Regina Glei's Blog, page 31

Too hot to argue

Last year this very day = 2nd of August, I was in Germany at Wacken, yeah! I wish all the metal heads loads of fun and good music

It’s August and insanely hot. Well, that’s what it’s like every year in Japan, but last year I escaped for most of August from Japanese heat. There was some decent German heat though as well, especially in Wacken day 2 and also in Prague, Jaromer and during Summer Breeze.

No big adventures are planned this summer due to work issues, only 5 days on a remote island. Reports from Niijima will follow. I’ll miss London’s SciFi Worldcon too, but am actually not sad about that, part of my book marketing block, I suppose. Been there, done that, know it doesn’t help. And it’s also way too expensive.

I’ve flown to Europe already twice this year for business trips, have no desire for a third long haul flight, and especially not during one of the most expensive times of the year with the yen having weakened and things feeling cheap in Japan.

The stay in the downtown Tokyo (Shibuya) hotel this week for that big work event was not cheap though, I paid actually less in Istanbul for a 5 star hotel and the one in Shibuya was tiny, old and crappy by comparison. But hey, it was right above Shibuya crossing. (see twitter pics).

Hanging out with a group of Germans (plus one Indian and one Turkish guy) showed me again my preferences. Movies, concerts, restaurants – yes, that’s what I like. Thougn mostly also the time spent in restaurants is too long for my taste. But going to a bar or two after dinner? That is so not my cup of tea. I managed to escape from the bar-hungry visitors and went back to the hotel room every night after dinner.

I might be an ENFP according to Myers Briggs type indicator (e=extrovert, n=intuition, f=feeling, and I forgot what the P was but it means I don’t like fixed plans), but I do have some introvert streaks, because I definitely recharge batteries alone. Lock me in with my books, my music, my movies, my computer and, as of recent, my keyboard and I am happy. The constant presence in a crowd of people from Sunday to Wednesday last week including dinner events – eek! Wanna get out and be alone.

I’m really looking forward to the island stint in 10 days where I shall wander around in the heat by myself enjoying the ocean view, the woods and trying to escape from mosquitoes

And now the introvert part of me wants to go back to correcting Hagen 3 and practicing piano. Cheers!

The twisted logic of the Japanese Service industry

While buying a new computer is no big deal at all, i found the service discussion that went on yesterday between Biccamera and myself quite interesting.

Time is money as we all know. Every computer in Shibuya’s Biccamera had an advertisement shield on it saying we install stuff for you for 1500 Yen. I asked the lady who was helping me about it and said it would take an hour and dragged me to the cashier. They sent me with my new computer (a pretty, red Toshiba Dynabook with Intel Core i7 by the way) to the service counter where the endless explanations started.

It took me a while to get it what the nice, young but not English speaking guy at the service counter meant. The essence of it was: well, you have to become a member somewhere and the first two months of membership are free, but then you pay 940 yen per month for “service”. (Service in terms of trouble shooting etc.) If I subscribe to this thing for an initial 1500 yen, then they pre-install the thing for me, the Windows 8 and also MS office.

If I don’t become a member of this thing, installing Windows costs 3000 yen and MS Office another 3000 yen. I protested that after e.g. 10 months of membership in this service package I have already paid 9400 yen. Oh, you can cancel your membership a day after you become a member, the guy said, then you only pay 1500 yen and get the stuff installed. If you cancel your membership until the 10th of August you only need to pay those 1500 yen and we install the stuff for you.

Uh?

Interesting. Let’s just try this for the fun’s sake. I filled out a ton of documents (of course, there are always a ton of documents…) and left my computer in their care and had dinner in the meantime in MacD (I shamefully admit) in the same building. When I returned to the service counter an hour later, my new computer was all installed and pretty. You can ask them much more, by the way: to set up mail accounts and anti virus and what not. But that of course takes more time.

But, I had eaten and someone else installed my computer for a mere 1500 yen – I was satisfied, time was saved and I went home.

What I find fascinating is this slightly twisted stuff that you subscribe for something to get its benefits and then you unsubscribe and the guys at Biccamera advertising that openly.

It reminds me of a story I read about those bloody, hotly disputed Senkaku islands. Japan and China both claim they are their nation’s territory. I read an article some time back from a British journalist who visited the islands. You are not allowed to visit them for political reasons or to make an official report about them. But you can get near them on a fishing boat if you claim your official purpose is a fishing trip.

This is what the journalist did. He hired a fishing boat, they went to the island and he took photos and stuff. The Japanese captain of the boat then insisted, however, that they have to fish. Of course he knows as well as anyone else on board that this fishing business is just a cover-up and lame excuse, but he stuck to the rules and made the people on board fish and they towed some catch back home.

The tiny example of the computer service and the bigger example of the Senkaku island visit show so nicely how this society works. There is a lot of regulations and you have to stick to them, but it’s no problem at all to find whatsoever ways to maneuver around them and people are getting very inventive doing that.

My 1500 yen did not pay the salary of the service counter dude, but I guess he is measured upon how many contracts he manages to send to his bosses. So he finds the slightly sleazy way of suggesting to me to subscribe and unsubscribe the day later. It’s beneficial for him and for me, if not for his company maybe, but who cares.

I love this kind of stuff, tiny loopholes for big and small things I shall unsubscribe from the PC trouble shooting service next weekend

Writing Progress Report

It’s time for a little update concerning my writing activities.

I would like to be thoroughly occupied with writing the second Dome of Souls novel (the first one was Dome Child) but things are getting in between.

Currently I am at 90,000 words with Dome of Souls 2 SciFi animal. That sounds as if the novel was finished, but far from it. The demise of the Lei Lao system, 500 years after the Dome Child ended the times of Bihindi, has epic proportions and therefore also epic book length I expect the Lei Lao upheaval to require another 40,000 words or so. My target is to keep the thing under 150,000 words The beast is huge and I like huge beasts!

