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.

Earlier today, I listened to Pachelbel’s Canon in D and was surprised to notice that I was moved to tears by the piece. It somehow affected me more than music usually does, and it’s not that I’m particularly weepy right now or anything. It just penetrated my senses in a way and on a level I’m not used to. I for the first time heard, saw, how the two violins (I think they’re violins) “play” with each other, throw concepts at, and inspiring each other.

For the first time in a very long while I craved to play some instrument again. I haven’t played anything actively in god knows how long, and when I tried to play the piano recently I just looked at the keys without feeling that “connection”. I guess music is one of those hobbies I’ve put to eternal rest.

In any case, I now wonder what classic music I’m missing out on so feel very free to give me tips on pieces you particularly like.

Oh yes. I am in Japan.

Only in Japan.

In other news, I JUST realized that my lap top has an SD slot. Imagine that! My cell phone has a MicroSD with an adapter thingie that came with the chip that works out of the box on my computer. Unfortunately the camera, while better than those you get on Swedish cell phones, isn’t like the real thing, but at least I can “show you stuff” (the above picture was taken using the cell phone cam). Expect pictures, though I’m still in the “uh-oh” stage which I entered right as they told me I was in the intermediate class, not the beginner’s class back in early April. If you don’t hear from me, it’s just that I’m still recovering from the “uh-oh”’s.

Hey folks, I just thought I’d drop a line now that I’ve finally gotten things set up so that I can blog. I’d love to sit and write about all the things I’ve seen for hours, but I’ve gotta study. Long story that I’ll write about later, that.

In any case, I’m in Japan, the plane didn’t crash, everything is quite a bit overwhelming, and I’ve eaten the organ in which fish keep their eggs. Knowing Japan, it was most likely raw too.

More soon. I’m alive anyway, in case you wondered.

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!”.

My bro sent me this video clip link whatever. It looks pre-arranged, but maybe not. If not, awesome guy. I wanna be like that when I grow up.

http://www.fileradar.net/files/view/World-of-Warcraft_World-of-Warcraft-Nude-Mod/493

I just *had* to find out if there was one (and there seem to be quite a few). Tried it out and made a couple of (female, admittedly) chars of different race and checked it out. It’s quite well made, actually, and I’m sure the WoW TS’ers (are there such a thing? IIRC there were TS’ers in Everquest so why not WoW) will be quite pleased with that mod.

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).

So I’m an ‘80-er. Not sure if that’s how you even say it, but being born between 1980-1989 I am thus an ‘80-er. My nephew and niece are both ‘90-ers (except my youngest niece, who’s a ‘00-er, born last year in fact). When I was a kid there were expressions and cool words we all used and understood that the old folks just didn’t get. I guess this is sort of where I’m headed now — into the old folks parking lot, I mean.

I mean, seriously. My nephew keeps saying “lol” and “col” all the time. I thought only the most self-loathing nerds *said* “lol” in real life. And what’s up with “col” anyway? I asked, and was informed it stands for “crying out loud” (I suggested maybe it should be “fcol” since one usually says “for crying out loud”, and was met with eye-glittering respect for this lingo-level-up, for 5 seconds, after which they realized *saying* “fcol” is impossible).

But yeah, I’m not cool in the eyes of an 11-year old anymore. Not something I strive for, so all is good, but it’s more that I’m entering the “kids say odd things” stage in life. Do mommies and daddies feel like that, or do they (are they forced to) keep up with all the slang and new words. Failing that, they might suddenly wake up and find their kid speaking a completely different language, maybe. Part of the process, I guess, and I guess 10-15 years from now, people will say “lol” in business meetings without being met with a single raised eyebrow.

ttylm8s

I just received the approval from the government to receive student aid for my studies in Japan. Only one thing left is the visa, then I’m good to go. The school claims that won’t be an issue so I guess I’m all set!