Two Rainy Days

      Last two days it was raining quite a lot and non-stop. So we have used those few rainy days to study and work hard, in order to have great time when the sun comes out.

GYM GREETING RULES

     Visiting training room was fun today. Japanese people are so friendly everywhere, always welcome you and bow. This is not the case in the gym, no one says neither hello nor bye. I have asked a Japanese guy who spoke English in the gym why it was like that. He couldn't really explain, only said, that in the gym if you don't know a guy, you never greet. Sometimes those things confuse me a lot here in Tokyo. 

COOKING AT HOME

     Those days Ondrej and me decided that we will cook more at home. A huge supermarket just opened in the building of our dorm at the first floor and finally we can buy not extremely expensive meet there. 

      We wanted to have a good meal and decided to go for fish with noodles. For that we needed to buy cooking oil. The problem was, that we didn't know how cooking oil was in Japanese. We looked at a shelf with tons of different bottles with yellow slow liquid that looked like oil. So we picked one and decided to ask on the cash desk if it was oil. Of course when paying we forgot to ask what it was...

     We arrived back to our rooms. It was Ondrej's turn to cook. In a few minutes he ran into my room saying that everything is burning on a pan. I didn't see a big problem in it, as our pan didn't have any tefal on it and everything burned quite easily on it. I had to make that moment a history, have a look at this cooking magic: 

    The cooked fish tasted very strange. I have no doubt in Ondrej's cooking skills, but it was something else. I smelled the "oil" and it had a strong alcohol taste... I took a bottle and went down to ask Kotani-san about that magic thing. Turned out, it was mirin, liquid no intended for frying things. We have done a great job again! 

EVENING

     It was my turn to cook in the evening and now I went to the supermarket to finally get the correct oil. At the entrance I saw Masa, our Japanese friend, and we went in together. Finally I got oil, the right one. Then we spent some time cooking and talking with Masa about differences of Europeans and Japanese people.  After I asked him to help me translate one book. That morning on campus we picked up a brochure where all Keio University clubs are listed. There are soooo many of them! An extracurricular activity club here in Japan is called circle, students usually have to pay a fee to be in it. Last two days all members of different circles are running around with papers and leaflets trying to recruit freshmen to join their circles. Everyone can choose a club for themselves, here are some activities they do: many music, theatre and vocal clubs, ecology, economics, law, English, book lovers, yacht, cameras, Russia lovers, card games, sightseeing, magicians, dancing, christian, quizzes, finance, marketing, history, tea clubs, cycling, movies, kaligraphy, detectives, manga, art, programming, trains, astronomy climbing, debating, flower decorations, bird watching, robots, a thousand of clubs for every sport, startups, anime, healthy food, chess, Disney, fashion, games, cooking, salsa, joga, cheerleading, darts, bowling, cocktails, and many more.... 

STARBUCKS

     Starbucks is everywhere, even in Japan. However here is has a slightly different touch. Maybe because of the area that it is located, maybe because of some other reasons. Seemed to me, that we were the only people close to our 25s in the place, others were just young students or school pupils with books and laptops on the tables. The service is a usually good, the coffee is nice and as usually pricey, but the atmosphere is not there. People do the atmosphere. I am not saying here is bad, here is different. Next time I will probably look for a smaller and cozier place. 

BIRTHDAY PARTY 

     Today our floor mate had a birthday. Our Japanese Residence Assistant (RA) have invited us to celebrate to his room. Japanese guys cooked for us and the whole boys floor has gathered in a small Kyohei's room. But there was one girl - Kanae, she was helping to cook. Generally, no girls are allowed on our floor, however Kanae is a Residence Assistant, so she is permitted to stay wherever she wants.

     Food was awesome, Japanese and delicious. It is in Japanese culture to say that the food tastes great to those who cooked it. We have tried lots of Japanese specialties. The best part was eating a cake with hashi (chopsticks).

 Birthday cake

Rice cookers

      Interesting thing was that Kanae has entered the room only once to pick up the dishes, the rest of the time she stayed in the kitchen or in the door to the room, but didn't enter. I was wondering, if it was a tradition or she was just a little afraid of a bunch of guys. When I asked her, she said she had to clean the dishes, that's why she was staying there all the time... I asked Jason to ask her in Japanese, as it turned out, she didn't really feel comfortable in a room fool of some guys from foreign countries whom she didn't know well. Reasonable, but was interesting to observe for me. 

RANDOM PICTURES

 Was taking a run under some bridge today. Found these. Japanese people throw away things in sets or can someon explain this so me =) 

 Kanji read as Hiyoshi. Name of metro station and campus of Keio university. Means "good sunlight"

 Japanese audi

Sun coming out after 2 days of rain