That One Minute

The much smaller beast of “That One Minute” – a fantasy horror comedy novella as I like to call it – is “officially” out already since 31st of March… but only in paperback form. Dark Quest is just not coming around to getting the kindle version ready and I am refraining from any “big” announcements as long as the thing is not available in e-book form… sigh…

This is my second title with Dark Quest by the way after “Lord of Water” and I love Katoh sensei’s as always great cover, which is for the first time not a pure “painting” but combinations of several photos (of the lake and mud) plus paintings of the gray hands and the staircases to hell ;-). So, the waiting for the kindle version continues… a painful three and a half months already……………….

Hagen 3

I got the beast back proofread last night (thanks Tom!) and now have to go through it one more time (therefore I cannot continue with Dome of Souls novel 2…) and then start the Createspace process. I already received the magnificent – send shivers down my spine – cover from Katoh sensei. It’s a worthy cover for the last book in the trilogy.

I suspect/hope the beast will come out September/October or something like that. I find the prospect to have to go through it now a couple more times rather unthrilling. I have moved on! I’m now back at the Dome of Souls! Hagen stuff is finished, done, completed! lol…

Then there is the bunch of other novels which are already written but I’ve done nothing with them yet. There are three at the moment, all of them potential starts of other sets of trilogies or series. One is “brand new”, just written half a year ago, and I’ve never sent it anywhere yet, but the other two have gone through the agent gauntlet – unsuccessfully.

I am suffering from a continuing “marketing block”. I just wanna write, not do all this stupid crap of query letter bullshit… I am so “anti-marketing” at the moment that I’m not even working much on my homepage, nor have I even looked yet at the video I took of me reading from Hagen 2 = To Mix and To Stir at Hal-Con in April.

I am tired of being nice and taking all that idiotic, arrogant crap from the publishing industry.

There is just too much stuff out there that goes by unnoticed… mine among it… and too may hopefuls that too many people try to take advantage of you.

I have very limited time for books due to job and the rest of life. Do I want to waste that time doing something I hate = marketing and sliming and being nice and hoping and being punched in the stomach again and again? Or do I want to use that time for doing something I love: WRITING?

2014 is clearly a time of I don’t want to waste my precious time with marketing bogus. Maybe I get my marketing desire back in a couple of months or so, maybe not.

As long as I am only suffering from marketing block and not writing block I am not worried

Oh… there is another book in the pipeline, high fantasy novel with Dark Quest (first real long novel with them)… but considering their speed I am inclined to believe that it’ll become 2016 before that novel comes out…

Short fiction? Sorry, nah… At the moment I have zero desire to write short fiction. I want the big, epic, long, lavish stuff where you have time to construct and destroy whole worlds and where you spend some time with the same characters. Epic is the order of the day I wonder when I will be able to finish the first draft of my 2nd Dome of Souls novel? Some time around autumn? We’ll see.

Now off to Hagen 3 edit duties.

Recent Movie Review – July 2014

More movie reviews:

I spent some time on planes again and watched a bunch of movies – so here is the digest:

The Grand Budapest Hotel

Let’s start with the highlight… afterwards it goes downhill

Oh, I love quirky movies like this one. First of all, what an incredible cast, Ralph Fiennes, F. Murray Abraham, Willem Dafoe, Harvey Keitel, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Jude Law, Edward Norton, Tilda Swinton, Adrian Brody…

How do you get such a cast together? Amazing.

I can’t really tell you what this movie is about, the league of magnificent concierges? How to keep your dignity in the most impossible situations? How to survive crazy regimes? The value of work ethics? How to take proper care of your customers and subordinates as well?

Watch it and find out for yourself what you think this movie is about. From the visual point of view, this movie is also pretty remarkable, since more or less every shot is centered. I don’t think I ever saw a movie that is centered to the middle of the screen to such a degree. That alone has intriguing effects and there must have been quite some measuring going on during shooting to have it all in the center of the screen A quirky and simple but intriguing story that makes you giggle and squirm (in a good way). Watch it, if you are into quirky stuff, definitely, this thing is a pleasure like a glass of good wine, or a piece of excellent chocolate.

Nebraska

Another squirm movie, if on a different level than the Budapest Hotel. This is Bruce Dern as an old, alcoholic man, long retired, who thinks he has won one million dollars (magazine scam) and who insists on going to Nebraska to collect his prize. Behind this frame hides the real story about backwater and rather poor US lower middle class life, defunct families and small town bickering. Saul Goodman from Breaking Bad plays one of the sons of Bruce Dern by the way, hilarious.

The social study of this black and white movie is intriguing. The black and white of course contributes deliberately to the general bleakness and plainness of the movie where real friends are rare and where communication among people has long ceased to be meaningful. Old couples who love/hate each other, fathers who never listened to their sons and vice versa. The TV as the “communication” tool that holds the families together. E.h. when a bunch of people sit in front of the “flickering box” (as Germans sometimes call TVs in a love/hate kinda manner) without talking to each other, creating a false sense of “togetherness”. Yes, they sit in the same room together, but they haven’t talked to each other in years. It’s a hard to bear movie in a way and I don’t want to watch it again, but if you are into “art” or at least “indie” films, this is a good one to watch, slow, without special effects and focusing on human drama.

The Place Beyond the Pines

Now this is a classic example of a movie with a meaningless title. But, considering the plot, I admit that it’s damn difficult to give this movie an intelligent title.

The movie has three distinct parts (spoiler alert). Part 1 is about a down and out bike stuntman who travels the US with a mobile amusement park crew and finds out that he left a woman pregnant somewhere when he returns to the place a year later. Bitten by guilt perhaps he quits, stays, but the woman has found a new boyfriend in the meantime. The bike dude has no money, finds a partner who persuades him to start robbing banks. After things go wrong, he is killed by a police officer in maybe self-defense.

