Regina Glei's Blog, page 19

Take-Off Attempts

After two weeks on business trip in Germany, I finally started the journey home, but that turned out to be easier said than done. I was on the road with Swiss Air this time and everything went fine until Zuerich. The plane from Stuttgart to Zuerich was a little delayed but nothing dramatic, and check in for the flight to Tokyo went fine.

We roll with towards the runway on board an airbus A340-300. Captain says “crew, take-off in two minutes” and we roll onto the runway, the engines start, we get faster, then, suddenly, half down the runway, moments before lift-off, the pilot kicks in the brakes and everything not fixed or belted to the seats tumbles forward. Without seat belts on we’d all have gotten into real trouble. Then the plane leaves the runway and rolls to the side. The captain tells the crew “crew, normal operations” to “unwarn” them. A few moments later the captain tells us: “Well, you surely noticed that we aborted take-off. We did so due to an indication we got here in the cockpit that our engine number two has an issue with reverse thrust. We’ll check it now and if all’s well, we can make another take-off attempt, maybe in thirty minutes, depending on whether the brakes have cooled down again. At the moment, they are too hot for us to start again, we’ll keep you posted.”

Gulp.

I’m not sure what consequences such an engine failure can have.

After maybe 15 min, the captain tells us, they discussed with the mechanics and they want us to come back to the gate and we don’t know yet whether we can continue with this plane. So, back to the gate we roll, but we are asked to stay on board. Checking the seat pocket contents reveals that an A340-300 has four engines, which reassures me a little bit, even if the number two engine fails, we still have another three… ahem…

A truck comes and places itself under engine two and the nervous passengers wait.

We were all quite disciplined though and nobody freaked out. Of course we are asking the cabin crew what will happen if the plane will be grounded and sure, they don’t have planes lying around in waiting. If we cannot fly with this machine, we won’t get to Tokyo today… which would have meant disembarking, retrieving luggage, getting a hotel, waiting for another flight… aiiiii…. so, I was kinda praying that they’d be able to fix the problem.

About ninety minutes later the truck is gone and the captain announces we’re good to go. Back into our seats, back to the runway. Of course everyone was a little nervous and tense, but this time the plane lifted off as it should and I found nothing wrong with its operations during the flight to Japan.

But, an entirely different problem arose. I was sitting in the back of the plane, row forty and the plane was not fully booked. So, initially I thought, yeah, this is going to be a good flight, where I can spread myself over two seats. Trouble was that around me in the back was a group of about ten 30 to 50 year-old French speaking men and as soon as the plane lifted off, they started binge drinking.

They killed several bottles of high percentage booze that they must have bought in duty free. The whole rear of the plane soon stank of booze and the assholes were talking non-stop and incredibly loud. I asked them once to be more quiet, two cabin crew members told them on different occasions to stop drinking their own alcohol and to be more quiet but to no avail. They fuxxers had zero consideration for the other passengers, zero.

The highlight was that, completely drunk and not knowing anymore what he was doing, one of the fuxxing assholes suddenly lunged over my seat and grabbed my soft hat, while I was finally kinda falling asleep. I got a huge scare, managed to catch my hat and shouted at the guy “are you fucking crazy, leave me alone!” The sucker said something incomprehensible, then said he was sorry, but I’m sure he was so stoned he neither knew what he was saying nor what he was doing. Incredible.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen such a bunch of idiots on a flight. These morons behaved like teenagers away from home for the first time.

I am angry with the cabin crew also, they should have been stricter and confiscated their alcohol or something, politely asking to be quiet and to stop drinking does not work with assholes like that.

Man, I was damn happy to be back on the ground with some two hours delay. What a horror flight… but, you gotta be grateful that nobody got hurt and that we landed safely…

X-mas Market Season in Germany

Thanks to a business trip to Germany, I had the opportunity to attend two real and original German Christmas markets in the south German towns of Ulm and Schwaebisch Gmuend over the weekend. The towns have around 120,000 and 60,000 inhabitants respectively and are both in Baden Wuertemberg.

Ulm is where Albert Einstein was born, by the way. The town sports a magnificent cathedral, the Ulm Muenster, which I also visited, taking the opportunity.

Here are some pics from the beautiful church.









