I went to fireworks yesterday with my girlfriend and two of her friends (A and her boyfriend, H). We had a perfect view from where we were sitting, thanks to A and H who grabbed a spot for the four of us when they arrived. They were early, we were late.

A and H were both wearing yukatas while me and my girlfriend (Ayapuu) wore regular clothes. I would’ve liked to have worn my yukata again too, but neither me nor my girlfriend thought about it.

When we got there, there was this little wagon-trail of food stands, lit up and noisy, down below where we were sitting, so me and Ayapuu went down and bought Takoyaki, fried chicken (in a mug…?), and yakisoba. Tasted awesome but we could only carry that much so we didn’t really get full.

The fireworks were pretty. Sort of like art. Not at all like the fireworks in Sweden, in new years, with the whole sky exploding in colors. The Swedish new years fireworks have their charm too, but this was more “thought out” and less erratic/spastic. I think I spotted that mushroom in Super Mario Bros (the original NES game) that is the very first enemy you see, but I’m not sure.

It continued for a little over an hour. A 30-ish year old little woman was sitting behind us commenting.

On every.

Single.

Mother fucking.

Firework. Like, every time something appeared on the sky there was a comment right from behind. I shrugged it off, thinking she was with a kid, but afterwards when I turned around, she was alone with her (I presume) boyfriend. No kid.

Anyway, there was a silly amount of people there, though I’m sort of getting used to the concept by now. The way home I thought we were gonna be standing in line to get on the train for an hour+, but we got on the first one that arrived, some 10 minutes after we got there. With the amount of people there, it must have taken like 3-4 trains before everyone managed to get back home.

When we got back to my girlfriends’ city, we went to a convenience store and bought food (told you the Takoyaki/fried chicken (in a mug…?)/yakisoba combo wasn’t enough) which we ate back at her family’s place.

I’ll definitely go again next year, praying that the retarded little woman won’t be anywhere in my vicinity that time. I was told that there were fireworks today as well, but I’m not THAT intrigued by them, so I’m just gonna wait until next year.

Or try to get my ass to Sweden this new years.

So, my very first earthquake today. They claim it was stronger than the usual ones. I was sort of looking forward to it, for two reasons.

1. I hadn’t experienced one ever.

2. I wanted the experience once, so I didn’t panic if a “bad one” happened.

The bad news? I slept right through it. That just sums my life story up, right there. Blah! Better luck next time, me.

It’s summer vacation! Which means I’m going to spend the next few weeks catching up on everything in school. Lots and lots of studying. Yay!

My friend up in Hokkaido suggested I flee up there for a few days over the summer but I don’t even have cash for that, though it was very tempting.

I did go to Lake Biwa before with the school for a barbecue/swimming party thing. I paid 1500 yen to tag along for “food and drinks” and ended up getting four-five tiny pieces of probably-not-thoroughly-grilled meat and two beers. With 40 people going and 2 fires (tiny, weak fires — Japanese don’t seem to know how to make fires), and one retarded little man who brought his own meat and taking up one fifth of one of those two, it was more or less just a matter of standing around like a retard or giving up, and I don’t like looking like a retard.

Hope everyone else is having a good summer (too).

So…! Yesterday around 1 am, as I am about to slither into bed, my doorbell rings. About 5,000 times consecutively. I figure it’s important so I walk outside and tada, my neighbors are enjoying the company of a new friend come to visit.

That’s a Rhinoceros beetle, or Kabuto-mushi as they’re called here. They’re completely harmless (or at least this guy was), and in fact as my neighbor put it, “It’s like a miniature dog!”.

Honestly, it was. I fell in love with that guy. Apparently Kim (my neighbor) opened his door and this guy came flying through the air, landing with a little thud on the wall right next to Kim’s door. When I came out, he was just lumbering about on Kim’s arm, seeming unaffected by all the people around him. We petted him, even on his little horns, and he didn’t try to escape or anything. We kept saying we wanted to keep him but we didn’t have grass or stuff to keep him happy, so eventually he just decided that he’d been socializing with us Swedes enough, and he took off and zoomed away.

Well, he attempted to but ended up landing with a little thud on the wall of the apartments above ours. We walked up and Kim tried to grab him from the wall but he had had enough of us and wouldn’t let go, so we figured it was time to go our separate ways…

Japanese kids have been buying these insects, raising them and even having them wrestle each other — in fact, throughout Asia, gambling takes place where two Rhino beetles try to toss each other outside of a ring (Beetle sumo), there’s even a world championship here in Japan, much to the disdainful amusement of some.

