Capsulehotel

A few nights ago I decided to spend a night in a capsulehotel. These kinds of hotels are typical for big business cities like Tokyo and Osaka. As the land prices in Japan have sky rocked out of proportions, a night in a hotel room is quite expensive. But capsulehotels are not really meant for tourist who want to look for cheap accommodations. The rooms are too small and impractical for this purpose.
Businessman in major cities in Japan have a hard and tense life, so they like to relax with colleagues after work. But when relaxing and having fun, time is sometimes forgotten. If you miss your last train, around 00.30. You might have several options. Take a taxi for about 10.000 ¥ and go sleep home or stay in a cheap accomodation, such as a capsulehotel (3000-4000¥ a night). So most capsulehotels are found near train stations in the middle of the city.

I spend the night at a caspulehotel in Shimbashi. Before getting in I had to pay for the night and found a small locker room next to the reception. In the locker room the shoes had to be taken off and slippers would replace them. Accessing the elevator brings me to the second floor, where I find a corridor with 20 capsule rooms. I open mine and sigh in relief, it is bigger than I thought. I was thinking of sleeping in a space as big as those drawers where they put the corpses in hospital. Mind you I can not stand up in the capsule, just sit and bent my head. In a side room of the corridor I find 3 toilets and 2 sinks and 1 shower. As I am the second guest, one person is already watching TV in his capsule, I can notice from the slippers in front of his capsule. So I change clothes to a pyjama, similar to a hospital's gown, provided by the hotel. Inside I have a small control panel where I can switch off the light and can control the radio and TV. I turn on the radio to find out there are 12 channels. 1 channel has English movies and 2 channels provide Japanese (block)porn. Nothing interesting so I decide to get a sleep as it is still quiet.
In the middle of the night different people get in between midnight and 2 am. The corridor fills up with an awful booze smell and my half-sleep gets totally disrupted. The air con is not working well and I don't want to open up the sliding door.
In the morning I wake up around 7.00 and decided to get up and take a shower. When I climb out of my capsule I see more than a dozen pair of slippers, all the capsules got filled up in the night. The snoring and alcohol smell fills up the room and I hurry to get take a shower, pack my stuff, take my shoes, return the key and get out.
Good experience but a terrible night, I suppose you have to be drunk to be able to sleep in a capsule hotel.

Chiang Mai Baby Panda

Exciting news from Chiang Mai, Thailand:

After the first successful artificial insemination of a panda by a Thai veterinarian team a cub has been born to Lin Hui, a 7 year old Panda, on a 10 year loan from China, in Chiang Mai Zoo, northern Thailand. The birth came as a complete surprise to zoo staff who did not know Lin Hui was pregnant. The success follows the 2nd attempt at artificial insemination.The 1st attempt in 2007 failed. Previously, zoo staff had tried everything to try to get the pandas in the right mood, even showing the two Pandas a Panda Sex Movie to try to get them feeling romantic.

There is some concern that Lin Hui may not be able to take care of the baby herself as it is her first. A team of Chinese experts has arrived today to give advice on how to raise the cub. The Chinese experts say that the baby Panda is a female. Officials say the cub is feeding from its mother’s breasts and both are doing well. The Public will be allowed to see the new baby Panda cub in about a month.

Mount Fuji

Mount Fuji or Fuji-san (富士山) is the highest mountain in Japan. With its 3776 it stands lonely on a plain, just 100 km from Tokyo. Mount Fuji is an active volcano that last erupted in 1707, leaving Tokyo at that time full of ashes.
Mount Fuji is also considered a Kami (God) in Shintoism and is often depicted in paintings and literature.
As it is rare to see mount Fuji very clearly it took me about 2 years of travelling to make a collection of nice views of Mount Fuji. For most Japanese people Mount Fuji is considered as shy as a lady. But when you see her, she blows your mind.

Cherry Blossom festival

Last month the Hanami (花見) festival was officially opened upon reporting the first cherry blossoms in Tokyo. This TV report is a nationwide sign to start travelling and looking for the hot spots with the most beautiful blossoms. The cherry blossoms or Sakura are considered the greatest of all blossoms. This Hanami festival takes about 1 months the period that all the blossoms over Japan have perished. But this is a month in which Japanese go crazy about Sakura. Special food is sold like sakura tofu and sakura ice cream, both are pink coloured of course. It is a time of crowds visiting sakura spot, resulting in traffic jams.
As beautiful as the flowers are so are the people visiting the flowers. People feel relaxed and open-hearted just like the blooming of a flower. Special tea ceremonies will be held and some people will put on their best traditional clothes for viewing these blossoms. No the girls are no geisha's! Just woman dressing in their spring kimono to enjoy the Hanami festival.

Kawaii!

