Koninginnedag

Koninginnedag, or Queen's Day, is celebrated in Amsterdam every April 30. This year the celebration took place on Friday, April 28 night (Eve of the Queen's Day) and on Saturday, April 29. The weather was extremely agreeable: sunny but cool. The entire downtown area was blanketed with people donning anything orange: hats, wigs, clothes, and jewelries. The color came from the name of the first king, Willem van Oranje (Dutch for Orange). Nothing weird in having Orange as one's name (think of similar surnames such as: Black, White and Brown).

The current queen, Beatrix, whose birthday falls on January, decided it best to keep her mother's birthday as the formal Queen's Day date as it falls on a much more agreeable Springtime weather. During that day, she usually goes to a small town somewhere in the Netherlands to make an appearance. She normally does not show up in Amsterdam during this celebration (she does not reside in Amsterdam).

The Eve of the Queen's Day is also a time when people would mark places in downtown for the following day's Flea Market. This year, Vondelpark (Amsterdam's version of Central Park) reserves the area for kids 16 and under to earn money either from merchandise sales or from staging a performance.

The celebration is not confined to land but spills onto canals as well, where revelers can be found on boats. I learn that it was not unusual for drunken people to fall off the boat during such festivities. The canals do not have any protective measures to prevent people from falling off the road either.

The picture above was taken from a pastry shop, where the day's offering contained anything orange (not necessarily the orange taste, but for sure the orange color). More pictures from this celebration is available here.

Airing Dirty Laundry

Seen somewhere in downtown Amsterdam during the Queen's Day celebration. The "I am" is taken from a current Amsterdam citywide campaign for tourism, called "I AMsterdam"

More pictures of the Koninginnedag (Queen's Day) celebration is available here

Jet Towels: the Ones that Really Work!

Hand-dryers in the restrooms of the world always leave a messy puddle underneath the devices and hands are not necessarily dried at the end of the timed session. Not until I arrived in Japan did I finally encounter these effective hand dryers. The Mitsubishi models (on the lower pictures, they are the first two pictures on the left) are more ubiquitous than the more recent Toto model (both at the upper and at the lower pictures, they are the ones on the right).

The device is usually attached to a wall, at the waist level (usually Japanese people's waist level). One activates the unit by inserting both hands downward into the mouth of the device, with the palm and back parallel to the unit. The machine turns on, and gusts of wind come from both directions of the hand. As one slowly pulls back the hands, s/he will find them dry.

And what happens to the water? It all dripped onto the bottom of the device and contained within it. No mess. Another advantage: there is no contact between the device and your hands (unless you have a huge-sized hands), which means minimal or zero chance of germ transmission.

For more information:
Mitsubishi Hand Dryer

What's This? An Umbrella Dryer, Of Course!

While I have seen, during rainy days, in many Tokyo department stores devices into which one could stick in a wet umbrella and take it out to have the umbrella having its own sheath, tonight I found this device where one could put in a wet umbrella and a gust of wind would blow it dry, much like the ubiquitous hand-dryers found in restrooms.

Stores generously supply such devices to make sure that water does not drip anywhere inside (to avoid messiness and to avoid slipping).

In Singapore last month, I bought an umbrella that had its own portable plastic sheath. Have you ever seen those novelty cups that could collapse into a flat rings of cylinders? Well, the concept was the same. The umbrella had this clear plastic cup-like top part. After one got out of the rain and into a building, one would just pull the succession of rings and create a protective wall around the long umbrella. This way, the water was contained and drip all the way to the top of the umbrella (which would be at the bottom when one was not using it). Later on, at home, one could just unscrew the top, and all the excess water would be released. Then one would replace the cap and store the umbrella as usual.

Unfortunately, despite my attempt at bringing that umbrella back to Tokyo, I left it at the Spa at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel. Curses! I have not even photographed the umbrella to show it here. Drat!

IKFA? What is that?

