Well... it starts at 666 USD per month... (2500 DH/month)
I say that's not too bad... coming from a person who lives in Dubai, that is!
Take a look at the photos for yourself for floors layouts and prices.
Sunday, 1 November 2009
Rentals in Tokyo, Japan
I know many of you out there (especially students) are wondering what is the rents for a small house in Japan?
Well... it starts at 666 USD per month... (2500 DH/month)
I say that's not too bad... coming from a person who lives in Dubai, that is!
Take a look at the photos for yourself for floors layouts and prices.
Well... it starts at 666 USD per month... (2500 DH/month)
I say that's not too bad... coming from a person who lives in Dubai, that is!
Take a look at the photos for yourself for floors layouts and prices.
Wednesday, 14 October 2009
More about Recycling in Japan
I saw some artworks of Recycled goods in Japan.
For a country with no natural resources, recycling become something more than vital!
Enjoy!
One thing I'd like to note there is that this art was displayed inside a mall in Japan... something I think is unique... I am not sure if they do stuff like this in other countries (although something tells me they do this in Europe?) Correct me if I am wrong
For a country with no natural resources, recycling become something more than vital!
Enjoy!
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
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| From Recycled Art in Tokyo, Japan |
One thing I'd like to note there is that this art was displayed inside a mall in Japan... something I think is unique... I am not sure if they do stuff like this in other countries (although something tells me they do this in Europe?) Correct me if I am wrong
Monday, 12 October 2009
Laws and Regulations in Japan -- Recycling in Japan Begins at Home
Well, this was something I wanted to write about in a long time ago.
Coming from a country in which Recycling is something you do if you're a little extra committed. Like being sportive, or a vegetarian or a charity worker.
Which means, it's something good, people know about it, but of something you wouldn't walk out of your way to do.
Which also mean, no one will frown upon you if mix your plastics and your papers, or your PET Bottles.
In Japan, however, that's a very different story!
In Japan, if you don't go by the rules, you can bet that someone will let you know soon enough... like everything, this country FORCES you to become civilized. No one questions the rules, if it's a rule, then that's good enough for them, no one would try to apply their personnel judgment at all... unlike in other places, in which people evaluate the laws, regulations and rules against their personnel beliefs and only abide by the given rule or law if it happens to be aligned with them and they are "convinced" by them.
Which explains why many people would break a rule or the law, especially if no one is looking.
In Arab countries in general, breaking a rule is a measure of importance, people would be "proud" if they break a given law or a rule, since it means that they are "above" this rule or law.
In Syria, where I come from, people who break the rules are often refered to as "clever" and "street smart" and "survivors" and those who humbly obey the law or role are referred to as "simple" or "unclever" and "naive"... And if you would point out to someone who is breaking a rule, for example, throwing garbage in the streets... then you're practically asking for trouble... since the automatic answer would be "it's NONE of your business"
In Japan, it is the other way around... if you break a rule means that everyone is "Licensed to Frown Upon You!"
Try it, ride your bicycle in a crowded street and people will give you polite gestures not to use your bicycle... some people might even bump you in the shoulder intentionally (yes... I had to try it out myself ^_^)
It is not easy to see a Japanese angry as hell... the only time I saw a Japanese getting angry ... (and I mean, realllly angry) is when someone breaks a rule "in-your-face" and with no remorse or intention to apologize.
This was the single "culture shock" which I have personally experienced in my two (2) visits to Japan so far. People take role a little bit too seriously in Japan! Very, very seriously.
Maybe I think the Japanese hate their own politicians... because their politics career is filled by deception and lying...
Ok, so back to Recycling...
I want to show you how you recycle a PET bottle in your house in Japan... which is in the given example, a bottle of Iced Green Tea
1) You drain the bottle in the sink, and raise it with water.
2) Next, you have to "strip" the bottle, Find the striated part of the plastic (as shown in red arrow in the picture). Every plastic bottle in Japan has this striated part so that it would be easy for people to do this step.
3) Remove the plastic top cover and the plastic wrappings, you will have to dispose of each one these separately (yep... separately!)
4) As shown, each of the three parts of your PET bottle is disposed separately:
a)The Bottle Top
b) The PET Bottle itself
c) And the plastic wrapping, which can be thrown with the rest of the plastic (and paper) garbage.
My host family did have a seperate one for papers and another for plastic... although something tells me they do inspect their garbage before taking it to the garbage man.If you don't do the above steps, chances are that the garbage man will refuse to take your garbage bags from the road side and simply let them there... there is a possiblity of being stumped with a fine if you were cought "not recycling"... reminds me of the days when no one used to fasten their seat belts in the arabic countries, and it was compuslary in the western world... give it 10 more years and recycling will become mandatory everywhere, just as seat belts now... ^_^
P.S. for those interested in further readings about recycling in Japan, please visit Wikipedia here
Coming from a country in which Recycling is something you do if you're a little extra committed. Like being sportive, or a vegetarian or a charity worker.
Which means, it's something good, people know about it, but of something you wouldn't walk out of your way to do.
Which also mean, no one will frown upon you if mix your plastics and your papers, or your PET Bottles.
In Japan, however, that's a very different story!
In Japan, if you don't go by the rules, you can bet that someone will let you know soon enough... like everything, this country FORCES you to become civilized. No one questions the rules, if it's a rule, then that's good enough for them, no one would try to apply their personnel judgment at all... unlike in other places, in which people evaluate the laws, regulations and rules against their personnel beliefs and only abide by the given rule or law if it happens to be aligned with them and they are "convinced" by them.
Which explains why many people would break a rule or the law, especially if no one is looking.
In Arab countries in general, breaking a rule is a measure of importance, people would be "proud" if they break a given law or a rule, since it means that they are "above" this rule or law.
In Syria, where I come from, people who break the rules are often refered to as "clever" and "street smart" and "survivors" and those who humbly obey the law or role are referred to as "simple" or "unclever" and "naive"... And if you would point out to someone who is breaking a rule, for example, throwing garbage in the streets... then you're practically asking for trouble... since the automatic answer would be "it's NONE of your business"
In Japan, it is the other way around... if you break a rule means that everyone is "Licensed to Frown Upon You!"
Try it, ride your bicycle in a crowded street and people will give you polite gestures not to use your bicycle... some people might even bump you in the shoulder intentionally (yes... I had to try it out myself ^_^)
It is not easy to see a Japanese angry as hell... the only time I saw a Japanese getting angry ... (and I mean, realllly angry) is when someone breaks a rule "in-your-face" and with no remorse or intention to apologize.
This was the single "culture shock" which I have personally experienced in my two (2) visits to Japan so far. People take role a little bit too seriously in Japan! Very, very seriously.
Maybe I think the Japanese hate their own politicians... because their politics career is filled by deception and lying...
Ok, so back to Recycling...
I want to show you how you recycle a PET bottle in your house in Japan... which is in the given example, a bottle of Iced Green Tea
1) You drain the bottle in the sink, and raise it with water.
2) Next, you have to "strip" the bottle, Find the striated part of the plastic (as shown in red arrow in the picture). Every plastic bottle in Japan has this striated part so that it would be easy for people to do this step.
3) Remove the plastic top cover and the plastic wrappings, you will have to dispose of each one these separately (yep... separately!)
4) As shown, each of the three parts of your PET bottle is disposed separately:
a)The Bottle Top
b) The PET Bottle itself
c) And the plastic wrapping, which can be thrown with the rest of the plastic (and paper) garbage.
My host family did have a seperate one for papers and another for plastic... although something tells me they do inspect their garbage before taking it to the garbage man.If you don't do the above steps, chances are that the garbage man will refuse to take your garbage bags from the road side and simply let them there... there is a possiblity of being stumped with a fine if you were cought "not recycling"... reminds me of the days when no one used to fasten their seat belts in the arabic countries, and it was compuslary in the western world... give it 10 more years and recycling will become mandatory everywhere, just as seat belts now... ^_^
P.S. for those interested in further readings about recycling in Japan, please visit Wikipedia here
Sunday, 20 September 2009
Eid in Japan
Well, since I decided to spend Eid holidy in Japan, I thought it would be a nice idea to witness Eid Al-Fitar in Japan.
Well… what I have seen wasn’t exactly what I expected.
It turned out that my Okasan (mother) has hosted an international student from Saudi Arabia before. And she knows were is the best mosque in Tokyo to attend Eid. It was located in the Oyama-cho, Shibuya-ku area in Tokyo. You can find the homepage of the mosque here
I looked it up on the internet. The mosque was also dubbed “the Turkish Mosque” to differentiate it from another mosque nearby, called the “Saudi Mosque”, which was quite different in attitude and style.
For example, for me a Syrian, the Turkish mosque was quite familiar. The Arabic calligraphy, the architecture of the mosque were all too similar to Syrian mosques. I was told by a Syrian friend whom I made in the mosque, that the Saudi mosque used a plain design, and has a rather strict policy when it came to men/women separation. Having lived in Saudi Arabia for 18 years as a child and a teenager, I would understand that Saudis interpretation of Islam would dominate even outside Saudi Arabia.