Now German X-mas markets are centered around two things, handicraft items and food, notably Gluehwein – cheap red wine with spices in it, served hot. Apart from that there are all kinds of finger-food imaginable, from a large variety of sausages served in bread buns to vegan meals. On the sweet side there is “everything” as well, notably Germknoedel or Dampfnudel, steamed bread buns drowned in warm vanilla sauce = close to heaven.

As for the handicraft items there is also more or less everything you can think of, lots of Christmas decoration of course, but also non-Xmas themed items made from glass, wood, metal, textiles, you name it.

The markets happen traditionally during the four weeks before Christmas and more or less every town has one these days, but I guess the most famous one remains the one of Nuernberg – and I’ve never been there yet ;-).



Also every Christmas market has a crib – after all Christmas is the celebration of Christ’s birth, and both markets in Gmuend and Ulm sported live-size dolls and real sheep and donkeys, who patiently bear groping children and adults too. I was surprised by this people-friendly sheep that maybe thought the kids had food for it, but there are big signs around saying, don’t feed the animals! They’ve got everything they need. I guess one or the other person still cannot resist the temptation to want to feed the guys and I hope their stomachs survive the coming four weeks.





Christmas markets are great, attract shoppers and tourists, but these days there is nothing like a sleepy X-mas market anymore, if you go there, be prepared for hordes of people and squeezing through the rows with stalls. Nevertheless, I greatly enjoyed the two markets, since I haven’t been to one in a decade or so

Wood vs. Concrete

Houses in Japan are traditionally built from wood. If the structures are small that’s more earthquake proof, easier to build up again and there was wood in abundance in days of old. Then “modern” life brought us concrete and steel.

Japanese wooden houses are not really built to last. Forty years maybe. There are some old country houses that are around for a hundred years or more but that’s the exception. Especially the city wooden houses are “done” after forty years. The big apartment blocks are made from reinforced concrete and last a bit longer, especially the newer ones.

I’ve lived in an old, cheap wooden city house for the past seven and a half years and while it was nice to live in your own house kinda, even though it was rented, I am, for the moment, thoroughly tired of cheap wooden city houses. Zero insulation, temperature inside equals the temperature outside. This summer and early autumn was very rainy and wet and I had a constant level of some 90% humidity and more in the building that I just didn’t get out. Strong wind made the little house sway, rain sounded like it would wash away the building, I felt every tiny little earthquake immediately.

Now I moved into a reinforced concrete apartment block constructed in the year 2000 and it’s like heaven. Even though the insulation is not like in European houses (double glass windows are unheard of here) it’s much better than in the little wooden house, it so far remains around 17 degrees inside even if it’s only 10 outside and the humidity is around 60%. When it rains I don’t even really hear it, since there are overlapping balconies all around (I’m in the fourth floor of a 7 story building) and there is no rattling and shaking when it’s windy.

You kinda get used to the conditions when you live in them and only notice the big difference if there is a change.

Noise level is also quite good, I hear children running around upstairs sometimes, but I also heard the children in the house behind me at the old place and that even louder. Next point is that while the old house had many rooms each of them was tiny and I always bumped into something. Now the rooms are much wider and on the same level.

I don’t regret living in that wooden house, but it was damn time for a change and I’m glad that the change is so far all around positive

I’m Sad, America, I’m Sad

I wondered whether to post something about my old and new apartment, but indeed, in the light of recent happenings, I shall postpone the “getting back to normal” to next weekend and expand instead on a short Facebook post I made this week.

When I was a child my parents tried to explain to me what radiation (from a nuclear bomb) is and they said that the buildings etc. still remain but the people in it die. You cannot see, smell, feel radiation but it kills you nevertheless. That explanation was of course not really correct, depending on how close you are to the bomb the houses are gone too, but it was enough to let me understand that radiation is BAD. Next came the question who would throw a nuclear bomb on us and the answer was the Soviets and the Americans are protecting us from them.

I grew up in North-Rhine Westphalia and the Russians were not too far away. I grew up thinking America was cool and Russia was something to be afraid of.

As a teenager I wanted to live in America without ever having been there. I wanted to study there and stay.

