I can’t stand my 90′s Japanese phone anymore so I’ve ordered an iPhone. Also, we went to Yokohama last week so there’s some video from there as well as a bunch of new pictures on flickr.

On my previous two trips to Japan I have always found something to be amazed and surprised by, but until last weekend I hadn’t found anything new to be amazed and surprised by yet. However, Asakusa Hanabi (fireworks festival) was truly surprising and amazing. I have never, ever seen so many people gather for this kind of festival. I’m pretty sure there were literally millions of people on the streets, everywhere, watching this thing. The fireworks went on for one and a half hours non-stop.

The fireworks were spectacular, but what really amazed and surprised me was the amount of people that had spent the whole day sitting on a tarp, eating grilled food and drinking beer, just having an awesome time waiting for the fireworks. I give you a video of said fireworks, but it cannot begin to capture the spirit of the festival and what it felt to be among those (at least) hundreds of thousands of people celebrating on the streets. I don’t know if they were celebrating anything in particular, I don’t think so. I just think Hanabi festivals exist because they are fun.

This is the school that I go to and in this video are some excerpts from one 50 minute lesson. This is basically how most lessons go, we practice dialogue, repeat after the teacher and read from the textbook.

I was going to talk about the cellphone, the camera and school. But I didn’t really have anything useful to say about the camera so I skipped it. I find it a lot harder to make vlogs right now than writing regular blog-posts. When I write I can get in exactly how much information I want and the reader can choose to read as much of it as he wants, it’s easy to school to see where interesting parts are and such. In the video though I have to be fast and concise or it becomes super-boring very, very fast. The end result is that the video contains a lot less information than a blog-post would have. It’s a good exercise to learn to be concise, but at what cost does that happen, and is it worth that cost? Anyhow, here is a video. Showing off the school-material is the most interesting and worth-while part.

Today we just chilled out. I recorded a bunch of stuff for a vlog to explain the phone thing, showed my new camera and talked a bit about school. However, it turns out I am extraordinarily boring when I talk, so I need to learn how to talk more concise and a lot faster. I’m going to make another attempt tomorrow, if that doesn’t work I’ll just write what I want to say instead of making a video. I did however make a video from some random shots throughout the day. We just spent the day walking around and found some pretty neat stuff.

I’ve managed to find some sort of Yoghurt now. It comes in half-litle plastic/paper containers and you can see one in the image below. This was my breakfast today. I think it’s pretty expensive though.

This is one of my absolute favorite things to eat in Japan, Mister Donut: