Incoherence

There have been more and more complaints. Simply to say, the behavior of people is not coherent at all as follows.

・My university told me that students could not access the internet because the provider needed to be changed during summer; thus, I have been waiting the end of the work. Nevertheless, yesterday it emerged that some students coming here later than me could receive passwords to connect the internet. Although I indicate to the university that there is the problem of double standard, it is still unavailable for me to use the internet.

・There are several clubs in Birmingham, which can be the positive aspects of urban areas; as a matter of fact, they are not good enough to enjoy dancing. First, there is a strict dress code. It is forbidden to wear casual clothes. It means that sneakers, a parka, a jacket, a hat, a cap etc. can be a problem to enter a club. To make matters worse, this rule is not necessarily coherent. Every time, security gaurds decide whether people wear formal wear or not at their discretion. The other day, I was refused to go into a club but at that time I wore the completely the same clothes as the last time when I could pass the gate.

・The service of a transportation company is different from Japanese one. One day, my parents sent a parcel for me, but I could not catch it since I was absent. A letter was sent to me and it said that the parcel was at the depot located in the neighboring city. There was no way to ask to dispatch it again; therefore I took a train to the city; the depot was far from the nearest station. Despite of spending half a holiday, when I got there, the staff told me that there was no parcel here and it was at the post office which was near to my accommodation. Even if it was obvious that the wrong information was on the letter, the company did not apologized to me.

・It is necessary to use a credit card to pay fees such as tuition fees and utility fees, which also often cause problems. There are several reasons. Firstly, the figures of invoice are usually incorrect; hence, customers have to inquire a company about the discrepancy. Secondly, acceptalbe credit cards are different from time to time. Although a company tell me that they cannot take American Express on telephone, occasionally they accept it when I visit a finance department in person. Their behavior is absolutely incoherent. To take another example, some time ago, I had to use my parents' credit card and gave information about it to a company. Then, there was no problem for the procedure; however, next time they turned it down after I queued for 30 mins.

These thing are small matters, but mostly they are not understandable and quite tiring to deal with. It is true that people can realize the good aspects of Japan once they have an experience of living abroad.

Complaints

Last Saturday, I moved in a new accommodation located in a campus of my university. In the last few days, I have had a lot of complaints, for example, the disconnection of the internet in my room and the bad hygiene in my bathroom. Although I am used to living abroad and dealing with these problems, I almost lost my temper because other flats which were the same price as mine had even better facilities.

To reduce stress, I went to the city centre with my friends and did some shopping last Sunday. At that time, I realized that there were huge differences between Sheffield, where I moved out of and Birmingham. Sheffield has less ethnic diversity and a lot of natives. They usually seem quite posh. By contrast, Birmingham has many Indians, Pakistanis and Arabians. I felt as if non-natives were isolated in this city.

Until now, thankfully I have met not a few good friends here. In order to be positive, I am going to make a effort to find more and more good aspects of the new life in Birmingham.

Prague

I have just got back to Sheffield from Prague, the capital of Czecho. My friend and I visited there for four days, which were enough to get familiar with the city.

Although I was concerned about the process of the check-in at Leed Bradford airport (see the previous blog below), there was nothing wrong happened and our depature from the England went smoothly.

We stayed a hotel in the outskirts of Prague which was quite easy access from the city centre because of the well-developed public transports. We had only to pay 27 Koruna, equivalent to nealy 150 Japanese Yen, to get a ticket giving us 74 minutes for a ride on a train or a bus. The most of the public appeared to go though a gate without a ticket, while nobody blamed them for cheating

Since the Czecho was unexpectedly chilly especially at night and changeable, I regretted having worn a T-shirt. Though my guidebook says the summer of Prague often has thunders, fortunately we had only drizzle for a short time.

In general, Czecho foods were quite nice, which seemed better than British ones. I ate a deer stew with bread and pickled onions. Despite the high level of alchol consumption, there were not many kinds of alchol in a pub. As I expected, a number of the advertisements of Pilsner Urquell were seen as if the whole city promoted the beer. Although we could not eat delicious sweets for the first two days, on third day we found fairly nice cafe which was a part of Black Madonna, a museum.