America seemed like a land of dreams where the people are free. I also admired the “melting pot”, so many races gathered there and it didn’t matter whether you were of Hispanic, African, Asian, Arab, Indian, or European or whatever other origin. That ought to be so cool, to have so many different people living together in peace…

Then Glasnost happened and an unlikely personal hero emerged for me: Mr. Gorbachev. Down came our wall – the Berlin wall – gone was the Soviet Union and the threat they represented. Also my personal interests took another turn. I ended up emigrating from Germany, yes, but heading east, not west and I’m living in Japan ever since the year 2000.

I’ve been to the US plenty of times, I’ve been to New York, L.A., San Francisco, Denver, Estes Park, Salt Lake City, Park City, Chicago, and Las Vegas. I’ve lived in Santa Monica for three months, the rest was all more or less short visits.

I cannot claim to “know” the US well, but I guess I have an impression.

And alas… what has become of the ideal of my youth? The melting pot has failed and white trash is attacking anything that is not white. White children chant “build the wall” and make Hispanic kids cry. Non-Christians get attacked and and and

60 million people vote for someone whom Hitler would be proud of.

What happened to the dream-land of the free? It has drowned in fear and elected a person for its president who is Hitler’s little brother.

When I see that aggressive, dumb, arrogant and ugly face on the TV screen I could vomit. What happened to you, America? Please end this quickly, please throw him out of office somehow, please don’t let hatred, meanness and ugliness prevail.

I’m sad, America, that it came to this. I hope America can return to the hero of my early youth and leave Trumpfuckistan behind it… Resistance is now in order. I wish I could do something to help, but I don’t know what…

A Moving Affair

So, I’ve moved last weekend from Kawasaki to Yokohama and all in all things went smoothly. I made a deal with the moving company that they half help packing and they came at around 8:30 in the morning with a big truck. I was promised three people but there were three plus a driver who also helped, so it was actually four

Back to the Coin Laundry

I haven’t been to the coin laundry in many years, but throughout October I have to visit that old institution, because my old washing machine didn’t do me the favor of holding out for another few weeks before moving to my new place.

The plan was anyway to get a new washing machine and to commence the old one to the washing machine graveyard, but I had hoped to be able to work with the old one until the move. The 11 year-old beast started to leak from the bottom in August and leaked ever more and there came the point when I thought it would be better to turn to the coin laundry rather than risking a flood in my old apartment.

Last time I’ve been in a coin laundry in Japan is some ten years ago or so!

I was kinda afraid there aren’t any coin laundries left but far from it. Internet search revealed several in the vicinity of my old apartment and the closest one is only five minutes by bicycle.

Looks like coin laundries won’t run out of business in Japan because there are a) washing machines for futons and other big stuff and b) probably unmarried elderly men who frequent these establishments.

The guys I saw in the past three weeks in the coin laundry all look kinda shady! Lol. I wasn’t aware that there are so many shady men around here. One or the other of them looked rather unwashed himself, kinda rare in Japan, but hey, at least he is washing some of his clothes once in a while.

Behind my immediate neighborhood is a collection of so-called “danchi”. Simple apartment blocks built in the sixties, seventies or eighties and now their rent is dirt cheap considering their age. And apparently single-looking elderly men live in those apartments who don’t have washing machines. I got one or the other strange look. What’s that foreigner woman doing here in our domain??? Lol. But other than that they ignored me and left me alone.

One week there were also two women in the coin laundry, quite young, and I wonder how they fit into the coin laundry picture.

Anyway, tomorrow will be my last round in the coin laundry, next weekend is the move and after that I will have a fine, nice, new washing machine and won’t have to drag my dirty clothes around anymore, very happy about that!

Due to the move, by the way, the blog will be paused next weekend. I’ll be back here in November. Cheers!

Loudpark 2016 Report – Day 2

The morning of the second Loudpark day saw heavy rain and again: thank goodness that the festival is indoors! I went there before opening, due to wanting to line up for signing session tickets and the guides and guards made us wait in front of the hall. They are changing the layout of things a slight bit every year in the attempt to improve I suppose, and while it was easier this year to get from the main hall to the side stage, they let people only in through gate A in contrast to opening gate B for the two-day ticket holders the year before. To open both gates is definitely the better choice, I don’t know why they didn’t do that this time.

