Night out in Shinjuku

So yesterday it was time for some more karaoke-ing. This time however, it was some sort of "class gathering". Oh, and also one of our teachers tagged along! At 7PM we met at Shin-Okubo station, and we decided to go to Shinjuku. While there we wandered around like headless chickens looking for a place to go. The problem in Tokyo is quite the opposite from my hometown - In Tokyo it's hard to just "get in" a place because there is so much of everything - everywhere! Too many choices... So you'll have to be decisive or else you're just going to wander around looking around forever.

Finally we found a spacey karaoke party place which was purely awesome =) The korean girls sang exclusively korean love songs, while we european folk stuck to the rock genre (Except for some Disney duet songs, of course!). The teacher sang mostly japanese extreme rock, which was really surprising. She's a hardcore Death Note fan, so she loved bands like "Nightmare" and "X Japan" who have both composed songs for that anime. She actually reminded me of "Misa Misa" from Death Note, for those of you who are familiar with the anime, haha.

After karaokeing we went to an english pub (but of course, no british people anywhere...). The teacher got a bit tipsy and fell down the stairs, which was both unfortunate and funny. While there we met a bunch of japanese people who insisted that we'd go with them to a smaller, more secluded bar. So we did, and we ended up in a strange little place which was about the size of a normal swedish room.

Oh, and two random swedes accidentally stumbled upon the bar as well, but I really didn't want to talk to swedish people all night so I told them I was a polish student named Jurrian. Of course my plan didn't work out that well, because they started to talk and brag of how cool and superior their country was compared to my old and rusty Poland. They even tried to teach me some Swedish, but they said my accent was off... In turn, I taught them "polish".

Anyway, I met some new cool japanese friends there, and at 6:00 AM it was time to return home :)

On a side note, I was supposed to go to a maid cafe with a few french people, but apparently they had been knocking on my door several times but I was sound asleep. But hey, if a 5.8 earthquake can't wake me up then why would a few puny french men!

A message from ground control

So we've finally done karaoke! It took me three weeks, which I don't really know why... but now it has been done, and my GOD was it fun!

We started by gathering up like 20 people from the guesthouse and went to a local izakaya (which is a japanese-styled bar/pub) and had some beers and some complimentary food to go with it. Once there, we talked about everything ranging from foreign policy to what people called their penises. After spending about an hour and a half there we went almost right across the street and we found a karaoke place on the fourth floor. Japanese-styled karaoke places differ somewhat to western places. For 2000Y (120kr, $19) each we got two rooms (because we all couldn't fit in one) and we could occupy them for as long as we wanted to. Meanwhile, the staff entered the rooms every so often to provide us with life's all necessities: Beer, drinks, snacks and food. The beers and drinks were of course totally free.

Since we were at that karaoke place from about 11pm to 5am, I think they didn't really make a profit out of us... I think most people had around 8-9 beers just at the karaoke place, not counting the ones from the izakaya ;P You gotta love the fact that a karaoke place were open until the morning (and I don't know if they actually closed after we went...) on a sunday!

Needless to point out, singing Queen classics after 8 beers was certainly a challenge, all be it entertaining!

I think the place had every song ever recorded, or so it seemed. Some girls insisted on spamming Disney songs, while us swedes hopelessly tried to harmonize to classic Bowie songs. It all seemed to work out very well actually, back then... but I'm not sure if I want to hear a recording afterwards.

Anyway, I *just* got a call from Eunmi-san from class when typing this. Apparently we're having some sort of class-get-together in Shin-Okubo at 7PM tonight. I better hurry and grab a shower cos my body odour resembles that of a dead weasel.

See ya!

Natsuyasumi!

Hello everyone!

I haven't blogged anything this past week because of laziness and lack of time. Friday was the last day of school before the natsuyasumi (Summer vacation) which is about three weeks. I kind of feel that there's always something going on here, even though we have school. Now that school's out for the time being, I think there's going to be even more activity around here... Anyway, partying here is not expensive, so it's all good. A short recap of the weekend:

Friday

We started it off by going to a small, dark secluded japanese bar in Shibuya (friday) which had a crazy bartender who was probably more drunk than we were. The guy was like 50 years old but reminded us of a worn-out rockstar in his early 30's. He really was insane though. A japanese women fell asleep on the bar after having too much to drink, and he turns to us and asks us "You wanna fuck her?". Later on he showed us a collage of pictures, and one specifically which was a photo of his ass, and said "Don't fuck this". Strange? Well, you should've been there. That was the number one bar I've ever been to though, and we're definately going back. It was really dark and gloomy, and they had an emo-esque gothic interior which was really cool. And the fact that the bar was so secluded on a smaller, less frequented street, it makes for a great hangout den for Tokyo's social outcasts. People there bought us champagne =) Then at four o'clock we went to a fancy restaurant and got something to eat and drink. At four o'clock. In the morning...

Saturday

Another hanabi festival! This time in Asakusa, Tokyo! Of course we (me, Na Young and Su Jin) had to go! This hanabi was longer than the one in Yokohama. Fireworks blazed the sky for a good two hours, which was great. The first thing we did was to go to a temple-area to get settled down. We got some ice-slushies and just chilled. After the fireworks we went to town and sat down near a river and drank some good ol' sake. I truly love these festivals. There's probably hundreds of thousands of people gathering everywhere celebrating by eating, drinking and watching fireworks. It's such a colourful and nice ambiance, kind of hard to explain ;P As I mentioned in the previous entry, it's tradition to wear a yukata when attending these festivals, and you've got to hand it to them... japanese women in yukata have to be one of the most beautiful sights in the world! It's really unfair to the rest of the world though. Japanese women are already blessed with a superior gene pool, and they really take great measures to look good every day... add to that the most beautiful national dress - the yukata/kimono - and you have an übermensch. The fireworks were cool as well.

Sunday (Tomorrow)

Tomorrow we are celebrating yet another birthday here in Matsudo. We're heading for an izakaya and then for the main event: karaoke party! I'm too tired to write anything further... it's 2:45 and I need to put myself in hibernation to get the energy I need to withstand this summer vacation.

Here are some pictures and videos I shot in Asakusa, enjoy!

Some strange street ninjas messing around for no apparent reason

A temple garden where we watched the fireworks

Even the ones who didn't dress up in yukata look cool!

Two equally important ingredients for a succesful hanabi festival: Yukata women and beer

I can't wait to tell Raphael I saw another Popo guy!

Big fish in a small pond

A stone monolith reading, "Eternal peace and tranquility". Well, honestly I have no clue of what it says. It could read "I'll penetrate you with a pineaple" for all I know.

VIDEOS

Just some fireworks
Beautiful surroundings

Yokohama Hanabi!

Yesterday was an awesome day. Me, Na Young and Su Jin from class went to Yokohama to watch the famous "hanabi" festival. Hanabi litterarly means "Flower Fire" which translates into fireworks. And boy, were there fireworks... (videos of that at the end of this blog, do not miss!) Also, this was the first day in my life where I only spoke japanese. Go me! Although I speak japanese like a late five year old who hasn't learned to talk yet...

The actual festival would start around 7:30PM but we decided to go there really early and do some sight-seeing and stuff. we began by just walking down the streets there. It actually is different to Tokyo somehow... it's hard to put a finger on it, but it certainly was different. I really liked Yokohama though, less neon-esque than my current home, but I really liked the streets and buildings. Everything was so spot clean and stylish.

Yokohama is very beautiful by the fact that it is very green. Everywhere you see green hills, parks and avenues with lots of palm trees. The cool thing is that you see these futuristic elements and high-rise skyscrapers embedded into the green-themed palette, which makes it look like almost like an utopia. The crystal clear azure sky helped, also =)

The bay area. This is the outskirts of an adjacent park.

One of many high-rise buildings. This is a hospital I think.

Our first stop was China Town. The China Town in Yokohama is one of the biggest ones in the world, and it really had a special vibe to it. The shops in China Town were very, very cool. They were typically japanese by the fact that they were very crowded and too small for their merchandise. What they lacked in size they made up for in floors though, since most shops had at least three floors - regardless of what kind of shops they were. It was certainly cool to walk four floors of panda-toys and dolls. And of course, "some" of us had a compulsive need to be photographed with a man in a panda costume.

Na Young and a panda.

