vrijdag 9 oktober 2009
Some pictures of the first day
Tokyo from the bus, our back-packs, plastic food in the windows you can order via a kind of gambling/fruit-machine and people leaving laptops and other stuff unattended while going to the toilet. Different world we came in, but we like it :-)
Friday October 9, Tokyo, Shinjuku, Japan
Friday October 9,
Tokyo, Shinjuku, Japan
23 Sunny
In the night we wake up at 02:00 am and try to get to sleep again. We do, and wake up near 9:30 and take a shower, have a “ontbijtkoek” and go to the twin observation floors of the Tokyo metropolitan government offices. The view over Tokyo is stunning and we stay there to watch from any angle and take pictures. We can see our hotel just across the parc and mount Fuji also to the west, all in the back of the large metropolitan.
We head to the shopping and eat are, and with all the workers hunting for food too we are not the only ones. We stop at the place we saw the first time when we exited the bus, a day ago. You watch the plastic food, remember the number that is near it and order at a cash machine the food. The ticket you bring inside the place where the cook has you plate ready. You sit at a wall next to others and start eating, apparently the more sound you make the better. We eat our noodles and in the same time next to us, some business man sits eats all his food, some other takes his place and does the same and when the third arrives we are stuffed and quit too. Amazing, they not only sounds fast when they eat, they are fast!
We head to our next experience, the subway of Tokyo. The busiest and largest in the world. We manage to get the tickets and jump on the correct subway heading to Tokyo Palace. Again we notice the efficiency of the Japanese. They line up on the station, the train stops at the exact spot so all doors are in sync with the lines on the ground of the station. People leave thought the right door, and we enter via the left door. Needless to say the train leaves exactly according schedule. The station names are in Japanese, but also in English and have numbers, so its easy to follow and know where to exit. Next to that, in the train there is a route of the train and the station it passes, arrows and lights show where the train moves and what the next station is. It good not be easier.
I notice in the train, everybody is polite, neatly dressed, uses almost always the phone to sms or internet and or have headsets. Never the music or phone is too loud. Never people fight for space or have arguments. All trains have comfortable pillowed seats, are clean, do not smell and do not have a single dot of graffiti on them. Graffiti I have not seen anywhere so far. Nor did I find any trash on the ground.
We walk to the Palace and the only thing you can do is walk around the big walls and water canals. You can get a glimpse of the Palace and we take some pictures. We head to the Palace Gardens. Free admission, but closed on Friday... and err... its Friday today. We didn't know. We had to the Tokyo station and see it is indeed a building with architecture based on the Central Station of Amsterdam. Funny to see. Its even more funny to see, the station is almost all wrapped and fenced because of major re-work and road work, just like in Amsterdam for some years now. Not sure if they know how well they copy the Building and its surrounding ;-) .
We had to the Subway to go back to Shinjuku Station. We buy a large bottle of water, orange juice and banana milk. While waiting for the hotel shuttle bus, I play with my photo camera and shoot people at the station. Always fun to see how people behave, dress and look like. Something also interesting to see is that people do use bicycles and drive on the pavement, next to the pedestrians. Interesting and an other item to check when crossing the streets.
In the Hotel we take a little nap (at least Sheila did, I was writing this journal) from 16:30 to 18:00 and we head to the center again, to hunt down some dinner.
Near Shinjuku Station we roam around and get into one of the very large shopping buildings where on the 8th floor all kind of restaurants are. One of the restaurant we go in and order some food. English is not their native language, I know, but Hello was even difficult it seemed. But they totally make it up with the delicious food, rice with shrimps and white rice with sweet & sour pork. I pronounce and point to “ oy-shi-kat-ta “ which means “It was delicious”. The whole staff smiles. The dinner was interesting too, you get first Japanese tea and a warm towel to clean the hands. With the food we got all kind of plates and cups... which to use for what, right? ;-) We were able to peak at the other tables and got the habits and adjusted our “manners”. Nobody noticed we were noobs at this game, lol. I asked the o-kan-jõ (the bill) and payed with Visa. They add 10% service and do not expect nor want any tip. Giving a tip is seen as embarrassment in Japan, which makes life at the table much easier. We take the shuttle back to the Hotel.
