Typhoon & Earthquake

First two weeks in Japan and already both typhoon (not directly though) and earthquake have happened.

Last week, typhoon number 18 went past Japan. They count typhoons here with numbers instead of giving names for them since they come every year. So this typhoon was the 18th of this year.

The typhoon didn't directly hit Tokyo as it went through central Japan, but it rained almost for the whole week. I wore slippers for the whole time as I ruined one pair of (cheap) shoes on Sun 6th when it rained a lot. Or to be honest the shoes got soaked and let of color resulting my feet being black even after a wash.

Going to school on a rainy day. Shibuya station.

Where the typhoon went. 日 means day, weekday is in the brackets, 時 means time.

The cheap Japanese umbrellas are really nice. :D And actually our teacher said today in the class that the umbrellas are apparently becoming a popular souvenir from Japan. She didn't understood why, but I told that in my opinion they are: cheap (~500yen from konbini), useful (you can see through, so even strong wind wouldn't be a problem), somewhat strong (more than you would expect from a cheap one. I want to take one home to Finland as well haha. :D

Then on 13th Saturday morning 5:49 am, the first earthquake came. The epicenter was at the Tokyo Bay and the intensity was 5.3. At our place it was either 4 or 5 in intensity based on the map (it doesn't have any names on it so I'm not sure which measurement point is closest to our place).

At first I didn't even understand what's going on, I was too sleepy. I though my neighbor is washing laundry (and that it's on the fast spinning mode "sling?", "linkous" in Finnish) in the next room and I was like "what the hell, why do you do it in the middle of the night". Then I realized that a) we don't have washing machines in the rooms, b) the walls are moving. But I didn't even bother getting out of the bed as I just looked up and declared that ok, nothing's going to fall on me and just continued sleeping. I can't remember it clearly as I was so sleepy, but the following picture gives some proof that it actually happened.

My laundry money pile was straight in the evening.

We also learned in our first Japanese culture/history/business/etc. lecture about an app (Yurekuru) that warns about the earthquakes about 10 or 15 seconds before it happens. My Samsung S2 has too old Android so I can't download it. More more reason to get a new phone. Many of the Vulcanus people woke up because of the app, I woke on the quake itself... and some people didn't wake at all. They seem to have good skills on sleeping. :D

First days in Tokyo

First week is behind and it's been a busy one.

Tokyo is... hot and humid. Though not as hot as it could have been (for example only +26'C at the most during the day predicted by the forecast for the first day). And yesterday is was raining cats and dogs (="satoi kuin saavista kaatamalla" in Finnish) and more rain is predicted for this week especially for tomorrow and Wednesday. Yay....

I left for Japan on Mon 31st from Helsinki with a straight Finnair flight and arrived Tokyo Tue 1st Sep around 9am. I can never really sleep on the plain so I practiced the Japanese way of sleeping in the train on the way to our hotel. I didn't fall asleep, but the Japanese seem to do so almost instantly. (For those who don't know, Japanese people might have really long commuting to their work or school and thus they tend to sleep on the trains.) We took the cheapest train from Narita Airport to Ikebukuro, so it took us almost 2 hours to reach the hotel.

The view from the hotel room in Ikebukuro.

All of us (all 45 people) spend the first night at the same hotel and on the next day we had orientation at Omotesando. After a super brief orientation we waited for our company representatives who took us to our dorms which for us is located at Takadanobaba. Our place is so really nice: we had everything needed ready for us and the place is relatively close to the school as well as Shinjuku. Shinjuku is one of the busiest areas in Tokyo with the busiest train station in world. Wikipedia tells that "The station was used by an average of 3.64 million people per day in 2007".

Not-so-busy Shinjuku in the early afternoon.

Besides the orientationDuring the first days we had to do registration to the city hall which is in Shinjuku, get National Health Insurance required for people staying for more than 6 months, open a bank account and get a sim card for phone. All of these went pretty smoothly. There's another post coming up soon with more detailed information about all of these (aimed for the next Vulcanus students).

Some photos of one evening in Shinjuku:

A smaller street in Shinjuku.

The Godzilla is always watching you...

On Thursday we had more orientation and in the evening the official reception of the Vulcanus programme at the Sheraton Miyako Hotel. The dress code was business as there were people from embassies and the companies present. There was no-one from the Finnish embassy, but I met a person who is going to work in the same team as me in Hitachi. My feet hurt so much as we had to stand for the whole reception and I wore heels 12 hours during that day.

The venue

Loppukevennys:

A shop named Kiitos with a Swedish flag even though Kiitos means "thank you" in Finnish...

Brussels meeting

The Pre-departure brief (PDB) for the Vulcanus programme was held on Monday 6th of July in Brussels. Most of the participants arrived on Sunday, couple of people earlier. We all stayed in the same hotel so we had a good opportunity to meet and get to know each other already before the meeting. 45 people is quite a lot people to get to know in a couple of days, but I'm sure we'll have enough time while in Japan. On the first meeting everyone seems nice and laid back and I'm sure we'll get along well. :)

I arrived to Brussels around midday on Saturday and got lunch with the people who had already arrived. We later walked to the city center to see to see the Grand Place (and Manneken Pis, because it was nearby). Brussels is quite small and there's not that much to see. We actually went to the Grand Place or nearby many times during the three days I was there.

