Friday, January 13, 2006
breakfast with Slav
for a few seconds this morning, i actually felt like Michael Palin. there i was, in an old restaurant with tired decor at 8am having been guided through the a famous fish market by some dude who wore a heavy coat and spoke with an accent Hollywood has made me stereotype to that of an arms dealer. { If there's one thing I know, it's never to mess with mother nature, mother in-laws and motherfreaking Ukrainians}. But Slav has Charisma. As i still can't stand either the texture or the taste of eggs, I ordered a bowl of somthing containing, amongst others, raw tuna and cooked crab. Slav moved here from New York a good few years back, and works as the only gaijin in a rather traditional japanese company. twice a day, in the morning and the evening, all the staff assemble for a group session where they all chant from a script exclaiming how they are going to be more productive, how they are going to sell more, and how determined they are to make a success. twice a day. the same script. everyone in the company. he expressed a degree of guilt towards sometimes skipping these prayer meetings, a trick that perhaps only he, being gaijin, can make excuses for. He agreed with the misconception surrounding the Japanese work ethic. 24by7 or more, but 24x7minutes of productivity per week. Lots of paper shuffling. He was thankful that there were no morning excercises to partake in. I left the restaurant in a good mood, walking to work. Somehow I managed to fall down in the most spectacularly cackhanded fashion, involving a moped, two bicycles and my ipod. I dont really understand what happened, but as I got up from the ground, people were staring. In Japan, it is rare to be stared at.
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