So I’m on the train toward the capital of Sweden, about to try out another lifestyle.

Stockholm is, apart from where I usually live, actually a city. I would call it a city, it’s not a big city, but a city non the less. It has a subway and like, at least some people.

I’m gonna be working there mostly so it’s gonna be a tryout of an actual lifestyle of living and working there. It’s gonna be fun to see if I can like the city and if I can like the work as something I could consider doing as a career.

I’ll be staying there until school starts around the start of September and I’ll be blogging as usual, so we’ll just have to see how it works out!

With learning Japanese that is.

I always feel I achieve more when I have a very clear goal as to what I am supposed to achieve. So I set up a goal for myself, and it’s quite a simple one (simply expressed, not simply achieved).

Pass the Japanese Language Proficiency Test or JLPT next year.

The JLPT is a standardized test to measure how skilled one is at Japanese. There are four levels to this test where level 4 is the easiest.

To pass level 4 you need to know about 100 kanji (or Japanese signs for those who don’t know the word) and you need a vocabulary of about 800 words. You also need to know enough grammar to match the knowledge of what is found in the books “Japanese For Busy People I”, some chapters of “Japanese For Busy People II” and one chapter from “Japanese For Busy People III”. And it just so happens that I own the first book, which is a good start!

According to Wikipedia you need to study this much:

So if I study one hour a day that means it will take 150 days or approximately 5 months.

Now one hour a day is a lot of time and I don’t even begin to fool myself into thinking I can keep that up. But on the other hand, the tests are usually at the end of the year which means I should have at least a full year to study.

I can do nothing more than try to keep an hour a day up, if I fail to do so I will fail the test and I will have failed myself. I really hope I can do it.

So there was actually one thing that I missed from Sweden, and that thing was candy.
The Japanese had quite a lot of candy, it’s not really that. But almost all their candy tasted very unnatural, it was all chemical tastes and the chocolate wasn’t really to my taste either, and of course you can’t really find real liquorice (you can’t find that in most of the world).

But the one thing I missed the most about Swedish candy was this:

Buying candy by the weight is something I rarely see outside of Sweden, but I love this! You can choose to buy as many pieces as you want from as many different kinds as you want and you only pay for how much all of the candy weighs. This is something I’m having a hard time seeing Japan take on because of their “fear” of unpackaged things and need for sterile cleanliness. But it’s really awesome because you can customize what you buy and you don’t need to buy a whole lot of packages of different things.

So it has come to an end, we’re at the hotel packed and ready to leave early tomorrow morning. What can I say, it has been a crazy ride. One month has gone by and we’ve seen loads of stuff, done loads of stuff and shopped loads of stuff (me at least).

It’s been a wonderful time and it leaves me longing for more. It leaves me longing for a more permanent stage of being able to go out to restaurants without loosing all your money, being able to actually physically buy a figure, being able to look for information or just see some cool magazines in a bookstore.

There’s so much I can do here that I simply can’t at home. It’s not possible because it doesn’t exist. Then there’s all the stuff I can do here that I can’t at home because it’s so much more expensive at home. The only thing I can do at home that I can’t do here is buy candy (I’ll write a post on this later from home to explain).

Regardless of all I said before about wanting to know more of Japanese life before deciding on whether or not to actually live here, leaving now feels like leaving home, I’m leaving so much behind.

But not to leave on a sad note — it’s been wonderful and there are some things I’m looking forward to at home, things that will be coming in the next couple of months.

As I place my butt on the plane for another 20-something hours of travel to go home, I will think about all of the wonderful things here and all the wonderful time I’ve spent with Emma here.

Once I’m home, I’m going to start sorting out the best pictures from this trip to produce a picture book, I will also be blogging a bit about stuff that I’ve thought about during the trip but forgot or didn’t have time to write about (unless I forget them again, in which case maybe I’ll write about them next time I’m here ).

Life is almost about to turn back to normal and I hope I can keep the feeling of Japan with me, and that I can have the discipline to read my theory books on Japanese and start learning this beautiful language.

