Me, myself & Thai

Sorry for the lack of posts, I simply haven't had time to just sit down and write and stuff! As some of you already figured out by the title, Sayam has finally reached the restrictive shores of Japan and we're now spreading destruction upon Tokyo together.

Since I'm in the middle of spring break now, we don't have to mind the hour (and we really don't) when we're out. I think our current record is somewhere around 14-hours of just walking around, exploring, and going to various izakaya and other interesting places. I think it reached its pinnacle when my girlfriend started to get a bit jealous because I was spending so much time with Sayam. She had been talking a lot about going to Odaiba (Kind of a romantic dating-friendly island off Tokyo's coast) together and I promised to go, but haven't yet done so... Anyway, I went with Sayam instead, haha. I think we lost around 30-40 man points by walking around there among all "the other couples", but we rightfully reclaimed them when we went to an izakaya and drank "drinks" out of brutal beer glasses that were larger than an average-sized Japanese person.

Eating Tenpura, squid & Karage at a small izakaya in Shinjuku

It's been really cool seeing an old friend again after about eight months. So far we've strolled the high-rise in Shinjuku, window-shopped the craziness that is Harajuku, dodged Yakuza members in Kabukicho, gotten lost in the old Edo-streets of Asakusa, and re-enacted Metal Gear-style sneaking in a ridiculusly luxurious hotel in Daiba. Oh, and Sayam drank a tea-spoon sized coffee for over three dollars.

"Thank you for using Ginza Line. Please set your cellphone to silent mode and refrain from talking on the phone. The next station is, Silent Hill. The doors on the left side will open."

We're planning on visiting the Museum of Science & Art in Ueno this week, as well as spending a great amount of time in Asakusa. We found a truly cool place there with almost exclusively japanese-styled shops and restaurants, close to the temples. A pair of ninja shoes caught Sayam's eyes, while a Yukata for under 3000 Yen caught mine.

I'll write about our adventures to come when we reach the old capital of Japan; Kyoto!


続く ~

Random J-bird

Reunion

These past two weeks have been complete opposites of one and other. I spent the first one camped in my room, as I was down with the flu. This is by the way the first time I've been sick since I came to Japan. Anyway, I spent about 6 days doing absolutely nothing but sleeping, watching movies on my laptop and basically being an infant. The following week however, I didn't even have enough time to go home some days. Since school here is super-intense and fast-paced (compared to our western equivalents) I had to spend a lot of time catching up lost chapters, as well as trying to hang on to the current ones. To add to that, I've gotten two new students, so my teaching schedule has gotten more active too. Also, as I mentioned in my previous entry my sister was coming to visit, as well as two friends from Sweden.

Sooo... I went to Sunroute Hotel in Shinjuku where my sister and her husband Peter were waiting for me. As I got there I received my long-awaited supplies from the motherland -- a huge quantity of LÖSGODIS which will last until my departure. We then went to touristy places like the Metropolitan towers to take pictures of Tokyo from a high altitude. Not surprisingly, my sister was more interested in taking pictures of various 'cute' stuff around the city.

Tourist? I think so!

Older brothers and sister usually have some kind of leverage over the younger ones in the family, but she has done enough awkward things here for me to have a good reserve of counter-arguments when we're back home. She'll always be the person who put green tea powder into a saucer of soy in a sushi restaurant.

The following day I met Magnus who had recently arrived. He actually got my old room in the Matsudo guesthouse which I lived in for more than half-a-year. He'll be here for two months, just the right amount of time to explore Tokyo. I went to Matsudo to pick him up (He was too frightened to leave the place alone ;) Anyway, long time since I've been to Matsudo... it's a really nice, quiet place and I like it a lot, but it's just too damn far away from everything.


On the same day we went together with my sister and Peter to an izakaya in Kabukichou to eat various dishes and have some cool drinks. Since izakyas usually have an endless amount of drinks for very reasonable prices, we decided to pay the 1500Yen/2h bill to get access their drink-as-much-as-you-can menu, and we basically went through the list from top to bottom.

Peter with his masculine beverage

Being northen european, we of course over-ordered everything and when the staff came to our table to tell us we had to leave in a minute (our time was up) we were still surrounded by 8 huge drinks (we were four people). When we drank them all up, the waitor cleaned up the table and quietly said "Sugee.." (Wow...) to himself.

This guy didn't believe we could finish off a huge batch of drinks enough to sink the Titanic

On my sister's last day in Tokyo, we went to Odaiba. It's a man-made island just off Tokyo Bay and is accessible with the monorail which 'flies' over the bay. While there, I was pretending not to know my sister since she suddenly evolved into some kind of ultra-mega tourist snapping pictures of everything like there was no tomorrow.

Now here I am, with these strange weeks behind me and looking forward to a great Haruyasumi (Spring break) which will begin next week. The only thing I have to worry about now is the final exam...

Also, I seem to be lacking a certain Thai. He got stopped before he was able to board his flight to Narita, and so by that bureaucracy has won yet another battle against sanity. Hopefully he'll get here next week!