Sunday, August 28, 2005

Midnight thoughts

Yeah, I'm finally back to Nagoya. This week I've been in Tokyo, visiting my brazilian friend Denise. Now its almost 7AM and I just came from the bus travel. I came straight to the pc because I don't want to sleep now, and to think that I have to return to my messy dormitory gives me the creeps.

Of course I have many pictures and moments to share, but not today. No, today is time for reflection. This is because it was an unusual trip, many things happened. Some good, some not so much. In the bus I was just thinking in the things that are happening to me in my japanese life.

Mainly the problems are related to relationships. There are the food problems too, but I'm starting to get used to it, so let's talk about the difficult issues.

I always try to get new friends, to meet people, to find and open more doors. I used to do that in Brazil too, so there is no change here. Sometimes these friendships get spoiled or just vanishes, but here I felt for the first time the 'I don't want to be your friend anymore' thing. Strange, indeed. In this trip, I lost another friend.

This increases my "good friendships lost" counter to 3, which is too much for me. Its useless to detail the reasons, but basically they don't want to be just friends. When they discover my feeling of friendship only, many reasons to fight appears. I'm just tired of this, losing people that I like.

And its not a japanese thing, only one of them is japanese. Maybe the cultural difference makes people expect more then you think is normal, and vice versa. The result is: be more tolerant, because not everything is what it seems.

I'm not sad, though. I made new friends in Tokyo, I learned a lot from everything, and every change is good.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Toyota Commemorative Museum

First I'm a little pissed off because just when I started to write in english, I began to receive spam-comments in the blog. Come on, these people have nothing more to do then just annoy us? I wonder if someone actually click on the links.

Anyway, I'm sort of disappointed now because I needed a friend, and couldn't find him. Its very easy here to get someone in your mobile's address book, but to find real friends is a big challenge. I have to get used to it, it seems that even friendship are different here. Benkyou ni naru na...

I'm not in the mood to write philosophy of feelings today, so I'll remember a nice event that happened last month. In another japanese-class trip, we went to the Toyota Commemorative Museum. Everybody knows that Toyota is a big japanese group that mainly makes cars. But I found that its not just that.

Toyota began its plan to take on the world with a innocent weaving factory. Always with top notch technology, they then changed to the automobile sector, and who knows what will come next.


Yuu san, Iwatsu sensei and Kyo san came with me. The big thing is one of the weaving machines, the museum's simbol.

In the beggining I didn't wanted to go to the museum, it looked kinda boring in the flyer we read some time ago. But its better then nothing. Because I like to do different things, I went there with a smile on my face.


Some interactive machines give more fun to the children. Or they are the only thing that resemble fun here.

Basically we saw many machines capable of transforming raw cotton in thin threads, and then make fabrics with them. Japanese guides explained the workings, but the language was still very difficult for me to understand. Ganbatte ne.


One big cotton cloud splitting through the many pipes.

The cool thing about this part of the museum is that while some of the machines are human operated, others are just like the production lines of the industrial revolution: long strips of machines where the raw materials are inserted, and the final product pops out in the end. Very Acme style.

Enough of this clothing stuff, let's move to the next stage. Entering on the Automobile section, we suddenly found ourselves in a dark corridor with glass walls. On the ground, some screens showed technologic stuff like matrix. Mirrors reinforced the illusion. Very cool indeed. But It's difficult to explain in words, so behold the picture!


What do you expect? It's a mobile phone's picture in a dark place without flash ;)

Toyota is proud of itself because it built one of the first high class japanese cars (which in my opinion looks exactly like the foreign cars of the time). Of course the best comes last, so we began analysing individual parts and materials.


This is a digital microscope, gazing an iron structure.


It's SO cool to play in a steel xylophone. Ok, not that much.


Iron, Steel and aluminum malleability test. Twist and shout.

Of course I took many more pictures of the many more things there, but I would go crazy if I tried to put all here. Well lets jump to the car production process!

In the primordium of the japanese (and maybe the rest of the world's) automotive construction, the cars were hand-made with shapes of wood, many hammer hits and a good amount of sweat.


The process was explained with videos and dummy dummies.


And that is the final product. Sugoi!

It should cost a lot too. Nothing special to me. Maybe I'm not a need for speed otaku.


Now THAT'S what I call nice vehicle.

Its the new toyota's personal locomotion system. Or sort like it. Its a shame that it wasn't working, just being exposed. Also, some car parts where shown in detail, with moving parts and information computers.


This rocket is actually an automatic shift system.

Did you like this so far? This was nothing, just old and new common stuff. The best thing about the museum was the amusement technology park. In short words, a place to play with nice gadgets.


This makes you feel like Pinky or some other stupid mouse.


The chairs simulate hydraulic suspension systems.


Air tunnel! Not mescaline enough to make you fly, but still fun. Look at the hentai teacher's gaze at Yuu's breasts ;)


A kind of maze. The directions were spoken by the helmet, but no vision augmentation effects :/


I felt almost like a power ranger with the apparatus.


Floating shock car. Boring!


Its always cool to see female struggling to see who's stronger.


Weight pendulum. Funny? Boring? Interesting? Wakaranai.

Enough playing! I gotta have some food or I'll die here, and the press will say that I died for staying 59 hours in front of the computer.

