Tokyo 'r Us RE-ENACT

But it’s impossible to compare Stockholm with such a humongous city as Tokyo. Stockholm is a very nice and beautiful city but compared to all the people and all the skyscrapes, which all looks like Babel’s Tower, it’s nothing.
This morning I woke up around 5:30 am and around that time there wasn’t much to do. I finally came to understand how to get hot water from the tap and for the shower / bathtub. First I thought the small panel on the wall was only for the shower and bathtub but apparently it’s connected to the tap in the kitchen as well. I’m learning something new everday.

During the morning I also discovered a small spider crawling on the wall in the living room. I’m not that big fan of spiders, bugs and stuff like that so I thought I might as well get done with it and kill it. To my suprise, Japanese spiders are apparently: 1: Very agile and fast. 2: Their bodies are made out of rubber or some other kind of elastic material. 3: Can jump / fly (which is waaay creepy for my taste).
I’ve never seen a spider in Sweden of this small size being this fast. And when I actually cought the spider with some paper and trying to squeeze it, it survived! It took ages before I could actually squash it. The most fearsome part was when he started jumping around. I’m not joking, the Japanese spider is the predecessor to the Japanese ninja. Immortal, agile and acrobatic. Luckily they’re not poisonous (not in the city at least… O_O).

Oh well, after Gustav and I had a talk through MSN during the morning we decided to go to Lina’s apartment and head out to the city. Around 9:45 we went to her place (same building, but two floors above mine) and knocked on the door. Apparently she had stayed up all night chatting with her boyfriend and family so she was still sleeping. Anyways, she wanted some time to prepare before we were going to head out so Gustav went back to his room and I went down to the supermarket. I bought some bread (Jesus my lord Japanese bread is so good) and some other fun stuff. I didn’t have proper breakfeast materials during the morning so I ate rice with furikakte (furikake is something you put on the rice for some more taste).

When I came back 30 minutes later, Lina and Gustav was waiting for me outside of my door. So after I put my stuff into the fridge, we went to Shinjuku. One thing I’ve noticed when you’re in Tokyo is that you feel so damn small. Partly because of the tall buildings and partly because you’re not Japanese. I look abit more Japanese than the other two since I’m half, but if you’re a Japanese you can probably still notice that I’m not a Japanese. The fashion here is different and even though I wear such simple clothing as t-shirts and jeans it still looks like I’m a foreigner (or at least I think so). Of course you bump into more foreigners in Shinjuku in the other bigger city parts than in the area I live in, but they’re still very few compared to the 9 other milion Japanese living in Tokyo. I try my best to blend in as a ”Japanese” with gestures, apologizes, humbleness and proper pronounciation. It’s a while before I go back home so before that I’ve hopefully become a Japanese, only to become Swedish again of course.

Right, where were we... Shinjuku! Unfortunaly I didn’t have a camera with me, but there will be more times I go to Shinjuku. Shinjuku is as lively as I remember it from two years ago. Everything from young people to older running around, making conversation, working and shopping. A really pleasant sight truth be told. I could probably just sit down on a bench somewhere and watch all the people passing by and then go come a few hours later still smiling. There are so many different people who passes the streets of Shinjuku and sometimes it feels so surreal. Not only that but there are tall buildings where ever you put your eyes. We went up the Shinjuku Goverment Building, but since it’s raining today the view wasn’t too good. I have to go back there when the weather is better. You go up 45 floors and there’s a nice view of Tokyo (usually) from there. One good thing about it is that it’s for free. Going up Tokyo Tower costs money!

We also went around to some shops, but there are so many shops that it’s impossible to find time to do window shopping in all of them in one day. For lunch we actually ate sushi! Ontop of that it was the kaitenzushi. Kaitenzushi is a type of restaurant which is funny, cheap and nowadays serves good sushi. The thing about this kind of sushi restaurant is that the chefs puts up different pieces on different colored plates. Depending on the color of the plates the price varies as well. They put the plates on a conveyor belt and the plates go round and round. I was happy enough with the 130yen plates and there are usually two pieces per plate, sometimes three. So 8 plates later I was pretty full and it cost 1040 yen which is very cheap compared to Swedish sushi.

We met this weird foreign guy in Shinjuku as well who seemed to be from Europe. Apparently he’s been living in Tokyo for 2,5 years, has a Japanese wife and teaches English… But he can’t speak Japanese at all! How can you live in a country without even studying the language? Especially a country like Japan where the culture is so different from that of the west in epic proportions. In any case, he wondered if we wanted to know a good place to have drinks and we said sure, why not. He took us to a place called Golden-gai. Here there are around 180 different bars, if I remember correctly, and each bar fit like 6-10 people. It looked abit shady but as I understand it (after some research on the internet) it seems to be like a cool place. I even might try it sometime!

After a whole day in Shinjuku, we went back home. The building I live in isn’t that far from Shimotakaido station, where the Keio line runs. It takes about 10 minutes to walk to the station which isn’t bad at all. On the way to the station there are alot of small shops and it’s not like it’s boring to go back and forth.
This is how my apartment looks like:

Above: Taken from the entrance


Above: Taken from the living room


Above: Kitchen


Above: Living room


Above: The building I live in. The entrance is to the right and my room
is right above the blue car (lights turned on).



Above: Tonights meal and drink. To the right is tofu with soja and to the left is grilled eel with rice! It's awesomely good stuff. Ontop of that Japanese beer is very nice as well. Something like a beer inbetween American / Mexican and European beer. The taste is not too light but also not too bitter.

Oh well, time for bed. It's a few minutes past 10 PM but I'm very tired and is almost falling asleep infront of the computer. Good night!