日本、またね。

I’ve always known about japanese figures and I’ve seen them a bunch of times. But most (read almost all) have some quite significant sexual tendencies, that is — they’re always half-naked.

The thing is that I’ve always thought people bought them for their half-nakedness and the sexual thing about them. But after reading a lot of Danny Choos’ blog about Japan and a bit of how figures play into the Otaku culture I’ve changed my mind.

So it kind of hit me and I’ve really come around to liking figures a lot — maybe not as much as Danny Choo or some other nerds around Akihabara, but I certainly am a nerd and as such it felt very wrong to go home without a proper figure in my bag!

So I went out today to find something cool and I think I hit the jackpot, cool and cheap!

50% off! Its a really good-sized high detail figure, so I’m really happy

Some images when it’s assembled:

And a final image with its proper base (which I think is supposed to look like snow or something) and the other clothes I got with it, plus the book and CD that I really haven’t checked what it is yet.

So as you know I got a cold last week. As expected the soar throat gave way to a runny nose, but something very unexpected arrived as well. I’ve gotten one of these “i’m-on-my-last-breath-help-me-i’m-gonna-fucking-die”-coughs too! It’s really annoying because I fucking hate coughing, and I think our neighbors and Emmas’ need to sleep agrees with me.

So I thought I’d fix the problem, googled and found this. So I subsequently went out to buy “az アネトン”. On my way there I had a really nice feeling! I had woken up a bit earlier today from the cough so I let Emma sleep in while I went out. I had a clear purpose (walking to the drugstore) and it felt a lot like morning because of the weather (even though it wasn’t morning in most peoples definition) and with both those things, it really felt like I was doing something here. Like walking to school or work, like I was actually living here, totally nice feeling.

Now I’m gonna try to take 3 pills of this 3 times a day as the lady in the store said. Lets hope it works cuz we’re going to the OriginalFake store today and I don’t want to be all nasty and cough over their super-expensive cool stuff. (Oh and yeah, the image is mirrored)

Today I found the worlds greatest T-shirt store in Harajuku. It’s called Beams and it’s beyond awesome. I didn’t take any pictures inside I’m afraid, but they had the coolest T-shirts I’ve ever seen and the prices were between 2800 and 5000 yen, which is awesomely good. You can barely find a mediocre T-shirt in Sweden for 5000 yen.

This is the bag I got from them, it’s extra big because I was carrying around another bag from UNI QLO and they were kind enough to give me this bigger one so I could put the UNI QLO bag inside it as well.

This is the t-shirt I bought.

Today I went on a bit of a shopping spree, so I came home with 6 t-shirts. (^_^)

Without any delay, here’s a collage of all the T-shirts I’ve bought so far. (The one in the upper right corner is Emmas, the other ones are mine)

They are all awesomely awesome and for a fraction of the price I would pay at home for this quality.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again — Japanese bookstores kick ass!

Here’s why:

There are tons of magazines and literature on every imaginable subject, you could literally walk into a Japanese bookstore and ask to become a master at ___ and the clerk will happily guide you to an entire shelf full of stuff on the subject of ___.

The image above for example are really thick magazines filled with every piece of information you could possibly want about pens, different kinds of pens, fountain pens. They have tests on different kinds of ink, which ink holds the best while moist and so forth. Information about new pens, about antique pens and their ink. It’s insane!

But that’s not it. I found this one magazine which just makes me want to be able to read Japanese that much more!

It’s a magazine about Mad-Science, this specific edition covered atomic, chemical and biological warfare. It shows detailed articles on crazy science and whack plans, it goes through potential biological weapons and weapons used in the past.

Click for larger versions.
As you can see, it covers stuff pretty well, down to chemical compounds and pretty advanced shit about how it affects the brainstem (I assume).

But wait, theres more!

Theres a shelf full of magazines containing every bit of information you could ever want on guns. One of which details everything about every gun ever used in a hollywood movie.

Here’s a shelf full of magazines about watches, everything from latest fashion to one full magazine all about Rolex watches and their every detail.

