Good-bye Amsterdam

On September 30th, I left Amsterdam. My apartment was on the 4th floor in the third building from the left. I lived there since May 2006.

For the past year and 5 months, I had really enjoyed my life in Amsterdam. I was half the time out traveling, but Amsterdam is “the” special place for me.

Even though I traveled around all over the world, Amsterdam is the best for me. It is really unique and stunning beautiful. I had thought to live there for the rest of my life. I hate to leave Amsterdam, but I will bring all my memories and will enjoy my new life in a new place.

There were times that I left lonely, but I am glad that I left New York and moved to Europe. I had a chance to visit countries that I would never though of going for my private trips, and I have learned a lot from those places. I think I grew up for certain extend. Definitely, I have gained an ability to look at things from different angles. And also, I realize how lucky I am to be where I am, or I never forget to appreciate what I have. Those are the things people assume that they can do, but it is easy to forget the appreciation once you get what you wanted, and often we want even more. But, I have leaned to appreciate even small things.

Even though it is very comfortable to stay in where we settle ourselves, I am glad that I got myself out of it and challenged for something completely new. It was very scary, but now looking back, it was certainly worth it.

Take a look at where I have been.　In total, it seems I've visited 18 countries in the past 15 months.


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Good-bye Amsterdam!

Amsterdam, NL II

Kinderdijk. Those windmills were built in 1740’s, and now this place is registered for UNESCO. This group of mills is the largest concentration of old windmills in the Netherlands.

Therefore, there are many of them

Every windmill is a house, and a family lives there. I didn’t know this until my visit here, but as the sign says, depending on how they stop the wings, there are different meanings. There are four different kinds; cross, X, right-bottom or left-bottom. I don’t remember which one is witch, but for example, one meaning is someone’s death in the house or another one is a baby was born.

Photographed by Josh.


Josh came to visit Amsterdam from July 14th until the 30th. Except the four days in Spain, he was in Holland the rest of the days, but his suitcase was packed with Japanese stuff. Not only that, this is not even his suitcase, but mine! All these things couldn’t fit into his suitcase, so he had to borrow mine! And it is entirely occupied by food!

Amsterdam, NL

Back to Amsterdam. Heineken is my Dutch treat!

The (only?) windmill in Amsterdam with Josh’s rental bike.

In the middle of a street, somehow there was a “HELP” neon.

Tapas in Amsterdam! This place became my favorite restaurant after this visit.

Amsterdam in windows. It was a beautiful day to sit outside to enjoy food and beers. I love a very bright summer evening in Northern Europe!

in my neighborhood. The block behind the canal is where my apartment is.
Even though I’m used to see this view every day, I really enjoy it every time.

We came to Ice Bar. It is just like the Ice Hotel in Sweden, but this one is only a bar. Everything is made by ice including walls, tables, couches and even a fire place! But no fire. Only the fire-like lights.

Glasses are also made by ice. It is more like a bar in a huge freezer. If you have worked in a restaurant, I’d say you have experienced the ice bar feeling already. Before we enter the bar, we can borrow a jacket, boots and gloves (Josh’s hands were very smelly after we got out of the bar because those gloves were worn by a number of people before us!).

And they have a time limit of how long we can stay inside. Every 45 minutes, they have a cut-off time, so if you want to stay the maximum 45 minutes, you have to go when they open the bar every 45 minutes. We went in 20minutes passed, so we could stay in there less than 30minutes (because everybody has to get out of it including a bartender because of the health risk.). But, 25minutes was long enough. I don’t think I could stay there any longer. I had so much fun though.

Outside of the ice bar, there is a hot bar. So you can enjoy more drinks!

Queen's Day, The Netherlands

April 30th is Queen's Day (Koninginnedag) in the Netherlands. This is the craziest day in the year. People are partying all day long. Look how many boats are on the canal; absolutely too many. Can you see the people on the bridge watching boats going by in the back? Lots of tourists visit Amsterdam on this day.

When I went out to check out the neighborhood, it was already going nuts. There was bungee jump going on the street (not above water!), and it is just full of people everywhere.

I decided walking towards Rembrandtplein (Rembrandt Square), and on the way there I saw these beautiful ladies serving beers!

Once I stepped into Rembrandtplein, I told myself "What a mistake!" I just couldn't move. Too many people!

I looked back and see if it was easier to go back. I didn't think so. I just followed the crowd and got out of the mess after 20mins or so which usually takes 3 minutes to go across the square. People are dancing, drinking and ... just everything including smoking, of course!

