This is what I woke up from today. And a lot of other days. They’ve been digging doing something on and off for a month. Loving it. And no, I’m not standing down on the street. I’m lying in bed and the windows are closed. If feels like they’re IN my apartment ffs. 

Okay, how do I explain this… Well, welcome to your first japanese lesson! No, not really. But I just thought I would share something w you guys that I still find very amusing. Let’s start from the beginning; there are three different ways of writing in japanese. KANJI, where the characters look really creepy and complicated; 中国語, HIRAGANA w characters that are round and swirly; れいぞうこ, and finally KATAKANA with strokes that are  more straight and pointy; ホッチキス.  One single kanji can be an entire word, where as hiragana and katakana work more like our alphabet. Except that each character usually consists of two letters, SO, RA, NI, MO… and so on. But anyway… What I wanted to talk about is the KATAKANA which is used to write words from foreign languages. They are really keen on taking english words and writing them in their katakana. Cus of the transition from the english alphabet to their katakana, the words get completley fucked up, u’ll see what I mean in a sec. It’s like a guessing game! A single “H”, for example, doesn’t exist. It’s paired up with either A, I, U, E or O- HA, HI, HU (pronounced FU tho) and HO. And when taking the english words and spelling them the japanese way, you get all of those extra characters thrown in there. KATAKANA is kinda evil in that way, tricking them into thinking it’s “correct” english. They might think they’re talking english, but it sure doesn’t sound like it. It’s freakin handy for me who doesn’t know japanese yet tho. The first day I got here and went to the grocery store, I managed to figure out what bottles were shampoo and which ones were conditioner. All written in KATAKANA, japaninglish! It can be pretty fun sometimes to see what they come up with!

So let’s give it a try! Can you guess what the words are in ENGLISH? (Hint: Sometimes, but just sometimes, “R” is pronounced like a “L”) (When I’ve written a double “ee” or “aa” or any other vowel, just prounounce it like a long “eeeeeeeeeeeeeee” or “aaaaaaaaaaaaaa”.)

1. biiru

2. erubeetaa

3. koohii

4. keeki

5. masshuruumu

6. tchokoretoo

7. uisukii

8. onzerokku (hint: number 7 and 8 are related)

Gonna calm down and eat some instant noodles and “read” a japanese magazine. 

(WARNING! RANT!) I am soooo fucking pissed right now. I hate my fucking bank. NOTHING EVER WORKS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, today’s the 28th and the rent is due. 108 000 yen. Since my friend is away all day, I said I would fix with the rent. You just go to the head office, which is one block away, and pay it in cash. Sounds easy enough, right? NOOOOOO!!!!! Cus my bank doesn’t understand that I need my money NOOOWWWWW!!!!!!! No, instead the ATM reserves the money I try to withdraw, meaning I can’t fucking use that money for 2 weeks EVEN THOUGH I never got a single dime. It’s stuck somewhere between sweden and tokyo… I GUESS……….. Same thing happened when my japanese cellphone provider automaticlly tried to withdraw money for this months bill. DENIED!!!!!!!! (/€%#”%/”)€/”!I/&€”(&%”&(%&!”(!!!!!!!!

So in conclusion I couldn’t pay the rent today. But thankfully they were kind enough NOT to fine me 5000 yen. I’m getting a japanese bankaccount I just haven’t had time yet. But then the next problem will be transfering money from my swedish bankaccount to the japanese one. Oh… I’m SOOOOO looking forward to that. 

I’ve had problems with my bank’s service in the past too that made me JUST as pissed. They’re called Sparbanken Finn. 

