Japaner, japaner, japaner...

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Ok, back again!

Today I emailed RB my decision. I let my gut instinct decide...I went with "Momentenkvalität".

Japan is a very interesting country. I arrived yesterday in Fukuoka with the ferry from Busan. I guess they don't get many westerners coming in that way, or maybe I look like a bad guy, cause I had to "come with". The cute little customs girl was so nice and polite that I didn't realise what was about to happened before it was too late. In the little room without windows three of her male colleagues were waiting. They unpacked all my stuff and asked a lot of questions...always very polite, always with a smile. When we were done my bag was better packed then I'd ever seen it! I hope the US customs will send their grunts on training in Japan next time...

The next incident was the bus ride. My first wrong was to try to get on through the front door. As everyone know, you enter the bus through the rear door and leave through the front door. When you enter you get a ticket with a number. That's the station number where you got on. In the front of the bus you have a board with all the station numbers and next to each station number you have a digital display. Here you see how much you are to pay if you want to get off. Just look for the number on your ticket, and check how much it is in yen. The price of course changes along the ride. Before you get off, you pay to the driver. If you don't have the exact amount of money, you can put in bigger bills or coins. Watch out though since what comes out of the machine is NOT the difference between what you paid and the price for the ride. The machine only breaks your money into smaller coins so that you actually can put the right amount of money in the box next to the driver. Easy, huh?

Today I arrived in Hiroshima and met up with my Canadian friend Rosanna. She's teaching English in Tokyo and we'll be travelling Hiroshima, Osaka, Kyoto over a couple of days before hitting Tokyo, probably on Tuesday. We spent most of the day around the peace park and watched a lot of heartbreaking documentation over the atom bomb and it's effects on the city and it's people. It really got to me... Tonight we had food with Japanese business men around a grill...interesting experience!

Cowabunga!!!

M

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Comments

[bernd]

momentenkvalität
hi magnus, congratulations with the job. certain you can't really go wrong on the decision with RB, but what is a "momentenkvalität". it's not tossing a coin, is it? enjoy your travel!