Sunday evening, time to write a little more and post some more pictures!

Last weekend, my first weekend here, I met Jan (Van Liempt, the boyfriend of the sister of a friend of my sister, a whole mouthful : p). He took me to a bar – 'Alps', one of those very nice, non-commercial, not so expensive bars with a small, unnoticeable entry (but large interior) that's impossible to find on your own – where I met some of his friends (a lot of French people). Later that night we went to some cool club and we put on our dancing shoes. Last train/subway going around midnight to one at night means taking an early morning train after going out is the most practised option. Main thing learned that night: Big stations in Tokyo, like Shinjuku, are just one big maze where it's near to impossible to find the right place you have to be from your first try. On our way to that club, our group of about 9 people got split up into 3 groups due to all the confusion in finding the correct subway to take and platform to go to. Unbelievably, we all managed to end up in the same place in the end. Fun fun fun! : )

The week itself was actually not really noteworthy ... I still had to finish an assignment from last semester in Stockholm, so I spent 5 days sitting in my room on the floor, behind my laptop, getting a painful back. Expect for some finishing touches, that job is out of the picture now: a big relief and I feel I can finally start “my time in Tokyo”, getting to know the city, other people and, at the academical level, focus solely on my thesis on solar cells.

During the week I took some pictures of the area I live (you will find some of those and other new pictures as usual on http://picasaweb.google.nl/Vincent.Vanderputten). It's a really cosy and calm neighbourhood with no cars and the sound of children playing in the street, very nice and only about half an hour from campus and the centre. All in all (location, room, rent, housemates,...) I'm very happy I found this place. Anyway, except for a walk and putting some pictures on the wall of my room, the week has been sleeping, eating and working.

This Friday Francesco (see picture) also arrived in Tokyo. Having a heavy jet-lag, he looked (and was) pretty tired when I met him in his place, in the centre of Tokyo, the next day (Saturday). Also a bit funny (for me at least): he got kept up most of his first night because his (French!) neighbour from next door was having some friends over and they were doing some karaoke and making a lot of noise... Poor Francesco! : p Now even more funny was that I met this guy, Victor, at Francesco's place, a guy who was one of the people from the group I went out with the previous week when meeting with Jan. And the most funny thing – maybe you're already connecting the 'French' dots – was that he was also one the people keeping Francesco awake the previous night. The walls were even so thin that Francesco was able to follow Victor's life story when he was telling it to the others, which made the three of us meeting in the kitchen a quite funny encounter! I guess one could get the impression that Tokyo's actually just a small village where everyone knows everyone... : )

Later that evening I wanted to take Francesco to that nice place, Alps, I went to the previous week. But as I wrote earlier, it was a very obscure entrance in some small back streets of Shinjuku area. And believe me, remembering you way around Tokyo or parts of it is no sinecure! Well, not the first days at least. Anyway, after walking around for some half hour, I suddenly recognise a street corner and “feel we're close”. Found it! Me happy, Francesco too – as he was tired and hungry – so we go in and eat something as well. Nice place, cheap and good food: Francesco likes the place too.

While we're eating we get “merged” with another group of foreigners (mostly Americans), start conversation, get introduced, are having fun and are making new friends. Nice! : ) As it was one of the girls' birthday, they were going to Shibuya to dance and party and they invited me and Francesco to come along. As we're not asocial beings (or at least don't want to appear that way : )...) we were happy to come along. On the way we pick up some more people and meet new people who join our group. I guess being foreigners in such a different place like Tokyo takes away a lot of social barriers present in our Western world, so it's quite easy to meet new people, in contrast to what I had feared. Meeting a lot of new people also means meeting more interesting people to share thoughts with. My guess is that “interesting” will be the most appropriate word to describe my 5 small months here.

Today, Sunday, I properly met the sixth inhabitant of this house, who was never here the last ten days because of loads of work: Mehul (left). He's originaly from India, but was born in Germany and worked in Singapore, so one of those people who's a bit from everywhere. He's also here for studies and seems like a cool and nice person. Spending time in the kitchen is also nice to get to know the people in this house better, who they are, what they're doing, etc. It's not really the habit here, but I'd like to try to have some “cook-all-together-evenings”, or something like it: a recipe for an interesting evening : ).

Well, that's in a (maybe oversized) nutshell what the last days have been like. Next days I will get started properly on my thesis work and start spending time at the university. Jan also told me they were going to a special Sumo wrestling championship this Wednesday, something I'm quite looking forward to!

And ooh yeah, for those among you who remember the movie 'Lost in Translation' and the character of Bill Murray making a commercial for the Japanese whisky brand Suntory (“Suntory time!”) in it: as it's one of my all-time favourite movies, I couldn't resist the urge of buying a Suntory Whisky bottle at the supermarket (even though I don't even really like whisky : p). You can find a picture of it at my pictures on Picasa. And Jan knows where the bar from the movie is (where the main characters meet each other), so he's going to take me there one of these weeks. Woohoo! : )

OK, this was really it! : ) The last word I'll make you read is (no lies!) this.