Japanese Salaryman Life pt.2

Continuing from Part 1.

Every morning I usually woke up at 5:50 a.m.

After letting some sun light into the room, I would rush to the bathroom to take my daily morning shower.

Scrubby me here and there.

After some simple breakfast, I would put on my suit with matching neckties and long sleeved shirts, and get ready to get out of the apartment at exactly 6:50 a.m.; so that I could join my co-workers to go to work together.

Yes, I went to work with my co-workers every morning! What team spirit eh?

Anyways, our means of transportation to go to work is the famous Japanese densha system. Famous for what?

Morning rush hours and suicides of course!

*Densha (電車) means (public) train.

In all seriousness though, work-commuting by train in big Japanese cities (in my situation, Yokohama) is pure pain, and such an energy drowning experience.

There was just too many people during the morning rush hours, and not enough trains to accommodate them; causing extreme over-crowding especially from 7:30am to 9:00am.

In Malaysia, if a train was crowded with people, you would simply wait for the next train and board the less crowded one.

In Japan, even if you wait for the next train, the situation would be the same; the next train is also going to be extremely over-crowded, and you don’t want to be late to work, so you just board the train, NO MATTER how crowded it is.

Some of you might think, well a crowded train might not be so bad?

I want you to watch the video below, and you’d understand why I hate the morning rush hours that I have to endure each day going to work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b0A9-oUoMug

Basically this is the kind of trains that I have to board every morning, minus 10 people, maybe.

I got squished, pushed, sandwiched, pressed, feet stomped on and some more.

What makes it worse is that the majority of the Japanese salaryman here don’t believe in morning showers. Damn some of them do stink!

And I have to endure all if this for an hour every morning; what a great way to start work!

It does not happen very often, but sometimes there are people who choose to use the train, not to go to work, but to kill themselves; and we morning train commuters hate them to the bones!

Not only they delayed and decrease the available train, they also made such a mess on the platform. The number of passengers would drastically increase two, three folds when this happens, and it caused such human-traffic congestion inside the station.

So please to those who wants to kill themselves, please do it without causing other people trouble, especially when we all are rushing to go to work!

Kill yourselves in a hole that you dug by yourself in the comfort of your own lawn, please! O wait a minute, not many people in Japan has lawns!

Anyways, with so much human density in such a small space, it was inevitable that this would happen: CHIKAN.

*chikan (痴漢) means molestation, in this context, molesting female commuters in the densha. Normally this would consist of an old Japanese salaryman, rubbing his penis against the lady in front of him, or using his hands to grab and have a ‘feel’ on any available female’s ass inside the crowded train.

I pity the Japanese girls that they’re living in a land full of perverts.

I’ve seen it with my own eyes, and in such crowded situation, it would be hard to know whose hand it is that was grabbing that OL’s ass.

*OL = short for ‘office lady’.

What I don’t understand is that most of the victims stayed silent and still, their faces facing down, like nothing wrong happened. Maybe they’re just too ashamed to make a scene and report it to the police.

Maybe they thought, if I just endure this, I might get to work on time!

But because such chikan perverts exists, I’m always cautious in making sure that I won’t be mistakenly accused of doing such acts.

Now, that’s another whole story…

Enough with train suicides and train molesters… all of this makes me dull.

Anyways, I should be glad that starting from tomorrow, I won’t be using the train anymore because I got sent to further my training in Sagamihara, which is just a 20 minutes walk from my apartment!

Although this only lasts for 3 weeks, I’m looking forward to a new scenery; no more crowdedness, no more suicidal nuisances, no more salaryman perverts grabbing high school girl’s asses.

Three weeks of awesomeness!

[note: the extreme 'crowdiness' situation only applies during morning rush hours. using the train to get home from work in the evening is often quite relaxed; sometimes i could even sit down on the seats!]

Panic during Totsuka Morning Rush

This morning, some of the train on the train-line that I use everyday to go to work to, has stopped working for about 15 minutes because of some shit that they don’t want to tell us.

The result of this brief halt of flow of people during such critical morning rush hour is total chaos, as the flow of anxious commuters fill the station’s limited floor space; it looked like some hajj ritual being performed by many man and women in suits and work attire.

There was no walking space at all; everyone moves by pushing and getting pushed by the flow of commuters. If anyone drops his/her bag, she/he should forget about getting it back.

Such scenes does makes me wonder with slight fear.

People would never be able to evacuate quickly in times of emergency, if such event that requires such action ever occur.

In all the madness where some couldn’t take it anymore and prefer to shout and swear at the person behind just because of a little push; I managed to get some photos with the low-tech iPhone camera.

tak nak balik berkhidmat untuk negara ke?

aku ditaja JPA untuk belajar di Jepun selama 6 tahun.

april 2003 – march 2009.

setahun buat bahasa jepun, 3 tahun buat diploma pastu lagi 2 tahun buat degree.

kalo ikut rate sekarang, biasiswa bulanan yang aku dapat adalah lebih kurang rm4800.

(100yen=rm3.7)

rm4800 darab 12 bulan darab 6 tahun = rm345,600.

banyak tu.

tu tak kira duit yuran pengajian + elaun buku la, elaun pindah, elaun kesihatan etc.

kalo campur sumer2, ada kot cecah setengah juta.

