There's a small fish shop. Its owner hates flies. Of course he has to, because flies with the stigma of pestilence and death can't be tolerated in such a honourable establishment, but his hate is compelled by compassion. All sorts of fish and squids are aligned in styrofoam boxes around the shop. Along them he sneaks with a flycatcher in his hand. After successfully dishing a fly he picks it up, pose it on the windowsill and contemplates the scene with a impish smile. At the end of the day there are around thirty flies precisely aligned. To immortalise his success he puts them all into a jar and to immortalise his duty he puts the jar on the upper shelf behind the counter. Until now there must be at least a hundred jars. So far a fairy tale about that guy. I still don't understand Japan, but this can't be really the goal of this trip, the aim is rather to understand Europe no more once I will go back. Please don't worry, it's not as far yet.

Some manners seem just to be outdated. Here it's quiet popular to make expeditions in the neighbourhood and taking along a botanist's box. All what creeps and flies will be catched. Indeed the hot and humid climate bears a lot of strange insects and animals, undoubtedly beautiful, as the lizard with the black body and a dark blue metallic tail I observed. But this behaviour resembles to that of the "Bildungsbuergertum" in Europe at the end of the 19^th century, which could be well at the origin. At the end of 19^th century Japan had been forced by America's economic interests to open their boarders. Until then Japan was still more or less a feudalistic society. To restructure the state, they choose Prussia as example. Government, and hence school system, science and culture was entirely adapted in accordance with this German state and, I think, also some neurosis, as the desire for colonies. To note is, that Japans war during the World War the Second was purely imperialistic. (By the why, Japanese nationalists call this war the "Great Holly War" to decline all responsibilities.).

Since two weeks I am working at Koyo Seiko. The goal is to develop a new controller for a flywheel energy storage system. (A rotating disc stores energy due to its inertia. The disc is levitated by magnetic fields to obtain an almost lossless bearing. This assembly has to be controlled to be stable.) So something I can stand for, even though Koyo Seiko is mainly active in bearing and steering systems for automobiles that is less my discipline. Anyway it's a real Japanese company with all its subtleties. The structure represents quiet well the structure of a European company forty years ago, organised by a fractal like hierarchy. This structure is wrapped by the offices arrangement. Where I work, it's a huge room with long workbenches ended with the transverse positioned tables of the section and department chiefs. Hence they are always carefully watching you. In such an office exists no privacy. (I am quite lucky to work from time to time in the lab even if it's an air-conditioned cage.) Further an employees rank in the hierarchy is decreasing with the increasing distance from chiefs tables. Of course my place is at the end of row near the copier. Nevertheless the behaviour is not as military like as it may seem. The comment of a Japanese colleague in reaction to my slight critic, in a Japanese enterprise the decisions are taken in collective and not decreed by a small management. I can't judge that yet. Anyway, the idea of the collective, the identification with the enterprise is primordial. It is visible in the company own uniform, a company own song that is played in the morning and evening during changing the clothes, the office "Spartakiade" (collective gym), the collective lunch in the canteen (actually at noon the lights are switched off in the offices during the one hour pause, so you have to leave the workplace, because it's arduous to work without light) and the weekly cleaning of the office. The most military like are the safety instructions. In the group we had to repeat some new safety rules recited by an instructor and finished the lesson with a three times "josh", that means approximately "ok, we understood, we will never forget this rule, and we will always be attentive". (All these observations and others about the Japanese society, the Japan Inc., motivated me to reread the Manifesto of the Communist Party, seriously. They are less the ideologies (What's Japans ideology?), than the similarities in appearance, which are astonishing.) Anyway in the last years a lot has changed. I don't know how deep embedded these ideals still are, for sure less in the younger generation than in the older.

So far an impression and if you want to know what's going on in my weird brain, just read this story.

He just wanted to figure out who he really was. So he posed himself in front of a mirror and asked the very question "who are you?" while pointing with the index finger at his double. But the double was pointing with the finger at him too and as he could read from the lips was he asking the same question. He didn't expect that. How could he give a response when he first needed the answer from his double? Moreover the double waited also until he would have given his. For a while they starred at each other. Finally he decided to ask another person but as nobody other was around he definitely let the question go getting the slight insight that it was possible to pose a question without getting an answer.

That's all for now. (And please forgive me my grammarless English.)