Mt Fuji

Twentieth floor, Tokyo, Japan. Morning 5A.M. You get up and you have a view of a lonesome mountain with a flat top covered with snow. Beauty at its best.
Talking about mountains the first thing comes to our mind is the great Himalayas. And if you have visited them, any other mountain you see looks like a hillock. You can appreciate the Alps but whats the hype Japanese have created about a single mountain that too with a flat top….!!! You have to see it to believe it.
Mt. Fuji is not a range of mountains but just a single dormant volcano “hill”. Standing all alone with a vast green pastured land and lakes near it.
The largest/tallest mountain in Nihon. And almost every Japanese climbs it. Its just a daylong trek. They actually have a race every year to climb this 18Km path !!!
This land still entice me….

Jishin !!!

3AM, everything is vibrating, I get up, feels its another earthquake, say “Crap” and get back to sleep. It happens only in Japan :).
Oh my God !! Its shaking again. I am standing on road and the road feels vibrating. I am not sure if its some subway train running underground or another earthquake.
Japan get atleast 1000 earthquakes every year. Though many of them are just noticed by scientists. And anything less than 3 on Richter scale don’t even make it to the news papers.

Japanese have devised the best possible way to construct buildings that can survive earthquakes. Any other country if there is a slightest vibration, people run out of the houses / buildings but here, even if its measured about 4 on Richter scale people don’t even look up, they continue working. Nihonjins are so use to it that in case of a major earthquake instead of running out of the building they will go and try to catch the falling perfume bottles. (Wow !! confidence that building won’t collapse).
I wonder what they will do if they happen to be in a place like Lathur (during an earthquake).

Survey ??

Statistics says this, says that… ever wondered from where these stats comes from ??
I remember reading it in a newspaper that most of the stats are made on the fly…
And over the years I realized it to be true too. Never seen any such data being collected in my country.

But welcome to Nihon !!!
I visited a building today where they were doing a survey on the traffic in the building. There were people sitting on all 11 entry / exits with a ticker machine actually punching in the number of visitors. All visitors were given a card on entry and taken back on exit, this was done from morning 9AM till night 11 (I left the building that time). They had big envelops collecting these cards on hourly basis.
Wow too much of work !!
I wonder what this data will help them ? Traffic in any building changes everyday !!! The difference should be more than 500 people (Come on there are 10s of eat-out there).
Anyways, made me realize that ticker machine are still used :).