” setengah juta? banyak tu beb, but still, ko masih nak stay kerja kat jepun, tak nak balik berkhidmat untuk negara, untuk rakyat ke? “

ke sudah lupa diri?

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dulu aku banyak kali terbaca berita pasal student overseas tajaan kerajaan yang lepas graduate, tak nak balik mesia, langgar contract dengan terus sambung kerja kat oversea, pastu tak bayar plak tuh duit pinjaman.

kerajaan taja mahal2 supaya nanti dia bole balik untuk berkhidmat untuk rakyat.

tapi balasan nya, dia lari entah ke mana, demi kepentingan diri sendiri.

taufiq ali, kamu macam mana?

first few days in kanagawa

I guess my predictions were true.

I predicted that I won’t be updating my blogs as frequently as I wanted to.

And as you can see by yourself, the rate of me posting new posts here has tremendously declined; even IF I have tons and tons of things to write about.

Like for instance, my new place in Hashimoto, Kanagawa.

For an apartment provided by my company, I was very impressed by how clean and in good condition it was.

I’m not saying that I expect less from my own company, but the place looks like it’s never been occupied by anyone else before!

Well, at least until I got my stuff from Akita here.

My job-training are just going to last until September before I get sent to somewhere else, so I plan to keep the apartment that I’m in now strictly basic; just enough for me to live in.

And it sucks though that I need to wait until the 18th of April until I could put some internet-connection magic into my Dell.

The internet provider guy said that because it’s April, the season in which a lot of people changes apartment/homes, I would have to wait in line for my turn to get their service started.

And oh, the other thing that sucks about this apartment is that it would take about 90 minutes for me to get to work.

It took like 10 minutes to walk from the apartment to the nearest eki (train station), about 60 minutes of densha ride, and then another 10 minutes of bus riding until I reach work.

Pretty tiring stuff to be doing everyday, especially riding the densha; it was inevitable that the thing would be packed with people who didn’t shower in the morning.

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I also changed my phone to iphone!

It was pretty unbelievable that Softbank is giving out iphones for free here in Japan; and I waste no time to grab the opportunity.

So I have been using my iphone for a week now, and I really understood why it was not so very well received by the Japanese users.

The thing is evolutionary as it is not friendly at the way Japanese people use their mobile phones.

The thing that irks me the most is the absence of infra-red ability to change information with your new found friends.

And the way Apple uses the 3G network to deal with internet bandwidth is also a little bit weird that it hinders with the speed receiving emails.

With all that said, I still think that it was worth the change.

Well, I DID got it for free, so I won’t be complaining much about it.

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Maybe this is happening because of the change of environment and lifestyle, but I think I’m pretty lonely right now.

As I am very new to this place, I have no friends; but I’m trying very hard to make some, as fast as I could.

Anyways, just right in front of my apartment, there is a video shop selling Japanese porn at extreme discount points.

I don’t know why I need to tell you that.

Maybe because I’m just lonely.

pic: there is big sakura tree right on the platform of sagami-hara station. pretty swett!

i love the sakura season!

thesis adventure over (hopefully)

Finally, my adventure in the thesis/final year project-world is over.

I did my thesis presentation yesterday, and although I didn’t have an easy time dealing with questions from the department professors, I am glad that I didn’t lose any of my vital organs and I am happy to announce here that I survived my dealings with those pack of vicious Japanese university professors!

I’m just joking; they’re actually quite nice compared to the other professors on other groups, as I was told.

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It has been a harsh 2 weeks for me.

I’ve not eaten very well, and have successfully lost about 3-4 kgs in body-weight during this 2 week period. That’s another proof that if you really work hard, you could actually lose weight, so to those who wants to lose weight fast, just work really, really hard, and constantly forget to eat properly for a better effect.

Not to forget to sleep just 4 hours a day. 6 hours maximum.

Then just watch your weight go down effectively!

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Anyways, I am now free from my thesis, and the only thing that I need to do right now that concerns my degree is to wait for the graduation day.

Yay and Alhamdulillah!

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Anyways, I am not totally free yet, because I got tons of things to do first before going back to Malaysia for a quick holiday.

First off tomorrow, I need to meet with the head department professor to discuss with him about who would be best as my guarantor in Japan when I start working here.

Then on the afternoon, I’m going to the immigration with syazi and syaira to renew/extend our visa. At the moment, my alien card described me as a ‘collage student’. I’m trying to change that label into ‘engineer’.

That’s going to be so cool.

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Then this coming weekend, us senpais (seniors) are going to held a simple makan-makan party to commemorate our coming graduation. We called it 送別会 (soubetsukai).

Then after that, starting from monday next week, I have just 3 days to excel in my Japanese driving license’s test and finally get a damn Japanese driving license already!, before my flight to Malaysia this 19th of Feb.

I hope my plans went smooth.

as smooth as akiyama rina’s fine piece of an ass.

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Right now, I felt very weird to NOT have to think about my thesis.

It is a good, weird feeling.

I’m pretty happy at the moment.