Very Japanese!

Sunday 4 November 07
Tokyo – Kumamoto

I could wake up today despite the jet-lag. I was so afraid that I wouldn’t be able to wake up that I set up two alarms on the mobile phone and one in the hotel room. I watched BBC news and had a shower and went down for breakfast. As always, the most enjoyable part of being in a hotel is the breakfast. I had some kind of a sweet fried egg with chilli French fries and a lot of bacon.

We left the hotel in the shuttle at 7:40am. I was sure that our flight is at 9:30am but that soon proved to be wrong. We comfortably arrived at Haneda airport on 7:50 just to find out that I was wrong and our flight was on 8:15. We started a frantic run to the check-in desk where the ladies were so nice and we managed to check in and run to the gate. We were in the plane in a record time and we took off. I spent the next two hours reading more of Keegan’s history of warfare. The description of the pre-historic warfare is fascinating and also depressing in a way.

We landed in Kumamoto fearing that we will not have our luggage because we boarded late but the two suitcases came on the belt first and we were out to see people receiving us in a few minutes. We were received by Japanese Red Cross people, one of them took us to what seemed like a typical old-style Toyota Land Cruiser but which gave a whole other picture from the inside. First, this one had four doors rather than the normal two, but this was not the strangest thing, it had an automatic gear, and a GPS with a fairly large screen.

The 10 kilometres trip to Kumamoto Red Cross training centre took about 20 minutes on a fabulous mountain road. As our colleague told us, the prince of Japan is visiting Kumamoto which meant the main road was closed for security reasons. We took a narrow mountain road that went on several quite high bridges revealing amazing valley, river and waterfall scenes. The mountains are covered with heavy foliage and faded from real dark in the back ground in layers going lighter towards the horizon. The scenes looked like a feathery watercolour painting.

We reached the training centre and the first thing to be noticed inside was more vending machines. Japan apparently has the highest rate of vending machines in the world with one machine for every 23 people (about 5.5 million machines in total). In the past 24 hours I have vending machines for soft drinks, coffee, beer, liqueurs, fast food, chocolate, fried food, sushi, cigarettes and so on. One hardly needs to look for a shop with all the machines around.

No rooms until the afternoon so we went around and met people and then settled down with our laptops and wireless internet in the meeting room. We were called to lunch quite early at 11:40am were we had Udon, a soup made of thick noodles with fried tofu with Tempora, rice, pickles, salad and fruits. It is heavenly to have such good Japanese food as the “normal” food.

Soon enough, at 1:30pm, the sessions started with introductions. In addition to the 23 Japanese participants, there were 8 other participants are from Hong-Kong, Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea and Australia.

Introductions and welcome from the Japanese and a funny little speech by Dr. Suzuki about how Japanese do not pronounce English properly that he delivered in very funny English.

Alex’s presentation was quite good but too long and I was hit again by the jet-lag in the middle of it so I couldn’t keep my eyes open. I went out and tried to wake up. It only went worse in Hervé’s presentation and I felt that I am going to die if that goes on any longer. The problem is I couldn’t sleep peacefully in the back as both of them were asking me questions all the time while presenting.

I got a call from Rania on my Skype at one point and it was really strange as it was 5:00am in Geneva. I tried to answer but I heard strange noises from her side with no one speaking. I worried a bit so I called her only to find out that she was asleep and it was little Garfield who was calling. My cat is calling me from half the world away. He apparently jumped on the table and Rania has forgotten the laptop on and while he was enjoying his sleep on the keyboard he made the call. It was funny, I guess he heard my voice from the speaker and got confused. I have always suspected that Garfield is actually a human in a kitten disguise… now I know.

The highlight of the evening was a traditional sitting dinner Japanese-style. It was pure fascinating with the extremely uncomfortable on the little pillows. I was sitting between Chris from Australia and a nurse that I cannot even pronounce the name of who worked in Kumamoto hospital.

The dinner was quite diverse with some sashimi to start with, and the Japanese colleagues were surprised that we foreigners like raw fish and can use chop-sticks but I guess they only under estimate the spread of their culture abroad. Then two kinds of soup and a few little things just to go to the main dish of the evening. This was a little stove with an alcohol lamp inside, kind of like the idea of the fondue stove. A metal plate was over that with pieces of meet, onion, eggplant and noodles. It had a metal cover so it was cooked both by grilling and with the steam inside. It was delicious.

After dinner, I talked to Rania and she was walking among vineyards close to Geneva with her mother, Christine and Sue. They seemed to have fun. Of course, what’s better than walking in the nature and having free wine directly from the barrel! I wish I was there, but Rania said that we should make that little trip on our own. She was there with a group called active mates that organises hikes and activities in Geneva.

It is time for bed, I am a bit embarrassed to go to bed at 9:30pm but I have the jet-lag as an excuse. Alex was already in bed so I had to change very quietly and go to sleep. Good night Kumamoto, and I hope I do well tomorrow.