My top 5 favourite Japanese sounds

1. Number one is unbeatable and hard to miss. It comes in as many varieties as there are Japanese. What I’m talking about is the [ääääääh]-sound, a conversation filler like [uhmm, aha] and the like. It’s at its best when exclaimed after someone has said something surprising and especially when it comes from a girl – then the [ääääääh] can be very high pitched. (To continue my course in Swedish sounds for you English speakers, ä sounds like the vocals in hair. Or at least it was the best I could come up with right know, anyone who has a better suggestion?)

2. The sound lorries make when they reverse and turn. It’s the voice of a girl and I guess she’s saying something like “sorry for being in the way and please watch out”, together with an extremely silly beeping sound. Ambulances also have the same type of sound, saying they’re sorry that they’re in the way. Maybe it’s inappropriate to say it’s hilarious, but it really is. Hearing this sound always puts a smile on my face.

3. The drunken, mumbly sound bus drivers make once in a while. It sound like: [Hasch, hasch… maschimasch… haschi, haschi… maschi]. I don’t have a clue what it means, but I sure like it.

4. A Japanese conversation, and especially when someone is explaining something to someone else. I like the rhythm of the language. I just wish I could understand it.

5. The ear-piercing sound you hear when entering a pachinko parlour (a pachinko resembles an upright pinball game and the parlours are filled with rows of them, and usually they also have a wide variety of video games). The sound is unbelievable, it’s loud and it’s chaotic and I can’t believe people spend hours in there. I wonder if there are any studies of the risk of developing tinnitus in a pachinko parlour?

The boss’s new gadgets

At work it feels a bit like the three of us “interns” are considered to be the company’s latest investment. We are the gadgets that the boss likes to show off with. But I’m not the one complaining, being one of the exotic Swedes I got to shake hands with a Noble price winner!

Dr. Shirakawa won the Noble price in chemistry in year 2000 for his discovery and development of conducting polymers. Last week he was visiting the company for a demonstration of their solar cells. He had been involved in developing one part of it. We were asked to join, and the explanation I was given was that he wanted to see us (or maybe, just maybe, it was the way I interpreted it). When the demonstration was finished we were presented as “our new interns from Sweden, who really wanted to meet you”. We bowed and said our [Hadjememachtee] (a polite way of saying hello) and then photos were taken and hands shaken and I was smiling big times. It was fun. He looked like such a sweet old man and he said it was an honour to meet us. Not too bad, ehh?

We’ve also had lunch with the boss himself, who is the holder of the Guinness world record of number of patents, and the chairman of the board. Nice, but formal occasions.

But there are also downsides of being the ones that everyone has to see. Once a month they have an in house conference and on the last occasion we were asked, 5 min prior, to stand in front of everybody in the conference room and present ourselves. Inside was all employees including all the members of the board, all in all between 600 and 700 people! I was so nervous I thought I was going to faint and I couldn’t hold the microphone fixed in front of me because my hands were shaking too much. But luckily it was a quick presentation. The backwash of the hole thing was that lunch was straight afterwards and I can assure you that it’s completely impossible to eat with chopsticks when your hands are still shaking from the adrenalin chock.

This week they had us listening to a lecture about electron spin resonance for 3.5 hours – all in Japanese! I couldn’t see the importance of that one. And just a 10 min break, without any fika (Swedish cake and coffee brake)! Well ok, I learnt one thing. With this analysis method they have concluded that as the price of tea (of course green) and instant coffee increase, the amount of free radicals decrease, thus expensive tea is more healthy than cheap. Very valuable knowledge.

I’ve finally uploaded some photos. As soon as I have some new photos I will upload them, so you just have to check out the photoalbum once in a while if you don’t want to miss out.

A day by the riverside

Sunday was a beautiful warm and sunny day, a typical Swedish summers day. We were invited to barbecue with the tennis team by the river. We weren’t the only ones doing this, many others had set up their barbecues and laid out their plastic mats and chairs and were enjoying it as much as we were. Some people were in the water fishing for their dinner.

The tennis team had done the grocery shopping, and they were packing up one thing after the other. We started cutting everything in nice little pieces and as the coal was warn enough we started barbecuing and then eating with the chopsticks straight from the grill. A very smart way to do it as everything will stay warm. We kept on eating for nearly 3 hours! Just small munches at a time, but it felt like the food supply was endless. The strangest thing they barbecued was something they called hormones, I think it was some sort of glands from pigs, yuck!

As I though we had finished it all, they started doing veggie yaki-soba, fried noodles:

All in all, I had a very nice and filling day in the sun!

About being an alien

Yes, I do feel like an alien sometimes. Like when it takes me 20 minutes to figure out which bottle is fabric softener and which is liquid washing powder in the shop. Or when I thought one of the guys in the football team wanted to shake hands with me and present himself, as he came crouching towards me with one hand reached out in front of himself. But in fact, he was only showing in a very Japanese way that he wanted to get through to pick up his water bottle, without bothering anybody on the way. And there I was, with a stupid hand reached out in mid air. Or when I time after other step over the slippers in random doorways that I think belong to someone else and hear voices behind me saying “no, no, wait, stop”, and as I turn around I realise I’ve missed yet another pair of slippers I’m supposed to wear to the toilet, or wherever I’m heading to.

But it’s okey. At least I have the certificate now, being registered as an alien: