Regina Glei's Blog, page 13

Suomi Feast 2018

It’s been a while since I went to the Suomi Feast. In the past it was called Loud and Metal Attack. I don’t know when the name changed.

One way or the other, it’s a mini heavy metal festival with Finnish bands (also sponsored by the Finnish embassy in Japan ;-)) and this year we had six of them with the headliner being Turisas.

The opening act in the cozy 800 people venue Shinjuku Blaze right in the middle of the nightly amusement center Kabukicho, was Noumena, a death metal act with a clear female vocal and a rough male vocal.



Next up was Mors Subita, the hardest and most death metal act of the evening. They had a great sound but the growling vocal was a bit too high for my taste

New Caledonian Diary – Part 4: Lookouts and Maitre Island

On my last day in New Caledonia I rode a local bus again to the last stop before a presumed look-out point. Nothing much was marked and I just followed instinct walking up a mountain road for a bit. Then finally I came across a sign telling me I was on the right way. I took the off-road trail and much like at the Isle of Pines the trail soon lost itself more or less entirely, but since it couldn’t be far, I walked on and indeed managed to get onto the top of what is called Ouen Toro. There is a small military base there, which is off limits and two Australian cannons from WW2 times are right before the fenced off military area. The spot gives a great view over the atoll and also Noumea. It was well worth the hike.











After climbing down from the mountain, I went back to the taxi boat, because there was a second island it sometimes goes to, further out beyond the Duck island, called Ilot Matire. The taxi boat only goes there once per hour, if at all. The high speed ride there was less than funny, because the surf was quite strong and the boat was swaying badly but I arrived after all. The island is much bigger than the Duck island and sports a luxury hotel with real houses on the island and also right above the water. The island is only a hundred meters wide but quite long and on its sea-side it has a fantastic beach, which, for the most part, I had entirely to myself. I encountered a sea snake wriggling up the beach towards the hotel, unaware that they are apparently very poisonous, and happily shot pictures of it instead of running away

New Caledonian Diary – Part 3: Ducks and Culture

On my fourth day in New Caledonia, I walked around the beaches of Anse Vata and Lemon Bay again, then took a taxi boat to the tiny Duck Island right across from the Anse Vata Bay. The taxi boat there goes every fifteen minutes and the short ride is loud (thanks to the monstrous outboard engine of the boat) and fun. The tiny island has a lovely beach, and a bar and a restaurant in the middle. That day saw the more typical weather for the region and the time of year, rain showers every few hours. It was like that every day except for the day of my arrival and the day on the Isle of pines. Lucky me!







The showers are usually not long, just fifteen minutes or so, but they can be quite intense. During one of the showers I stayed under the roof of the bar and chatted with Australian cruise people. Three elderly guys, one wearing a captains hat, who looked like they have a constantly high level of alcohol in them The dude with the captains hat said his boat was the Lollipop they were on a ten day cruise and had visited one of the the Loyalty islands first, then Isle of Pines, now Noumea, before going back to Sydney.

While there are no ducks on the island, there were plenty of seagulls who were also nesting and a part of the island is fenced off. You can walk around the island in a ten minute stroll. It’s a lovely little spot and fun to get there via taxi boat.







Day five of my stay was a culture day.

I wanted to visit the Jean-Marie Tjibaou culture center and that day seemed good for it because of not so nice weather with many clouds and those occasional showers. But, how to get there… there is a public bus system in Noumea and I decided to try that out. To get to the culture center I had to take a bus to the city, then change to another. Funnily the buses reminded me of the buses in Los Angeles, where the only people who ride buses are either too old to drive a car, too young to drive a car or to poor to own a car… in contrast to Los Angeles though, the buses felt safer and more civilized. But the divide between rich French and not so rich locals was saddening. The culture center was the last stop of the route and I was the last passenger to get off. The museum did not have many visitors… which is too bad, because it is very beautiful. I wonder why they needed an Italian architect for the building and not a local one, but nevertheless, he did a great job, the building is amazing.