In the Hotel I see an other guest walking with a plastic suite case with some strange gear and a UTP cable in it. That UTP cable triggers me and I ask at the desk what it is. Aha, internet connection set, for the strange sockets in the room, and without charge (they say). I hook up and indeed get connected on my eee PC, phew, so I did not buy this little gadget for nothing. :-) The journals I created I post on the blog. I stop writing, to spent some time on backing up the photos and hey, who knows, I might post some on my Picasa website to share with the family and friends. Check out http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh .
Thursday October 8, Tokyo, Shinjuku, Japan
Thursday October 8
Tokyo, Shinjuku, Japan
25 Sunny strong wind (cycloon)
(9:45) We pass customs etc and with all our gear we had to the trains, where we find out they do not operate today due to the cyclone. So we buy tickets for the bus (6000 Yen for 2) and line up near the efficient people from the Friendly Bus Line.
These people here rock if you talk about service. Every bus goes right on schedule, all people on board, luggage in the bus and no errors or angry faces. Its in their blood you would think, even the people putting the bags in watch the clock every few minutes to make sure their work is done and the bus can leave JIT (11:10 as the schedule had requested). The lady coordinating all of this, bows to us and the bus when we drive away. In the mean time a policeman grabs some trash from the street and puts it in the trash bin. Wow.
The trip to Tokyo is a little more than 1 hour and enough to make me take a nap again. At the station of Shinjuku we drop off. Sheila saw in the corner of her eyes the Shinjuku New City Hotel a few minutes back in the bus,so we had a rough feeling where to walk to. And we indeed were able to walk straight back to the suspected place and are around 13:30 at the hotel. Check in is at 15:00 but our room is ready and we can hop in. We take a little nap, check if our phones work (they do) and sent some “we are fine”-like messages to the family. After the naps (we needed that as we basically lost our Dutch Night, so had almost no sleep) we take the free shuttle to the center (Shinjuku station is destination and only a few minutes by this shuttle) and roam around in Down Town Tokyo. Its crowded, but not overwhelming / chaotic and we feel comfortable here. Also the 25 degrees and wind make it very nice to walk and checkout the shops. We eat and are surprised to see so many people putting their bags or even running laptops on the chair or table to “reserve” their seats, and than walk away to the counter or even toilets. Their belongings unattended, apparently people do not steel from each other like in other (or my) country. We walk around some more, but are rather tired and go to bed at 21:30.
Wednesday October 7, Zaandam/Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Wednesday October 7
Zaandam/Amsterdam, The Netherlands
14 C Clouded and drizzle
Last things we pack and drive to my brother, who brings us to the airport. Within 15 mins we checked in our luggage and passed customs and have plenty of time to have some lunch. The boarding is delayed and some stressed Japanese guy keeps saying something is wrong and something terrible is going to happen to this flight. His “proof” is that he cleaned his whole house and he has never done that before. I joke with the question if he has never cleaned his house before or never before a flight. Too bad for him he does not catch the joke.
In the plane we negotiate and “sell” my window seat for an ail seat, so we still are able to sit next to each other, rather than at different places in the plane. Next to us sits a very friendly Scotsman who is part of the Scottish rugby team, playing for a week in Japan. We had the best dinner ever in a plane, with excellent Japanese food. Eaten with chopsticks, of course.
Besides that you did not have your own tv and media selection system the flight is OK, until the end. The last 5 minutes are bumpy as hell, due to the cyclone nearing east of Tokyo. We go up and down, left and right and people yell in the plane. Its almost the same “roller-coaster experience”as the landing in Washington last year with the big Hurricane. Lucky us, this time the visibility is clear, even sunny, so you can see the wings bend like crazy and know you will drop and prepare for the “funny stomach feeling”. The pilot puts the plane on the ground. In the meantime we jumped from Wednesday night to Thursday morning due to the 8 hours time difference.
dinsdag 6 oktober 2009
Ready 4 Japan!
Bought some new gear for the holiday.... the ASUS eee PC, 1005HA Black to be precise. I read that most people in Japan, had difficulty connecting with WiFi on their iPhone, as... well... Japan does not have that much WiFi.
Due to small rooms, people are all together for computing and the Edge / 3G technology is widely spread, so Japan did not need so much WiFi in cafe's and/hotels etc. With that, it would mean we would not be able to book our next hotels, so I thought I buy a small eee PC that can connect with a cable in the Hotel when needed.
Next to that, I have than also a backup device for all my photos I take and a easy device to blog for the family. In addition, we can use Skype when connected, to call or even webcam to home.