Boom, the protagonist is dead and the story shifts to the next protagonist, the police man who shot him. The police man suffers from guilt because he ended a life, finds out he had a baby son just like him, etc. He uncovers corruption in his department and is suddenly a “hero”.

Boom, 15 years later. The story shifts again and we are now focusing on the son of the police man and the son of the biker, they go to the same school, they get involved in drugs, biker’s son finds out that the father of his buddy is the police man who shot his father, etc.

To have such a plot in a 2 hour 20 min movie is a bit unusual, so credits to the writers for this. All 3 stories were rather interesting, if not grand and “wow”.

Since I did not know a thing about this movie before watching it, I was surprised that the protagonist dies after 40 min. Hey, an innovative movie.

Critique point number one is that this thing was ENTIRELY humorless. There was not one scene where you could smile, not even a cynical smile. Thus the thing took itself too serious, which, in my opinion is a big down-side. And then the title: How do you name a movie or a story like that? The Place Beyond the Pines is where it happens… but dahhhh… so what? They really should have tried to come up with a better title for this thing. Worth watching, but do not expect to have a “good time”.

R.I.P.D

This is a classic Hollywood “high concept” movie. Something that you can pitch in one half-sentence to a producer in an elevator, in contrast to the previous three movies described above.

“The Rest in Peace Department is about policing after you’re dead.”

Police officer, happily married, dies while on duty, goes to a place between heaven and earth where other deceased police men like him see to it that things between heaven and earth remain “in law and order”. He gets teamed up with a “teacher” police man – the elder partner who doesn’t want him, but they gradually become friends, played by Jeff Bridges.

There is a bad guy who wants to destroy heaven, (Kevin Bacon, who else ;-)) and Jeff and young dude have to prevent that from happening.

“Ghost” elements because Patrick Swayze – eh, young police dude – has to protect his still alive wife form the inter-world bad guy. Big fuzzy special effects of bad guy trying to destroy the world… I don’t think I have to continue.

In short this was super standard happy-end Hollywood and exceedingly boring, supported by the fact that Jeff Bridges was a Marshall from 1850 or so and talking in a Texan??? accent that I really really could not understand. So maybe I missed some good jokes, but I’m inclined not to believe so. Category, no need to watch it, seen it a hundred times before, Hollywood at its worst. Hail to the Budapest Hotel!

Turkey – Istanbul Travel Report – Part 2

Here’s the second half of the report about my short trip to Turkey

On day two of my Istanbul visit, in glorious sunshine again, I repeated the morning tour via subway to Taksim square and from there with the sightseeing bus to Sultanahmet square. This time the aim was the Topkapi palace where the sultans of old resided. The palace is located behind the Hagia Sophia and lies in a beautiful and very green park. The palace itself is not a grand castle but a stretched out complex rarely higher than two floors. Rather than private chambers preserved it’s mostly been transformed into a museum complex with houses that harbor sultan’s clothes, another with jewels, then several Islamic objects of worship next to some pavilions where the sultans entertained guests etc. It’s well worth a visit, if it lacks the grandeur of a Chinese emperor’s forbidden city or a European and also Japanese castle.



After the castle and lots of walking around it was time for a bit of a rest in form of a harbor boat tour starting from the harbor next to the new mosque and the Egyptian bazaar. I don’t know if there are more luxurious tours but the one I ended up on was a huge party boat with no ticket sales except for handing a guy at the pier a ten lira bill. On deck stood plastic chairs in rows, no life vest etc. in sight anywhere. Down below was a sign that life vests will be handed out by the crew if necessary, but no way there were enough on board. Quite lax regulations I would say.

The boat rode up the Bosporus on the European side, under the bridge I had crossed the day before and on to a second bridge with the fortifications shown below.



Before going under the second bridge further to the Black Sea, the boat turned around and hugging the Asian coast, rode back to the old city and the new mosque. Also from the second bridge on it looked like the windy gap between Asia and Europe would continue for yet quite a while and thus I have not yet seen the Black Sea.

On the ride were mostly Turkish people and not so many foreigners, so I guess I took a tour for locals what struck me very much was the wealth displayed at the waterfront. On both, the European and Asian sides, one villa hugs the hill next to another villa. I wonder what rural Turkey looks like but Istanbul struck me as a modern, rich and highly developed city.



That impression continued on the bus tour I took around the golden horn with the other route of the sightseeing bus company. Many nice houses, beautiful mosques and also some churches here and there. Around more or less the entire golden horn, at least on the western side of it, are parks and whilst there are only very few parks who allow BBQ in Japan there seems to be no such rule in Istanbul. Like one big grill party, people come out to these parks and have BBQs on a sunny Sunday evening like this.

I would have liked to visit xxx palace too, but there was not enough time and it was already evening. At least I’ve seen it from the outside. After one last round through the Egyptian bazaar, I rode back via tram, cable car and metro to my hotel and had dinner there (with soccer watching).

Nothing much happened in the morning anymore on Monday except for a taxi ride back to the airport and then flying on to Stuttgart.

Funnily, nobody addressed me with “no-guide” or other schemes on day two. As for women, it looks like in the photo below, European style vs. completely veiled, there is everything in a mix of let’s say 45% European style, 40% partially veiled and 15% fully veiled.



All in all it was a great trip and Istanbul is a fantastic city with loads of history to offer and I would have liked to stay a bit longer The full “load” of pictures you can find on my Flickr page.

Turkey – Istanbul Travel Report – Part 1

Off to adventures again this time thanks to the fact that the cheapest flights to Germany from Japan seem to be with Turkish airlines currently and my company requires me to take that cheapest flight.

