HUMANOID ROBOT

I received a presentation from this little fella yesterday.

Wikipedia really gives you all the information you need so I'll just paste the link (sorry for that)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASIMO

SHIBUYA CROSSING

RED LIGHT

GREEN LIGHT

SEX AND VIDEO GAMES IN GEEK CITY

I wandered around in Akihabara, a part of town that is called Electric Town and is covered in arcades, the large halls where the Japanese (mostly men) sit down and play video games for hours. The large buildings have different themed video games on each floor. The floors are sometimes men or women only, smokers or non-smokers.
Most public places in Japan still allow smoking. In most restaurants and bars there are smokers sections. So, if you miss the 60ies, ie. being covered in fog while eating at a restaurant, you can get all nostalgic in Tokyo.


Inside the arcades it is forbidden to take photos so I can only show you the outside. The arcades remind me of Vegas and I don't know if the gamers realise whether it is day or night outside. Anyway, after looking around for 10 minutes inside, I already craved for some fresh air and quiet.

I decided to go in one of the many Manga book stores. Some are rather small and stacked with tons of manga and anime gadgets but most of them are as gigantic as the arcades. Anime and Manga lovers could probably spend days insinde such stores. Just like the video games I find it a rather manly world. Including lots of sex, violence and violent sex.








Most of it I've seen before but some of it I find very, very disturbing... You can decide for yourself...











Since I was not allowed to take photos inside the shop I had to buy these books to be able to photographe their covers.



When I fly back to Belgium I will leave these in Tokyo. I have the feeling I could be arrested if I brought them into the country.

Luckily for me there's also some really girly entertainment. The photo booths! Jay! For around 400 - 500 Yen, you can go, alone or with your girlfriends, into a booth, have plenty of photo's taken and then get into the adjoining booth where there's a large computer touch screen and you can photoshop yourself into a real Japanese topmodel (according to the traits I told you about in my 2nd article) or, depending on your taste, just make yourself look really scary. :-)                                                           Boeh! Aaaargh!         ---->

                                                                                                   

ABOUT TOWERS AND TOILETS

Aside from the Sensoji temple I also had time to visit the Sky Tree Tower. And as usual I liked the walk over there more then the tower itself. (btw. beautiful weather, look at that blue sky!)
For some reason humans always want to have the highest tower in the world. It really is a mans world, isn't it. :-)
I visited numerous "highest" towers and it never has done it for me. They are all the same, whether it is the Eiffel tower, the one in NY with all the stairs or the Burj Khalifa in Dubai: a skybar with a spectacular view, a sky restaurant with a spectacular view (reservations definitely requiered), souvenir shops and an exhuberant entrance fee.
And the view is, well, never that good really. And I can see Mount Fuji from my 8th floor hotel room anyway. (brag, brag).


Here is what you see when you look down from the tower. Looking down is always a little bit scary actually.

I took more pictures of the toilet, where I didn't have to pay an entrance fee. Aah, those life priorities :-)

So here is a close up from the control panel of a standard Japanese toilet. Some have more options but this already suits my needs very well. Every time I sit down on the heated seat and have my ass automatically washed with warm water I'm convinced I could live in this country. People who like to cover up their toilet noises can put on some music and turn it to the max.

Okay. Some other pictures from things I saw on my walk today.

A road map, when I tried to figure out where I was (obviously). But the only thing I understood was that I would burn 120kcal if I'd walk the indicated 2,6 km itinerary.

<---

Riksjas, and not even with bicycles. BIG surprise!

A lot of beautifully, with plastic flowers decorated front porches.

Many, many Japanese and American fast food chains.

And some really, really angry looking fish in a pet shop.

MY FIRST EARTHQUAKE

I wanted to blog today about manga, porn and photo booths but I just experienced my first earthquake, after only four days in Japan, so I decided to change the subject.

Before my personal experiences, here some dry facts:

Earthquake information (information on seismic intensity) Issued at 18:57 JST 17 Jan 2014

Occurred at (JST) 18:53 JST 17 Jan 2014
Latitude (degree) 35.6N
Longitude (degree) 140.1E
Depth 80km
Magnitude 4.3

Apparently there occur 3 to 4 earthquakes per day (!) in Japan. This means that there are over 1000 earthquakes per year in this country. Most of them do not cause any damage and are hardly or not at all noticed.
I checked the website of the Japanese Meteorological Agency and since my arrival there have been 20 (!) earthquakes already. (If I'd only known :-) ) Mostly in the northern part of the country so they weren't noticable in Tokyo. People here seem so used to it, it's not even discussed or let alone, mentioned in the news. There has been an earthquake with a 5.0 Magnitude, 2 days ago and I would have never known if I wouldn't have done some real research on the web today. I can assure you that a 5.0 earthquake in Belgium would be all over the news! For days...

