生活

So now I'm finally starting to getting used to living here. I don't get surprised by everything in the same way anymore, and just living som kind of everyday life, which is to say quite nice! At the same time it kind of shocks me when I look into a calendar and see that I've been here almost a whole 3 weeks! It honestly doesn't feel like even near that much, but much more like maybe one week.

At least it seems that being here actually does improve my japanese a lot, and especially when it comes to listening I'm really starting to get better, and can even hold simple conversations without too much trouble. Also I have noticed that you get much more motivated learning when living here, since when you learn a new kanji, or a new word, you immediatly see that this is something that i can really use in everyday life, and make my life simpler. It can help me read various signs and so on and so on. Although I still don't understand most signs completly, at least I mostly understand them enough to be able to guess what it tries to say.

So what have I been up to? Not much, to be honest. Of course I have been doing stuff, but not much considering I've been here for almost 3 weeks, it would be to expencive to go about doing things all the time, and also tiring, considering I have to get up at 7 to go to school every day. So a general day looks something like this:

• Try to get up at 7:00
• Get up at 7:20
• Eat some breakfast
• Take a shower
• Think it's probably a little to late to walk all the way to school (or be too tired), and take the train instead
• The train is really crowded, but get in anyway, and enjoy at the beautiful view over Tokyo from the elevated railway. At the second stop get out, and walk the rest of the way to the school. Sometimes I of course do have enough time in the morning, and then I simply walk the 30-40 minutes to school.
• Get to school and take the elevator to the 6th floor where our classroom is, unless the elevator is to crowded, in which case I take the stairs.
•  Have classes for 3 and a half hours until 12:30 
• Go buy some lunch at the nearby supermarket, and sit down and eat it in the school lobby on the first floor.
• Do the homework for tomorrow, and then use the rest of the time until 16:30 to learn new kanjis and words.
• Now the school day ends! Either go home and cook some dinner and play games/watch anime/do something else at home, or join some friends and do something fun elsewhere in Tokyo!
• Sleep

Of course there are slight variations to this schematic, but at least it quite closely resembles what i do during the days. So now I can use the rest of this entry to discuss the things I've done that deviates from this.

Something very nice is to just now and then join some friends and go to some other part of Tokyo, like Harajuku, Shibuya, Akihabara or Roppongi and walk around a little and have some dinner. This is really cool, because you actually get to experience living in such a big and densely populated area, and it's something that I still havn't really get used to fully. There are so many cool buildings, smart traffic solutions, cool railways etc. etc. that I still get really excited when I see them!

Other stuff I've been doing is going to a picnic in yoyogi park, which was really nice, and also last sunday I went to a consert in Ikebukuro, which was a really interesting experience. It was called metalympic, and there were 5 different metal bands. The first ones (nard) were really weird and hard to define, but they had really cool outfits, and I kind of liked them. Somewhere during there performance I noticed that a large portion of the crowd were middle aged women, and I guess the avarege age in there was something like 40 at this point. This was explained by the next band (ware wolf babys), which consisted of something like 40 year old women, playing more old school heavy metal. After their performance the avarage age in the crowd quite quickly dropped somewhat.

The third band (VELL'z FIRE) was quite intresting, and played really well. After this they had some kind of air guitarr competition, after which the most important part of the evening came, Gotsu totsu kotsu, or 兀突骨 (see 3:15 here http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pj-aOoN7gwI)! Really cool samurai death metal. In the end there was a band called breed of darkness, this time with middle aged men. In total, this was a really nice event!

Also, I have now lived for 3 weeks without a cell phone, and turns out it actually works quite ok! Will try to get some pictures up sooner or later too!

Random thoughts about Japan

During the few days I've now been in Japan I've had several thoughts about some random stuff I'd like to share. They are mostly completly unrelated to each other, so I'll just write a long list of them. Think of it as my version of essays in idleness by Yoshida Kenko (with slightly less sexism though).