I went with Turkish airlines already in May for a business trip and was joking to my boss about having to fly via Istanbul yet again and boss said, why don’t you make a stop over? I took him by his word. The stop over I have to pay by myself of course, but not the flight

My Turkey experience started with one of the laxest security and passport checks ever. As a German national you just show them your passport, no forms to fill out whatever and off you go. I wonder whether in the customs area anybody is ever asked to open his or her suitcase

On Turkish ground the question as usual was how do I get to my hotel?

I asked an information whether there are hotel buses to the big chains. The dude looked at me as if I was E.T. and said, metro or taxi. Okay, so taxi it was.

My taxi driver spoke three words of English and nodded when I showed him my reservation for the Hilton Istanbul Bomonti. I took the Hilton to treat myself for those three nights and “to feel safe”.

It was Friday evening in Istanbul, sunny, warm, but not hot and there was traffic. Loads of it. The taxi driver asked me in between “smoke?” “So long … Traffic”. But I don’t smoke so declined. I offered him he could smoke (taxi smelled like he did) but he didn’t, I guess out of politeness

He complained: to Hilton twenty minutes! Traffic! It took us an hour to get to the hotel.

At the hotel a guard man checked our taxi for explosives, familiar from the Interconti in Jakarta where they did that too when I went there 2008 or so. Not that the check was very thorough.

The taxi driver smirked at me. Bomb! And pointed at my carry-on bag and we had a good laugh.

At the hotel also a, if lax, security check at the entrance where they scan your bag.

It turned out that the hotel’s wifi was down… Haha… At every youth hostel you have wifi these days but not at the Hilton in Istanbul! But I shall not complain, since the view was awesome and youth hostels don’t have room service.

I had a mini meal, just right, of something called Manti – Turkish pasta and managed to stay awake until about 22:30 local time.



I dreamed totally weird stuff during the night. That I had checked into the Hilton in a three beds bedroom and suddenly a young French couple joins me in the room (I had met a young French couple in the elevator) and wanted to share it with me. I called the reception and the manager and complained but I couldn’t get rid of the French couple. The girl said to me oh we can cook together and I shouted back at her, I want to be left alone! I don’t wanna cook together with nobody! Then the bathroom flooded probably inspired by a slightly defective shower that sprays into directions it shouldn’t, and images from a tornado that happened in Istanbul on Wednesday or so with torrential rains and flooded apartments that I had seen on TV… Yuk! I was happy to wake up alone in my room with only one queen sized bed.

Certain desire for solitude due to the stress I have at the moment at work?

Up and ready for adventures, I asked at the reception what the best way was to get around town for sightseeing and they recommended to use the hop-on, hop-off Big Bus and to take the subway to where it starts and stops. Okay, so I walked to the next subway station which is about a ten to fifteen minute stroll from the hotel and ventured into the depths of the Istanbul public transport system.

The station where the Big Bus stops is none but Taksim, which recently has gained worldwide fame due to the protests going on there. They seem to have subsided though, the square was peaceful and nearby Gezi park, the initial spark of the protests, was untouched.

The roofless double-deck bus has sockets for headphones in every seat and in more or less every European language you can get some explanations while the bus drives past. The first goal was Sultanahmet area with Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.



Lining up for Hagia Sophia (long queue) the first “guides” approach the people in the queue trying to sell you their guide services… They are quite persistent but another German guy and a Dutch couple around me and myself managed to get rid of the guide. However, then we noticed that the people in the queue were already having tickets and someone else alerted us that you have to line up for tickets first…. Uh… Line up twice? Anyway, so we changed lines for the tickets, but then they let you through without having to queue up at the other line again. Not very logical but if it’s to your advantage…

Hagia Sophia is great. It was first a church built some time around the 5th century, then was redesigned a mosque in the 15th century and is a museum since the 1920 ties, if I remember the explanations on the signs correctly. You have Christian icons and mosque design combined in one. It’s an utterly beautiful place, which, of course is under constant restoration.



Opposite the Hagia Sophia is the blue mosque. Not knowing what was going on, I walked up to the entrance and some guy talks to me. I’m not a “guide” I just want to help you…. Hm… The mosque will close to visitors for prayer in a few moments, hurry up and follow me to the visitor entrance. I didn’t really know what to make of the guy but followed him and he was of course asking me questions in between, where I am from, my name, whether it’s my first time in Istanbul. But then he proved to be right, just a few people behind me they closed the visitors entrance. It was all a bit rushed since they were preparing the mosque for prayer. You have to take off your shoes, used to that from Japanese temples. Then you have to cover your legs, men and women alike. For women you have to cover also your arms, no problem, I was wearing a long sleeved shirt anyway and you have to cover your hair, a hat is not allowed, you need a scarf. They hand out scarfs at the entrance and long, kimono-like coats for women who don’t wear enough. You carry your shoes around with you in a plastic bag.



Thus prepared, I entered my first mosque ever. In the back is an area for visitors and you are not allowed beyond a certain point if you are not a male believer, female believers apparently stay in the visitor area, at least in Turkey, I am not sure about other Islamic countries. You are allowed to take photos inside. My first mosque visit was rushed, since they wanted to clear out the area of tourists. I also had this guy still around me the whole time. Then he ushered me out of the mosque and wanted me to come with him to a small bazaar to see “his business”, carpets and kilns, he said. I politely, I hope, refused and he gave up and I managed to escape him.

I walked in a big loop around the Blue Mosque since I hadn’t had the chance to really look at the courtyard yet but did not want to run into that guy again. On the way, another guy addressed me with the usual questions, where I’m from what my name is and no, no, he is not a “guide”. I am not sure what the deal with the no guide thing is! Lol. I escaped him too and took a look at the mosque yard and then strolled back towards Hagia Sophia, sat down for a sandwich lunch and waited for prayer to starts. It does so loudly and I had my first real call for prayer live.