People are in orange on Queen's Day. What's coming out of the boat on the left is bubbles!

After walking around the neighborhood for about an hour, I came back to my apartment. The party is still going on outside. Boats are still going back and forth on the canal. Don't get me wrong. I love my apartment facing the canal and enjoy the view, but not this particular day. Boats don't just pass by, but they have very loud speakers!! When I felt I had enough of Queen's Day, I shut my windows, plucked earphones and watched a movie at home. That was my first Queen's Day.

(Lucky me. A boat with loud speakers was parked right in front of my apartment until 11pm... I'm not kidding.)

Monica's visit, The Netherlands II

Monica and I went to Zaanse Schans. According to Monica’s research, people in this village are wearing traditional Dutch clothes.

The view was great because of the wind mills, but we did not see any local people in traditional clothes, but the workers in souvenir shops. We gave this village a new name, Epcot from Disney World. It looked all fake.

However, once we started walking into the town, we were a bit surprised. Those windmill houses are actually used by local people. I thought they were for display to attract tourists, just like Epcot. But this town is actually functioning like any living places. That means, some stranger tourists come by in this town and take pictures of themselves having “actual someone’s” houses in the background. It sounds like big bother for the house owners

The next destination was Marken. This place is about fifteen minute away from Amsterdam by car. The drive to this Merken Island is beautiful. There is this long road running to the island, so we had beautiful water view on our both sides. The water was shiny, and we were enjoying the nice breeze with windows open! Beautiful!

Merken is also known as the town that carries the traditional cultures, like people are wearing traditional clothes in their every day life. We didn’t see local people outside in this town much to begin with, but the man I saw was wearing suspenders. Does it count? Monica and I stopped by at this small souvenir shop, and there she was; an old lady in “the” clothes sitting on a chair behind the casher knitting. She was very quiet and looked very cute. She was wearing red-white stripes shirt with a vest and a long skirt and a white hat. She looked like she would appear in a children’s book. I was very pleased to meet (see) her finally. This town is not Epcot!

Monica and I didn’t have breakfast, so we were pretty hungry. We walked and walked looking for a restaurant. But this town seems very small that there are not so many restaurants or café’s. It almost looked like everyone in this town know each other that they don’t need a restaurant to go out to, but rather go to the best cook neighbor’s house to have dinner.

Because we didn’t find any place for food or didn’t see local people outside, we were about to turn back to the car to drive back to Amsterdam…

Then all the sudden, this street showed up by the small port. From no choice to too many choices! Oh, you don’t know how much we appreciated this view! It seems like we were walking towards opposite direction. We had lunch here sitting outside and then went back to Amsterdam.

Monica’s stay was only for one week, but I really enjoyed her stay as well as the sightseeing!

Monica's visit, The Netherlands

From 23rd of March through the 29th, my old roommate in New York, Monica, came to visit Amsterdam. My Amsterdam travel guide was fully utilized after one year rest since last summer.
A break at a bar after visiting Anne Frank’s house.

Monica and I drove to Noordwijk looking for flower fields. If you look closely, you can see yellow flowers in the back. I’m not sure if it was too early for the season, but we didn’t find that many flower fields with colors yet.

Zoom in!

Those flower fields sure look more like strictly for business. They line up for straight lines. Yes – we went into someone’s private fields without permission. The gate was open and was welcoming us to the inside! (or at least it looked like it.)

Simply so many!

Close up. It looks like a bed made out of flowers.

The Netherlands is really a beautiful place. Especially when the spring comes, I realize it more and more. I love and enjoy living here surrounded by flowers. I have finally realized the beauty and cuteness of flowers by being this age.

We stopped by Noordwijk Aan Zee. Beach is my best favorite place to visit! I love being close to the water!

Golf Lessons, The Netherlands

Since last weekend, I started golf lessons.

It is for thirty minutes every Sunday for ten weeks including a two hour course lesson. I am actually not that confident if I could be “that good” to be able to play on the course. In the end, I am supposed to take a test to get licensed. In Holland, if you do not have the license, then you are not allowed to play on the course.

Because I didn’t get a chance to go practice in the driving range last week, I went early today to hit some balls before my lesson. For the first fifteen minutes, I was really bad. But after that, I think I got “it”. I started hitting balls pretty well. It was pretty irritating when I couldn't hit the balls, but once I started hitting, I felt really good. The best part is to look at the ball going high up in the air. No matter how much my hands hurt, I still feel good when I see that.

