Even now, I can not perceive the size of Tokyo. I love that fact. I simply can not put into my mind how large it is. The following video reminded me of that fact.

And so in an attempt to try to visualize the size of Tokyo, I want to compare it to Sweden. I’ve wanted to do this many times before but haven’t prioritized it. It is actually harder to create a decent visualization of this than I first thought. Here is an attempt, but it is far from perfect.

Let’s start with some definitions. The Greater Tokyo Area is an area that is sort of considered to be Tokyo to many people. If you live in the Greater Tokyo Area you probably work inside Tokyo and you live within Tokyos train network and things like that. For all practical purposes you live in Tokyo, but you might officially be living in a different district than Tokyo. In this area 32.5 Million people live.

Let’s overlay the outline of Skåne, the part of Sweden in which I live, on top of the Greater Tokyo Area. The green outline is Greater Tokyo and the red outline is Skåne. The grey parts in this map is indeed city. So Greater Tokyo is basically like building a very large city over all of Skåne and putting 3 times Sweden’s population in that city.

Greater Tokyo vs Skane

Let’s do the opposite and put the outline of Greater Tokyo on top of Skåne, just to be more clear in the illustration.

Skåne vs Greater Tokyo

There is significantly much more green in that picture. But in the bottom left we can see a small patch of grey, that’s Malmö. Sweden’s third largest city. Let’s compare Malmö to Tokyo.

Malmö has a total of 650,000 people living in it including those that don’t really live in the city but in towns on the outskirts that are officially part of Malmö. Tokyo is the one region that is officially called Tokyo, which is significantly smaller than Greater Tokyo. In Tokyo there lives around 13,000,000 people. That’s 13 million compared to 650 thousand.

Let’s put the outline of Tokyo on top of Skåne so we can continue from the picture above.

Tokyo vs Malmö

The green is Tokyo and the red is Malmö. Pretty interesting. But I think it is better illustrated by putting Malmö on top of Tokyo.

Malmö vs Tokyo

There you go. For those familiar with Malmö you get a pretty good idea of how big that area is, and as you might be able to imagine from the map, that grey area is covered with skyscrapers.

Let’s zoom in on the interesting part of Tokyo, the most lively centre. It’s illustrated in the blue square below and is roughly the size of Malmö, just slightly larger.

Square we zoom in on

In this little square, we have all the common tourist spots. This little square inside Tokyo, inside Greater Tokyo, is the area we managed to slightly explore in a month the first time we were in Japan. Or to be honest, we didn’t even explore half of it.

Zoom in on that square

When we lived in Tokyo the past year we lived in Nakano, which is leftmost dot on the map. The other dots are the different famous areas, those that are written about most in tourist books and blogs. Odaiba is my favorite area to just relax and walk along the “beach”. Akihabara is my favorite area for electronics and Shibuya is my favorite area for partying.

When my mom came to visit for a week we rushed around every day and we managed to see these 10 spots in 6 days, so we did almost two places per day and that was a very high pace. These 10 places are the bare minimum you should see if you ever go to Tokyo. And these are just a small square within Tokyo, which is a small area within Greater Tokyo, which is just one part of Japan you should see.

Last monday we had a School Assembly type thing that lasted a full day. It was called a スピーチ大会 or “Speech competition” or “Big speech meeting”. If you remember the speech I did in class a while back that was for the purpose of selecting a couple of students from school to hold their speech in front of the entire school. In my class me and Taru was selected as the best ones and because the teacher basically said Tarus’ speech wasn’t “serious” enough (the content, that is) for the big meeting I was selected in my class.

I then went on to hold the speech again together with 8 other people from the elementary level japanese classes. The other people were really serious about the whole thing and had memorized their whole speech and practiced a lot and I really didn’t think it was that serious. I think the content of my speech was good enough to go on to the big contest but I did really not put in that much effort into actually trying to go there. Of the 8 people from elementary level, 3 were chosen to go on to the big meeting and the ones that were chosen deserved it with how hard they worked for it.

Anyway, the first half of the day was listening to speeches, and the second half was student performances, someone singing and playing piano, someone playing instruments or doing traditional dances and such. I have a little bit of video from it and a picture.

