My Tokyo Sojourn

In English for a change... :)

Was in the capital of the land of the rising sun. A good stay overall. Not great amount of time for my own self due to various things scheduled but still I enjoyed myself a lot.

1. Mission and Mr K:
I spent most of the time there attending training sessions at a state-established institute where I also sat a couple of exams at the beginning and end of the programme, which went fine. I found all the contents of the programme interesting and useful. It's amazing there're always things to learn.

There was this guy around 50 yrs of age who also came in the same capacity as mine. Sharing some time with him, I realised that he was an extraordinarily naive person. He's been actively searching for his future wife on the net. At night he kept telling me how he 'met' the women who proposed to him at a blind-date site. The things the women have in common are they're so good-looking, young, American or British, have financial difficulties, ready to fly to Japan to marry him, need some amount of money from him for the air ticket to Japan and, most importantly, love him. I just asked him to come down to earth... what else can I do?

2. A good old friend:
Saw Mr H for the first time in years. We met when were students. He and I were never in the same class or whatsoever but somehow we've stayed in touch. He kindly planned his business trip so we would meet up. Had some drinks at an izakaya and chatted. Through him (his mobile), I also spoke to a few other friends of ours. We all have done different things over the past years but we're still the same in some ways.

3. Things in the city:
Visited Mr O who runs a company. Have known him for several years but it was the third time we saw each other. He's the father of my friend from college and came to visit his son in London, when we met for the first time at a Greek restaurant. Since then we've exchanged e-mails at times. He has his own mailing list and I always enjoy reading his daily messages. I felt as though we had seen each other quite often as we so naturally talked about a lot of things over some alcohol which he calls 'fuel'.

4. Misc:
On the trains, it was schocking to see many ads for debt consolidation and private detective agents.

There was a young mother with her baby in his buggy struggling to walk down some stairs on a metro station premises. It was hard to believe my eyes when well-dressed people were walking past her so I walked back a little to help her carry the buggy. Individualism is fine but not to the extent where people decide not to care for others.

Compared with the world's major cities, Tokyo is so big and busy but the cityscape on the suburbs is nothing special. It made me feel at home for some reason but a book titled "Dogs and Demons", I heard, may be worth reading in this sense.

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