The culture center has art displays from local artists, a library, some tribal houses and a photography display with photos from Noumea in the 1880ties. The museum is named after the local Jean-Marie Tjibaou, who fought for New Caledonia’s independence from France and was assassinated by another (even more radical?) local. I heard next year or so there will be another referendum deciding about the question of independence from France.

New Caledonian Diary – Part 2: Isle of Pines

On my second day, a Sunday, the weather wasn’t as glorious as on day one and several showers interrupted things. I wandered along the Lemon Bay and the neighboring bay called Anse Vata, and visited the small but excellent aquarium showing the local fish world. A lovely slow day at wonderful beaches. Those two beaches are the main beaches of Noumea and luckily my hotel was at one of them. I don’t think my stay would have been as nice, had I stayed in a hotel downtown.

The biggest adventure came on day three. I wanted to go by boat but that was even more expensive and the boat sailed only once per week in contrast to several flights a day to the Isle of Pines, south-east of Noumea.

It’s mostly famous for something called the Piscine Naturelle, a natural pool surrounded by pine trees where you can see fish like in an aquarium only that it’s live and real.

The twenty minute flight there was fantastic, with aerial views as stunning as out of a picture book. The mighty atoll around Grand Terre with its many tiny islands looks almost unreal.









The airport of Isle of Pines is of course tiny and I had a small problem after arrival, being: how to get around? There are only 2500 people living on the island and there is no public transport. I asked for a taxi at the airport information desk and after a 15 minute wait, a guy called Mayu picked me up. The rest of the people on the plane were picked up by hotel shuttles.

Mayu drove me through forest without a single settlement to the end of the road trying to speak French to me and we hobbled along with my broken French and his broken English until he dropped me off, pointing to the right, go there. All right. I expected at least some tourists like me but there was not a single soul around, except for a lady collecting 200 Pacific Francs of toll. The start of the Piscine Naturelle is already amazing and it was super hot and super lonely.





I changed into my reef walker shoes and started splashing. After a few meters you kind of get desensibilized against stepping on star fish… hya! They are every few centimeters. Interestingly they are the same kind as 7000 km to the north. I saw plenty of them on Amami Oshima in Japan too. Millions of smaller and bigger crabs also walk around and indeed there are fish in the pool wherever you look.

I was born in Europe where people don’t really know how intense the sun can be. I got used to the sun in Japan, which is several degrees more intense than in Europe, but nothing in comparison to New Caledonia. You gotta be careful about that sun down there, man. The light is so harsh, it makes things look blacker than they are on photos. I walked around very clothed, but got sunburnt at every exposed bit, despite sun cream. Although it’s rather sun allergy than burning.

When the water got too deep, I continued on a trampled land path until the real Piscine Naturelle which is absolutely breathtaking. Steel blue sky, very green trees, white sand, very blue water. It’s one of the most beautiful places I have seen so far.







There were a few people there, but not a crowd and there was no problem to get a quiet moment with nature. Despite going into the water only for 30 centimeters depth due to clothing, you can see all sorts of fish. Deeper in the pool it must be truly like an aquarium, but considering my skin conditions, I was content with what I got. I walked down a dried river bed, or rather sea arm, which floods during high tide, feeding the pool, to the open ocean. Also that coast is stunningly beautiful.







There is a restaurant at the beach and around the corner in a small Bay is the vicinity of the Le Meridian Isle of Pines hotel where I ditched the reef walkers and got back into normal shoes. One day when I’m old I might stay in that hotel for a few days and do nothing but walk to the Piscine Naturelle and back

I walked back to the place where Mayu dropped me off and this time headed into the jungle, the goal was ch another Bay on foot. But… there are holes in the ground all over the place, small holes at first but venturing further into the jungle the holes got bigger and bigger. Further, the path became less and less obvious. Then I got a look into a fist sized hole and saw this….





that part of the crab is fist sized, the rest of the crab… uh. There are thousands of holes! When the way seemed to all but disappear, I got scared of getting lost and being attacked by monster crabs! And thus decided to return. The crabs are a form of coconut crab and can get pretty damn big. I don’t think they attack humans, but I don’t want to have to walk through a few hundred of them!