The picture on the top right says IKFA, but it actually is IKEA. Yes, the company of Ingvar Kamprad Elmtarryd Agunnaryd (of the Elmtarryd farm in the town of Agunnaryd in Smaaland, Sweden) is invading Japan. Again; but this time, the President of IKEA hopes, it is older and wiser. The company apparently had opened before (1974-1986) but to a lesser success than it had hoped. Back then, it did not have "the needed support to adapt products and respond to requests from the Japanese side." But really, all those 12 years???

I thought I had graduated long ago from IKEA-land, but something was pulling me back. That something turned out to be an invitation that my partner and I got from a Japanese friend who had started working for the company a few months ago, in preparation for the public opening on Monday, April 24, 2006. The invitation-only "soft-opening" happened tonight, Thursday, April 20.

The trip from Tokyo to Minami-Funabashi in the Chiba prefecture was quite challenging. First of all, the Tokyo station was sooooo humongous that it had areas I never knew existed. Two plus years of living here but I was extremely ignorant of Tokyo's heart of all stations. Second, the Keiyo and Musashino lines shared the same four tracks, and the signs were rather confusing on where to stand. All four platforms said that they would host the trains going to the same direction; we were not sure until we found out that Tokyo station was the terminus. There were also different speeds (local, rapid, express), which was not news to us, but to exacerbate the situation, all trains were late this evening, and there were platform changes. This meant that the platform for the rapid train (mid-speed) became the one for the local train (the slowest), and so on. We had to run up and down the escalators to reach the platform across our original platform when we realized of the platform change (it did not help that we saw our train pulling in while we were in the wrong platform!!!). We made it and even got seats in that sardine-can of a car.

When we arrived, my partner was intent on doing one thing and one thing only: the IKEA Swedish meatballs. He missed that combination of mini meatballs smothered in gravy, accompanied by boiled potatoes and a dollop of lingonberry sauce. The spanking new cafeteria had 700 seats, the biggest IKEA café, according to the President. The layout reminded me of the one in Emeryville (near Berkeley, CA). Once that was satisfied, we breezed through the showrooms on the second floor (where the café was, too) and down to the Market Hall on the ground floor. We made it out rather quickly, carrying only a much needed floor lamp and inexpensive tea candles. Thank goodness that this was only a soft-opening. We would never have gone had this been a public grand opening, where there would probably be way too many visitors.

Going home, we the town idiots got on the train heading in the wrong direction. Somehow when we just got through the turnstile and saw a train on the platform, we ran inside and checked quickly if we were on the right one. Tonight, both of us were just too tired to do so and checked only after we had passed two stations. Two wrong stations. On the third one, we stepped out and waited for the train going the opposite direction. Fortunately the fair and cool weather was agreeable with us. We told each other that we had done this journey to support our friend who had found his much-sought employment, especially since he had been jobless for some time.


IKEA Funabashi
2-3-20 Hamacho
Funabashi-shi, Chiba-ken 273-0012
Japan
Tel: 047-436-1111
7 days a week: 10:00 - 20:00

Nearest station: Minami-Funabashi (Keiyo and Musashino lines)

O-Hanami, O-Hanami

O-Hanami, O-Hanami...how lovely are your blossoms...

It is that time of the year again when the already ubiquitous never-stay-at-home Tokyoites come in droves to view the magnificent Cherry Blossoms. I am just happy to have made it back in town in time for this annual flower viewing. The marvel of it has gone down a notch, mainly because we went to the same spot (the Chidorigafuchi and the notorius Yasukuni Shrine). A friend of ours invited us for a picnic at the Shinjuku Park, another popular spot for Cherry Blossoms viewing, but the invitation came as we were already on our way meeting another friend at the Chidorigafuchi site.

The difference this year came with the presence of so many ducks floating on the river, competing for attention with the romanticists who were rowing their boats nearby. We were also treated to an outdoor dance performance that took place right by the Shrine. Men and women of all ages participated in the music and merry making of this festival.

While the emergence of the blossoms varies each year because it is dependent on the weather, we are glad that this year the blossoms have not made a mockery of us in this April's Fool's Day.

For more pictures, click here.