Yay! Tonight at 1:12 am, my niece Chiara Marie was born! There haven’t been any big problems and both girlies are okay. Of course, everybody is a little tired after a nightshift like that but everything seems to be fine. Just came back from a short visit and here are the very first pix:
Well done, Sis π
Just to annoy my sister and to prove the timeliness of my blog: Oneesan is on her way to the hospital and – finally – give birth to my niece π
On Saturday morning, we decided to make use of the magnificent weather and went hiking. Well, it was not a big deal, just the Tregleralm, but nevertheless, it was very nice and beautiful. Take a look!
Well, the title says it all. I’m back. My over six months stay in Japan finally has ended and I’m actually writing this post from my parent’s place. So weird: I woke up in Tokyo, had a nice Starbuck’s breakfast and a nice train ride to the Narita airport and now? Now I’m here already and will sleep in my old kodomobeya tonight…
And here’s to all the people I know in Japan again: THANK YOU SO MUCH! I can’t even say how grateful I am for the past six months.Β Please don’t forget me for I’ll never forget this wonderful time! Anybody, please keep in touch!
Phew. Finally, the time has come for my very last post from Japanese soil…
To make things more interesting, I changed some small bits. Applied a new theme and removed the weather plugin (my intention was to piss off everyone in Germany with the extremely warm and sunny weather we had here all the time – until I installed this damned plugin). Hope you like the new Theme!
Anyways, because I’m packing my stuff – and this also includes my computer – I want to say THANK YOU to Japan. To the people here for their kindness. Actually, I’m amazed more and more every day that in this true metropolis, which is the most crowded place on our whole planet, still most of the people are friendly, kind, helpful and smiling. And it’s mostly not the kind of fake smile that you can easily get in the USA! I wish I could fit into words how I feel right now but I think that’s impossible. This country, this city, my great roommates, everyone here – I will never forget that and feel extremely grateful for being given the chance to experience all the stuff you could read about in my blog – and all the other stuff I did not dare to post. π
Mina-san, hontouni doumo arigatou gozaimashita.
Ima kaerimasu, dakedo zenzen kaeritakunai.Tabun mata rainen, ne?
… I finally managed – after more than six months – to get to Tokyo Tower! Of course I had my camera with me π
Please also take a look at my other sister’s new blog, woh just moved to Barcelona together with the human jukebox Stigi permanently. Unfortunately, the Spanish Internet providers are not very … well, let’s just put it like that: Sometimes Ela and Flo have Internet access… So therefore, the blog is yet empty but as soon as the connection issue has been solved, they will upload a lot of stuff and pictures about their life in Spain! (and again, this will be in German π )
As I mentioned in my German blog, I’m going to be uncle this fall! I can’t – not even to the slightest bit – express with words how happy and excited I am about this. π My sister will be giving birth to my very first niece in the next few days and I want to use this opportunity to trackback to the new blog of Andrea and Patrick, the proud almost-parents. This blog is written in German, so hontouni doumo sumimasen to all my non-German readers (who are Japanese most likely π )
Saturday morning: Still sleepy, but really excited, I’m standing in Shinagawa station at the Shinkansen tracks and await the “Nozomi super express” train that will bring me to Kyoto. Upon my arrival in Kyoto, I locked away my luggage at the station and made my way for the Kinkaku-ji, the golden pavilionΒ temple. Unfortunately, it was quite a rainy day – no wait… Actually fortunately! If the sun would have shone, I’d have died of the heat. Kyoto is located in some kind of natural frying pan – it’s surrounded by mountains on at least three sides, I think. Everyone warned me that going to Kyoto in the middle of August is some kind of attempted suicide π So I was not angry at the weather gods although it was raining. The temperature was convenient and I just bought a 500-Yen-umbrella (just about three Euro, folks)
Okay. Golden pavilion. It was… WOW! Seriously, this is quite impressive for the upper two stories of it are completely covered in pure gold and its location in the middle of the Rokuon-ji, a very beautiful deer park, is just magnificent. One of the guidance people standing around told me that the local government decided that there shall be no high buildings in Kyoto many years ago so the view inside the parks and temple areas is not spoiled by modern buildings in the background (like it always is in Tokyo).
After the golden pavilion, I went to the Ryoan-ji Zen temple with its famous stone garden. A very peaceful and calm place – pond included, of course. The stone garden features mostly empty space with just fifteen bigger boulders in it. Very interesting is one thing: No matter from what angle you are looking at the garden (which means from positions that a not too tall human being can have their heads in without taking a ladder or any other auxiliary material), you can only see a maximum of fourteen π I walked around in the garden for a while and finally departed for the Nijo-jo, an old defensive castle.
In the later afternoon, I felt pretty exhausted, went back to the station to get my stuff out of the coin locker and finally checked in at my hotel to have dinner and get some rest. After breakfast in the morning, I fell asleep again… π Anyways, the Sanjusangen-do Buddhist temple was just next to my hotel, so I visited that one first. It’s really amazing for it features one huge statue of the thousand-armed Kannon accompanied by one thousand smaller statues (which still are of human-equal size) of the Kannon. Yes. One thousand. And because that’s not enough, there are also 28 big statues of famous guardian spirits. The name Sanjusangen-do literally translates as “33 spaces between the pillars”, referring to the architecture of the main hall. Phew. I was quite impressed by that one…
Because I still had some time left, I finally went to To-ji, what means nothing more but just “eastern temple”. However, this temple area is – just like the Kinkaku-ji – one of the major images everyone has in mind when thinking of Kyoto because it features the famous five-storied pagoda. Of course, there’s a pond here, too π Come to think of it – Sanjusangen-do has no pond! Wow… Strange… π Anyways, I took some stupid pictures here, too and enjoyed the sunny day. Actually, during my walk back to the Kyoto station (the To-ji is quite close to it) it became pretty hot and humid and I started to understand why everyone warned me of coming here in August.
Finally, I entered the station again, bought some O-miyage for my roomies and snacks for the train ride back to Tokyo and got on the train eventually and was a little bit sad that this very interesting and funny weekend had come to an end now. However, I took almost 550 pictures and here’s a selection of the good ones for you!
No no, I’m not talking about credit cards here. My beloved visa status called “designated activities” or also “working holidays” would have ended on Aug. 28th but my flight back is already booked for Sep. 5th so I had a small problem here. Well, since my work is officially over since Aug. 18th, I went to the Tokyo regional immigration office (actually I’ve been there more often now than I’ve been to Takaosan…) to change my visa status from that kind-of-resident-thing to “temporary visitor”:
*sigh* now I cannot run away from the fact that I will leave this country in just two weeks. So many dear memories, so many dear people, so many things I will miss… π