Tokyo has appointed 3 special ambassadors to represent Japan a few days ago. In a bid to raise the international popularity, 3 young women were appointed as representatives of their country.Eye-catching is of course their outfits. A combination of "anime", "manga" and popular Japanese youth culture can be observed on these young women.

The whole ambassador campaign is focused on the Japanese word "Kawaii", meaning "cute".

With the promotion of Japanese cuteness, Tokyo wants to influence young people in Asia and Europe.

Japan has been making efforts to boost its "soft power", a strategy that analysts see as important. "America has a lot of soft power, because people like American culture."

Voice of the airport

In an earlier post you could already read that I had some strange experiences at Chinese airports.
Last year I had a special group travelling with me through China. This group consisted of older couples and a few singles from the same Christian organisation. The group started their trip from Shanghai and had to continue to Xi'an after a couple of days sightseeing in Shanghai.
I didn't know the group very well yet the day we had to take the flight to Xi'an as we were only 2 days together.
We arrived well on time at Shanghai International Airport to grab our flight but the flight was delayed. Which is normal in China, a flight arriving on time must be a miracle. After checking in the suitcases and receiving the boarding passes we passed the security check and headed for the boarding gate to discover that the plane had some delay. The ground staff assured me it would only be delayed for 1 hour. So I gather everyone around and told them they could leave their hand luggage near the gate. I would watch the bags while they could have a walk around and look at the shops at Shanghai Pudong International Airport. I also instructed them to be back on time (1 hour later).
As promised 1 hour later the plane arrived and we could proceed to board the aircraft. Everyone from the group picked up their luggage and got in the plane. I saw that one backpack was left behind and according to the luggage tag it belonged to Miss X, a single lady in the group.
I asked the group where Miss X could be and they revealed that she had a drinking problem and probably was sitting in a bar.
I got a bit worried as we had to board the plane immediately and asked the ground staff if I could call for her through the microphone system of the airport. They allowed it and I prepared my best voice to announce solemnly that Miss X was asked at the gate quite urgently. The whole of Pudong Airport heard this Dutch announcement.
I waited for 10 minutes and Miss X didn't show up. The ground staff urged me to hurry up as they wanted to close the gate in a few minutes. I gambled and took a choice and ran through the enormous hall of the airport looking in all the restaurants and bars around. I finally found Miss x sitting in one bar drinking a beer and looking at me as she was from another planet. I explained her the situation and finally got to her. She looked as she waked up from her trance and started to panic. We both ran to the boarding gate, where the staff was waiting for us. We got on the plane and entered the plane as the last passengers.
So that was a close call.
From then on I knew Miss X's problem and watched her carefully.
She didn't disturb the trip any more but we had to organise some "toilet stops" quite frequently for her.

Business card

Japan is in our mind the land of the business man. And this image is quite correct for the big cities as Tokyo, Osaka, Kobe, ...
The most important tool for a business man is his business card. If you don't own a huge map full of other people's cards you are a nobody in Japan. The business card is synonymous for the person himself. So you have to treat a business card with the same respect as for the person itself.
Upon receiving a business card make a slight bow and stretch out both arms. You will take the small card with both hands and make a quick nod with the head. Examine the card and then put it away respectfully. NEVER FOLD a card, because this could be seen as a sign of folding the person himself. Don't put the little piece of paper in your trousers but place it respectfully in a card holder or in the pocket of your jacket.

So a little card can make quite a fuzz. Upon walking in the streets in Tokyo I saw some men giving their business cards away (still with 2 hands and a little bow) on corners of the streets. It seemed only females were targeted in this random give-away game. I decided to ask my guide why these men were giving away these precious little papers.
Because Japanese get more relaxed after work and after some beers I decided to take my guide to a beer bar and question him. The bar was located in Ginza area, which is a good and expensive, but mobster-directed district of Tokyo. Only a couple of streets away from my hotel, but on the way I made another amazing discovery. In front of a classy building in one of the streets I saw a lot of pretty ladies all dressed up in wedding dresses. So I thought "What a nice huge wedding took place here!". But anyway it might be something to ask my guide for.
So after a couple of Belgium beers the tongue gets loose and that's when I find out that Japanese are refined in their ways of offering sexual services.
The men giving away them business cards are generally working men (sometimes married) who offer their services after their working hours. It seems a big percentage of the male population in Tokyo is handling business cards in the streets as to find some payed (or not payed) sexual activity!
The wedding girls didn't come from a highly fashionable party. They are the most exclusive prostitutes. How fancier the clothes, how more expensive the lady, that's the Japanese rule. And I didn't get to know the exact price, but it seems such a high class girl will demand as much as a half month's salary (Japanese salary).
Amazing what information you can get with a couple of strong Belgium beers!