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.