Anyway, once inside I lined up for getting a ticket for the signing session of amorphis. Got one after an hour, which was nicely spent with chatting to other people waiting in line. Due to that, I missed most of the Savage Messiah show, a power metal/melodic thrash formation from the UK. The bit that I heard sounded nice. Next up were two Japanese bands “Kuni”, some musicians supporting a Japanese guitar legend and on the side stage, which that day was devoted to “extreme” metal, a band called Nocturnal Bloodlust, also Japanese only. I sampled them both, but they weren’t knocking my socks off. Neither did the Dead Daisies, a “super” band formed from members of bands like INXS, Guns N’ Roses and others. More hard rock than metal to my ears.

But then a first highlight. I pretty much liked Lacuna Coil from Italy. They go with a two vocal strategy, a lady singing clean vocals and a guy with rough vocals. Unlike most metal bands they dress in white and kinda look like staff from the asylum ward of a horror movie. The lady on vocals was excellent and I liked the whole atmosphere and sound of the band. I shall sample some of their albums.



I had seen “Riot” before, didn’t care much for them and took a lunch break, then watched the beginning of “With the Dead”, a doom metal band with members of other former doom metal bands, but oddly their sound was “too slow” for my taste! So I went to sample “Sixx A.M.”, the second band of Motley Crue’s bassist, but guess what, my general fatigue took over again and I dozed off sitting in the ranks… lol.

I woke up in time for the amorphis signing session though and got that done, then rushed to the extreme stage hall where Enslaved was playing which I wanted to see and to get a good spot for amorphis.



Enslaved turned out to be the second discovery of the day. Enslaved is a Norwegian black/progressive metal band and very much of the kind that I like. They also have a two vocalist strategy, with one guy on the guitar doing rough vocals and the keyboardist doing clear vocals. Yes, I have a weakness for that combination

Loudpark 2016 report – Day 1

This weekend, I took a break from packing and throwing stuff away because:

October = Loudpark: Japan’s probably biggest heavy-metal festival and it was my fifth time in a row to go there. The line up with in total 39 bands was quite impressive also this year, not falling short of the “special” lineup of 2015 where Loudpark celebrated its tenth anniversary.



I think the organizers limited tickets this year, doing some lessons learned from the painfully packed Saitama Super Arena last year and it was the first time ever that people asked for tickets on the way to the venue. Not sure if it was really sold out or whether they hoped for cheaper tickets?

I started day one with goodies hunt and then sampled the bands.

The first thing I saw was an act called Zardonic, a one creature show. He is sort of a DJ and appears only with a mask on. It didn’t throw me off my feet, it’s damn difficult to interact with your audience with that mask. I guess it’s good for a disco but for a concert it’s a bit “boring”.

Aldious turned out to be a Japanese all girl heavy metal band. They were okay, more adult than Baby Metal but their Cinderella-like costumes didn’t really fit to the music. Interesting but not overwhelming.

Myrath from Tunesia was more to my liking. They kept an Arabic touch in the music and are a nice solid metal act, if on the soft side. I heard they wanted to bring a violinist and a belly dancer but something went wrong and thus a Japanese lady danced in the beginning and the end with scarfs which looked nice, but admittedly, a real belly dancer would have had more impact

Messy – Half-messy – Orderly

After living in Kawasaki for seven and a half years, I decided to move to neighboring Yokohama because a) my place of work changed from Tokyo-Shibuya to Yokohama and b) because the place where I currently live, is not as earthquake proof as I’d like it to be.

Houses in Japan are not built to last for an overly long time and my current place dates from 1987, the one I’ll be moving to dates from the year 2000 and is made of reinforced concrete in contrast to the wooden place where I am now.

Ever since leaving my parents’ place at the age of 19, the seven and a half years in Kawasaki are the longest I lived in the same apartment. I’ve been moving about every four years before. I don’t really remember anymore why I didn’t throw out more junk in 2009 when I moved from Saitama to Kawasaki, but this time I was and am determined not to move all my junk from Kawasaki to Yokohama.

I have been throwing things away since May or so, bit by bit, and more massively since the beginning of August.

