Despite the heavy rain I decided to ride my bike to work. I was wet and dirty, but enjoyed it very much!
Tomorrow the weather is supposed to clear up, I hope so, cause I’m going to get a haircut and all.
Bikes rock!
So the time has come to return to ye olde homecountry.
I’ve spent a good 25 days in Japan now, my longest stay yet. Right about now the idea that this will be my last night in Tokyo slowly sinks in. This is also when the nostalgia kicks in and I feel that I’ll miss this place terribly.
I’ll miss narrow streets, conbinis, vending machines (although my teeth wont miss them!), passnet, cheap good food, trains that come often, izakayas etc… I wont miss the bikes on the sidewalk and trains that stop going at midnight. Nor will I miss the bugs, cockroaches and creepy dying things falling out of trees (sometimes landing way too close for comfort, or in the case of Nisse: on you). I think I’ll miss the bugs least of all! hehe
This trip has been rockier then the last two. There have been days here when I would have killed to be home in Sweden. I think it might have been the heat. I have handled it much worse then I expected. Next time I’ll come during colder times. I’ve also been annoyed at some aspects of Japanese society like the drone culture and male domination which has at times caused what I might call “annoyance attacks”. The annoyance attacks are very annoying.
Sometimes when I am in Stockholm I have days when I’d kill to be in Japan or New York or something, and when I am in Japan I have days when I want to return home. So the end result is that I look forward to coming home, but still some kind reflex nags in the back of my head and begs to stay longer.
Life in Stockholm seems much simpler. Except maybe when it comes to finding good and cheap places to eat. Something about Japan makes me tired at times, maybe it’s the need to constantly process Japanese or the large crowds or perhaps even the long distances between places, hard to tell.
The idea that Karin will not be home when I get back is also making this harder. Quite a bit harder in fact. At least the Vlad will meet me at the airport, hehe.
They say the grass is always greener on the other side and for me this is so true that it sometimes makes my life a total bitch.
I’ve uploaded some photos to make my nostalgia even worse. Head over to here and see.
A few days ago I became a little older.
It was celebrated by my cuz vlad in the following way. (among many other ways)
The journey is almost at it’s end and all throughout me and Karin have been so busy that we haven’t even had time to blog. Seriously it’s been one city after the other and generally we just didn’t have time to go to internet cafés to make funky blog entries. So I will just have to make a big one when I get back.
Here are all the towns we visited in order: Tokyo, Matsumoto (Utsukushigahara onsen), Nakatsugawa, Magome, Tsumago, Osaka, Beppu, Senomoto, Kurokawa onsen, Aso, Kumamoto, Hiroshima, Takamatsu, Uwajima, Osaka, Tokyo.
What a list! Anyway, we’ve had a great trip with a ton of fun and crazy stuff. The heat however has been very very strong indeed. Sometimes it defeated me. It was horrible. The other day it was 41 degrees in Kyoto and Tokyo. In the shadow. We were walking around. In the sun. It was kind of like when we stepped out of an air conditioned bus into the Sahara desert in Tunisia, but this was in Kyoto. Caught me by surprise.
Now we’re gonna try to haxx Karim’s psp a little… or a lot.
On my previous two trips to Japan I had little to no trouble with jetlag… However this time I have suffered more then I expected to. I believe that my preparations (sleeping very little before the flight ;)) were either insufficient or maybe too excessive. Anyways I will attempt a new strategy next time.
It’s about 11am and I just woke up. As I write this Karin is bent over a bucket trying to get rid of some of the food she ate last night. I dunno, maybe she doesn’t wanna gain weight! 
Usually that is where spent my mornings after an evening such as the one we just had, but this time the tables are turned. Although I have never been in this position myself on my previous Japan trips.
