incredible, how much trash one can pile up in just one year. Planed to clean up my room within 3 days, to make moving out as least stressful as possible. Turns out that seems to be a task as impossible, as reaching the asympote. 無理. Wouldn't all be that bad, didn't one have to decide for each item to discard how to caterogize it within the 14 different trash bins. Germany is ruled by the Green Party and I am well indoctrinated, so that my environmental conscience screams in pain, once I see something sorted incorrectly. Just imagine a chopstick made of bamboo, perfectly biodegradable, would end up in the unburnable bin and lead to the enlargement of a dump. Ahhg, better try not to think of that too much. But now, how should I sort the left over painkillers and antibiotics that my parents had brought over, because Japanese doctors wouldn't give them to me in the dosages, my enormous foreign body required. The box and the useless paper describing when best to take these pills (never), are clearly paper trash. The metal foil that seals the pills is unburnable, and the plastik wraping is recycleble, but what about the pills themselves??? Are they biodegradable, burnable, or do they need to be seperatly discarded in "super dangerous trash" (すごく危ないゴミ)? Will it lead to Japanese epidemics of resistancies, if the antibiotics reach the ground water? And then this decision has to be made in a split second, because the room check is in 3 min and nothing is cleaned yet, ahh. Was quite a relieve when I passed the room check with compliments (頑張りました、ね). Precousiously I had visibly placed a gift for the dorm lady on the desk to ensure the success. Now a box of 20 kg are stored in Nagoya and I took a suitcase of another 23 kg to Tokyo, but the airline only allows for 20 kg per person. So I guess, I will need to convince a Japanese, to come along as a Sherpa, or I will have to send it all by sea. Panic.

Feminism is still on its knees in Japan.

The ドイツbaito girl paid me in Euro yesterday. Said I would need them anyway soon, and they were leftovers from her last trip to Munich. She had gone there for a week to by a book.

This is the Euro note, a visiting Brit and me, the visiting Englishwoman asked, whether we had used Franc before the indroduction of the Euro. Made me laugh the rest of the night.

The signs of a passed era. So, the three sting didn't get smashed then?

earlier I confessed about my addiction to toy dispensing vending machines (がちゃがちゃ). This is my latest find: embedded specimen of human organs for the increadible price of only 100 Yen.

So I started feeding the machine witch coins, but first only an embedded frog appeared, than some teeth, but all I wanted were some human organs!!! The third try gave me the intestine. By the way, those glasses can be opend and the red fluid turns out to be yummy JellO.

The conversation class student, that helps me not to forget my German, brought along her cell phone recently.

There is a tiny pink bear on the display, that you can feed, pet or harass, isn't that great! It's jumping around and doesn't do anyting useful, but demanding your attention.

Found this book the other day, that teaches German studying Japanese some usefull and often heard phrases.

now you try to imagine the tiny, shy Japanese girl on her foreign exchange trip, yell all of a sudden: "watch out, there is dog shit!"

ran into the first Japanese person that was wearing a t-shirt with a Kanji. I was suprised and confused by the neglectance of all Japanese fashion rules, which usually only allows for Roman characters and English sentences of worst grammer to be printed on clothing.

Usually the only people that dare to wear big fat Kanji printed on their chest are foreigners in the subway, ignoring the fact that everyone around them can read the characters but them. "What does it say?" I asked and got an explanation of every single kanji on its own, but was told that the meaning of the combined characters was elusive even to the wearer himself. "So why did you buy it?" "Because its so strangely funny, must have been designed by foreigners, I think it's hillarious" Yeah, tomorrow I will sprot my "it is bilking, there is no money"-hat and a shirt reading: "Round of humid" just to counterbalance the fun.

Made the spontaneous　decision on friday night to go for a short trip to Hiroshima, a city not only renown for inducing chronic depression to all its visitors contemplating a second about the effects of ionizing rays emitting explosives but also famous for beeing in the vicinity of one of Japan’s most famous and beautiful tourist attractions, Miyajima with a floating red gate in the middle of the ocean, attracting herds of guided tourists, the kind that I distaste the most. With these prospective goals in mind, I abandoned any sense of duty to my outstanding labwork and joined Liz and Stephen on their travels, certainly a journey of adventurous character. Had we given the idea a split second of thought, we might have noticed the ubiquous taifun warnings issued for just this weekend for just exactly this part of Japan. With an insufficiently waterproof backpack of the summer clothing, ignoring the obvious thread to any joyful excursion, POURING RAIN, to call the evil by its name, we hopped on the first shinkansen (bullet train) to Hiroshima and arrived about at the same time the taifun did. The first raindrops were starting to fall, shortly after we left the train station, and to ease the readers suspense, I give away that it hardly stopped raining in buckets until we safely but soakingly arrived　back in Nagoya　two days later.

Hiroshima is the first city that was destroyed by a nuclear bomb and the reminders of that summer morning on Aug. 6th are omnipresent in form of uncountable memorials for the numerous people that fell victim to the bomb. A cloud of overwhelming suffering hangs over this place casting a dark shadow of sorrow poised to dominate any train of thought. The explosion at 8:15 AM burned human shadows into stone, turned a city build on wood into a flaming inferno and left all survivors not just with the scars of burns and the pain of delayed diseases caused by radiation, but also with the memories of the apparent horrors of nuclear war, leaving mental scars not to be imagined.

The time the world learned of a new fear.

After we had left the atomic bomb museum, we wandered around aimlessly only to find that we were in desperate need for some mindless fun and entered a game parlor, a quintessential Japanese invention. Next to the usual video games of carnage or high speed chases, Japanese game parlors also feature games that let you slip into your dream profession.

We can see Liz as a fish cutter, random Japanese as prospective DJs, Steph and me shooting away on the photo game, and the famously brainless “taiko drum game”. Games tailored to the need of hard core nerds are “type away the attacking monsters“ or the old school “Super Mario”

After spending the night in an internet cafe, a much cheaper and better connected accommodation that any hostel, we sought out to find Miyajima, a small island with a gigantic, red, floating gate and ancient shrines, sayed to be one of the 3 most beautiful places in Japan.

We found ourselves a bit confused by the apparent lack of signs or directions that would help us find the ferry, quite unlike the usual Japanese tradition of guiding the foreigner with the subtleness of a sledgehammer. (Can you see the sarcasm? Then you might not be American.)

The floating gate that is prominently featured every guidebook about Japan turned out to be a gigantic lie. Here I present proof to the world today that the “floating toori (gate)” is not even remotely floating, but firmly attached in the soil of the beach, what a scam.

The rain only adds the beauty of the scenery and the comfortable feeling of moisture, no liquid in my shoes. (here it is again, sarcasm)

In search for directions, a deer started eating our map. Now that’s not what I call a welcoming gesture towards tourists. This did not keep Liz from running up to every one of these vicious creatures to hug them, and yell in a very Japanese fashion: “kawaiiiii” for the rest of the day.

The mountain shrine, impressive! (no, no sarcasm here, sorry)

The next day, the weather played an ugly trick on us. First, the rain seemed to have died down a lot, so we decided to go to the island once more time, to enjoy the 3rd most beautiful sight of Japan in better weather conditions, but as soon as we had boarded the ferry … Here the gate at high tide.

But now you know the secret, it really isn’t floating at all, really! In spite of the rain was the trip a success, thanks to the adventurousness that Liz and Stephen, who found themselves

Soon this page will also have entries in English. Are we looking forward to that?