A person holding a speech

In the video there are professional players toward the end that was the finishing show for the day, they were really good and entertaining. The dance that a group of people are doing in the middle of the video are from a very famous korean pop-group. Check out the YouTube video of the original. It’s actually really funny and addictive music

While I was editing video and such I found that I had footage of the Snow Monkeys from Nagano as well that I hadn’t uploaded. So here’s that video too! I put in some of the music from the first video

Last week we got an assignment to make a speech in school. The speech could pretty much be about anything, and should last 2 minutes. I first made the speech in english and then translated it to the best of my ability. I then paid for a professional translation of it and got a real Japanese version of it. It’s quite interesting to see the difference. I’ll show you the original english speech, the professional translation, my translation and then finally I translated from my Japanese version back to English to show you how much was lost. Finally, there is a video of me giving the speech in school from today.

Original English

A cashless future

When I first came to Japan and stepped off the Narita Express I was confronted with having to take the subway. The Japanese subway system is a marvelous thing and has driven a lot of innovation. There is one thing in particular that I am impressed by and that I believe is important to the future of Japanese society. That thing is the PASMO and Suica cards.

In Sweden we hardly use cash at all. Everyone pays with credit cards or cash cards connected to their bank-account. I believe that this is a good thing because it decreases the risk of theft that carrying cash brings. It is also more convenient than having to carry around cash and bring up cash every time you buy something. It is much easier handing over a single card than to count cash from your wallet.

In Japan cash is very popular, everyone walks around with a lot of cash and everyone pays with cash everywhere. There is however an exception that is slowly spreading to become more and more normal and that is using PASMO or Suica to pay for purchases. It started with the Subway system, then spread to vending machines and kiosks at the stations. Now you can pay with PASMO or Suica at convenience stores and even some grocery stores.

PASMO and Suica holds several advantages over credit cards. They are much faster, they do not require and on-the-spot bank confirmation to handle a transaction and you don’t have to swipe your card in a machine, simply place it on the reader without removing it from your wallet. Those are technical advantages, but there are safety advantages as well. PASMO and Suica are charged with cash and has no connection to your bank-account. This means that if the card is stolen or lost you only loose the cash on the card and not all the money on your bank-account. You can also register the card, allowing you to cancel the card and get the money that was on the card back. In short, it has all the safety features of a credit card but adds many of it’s own.

In the future I hope to see Japan take more advantage of this system, spreading the locations where payment by PASMO or Suica is possible. Japan can become a better, more high-tech and safer cashless society than Sweden.

Professional Translation

キャッシュレスの将来

私が初めて日本に来て、成田エクスプレスから降りた時、地下鉄の乗り方に苦労させられました。日本の地下鉄は素晴らしいシステムで、多くのイノベーションを促進しています。その中で私がとりわけ感銘を受け、日本社会の将来にとって重要だと考えるものが一つあります。それはPASMOとSuicaです。

スウェーデンでは、ほとんど全く現金を用いません。誰もが、銀行口座と繋がったクレジットカードやキャッシュカードで支払いを行っています。これは素晴らしいことだと思います。なぜなら、現金を持ち歩くことに伴う盗難のリスクを減らすからです。また、現金を持ち歩き、何か買い物をする際に毎回現金を出すよりも便利です。財布の中のお金を数えるよりも、一枚のカードを手渡す方が簡単です。

日本では現金が非常に好まれており、誰もが多くの現金を持ち歩き、どこでも現金で支払いを行っています。しかし、徐々に一般へと広がりつつある例外が存在します。それは、買い物の支払いにおけるPASMOとSuicaの利用です。これは地下鉄のシステムから始まり、その後自動販売機や駅のキオスクへと広がっていきました。現在は、コンビニエンスストアや幾つかの食料品店でもPASMOやSuicaで支払いをすることができます。

PASMOとSuicaには、クレジットカードと比較して幾つかの利点があります。PASMOとSuicaはより迅速で、即座の残高確認によって取引を処理し、機械にカードを通す必要が無く、財布から取り出さずに読み取り機の上に置くだけでよいのです。これらは技術的な利点ですが、安全性の上でも利点があります。PASMOとSuicaは現金をチャージし、自分の銀行口座とは全くつながりがありません。これは、カードの盗難や紛失の際に、カードの中の現金を失うだけで、銀行口座にある現金を全て失う訳ではないということです。カードを登録して、カードを解約したりそのカードの現金を取り戻したりすることもできます。要約すれば、クレジットカードが有する安全性を全て持ちながら、独自の様々な安全性も付け加えられているということです。

