ExprezziO

As the days passed I adjusted myself to the Japanese way of life, the life that was counting each and every second, the life which consisted workaholic weekdays and sometimes weekends too. For first few days I was struggling with my jet lag, I was not used to sleep till 1:30 in the night but very soon I was out of that state. I became confident to go out on my own, to get the monthly pass for my train route from ticket vending machine, to change the trains as per route, to order in the restaurants and to communicate with people in Japanese. I learnt to eat with chopsticks without demanding a spoon or a fork and I started liking the Japanese green tea.     I found people of Japan passionate to be workaholic, the offices were used to be full of people in the evening and sometimes even in the midnight. Japanese people are very particular to maintain the politeness in the behavior, they do not tolerate even slight impoliteness from their colleagues. They ...

   One of my room partner woke me up in a few minutes and told me to get ready. I resisted in sharp voice, "do you go to the office at 4 in the morning"?. "No", my friend replied. "Please have a look at your wrist watch, if at all it is set according to Japan Standard Time". I looked into my watch, it was 7:15 in the morning, so I was sleeping for whole four hours and I was feeling like I had just reached the apartment few minutes ago from my journey all the way from Mumbai. Still in a voice of protest I said, "but its just 4 hours I was sleeping, don't you think it is unfair, especially when somebody is exhausted by a journey of  16 hours". My friend smiled and replied,"It is a Japan my friend, sleeping more than 4-5 hours is considered as a sin here, you have already completed your quota, now don't waste time and get ready quickly". Two of my friends were going to drop me at the Shibuya station on the Yamanote line and one o...

 It was late in the night according to local time when our flight landed on Narita airport. We were standing in the queue for immigration. "We are almost 2 hours late", my friend muttered. I saw in wall clock it was showing 11:30. "Now at least two hours to reach the apartment at Rokugoudote", I said to myself, a distance of approximately 65 kilo-meters. I was worried about the mode of transport, I was totally unaware of the fact that the taxi which was supposed to pick up us from Narita airport was already gone. Immigration officer demanded my passport and invitation letter then he looked at me and called his colleague, discussed something with him. His colleague then asked me whether anybody is accompanying me, after I pointed my finger to my friend both of us were told to wait in some waiting room. He did not ask us any single question or not even explanation for something. We were sitting there for almost half an hour like a statue, I was so tired that I was not...

 On our journey to Mumbai international airport we found out that my and one of my colleague who initially missed our van had a ticket of same airline but the guy who boarded the van at the end was having a ticket of different airline. He became nervous as he was going to travel entire journey from Mumbai to Tokyo all alone and for the first time.     We reached Mumbai international airport six in the evening. After getting inside we immediately checked in our luggage to avoid extra burden. I sat on a bench, thinking of how to spend time. I wondered, for a last whole week, I was in need of some spare time for relaxation and I could not afford it but now I was having a plenty of time to spend and I was getting bored I was not feeling like to take a rest.    Three of us were wearing suit, neck tie, in a perfect formal attire, I was feeling like we are part of some high profile delegation and are visiting Japan to attend some important co...

   Sometime your silent, straightforward life takes sudden turn, it changes drastically, you don't get time to prepare yourself  to face the new era of your life. In a same way, my life took a sharp turn in 2006, I was switching my job to company having customers in Japan. I joined the company office based in Pune. The induction and other formalities took place and my life in the new company started. I was happy and first few days passed in that happiness. But you quickly get bored at new place if you are not assigned any interesting work and same thing was happening to me. That boredom was irritating me and occasionally, thoughts of one more switch started coming to my mind. I was not doing any interesting or so called challenging work for almost next two months and finally on one fine morning I decided to ask my management about this and if they don't respond positively I was thinking to quit this job and find the new one. I talked to my manager and conveyed h...