Last week...

Picture of Nighttime in Heidelberg - just for good measure 

... I was rejected ... again. I really wanted that job. Too bad.
... I got two wisdom teeth pulled out. Thank God that we have anesthesia these days. But still, it hurt like hell for the rest of the week and I am totally cured of thinking about getting the other two removed any time soon.
... I got those two teeth pulled out exactly one day before my 28th Birthday. Yeah---Happy Birthday to me!
... I could barely eat my birthday cake. What a shame.
... On Friday, there was an interesting job offer from Japan. I'm totally going to get it this time!!!
... Today I did a picnic for my Bday with some friends, even though only a fraction of my invited guest showed up. But we had fun nonetheless.
... Tomorrow (Sunday!) I'll have another job application training seminar. I'm so going pro in theoretical knowledge about getting a job. Theoretically.
... Starting on monday I'll start my new part time job. Nothing fancy, but it'll bring a little bit of money in my empty pockets and the people there seem fun enough to work with. Wish me luck!

P.S. I'm currently putting my very first DIY Tutorial together. Stay tuned!

Greetings!

Japan Archives: Shopping in Japan

Japan and Service are two words that seem to belong together. Every visitor to Japan will learn quickly that a customer is not a king (as he is supposedly in the Western World), or an emperor - no a customer is a god. Well, I wouldn't go to that extent but Shopping really is an adventure of its own in Japan.
Yes, everything has its price. But good, heartfelt service will be bestowed upon you even if you look way too poor to be able to afford anything in that store. (Example: Student (=me) with rather out of date clothes in a Tiffany Store at Ginza Street. I would never walk into a Tiffany Store in Germany. Ever.)

Today, I just picked some random pictures out of my last year Japan trip picture folder. As a tourist you'll try to find some rather "traditional" places to have a look at Japanese trader spirit. Like the Ameyoko, a street in Ueno (picture above). Ameyoko is really crowded nowadays (it was a Saturday, though) - on weekdays you'll find more foreign tourists, I guess. If you are inclined to buy: Fish really is (was??) cheap there and you can have great sushi there, too.

"Hm, which salmon steak am I going to buy today?" (It's really cheap. Wish I could buy salmon that cheap and fresh in Germany.) Sadly, I never bought fish there - wouldn't have been able to cook it anyways. But still - I like to go trough Ameyoko as there are also Japanese bakeries, which sell freshly made melon bread or other food vendors with okonomiyaki (japanese style pancakes with vegetables and sea food). Also, there are a lot of tea shops around for lovers of Japanese green tea, as me.

As I said: random pictures. Japan also is the country, where the most products are accessible most of the time. Like 24/7. Around the clock.  There are the konbini stores (= small convenience stores), which are open all night and day and then there are vending machines practically everywhere. Mostly for soda and canned coffee, but sometimes for other goodies as well. In this case: Umbrellas! I really had to take this picture at the train station in Omiya - I loved it so much.
By the way, I never saw a vending machine where you could buy used panties. Sorry, boys, I guess those machines exist somewhere in Japan, but not in the areas where a respectable girl like me actually went to. (Yes, I went to Kabukicho once. At night. With friends. But we just did karaoke.)

An old styled store in downtown Ikebukuro. It is always astonishing that even though Tokyo is the capital of department stores so huge you can easily get lost in them, it is also still a city where the smallest shops seem to exist. Sure, it is getting harder for little shop owners, but still - they are friendly and seem contempt with their situation.

My favorite department stores are Loft and Marui city, by the way. The first for its marvelous selection of paper goodies, Japanese pens, washi tape and the like, the second for its obscene amount of clothing (every style one can imagine: cute, serious, grown up, festive, really anything) and accessorize. Well, it was torture to be sure - but Japanese clothing was out of question for my western butt, so I had to feast on necklaces, bags and make up. (You don't wanna know the details, to be sure.) This picture above just shows what happens, when you are doing your shopping trip on a rainy day: Your shopping bag will end up in plastic covering so it can't get wet. (I bought Mary Quant make up.) I still can't quite decide how I should find that. I mean, I totally freaked out, when I saw that happen for the first time. I was so stunned. (We Germans like to recycle as in "We wanna save the world" and plastic has a very bad connotation for me...And in Japan....well, let me tell you: Almost everything is made out of plastic, even cheese.) But still, I'm very fascinated by this concept of covering a shopping bag up.

For some reason I made lots of pictures of flower shops in Tokyo. Maybe I was missing some greenery in this mega city. And I also love tulips. The light pink ones - or the filled ones! But I never bought plants in Tokyo as it is just way too expensive.

But I really was tempted to buy this Bonsai Cherry tree! But sadly, it wouldn't have survived the flight, let alone be allowed through customs in Germany. What a shame.

Summertime!

Somehow June wasn't quite the summer month this year. Yesterday I walked through a thunderstorm to attend a psychological study (well, I currently need that kind of money. Wasn't much, but at least I could buy some cereal for the next two weeks.). But I'm not complaining as it can get so hot in Heidelberg that one just keeps complaining about the heat. It's actually a heat that one can compare to the "mushi atsui" (muggy and humid hotness) that agonized me in Japan. But there is no air condition in private homes in Germany!
Next week I'll turn 28. 28 years, lots and lots of years of study and the question: Can I finally do something useful with all the things I've learned? Real life - hello, where are you??