Next I wanted to go to the spice bazaar and hopped on the Big Bus again, but traffic had another plan. While in the morning it had been crowded but okay, now chaos prevailed around the so called New Mosque and the spice market behind it and the bus didn’t stop there but drove on for the rest of the tour which leads past some other attractions, then makes a ride across the Bosporus bridge to “touch down” in “Asia” as they say and rides back again. In the meantime a monstrous thunderstorm lurked over the city and there were a few lightning flashes and impressive clouds but they luckily loaded their contents somewhere else. Nevertheless the clouds made for some nice photos. The Bosporus is pretty narrow and I’m not sure whether I did manage to catch a glimpse of the Black Sea beyond.



Back at the new mosque the traffic chaos was perfect. Man, you need some nerves for riding those streets. I finally managed to get off the bus and took a my-pace look at the new mosque. Same thing here, take off shoes, cover your hair but they let you inside when no prayer is going on.

Next up was the bazaar. First of all the Egyptian or spice bazaar behind the “New Mosque”. Very pretty and colorful if of course touristy and a bit repetitive with dozens of Turkish delight shops. Then I wound myself through thronged streets in search of the Grand Bazaar without a map, all ways lead to the grand bazaar! funnily it was less crowded in the grand bazaar than in the streets. Some nice impressions from the streets with photos of weird dressing dolls, shop windows you don’t see in Asia or Europe and billboards for how to dress smart with scarfs you can find in the Flickr photos.



Maybe, or luckily, I missed the main gate of the grand bazaar where it may be more crowded and I entered the grand bazaar at gate eighteen. It is really huge and the crowds dissipate inside, at least in the areas where I walked around.

On the way back towards Sultanahmet I had another two guys addressing me but I more or less ignored them and did not speak to them. Out of lack of knowledge as to what to eat I ended up taking a rest at a Starbucks. There again I had a guy addressing me soon while I sat there trying to relax. His English was excellent and he claimed to be an English teacher from eastern Turkey but now located in Istanbul. The usual questions but also whether I have children or not and so forth. He was polite and I was too but when I had enough of the interrogation I left the Starbucks.

I am not sure I understand the purpose of these guys addressing you. The teacher in the Starbucks didn’t make the impression as if he wanted to sell me something. I don’t know what purpose these conversations serve. Just want to chat to a foreign woman? I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so why talk me up? Maybe that’s just “normal” behavior, though I can’t help feeling weird about it

I had done enough sightseeing for one day and considering the horrible traffic I tried out the tram system to get back to my hotel somehow. That meant riding one of the trams until it’s final stop then changing to the metro for one station before having to change again at Taksim. The metro at the end of the tram was quite a surprise. Istanbul is hilly, though I didn’t expect it to be so hilly as to require a cable car. The one station back to Taksim is thus an interesting one and the system is understandably only one station long.

On the city map I had received from the hotel was an add for a shopping mall only one station from the one where I had to get off for my hotel, so I went there and landed in a posh shopping mall with zero tourists around.

I found my target shop: a supermarket. I love exploring supermarkets in different countries because they tell you so much about how people live. This one was no exception. Despite this being no Costco, the portions were quite enormous. You can buy a single yogurt cup, yes, but it’s a kilo big

It started to rain after all and I gave up trying to find a way to walk back to the hotel in the rain. Taxi seemed unavailable and I rode the one train stop back to the route I knew already and thus ended a great first day in Istanbul. You can find the full set of pics on Flickr

Turkey – Istanbul Travel Report

Off to adventures again this time thanks to the fact that the cheapest flights to Germany from Japan seem to be with Turkish airlines currently and my company requires me to take that cheapest flight.

I went with Turkish airlines already in May for a business trip and was joking to my boss about having to fly via Istanbul yet again and boss said, why don’t you make a stop over? I took him by his word. The stop over I have to pay by myself of course, but not the flight

My Turkey experience started with one of the laxest security and passport checks ever. As a German national you just show them your passport, no forms to fill out whatever and off you go. I wonder whether in the customs area anybody is ever asked to open his or her suitcase

On Turkish ground the question as usual was how do I get to my hotel?

I asked an information whether there are hotel buses to the big chains. The dude looked at me as if I was E.T. and said, metro or taxi. Okay, so taxi it was.

My taxi driver spoke three words of English and nodded when I showed him my reservation for the Hilton Istanbul Bomonti. I took the Hilton to treat myself for those three nights and “to feel safe”.

It was Friday evening in Istanbul, sunny, warm, but not hot and there was traffic. Loads of it. The taxi driver asked me in between “smoke?” “So long … Traffic”. But I don’t smoke so declined. I offered him he could smoke (taxi smelled like he did) but he didn’t, I guess out of politeness

He complained: to Hilton twenty minutes! Traffic! It took us an hour to get to the hotel.

At the hotel a guard man checked our taxi for explosives, familiar from the Interconti in Jakarta where they did that too when I went there 2008 or so. Not that the check was very thorough.

The taxi driver smirked at me. Bomb! And pointed at my carry-on bag and we had a good laugh.

At the hotel also a, if lax, security check at the entrance where they scan your bag.

It turned out that the hotel’s wifi was down… Haha… At every youth hostel you have wifi these days but not at the Hilton in Istanbul! But I shall not complain, since the view was awesome and youth hostels don’t have room service.

I had a mini meal, just right, of something called Manti – Turkish pasta and managed to stay awake until about 22:30 local time.



I dreamed totally weird stuff during the night. That I had checked into the Hilton in a three beds bedroom and suddenly a young French couple joins me in the room (I had met a young French couple in the elevator) and wanted to share it with me. I called the reception and the manager and complained but I couldn’t get rid of the French couple. The girl said to me oh we can cook together and I shouted back at her, I want to be left alone! I don’t wanna cook together with nobody! Then the bathroom flooded probably inspired by a slightly defective shower that sprays into directions it shouldn’t, and images from a tornado that happened in Istanbul on Wednesday or so with torrential rains and flooded apartments that I had seen on TV… Yuk! I was happy to wake up alone in my room with only one queen sized bed.