Anyways, the experience was interesting, since I took my host mother (Okasan) and Japanese friend to Eid Al-Fitar. We woke up at 5:00am and we got ready to go by 6:00am. We arrived to the mosque at 7:00am, and, to our surprise, it was empty! I thought we must have surely missed the prayer. But I wondered, where are all the people?
It turned out that in Japan, they intentionally delay the prayer until 8:30am since people need to come to the mosque from remote areas in Tokyo. (I found that quite interesting since in Islam the Eid Prayer should be done around Al-Fajir prayer (which is around 5:00 till 6:00am)
During the time it took us to realize this, I was able to make friends with a Syrian guy who also found it strange that no one was there at 7am. But when the Imam arrived at 7:15am we were told on the new time. He is a medical student in Tokyo university specializing in Cancer treatment. We became friends almost instantly afterwards. We sat together during the Eid speech (which is, unlike the Jumaa Prayer, is done after the prayer.)
Before the prayer started, I saw a Japanese guy who looked Muslim for me, he was one of the Imams in the mosque. He speaks fluent Traditional Arabic. I asked him “How many years have you been a Muslim?” and he answered by saying that he was “2 years Muslim” and he only studied Arabic for 2 years, and he (for my surprise) never visited an Arabic country. He learnt Arabic purely in the Saudi embassy Arabic language courses. Interesting, right?
And I cannot learn Japanese away from Japan??? I’ll show these guys! I’ll be very fluent in Japanese once I am back from Dubai next year!
The thing I noticed the most was the relaxed atmosphere of the mosque when it came to women/men segregation. Ok, so there was a sign saying “women prayer place”, which made me hesitant to follow by female friends in. but I found many men inside that area. Which I found that they are sharing the area with them, due to the limited area upstairs.
Another interesting thing was the presence of many non-muslim people, ladies and gentlemen (of course, being a man, I noticed mostly the ladies ;-) I even noticed some Japanese highschool girls writing down some notes (presumably for a report?)
I was impressed by how my host mom and my Japanese friend were very open about the prayer. They sat on the floor with the other ladies and they listened to the Khutbah (the sermon). They noticed the presence of many Muslims from Africa. Many of which were wearing their native countries’ custom. We even saw an Afghani man with a very long mustache. He invited us to take a picture with him.
Over all, it was a wonderful experience. The Imam (the priest) give everyone the instructions on how to do the prayer in Japanese. The prayer was as we all know it, in Arabic (of course). However, the Khutbah part was quite interesting… He delivered the speech in Japanese first (it was a 10 min speech), then in Turkish, and finally English.
I guess there were so few Arabic people that they didn’t feel there is enough audience to deliver it in Arabic? (or they thought that all Arabs are fluent in English!)
Well… what I have seen wasn’t exactly what I expected.
It turned out that my Okasan (mother) has hosted an international student from Saudi Arabia before. And she knows were is the best mosque in Tokyo to attend Eid. It was located in the Oyama-cho, Shibuya-ku area in Tokyo. You can find the homepage of the mosque here
I looked it up on the internet. The mosque was also dubbed “the Turkish Mosque” to differentiate it from another mosque nearby, called the “Saudi Mosque”, which was quite different in attitude and style.
For example, for me a Syrian, the Turkish mosque was quite familiar. The Arabic calligraphy, the architecture of the mosque were all too similar to Syrian mosques. I was told by a Syrian friend whom I made in the mosque, that the Saudi mosque used a plain design, and has a rather strict policy when it came to men/women separation. Having lived in Saudi Arabia for 18 years as a child and a teenager, I would understand that Saudis interpretation of Islam would dominate even outside Saudi Arabia.
Anyways, the experience was interesting, since I took my host mother (Okasan) and Japanese friend to Eid Al-Fitar. We woke up at 5:00am and we got ready to go by 6:00am. We arrived to the mosque at 7:00am, and, to our surprise, it was empty! I thought we must have surely missed the prayer. But I wondered, where are all the people?
It turned out that in Japan, they intentionally delay the prayer until 8:30am since people need to come to the mosque from remote areas in Tokyo. (I found that quite interesting since in Islam the Eid Prayer should be done around Al-Fajir prayer (which is around 5:00 till 6:00am)
During the time it took us to realize this, I was able to make friends with a Syrian guy who also found it strange that no one was there at 7am. But when the Imam arrived at 7:15am we were told on the new time. He is a medical student in Tokyo university specializing in Cancer treatment. We became friends almost instantly afterwards. We sat together during the Eid speech (which is, unlike the Jumaa Prayer, is done after the prayer.)