Sightseeing spots were relatively near each other. Thus, largely we walked from one place to another. The view of Prague castle from Vltava river was the finest and impressive. We felt even suprised at that sight because we got the place by chance and had not known what we could see from there. We also listened to an opera concert at a church near Charles bridge where Mozart reportedly played an organ.

Religion

Since I am atheist but open to all, in the day time I went to mosque with my classmates, Turkish governors believing in Islam, out of my interest. As I had taken a Bible study for more than half a year, actually I was curious about how different two major religions are: Islam and Christianity. Talking with pious Muslims about Koran was quite stimulating and challenging. In a global point of view, there are not many secular countries like Japan. While living in the U.K., I am going to have more experience in order to gain better understanding about religion.

After receiving the service in the mosque, my friends and I went to Zeugma, a Turkish restaurant in London Street. This shop appear to be one of the most popular restaurants in Sheffield. My classmates told me that the chef served almost the same dishes as authentic Turkish ones. Indeed they had dinner with their superior there as a business entertaining during the last semester. Even if I often had went there with Japanese students, this time I could know how to eat Turkish food in the Turkish way. At night I left them to see other friends.

William, one of them, drove us to his house and cooked Japanese curry and several side dishes because he is half Japanese and half English. He runs his own business in Sheffield but is going to be a MBA student from this September due to the influence of Yasu and I. We gave a toast to his success in getting an acceptance letter and a scholarship from a university.

Travel

Next week, my friend and I are going to visit Prague, a world heritage, in Czech Republic for 4 days. Our flight, Jet2, which is a short-haul airline, is taking off from Leed Bradford airport. It is unusual that I am a little bit concerned about the procedure for boarding. I suppose that is simply because my classmate missed her airpcraft at the last Easter break. Her carrier was different from ours, Ryanair but it can happen to me in turn. From her talk, despite her 3 hours' earlier arrival, she was refused to get on the aircraft to Spain since she did not have a Visa stamp on her boarding ticket. She is still disgruntled and does not know the reason in detail. If my memory serves me correctly, mostly Japanese do not need a Visa stamp to travel across the Europe. Actually, I did not have to show a Visa stamp to go to Barcelona, Spain. Umm.. it is not understandable.

After that trip to Prague, I will move to Birmingham from Sheffield. There is little enough time to pack my stuff, a Delonghi heater which an old MBA student gave me and a lots of textbooks about Managemet etc. If someone has interest to buy them, please tell me by email. Probably, I will give you free of charge or at a bargain price. Interestingly, most British students do not use a transportation company. This time I also will follow the custom and hire a car with my friends, Andy and Kaori, who are going to help me make the move. Although my international driver's license is available, largely Andy will drive the car. As long as I am not used to a roundabout, a British cross road, there is no way that I drive a car in this country......

These days

I am sorry not to write a blog for ages. There have been a lots of thigs happened during this time. Briefly, I travelled to several places in Europe and succeeded in getting a scholarship from my university.

Last week, I went to London to see the Wimbledon tournament with my friends. Luckily, we could see William sisters' play in front of us. We also enjoyed having a drink, Pimm's and the traditional dessert, strawberries with double cream. Through this experience, I got familiar with this lawn tennis championships attracting people from all over the world. If you have interest in going there but don't have a ticket, let me know in advance. There are some advice.

On the day after going back to Sheffield, I paid a visit to Cambridge with other friends. By chance, there was a graduation ceremony. We could see students wearing an academic gown. Partly because of that ceremony, city was even more atmospheric. Although there was a long queque of tourists for each college which is a major sightseeing spot, we did not have to wait to enter there because of my friend having graduated from Cambridge university as a first class student.

Today, I took my classmates, Turkish governors, to a Japanese restaurant, Yama in London St. Indeed sushi was the most suitable dish for them considering their religious and dietary custom but sad to say, some of them could not eat just one piece of sushi. It seemed rather too challenging for them to eat uncooked fish. Since sushi is my favorite dish, their resposes were unexpected and opened my eyes to the cultural differences again.

Brad Sugars

A human overestimate an one-year achievement and underestimate a ten-year achievement.