After wandering around more the inner part of the Piscine Naturelle and watching the tide come in, it was time to return to the airport. I ordered a taxi at the front desk of the Meridian hotel and got a ride back with the driver asking me in good English whether New Caledonia is more expensive than Japan. Yes, it is! Back at the airport I was the first passenger and wandered around there a bit at utterly lonely roads, then flew back to Noumea.





Usually I am not in the habit of going anywhere twice, but maybe I will return to the Isle of Pines, since Piscine Naturelle is worth more than one visit and there are other nature points to see on the island, which I haven’t been to yet.

New Caledonian Diary – Part 1: Noumea

I think to remember that I got aware of the existence of New Caledonia for the first time around 2003, when I made my first trip to Australia. Some totally relaxed French people in light summer clothes were boarding a flight to a place called Noumea and I never heard of that place before or knew where it was. A quick Internet search revealed the island of New Caledonia and since I reportedly have a strong interest in Pacific Islands you’ve never heard of, I vowed to go there one day. It took a few years to realize the plan but now it happened.

The flight from Tokyo to Noumea takes eight hours and a bit. I arrived at about 23:00 and had ordered an airport shuttle bus. That bus drove a long while through a thoroughly dark countryside before arriving in Noumea. The La Tontouta airport is an astonishing 47 km from Noumea. New Caledonia is also probably one of the biggest islands you’ve never heard of. From Noumea at the south to the most northern town of Poum it is a whopping 425 km. New Caledonia has literally thousands of islands. The Grand Terre, which is the main island, north of it the main three Loyalty islands and the Isle of Pines to the south-west, plus thousands of tiny islands around the big atoll region. The mini bus dropped of some five parties before it was finally my turn as the last passenger and I arrived at my hotel only at 0:30. It was a boutique hotel three minutes from the Baie des Citrons and nobody was there at this time. They arranged to have my key in a safe and emailed me the number beforehand. Luckily everything went well and I got into my room all right.

On the first morning I inspected the Lemon Bay shortly, which has a lovely beach and promenade, then walked some 45 min into “downtown”.





The weather was glorious and the sun super intense. Without my full sun gear including Japanese long sun-protection gloves, I would have been burned in ten minutes. Downtown Noumea is a bit sleepy, but has a lovely Central Park. I’m not overly surprised that there are tensions between the French, the former colony overlords, and the local Kanak people. There are many more or less homeless looking locals while there is not a single French-looking homeless person. Also local youngsters hang out in troves, making the impression they have not much money to spend or things to do. Despite the big size of the island, the population is sparse, some 270,000 it seems and about 104,000 of them are Kanak people.





A cruise ship was parked right next door and a bunch of Australians swarmed town. The cruise ship looked nice but was several leagues smaller than the Independence of the Seas, which I boarded twice so far

Too Much Work

I missed a couple of Saturdays’ blog entries due to too much work and not enough energy left to write for the blog. People are too busy these days. I would very much like to know what life was like before TV and Internet, when you had nothing but a newspaper to read. Also working life has become too busy with global telephone conferences where the lucky Europeans get away with having the conference during midday, but the poor East Asians have to sacrifice their evenings and the poor North Americans their early mornings.

In private life there are too many distractions and also too many obligations “to keep in touch” thanks to the modern forms of communication at our disposal.

Then I hear about a sad case of a co-worker and that puts the busy and hectic business life into perspective again and that reduces its importance and the amount of emotions invested. My colleague has two sons and the older one has a mental health problem. He is 17 but has not attended school for the past year. He dropped out of high school after the first year and has not returned to school since. I don’t know what kind of mental health problem he has, but if he was and is unable to attend any form of schooling for a year, it must be bad. Compulsory education is until the age of 16, so luckily he made that, but all in all the kid’s future looks quite bleak, since he is missing some very important years of his education. One can only hope that he gets back on track soon and finds the energy to resume learning. Even if he does not return to school, he will have to learn some trade to support himself one day. I cannot imagine what it’s like for the parents to see their kid struggle so much.

