| Lost in Translation |
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| Written by Tripspot | |
| Monday, 04 February 2008 | |
 Following are excerpts from my travel diaries from my trip to Tokyo last week (names have been changed).
.jpg "Akihabara District") Akihabara District, Tokyo, Japan
Thank god Steve is here! Otherwise, I estimate that it would take me about a couple of hours to get lost and would only survive for 2 or 3 days without food. 8:00 pm. - There are three hotel staff people in my room trying to set Internet connectivity in my room. I actually fell sleep while they were working. I woke up every five minutes just to ask: “Is it ready??” And then I would go back to sleep without waiting for an answer. They gave up after an hour and a half.Monday. – They told me I had to bring a suit to work, so I decided to break the ice in my first meeting and bring a ninja suit that I rented in a costume shop. I don’t think that went very well. Japanese people don’t have a sense of humor. Akihabara District Tuesday. – I woke up at 5 in the morning, and decided to fix the Internet connectivity by myself: it worked! Afterwards I went running three miles thanks to Steve… I learned my first Japanese kanji today, unfortunately I can’t write them here since my computer doesn’t support them. My name sucks in kanji!!! We had dinner in what it seemed like an apartment complex. Afterwards, we went to the hard rock café. We went to a discount store, and they had a big fish tank with very exotic fish. I thought that was a nice, but when I was looking at the pictures of the fish with their name, I realized they all had a price. I wondered if I had any of those fish as sushi. Wednesday. - I can’t stand CNN anymore!!! I have watched the same news over and over for three hours now… That’s the only channel I can watch where I can at least understand a single thing they’re showing on TV. Every program they show in the other channels resemble Pokemon episodes (even soap operas) and I don’t even understand those in English. They also have a channel fully dedicated to detective shows from the 60’s (kung fu, the saint, etc). I woke up at 5:30 am today… five more days and I might be fully adapted to Japanese time, oh! And that’s also the time I have to leave Japan. Steve is a great translator! He can take a whole minute worth of speech and condense it in a couple of phrases. Example: Me: “Good morning, I’m pleased to be here today. I would like to talk today about the current state of our industry and the opportunities and challenges that we will have to face in the future”. Steve: “Ohayo gozaimasu”. Me: “I would like to take the opportunity to thank Mr. Kobayashi, who without his sincere efforts, this meeting would have not taken place and our efforts would not have been as focused as they are today”. Steve: “domo arigato gozaimasu”. Thursday: Woke up at 5:30 am again. At least I can read my email at business hours back home. I have a very important meeting with a very large Japanese bank today. I will bring my samurai suit this time to break the ice (they might like samurais better) To be continued…            |
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| Last Updated ( Monday, 04 February 2008 ) |
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