Certain desire for solitude due to the stress I have at the moment at work?

Up and ready for adventures, I asked at the reception what the best way was to get around town for sightseeing and they recommended to use the hop-on, hop-off Big Bus and to take the subway to where it starts and stops. Okay, so I walked to the next subway station which is about a ten to fifteen minute stroll from the hotel and ventured into the depths of the Istanbul public transport system.

The station where the Big Bus stops is none but Taksim, which recently has gained worldwide fame due to the protests going on there. They seem to have subsided though, the square was peaceful and nearby Gezi park, the initial spark of the protests, was untouched.

The roofless double-deck bus has sockets for headphones in every seat and in more or less every European language you can get some explanations while the bus drives past. The first goal was Sultanahmet area with Hagia Sophia and the Blue Mosque.



Lining up for Hagia Sophia (long queue) the first “guides” approach the people in the queue trying to sell you their guide services… They are quite persistent but another German guy and a Dutch couple around me and myself managed to get rid of the guide. However, then we noticed that the people in the queue were already having tickets and someone else alerted us that you have to line up for tickets first…. Uh… Line up twice? Anyway, so we changed lines for the tickets, but then they let you through without having to queue up at the other line again. Not very logical but if it’s to your advantage…

Hagia Sophia is great. It was first a church built some time around the 5th century, then was redesigned a mosque in the 15th century and is a museum since the 1920 ties, if I remember the explanations on the signs correctly. You have Christian icons and mosque design combined in one. It’s an utterly beautiful place, which, of course is under constant restoration.



Opposite the Hagia Sophia is the blue mosque. Not knowing what was going on, I walked up to the entrance and some guy talks to me. I’m not a “guide” I just want to help you…. Hm… The mosque will close to visitors for prayer in a few moments, hurry up and follow me to the visitor entrance. I didn’t really know what to make of the guy but followed him and he was of course asking me questions in between, where I am from, my name, whether it’s my first time in Istanbul. But then he proved to be right, just a few people behind me they closed the visitors entrance. It was all a bit rushed since they were preparing the mosque for prayer. You have to take off your shoes, used to that from Japanese temples. Then you have to cover your legs, men and women alike. For women you have to cover also your arms, no problem, I was wearing a long sleeved shirt anyway and you have to cover your hair, a hat is not allowed, you need a scarf. They hand out scarfs at the entrance and long, kimono-like coats for women who don’t wear enough. You carry your shoes around with you in a plastic bag.



Thus prepared, I entered my first mosque ever. In the back is an area for visitors and you are not allowed beyond a certain point if you are not a male believer, female believers apparently stay in the visitor area, at least in Turkey, I am not sure about other Islamic countries. You are allowed to take photos inside. My first mosque visit was rushed, since they wanted to clear out the area of tourists. I also had this guy still around me the whole time. Then he ushered me out of the mosque and wanted me to come with him to a small bazaar to see “his business”, carpets and kilns, he said. I politely, I hope, refused and he gave up and I managed to escape him.

I walked in a big loop around the Blue Mosque since I hadn’t had the chance to really look at the courtyard yet but did not want to run into that guy again. On the way, another guy addressed me with the usual questions, where I’m from what my name is and no, no, he is not a “guide”. I am not sure what the deal with the no guide thing is! Lol. I escaped him too and took a look at the mosque yard and then strolled back towards Hagia Sophia, sat down for a sandwich lunch and waited for prayer to starts. It does so loudly and I had my first real call for prayer live.



Next I wanted to go to the spice bazaar and hopped on the Big Bus again, but traffic had another plan. While in the morning it had been crowded but okay, now chaos prevailed around the so called New Mosque and the spice market behind it and the bus didn’t stop there but drove on for the rest of the tour which leads past some other attractions, then makes a ride across the Bosporus bridge to “touch down” in “Asia” as they say and rides back again. In the meantime a monstrous thunderstorm lurked over the city and there were a few lightning flashes and impressive clouds but they luckily loaded their contents somewhere else. Nevertheless the clouds made for some nice photos. The Bosporus is pretty narrow and I’m not sure whether I did manage to catch a glimpse of the Black Sea beyond.



Back at the new mosque the traffic chaos was perfect. Man, you need some nerves for riding those streets. I finally managed to get off the bus and took a my-pace look at the new mosque. Same thing here, take off shoes, cover your hair but they let you inside when no prayer is going on.

Next up was the bazaar. First of all the Egyptian or spice bazaar behind the “New Mosque”. Very pretty and colorful if of course touristy and a bit repetitive with dozens of Turkish delight shops. Then I wound myself through thronged streets in search of the Grand Bazaar without a map, all ways lead to the grand bazaar! funnily it was less crowded in the grand bazaar than in the streets. Some nice impressions from the streets with photos of weird dressing dolls, shop windows you don’t see in Asia or Europe and billboards for how to dress smart with scarfs you can find in the Flickr photos.



Maybe, or luckily, I missed the main gate of the grand bazaar where it may be more crowded and I entered the grand bazaar at gate eighteen. It is really huge and the crowds dissipate inside, at least in the areas where I walked around.

On the way back towards Sultanahmet I had another two guys addressing me but I more or less ignored them and did not speak to them. Out of lack of knowledge as to what to eat I ended up taking a rest at a Starbucks. There again I had a guy addressing me soon while I sat there trying to relax. His English was excellent and he claimed to be an English teacher from eastern Turkey but now located in Istanbul. The usual questions but also whether I have children or not and so forth. He was polite and I was too but when I had enough of the interrogation I left the Starbucks.