First post in english: Nagoya Castle

Ok, I'll try to write in a correct way, but its difficult - the little I know about english I'm starting to forget, and my overall english is being japanised. I guess this is part of the transformation between a normal guy to a japanese =)

Because there's been a long time since I wrote the last real post, I don't remember much of what happened in these days. But I took some pictures, so it'll be easier to tell my tales so far.

Oh! Maybe I have some new readers now, with this english thing. For you that don't know the purpose of this blog, I'll tell: its just a diary of my life here in japan. Its the place to put pictures, crazy japanese stuff, ideas of life and some bad jokes too. Argue with me in any point, I just love opposite points of view.

As far as I know, I'm living in Nagoya, Aichi Ken, Japan, to study in my Master Course. My thesis theme is Consistency Control for wireless real time games. I know that you didn't asked that, but now that I know the details of the project, its nice to say.

Well, my japanese course is over. I made the presentation in japanese with the aid of my power powerpoint, and everything went A-OK. The funny thing is that I even danced with the japanese teacher one of the traditional dances of my state. Of course it was all planned, but fun anyway.

Just before the course's end, one of the japanese teachers, Miss. Koinuma, took us to the Nagoya Castle. Its a big castle, the post card of the city. It was built by Tokugawa Ieyasu in the Edo period (about 1600 DC), destroyed in the 45's war and then rebuilt from the ashes. Like other old japanese castles, this one now is a big museum and an endless source of souvenirs.


I have no idea what these flags mean. The parasol is very common here too.

So I went there with the teacher and my chinese classmates. The good thing is that I used Kyo San's camera, so the pictures became a little better then my cel phone's. In the entrance, another of those 'technology x tradition' common scenes in japan.


Automatic ticket selling machine. The entrance was 500yen.

One of the first impressions of the castle: it is huge! I'm not experienced in these types of castles, but I was impressed by the size of the place and the castle itself. Around the castle there are vast open areas that used to be a little city, and big walls with deep dykes served to protect the constructions. The feudal period in Japan wasn't much different then the one we learnt in the traditional medieval europe history class, I guess.


Slaves working on the garden.

I felt sorry for these guys, the sun was whipping our backs and heads in a furious attempt to improve the drink selling machines industry.


The thing in the front is just a guard house.

This crane is there to put back the dolphins of the castle. WTF, you say, and I'll explain: in the roof of the castle there are 2 golden Kinshachi-jo, a dolphin-like creature that protects houses. Kin means gold, and shachi is a type of mythical killer-whale creature that god knows why all the pages in english call 'dolphin'.

Anyway they were strooling through the Expo, and now are returning to its original place. The funny thing is that each of the killer-dolphin weights 88kg of pure 18k gold, and they are still there. I remember about the Jules Rimet trophy, won by Brazil in the 1970's World Cup - it was stolen and melted by black-hearted badguys. As my father says, 'You can't compare unequals.'

Back to the castle... inside, lots of floors (seven?) with uninteressing materials: representations of the old japanese lifestyle, some huge katanas and armors, dead beetles and other things you would expect in a legendary castle. In the stairs, the blind people can read orientations written in braille, and the ones that can't climb the stairs (or are too lazy for that) can use the elevator - non existent in the original castle's version, of course.

In the top floor, a souvenir store! They sell everything from keyrings to wood toy swords. You can also have a panoramic view of the city, which looks, in the 4 directions, just like this:


The big horizontal line are the train/expressway lines, a very common asset here in japan.

This picture reminded me of the Central Park in the USA, although I never been there. I guess I'm seeing too much TV.

In the end the castle was a little disappointing, much worse then the Kyousu Castle. Maybe because we couldn't take pictures inside or dress like samurais and warriors, maybe because everybody says its beautiful, contributing to the false expectations.

That was my trip... I'd like to thank those who went there with me, it was a very pleasant time.


Unfortunately Yuen san is not with us anymore. He came back to China :p

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Toda mudanca eh boa.

Caraca, vai fazer quase um mes que eu bloguei pela ultima vez. Uns chamam isso de preguica, outros de falta de tempo, outros de falta de assunto. Na verdade nao eh nada disso. Acontece que nao tenho tido muita paciencia para escrever no blog. Sao varios motivos, que o tempo vai mudar.

Nesse meio tempo muita coisa ocorreu, tenho muitas fotos, mas nunca escrevo. Talvez isso mude. E hoje eh dia de mudanca.

Acontece que estou pensando em mudar a lingua do blog para ingles, que pelo menos eu entendo. Antes eu era contra blog de brasileiros em ingles. Oras, vc tem q seguir a sua lingua! Alem disso, meus amiguinhos inguinorantes em ingles podem ler. Por que a mudanca, entao?

Um dos motivos eh que com o passar do tempo, os amigos do brasil vao te esquecendo (ou se importando menos) e vc vai conquistando mais amigos internacionais. Assim a importancia lingual vai shiftando gradualmente do portugues para o ingles, e depois para o japones. Mas um passo de cada vez.

Alem do que, todos os meus amiguinhos brasileiros sao mestres em ingles (salvo a minha mae, mas isso sao detalhes). Meu ingles melhora, e meus novos amiguinhos podem ler as bizarrices que escrevo deles mesmos.

Assim, a nao ser que eu hajam fortes correntes descontentes, vou seguir com os planos de internacionalizacao.

E que a salsicha esteja com todos nos.