Before the prayer started, I saw a Japanese guy who looked Muslim for me, he was one of the Imams in the mosque. He speaks fluent Traditional Arabic. I asked him “How many years have you been a Muslim?” and he answered by saying that he was “2 years Muslim” and he only studied Arabic for 2 years, and he (for my surprise) never visited an Arabic country. He learnt Arabic purely in the Saudi embassy Arabic language courses. Interesting, right?
And I cannot learn Japanese away from Japan??? I’ll show these guys! I’ll be very fluent in Japanese once I am back from Dubai next year!
The thing I noticed the most was the relaxed atmosphere of the mosque when it came to women/men segregation. Ok, so there was a sign saying “women prayer place”, which made me hesitant to follow by female friends in. but I found many men inside that area. Which I found that they are sharing the area with them, due to the limited area upstairs.
Another interesting thing was the presence of many non-muslim people, ladies and gentlemen (of course, being a man, I noticed mostly the ladies ;-) I even noticed some Japanese highschool girls writing down some notes (presumably for a report?)
I was impressed by how my host mom and my Japanese friend were very open about the prayer. They sat on the floor with the other ladies and they listened to the Khutbah (the sermon). They noticed the presence of many Muslims from Africa. Many of which were wearing their native countries’ custom. We even saw an Afghani man with a very long mustache. He invited us to take a picture with him.
Over all, it was a wonderful experience. The Imam (the priest) give everyone the instructions on how to do the prayer in Japanese. The prayer was as we all know it, in Arabic (of course). However, the Khutbah part was quite interesting… He delivered the speech in Japanese first (it was a 10 min speech), then in Turkish, and finally English.
I guess there were so few Arabic people that they didn’t feel there is enough audience to deliver it in Arabic? (or they thought that all Arabs are fluent in English!)
Friday, 18 September 2009
Keys disable?
How to disable Ctrl, Alt, Del, F1 and F3 on your keyboard?
Some will go on a google quest to find how to use something like regedit.exe and find the correct way to do it... some will use the windows security features...
well... I'll make it simple for you... just go to any grocery and buy a tube of SuperGlue.... and you're in business.... the rest relies on how imaginative are you
Don't believe me? Checkout these couple of photos!:
Some will go on a google quest to find how to use something like regedit.exe and find the correct way to do it... some will use the windows security features...
well... I'll make it simple for you... just go to any grocery and buy a tube of SuperGlue.... and you're in business.... the rest relies on how imaginative are you
Don't believe me? Checkout these couple of photos!:
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| From 2009_09_18_SriLanka |
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| From 2009_09_18_SriLanka |
SriLanka, part deux
Well, SriLanka didn't change that much since the last time I've seen it.
Still warm, a LOT of rain... (crazy, actually) one second it's dry and you find like someone opened the shower in the streets!
If you want to smell Sri Lanka, just wash your underwear (and I am not kidding here!) and "forget" it in the washing machine for 2 days... and then open the washing machine door and enjoy the fragrance of SriLanka!
This time, I didn't have the energy to do something drastic like last time, plus the weather was not in my side. So I decided to something "indoors"
I remember that one of my Japanese friends wanted to do Ayurvenda therapy. So I wanted to try it myself.
The massage itself wasn't very impressive. The Thai massage is much better. but the experiance I would not forget is the "oil pouring" thingi.
It's basically hot sesami oil. They pour it in a great quantities on your forehead, and you relax for 1/2 hour and enjoy the feeling of hot oil going through your hair.
I leave you with some photos from this visit:
Still warm, a LOT of rain... (crazy, actually) one second it's dry and you find like someone opened the shower in the streets!
If you want to smell Sri Lanka, just wash your underwear (and I am not kidding here!) and "forget" it in the washing machine for 2 days... and then open the washing machine door and enjoy the fragrance of SriLanka!
This time, I didn't have the energy to do something drastic like last time, plus the weather was not in my side. So I decided to something "indoors"
I remember that one of my Japanese friends wanted to do Ayurvenda therapy. So I wanted to try it myself.
The massage itself wasn't very impressive. The Thai massage is much better. but the experiance I would not forget is the "oil pouring" thingi.
It's basically hot sesami oil. They pour it in a great quantities on your forehead, and you relax for 1/2 hour and enjoy the feeling of hot oil going through your hair.
I leave you with some photos from this visit:
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| 2009_09_18_SriLanka |
Friday, 20 March 2009
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