I am not sure I understand the purpose of these guys addressing you. The teacher in the Starbucks didn’t make the impression as if he wanted to sell me something. I don’t know what purpose these conversations serve. Just want to chat to a foreign woman? I’m not a spring chicken anymore, so why talk me up? Maybe that’s just “normal” behavior, though I can’t help feeling weird about it

I had done enough sightseeing for one day and considering the horrible traffic I tried out the tram system to get back to my hotel somehow. That meant riding one of the trams until it’s final stop then changing to the metro for one station before having to change again at Taksim. The metro at the end of the tram was quite a surprise. Istanbul is hilly, though I didn’t expect it to be so hilly as to require a cable car. The one station back to Taksim is thus an interesting one and the system is understandably only one station long.

On the city map I had received from the hotel was an add for a shopping mall only one station from the one where I had to get off for my hotel, so I went there and landed in a posh shopping mall with zero tourists around.

I found my target shop: a supermarket. I love exploring supermarkets in different countries because they tell you so much about how people live. This one was no exception. Despite this being no Costco, the portions were quite enormous. You can buy a single yogurt cup, yes, but it’s a kilo big

It started to rain after all and I gave up trying to find a way to walk back to the hotel in the rain. Taxi seemed unavailable and I rode the one train stop back to the route I knew already and thus ended a great first day in Istanbul. You can find the full set of pics on Flickr

Primal Fear Gig Report

Lots of bands in Tokyo this spring that are of interest to me therefore yet another gig report.

Primal Fear and I have some “history”. I don’t remember how I stumbled across the band but I had my peak “liking” of Primal Fear around 2007 when their New Religion album came out. After the in my opinion disappointing 16.6 album I turned to other bands. Seven Seals is my favorite album of theirs by the way. I’ve never seen them live before and now finally there was the chance since they came to Japan again (after a five year pause apparently and I missed them in 2009 – must have been in the wake of the 16.6 album).

I don’t have their latest albums “Unbreakable” and “Delivering the Black” (yet) but was hoping they’d play some of their older songs too.

The gig happened in Shibuya’s On-air East, a 1300 people venue, which was not sold out but well filled. No pre-band and at 19:00 the gig was supposed to start and the drummer and one of the guitarists came on stage, but the rest did not show up and they played the intro (from a tape) twice, which was a bit irritating and I am not sure what kind of glitch had happened

But finally the rest of the band appeared and things got going. Ralf Scheepers, the German vocalist, is already 49 years old, but wow… there is quite some body building going on and his voice is still impeccable. The guy is almost intimidating, at least 190 cm tall I suppose and one mountain of muscles. He looks like his chest circumference is two meters! Lol.

Luckily they played some 60% “old” songs that I know and I got good headbanging opportunities. Somewhere behind me stood someone who was trying to compete with Ralf, a Japanese guy singing falsetto and while stuff like that is usually painful, this guy pulled it off and sang quite nicely along with Ralf, impressive!

Somewhere in between Ralf broke out into singing a Japanese folk song??? in Japanese. Oops? Very nice that he learned the words, but I am not sure about the pronunciation, at least I could not understand The audience was also rather perplexed and I wonder if they understood? The singing was beautiful though, despite not really knowing what this was all about.

The crowd was their usual enthusiastic Japanese self, even on a higher level than what I have otherwise experienced and they managed to scream the band back on stage for another bow even after the encore was over, which is quite rare here (the venue owners switch the light on and an announcement tells you to go home). Another interesting aspect for me was that while usually the ratio of men to women at metal gigs is 70:30 or so, for Primal Fear it was 80:20 if at all. I wonder what Primal Fear’s ratio is like in Germany or the US where they just toured. Why do girls not like Primal Fear???

All in all it was a great gig and I’m glad I finally saw them live and now I am inclined to buy their latest album and have a little Primal Fear revival

Japan’s 5th Season

The four seasons are very distinct in Japan, bloody cold dry winter (not so dry = loads of snow in the mountains), beautiful spring, freaking hot summer and glorious autumn (if interrupted by the occasional typhoon). But sometimes Japan has a fifth season between spring and summer, the rainy season, called “tsuyu” around here.

Maybe because of the very distinct and rather extreme seasons talking about the weather is a standard conversation opener. It’s either “samui desu ne” = it’s cold or “atsui desu ne” = it’s hot with all variations of politeness in between (e.g. kuso samui/atsui translates to something like fucking cold/hot ;-))

And concerning the rainy season it’s like this: When it’s not coming or is rather mild, people complain that it’s not raining enough and it’s not good for the plants. When it’s a strong tsuyu people complain that it’s raining the whole bloody time The extreme forms of the rainy season result in drought (pretty bad when I was here as a student and we had water rationing and the rice harvest was so bad rice had to be imported) and floods and mudslides. Maybe this year will be a flood and mudslide one. At the moment it’s raining without pause for some three days already and at times it’s raining pretty damn heavily.

I am in a hilly part of Kawasaki and we don’t really have floods because the water finds somewhere to flow down to and I haven’t heard of mudslides yet, but we’ll see what happens.

The little river down the hill looked pretty full today, usually it’s just a trickle of water, barely steady, today it was flowing pretty fast though still quite a way until stuff needs to happen. On the sign we have half a meter of water (usually barely 10 cm) but the alerts only come into place at 1.3m and evacuation of the houses around the river at 3m.

Rain in Germany is not like rain in Japan. I don’t know what it is but it is never really wet in Germany, even if it rains for three days in a row. Here the general humidity of the air goes up to ridiculous levels during rainy season and typhoons as well and the hydrometer shows 100% humidity inside a room = it should actually be raining inside! lol. It never gets like that in Germany. Everything is saturated with moisture, clothes you touch, your bedsheets in particular feel cold and clammy. Tissue paper becomes too soft and tears, sheets of paper become flabby and undulate. Such stuff doesn’t happen when it rains in Germany.