I’ve always been so confused about this whole Beetle fetish thing until now. Now I want one of my own! Insanity. But fuck, that li’l guy was so cool! Honestly. Like a micro-dog.

Rico (another neighbor) with a real camera took a bunch of pictures of the li’l guy. If you yearn to see Rhino-san with, you know, focus and stuff, let me know and I’ll snatch pictures from Rico and put them up here.

I occasionally read about how other people do stuff, such as experience traditional Japanese tea ceremonies or wander the Russian steppes or eat Big Momma’s sweet potato pie or, you know, stuff that you think people might be interested in hearing about. Sometimes when I hear these kinds of stories or see the pictures they took, I think to myself “are they just happy they did something, or did they actually find it interesting?” “Did the excitement and anticipation they held before they went ‘lift them’ through it, or did the contents affect them in a meaningful way?” These are perhaps odd questions to think about, but I can’t help wondering sometimes.

You know, you go somewhere, visit some place, you think it’s quite the deal, and then you tell people, they get all “oh man I wish I’d been there”-blue, and so on. But did you really, honestly enjoy the show, or did you just think it was cool to have done it? Sometimes I end up realizing, long after the fact, that I didn’t really get much out of some event or thing that I experienced and was all excited about at the time. The Gion festival was not, however, one of those times.

To some people that I know, it wasn’t all that interesting. To me, it told an indefinite, unending tale about a past so well preserved that we of the West could only marvel at a single shred of scrap from one of these things, were it dug out from its many centuries of hiding beneath the earth. A thousand years of history preserved and protected and even, today, the tradition, although changed, no doubt, is still upheld and honored.

It was as frightening to me to see the dedication and devotion and homage these people displayed as it was inspiring. As 30-40 people were pulling, by hand, one of these huge vehicles past you on the street, there was no being unaffected. The grinding and squeaking of the enormous wheels whipped your consciousness to life. This was no game. Not solely a game, anyway. But enough of that (or rather, more of that later)….

The Gion festival is named after a district of Kyoto, and is said to have originated as part of a purification ritual over a thousand years ago. I’d tell you all about how that came to be, but I think Wikipedia does a better job, especially since I know nearly nothing.

Yes, that is me. And yes, my hair looks a little odd right now. I’m working on it. More importantly, I’m wearing a yukata.

It was definitely an interesting week, though. During the evenings of 15th-17th of July, the streets where the festival was to take place (mainly Shijou-Kawaramachi and the surrounding streets) were turned into pedestrian streets (no cars). According to my girlfriend there weren’t a lot of people this year, but to me, it was like a living wall of flesh. Scary stuff. I hope it stays ‘not a lot of people’ the next year too, or earth might tilt over due to the excessive weight of human matter in one concentrated place.

This is the morning of July 17th, right before 9 am. “Not a lot of people.” (It actually wasn’t that bad… in front of us. Whenever I turned around I saw naught but humanity.)

The culmination of the festival was 9 am on 17th of July, where a number of differently shaped and sized carriages (32 of them, to be exact) were carried/dragged through the streets by people dressed in traditional attire. These carriages were classified as either yamas (”mountains”) or hokos (”spears”), where, generally speaking, the yamas are smaller than the hokos (sounds a little tilted, I know), or in some cases, the hokos were simply unique enough to be considered hokos, rather than yamas. Some of those carriages were huge, though. You can’t help feeling awed by the pure energy behind the moving of those monstrosities, which was of course done exactly as it was done a thousand years ago.

Fune Hoko, one of my faves (look at that birdie, so damn cool!), on the eve of July 15th; the yamas and hokos were spread out throughout the city the days prior to the actual pulling them around, and a part of the festival was to go around and look at them, even enter them. The above hoko is shaped like a ship, and is called Fune Hoko (船鉾), which simply means “Ship Hoko”.

Gion is one of the most famous festivals in Japan, and there’s a lot of information about it, in English. Here’re a few links in case you want to read more thoroughly about what I’m talking about below:

• Wikipedia article on Gion (the district).
• Wikipedia article on Gion Matsuri (the festival).
• Information about the yamas and hokos — worth reading if you want to know the background behind these things.
• A sorta map over where they were located (prior to the “big move” on July 17th) — a few years old, but you get the picture.

Now for some pictures, more or less in chronologic order.

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On June 1st, me, my girlfriend and her parents went to Tenryuuji, which is considered a world heritage ([wikipedia article]). It’s basically a pond, surrounded by a series of little gardens of various kind. There’s also a building you can go into which has a pretty nifty dragon painted in the ceiling, but you’re not allowed to take pictures in there, so I can’t show you. I can show you pretty gardens, though.