Yay, our bikes are sold!!! A canadian couple bought em. Man what a hassle.. first we had to go to a police office and get some paper saying “I AM NOT THE OWNER OF THIS BIKE ANYMORE”. By “get some paper” I mean an hour of waiting for them to fill out some form. And then you have to go to the bike shop where you bought the bike and ask them to register the new owners. Yupp. Well it was actually no surprise to me.This morning we also visited the city hall for the 100th time. Today we had to get them to lower the cost of the health insurance we got. We got the bill in the mail the other day but since we didn’t have an income in Japan during 2009, we get it much cheaper. And again.. none of their freakin systems are synched or digitalized, so that’s why we got some standard bill with a fixed cost. At this point I don’t care that everything takes so long to fix and that they today for the 100th time took a copy of my ID and asked where I get my money from… even though I gave them all possible information when I applied for my VISA before I got here. You just have to learn that what takes 15 min back home takes 2 hours here. You just have to stay calm and polite. At this point I just find it a bit amusing. It’s like when you’ve been to McDonalds too many times and know what they’re gonna ask you next.. “To go?”. Instead you just tell them all of the information before they have the time to ask. But.. it’s doesn’t really speed up the process over here though… for some reason. But at least you know what to expect!  

Going through some old kanjis and learning some new atm. Everyday we learn six new ones and also have a test on a couple of them, previous learnt ones or the ones we learnt the day before. They’re incorporated into different sentences and you’re suppose to translate the kanjis into hiragana (how the signs are pronounced, written in the japanese “alphabet”) or write the entire kanji yourself. Good exersice. We now know 48 kanjis! Out of.. 1 trillion? haha.

I just realized I’ve been listening to Kanye’s song ‘Impossible’ now while studying the kanjis. ‘Maybe we done the impossible… it’s impossible for me to fail, I gotta keep on movin…’ lalalalal. Learning kanjis can sometimes feel impossible. Just almost though!!

After school and a quick costume change, me and a friend from school headed to a party in Roppongi. It was a private rooftop party hosted by someone her friend knew. Remember the Hannabi I posted about earlier, the crazy firework festivals? Well they’re still going on here and there all over Tokyo, and of course there was one yesterday. Daaamn the view was pretty sick from the 13th floor! Well, the fireworks were kinda far away… but still! All of the buildings, the lights. Ah so nice! From a rooftop!

There were tons of people at the party. Mainly americans and japanese people that either were brokers or worked within real estate. But hey, we blended in well! Oh and there was free food and free alcohol and waiters serving you desert and there was also some famous DJ… deejaying. Haha. All and all, we had a great time and met some really nice people! 

It’s not a dream, it’s real. I’m living in Tokyo.

Today school started again! It was awesome! And the school is new and a lot bigger, so there’s tons of students now. Other than that, today must have been the hottest day so far.. when I breathed through my nose I could feel the hot air in my nostrils! Hard to explain, but it’s definitely a sign. Of something.

On top of that, we’ve decided to SELL OUR BIKES. No, I’m not kidding. I’m selling the-most-comfortable-bike-in-the-world-bike! It may seem drastic.. but check this out. It all began when we got that f*cking 5000 yen / 450 SEK / 45 EUR / 60 US dollars / ticket for parking it wrong (Remember that the bike only cost the double). First of all.. there was a sign that any stupid foreigner would interpret as “park to the left of this sign”. A sign w a bike on it, some japanese kanji (letters) and an arrow pointing to the left where there rightfully (not) also where bikes parked.  So common.. what did we know. We did however know that there were some sort of rules when it came to parking your bike. But we didn’t know it also applied there. So that fine totally set us back. And now after investigating on where we can park it, at home and at school, we’ve now calculated it to a total of at least 4000 yen (do the conversion yourself, kthx) per month. That’s insane. I get that u can’t just put your bike wherever in a city with this many people, shit would just clog up. But that it costs as much as owning a freakin car and that you have to go through the hassle of finding a parking spot, just like w a car, but not having the convenience (airconditioner) of one… well it just doesn’t add up to me. So i’m buying a car!!! … Joking…. I’m selling my bike before I get any more fines. Period.  

So what have I learned? That my previous just-do-what-everyone-else-is-doing-tactics over here fails. It’s always worked… when you don’t understand something, just imitate what everyone else is doing and you’re probably right. That ‘probably right’, is probably not so right anymore.

No, that last post had nothing to do with Japan. Except the fact that I found the link while being in Japan.

Yesterday I went to a ‘kräftskiva’. A swedish tradition where you eat kräftor and drink snaps. But I had never been to one before, first time. haha. And yes I wore a hat and a bib like that. That’s what swedish ppl do.