XV. Future

The last days before Golden Week were not easy, as I was trying to keep focused at work but my mind was wandering elsewhere. Outside, the sun was shining. At home, travel guides and bag pack were ready to go. At work, Golden Week was The Lunchtime Topic. It struck me that whilst most managers had to go on business trip during Golden Week and had only a few days off, many Office Ladies were using Hitachi’s long Golden Week to go on trips to far and exotic destinations, ranging from Italy to Trinidad. I guess the combination of having fewer responsibilities than their male co-workers and being able to save up more money living with their parents enables many young Office Ladies to make trips many salarymen can only dream of. It made me wonder: should Japanese career women really aspire to careers similar to those of their male colleagues? Or had Japanese salarymen better follow the example of their female counterparts and invest more in free time and having fun? I wonder if emancipated Japanese women will want to adopt a salaryman lifestyle or if they will be able to change Japanese corporate lifestyle as they rise in the company’s ranks.

All this Golden Week talk made me eager to get out and travel. Luckily the working week ended early as I got Friday afternoon off to go to the Dutch embassy’s Queen’s Day reception. Although I am not too fond of expat culture in general, it was quite nice to chat to other Dutch people and find out how they are experiencing life in Tokyo. The Dutch cheese was also wonderful, although I did miss the dropjes.

The first days of Golden Week I spent relaxing, catching up on sleep, e-mails and enjoying the gorgeous weather. I discovered Hamarikyu Teien which is now officially one of my absolute favourite parks in Tokyo, and sipped matcha in the tea pavilion in the middle of the park’s salt water pond. I also explored Odaiba, which sometimes feels like a city from the future. There are dancing robots at the Toyota Universal Design Showcase, there are the Fuji Building and Tokyo Big Sight which seem like spacecrafts carelessly left behind by aliens, there is even a Tokyo Teleport Station. It doesn’t get much more SciFi than that. I read somewhere that Tokyo is the place the rest of the world goes to in order to see what the future looks like- looking back at the island’s futuristic skyline from the deck of the water bus, I myself felt a bit like a tourist back from the future. It was a strange sensation, yet at the same time “just another day in Tokyo.” Be it a miniature Statue of Liberty, a trumpet playing robot or an indoors recreation of Venice: if you can’t find it in Tokyo, it probably doesn’t exist- or you’ll have to wait at least another decade before it does.

I already had a blog. But...

... it's in Dutch. It has been up and running for the past 3 years and I'm pretty proud of it. You can find it here. Why I started this new blog? One of the reasons is that from January to August 2008, I am living, studying and interning in Tokyo, Japan. Which is cool in itself, and very cool to write about. Until now I've kept (most of) my friends up to date through my Dutch blog and, having limited time to spare, have been reluctant to translate or rewrite my blog entries into English. But, as I now have to write weekly reports in English so that the people of the people of the Japan Prizewinners Programme can keep track of what I'm doing, I figured I might as well upload them to this blog, thus offering my international friends a small and hopefully interesting glimpse into My Life In Tokyo.

As for the name of this blog? Stupeur et tremblements was written by Belgian writer Amélie Nothomb and has been one of my favourite books on life in Japan ever since one of my friends from the EP suggested I read it. It has also been made into a wonderful film.