Today’s lesson was “chip”; the swing when the ball is close to the green (15yards?), and this is pretty hard. In the driving range, I hit balls without thinking about a distance, but with chip, I’m supposed to change the swing depending on how far I am from the pole. Okay, this is my second lesson, and isn’t this a bit too early to learn something high technique like this?

It seems I will be practicing patter next week, and the week after is bunker. I was thinking, “Wait a second. People try not to sink the ball in the bunker, but there is a lesson for it?” I guess. I actually can’t wait for that lesson.

Flowers from yesterday. They blossomed already in one day; maybe my apartment is too warm?

Flowers of the week, The Netherlands

These are the flowers of this week!

I don’t know the name of those flowers, but they are so pretty. I am not good at flower arrangement, so I simply cut the stems to “good” length and put them in a vase. Even though I have no clue about what I am doing, I knew that they didn’t look good. So I had to redo it many times. It took me about thirty minutes to this “okay” version.

The weather was not so nice this weekend, but I got on my bike to go to the Albert Cypt Market. It’s been months since I rode on a bike. I had layers of clothes, but it was a big mistake. Once I got to the market, I was drenched with sweat. Anyways, since before, no matter how many times I put air into the tires, they weren’t really filled. So I went to a bike shop. Two hours later, when I picked up my bike, this looks-like-16-year-old guy told me that there were many holes on both tires (front and back). How did that happen and when?

I had a very easy ride back home. No sweating. It seems it was all about the tires. I had been wondering why other people can ride a bike pretty fast but don’t seem to be tired. Every time I was on my bike, I was out of breath. Well now I know that I was riding on a bike with no air. That makes sense. My bike-life future became bright now.

I also bought this potted-flowers. It’s supposed to blossom yellow narcissus.

Spring, The Netherlands

Amsterdam is back! Spring is finally here!!

Since Fall, it has been drizzling every day. It is not like it is raining all day long, but we have some sunshine now and then in a day, but most of the day is cloudy and dark. But last weekend, we had a great weather!

Spring equals flowers. I got these pretty flowers. It has many small flowers, and the amount of the pollen is unbelievable. I have been sneezing and having a runny nose this year again. In the morning, when I get up, my throat hurts. Since about five years ago, I’ve been noticing these behaviors, but at the same time, I’ve been trying not to “admit” it… do I have pollen allergy?

Because the weather was very nice, I drove to a beach for a walk. This area is called Noordwijk aan Zee.

X'mas Party, the Netherlands

On the 15th of December, we had a company Christmas party. Every year, I was alone at the party as I’ve had a long distance relationship. BUT this year, both Josh and I were invited to the party with a nice treat from my company so that Josh could travel without any cost on us. Besides, I was suggested to take a week off while Josh was in town. What a treat! I had the best Christmas gift even before the Christmas day! Plus, to avoid “drink and drive”, we all stayed at the hotel where we had the dinner; no worries about drinking a lot and partying hard! (Ok, some people had too much! It showed the next morning at the breakfast.) Anyways, this party was awesome, and I may stay in the Netherlands forever…!

By the way, about the dress code; we were supposed to dress up, but I did not expect the guys to wear tuxedos (of course, with a bow tie)! That is “dress up”! I’ve seen guys in tuxedos before, but it was at Casino Night or in movies. It seems when Dutch people have formal dinner party, they dress up REALLY well. I actually really liked it though. At the end of a year, having a nice meal in formal clothes is really nice. My British boss and Josh (American) were in regular suites. I suppose this is something very Dutch?

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Finally, I came home to Amsterdam. After I parked my car coming from the airport, it was about 8am, and here is the view of Amsterdam at 8am. I totally forgot about the mornings in Europe (Northern). It's dark!
Oh man, I miss Asia!

Family Day

Family Day; an event from work held on the 11th of Nov. All of my colleagues were invited with their family. All together, we were more than thirty people, including 15+ kids. It was like a zoo to be honest.
We got together at noon, and we had Middle Eastern lunch. And then, we went to this place where we had a two hour workshop for African music (picture).

Kids were also learning how to use this African music instrument.

After the music workshop, there was this African dance lesson. It was supposed to be for kids only, but somehow, we all ended up dancing together. This picture was taken by my colleague who did NOT join for the dancing part, but contributing to the music part (yeah, right). This picture makes us look like we are doing Tai Chi, doesn’t it? It actually looks pretty funny. But this African dance was very fast beat, and we all were sweating in the end, or at least I was.