The air feels like balm though and I bet our high levels of humidity during summer here help Japanese ladies to have fewer problems with wrinkles than Germans (who stay in Germany ;-))

Another curiosity are these bags for umbrellas. As soon as there is a drop of rain, shops whip out their umbrella covers to try to reduce water on the floor and this sign here warns of the ground becoming slippery when wet, so please use the umbrella cover. It’s a horrendous waste of plastic I suppose, because you of course throw the cover away when you leave the shop, but the idea in principle is not bad.

So, I don’t have much recollection of a “bad” tsuyu in recent years, it rained a bit now and then in June and that was it, but maybe we’ll have a “real” tsuyu in 2014? I’ll report if the little river’s level is rising, but my place is on a hill 200 meters away from the river, so no worries there.

Recent Movie Review May 2014

Here’s some movie digest of relatively recent movies (American Hustle, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty, Frozen, Europa Report, World War Z). Unfortunately, I am a bit short on time these days and must admit that I saw most of them on various tiny in-seat airplane screens instead of big cinemas but “shouganai ne” = it can’t be helped.

American Hustle:

Interesting. Nice twisted plot and nobody is what he/she seems and layers of lies like layers of onions, but somehow I did not find this movie overly original. There has been loads of stuff on con artists and onion layer plots. I cannot resist to compare it to Inception, which I liked much much better, since there was at least the unique and fresh aspect of reality bending to it with the streets of (was it Paris?) Paris folding towards you for example.

What irritated me about American Hustle was that I thought the whole time Amy Adams was Nicole Kidman… (now why did I think that, hu? Some resemblance perhaps?) and I also was sort of esthetically offended that Christian Bale looked so so so ugly in this movie! (laugh) He is not ugly and congrats for the ability to make himself ugly but it’s such a waste! There is so much ugliness around us, why add to that when it’s not necessary? Well, I am half joking of course, there was some nice acting there, but nevertheless how Bale looked like in that movie made me cringe the entire time.

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

I don’t know the first movie of this title that is apparently from 1947 (wow, who dug that one out of the ground again?) and cannot compare, but I found the new version to be almost entirely delightful. I am not a big fan of Ben Stiller, but in this movie he made me even like him It’s a nice story to see this guy doing things he’d usually never do because of a tiny mishap. I love this theme of tiny things causing big stuff and it’s just wonderful to have the negative inside the wallet and Mitty overlooks that and goes on this epic hunt. The shark in the icy waters of Greenland was over the top of course, but the exploding volcano in Iceland made up for that again and the Afghan warlords being softened up by cake as well. With plots like that you can easily disappoint the audience – we are waiting the entire movie for getting to know what was on that darn photo. That’s dangerous, the more you make the audience wait, the higher are the expectations and I feared the movie would crumble with the revelation of what’s on the photo, but, at least in my opinion, the outcome was adequate and fulfilling the promise and premise.

This movie was a great reminder of the “contract” you make as an author or director with the audience. You promise to deliver something (entertainment of whatever form) and the audience expects a fulfillment of such a promise. It would have been fatal for the movie not to show what’s on the picture for example or to have something disappointing on it, but the director = Stiller knows that lesson and delivers in the end. Well worth watching.

Europa Report

Never heard about this movie before and I am sure it has not seen any screenings in Japan. It’s a European SciFi movie it seems about a manned mission to the Jupiter moon Europa where mankind hopes to find the first extraterrestrial life in the presumed ocean under the icy surface.

The premise is a bit lame, countless missions on countless spaceships have gone out to find extraterrestrial life in the SciFi movie history and Jupiter and its moons are especially critical since there is something called 2001: A Space Odyssey. But I’d like to give the style of the movie a bit of credit. It’s all told backwards sort of. The mission fails and we know they won’t return more or less right from the beginning, but then it unfolds that they managed to repair their communication system (to simplify it a lot now) and we get to see the recordings the crew made during their journey = the movie has sort of mock-documentary style. Apart from 2001 elements, there are “Alien” elements too (on Europa itself), then a little bit of “The Abyss” and last but not least “Event Horizon”, sort of demonstrating how difficult it is to make an “original” SciFi movie these days. The documentary style also results in the actors being “kinda cold” and I found it difficult to identify with them and to feel anything for them.

Interesting experiment, but I guess this movie will soon be quite much forgotten especially with such a lame and “misleading” title…

World War Z

I know, I know, it’s been a while since that movie came out, but I had missed it and now finally saw it. I have nothing much to say about it except for impressive human/zombie ladders reaching over the barriers erected in Jerusalem and finally zombies who are quick instead of slow. If the fastness of the zombies and the consequences that their speed has is the only thing truly remarkable about that movie then… Anyway. Despite a bit of zombie tiredness due to too many zombie movies (and novels) I am still a fan of the Walking Dead and am looking forward to its next season World War Z I can do without…

Frozen

Now that main song (Let it go? Am not sure about its title) is quite an earworm as we say in German (a catchy tune) indeed. I am wondering why it appeals to people so much. I don’t know the original story by Hans Christian Andersen and how much it has been “disneyed” – I bet the snowman thing is a Disney addition for example.

The movie is only the fourth movie ever to have broken the 20 billion yen mark in Japan (the others are Titanic, Spirited Away and Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone) and is insanely popular here (especially among women). The old advertisement slogan “women appeal to women and men appeal to men”, seems true for this movie. Twitter feed in the NHK news at 23:30 the other day spoke of “it’s appealing that there are two heroines and not only one”, for example.

I personally found the snowman a bit annoying and it reminded me somehow of Jar Jar Binks! Lol. Although of course he was not as bad… I think Jar Jar Binks enjoys the status of worst character ever in any movie

What’s a bit unusual is that the story is astonishingly populated, two heroines, two heroes of which one turns out to be a bad guy, plus the obvious bad guy, and not to forget the elk, the trolls (and the snowman). Even if it got watered down by being “disneyed”, there is some fine character crafting in the background done by Andersen, which surely contributes to the success of this story. But hey, in the end it’s 80% about that song after all, I guess