cultural differences

Yesterday I had a Japanese friend come over. We talked a little bit, etc. then I noticed that he had a cold and he needed to clean his nose. I handed him a tissue, and he used it carefully, so I hardly could hear it. I was surprised when he put the used tissue onto my room's table. He did the same thing with the second tissue, and when he left, he took the tissues with him. Now, imagine this with a ...a German, for example. The German wouldn't bother keeping the noise down (but should ;-), but under no circumstances the used tissue would be put onto the table, next to a candle, glasses, and food. Different countries, different ...standards of behaviour.

first snow

Summer seems to be over. From end of April until the end of October, the sun was shining, with just a few wet days inbetween.
Meanwhile it`s really cold, and... on Monday we had the first Snow this year. It wasn`t really enough to cover the floor, but it was at least one or two snow flakes. For me, it could be the first white christmas in years.

new windows

After waiting for weeks for those new windows, the workers came the first three days this week. It was a dissapointment when they just exchanged the little wheels for new ones and not the windows themselves, which have partly cracks and are so dirty you wouldn`t like to touch them. So, in the end we have to clean the old windows...
During the changing I talked to one off the workers. Windows with isolation (three, or at least two layers of glass) don`t seem to be too common in Japan. No wonder that people spend a lot of energy just for the heaters - especially, because with such old heaters as we have them in the I-House, the windows have to be open if you want to heat your room...

Pornoking

This week Richard and me had an idea. We organized a movie night, an Anime and a real movie from the hard core section at Step One at Marutamachi. On that evening, about eight people watched the show. The funny part was, that Jay commented everything, pretending to be the producer of the movies. The content of the two movies apart (the Anime peaked in a bloody defloration, the second movie was embarrasing in regard to the Babyplay-scenes and the incompetent play of the actors), the night ended with a surprise... after the movies, we thanked Jay for his rental card (which he thought he lost). The Pornoking didn`t appreciate that too much... but then again, he got away pretty cheap as we didn`t rent a movies from the children or rape section. (yes, no joke, there`s really a whole wall full with that crap)

picture page

The picture page is online, life and kicking! You can access the pictures by clicking on the link in the lft bar. I will upload new pictures as long as I get new ones. So, if you have some, send them to me please. All pictures have some connection either with the I-House or Japan. I would appreciate it, if you could look through some of them and correct me if I gave a picture a wrong name - as some are taken by other I-House members (thanks to Roberto, Reyna, Manon and Adriane) I`m not always sure where the shown location is. Enjoy.

Celebreties you would never expect in ads

What is rarely known in your homecountry, celebreties from the US or England (and yes, Canada) do commercials for good money which range from hilarious to plain stupid.
You can see a smiling Bruce Willis sitting on the beach in bermudas on every other vending machine or Mariah Carey kicking some Japanese ass in playstation games on a television commercial or sipping coffee on stage. LeonardoDiCaprio is using credit cards (they even made him to say something in japanese), Meg Ryan is... err, well... who`s paying attention to the content if you`re amazed by the person in the commercial? ;-)
Brad Pitt, Tiger Woods and Stevie Wonder are als seen occasionly in coffee commercials, partly even with interesting background music.
The Simpsons are doing better than anybody else, nice synchronization, short plot and the product, C.C. Lemon isn`t too bad either... it`s funny to hear Homer talking in Japanese...