A shrine in China Town

While roaming the narrow and crowded streets it was like stepping foot in another country. Like China, but cleaner and without pick-pockets probably. And while still being Japan, things were pretty expensive here. Although I think I've gotten too accustomed to the Japanese food prices, because I always try to stay away from restaurants serving dinner over 1000Yen. For 1000Yen back in Sweden, you won't get dinner anywhere... besides MacDonald's and other fast-food shacks. We finally found a really cute restaurant in China Town and got some amazingly delicious food and drinks for 800Yen (about $8, or 45-50 SEK).

After dinner we went to "Itaria Gaadensu" or "The Italian Gardens" which were located on a large hill in Yokohama. In old times, rich merchant families settled here, so it was cool to see proof of european-styled mansions amongst japanese architecture. We immortalized our visit by writing down the following on the guest-book in the mansion:

"Su Jin, Na Young and Christian were here. Sayounara. Hanabi!" The artsy illustrations were done by Na Young...

The diplomat's garden.

After the gardens we thought we'd head towards the bay area were the fireworks would start in two hours. We took a little detour to walk the beautiful shopping avenues of Yokohama. There were lots of strange people there... apparently this street is famous for its animal shops, like dressing up dogs and stuff. Creepy, I thought. Kawaiiii, my entourage thought.

Anyway, we went to the harbours to settle down. It took about 30 minutes to find a good spot, since we forgot that half the earth's population also had a keen interest in seeing the fireworks. Miraculously we found an unused square metre of space which we claimed in the name of everything that's good and pure!

When the fireworks finally started, we recognized that all the hype and talk held true. They went on for an hour and 40 minutes with continues fireworks filling up the night sky. Sometimes they fired up "smiley faces" and those mushroom fiends from Super Mario which was too awesome for words. When they fired up Naruto-symbol fireworks the nerdy women behind me screamed their lungs out. I won't post any pictures since clearly demonstrated them better, so in the end of this entry there are links to the videos I shot.

Whenever there are fireworks festivals and similiar events here in Japan, it is tradition for both men and (especially) women to dress up in Yakuta or Kimono, the national dress. Seriously, this has got to be the most beautiful dress in the entire world! When you're in a crowd of thousands of yakuta-wearing women it's hard not to ignore the actual hanabi. And also, if you think that japanese young children are cute, you haven't seen them in yakuta!

It's going to be a loooong time before I see something as impressive as the Yokohama hanabi. But apparenty, this one was the "smaller" of the hanabi events. But honestly, I don't want to imagine even more people watching fireworks... I was planning on doing a stage-dive to get through them all faster at one point.

After the fireworks had ended and the massive crowd of people were heading for the city streets, we decided to go to the Cosmo World! The Cosmo World is an amusement park in the middle of Yokohama with extremely addictive roller-coasters and other entertainment. Na Young had actually never been in a roller coaster before and was nervous like hell, so needless to say I set us up for the most extreme ride I could find there. It was fun, she screamed her lungs out! It's something special to be spun around in a sub-sonic whirlwind and see glimts of the Yokohama skyline while upside down.

I strongly recommend you to check out http://www.npointercos.jp/Yokohama.html for some really good pictures of Yokohama. Anyway, here are the rest of my pictures:

Na Young-san

Who's the idiot doing the peace-sign the wrong way?

The streets of China Town

Anachronism

I guess they were thinking; "If we can't fit it on the ground..."

The colours of an utopia

Na Young with a Swedish 50kr bill

I'm still grumpy that all the video hosts I've found screw up the quality of the film, but still, here are the videos

Hanabi "smileys"
Hanabi finale
Strange cat person
Yukata child

Birthday Party...

... once again, on a school night. Yesterday (thursday) we had a birthday party for David the swiss guy. There were nearly no swedes this time, a good bunch of french people though. We were supposed to go to a local BBQ restaurant but we ended up on Mos Burger, which is like Japan's McDonalds counterpart. I think we went there simply because Raphael is in love with one of their waitresses though ;P The whole evening eventully got centered around Raphael's awesome T-shirt, the Mr. Po-Po! Kind of hard to explain, so I won't.

