Dominiek.com

Normally, I try to keep my blog a little detached from my personal life. My main intend for this blog is writing interesting articles and not fall back on talking about myself. Nevertheless, sometimes I will do a little personal life update and here it is.

Since a month now I've been back in Tokyo after having spend several months in Amsterdam and one little trip to Shanghai. As of this weekend my new address in Tokyo is:

Tokyo, Setagaya-ku, Okusawa-1-chome, 1-15-11, 158-0083 kurita house

Here are some pics of my new place:

This weekend my dad made a stopover in Tokyo for two days. Timing was great, because this week is the world famous cherry blossom season here. The cherry blossom season comes with a typical Japanese tradition: get drunk and eat under the pink flowers.

I had to confess to my dad that that’s basically what we do here in Tokyo, if we’re not working, we drink and eat, there’s not much more to do here.

Ofcourse I try to fill up all that little non-working time with Japanese learning and other cultural activities. But here in Edo nowadays, consuming is pretty much equal to culture, isn’t it?

My dad was – like any other ‘Temporary Visitor’ – amazed by all the capital spend on shopping and dining facilities and the Japanese’s complete inability to speak English. Of course this gave me the opportunity to impress him with my ‘two beers please’ Japanese!

After an awesome weekend and talking a good amount of Dutch again this weekend I celebrated my Dutch pride by cooking a traditional Dutch dish called Hutspot, here’s my recipe on OpenSourceFood

Update: Haha, by coincidence I stumpled upon these two blogs about living in Japan and thus about food/drinking: yongfook.com and gajintonic. Quote of the latter:

Japan is a pisshead’s paradise! It’s a land of happy drunks, relaxed alcohol laws, and hilarious novelty bars which are open all night. arrived in Japan expecting a spiritually-enriching cultural experience. Five years later, all I have is a truckload of dodgy drinking stories…

This post will be a personal life update (with pics).

Today was my first working day as a RubyOnRails Developer in Shibuya . The company I work at does normal Japanese hours (from 10 till 10), but fortunately, they have a laid back international atmosphere. On a normal working day I communicate in Japanese, English and Flemish-Dutch with my colleagues. My co-developers are pretty cool and like-minded. The core Rails guy lives in Honolulu and flies in every few weeks. Also most of them have read the book that just got delivered to me: Getting Real

Another core activity next to my job is studying Japanese. Every Tuesday and Thursday evening I go to Japanese Kaiwa (conversation) class. It’s kind of interesting how slowly – but gradually – all that noise starts having a melody.

Also, I will try to make some more time for art. This weekend I visited an Australian Contemporary Art Exhibition and the Dutch movie ‘Phileine zegt Sorry’

Also I came up with my own idea of a cool art project: Yamanote Clock (This link is a writeboard, password is empty, feel free to edit!)

This weekend I moved to Tokyo to live together with my girlfriend for the time being. I decided to study some Kanji ‘at home’ this afternoon, since I have a long time gap between the job interview this morning and the Japanese conversation course tonight.

After studying for a short while I felt like eating some caramel candy, so I left for the nearest convenience store, the Family Mart. The store is only one block away and open 24/7, hence the name convenient. The last time I visited during the night, I think that’s why I didn’t notice the five-floor high giant red ‘strawberry house’ next to it, they sell hello kitty items there.

Just like last time, I observed many Mercedes cars and luxurious domestic Toyota models. This is kind of strange, everyone should be working at this hour right? Well, they are, but they go there by train (Can’t blame them, this morning the train took me through 10 kilometers of metropolis in 11 minutes!). So the cars are just for showing off to the neighbors (that you don’t talk to in Tokyo). I have no problem with that, it’s good for the environment and pretty cars are nice to see (Yes, I admit it, I like watching Top Gear, which I guess makes me a stereotype male).

Apart from many fish and chocolate candy, there was no caramel in the Family Mart. There was something called ‘karamerry’ but it had the picture of an apple on it. Chocolate it is than.

After filling out my address for the 30th time it struck me: the Japanese can torture people with their procedures and paperwork. I’m applying for two universities in Tokyo (Keio and Waseda), I thought 8 pasphotos were enough for this procedure, but I had to make an extra 4. This relates to my previous article about the knowledge/wisdom age. It sometimes seems that Japan can be quite stuck in the Industrial Age. True, this factory-mentallity has made Japan as wealthy as it is, but the time has come for change and they know it. As this book states, these problems in Japan create oppurtunities for (Western) entrepeneurs.

At the moment I’m in Tokyo for the coming 2 weeks, so I’m instantly reachable at:

• tel: (+81) 090 1730 5875
• sms(=email): dominiek [ at ] t.vodafone.ne.jp