When I started this blog I was devastated by the loss of my scholarship and opportunity to write a doctoral thesis. Well, I love to write - but was it really necessary to go on writing academic stuff? So I joined a Creative Writing group at my university and started to write a short story. Everyone needs to start somewhere. And someday I want to write a novel!
Well, job applications are going out, but I'll have to be patient, I guess.
I dived into being creative: Crocheting, Knitting and today I actually hand-sewed drawstring bags (well, one...). This is also definitely something I want to hold on to: Creating things with my own hands instead  of just buying stuff.

I'm just sad, that most of my friends from old times won't be able to join my B-day picnic. I really wish I could meet them again.

*The picture was taken at home, when I created a new drink for me and my mom. It was delicious.

My mobile evolution

When I was back at home last weekend I thought about some of my collections which I could show you, dear readers. Well, I have sparkling things like beads in a drawer, I own lots of random Japanese kitsch, there are many color pencils I collected throughout my childhood years up to now (It is very hard for me to ignore new color pencil collections...) and in my earlier twenties, when I actually earned some money, I started to collect MAC as in Make up Arts Cosmetics (and I love to use it!).

Well, I ended up shooting my collected mobile phone history. Actually my first Nokia phone is missing. Maybe I (or more precisely my parents) recycled it as one should do with old technology?

Well, the left one was a Nokia and it's made of very cheap plastic indeed. I can't believe that we actually used such greenish screens in the early 2000s. By the way, I was one of the last students in my school to get a mobile. I begged my parents, but they were never very much into newest technologies. And well, they were right: Why would a school student actually need a mobile? Other than downloading new jingles and have to pay a lot for it? But then, the bus sometimes didn't come and I had to reach my mother to pick me up from school. (I used a phone card and an old fashioned phone booth.)

When I went to Japan in Spring 2005 for one year I got the orange KDDI mobile. I loved it! I had never seen such an up to date and sophisticated and by the way stylish phone before! And I could take pictures with it!! HA! Mobiles on the German market just started with that kind of technology. And even nowadays, if you have a look at the Japanese mobile market you'll realize how far behind we are.

After my year in Japan I was rather disappointed to get a new mobile. It was really hard to get a folding mobile in Germany. So I got a motorola Razr and afterwards the Razr V2, which I still love very much. I actually miss that one quite a bit. My one year old Sony is again made of rather cheap plastic. But I can take good pictures with it while on the move. And as long as I can make phone calls with it, it serves its purpose, I guess?

Obviously I'm dreaming of an iPhone and actually was offered one the day I bought the Sony. But in Germany monthly costs for an iPhone are way too high for a student to pay. (I would have had to pay twice as much as I pay now!) So I declined (I'm so proud for being that strong! hahaha).

Hopefully I'll get a full time job sometime this year and then I'll get one!

Instagram Magic: Zoo Animals

On Sunday my family went to the zoo in Erfurt. Last year in august my mother and I bought a sponsorship for a thuringian donkey at the zoo as birthday present for my father. Recently this kind of sponsorships became somewhat popular in Germany. So we paid food for one year and could feel happy about helping an endangered species. The cute donkey above is such an endangered thuringian donkey. Our donkey is a 33 year old female and was in her stable. We could pet her and she seemed to like it. (But my parents were kind of sad about her condition.)

Still, I liked the zoo and haven't been in one for a while. (Last time in Ueno, Tokyo as mentioned before.) The zoo in Erfurt is really lovely. Most animal quarters have been rebuilt or renewed and the animals look happy. A very interesting place is the integrated thuringian farm from 1862. It was built to provide milk for mothers and their children in those times. It is the most popular place inside the zoo and families with children gather there to have a look inside old farm life.

I myself found my inner child while feeding a llama. It was just hilarious! My hand was very wet afterwards...To be kissed by a llama cannot be a fun experience at all!

Traditional road trips

More Instagram pics - today send to you from Erfurt, right in the middle of Germany. It is kind of tradition to drive with my mom (in her new convertible) to Erfurt or Weimar, when I'm back home. As I mentioned before this area belonged to the GDR once. And many (Western) Germans still believe we live in Wild West here. (Meaning there is nothing but wasteland and old rotting buildings and nothing to buy and nothing nice to see). Well --- wrong! Oh, so wrong. (Except the occasional rotting building here and there - see pic above...) The last twenty years were spent with lots of rebuilding, reconstruction and renewal. Yes, the GDR was a grey, grey and depressing country when looking at the cityscape. And there was nothing much to buy. (Which was a constant source for jokes: "Don't you have no bananas today?" "We haven't got any tomatoes here. No bananas are sold next store!" Hahahaha!! Love it.)
My childhood has been a happy one. Even though even my family had to deal with repression at one point and another. (I'll have to tell you a sad story soon, when doing another post on my childhood pictures.) And I remember very clearly that I dreamt of many toys I would never get. But we were inventive and built our own stuff from the materials we could get. And I spent so much time in nature. And I remember that as a great time.
But still, I'm very happy about being able to buy nice things nowadays. (I'm a girl after all.) And about being able to choose my own future. Not the future an oppressive system wanted me to have. Thank God.

Greetings!

P.S. I showed those Instagram pictures to my mom and she said: "Why would anyone destroy perfectly good pictures to have them look like pictures taken by old cameras??" Good question. But - hello? - it's so much fun.

While traveling with trains...

, a photo by Chisa2010 on Flickr.

...I love to just stare out the window. (Even when I'm determined to work.) You guessed my fondness for traveling by now, of course. And even though I absolutely love flying, taking the train might be the better option (if possible anyway). You actually SEE the country up close when going by train. (I loved riding trains in Japan! Not just because they are über punctual.)
I actually love to watch the German countryside slide past. I took this picture out of the ICE today. It might look boring to you, but I actually like the green shrubbery quite a lot.
Greetings.