At the end of the day, we went out for Ethiopian dinner. The food was pretty interesting. It came out in a very large plate for about four people’s food. The way to eat it is that you take a piece of the pancake, and take some of the "stuff" and eat it by hand. (We didn't know what they were.) This pancakes were too sour that most people didn’t like that much. We ended up stealing kids’ meals which were French fries, nuggets and some other fried stuff. So the food was not people's favorite. I don’t think I will go there again either.

Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Red Light District.

When my colleague from Sweden came to visit, I took him to the Red Light District. I took this picture then. For the people who are not familiar with this, I would call it “a prostitute vending machine.” You walk around to pick the best suitable for your needs, and you negotiate with the girl by the door and then disappear into the room. That’s when the curtain on the door is shut so you know the girl is busy “working.” Amazing.

As you can see, there is a group of guys staring at the lady in the shopping window. It looks so sad, doesn’t it? But just like any women to be exact. We do browse shopping, touch but no buy (that easily).

De Haag, The Netherlands

I came to visit The Haag. My colleagues invited to his place on the weekend. Unfortunately, I do not have any friends in Amsterdam or in the Netherlands, so it was a great pleasure that he invited me over to his place on the weekend!
The Haag is about one hour drive from Amsterdam, and his apartment is only five minutes away from the beach! It is incredible that somebody lives that close to the beach! I grew up near by the beach in Japan, so living by the beach is the most attractive fact for me. I would love to do that in the future. What’s even better is that I can jog along the beach. Fantastic!
I really liked the atmosphere, so I would consider moving to this place. I love Amsterdam, but living by beach may beat it. There are tons of restaurants and bars along the beach. So I can come here when I feel like it to read or just to relax! I can see myself being here every night!

Bungy Jump! I have done something very similar about 10 years ago. It was fun but also awful. What’s bad is the going up and down in the air after cutting yourself loose once. Maybe when I come back here, I would try this. We'll see.

Dutch

I started learning Dutch.

It is every Tuesday night starting at seven for three hours for ten weeks. I have a group of seven students; 19 year-old very cute girl from Germany, the-same-age-as-me guy from Ireland, looks-very-serious guy from Greece, always-sweating-but-wearing-a-sweater boy from Brazil, somehow-i-feel-close-to-him-beause-he-is-American guy from San Francisco and just-graduated-from-college boy from Switzerland. As you can imagine I am the only Asian, so everyone remembers my face and name easily but not the other way around.

I like to have a group of people in class, because we get to practice a lot in speaking the language. Because I have to skip classes for coming a few weeks, I had private lessons. My regular class is for three hours, but this private lessons were only for one hour. It was too much information all at once, but barely any practices. Because of my job, a private lesson suite better for my schedule, but I rather continue with a group session.

Dutch is very close to English, but not the pronunciations. There are some alphabets that I had difficulty with in English, like “V”. It does not exist in Japanese, so Japanese people tend to pronounce it as “B”. Even though I got the “V” sound in English, now I have to pronounce it as “F” in Dutch. That being said, it is pretty difficult to read in Dutch for me. For example, my brain is trained to concentrate on the letter “V” to pronounce it in a right way, but now, I have to switch it to pronounce it as “F”. Besides “F”, there are more letters that I have to be careful with in Dutch. “W” is pronounced as “V”. “J” is pronounced as “Y”. What’s worse, “G” is pronounced as “Hrrr”. My brain is going…Ahhhhhhhh!

Swedish is pretty close to Dutch as well I think. Several years ago when I was not used to hear Swedish yet, my Swedish boss at the time said “Yump”. I had to ask him what he was saying three times. Finally, he said, “Shima, don’t you know yump? YUMP!” and started hopping on the floor. I was like “ahhh, jump!” He looked like a bit confused. It seemed he could not hear the difference; yump and jump. Just like Japanese have difficulty hearing the difference between “L” and “R”, the same thing happens with Swedes for “J” and “Y”. So I suppose I would have the similar experiences with Dutch.

	Another challenging thing in Dutch is counting numbers. If the number is one digit or teens, I'm fine, but everything else. For example, the direct translation of “32” in Dutch is “2 and 30”. Somebody, help me!
	When starting to learn a new language, besides numbers, clocks always appear in a text book. This is something you don’t even think about in an every day life. You see a clock and you know what time it is. But if you try to do that in a different language, it is a big deal. When learning a new language, I feel like I turned to a 2-year-old. As a matter of fact, when I was on a train, I heard a baby-boy practicing to count numbers with his mom. Actually, he was better than me.
	Mijn werkboek. (My workbook)