Robots in Toyota City and castle in Nagoya

Due to a business trip to Nagoya, I(h) got a chance to see one of Japans many castles. As most of the major castles in Japan, the original was destroyed during World War II. The reconstuction was still impressive though:


The biggest impression left in Nagoya was not the castle though, but a visit to the Toyota factories in Toyota City (yep, Toyota has a city named after them!). The visit left a feeling of science fiction and reality is merging.
The high technology factories was equipped with a conveyer belt in the assembly hall, that did not just assemble one type of car, but several types of cars following each other. This was done with practically no parts on the line to assemble the car with. Toyota must have the most efficient warehouse management system in the World! No wonder why the entire car industry and practically all other industries (including the pharmaceutical industry) are copying the production principles of Toyota.

The science fiction and futuristic ideas of Toyota was presented at an exhibition at the Head Quarter, which included a trumphet playing robot. Of cause.

Toyota also presented the scooter (i-unit) of the future:

This is Henriks car, seen in another perspective:

Hot toilets

Last weekend we went to the showroom of the biggest toilet producent in Japan, Toto, and tried their state-of-the-art toilets. We had great fun pushing the different buttons on the remote control for the toilet. We did not go on fire though: Pas på - Toilettet brænder!
& Japanske toiletter bryder i brand

Weekend lazy

Another weekend just flew by. We stayed home for once and enjoyed the tranquillity of not doing much, but had a lot done anyway. Letters were written, delayed birthday cake made, new shopping centres discovered, video watched and Nintendo DS played.

In the city, we were, once again, amused by the numerous signs of Denmark around us. We can’t figure out, if they are there, because we seek them, or because little Denmark is quite popular here… It can’t be, can it?
So what can we add to the list...? We have found a Danish bakery “The little mermaid”, a display of the productions of H.J. Wegner in the furniture department, our national football t-shirt in the sports shop, Rosandal products and the year-plate from Royal Copenhagen in the chinaware assortment.

We also had time to visit the Planetarium, for the sake of the view. On the 22nd floor, you have a pretty cool view of the Shinkansen train as is speeds its way through the landscape emerging from under the building – a must see.

Sunday we slept in, splashed in the bathtub and then went for a walk. We visited a big Buddhist temple, not far from our apartment. All the pictures are from there. A local tried to explain some origami figures to us. In Japanese, of cause. Something with wings. We guess a bird? Later we could hear him tell his family about some Gaijins. That we understood ☺



We found a new favourite Italian restaurant/coffee shop and a French restaurant we are bound to try any day soon. And that's about it. It is still snowing on and off every day, so the cherry blossoms are still on hold.
One last shot of part of the temple:

Newest buy

In the department stores you can find fashion shows (!) only for mobile phones and each of the leading phone companies throw 10 new models on the market in every collection.
This one we picked from Au's spring collection. It has a 800x480 high resolution display with a 170-degree viewing angle and can be used for television, web surfing (it comes with an email address), playing the preinstalled Final Fantasy or even for advanced navigating via GPS.
More odd is the barcode-reading functionality. Via the camera, the phone can scan barcodes on posters and in magazines and reveal or transfer web addresses, email addresses or phone numbers directly to the phone. Or, what about this one: By holding up the phone to a speaker – the phone is able via databases to identify the song and tell whatever album we need to buy... probably over the phone.
Of cause it also substitutes a credit card at some convenience stores and vending machines.
Unfortunately many of these applications are in Japanese, so it might take a while before we get around them all.
The beauty of the beast is the draw back. Phones on steroids, strong and heavy enough to carry all the newest revolutionary-technology-rocket-science-gimmicks have replaced the tiny elegant designs in Europe.

Starting our everyday life in Koriyama

The first day Henrik went to work, a bell rang. Not expecting that, I jumped up the sofa not really sure what to do. I figured it must have been the door-phone. I lifted off the rear and wondered...a guy started to talk in the other end ­- in Japanese of cause. I reply ‘IIe, Nihon-go’, which in no way is Japanese, just the words that means No! and Japanese language. The guy keeps talking and I reckon he wants to be let into the building.
I look at the thing attached to the phone rear: 22 different buttons all with a label in Japanese. Which one is the magic one that will open the door? I try them all from one end to another and when a sound starts as an alarm goes off, I figured it must have been the door that opened or that I had done something really wrong.
The mysterious call turned out to be a messenger. He gave me a package while he bowed several times to me, saying things I did not understand. I tried to follow him, by doing a lot of bows and said several times the only Japanese phrase I can speak so far: Arigatoo Gozaimasu, which means thank you very much. From the look on his face -­ it looked like I had managed to say stuff he did not understand as well.