Grand Place square

Manneken Pis, one of the most famous sights of Brussels...

Belgium is famous for it's chocolate, which I bought as a souvenir, but also for waffles. I learned that there are actually a couple of types of Belgian waffles, Brussels waffle and Liege waffle. I got waffles twice while in Brussels and both times the Liege waffle as it seems tastier and softer. Delicious!

Liege waffle with chocolate ice cream from Waffle Factory. The other was a Liege waffle with warm chocolate and hazelnuts from Maison Dandoy.

On Monday we had the long awaited meeting. We went through a lot of info about our arrivals to Tokyo, how to get to the hotel and to the meeting, we got the schedule for autumn, personal information about our internship and dormitories, the COE form etc. Most of us got all information, but there are still some who are waiting for their dormitory addresses for example. The COE form is needed for the visa application and I already got my visa yesterday from the Japanese Embassy of Helsinki. They made it ready while I waited for max. 10 minutes.

The most interesting info (for me) that I got: Where I will be living:

We got detailed information (address etc.) about the apartment, but I don't want to tell all that here. So you have to be satisfied with the following info. :)

My Tokyo apartment will be in Takadanobaba. The train trip to school with Yamanote line (apparently the busiest line in Tokyo) takes only 12 minutes. That means my travel time to school is only 0,5h which a really good time considering that some people on the programme have to commute even up to 1,5h per direction to the school. There will be at least 6 other Vulcanusians living there with me and we'll all have our own room.

My Hitachi apartment will be located 8km from my work. I'm considering getting a bike since taking the train doesn't seem the best option (have to walk 3,5km anyway). Might take the train on the snowy and rainy days though. We'll see, there's still a lot of time until I'll get to Hitachi. In Hitachi at least two Vulcanusians are going to live in the same dorm with me. Again it's a single room.

Both of these apartments are well equipped (see below data for my Tokyo apartment), I have internet provided for Tokyo (for Hitachi I apparently have to get it myself) and I don't have to pay for electricity, gas or water. Some people might have to pay for their electricity, or they might not have a bed or desk or they might have a shared kitchen or bathroom (and in at least one company dorm there seems to be no kitchen in the whole building...). So I'm super happy with my apartments thus far. :)

My Hitachi apartment has the same things except there's no telephone, but the apartment is 24m2 and I have a private washing machine.

At the end of the meeting we took a short test of Japanese. Those who couldn't finish the hiragana and katakana sheets are required to study them before coming to Japan. As for others who knew more Japanese, we are going to have max 30 minutes conversation with a Naganuma School teacher to determine our speaking and conversation level. Mine will be on Wed 22nd 9am Finnish time which equals to 3pm in Japan. Wish me luck!

My flight back was on Tuesday afternoon, so I had 24h left in Brussels after the meeting. For the rest of my stay I walked around the city, ate something not that special (+waffles and nice hotel breakfast) and drank some beer, all these with some other Vulcanusians. Belgium has some interesting beers as they also had a raspberry one (with 30% of raspberry juice). After that I wanted to get a real beer, even though I usually rarely drink beer.

I left my DSLR at home on purpose, so all of my photos are taken with my phone which usually doesn't take any good photos. This seems way better than usually though.

Nice trip, nice people and nice waffles. Next time most of the Vulcanus team sees each other will be in Japan. It still feels so far away even though I have less than 2 months left in Finland. Better to eat more rye bread and karelian pies.

First things first

Hello and welcome my blog! :)

If you are reading this, you'll probably know or noticed that I'm going to Japan for a year. And you'll probably know that I'm Kata from Finland.

A short story if you are too lazy to check this and this:
I'm a freshly graduated Master of Science (Technology) majoring in Electrical Systems. (Power Systems and High Voltage Engineering to be exact.) I'm going to Japan for a year on "Vulcanus in Japan" programme starting this September. We'll spend four months in Tokyo on a Japanese language course and after that we'll have an eight-month internship in a company. I'm going to work at Hitachi Research Lab in Hitachinaka Hitachi, 2 hours north from Tokyo.

We still have two whole months before landing to Tokyo on September 1st, but since we will soon have the Pre-Departure Brief (PDB) of the Vulcanus programme in Brussels I decided to create this blog already.

In this Brussels meeting we get a lot of info which I assume contains for example the details of our accommodation in Tokyo as well as the files for applying for the visa.

This will also be the first time to meet the other Vulcanus participants. There are at least 44 of us this year, though not all rows in our Vulcanus Google Docs file are filled so it might be that we have the maximum 50 participants this year as the last person selected seems to have the number 50. We'll see how it is in Brussels. Some Vulcanus statistics for '15-'16 can be found here.

Exactly one week to the meeting and weather forecast looks like this:


A nice +30°C for wearing business casual... Good thing the dress code isn't business.

Anyway, I'm excited to go to Brussels, have some more info and meet people. Of course I'm also excited to eat some Belgian waffles and chocolate as well as those super delicious macarons of Ladurée (I thought I hated macarons before I tasted ones from this shop).

I'll write more after the meeting. :)