Last but not least, its also just plain fun and a cool gadget :-) eg... DIVX are copied and ready to view in the plane or where ever we go. :-) with a battery lasting 8 hours, its easy to kill some time.
We did check in today via the internet, but found ourselves spread over the plane. :-( There were no seats next to each other any more, so for next time we need to make reservations sooner. For the plane back, we just now did.... I did not know you were able to tell what seats you want, 90 days before the flight?!? Nobody told us, we always thought 30 hours before departure you can check in, and that's it.
Anyway, in the plane we need to see if we can negotiate with someone else to swap places. And otherwise we just have to accept it, the next month we are together anyway ;-)
Now we first need to pack our backbags to a max of 10kilo to be really ready.
cu Marcel
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Marcel de Koningh
Photo KingH
LinkedIn : http://www.linkedin.com/in/marceldekoningh
Facebook : http://www.facebook.com/marcel.de.koningh
Photos : http://picasaweb.google.com/photokingh
Blog : http://photokingh.blogspot.com/
Hyves : http://kingh.hyves.nl/
email : mailto:photokingh@gmail.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
woensdag 23 september 2009
Weight is going down!
Hi,
Weight is going down, since I bought my bike and sport more.
I wanted to reach 80, so my new goal is to go below the 80 and hit the 70 target... but lets take it 1 kilo at a time and in a slow pace. As the kilos gained were also not added in a few weeks, I want to take it slow and have a balance.
maandag 24 augustus 2009
dinsdag 26 mei 2009
Bianchi Bike
Hi,
I have my bike for 4 weeks now, travelled a lot with it and enjoy the free rides. The bike was bought for sports, health and having fun. My good friend Diego also bought a bike and we travelled some km's already and for sure will have much more km's to make!!
So enjoy the pictures!
Greetings,
Marcel
mailto:PhotoKingH@gmail.com
maandag 15 december 2008
De appel valt niet ver van de boom... eh huis.
Inmiddels heb ik mijn nieuwe Mac een week in huis en hij is nog niet vaak ver van mij vandaan geweest hier in huis :-)
Hij bevalt tot nu toe uitstekend.
Ik heb al veel tips en tricks geleerd, uit forums, tutorials en gewoon zelf uitproberen.
De toetsen die leken te ontbreken (qua NL/UK layout verschillen), zijn aan te roepen doormiddel van shortcuts (FN+backspace is hetzelfde als delete bijvoorbeeld, etc). Dus da's geen probleem.
De upgrade van het OS, is er nog sneller gekomen dan ik dacht... vanavond om precies te zijn. Het is een soort fixpack en niet eens een totale new OS versie. Het is de 10.5.6 (tov de 10.5.5 die ik nu heb). Hij is gewoon te downloaden door een sw update te draaien, dus ook daarvoor is het goed geweest niet gewacht te hebben :-))))
Het scherm, gebruiksgemak en de super looks zijn elke dag weer een feest.
helaas zie ik toch ook wel enkele nadelen van deze machine....
- ik moet nog steeds slapen, werken, douchen etc... gaat ten koste van de tijd aan de Mac...
- elke maandag moet ik toch weer een Windows XP machine opstarten en aan het werk die week..
- soms moet ik iets van mijn Windows PC opzoeken en dan valt de 6 minuten wachten voor XP gestart is wel erg tegen... ook de 3 minuten voor hij afsluit vallen nog meer op dan vroeger
zondag 2 november 2008
De schuur is af!!!
Ja ja, daar istie dan...
het schuurtje...
hij is eindelijk af!!!
Vandaag waren we eindelijk weer eens thuis, was het toevallig goed weer en hadden we toevallig geen andere ToDo meer staan.... dus we konden eindelijk het dak erop gaan zetten.
Om ruimte te hebben achter de schuur, voor het boren en schroeven, hebben we de schuur in zn gehaal verschoven. Met hulp van Ton hebben we de houten constructie voor het dak en de dakplaten er samen opgezet. Daarna afkitten en een balletje op de nok en klaar waren we. Schuur weer op zijn plek schuiven en vullen met de stoelen, BBQ etc uit de tuin.
Veel mooier gezicht en een handige ruimte erbij in de tuin.
Nu alleen nog planken, ophang systeem etc bedenken, maar dat kan later wel, we zijn voorlopig ff klaar met klussen aan de schuur ;-)
Marcel.
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