1. When cars in Japan turn left, they actually say "I'm turning left, please be careful!". Same goes for ambulances, although they talk much louder.
2. Using the yamanote line is awesome.
3. In summer, it's usually warmer on the outside, than inside, which is quite shocking to me. Same goes for when the sun is down.
4. It's summer, but still it's dark by 19:00, which is quite shocking since in sweden the sun is still up at 22:00.
5. Honestly I'm not surprised by very much of what I find here, since I've already read about most stuff, and also been here before, but it's still quite different to read something and to experience it. For that reason, most of the stuff I write here is not "stuff I was surprised to get to know", but rather "stuff that amazes me". One thing though that really did surprise me is the usage of electric outlets, which is quite restricted. At the dorm where I live, we are not allowed to use electric outlets outside our own rooms, not even for using a razor in the bathroom, or using your computer in the self study room. Not even in school, where we have free WiFi, is it allowed to use the outlets for charging your computer, because then you are "stealing" the electricity. This is just ridiculous.. Good thing I have a good battery!
6. All japanese buildings have air condition. That's nice!
7. Yamanote line is awesome.
8. Went to a real japanese supermarket today, and it was actually quite similair to the swedish ones, which is nice. Made some meatballs too. おいしかった！It was actually quite scarry, because there were soo many people, but apart from that, it was something like coop forum, a furniture shop and a small version of Systembolaget in one building.
9. Japanese people, at least in Tokyo, seems to be driving quite crappily. Whereas japanese people in general tend to be very nice to everyone, and showing lots of respect to eachother, this seems to vanish once inside a car. Very fast accelarations, really fast breaking, driving against red lights, etc. Moreover, people tend to park basically everywhere, often in really bad places.
10. I know almost every country is nationalistic when it comes to car brands, but it's even more obvious here. Basically every car I see on my walk from where I live to school is of a japanese brand. I have seen some rare cases of BMWs, and some case Mercedes too, but apart from that, only japanese cars. Toyota seems to be by far the most usual, but in Higashiogu where I live Honda and Nissan seems to be more popular. When it comes to trucks, it seems Isuzu is by far the largest one.
11. You get a lot of coins when you use cash all the time. Especially the one yen coins are quite bothersome, since they are quite useless. Only good usage of them is to avoid getting more of them.
12. People here seem to be scared of walking. I have 3km to school, and most people seem to think I'm crazy for walking instead of buying a bicycle or taking the train.
13. Rice is crazy crazy expensive here, but at the same time really really tasty.
14. It's actually possible to live without a cell phone. Sure, it restricts you sometimes, but at least it works out quite ok.
15. Just having a laptop, and limited space and comfort in your room makes wonder for study morale!
16. Yamanote line is awesome.

New blog

So, I finally managed to start a blog. I have no idea how well I will maintain it, but at least I'll try. I've been thinking about what language to use, but finally settled for english, since i figure there might be some non-swedish speaking people who also want to be able to follow. Might also be worth noting I probably won't spend that much time checking my spelling and stuff, so there'll probably be some nasty errors.. Also I won't try to put too much effort into following some sort of red line either but will instead just focus writing what I at the moment think might some interesting reading, and hopefully stuff won't be too terrible to read.

So, in case there is someone reading this who doesn't already know who I am, I'll try to give you a short introduction (自己紹介). My name is Oskar, I'm 22 years old and I study engineering (engineering physics and electrical engineering) at Linköping university. This year (2012-2013) I'll be doing an exchange year at Tohoku university (東北大学), which is kind of why I started this blog. However, as this starts in october, and my spring term in Sweden ended in the begining of june, I'm spending my vacation studying japanese at akamonkai language school in Tokyo.

I currently live at dormitory of this school, which is nice, since it is very cheap. I live in a shared room, and it works fairly well. It's not very convinient, but since I don't spend a lot of time here good enough. I bought a frying pan and a sauce pan, so I can make som ramen/pasta/rice if I want to, and also fry gyoza, or cook other simple ready made food/intermediates, although I can't really cook anything advanced. I finally managed to find some supermarkets too, so now I don't have to survive on bread, onigiri and bento from the convenience stores anymore either (hell, now I can make ramen, gyoza and eggs instead!).

We made placement tests this wednesday to decide which class we will attend as well, but I think the level of the class I'm now attending is in general too low, but I guess it's because of my slacking in Kanji repetition... I'll try to catch up with my kanjis and see if I can get moved up to a higher class later on; it shouldn't be too difficult. At least i got into the morning class, which is nice, because otherwise there's a good chance I would just sleep through all mornings without getting much done.

I wesn to akihabara as well and bought and power strip and another converter from the japanese/american standard to the european, so now I can use several electronic appliencies at one time! How convenient! Got an alarm clock and an electronic dictionary as well. =) Was fun to run the yamanote line again as well. This line is really amazing, and a must see for any visitor to Tokyo!

I live quite close to my school (about 3 km), but it still takes me maybe 35 minutes to walk, since I don't have a bike. I could take the train, and this would reduce the time with 15 minutes to 20 minutes, but then I would be dependent on train times (not a big problem in Tokyo though) and more importantly it would cost me more than 400 yen every day, so I say it's better to just walk and get some excercise as well, although most people here seems to think I'm crazy for walking such a "long" distance.

Will probobly come with some more thoughts in time, but not for know. Jet lag is calling.