The main area is the place with the gardens. The gardens actually surround this big mansion-like place, where monks do rites and stuff on occasion. Regular folks can’t actually go into the mansion on these days. Luckily this day wasn’t one of those days so we could go inside as well. Anyway, let’s start with the actual getting there.

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The 6th of May (I know, I’m sort of behind), I went to “Fushimi inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社)” [wikipedia], together with my girlfriend and her parents. It was more or less a gorgeous day and it was a very beautiful sight. It was a huge temple area, with a trail leading up around with various things to see on the way. We didn’t go all the way (papa-san was getting hungry *grin*) but what I did get to see made me wanna go again. Pictures:

Arrival, a little before noon.

The first thing you did when you arrived was a small cleansing ritual (simply washing your hands and mouth with water from some… thing.

The cleansing thing. You can see a number of little “scoops” with which you gather water, pour it over your one hand, then over the other, and then finally take a sip from it, and spit it out into the area below (surrounded by the gray stone).

There was a pretty cute little map over the whole area. It’s a link so you can click it to see a more sized-up version if you are curious.

Map over the Fushimi inari-taisha (伏見稲荷大社).

I’d make a modified version with a red line following the path I took but you know, I honestly don’t really know where we ended up going. It is quite a lot bigger than it looks on that map, though. I think we walked around for an hour or so, but on that map, we may have moved a few inches or three.

One of the things I particularly love about Japan is the ancient “monster-culture”, or however you wanna call it. There are monsters in every society’s history (ogres or whatever), but the Japanese one stands out somehow. I’m afraid it may have to do with Nintendo.

“Hi.” (This fellow was guarding the entrance to the place, if I recall. Pretty imposing when you’re standing there being stared down at, to be honest.)

I have a hard time finding beauty in structures, but I must admit things like the above strike me as beautiful. I can look at something and often think “Oh. How quaint.” but that’s as far as it gets.

Or how about this one. Gorgeous, if you ask me. Or maybe I’m just Japanophilic.

You found things like this all over the place, as if someone had indifferently strewn them out over the floor without a thought. Incredibly beautiful, and sometimes only noticeable within a single step, in between a narrow path leading away from the main one you’re trekking on. I can’t imagine how many things I missed as I walked there. It’s as if they’re made to be walked again, and again, and each time you’re meant to discover new things.

There’s me, and uh, my girlfriend, who’s hiding. Behind me. As you can see, I’m wearing a Skotos t-shirt (”Why Yes. I am God.”)  — still faithful, after all these years. We are standing against one of the many, many red pillars making the gates (torii, I believe they’re called). These things did never, ever end. I can’t imagine just how many of them there were. This place is one of the more famous ones, so you may have seen it on TV or so, if you haven’t been here personally.

You found these occasionally, i.e. the torii-path splitting up into two directions. Oh and there’s me, too. Look how white my skin is. I’ll be scorched this summer, I just know it.

Another map. There were a variety of maps over the place around the place so you could sort of see where you were. I like these for some reason. A billion times cooler than some computer-made “You Are Here” map.

Another “hidden” spot that you would easily miss if you weren’t looking to the sides all the time. Their unobtrusiveness makes spotting them feel almost sinful, and taking pictures felt like stealing something precious from somebody. But I took a picture anyway. I hope the gods won’t mind (actually, if I understood papa-san correctly, this whole area is dedicated to the god of trade — so by showing you this, you might feel enticed to visit, which the god of trade can’t argue with, now can s/he?).

Ooh, a flower. *snap*

Speaking of flowers, I’m going to try to get the pictures up from Ten-something-something that I went to before. I forgot the name (heh), but it was more or less a collection of gardens. Incredibly gorgeous, and if you happen to like flowers and plants, you’d be in the die-now-happily state. I personally don’t really like flowers that much, but being there and seeing all the gardens and arrangements made me appreciate our flowery friends on a whole new level.

Something that you tend to find everywhere in Kyoto, especially in places like these, are the tiny little streets that stretch out in every direction. Their love for octopus might have inspired them, who knows. Or maybe it’s that they’ve been far more preservative over their heritage from the old times than we have, in Sweden. Regardless, I hate to sound conservative but I completely adore these.

A gang of… monster-dogs. Or are they bulldogs, the guys in the middle row? No, they look more like goblins.

The last image. Buddha stuffs. There were lots of it all over the place, but this one was particularly large and … goldey.

That’s it for now. I’ll try to get the Ten-something-something pictures up as soon as possible. Oh, and I’ll figure out the name of Ten-something-something as well. I think I’ve got a brochure lying around here somewhere with it written on.