I’d like to classify people into orderly people, half-messy people and messy people. And I hereby put myself into the half-messy category. Oh, hell, what junk I have gathered during the past seven and a half years! Ahhhhhhhhhhh… I’d also like to classify myself as a hunter and gatherer. I’m a fan of many a movie or TV franchise and of many a heavy metal band and then there are books also. The amount of books, DVDs, CDs, figures, posters and and and that I have hunted and gathered is staggering. On top of that there are tons of memorabilia and souvenirs from that other passion of mine, traveling… ahhhhh.

And am I very tidy? NO! Because everywhere stands something, lion figures from Okinawa, Ganesha figures from India, Captain Picard figures, plush animals, Wacken goods… and I am too lazy or busy to lift them all up and dust them regularly. Meaning, all the stuff is bloody dirty/dusty/messy. I am dearly trying to get rid of junk and have thrown away loads like his one every week now for a while, but still there is so much left I’d like to keep.



I’m still calling myself half-messy because I’ve seen worse

End of the Car Adventure

So, my “glorious” car adventure has come to an inglorious end. I sold my car two weeks ago after being a car owner for two years and nine months.

Since last November, I rode the car for three times, all of those three times were in April (twice with my driving teacher, once alone) and that was it. Under such circumstances it has no meaning to own a car.

The being-scared-shitless before driving never eased and I saw no sign that it would get any better in the near future, at least not as long as I am living in the greater Kanto area. There are too many cars here, too many people, bicycles, scooters, too many narrow streets and it just freaks me out. On a small island with less traffic and a speed limit of fifty kilometers per hour I think I could get used to it despite narrow roads but in the greater Tokyo area I don’t see a chance to get less afraid of driving.

Now how do you sell a car in the greater Tokyo area? Especially when you don’t want to drive it anymore anywhere?

At first I phoned the used car dealer where I bought the beast but he said, they don’t come to pick it up, I have to drive it there twice, first for assessment and then for handing it over. No thank you.

So next I looked in the Internet and found a site where you can put in some basic data for your car and then they promise to call you within 24 hours. They called me after, I’m not kidding, five minutes. Wow. They asked me their standard questions and when I’d be willing to sell the thing. I said: today if you want. Okay! Someone will come to your place to assess the car in 90 minutes! Uoooooo. Lol. Okay, fine by me.

So I went down into the garage and quickly relieved the car of my personal items. As promised, 90 minutes later, a dude arrived from the dealer thing and checked the car. The last time I rode it was in April and ahem…. The battery was dead. The sales guy had to drive his car half into my garage and connected his battery to mine and thank goodness it started up. So he checked the rest of while letting the engine run, charging my battery. Of course he had not a good impression then of my car and the price he offered was in the lower range, but considering that I would have to have called the Japan auto whatever federation for battery help etcetera, I nodded off the price but asked for some thinking time to call a Japanese friend of mine who knows a bit about cars to check what he thinks of the situation and the price offered. All this happened on a Saturday afternoon by the way.

I reached my friend in the evening and he assured me that the deal wasn’t too bad considering the dead battery and the bad impression. If I were to clean up the car, keep on looking and negotiating I might get some more money from another dealer but time is money too. I was under pressure to sell the car, because I’ll be moving to a new place end of October and there I wouldn’t have a free parking slot, so that was another motivation to get rid of the car or commit to driving it, which I couldn’t see myself doing.

Thus I called the sales guy at around 21:00 in the evening (which he assured me was okay to do) and told him I’d sell it. He gave me a bunch of papers necessary for the sale before he left at maybe 19:00 and I was supposed to fill them out and send them to him later. On Sunday then someone came with public transport and on foot to my place and picked up my car and drove away with it! Bye bye car!!!!! Hyaaaaaa….

The car was sold and gone in less than 24 hours. I filled out all the papers and sent them and the second key, and got money transferred within the week after the sale and thus I am not a car owner anymore. The speed of the transaction was marvelous, the service staggering, since I didn’t have to drive the car anymore and apart from filling out papers had no work with it. It is the first car I ever owned and I don’t know how easy or hard it is to sell your car in Germany or elsewhere, but in Japan it was surely a piece of cake.

Even if there was a tiny pinch as I saw the driver guy driving away with my little red devil, I am 95% relieved it is gone and that this form of stress is taken from me. I love my bicycle, I do! It is and remains my favorit form of transportation