on music

Just a short post on the Japanese and music. They seem to have some difficulties deeming appropriateness in their choice of songs in public places. Maybe it's the Western touch that's confusing?

A few weeks ago we were in the cafeteria around lunch time and stopped to listen for a moment.

They were playing G6 with Far East Movement. Not your typical lunch tune.

And today I ventured into the steam sauna at the gym for the first time. Such a serene place for relaxation and refreshment - a woman was even sleeping/napping/resting her eyes in the corner (which was fairly odd seeing as she was stark naked...) and the water drops from the ceiling sometimes fell down and hit the floor with a soft sound.

In the background was THIS playing.

Jo x

anime blog post

I just got back from the gym, and I have a story to tell. For a change I thought I'd post it in anime. Here goes. 

 

I was standing in pouring rain that perfectly matched my miserable state (bad gym session), waiting for the green light.  It took ages of course.

 

Then a voice behind me said arimasu (roughly meaning "I have").

A man came up to me and amazingly shared his umbrella! (Sadly he was old and not nearly as cute as his anime representative). But very nice. Turned out he works for Sony and just visited Stockholm. He wished me good luck for my studies and went on his way once we reached the other side of the street where there was a sheltered area.

 

 Absolutely made my day.

Jo x

bits and bobs

 Took an afternoon in Shibuya yesterday. Look closer on the photo left - it says Basketball Street! Wonderful name if you ask me. Some sort of advertising for the BJ League or something.

Shibuya is an awesome place. Lots of shops, restaurants and general cool stuff. Went into Don Quijote - a huge store with plenty of international products: make-up, hair products, food and clothes. I went a tad crazy and got dark chocolate and dried mango among other things. So good! They had English tea, German sweets, even Cadbury chocolate (!) and a lot of American brands. Definitely going back.

H&M with super cute elevator and funky interior decor. Good prices too compared to the rest of Tokyo. Of course, also a touch of home.

Lunch at Hiyoshi Campus. Very cheap cafeteria. This lovely meal which was very filling indeed cost me 260 yen = £2.60! Yummy yummy fried tofu far left, rice at the bottom, and some even yummier pickled egg plant, cooked kabocha and honey glazed potato to the right.

After 3 hours of Japanese, this was a nice reward. It's doing my head in, but thankfully the grammar is so easy. The tricky part is that you have to read the situation and read the subtext in order to understand a conversation. For example: if it's obvious, you don't specify the person. So if it's obvious I'm talking about myself, I won't add "I" to the sentence. "I studied yesterday" would become simply "studied yesterday". No lazying around in convos here, oh no.

News thus: bought ticket to the big baseball game between rivals Keio and Waseda (30th Oct) and to the Halloween Party 29th. Now costume hunting begins. I'm thinking Sailor Venus...

Jo x

super secret project (ssp)

 A for the moment secret project brought me to Gotanno in Tokyo today. Gotanno is north, a lot more north than you'd think - it's in fact so much north it's not even on the subway map. But awesome myself managed to get there and back without getting lost or causing disaster. Proud indeed. 

 NB! The cat has nothing to do with the SSP. Simply joined along the way.

Jo x

arty schtuff

Just some photos I took from our arts excursion/field trip thing. Looking through them I think back to the taking of them and realise I want to be a Nikon/Canon-twat too. One day I will own a proper camera...

Condoms according to blood type. What's yours?

By an American artist. Met him!

Note the price. Hrm.

Freaky dude outside a gallery

From famous patisserie in Tokyo

Queue + man in a hat by the door = Win!

Gotta love it.

 

 

Nippori, Tokyo.

Jo x

yagami campus festival 2011

Note the smug beaver in the middle

 I've had a busy last couple of days (just realised now it's been a weekend, but somehow my weekends tend to be more busy than weekdays...hrm) and on Sunday we went to the Yagami Campus Festival just next door to our house.

Universities here have lots of festivals, and only at Yagami (which is a fairly small one) they expected over 20,000 visitors over two days. In November there is Mita Festival, expecting roughly 200,000 people! Yes, insanity.

So what is Yagami Festival? Well, a lot. There was the Mr/Miss Yagami beauty pageant contest thing where five candidates of each sex compete and one is crowned at the end of the festival. They were sadly highly disappointing and neither the guy nor girl I voted for won. Bad, bad, bad. Clearly people here have no taste. At Mita Festival there is the slightly bigger Mr/Miss Keio contest, and whoever wins Miss Keio is apparently sure to get a good job in TV in Japan. There was also a competition for the best guy-dressed-as-a-girl (see left) but I don't know who won that one. At the festival there were quite a few guys dressed up in maid costumes with heels, tights and everything. Did I mention Japanese guys can come across as even more...metrosexual...than Swedish ones?

 Everything was very 'homemade' and I think really most of it was for children. Flee market, plenty of food stands ('why don't you, why don't you?' shouted all over the place) and even a Haunted House! Now, what needs to be noted about the Haunted House is that a. my friends and I were the oldest ones in there. Everyone else was below 12, and b. the interior was made up of black plastic bags so it sort of killed the mood. But, in all fairness, it wasn't bad. I have a slight phobia of Haunted Houses from a horrific one in my youth and was a little bit hesitant about going in. Have you ever seen The Ring? Yes, well, imagine that. Somehow it gets a whole lot scarier when there are Japanese people scaring you. They were lying under tables and shooting out in front of you (my friend almost accidentally stamped one in the face), and some would just stare at you. Funniest part was when a 'ghost' scared my friend, she screamed, and the ghost bowed to her as we walked away. Only in Japan.

The maze

The 'Kick-A-Croc-Competition.' Not ok even then, people! Not going to happen.

Science house (note the kids in the background

Bug society

 The night ended with fireworks. I semi-don't get the point with fireworks, but this particular shower of rain/waterfall was awesome. During the show (there were mostly Japanese people there) you'd hear 'Ooh! Aaah!' from the audience as the colourful images spread across the sky. So cute.

Then we went home and on the way I picked up one of these thingys. I think it's called goma and it is a bun with black sesame paste inside. Kind of good but the bread was like an uncooked dry-ish dough. Not so sure about that one.

Yesterday we went to an arts event with class and met some artists and took plenty of photos. To catch them, watch this space.

Jo x