So, 6 days from now (on Friday), I toddle aboard a plane that goes to Istanbul, Turkey. Then I sit there and stare at a wall for 5 hours or so, after which I trundle aboard a second plane that goes to Osaka, Japan. Gee, I’m finally going.

I for one am amazed that I *am* going. So many hurdles in the way of my trip that could’ve prevented me from pulling it off, like government aid restrictions and the like (say “CSN!” to an unsuspecting Swede and they’ll react about the same way another human would, if you were to exclaim “Blood, blood, blood!” (Hitchhiker’s Guide reference, there…!)). For the record, this is the itinerary: Stockholm, Sweden 02:10 PM on April 4th —> Istanbul, Turkey 06:35 PM; Istanbul, Turkey 11:55 PM on April 4th –> Osaka Kansai, Japan 04:55 PM on April 5th. Aside from the 5 hour wait in Istanbul, looks good to me!

My mother keeps harassing me about preparing for my journey, and has been doing so now for the last 7 or so days. Admittedly, I’m moving outside the country and will be there for 2 years, but how can you possibly prepare for such a journey 2 weeks before the plane leaves? I’m not shipping anything there since Sweden has no affordable plans for such things (you wanna send something FROM Sweden, you gotta send it express, no cheap boat routes available, whereas sending stuff TO Sweden, you have those options — it makes no sense).

(returns after doing some packing — decided to start today, and take things slow — how on earth am I going to fit it all in there?!)

Speaking of the aforementioned in-parenthesis problem, I have one big trunk (150-something litres, i.e. 35-something US ounces (non-liquid)), one big backpack (75 litres, i.e. 17 US ounces (non-liquid)), my lap top (in its own case), and a carry-on bag that won’t be nearly as big as the trunk/backpack. So if I guess the carry-on bag will be something like 10 litres, that puts me at around 240 litres or so. In there I intend to fit all necessary clothing, a bunch of books, the more expensive parts of my computer (CPU, RAM, MB, 3 HDD’s — not because drives are expensive, but because the drives have tons of stuff on them that I’d like to have available), and, more importantly, gifts. Yeap, mostly got chocolate but got something else too for my girlfriend (she might be reading so won’t tell you what it is!). I think the limit per bag is 20 kgs… or was it 40 kgs…? Gah. *checks*

… 20! Figures. But if I pack right, each bag may weigh 20 kgs so I’ve got 40 kgs to play with (that’s about 100 lbs in total, unless I’m mistaken), and the carry-on may weigh up to 8 kgs. Don’t really wanna lug around 8 kgs but hey. (Does that include my lap top’s weight? I guess I won’t go too close to the 8 kg limit or I might find that out the hard way.)

Oh well. Today’s a sort of farewell party for me with the family. It started out well with my mom being grumpy this morning and tossing vacuum cleaners at me while I slept (seriously…!), and then she lumped the cooking chores upon me and went out to help my brother with something he needed help with. The party is in over 4 hours so I’m not sweating it just yet, though. Thought I’d take it easy, pack some, write on my blog-gone-extinct, and I guess start working on dinner once we’re a little closer to dinner-time.

Tomorrow, in fact, is also a farewell-thingie for me but at lunch time. My sister has kind of excommunicated herself from our family — at least during the bigger gatherings — so she tends to come visit for lunch the day after we have some big party. I suppose that sounds worse than it is, but is worse than it appears. The result, in any regard, is waffles. Lots and lots of waffles. With varying flavors of jam and whipped cream. Waffles are not a dessert in Sweden, for your information. It’s a perfectly normal thing to have for lunch, and even dinner.

Speaking of days, I’ve noticed that every single day, there’s something I have to do that is at least semi-important. Last week I had TWO things every day that I had to do. I was so sure I’d miss some appointment somewhere, but so far it seems like I’ve pulled it all off — embassy visits, dentist appointments, etc. And the only day I don’t have anything planned for now is Tuesday. Monday I gotta go to the Japanese Embassy to get my visa, and I am also meeting up with old friends from high school, and on Wednesday I gotta go to the dentist AND I gotta go to another dentist. Yep, two dentists, one day. Dentist-ophobes beware! (I know “dentist-ophobe” isn’t a real word, but I can’t recall what the real word is right now). On Thursday… I gotta pack whatever’s left! And on Friday the plane leaves.

