Picking up the pieces: Final Reporting Session at the EU-Japan Centre for Industrial Cooperation (26-08-10))

So here it is. The D-Day I thought would never come is finally knocking on the door...

Even before the show started, the day already looked like a tough one: the previous night I went with Hajime and Chun to Oedo Onsen in Daiba (there'll be a post somewhere about that too), and I managed to reach my house at 3am. True, the speech for the presentation was already written and checked (Thanks Hajime!), but the physical presentation didn't exist, hehehehehe... So I had to spend a couple of hours selecting pictures and videos for the final show... leaving me with something like 3h-4h of sleep for one of the longest (emotionally speaking) days of the program. Woke up at 7am, walk around in a winter suit with 30 degrees C and 70% of humidity, run back and forth from the station to my house a couple of times to pick up forgotten stuff...a typical morning to Hanzomon :)

Then, at 9am, lights out, and up and with the courtain. One by one, each of us (Vulcanus) would stand up and share with our fellows, the Centre, and the representatives of the hosting companies his/her year in Japan. Again, no surprises here: when Willy had to talk, he started to cry like a baby (sigh...). And the thing continued in Monika's and Davide's presentation, with also sporadic storms in Kuba's and David's (Davids' one is so good I attach it here. The music was composed by him). I must say, reviewing this whole year through the eyes of the other Vulcanus was a hard experience. It's not the first time that I say this, but even now it's difficult for me to describe my Vulcanus year with positive or negative adjectives: there's been so many things going on, the personal experience has been so big, so full, so complex, that it is going to take me a while to assimilate and understand all of the things which took place there.

(Remember the post about the guy who spent 1,5 million yens in 48 hours with the mobile phone? Here's your man...and the mobile phone bill!!)

But I'm diverting from the main topic here. So, to sum up, everyone of us brought her or his own Japan to the meeting. Wether the talk was only about work, or about his traveling, or a mixture of both, every participant gave his own personal stroke to the whole Vulcanus painting. I'm not going to get into details, but there was this one "presentation" (more of a failed attempt to make a round table) which I found simplistic and completely unfair towards the Japanese. The controversy of its topic was such that, in order to be fair enough with the topic of discussion, the speaker should have taken a much more mature approach. Instead, for the last time, the gaijin card was played, and the speaker preferred to take the role of European conquistador who looks above the poor and uncivilized aborigines (a.k.a. , all the non-Western cultures). Though I could have agreed to some extent with part of its discourse, the way in which the topic was treated, as well as the way it was presented forces me to be against such opinions. Plus, I also think it was very inappropriate and rude to talk about such topics in front of the Japanese representatives of the host companies. The attendants expected to hear about Vulcanus in Japan, not about old clichés from the Japanese culture.

Differences appart, the presentations were followed after by the cocktail party, with plenty of food and drinks, and of course, speeches (Japanese love speeches way too much for me). And, in order to keep the tradition and close the circle, the whole ceremony could only finish with a splash of music and lights such as the ones of A-Life...

I wish everybody a happy trip back home Vulcanus! You guys know how to make time worth...

The last supper (?)... with Hajime and Chun (27-08-10)

For the last bang in Machida, I wanted to try one of the last Japanese culinary frontiers which were left to me...Fugu!

Now, I couldn't find the occasion to go for a Kobe beef restaurant (shame on me, I know...), but I wouldn't be leaving Japan without trying their flagship fish. Fugu (河豚, フグ, or pufferfish) can only be eaten in Japan (as far as I'm aware of). Its meat is reputed to be among the tastiest and most delicious, at least for the Japanese. Unfortunately, there is this poison-related problem: Fugu fish has some glands whose poison ranks very high in Mr.Death's Wish List (just below listening to Britney Spears for 30mins.). You need a special license AND specific training in order to become a fugu chef and open a fugu restaurant.

It's fairly easy to convince Japanese people to go eat fugu. Yes, it's expensive (menu prices start around 4.000¥ or so), but considering how much they like it (and also the fact that it was really my last going out, I will not be seeing Hajime after that), it doesn't let that much of space for them to say no. The same goes for Chun, the Malasyan intern who had never tried fugu before, hehehehe... So the three of us headed for the fugu restaurant in Machida, with 300¥ discount tickets -Yuhu!- (even though it doesn't account for much, considering the price of the meal...)

The reccomended menu consisted in five main dishes containing fugu: a fugu-skin appetizer, fugu sashimi, fugu tempura, fugu BBQ, and fugu rice. Overall, the experience was interesting. Specially the fugu tempura and the fugu BBQ, where you could really feel how tasty is fugu's meat. Moreover, with the BBQ slices you could see that the fish was really fresh, since its flesh was still moving when they served it on the table (check out the vid!)



It's not the first time I get to eat moving food, but not being able to actually recognize where each piece of meat belonged to made me feel like staring at a living (?) cubist sculpture...

The skin's texture was OK, but its flavor is so subtle it's kind of complicated to figure out its taste.

All in all, I enjoyed the meal pretty much. All these "last things" that I've been doing for the last week have wore me down a bit. this supper, of course, was no exception...But on the other hand, who can cry when Chun and Hajime are both around?


Thank you guys for these past months...and the Fugu!

On the way back home...home?

It's been a long time since the last entry. Way too long. Many people have come, many have left. So many things have happened... And now, while I'm waiting to take the plane to Rome, I have suddenly felt this need, this urge to grab a pen and spill it all out. This year cannot fade away, I say to myself. It cannot become just one more year among a crowd of nameless years, undistinguished. It will not be fair. I'm already starting to feel the unreality of it, as if it had not been more than an unusually long dream, fading away as the sun rises... Just like a big parenthesis in my life, a bubble of feelings which seem to have never taken place in real life.

So, once again, I raise my pen. Against oblivion, against time. This year should always stay alive, somewhere...

Come with me Toto, it's time to move on again. Let's pay homage this wonderful dream called Vulcanus in Japan 09-10, and to all the people who took place in it...