Nhat V

Hey people from all around the world ! I got a lot of stories to tell, I hope you have some spare time !

how is it banging? Well I've just spent my first month in Tokyo. It's just so incredible!! I mean imagine having all the Swiss people in one huge city. Restaurants in every steets, sushis, yakitori, raamen shop... a Pachinko slot in every corner, game centers of 3 floors at last, people dressed like in a cartoon, (this is called cosplay for costume play), karaoke bars..It's seems like it would take pages to enumerate everything...

Many incredibles things happened during this month..but let me start with the internship which is the reason why I came to Tokyo.

The company :

It’s called Syngenta as some may know, they are mostly selling products for farmers like pesticides, fungicides and insecticides, well I'm not going to talk about the moral issues here but..let's just say this field is not my favourite...the good news is that I'm in the marketing department and the people are quite nice. Luckily for the first month I've been working with a French girl call Pia, she's really nice, she likes to party (usually until the morning) and drink (more that a lot)... Thanks to her the working time passes quite quickly. You'll see her in the photos section called (The longest night in Color Studio). Except her and my boss, all my other colleagues are Japanese, they all speak more or less English, sometimes I try to speak to them in Japanese but... I still need some practice though..

Another good is news it that the working ambiance is quite cool, I mean I hardly work overtime, It happened twice in a month and it was exceptional so really.. I felt really relieved not having to work like a Japanese. :)

My flat :

Well I think flat is a big word..let's call it a studio, all that I can is that say it's pretty small, 20m2, all furnished, I mean there were even a microwave, a vacuum cleaner, an iron, almost everything except the kitchen stuff. The latter was not a problem thanks to the 100yen. (shop where you can get basics stuff for 1chf an item..from fork, umbrellas, shampoo, plates, pens..I list is long..)

Hum oh yeah ..I got a washing machine, an air conditioner which is extremely useful in Tokyo, a balcony that I almost never enjoy, let me explain why... and that's the major problem of this flat. I'm living very close to a train station which is indeed very useful when I need to go around Tokyo but I'm leaving very close from the railways so it's quite noisy. I was quite shocked at the beginning but now I'm used to it. I can't really complain since I'm not paying the rent which is paid by the company. I'm living 30 minutes door to door from home to the office which is almost a luxury in Tokyo, some colleagues have to travel 2 hours to go to the office !! I mean... that's just crazy..imagine spending 4 hours a day in packed trains..that's not a life...

Going out in Tokyo

Definitely Tokyo is the place to be when it comes to clubs, like in London you can go out every day of the week. There are sooo many clubs, it’s just impossible to visit  all of them, fortunately I found a webpage that gathered information about the most popular ones and I’m focusing on them J.

So far I’ve been to Roppongi, it’s quite famous among the foreigners since there are so many of them..it’s not my favorite place, but there are many clubs, bars and people in the streets. There’s a big concentration of African people, mostly coming from Nigeria, I don’t really know the reason but I heard that lately the majority of the clubs in Roppongi are owned buy them.

The other place I’ve been is called Shibuya, now it’s a lot better, first of all there are not so many foreigners and there are a lot of hiphop clubs ! I’ve been to a place called Harlem and I got rejected the first time L cause I didn’t know I had to come with a girl..(this is the only club where this rule exists..) but as I heard It was really good I went back the week after with some friends (including girls) and that time we entered without any trouble.. it’s not a cool rule, but at least you can expect to see more girls than in other similar clubs.  The music was good, it was not packed so I was able to show them how people dance in Switzerland… (sorry to represent you guys haha) So far I’ve been out every weekend and it’s gonna go on and on…

Incredibles meetings

I have to tell this story cause it’s quite something unique. Thanks to facebook.com (for those who doesn’t know this website, let’s say it allows you to connect with you friends even forgotten ones by navigating though your friend’s friend lists.) I met  my man called Jean Francois Huertas, we were studying together when we were around 11. He’s gonna work in Tokyo for a year. So one day he told me a little about his different trips and stories. One was that he was victim of an accident in Tokyo and “thanks to it” received a lot of money from the guilty driver. With that money he took the train from China to Switzerland, it was a 7 months trip (lucky boy). Now get ready cause when I talked about this story to Pia, my French collegue. She told me she heard about it ! The reason was that both had gone to Kyoto for a university exchange and had a friend in common… I think it’s when you have to say..this world is little..

Not finished, for the Swiss national day, Jef (Jean Francois) and I went to the Swiss embassy, which happens to be 300 metres away from Jef’s apartment in Roppongi, we were quite surprised to meet so many Swiss people, we were talking to some Swiss from the French part, when suddenly I saw a guy who seemed really familiar… I couldn’t say from where I knew him..so I went to talk to him and I told him “hey I think I know you, I’m Nhat” “Nhat?!” Yeah it’s me” “we were studying together with Jef”, he was right I totally forgot about it. My excuse is that it had been 16 years since the last time I met him.. once again destiny or whatever it is brought us together !  I wonder who I’m gonna meet next that’s just so crazy..

Ok I’m gonna stop for today, it’s getting late. I just want to say I’m really happy to be here and I hope you’re all doing fine wherever you are. If someone wants to visit me in Tokyo, just send me an email and will talk about it !

Peace!