Last night me, nisse and Karin went to watch some serious fireworks in Yokohama along with half of Tokyo if not more. The commotion was immeasurable. The trains were packed with Japanese returning home from work mixed with kimono- and yukata-clad youngsters on their way to the event. They had all kinds of extra personnel working to make sure that people could get in to the trains, out of the trains, off the station and into the station. Lot’s of hand-held voice amplifiers produced many kudasais. There was also quite a police force on the site, with a situation tent and everything.
Our host for the evening, Ino, had been to the site at 9am the same day and booked (by taping a sizeable piece of blue tarp with her name on it onto the asphalt; we subsequently spent the evening on said tarp) a very nice spot close to the action.
The party was epic in nature. Which it has been almost every time with those crazy people. 
Although I myself was not drinking anything the entire evening, for the others the beer and sour (aka saawa; japanese plum wine mixed with soda) flowed. Japanese people know how to party in most conditions and one of the best kinds of parties is on the street.
All hail the blue tarp! Used by partying Japanese as a “table” and by homeless Japanese for building make-shift shelters.
This particular tarp served host to many different foods and drinks (both literally and figuratively). We ate food, we drank liquids. From around 19:00 to midnight. Please note that the tarp was the only thing between us and solid asphalt for 5 hours straight.
Anyways, a bit after midnight we caught the last train to Shibuya and since in Japan all trains stop going by 1am, we had to walk the rest of the way to our place of sleep on foot. The train ride took about an hour and then we walked for another hour and a half and arrived home around 3am. So much for fighting jetlag
The woman who takes care of the inn where were we are staying (Elegant Inn Yasuda) is super-nice. She has on numerous occasions let us call her in the middle of the night and opened the door for us. I guess some hotels have no curfew which is nice, but at least in Yasuda the external door is always locked so only other guests can walk out with your laptop while you’re out enjoying Tokyo. Her mother complained to me this morning saying that she is very sick and that we should stop coming in so late. She doesn’t look sick, but I certainly don’t enjoy waking up people in the middle of the night. Sick or not.
Anyways I hope Karin can finish her romance with the bucket soon so we can do some aimless wandering around Tokyo.
We arrived at last.
I feel wonderful, the weather feels great and the air smells good.
I might never go back.
We had a nice lunch at shimuro ramen where we have eaten a few times before. It is sort of a tradition these days. Great ramen.
Now time to get a room somewhere.
Sitting in Vienna International Airport. Free WIFI. That’s progress.
That’s about it.
In about 30 hours I am going to Japan. For the third time.
I totally look forward to meeting my friends, both Japanese and Swedish. Yo Nisse, that includes j00! (Ueno at 10am :))
This time I am going with Karin, my girlfriend… I feel a certain trepidation since August is not considered to be the best time to go to Japan, so I fear I might frighten her off. I myself know the greatness of Japan, but for a n00b, the climate of August might be a turn-off. I’ve heard it described as Hell by some. Let’s hope for the best!
On the bright side, Nisse, who is a hater of all things hot and a lover of cold weather has now been living in Japan for a month and has not complained about the weather.
Anyway, when the trip is so close I always get frustrated because I just want the time to pass so I can be on the damn plane. Or better yet, at the destination
Now to further pack and clean.
PS: I’ll try to blog a bit this time too.
I am writing to you from my girlfriends sofa. Which means that I’m home (at her place anyway).
It feels good to be home. It felt nostalgic to ride the Stockholm subway and busses again. I actually have not been away from Stockholm for such a long period of time since 1994. This was a whooping 26 day trip, my last long trip was 2 weeks, and that was also Japan hehe.
I have very few regrets about this trip. If any, it’s that I at times let my longing for Karin get me a bit stressed out and take it out on the Japanese peoples.
Anyway it was a great trip. And to quote from a movie you should have seen: A person needs new experiences. They awaken something deep inside of us. The sleeper must awaken.
Although at this point, the reality of the real world is slowly smashing back down on top of my head and I gotta deal.
So stay cool and enjoy the summer.
PS: I’ll be putting up more pics slowly. My harddrive is not big enough to handle it all, so I need to do some rearranging.
Lazy Zealots angelhill.net/code
