I’m at a really crappy airport in Vienna right now! But at least we found a place with electricity and free WiFi! That’s pretty sweet. Other than this little gem, the whole airport seems like it was built in 1992 and haven’t been touched since.

But we’re on our way! Feels pretty good. Still feels sort of strange but yeah, good!

In a couple of hours we board our flight to Tokyo and then it’s time to check out our 5 sqm dorm rooms! Nice.

My name is Fredrik, which is easy to say in Swedish, but seemingly hard in every other language. It’s pretty hard to say in English so my old english-teacher from high school used to call me Fred in class. Which I think is an acceptable nickname.

As I’m moving to Japan now though I feel I need a Japanese nickname, Fredrik is obviously impossible to say so it would become something like “Furederiku” (フレデリク). Furederiku sound awful and is way to much to say. Furede or Furedo or something like that doesn’t really make it better either. And my last name is pretty much impossible to say in Japanese as well.

So.. I need a Japanese nickname. Suggestions anyone?

I got back from Stockholm a couple of days ago. I was up there to spend some time with a couple of friends before I went to Japan. A nice couple of days!

Me and Emanuel playing Race for the Galaxy in Stockholm.

Yesterday I got my visa, finally. So now everything is 100% ready to for the trip!

I have also decided to buy the Macbook in Sweden. It turns out there are a number of advantages for me to buy it in Sweden. It has been sent from China now so I’m hoping it’ll arrive some time next week! I might make a video of the unboxing and replacing of HDD.

That’s a simple update of what’s happening right now. Not really that much, which is nice. I wish I had someone to play Race for the Galaxy with though. It’s a strategy card-game which you can see in the picture above. It’s very fun yet causal to play.

Maho was a frequent commenter on this blog when I was in Japan the last time. A while back I saw that she wrote on twitter that there was a special kind of candy she liked and that it was Swedish candy. Of course I recognized the candy and thought I’d send her some more as a thanks for the comments explaining various things! Emma and I then went to the store and gathered up a variety of Swedish types of candy including the kind Maho liked and sent her a package.

The package

Today I got a package back from her! :D

The package

The package is about twice the size (if not more) than what we sent her! And it’s completely covered with awesome!

Awesome postage stamps

When opening the package I found more awesome! Everything was so neatly laid out and cute!

The insides

She had also written this totally epic letter! This is way, way more effort than we put into our package :P

Best letter ever!

This is all the stuff we got, I haven’t tried anything yet but I’m going to next time I meet Emma!

Contents of the package

Emma got a special little bag of goodies just for her with the cutest most awesome stuff ever created by man!

The stuff to Emma

Thank you soo much Maho! :D

I will post more on each item as I/we eat them! :D

Tokyo Vice

I just finished reading Tokyo Vice. It’s a book about being a journalist in Japan, about the Japanese sex industry and about the Japanese mob (yakuza).

The book markets itself as being very much about the yakuza and revealing some amazing stories about the yakuza, and it does. The only problem I had with it is that it’s equally as much about the authors life in Japan and the sex industry. The information about the sex industry was just as interesting, if not more interesting, than the information about the yakuza though. The information about the authors life was, well, a 4 out of 10 read.

I would recommend the book, but only if you really can’t find anything better to read for the moment or are truly interested in reading about true investigative journalism.

I now know, perhaps more than I wanted, about the Japanese sex industry, human trafficking and the workings of the yakuza. Although I have two upcoming books that cover the sex industry and the yakuza respectively, so in a while I’ll know even more about it.

One funny little factoid I found in the book that was humorous is a weird way was that one of the biggest types of front-company for the yakuza is management consulting. Apparently a lot of yakuza are “management consultants”.