The above story, is just one of many likewise encounters we have had so far. From the moment we landed on Japanese ground we have either felt lost, ignorant, unsure, misunderstood, confused or more than one of the mentioned feelings in all thinkable situations.

We spend hours in the supermarkets trying to find what we need and some things we have put on stand by, as we after 4 hours gave up finding that specific thing. Instead we have started to buy unidentified things. We have managed to have numerous conversations, were we understood absolutely nothing (though we have figured out that if we continue to smile, they eventually look happy, and stop talking to us) and we are surrounded by things and goods we have never seen nor used before, as the oven in shape of a drawer meant only for fish, the petroleum heaters with a Japanese instruction book and the really advanced rice cooker we at first glance thought was a vacuum cleaner.

The Japanese is not only 2 year-frontrunner on electronics, and have their different food and a difficult language, they also have an ancient culture, unique traditions and customs that we are being challenged to follow, whether it is the correct way to hold a cup, or to accept a gift, or even something as simple as to remember to take of the shoes before we enter a restaurant or even the work place. Luckily we find that part of our stay really fun and siege the challenge with pleasure.
It can be enormously fun to observe the local customs and hopefully, in the near future, it will pay off.

In the end, we find comfort in the universal law that says, whenever you have had an experience – you are that experience richer and feel more confident the next time. :o)

By the way ­ the package, covered with Japanese characters and just one name I could almost understand ‘Henrin Westerlin’ contained something as boring as three phone books.
But! Now that is efficiency. We had the phone connected just the day before!

A day's catch at the supermarket.

Heading home

In some cases the following would look strange:
福島県郡山市清水台
In our case it is just a matter of getting used to the local way of writing the name of our new neighbourhood. :o)


So here we are! Should we say 'finally'? Or should we say 'already'?
Having spent the last 5 months on the road, slept in 7 different countries in more than a 100 different places, we definitely have the urge to say 'finally'. Finally we arrived at a place to settle down, at least for a while.
‘Already’ pops up as well, as the time we spent in Denmark during Christmas in no way was sufficient to cover our needs to spend time with our friends and family, whom we missed a lot while in Brazil. We have truly learned how precious, time with friends and family is.

Our trip from Denmark to Tokyo went well. No worries, - The signs were written in Danish, the stewardesses spoke Swedish and the films were in English. The challenges began when we were outside the Danish comfort zone, going from Tokyo to Koriyama, or Kooriyama, as the correct pronunciation apparently is.

To make a short story long, we took six elevator rides, long walks down different corridors and asked several people for direction hoping to be sent to the right track at the train station in Tokyo. We even had a nice chat with a Japanese woman saying Guten Tag, as learning European languages apparently was her hobby.
We carried more than 100 kilos (!) of luggage, and combined with a lack of sleep on the airplane, we really weren’t in the mood for getting lost in translation, so to speak, so you can imagine how we felt, after half 'n hour finally turning up at the train track that matched the number on our tickets, but with a sign saying Korihama. Not Koriyama.
This was not our train! We had to go back to change the tickets, then find the correct track, wait for another hour and finally the last bit of travel could begin, in less than 80 minutes we arrived in our new base, Koriyama.

As we exited Koriyama station, we were reminded that we had just arrived on the other side of the planet. On the public square a local pop band was shooting a video. In no way pros, but in every way it demanded a stop!
One guy was leading the band, playing air-guitar. Five persons were standing on line behind him, dancing synchronic in this happy naive childish way that only Japanese can get away with. It was all very cheerful.
What a great laugh to arrive to and what a humorous place we had arrived at :-)

We decided to walk to the apartment from the train station. It seemed much easier to carry the 100 kilos of luggage divided into 7 bags, up the steep road, than to have a Japanese conversation with a taxi driver.

Excited and exhausted we arrived at the apartment, – our future home (!) and sat down on the chilly floor. No furniture, no soul, but this was unquestionably a place we could see potential in. The centrally located flat has spacious rooms and an 11-meter long sunny balcony with a great view of the snow-capped mountains. What else do we need?
As we figured out in Brazil, home is not where you were born, nor where you live. Home is where you feel welcome, loved and safe. Home is where you feel at home. For us Denmark is home, Montes Claros is home and hopefully in the future, we will feel at home here in Koriyama.

The train on the photo is the Shinkansen, the Japanese express train, that took us from Tokyo to Koriyama.