Japan

(MOW is a very popular icecream in Japan,.packed in a paper cup.)


I remember the day when I first saw a mow. A colleague of mine was eating it. I thought how could he have an icecream in the lunch break? We just had lunch! Not even 23 hours later I was addicted. He sat there and had his mow, I had mine. I didn´t pay attention to him, so I finished my ice cream within a few minutes. His paper cup was still full. So I was staring at his mow all the rest of the break. It was a horrible experience but it was worth watching. The big differences between his style and mine (which was not a style at all), was that I penetrated my icecream with the wooden spoon to get some bigger pieces, while he just scratched the surface. Next day I followed the his style. It was not satisfying. Scratching on the top of an ice cream while the edge is melting is just a bad habit.
With the next mow I started to develop my own style of eating the mow. Instead of scratching at the top, I was forming my ice cream with the spoon, beginning from the edge, so that the melting part, where my warm hands are can vanish in my mouth. This style met my expectations of last longing and even better tasting ice cream. When the mows went by I started to form a round ice cream ball in the paper cup. Turning it around whenever possible to get also the lower melting part of the ice cream. Within 1 1/2 weeks I was slower with eating the ice cream than my Scottish colleague was.

Two days ago I had some problems with the internet connection in the hotel. Whenever you checkout they unplug the internet line. So when I returned to my room, the internet was not working. So I went down to the lobby and asked one of the girls for help. She understood perfectly what my problem was and asked me to wait a few minutes. The she started to type on her keyboard and wrote down something on a piece of paper. After a few minutes she handed me the paper.

"Because I should be connected I will check my connection. Please wait ina room."

Cute, she was using an online translator to get the message back to me.

"Imagination comes from work" Do you think so? It was written on one mans folder he was carrying in the train yesterday. It seemed like a slogan from a company he is working for.
While being to work today I thought a lot about this sentence. I strongly disagreed when I read this statement the first time. Being at work takes all your time and effort to achieve some results and having the work done. Normally. But then I realised something else. Whenever I´m working I´m daydreaming more than I would do in my private time.
And so I dreamed and remembered back the years. Most ideas for my private life (where to travel, what to do on the weekend and whom to kiss) I had at work, in the university or at school. Was that the imagination they meant?

On the other hand most of my ideas for work came when I was at home. Maybe I need the distance to a problem to get it solved. But how can I solve my current problem? It´s kind of Japan related and I´m still in Japan. To have the distance I need for solving the problem I have to leave the country which means that my problem is obsolate. Mhmmm maybe no gudo!