Welcome back

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It has been almost an year since I last posted something meaningful here. My only excuse is my own laziness. And at the end all it took was for me to completely migrate all of my domains, while screwing everything in the process. After several unsuccessful attempts to migrate my WordPress, I just decided to do a fresh install. Now everything is running nice and smoothly!

I want to promise my self that I will post more often, but I just don’t see it happening. But on the bright side, this means that I’m not an attention whore.

You see, when I first started this blog (before I came to Japan), I thought that I will supply some insight to people who are fascinated with Japan. But now I realize that this is IMPOSIBURU!
It will take all of my free time and some of my sleep time as well, to try and put into words everything that I have experienced since I came here. And even if I did it will still be impossible for people to understand it – you have to experience it yourself.

I am even considering to rename the blog to something that doesn’t contain “Japan”, since I wont stick around for much longer. But there is still time for that.

iPhone, iTunes & Why am iDoing this shit

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Wow it has been a while since I last wrote here, like 4 months or so. And it would have been another 4, if it wasn’t for my marvelous adventures in the world of where everything begins with a lowercase “i”.

So there I was, couple of days ago, minding my own business, when out of nowhere I got a text from my mobile carrier company (SoftBank … yeah!???). I was about to disregard and forget it forever as any other spam they send my way, however some cosmic force forced me to take a second glance. Reading in Japanese is not one of my strong points, but anyone that has studied kanji can tell you, that you don’t need to be able to read everything in order to get the main idea of a text. (also there was a lot of

Sensors stopped Shinkansen trains before quake

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“East Japan Railway says its Shinkansen bullet trains were able to put on their emergency brakes seconds before the March 11th earthquake, thanks to its early detection system.

JR East had 27 Shinkansen trains operating in northeastern Japan at the time of the quake, but all of them stopped without derailing.

The company had set up 9 seismographs along the Shinkansen tracks and the Pacific coast.

On the day of the quake, at 2:47 PM, a seismograph in Miyagi Prefecture 50 kilometers from the tracks detected ground acceleration of 120 gals, which is the benchmark for stopping train operations.

The early detection system automatically cut power to the trains. All of the trains then applied the emergency brakes to slow down.

The seismograph at Sendai Station recorded the biggest tremors. The railway operator found that the first tremor occurred 9 to 12 seconds after 2 trains near Sendai slammed on the brakes. The strongest tremor came one minute and 10 seconds later.

It’s not known at what speed the trains were moving when the biggest tremor hit, but they had apparently slowed down enough to avoid derailing

Tuesday, April 05, 2011″

Source: NHK

I just love how advance is the automation system of the shinkansen. They hardly have “drivers”, or more appropriate term will be “pilot“, the shinkansen is going to fast for any human to react in a case of danger. The operators’ job is just to supervise and look good in a uniform.

Anyway, this article convinced me that the shinkansen is safer than an airplane

Fukushima Nuclear Power Plant – What You Must Know About Radiation

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Update: March 22. I’m glad to say that the situation at Fukushima Daiichi is gradually improving. However I would like to turn your attention to this. Even though there is no (or very low) radioactive particles in the air, and as long as you don’t live in the 30 km quarantine zone, you can feel save to walk the streets. However if enough radioactive?particles?enter your systems, they may have long term effects and/or cause cancer.?Unfortunately I can’t give you any specific number, but the less exposure the better.
I myself will refrain from drinking tap water and fresh vegetables, fruits, fish and milk that are made in Japan. I will concentrate on frozen goods, cans, meat and?Chinese?vegetables, I will also take some Iodine rich food supplements?until?the radiation levels have returned back to normal.

Tokyo radiation levels ?hourly data.

Update: March 18 14:05. The radiation levels reported by NHK were WRONG. The latest value is 271

What Foreigners Think of Japanese Toilets

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This is what I thought when I first saw a Japanese toilet. At first I couldn’t accept that there are so many buttons just for washing your ass, so I came up with a more plausible application for all those controls.
For homework: write in the comments, what was YOUR first encounter with the Transformers Toilet.

Looking good

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I got my visa and airplane ticket reservation from the embassy of Japan.

The 20 (or something)?journey will start at 6:30 on 1st of April ?from Sofia and will end?at 10:00 in Chibu International.

The visa itself is very “fashionable”. It has my picture in monochrome, shaped in an?ellipse. ?It gave me the chills since this kind of?portrait is?usually used on gravestones (at least in Bulgaria).

But in contrast to that, in order to make it more?cheerful, there are several pink sakura flowers, one of them, as bigger than the picture itself.

I am sorry that I can’t scan it and paste it here (after?blurring almost every personal information and even more).

I am heading back to packing and hopefully my next post will be from Japan.

First !!!

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This is the first post of my new blog, which will be only in?English?and will follow my adventures in Japan. Since I haven’t arrived there yet, there will be not much to see here until April 2010.

The purpose of this blog is to both keep my?friends up to date and also to?educate people that are interested in Japan. When I started researching what was I to expect when I get to Japan, I found out that such blogs as mine are very?helpful and interesting. I have already added two such blogs under the “Blogroll” category.

The idea for the name “Ivan & Japanese people” came from a very old?Japanese?video lessons “Let’s Learn Japanese”, where the main story is titled “Yan And The Japanese People”. Another inspiration is Matt Harding, you can see his website for more info.

I’m running dry here and there isn’t more to say now, just hope to get some visitors in time. In the mean time keep checking the blog!