They even have Match Lectures in magainze format, including a CD with the spoken lectures so you can listen to the lectures and follow along in the magazine.

One thing I really love about Japanese books (not magazines this time) is that they’re really small. Most books you seem to buy in three parts, where the cost of all three books is about equal to the cost of one pocket-book in Sweden (even a little less usually).

They fit perfectly in the hand and don’t weigh anything! There’s no need to carry around the whole book, you don’t read a whole book that fast anyway. You only need one part at a time. Perfect.

As you can see, one can easily waste away quite a few hours in these stores, even if you can’t read Japanese. And if you can, you just want to read everything! I’m starting to understand the whole culture of standing in the store and reading. You couldn’t possibly afford to buy everything you want to read.

Well our time is almost up here in this.. indescribable place. And the bad feeling of having to leave is certainly creeping up on me. It really has been a wonderful time and even though we didn’t get to see as many “new” things as the last trip, we have gotten a fantastic experience.

I feel we have gotten more of a feeling of how it is to be here when you’re a bit more used to it, and it’s still not boring me! Not one bit. The first time around of course it’s going to be awesomely fun, but the second time around could have turned out to be boring just because we’ve already seen it all once. It did not turn out that way!

But I plan my departure from this country with one experience missing – one that I wanted, but didn’t know how to get and haven’t gotten. The experience of how it would actually be to live and study or work here.

I want to know what young people complain about with Japan, I want to know what old people are complaining about with Japan. From knowing the complaints of the people, I can decide if they are complaints that actually matter to me and if I would complain about it too if I lived here.

I want to know how people live here, what all the apartments look like on the inside, how easy it is to get rich and how easy it is to get poor.

I want to know what the health care system is like, what insurance people have and if you get ruined if you get an illness requiring you to be in a hospital for a long time.

I want to know what kind of vacation I can expect and what kind of salary to expect as a Master of Engineering Physics fresh out of school. I want to know what kind of vacation and what kind of salary to expect after 10-15 years into my career.

It seems easy to get lost as a salaryman among the millions of salarymen, it seems almost impossible to “climb the ladder” and to earn a reputation.

I want to know what the political system is like, if people care about politics and how they show their care.

I want to know about issues that matter to me, like personal integrity and welfare.

Until I know these things, Japan will always only be a fantastic place for vacations to me. I can’t logically decide if it’s good or bad to live here without these facts, but of course — my heart tells me it’s good.

Yesterday we went clubbing again, we wanted to go to Ageha, one of the biggest clubs in Japan. It has a lot of dance floor, even one outdoors with a pool in the middle. Unfortunately, yesterday that club was host to “Asias biggest gay party”. Instead, we went to Tokyos second (I think, or third) largest club, Womb.

The club kicked ass actually and it played awesome music (according to me, not Emma ), but I do think they should have mixed it up a bit and played some nice Hip Hop or something on the other floors, there were 3 “lounge floors” with bars and chairs and stuff and one big-ass dance floor. The lounge floors played the same music as the dance floor.

We left kind of early because I wasn’t in my best shape ever with my cold and all. All in all I think it was a pretty good night though! This club lived up much more to my expectations of what a club should be though! However I still want to see a club that plays Japanese music, but maybe on another trip since we won’t be here one more weekend.

So today, kind of tired, we went up a bit later than usual (we came home at like 6am even if we left early). We went to buy stuff for a friend of mine at Muji, went to buy more sneakers for Emma and then went to a cool bookstore (Junkudo, thanks Maho) in Shinjuku. We stayed there for like 1 1/2 hours just looking around and just when we got to the Manga floor they closed the store
They seemed to have a huuge selection of Manga though so we’re probably going back some day!

The number of pictures coming up have declined since we’re not.. finding new stuff all the time. I kind of feel like we’re just living life here now, being half-accustomed to everything here and just… strolling around having a nice time!

Oh right, we went to this mall in Harajuku too that are having a sale, it was craaazzzyy there! They have the weirdest TV commercial ever too that we’ve seen a couple of times.