Anyway, we ate... then we all headed to Daiei (best store in the world) and bought some beers and smirnoffs (for the girls). We then found the most amazing thing; A one-litre beer can! For 500 Yen we got a litre of beer, in a freaking can! When there's beer in a big store in Tokyo, chances are that you'll have many sizes and flavours to choose from. For instance, the Asahi beer which we got came in the sizes of Medium, large, rediculously huge and kawaii. Pictures below... although not from the actual party, cos my camera ran out of batteries =S

Just a quick update on what's going on. Yesterday, this party. Today, me and Alexandra are going to Akihabara and probably buy matching cellphones, *and* look for Mr. Po-Po T-shirts! Tomorrow, sleep for at least 15 hours. Sunday = I'm going to a fireworks festival in Yokohama with Na Young-san and Su Jin-san! Yokohama is a city which has "grown into" Tokyo under the recent decades. If I recall correctly, the fireworks festival on sunday symbolises Japan's end as an isolationist state when american merchant ships opened Japan's international trade routes.

Raphael's love. He is planning on abducting her and going back to France and live on a vineyard.

A lot of variety in beer ranging from "Kawaii-size" to "Ridiculously huge" The big one is a 1-litre beer can

Malin, another Death Note junkie! Worthy of mentioning is also that she adores the 'cactuars' from Final Fantasy, although she won't admit it =)

Mr. Po-Po needs some of that divine beverage. Priceless facial expression!

Class in session

I just thought I'd stick in an extra entry about my class, and what it is like studying here.

My class consists of mostly asian people, namely south korean. Then there are swedish, french, taiwanese, chinese and danish people. In my parallell class there are also spanish and british folk. We are about 20 in total in my class though, I think. (Guy in the upper-right picture is Jonas, a fellow swede)

Well, class starts off with a "Minasan ohayou gozaimasu" from our sensei, which translates into "Good morning everyone". From there on, it's showtime. The classes are pretty intense, so you really can't afford to miss anything. I personally have a hard time memorizing everything. However, most europeans in our class suffer the very same fate, and it's beyond me how those übermensch south koreans actually memorize everything.

I must say that japanese teachers are much more fun than their western counterparts. Since they don't speak any english, they try to get their point across by acting out hilarious body language and charades when we look like sitting question marks. I mean, just their 'teacher's notes' are fun! Just look at the examples below.

The above smiley means that you have done something that's... well, not so good. But I mean, it's almost worth doing just that just to get these different awesome anime-esque smileys! I've seen students in our class get smileys that are way worse, so I won't panic just yet.

This one speaks for itself. What western-styled teacher would *ever* make notes in your homework like this? These kind of smileys show that you've done something right, obviously!

Okay, so our teachers are cool - what about the rest of the class? Well, I've known them for just a little more than a week, but it's a cool bunch. Some of them live in the same residence as I do, so sometimes we commute together in the morning (depending on when everyone wakes up). I'm a little embarrassed of the fact that I don't remember everyone's names... I'm having a hard time memorizing some of the korean students' names since some of their name tags are in kanji.

By far the most skilled japanese speaker in the class! Umi-san has helped me countless times with my japanese. She also speaks english fluently, which is cool.

Jack is the one who I was exploring Shinjuku with (which I mentioned in a prior blog). He is the one living with TkyoSam, a semi-famous youtube v-logger.

Two south-koreans who also speak japanese really well. Lee Na Young (left) made a suggestion about meeting up at Nippori station (my train-switch from Matsudo) tomorrow, but I have no idea how we are going to find eachother in an endless ocean of japanese people. Oh, and since my korean is a bit rusty to say the least, we communicate only in japanese, which is *great* practice. Speaking japanese like that usually gets long and hard (that's what she said, huhuhu) but it's fun to be a bit lost in translation sometimes. Kawaii desu ne?

Chinese guy and french guy. French guy's name is Julian, forgot the chinese dude's name.

Today's grammar lesson. Japanese grammar is pretty simple and straight-forward for the most part - especially when compared to Swedish - but because it's so different it gets really tricky when composing sentences. Thankfully, there are not that many irregularities in japanese, so you can memorize a great portion of the language without being a native speaker. Some of it is annoying though... like, for instance, the word twenty (ni juu = two ten) is "hatachi" when speaking of age.

I'm mostly focusing on vocabulary right now though so that I can understand what the hell the teachers are trying to teach. Thank God I know hiragana and katakana... Some of the students didn't acquire them before coming to Japan, and well... the teachers write almost exclusively in hiragana. Some teachers also don't know romaji (our way of writing, the roman alphabet) very well, so it's fun to see them mess up upper and lower-case letters, or accidentally re-arrange the order of them when writing down a word. "Erebeeta (Elevator)" once became "EveLaTor" which was purely awesome.