TEMPLE TIME

Today I took a lot of pictures so I barely know where to begin. After spending my morning hours online (thank you LinkedIn for making the people on my computer screen look the same as the people that are walking outside. How considerate.), I decided to go out and visit a temple.




I went to the Sensoji temple, one of the oldest temples in Tokyo, which was a 20-30 minutes walk from my hotel. I didn't know what to expect but it was very beautiful and turned out to be a great place for some Buddhist recreation.

You can do plenty of activities like drinking, playing or washing yourself at the little dragon water fountain.

Burning your own incense sticks above a small charcoal fire.

Waving the smoke from dozens of burning incense sticks in your own face.

And having your future predicted. What is called an Omikuji. Something like a fortune cookie but from a drawer.

It goes like this:


1. Take one of the metal boxes from the counter, shake it a couple of times politely (of course) and think about your wish.

2. A stick marked with a fortune number will come out of the box.

3. Memorise the number and put the stick back in the box.

4. Open the drawer with your number and take out the sheet. It will tell you if you'll have good luck or bad luck regarding your wish.

5. It also states clearly that no matter if it's good or bad news, you should always do your best and never be careless or arrogant.

 

 6. Don't forget to pray before you leave the temple!

BEAUTY IN JAPAN

All over the world women care about their looks. But it looks like the women in Tokyo really have taken it to the next level. Most of the western women just want to look like a better version of themselves. The women in Tokyo, on the other hand, want to look like someone else. Some sort of combination between a cute, shy Manga girl and a European top model is their dream look. This means they want huge eyes, bigger lips, smaller faces, bigger boobs, a pale skin, blond or light colored hair, preferbly thick and curly ànd they want to be tall with long legs. So basically they want to change everything they're born with. These women want the impossible. Surgeries are an option but for those who can't afford them shops are full of the right make-up, fancy clothes and  adorable accessories to look like the woman of their dreams.

Magazines for teenage girls and young women are filled with tips for the right surgeries, non-surgical treatments or fake attributes that create optical illusions.

This girl on the left is an example of a magazine ad for hair extensions (I think). She doesn't look Japanese anymore at all!

Japanese people are definitely disgusted from fat and fat people are considered lazy pigs.

Here, one of the many weight loss ads. For some reason I feel like they should publish this ad in an American Magazine. Also, this is the first time I travel to a country where I'm considerd fat. The first time I'm being advertised as a "before", usually I'm the "after". The before woman is what the average Japanese woman on the metro looks like though, so I totally fit in.

That girl in the grey bikini isn't even anywhere near fat!

 

And another girl who looked perfectly normal  before her weightloss.

But normal is not at all what the Japanse woman want to look like...

Here some pics I took today in the Japanese shops. 

All the girls are dressed to look cute with lots of make-up, dyed hair and accessories. They all wear super high heels to look taller.

In Tokyo there are a lot of subcultures as well. And of course if everyone tries to go one way, there will be people trying to go the other way.

And what's not cute? Right. Heavy Metal, Punk and Gangsta Rap. Some Japanese women actually try to look African-American... And others just like tanning salons and wearing lots of bling. I guess every country has its Jersey Shore. :-)

ABOUT NOODLES AND TEA

I arrived in Tokyo this morning and after checking into the hotel around 2pm all I really wanted to do was sleep... Of course I did not, instead I went online for hours to find the coolest people in Tokyo who would want to show me the hottest bars, clubs, shops and restaurants in town. I actually managed to find some interesting people and promised to get back at them after a really good nap. But again, I did not sleep, instead I showered for an hour, checked my emails, updated all my online profiles (I'm in Tokyo!!!) and by 8pm I was starving, so I had to go outside to buy my first Japanese meal.

It's only my first day and I didn't want to overdo it, so I went to the 7/11 (yep, that one) just accross the street, where I bought this -->







Uhu, right, I know, me neither....




Basically I took the things I recognized. And that were

Noodles (with unknown ingredients),

more noodles (with more surprise ingredients),

Green Tea (I suppose)

More Green Tea

And more tea, this time undercover as a jelly pudding, which you're supposed to poor water over and then it melts into a tea, or rather something tea-ish. This one is Jasmin flavoured. They also have blueberry, caramel and many other flavours plus they also sell jelly coffee. I'll buy the coffee tomorrow but only to show you as a personal science project.

Besides that I found a whole salad that only contains 19Kcal :-)

Which i didn't even manage to finish




And one hard boiled egg, 66Kcal, 68 Yen and salt already in it. Call me stupid, but how do they get it in there!? It was in the yolk. I did finish that one though because all that salt made it quite tasty!



FYI, 100 Yen is about 1USD, so it's pretty easy to keep track of what you're spending.

Two of my other first day experiences were meeting my first Yoshi of this trip, and therefore also receiving my first business card.

And trying to figure out my AC (which I'm still doing right now) because its supposed to be 24C in here but it feels like -10.









More about the ordinary life in Tokyo tomorrow...