks and Okonomiyaki

The highlights of the last 2 days were definetely the fireworks in Yokohama at thursday evening and the meal with the company at friday. But let's start with the first one.

Everyone just wanted to see the fireworks :)

After some days of work and slepping, I was finally dragged out of this routine. This time I went with my co-worker Mika-san and two friends of her to the fireworks or in Japanese "花火" which is pretty usual in Japan during the summer. So many people gather around one place in a city to watch fireworks.

And they are pretty amazing. The first half of it. Unfortunately was the smoke of the fireworks so bad that a big smoke screen took most of the sight after the half of the show. But nevertheless was it pretty amazing just to relax and watch the fireworks. I will defintely do it again. Wait ... Saturday is the next one in Tokyo, am I right?







The meal together with the company at friday was planned long before. Maruta-san (aka my boss ;) had coordinated everything so that we just had to go to a nearby restaurant after work. At this play, I want to thank him again for all the ways he help to get together with everyone :)

It was a very smooth evening were I discovered some new secrets of the Japanese kitchen. But onfortunately the Sake was a liiitle bit strong and I can now not remember the names of the dishes, just Okonomiyaki. And just because I knew it before :D

Okonomiyaki - The only dish I can name ;)

It was a great experience to get together with my co-workers, even my Japanese language skills are still worse oO But through observation, listening and combination I got most of the topics ^^

After a great meal with greater people, I drove back to my apartment with Moritz-san, the fellower which I mentioned before :) After a first confusion about the way, I finally found back home.

Tomorrow will be a short night visit of Tokyo and at Sunday my next trip in Tokyo during the day :D

Greetings from Yokohama!