I hope you enjoyed the brief tour of the class... kind of non-informative, but still ^_^; I'll let you guys (Swedish peeps) know when the video log is coming along!

Sayounara!

World War III and some BBQ:ing

Yesterday was the hottest day in my entire life. Humid as hell, no wind... anyway, we had a BBQ near the Matsudo river!

There were well over 25 people there, mostly from our guesthouse. Besides being a food and drink party, it was also (as Alexander poetically calls it) the "Battle Royale of food". You see, when over twenty people of different nationalities are hungry and you have a grill that's roughly a third of a square metre, there's going to be bloodshed. With beers added into the picture, you get waterfights, chopsticks fights, guys jumping in the river... etc.

There were a bunch of japanese people there, but there was one who was one who is really worth mentioning; A girl named Aiko (pic below) who was studying SWEDISH. Why would anyone do that to oneself? Study a dying language that barely no one knows - even some of the swedes don't speak it very well. Kind of defeats the purpose of being an overall cool japanese person ^_^;

I deduct 50 cool points from Aiko and anyone else who dares to waste time on learning the Swedish language!

After the madness had calmed down for a bit, we all kind of just chilled in the weather(read: extremely agonizing heat). Also, Julia found some snake skin with a cigarette butt attached to it (Solid Snake?). Pictures of that and more below.

Chiizu!

Japanese guy

We found a snake scale with a cigarette butt stuck to it... Solid Snake?

The mandatory japanese piece-sign

Shinya the party planner. A bit drunk.

Poor Malin didn't seem to get much to eat at the grill... er, I mean war.

Where Americans, British, Scandinavian, European and Asian people collide.

Raphael with the beers prior to the BBQ

More liquour

Alexander looking semi-drugged to death. "Duude, wait... what?"

Roppongi Friday

Aside from MacDonald's, Roppongi is probably the least japanese aspect of Japan. Anyhow, we went there to party yesterday. There were a bunch of swedes, french, spanish and japanese students from our residence tagging along. For those of you who haven't heard of Roppongi, it's a modern neon-light party district near Shibuya. It houses the rich, famous "Roppongi Hills" area with the Mori Tower as its centerpiece. The Park Hyatt is also located there.

Roppongi's nightlife is mainly geared towards foreigners and japanese women who wish to hook up with them, so it isn't exactly like the other party districts like in Shinjuku or Shibuya. The first place we went to was "Heartland" which is a bar/dance-kind-of -place right below the futuristic blue neon lights of the Mori tower. It was packed tighter than the low rims of Hell though, so we only got a few beers and waited for some japanese people who we were supposed to meet there. There were some... questionable women there. Maybe not the brightest demography, although it was pretty vibrant ^_^.

When the (more interesting) japanese women we had been waiting for came along, we headed out for a club a few floors up another building. It was called "Flower" and we weren't allowed in until some (apparently) famous japanese guy managed to sneak us inside. Said and done, and he bought us some shots and beers while inside! The club had great music and awesome people - and the best part was that we were like the only foreigners there. Also, they had more 'japanese' bar prices... so no rediculously overpriced Swedish alcohol. Flower rocked. Out Loud. They even had beer vending machines - inside the freaking club!

Oh, and clubs in Roppongi usually close around 6am, so of course we partied until closure. Got home around 7 I think... woke up again at 3pm today.

So far I've spent my day taking a 30-minute hot shower, buying a life's supply of stuff at the Daiei store for about 1000Yen ($10), and continued my chilling by watching a few episodes of The Office on my computer while eating some strange japanese cheese-doodles. I was supposed to go to a duty-free electronic store today with Alexandra and Malin, but nothing right now can disturb my lazy saturday.

Life's good.

Makudonarudo

Yeah, I know it's not very japanese...

I was hungry after school today, so I went to the nearest McDonald's (15m from school...). I stood in line and waited for my turn, and when I was up, I was met with a shocking realization. It tooks some while to melt it all in, but as I walked away I realized how bizarre that encounter was: The man in the counter was actually being... happy and nice! I have never experienced this in a McDonald's before! He bowed when I gave him my mere 600 Yen for my meal, smiled and gave me my change back and bowed again asking me to come back someday and wished me a nice day.