将来的には、日本がこのシステムを更に活用し、PASMOとSuicaで支払いが可能な場所を広げてくれることを期待しています。日本は、スウェーデンよりも優れ、ハイテクで、安全性の高いキャッシュレス社会となることができるでしょう。

My translation

キャッシュレスの将来

私がはじめて日本へ来た時、「Narita Express」をおりて、日本の地下鉄を使わなければなりませんでした。日本の地下鉄はとてもすごい物です。たくさんぎじゅつをかいはつしましたから。その中で、日本の将来に大切だと思う物があります。それはPASMOとSuicaです。

スウェーデンではみんなは現金をあまり使いません。みんなはクレジットカードとかキャッシュカードで払います。それはいいと思います。たくさん現金をもっていれば、人は安全じゃありません。それにカードで払うことは現金より便利だと思います。

日本で現金は人気があるので、みんなはいつもたくさん現金を持って歩いて、どこでも現金で払います。でも、例外が一つあります。それはPASMOとSuicaです。PASMOとSuicaで払うことはいつももっとふつうになります。地下鉄で始まって、それから自動販売機を使って、今PASMOとSuicaでコンビニとかスーパとかいろんな所で払うことができます。

PASMOとSuicaはクレジットカードよりいいと思います。もっと早いし、銀行のかくにんをいらないし、それにさいふから出さなくてもいいですから。また、PASMOとSuicaはもっと安全だと思います。PASMOとSuicaに現金を入れるので、銀行のこうざを使わなくてもいいですから。

私はPASMOとSuicaをもっと使っているみらいの日本をぜひ見たいと思っています。日本はスウェーデンよりもっとよくて、もっとハイテクで、もっと安全なキャッシュレス社会になることができると思います。

Translated back into English

A cashless future

When I first came to Japan and stepped off Narita Express, I had to use the Subway. Japans subway is a fantastic thing because it develops a lot of technology. Among those things, there is a thing that I think is important for Japans future. That is PASMO and Suica.

In Sweden people don’t really use cash. Everyone pays with credit cards or cash cards. I think that is good. If you walk around with a lot of cash, people are not safe. I also think that paying with cards is more convenient than paying with cash.

Because cash is popular in Japan, everyone always walks around with a lot of cash and pay anywhere with cash. But, there is one exception. That is PASMO and Suica. Paying with PASMO and Suica is becoming more common all the time. It started at the Subway, then vending machines used it, now you can pay with PASMO and Suica at different places such as convenience stores and super markets.

I think PASMO and Suica are better than credit cards. It is faster, doesn’t require confirmation from the bank and you don’t have to take it out of your wallet. I think PASMO and Suica are more safe as well. Because you put cash into PASMO and Suica, you don’t have to use a bank-account.

I really want to see a future Japan where PASMO and Suica are used more. I think Japan can become a better, more high-tech and safer cash-less society than Sweden.

Video from school

If you’ve never watched the show Survivorman, I think you should. It’s entertaining, educating and the guy is just generally pretty bad-ass. Imagine a combination of a someone with lots of experience and common sense with McGyver. I’ve only seen 7 episodes so far but they’re all pretty good. Some are more entertaining than others. I’ll give you the 7th episode to watch right here and now (below), it’s definitely worth it!

I made a video the day before yesterday and uploaded to YouTube and then went to bed, I later forgot to put it up here, so I’m doing that now

Since I made the video I’ve been out running once more (just came back from that). Feels really good when you’re back from it but sort of hesitant before getting out there. If I didn’t have Emma to run with today I probably wouldn’t have gone out. Now that I’m back though I feel awesome and more alert then ever! We ran 3.71km today in exactly 30 minutes. Shaved 5 minutes off the run and ran 100 meter further.

Another great thing about running is that it’s a fantastic (!) way to discover the city, we just run around randomly in streets, choosing turns as we go along so no run is like the other one. You see a lot of cool stuff when just running around, and you get a great insight into what the “normal” parts, i.e. not shopping-districts, of Tokyo look like! If you’re ever out traveling, I recommend running to discover your location!

A random assortment of some video I have filmed over the last couple of months, showing off bits and pieces of things I like in Tokyo.

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.