Saturday, 2. February 2008
bleeding hearts for german engineers
carschti, 14:45h
I´ve completed the holy quest for "Momo".
And I´ve been to Kichijouji. Margie was right, I liked it. The town is like a comprehension of Japan. Shopping streets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, small streets with old buildings like Kyoto, Temples like everywhere else in Japan, normal new buildings like Tokyo and parks.
But this place has something special. I´m aware of three things that are different to most of Japan.
1st: This place has an huge amount of Gaikokujin. Black people, white people, indians, europeans, americans... This fact itself is not sooo special, BUT they say hello to each other. It happened not the first time to me in Japan, that other foreigners were greeting each other, but soon after my first contacts with other foreigners I found out, that only those were paying attention to others, who might have realised that they will be different, no matter what. Best example Yokohama. There you can meet the normal amount of foreigners like in every big city. But it´s the best place to do some background study.
I´m open minded and I think I´m friendly enough to say hello to everyone who seems to be expecting something like this. I´m a normal foreigner, blond hair, no brown eyes - so everybody can recognize me as one very easy.
In Yokohama you can meet three different types of foreigners. Tourists, locals (people living there) and boy/girlfriends. Well, I assume that the tourists and the locals are aware of the situation that they are different. The boy/girlfriend type, however, seems to think that´s people automatically japanese when being together with an Japanese. Invisible for other foreigners.
Being in Yokohama several times, having traveled through the southwest of Japan, I can assure you, that none of the boy/girlfriend foreigners was saying hello. Minimum 80% of the others will say hello to you, when meeting outside of an typical tourist spot. Back to Kichijouji. There every foreigners said hello to me. With or without japanese friend, didn´t matter. It was crazy. The greeting factor was 100% (and I met 27 foreigners). Incredible.
2nd: This is the richest area I´ve seen so far. BMW´s, Audis, Mercedes, Porsches, Lamborghini, Ferraris you can find every brand there.
In the japanese branch of my company there´s a sign, which means roughly translated: "A scratch on the panel is a scratch on your heart!"
Today my heart was bleeding. I don´t like cars as much as I probably should (I´m a man), but today it made me cry to see an "expensive-gorgeous-beautiful-well designed-perfectly handcrafted-strong-dream of every young boy-marry me girl" car in a state where I think nobody would say: "I don´t care"
Even if I would have enough money to effort 30 of these cars, I would never ever ever ever do this to it. See yourself:
3rd: This must be the capitol of the hairdresser union. 13 shops within 200m. It was impressing that every one of these shops was filled with people.
And they had an outlet store for Jack Wolfskin:
And I´ve been to Kichijouji. Margie was right, I liked it. The town is like a comprehension of Japan. Shopping streets like Hiroshima and Nagasaki, small streets with old buildings like Kyoto, Temples like everywhere else in Japan, normal new buildings like Tokyo and parks.
But this place has something special. I´m aware of three things that are different to most of Japan.
1st: This place has an huge amount of Gaikokujin. Black people, white people, indians, europeans, americans... This fact itself is not sooo special, BUT they say hello to each other. It happened not the first time to me in Japan, that other foreigners were greeting each other, but soon after my first contacts with other foreigners I found out, that only those were paying attention to others, who might have realised that they will be different, no matter what. Best example Yokohama. There you can meet the normal amount of foreigners like in every big city. But it´s the best place to do some background study.
I´m open minded and I think I´m friendly enough to say hello to everyone who seems to be expecting something like this. I´m a normal foreigner, blond hair, no brown eyes - so everybody can recognize me as one very easy.
In Yokohama you can meet three different types of foreigners. Tourists, locals (people living there) and boy/girlfriends. Well, I assume that the tourists and the locals are aware of the situation that they are different. The boy/girlfriend type, however, seems to think that´s people automatically japanese when being together with an Japanese. Invisible for other foreigners.
Being in Yokohama several times, having traveled through the southwest of Japan, I can assure you, that none of the boy/girlfriend foreigners was saying hello. Minimum 80% of the others will say hello to you, when meeting outside of an typical tourist spot. Back to Kichijouji. There every foreigners said hello to me. With or without japanese friend, didn´t matter. It was crazy. The greeting factor was 100% (and I met 27 foreigners). Incredible.
2nd: This is the richest area I´ve seen so far. BMW´s, Audis, Mercedes, Porsches, Lamborghini, Ferraris you can find every brand there.
In the japanese branch of my company there´s a sign, which means roughly translated: "A scratch on the panel is a scratch on your heart!"
Today my heart was bleeding. I don´t like cars as much as I probably should (I´m a man), but today it made me cry to see an "expensive-gorgeous-beautiful-well designed-perfectly handcrafted-strong-dream of every young boy-marry me girl" car in a state where I think nobody would say: "I don´t care"
Even if I would have enough money to effort 30 of these cars, I would never ever ever ever do this to it. See yourself:
3rd: This must be the capitol of the hairdresser union. 13 shops within 200m. It was impressing that every one of these shops was filled with people.
And they had an outlet store for Jack Wolfskin:
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