Things like that put life into perspective again and make the personal bit of stress smaller.

Especially, since in a week from now I will be on the southern hemisphere of our one and only planet because it’ll be “golden week” in Japan (an accumulation of holidays) and I booked a week of getaway to New Caledonia. I will report about my island adventures as usual

Bored by Sarcasm

I am not sure whether this is a German specialty or whether it is more universal, but since I am encountering mostly Germans who practice sarcasm and irony, let me presume it is a feature mostly to be found in that species, and let me add, mostly in German males. Maybe it also comes so much to my attention, because, while irony and sarcasm does of course exist in Japan, it is however rarely used and certainly not for “sport”.

Among an astonishing number of German males whom I’m encountering in business life, sarcasm and irony are a very popular form of expression. Some guys use it in every bloody sentence. It gets immensely on my nerves. While a bit of spice in form of sarcasm does have the capacity to lighten things up; it, dears sirs, used in every sentence, becomes a nuisance and is annoying, useless and tiring.

I seriously wonder why some German males are so attracted to sarcasm. Do they think it makes them sound cool? Apparently. Is it a kind of pissing contest? Do they want to impress me? Dudes, it ain’t working, just leave out the damned sarcasm and have normal conversations with people. If you use irony, do so sparingly and strategically, then it might be funny and interesting. Otherwise, just shut up, please…

Dumb and Dumber

I suppose there are studies and papers being done on the topic by whatsoever professionals, but I don’t care, I just want to state my opinion. It is my firm belief that the number of dumb, uneducated, idiotic people in the “first” world has neither significantly increased or decreased over the past ten or twenty years. Trouble is, twenty years ago, idiots didn’t have a big platform at their disposal to voice their opinions.

If, for example, a flat earth idiocy existed twenty years ago, the educated part of the world did not know too much about it, because all the members of the club of morons could do, was maybe print leaflets and leave them at their local Mac Donald’s.

Nowadays, unfortunately, these idiots do have a global platform and that is social media, which reaches millions and millions… While social media are a great way to connect people from all over the world, unfortunately they also connect the idiots from all over the world and give them a stage. I don’t know what the cure for that could be, since in most cases, idiocy is unfortunately a quite incurable disease. I shall try my best to ignore them and shall try my best to not let them disturb my questionable and endangered peace. Cheers!

70,000 Tons of Metal – Part 4

Last Day of the 70,000 Tons of Metal 2018

The way back to Florida saw better and hotter weather than the way to the Grand Turk and after the infamous belly flop contest (which is great fun) I hit the pool myself, if without belly flopping I also watched parts of the gig for Leaves Eyes from one of the hot tubs. Watching live heavy metal from a Jacuzzi is quite a unique experience



The highlights of the day were the Dark Tranquility and Sabaton gigs in the Alhambra. Mikael Stanne got familiar with the crowd again, the sound was pretty damn good and I thoroughly enjoyed the gig from the first row. Getting some water, revoked my space in the first row and I had to retreat to the very edge of the stage but that also had the advantage to avoid the constant flow of crowd surfers for Sabaton

70,000 Tons of Metal 2018 – Part 3

A Day at the Grand Turk Island

When we went to Haiti in 2017, we were confined to the patch of land that Royal Caribbean has leased there. To my great pleasure, on the Grand Turk island though, we got to see the real thing. First of all, the island is tiny! There are apparently some 3000 people living there.





I left the boat at around ten in the morning and wandered up and down the amazing beach next to the ship for a bit before resting from the super intense sun at a beach bar.



Then I had booked what Royal Caribbean calls an excursion. In my case a bus tour in an open bus/jeep around the island. It was sold as one of the excursions where members of a band attend and in our case it was the band Wolfchant, folk metal from Germany. However, there were three buses and no band member was on mine