To sum up: Extraordinary service and human warmth in a McDonald's express restaurant.

WHAT IS WRONG WITH THIS COUNTRY

Sign reading: Makudonarudo
Hanbaagaa (McDonald's Hambuger)

More rumble...

Yesterday was supposed to be my big study day. That changed when a japanese student who is living in the same hotel as we do, invited us all to his university. His class and some others were having a party to celebrate... well, I don't really remember what it was, but it was some sort of accomplishment they had achieved. So anyway, we gathered up a bunch of people and went there. On the way, me and Raphael (a french student) dropped by a convenience store on the to pick up some beer for the party since we were kinda late (I love how availbale everything is, regardless of the hour!). Easier said than done... you see, when japanese people like something, they usually start messing around with it until there are tonnes and heaps of different variations of that particular item. This time, it was beer. Japanese people love beer, and I stood confused for a few minutes trying to decide if I wanted a citrus or tomato(!?!) flavoured beverage.

The party was situated on the university roof, which needless to say, was pure awesomenessseses! Apparently, the japanese student's classmates knew that he was living in a dorm with gaijins (foreigners) and wanted him to bring us along. I met some really cool people there, and exchanged a few email addresses for future meetings. The swedes and danes were of particular interest to them, and they like... gathered up in a circle around each of us and asked a billion questions. They were really surprised and excited about the fact that I liked japanese film and anime, and each time you replied something in japanese (like a few words) they were all like "SUGOOI!!" (awesome).

I also met the coolest nerd ever. When the japanese law students asked me what anime I liked I listed a few favourites, and when I got to "Code Geass" some guy with way too many teeth and tucked-up pants shouted out "AAAH SUGOOI, KODO GIASU SUKI DESU!! RERUSHUU RANPERUUSHU! NI BURITANNIA!" which made my day right there.

Then I talked to some south-korean exchange students about Kim Jong Ill, then discussed Beethoven with a girl who played the flute and cello in the univerity orchestra, and later on mingled with the french people.

When we got to the drunken state, we realized that we had school 8:50 in the morning, and that we should get back to the residence. Yep, first time I've partied on a school night, but it was one of the best parties I've been to in a long while. I'm sorry for the lack of pictures, but I didn't bring my camera to the party =(

Now I have to get going to City Hall here in Matsudo and get my alien registration card! (Gaijin Kaado)

School Rumble

First day of school! It started out with thunderstorms in the morning (Still hot like you wouldn't believe...) so I had to get one of those epic japanese see-through umbrellas (= one step towards japanization).

Then I rushed to the station and had to wait out two trains because I couldn't get in because it was full. Be aware that the word "full" doesn't have the same connotation in Japan. There's full, and there's japanese-full. I mean, the freaking train from Matsudo has FIFTEEN wagons with SIX doors each running every 6-minutes, and they fill them up rediculously full each time. It's beyond me...

There was this one japanese schoolgirl who litterarly threw herself into the trai... er, wall of human beings, and bounced right back to the platform. She then made a second attempt and somehow fit, probably thanks to the station officers (The people whose jobs are to mush everyone in and close the doors so that the train may leave). After I saw that, I lost my ambition to try to squeeze myself in. I waited for the next train. Same story. Nailed the third one though.

Okay, so I got to Shin-Okubo station where my school is located and went up to the sixth floor where my classroom is. It all went smoothly from here, and my classmates are pretty cool. Like half are korean and the rest are swedish, english, danish, french, spanish and chinese I think. After class, me and Jack went to Shinjuku and scouted some beautiful alleyways hidden in all the craziness. Then I accidentally bought the most delicious treat I've ever had... some sort of baked bread with chocolate and sugar-like substance. It tasted like the catholic GOD or something else equally divine and revered.

Anyway.. our monday teacher's name is (K)yoko Ono... I kid you not! She doesn't know a word of english (handles some engrish though), so the entire session was in japanese. The verdict? I've learned more in four hours than I have for the past three gymnasium years back home - and my teacher spoke a language I didn't understand! That should tell you something...

Oh, language barrier downside = She gave us a bunch of homework so I don't quite know what to do.