You know, the more I type, the more I realize that there was a lot to be said after all. I keep thinking I don’t have anything I want to blog about, but once I sit down, all kinds of stuff just sort of pop up. I guess a “real” blogger would have simply written one of the many things I’ve written above, posted it, then written the others and kept them unpublished and then published them one at a time with a couple of days in between. Good to keep the audience listening, and all that (I think Technorati, for example, only considers a blog active if it is posted to once a week at a minimum — boy I’m lucky if I post once a MONTH to this thing).

Speaking of “popping up”, the word for “appear” (as in “come out”) in Japanese is “deru” (出る). I went out to grab lunch a few days ago with a former teacher of mine who happens to be American, which has somehow lead to us speaking English when we talk (both in emails and in person). When I switch languages like that, though, I tend to get confused sometimes, and at some point I ended up responding to her in Swedish. Realizing that I was suddenly speaking Swedish, I wanted to say “Swedish is ‘coming out’” (not sure why I wanted to word it that way), and what I ended up saying was “Swedish is der-ing!” Der-ing? Talk about bastardizing languages in general. Was fun at the time though, but she probably didn’t get the reference and I didn’t explain.
In any case, I can’t wait to get started, both on seeing Japan in general, and in learning Japanese, and actually being able to socialize with my girlfriend. But I think one of the things I look forward to the most is seeing the people, as I think there’s a lot to be discovered about humanity in examining cultural differences. I do intend to blog more, especially once I get a new digital camera (expect lots of pictures!), so don’t unsubscribe now, despite my incomprehensive, rather-too-large and sporadic-to-the-point-of-true-randomness blog post titled “About time!”.

In case you haven’t seen it, I moved back to my mom’s place at the end of January, where I will be living for the last two months before I move to Japan. Back in April 2007, I switched ISP and went with some offer they had. The offer unfortunately bound me to use their service for 12 months. That is, until the end of April. With my move to my mom’s place, I was more or less forced to take the ISP with me (or pay for February, March, and April without actually using the service).

So my mom canceled her internet and I requested that mine was moved to her apartment. This was to take place at February 1st (i.e. her expired “end of January” and the move was to take place “the first of February”). In theory, that was supposed to happen, but around noon, January 31st, the net connection went down. And didn’t get back up again until yesterday, roughly 2 weeks later.

During these 2 weeks I couldn’t do anything at all. So I played offline games, like Starcraft (good game), Diablo 2 (um. Obsolete version of WoW, at this point), and Neverwinter Nights (um. Deranged and buggy version of WoW, especially since I couldn’t grab any of the updates online, so I played the release-version). Let me tell you… my appreciation for World of Warcraft has taken on new levels after this experience. There are so many things in WoW that improve upon the things that exist in the older games. Despite that, once I got back into WoW, I kept trying to hit ‘r’ to rest, when I was wounded in WoW. I also tried clicking on spots on the ground to “go there”.

Starcraft was good fun though. I enjoyed the story line almost as much as I did when I played it for the first time. I played through the whole first game, and  got to the Terrans in Broodwar, but at that point I sort of lost interest. The repetitiveness of “take out the whole map which is filled with enemy bases” missions just got boring after 3-4 times in a row.

Once I got back online, I was struck, as always, by the “so what now?” daze. While offline there were so many things I wanted to do online, but when it came down to it, I only really checked email, talked to friends, played some WoW, and that’s about it. I was a bit worried about the visa application for my Japan trip (the school will receive the visa at the end of February, and will notify me shortly after, they say) and I was kind of concerned about the various projects I have going that need finishing before I leave Sweden.

I mostly slept. With all that time on my hands, I kind of lost the motivation to do anything useful. I did get most of my things packed away (the things I won’t bring with me to Japan) and I did some hiragana practice and so, but not as much as I could have. Nothing I’ll beat myself with a stick over, but still. I am ever reminded of the necessity to be busy, for me to be productive. If I end up not being overly busy, I seem to shut down or something.

Anyway, I’m back in case you wondered (but with the infrequency at which I blog, I highly doubt you did).

Last Monday, I sent my application to the school in Japan (Nihongo Center, 日本語センター), and yesterday I emailed them asking if they’d received my application. They had, and they told me the next step in the process is the visa processing fee (~$150 US or so) and the application for (December) and issuance of (March) my visa. That leaves me very little time for buying my plane ticket though, cause I leave April 4th!!

So I asked them about when I would know for sure if I was accepted, and got the reply that I am practically accepted already. “They were sure.” So here’s to hoping they’re right, because I’ll be buying plane tickets and such based on this assumption.

But yes, good news is that the school I’ve applied for has stated that I’ll be accepted for sure, which is a good sign, if you ask me. Very little stands in the way now. I’m a happy little clam.