Kyoto: Gold Temple and Leaves Changes

This is a Picture of the Golden Pavillion in Kyoto. I wanted to visit it for quite some time but I didn't have the time. It is one of the main buildings of this temple. It hasn't always been a temple. At the beginning, around the 1220, was a residence.

After the last owner died, he left in his will that his residence should become a temple Zen. It was only in 1994 that this place was inscribed in the World Cultural Heritage.

Not only the Temple, but all around it, there is a really nice garden with ponds and small waterfalls.

But the real reason why during the past two weekends a lot of Japanese are travelling around, is the Change of color of the Leaves. They are of various tones of Red.

I thought would be silly to just go out to watch leaves. But, is really different than Switzerland. In Switzerland we don't really have the change to see it. Probably due to the Rainy November that destroys the leaves quickly and makes them fall on the ground.

The only thing, is that in Japan, when there are this kind of events...a lot, really a lot of japanese travel around. Trains were full and Buses really crowded...

Exams, Exams, Exams!

This is a busy period. After taking the Java Programming Exam, This week on Thursday we had the Trial Test for the upcoming Exam of Japanese JLPT (Japanese Language Proficiency Test) that will be on December 6th.

This year I'm going to take level 3. Is not difficult, since I've been living in Japan for about 9 months and my attendance has been of 99.72%. Yes, you read right, we get the attendance recorded up to two decimals. The reason why was not 100% is that I got to school 7 times late (but always below 10 minutes) which translates in a lost hour every 4 times being late.

Even with my attendance nearly reaching 100% I have difficulties keeping up with my fellow classmates from China and Taiwan. Koreans Score quite high, too. I was surprised about it, until I found out that Kanji are Used in Korea too, in addition to their writing system. If you want to know more, here an article.

The reason I'm taking Level 3, is that for this level, only knowlege of 300 Kanjis is required. For Level 2, the kanji knowledge required, goes up to 1,000.

After the latest Test on December 6th, I will finally have some easy time until January...

Sun Java Programmer 6 Certified!

Today I did it. I passed the Offical Sun Microsystem Java Programmer 6 Certification! It hasn't been easy. I've been preparing for few months and during the past 4 weeks I've been going thru lines and lines of programming code and Practice Tests.

During the past week, I've been practicing daily for 5 or 6 hours. Even so, the test was really tough compared to Practice Exams.

At the same time, we had various tests at School in Japanese. I think the tougher thing for me is memorizing. Memorizing new vocabulary, grammar rules, Japanese Characters and their readings and on top of it rules and methods of the Java language.

Sometimes I have the feeling that I can only push 'that much' in my brain ;) ...

As I was quite brain-tired during the past few days, I've found that eating chocolate helped a lot. I've tried with Fruit Sugar, but it didn't help that much. Why Chocolate? no idea, but it was tasty and it worked ;)

Next step, the EJB 3.0 Certification, called SCBCD: Sun Java Business Component Developer 5...

Killer Caught !

The big news during the past week: They captured the prime suspect for the killing of Lindsay Hawker, a British girl that came to Japan a couple of years ago. The picture above, is the same person, even you could not tell at first. His name is Tatsuya Ichihashi .

There is an article with some informations on wikipedia , the family's website and a Blog with latest news on the subject.

The news is big because it involves a foreigner and few mistakes done by the police two years ago while trying to catch him. Since then, he run away, had a plastic surgery and moved elsewhere.

This until last week when he was finally arrested. The media coverage is huge on this. Probably because this small victory shed some good light on the dark shadow that covered the police department when he slipped away 2 years ago. (Some of the rumors says that the reason he could run away, was that the police had problems with Walkie Talkies while chasing him)...

If you have time, take a look to the JAPANTODAY website. You will be surprised about the quantity of news on murders and suicides.

Since we are talking about creepy stuff, here another little information. In Japan, the suicide Rate is quite high and this is known. What is less known is how they do it:

Mostly, they choose Normal Train instead of Subways, probably due to the fact that the speed of the train is higher in open areas than the one of the Subway (btw. subways are not only underground in japan).

When someone jumps in front of a train, things can get quite messy and all Train traffic is interrupted. For this reason, there is a fix rate for Suicides: about 300,000 USD. Yes, you read right. The Train Company will ask the family of the deceased to pay the bill...

So, not only the family has to bear the loss, pay a funeral that can cost up to 40,000 USD, but even get a huge bill for disturbing the daily commuting...

Life can be expensive in Japan, but Death... has its own price too.

At the Karaoke!

In Japan people is crazy about Karaoke. Whenever they have the chance, they go to Karaoke. Karaoke centers are quite modern and well organized. They have multiple floors and multiple room sizes, from the single room to rooms to host even 20 or 30 people. I'm not a big fun of karaoke as i'm really terrible at singing ;)

We were about 20 people and we got two rooms, one big and one small...

This is how the karaoke set looks like. They have thousands and thousands of songs in there, two microphones, two digital wireless pads to choose the songs and one Pad to read the song lyrics.

It was fun to see my classmates singing, and you can tell from the video above ;)

Cheese Chocolate!

The past week has been quite busy. Many Tests and a lot of topics to study. Besides Japanese, now I'm studying for the Java 6 Certification. Not difficult to understand, but there are many rules to remember. I needed something to boost me up...

Here it comes! The Hokkaido Cheese Chocolate!

On the back of the box it looks like is cheese wrapped with chocolate. Actually, I think they just added some cheese to the chocolate mix.

I didn't feel a particular strong cheese taste, but it smelled a little like cheese...

For the one of you thinking that is odd to mix cheese and sweets, you may want to try Parmesan Cheese and Honey. I tasted it few years back in Milan for the first time and it had quite an interesting taste :)

Give it a try!

The last mild days before winter...

Yesterday (saturday) was probably the last day with a mild weather. No Clouds, warm weather, really nice.

From today it started raining, and temperatures have been announced to get lower from next week.

I took these shots at Harborland near kobe station. The one at the bottom is an hotel!