There is a lot of beautiful flowers along the street when I am walking home, here is some of them.

& completely unrelated: I changed the font-size. It is smaller, and harder to read, so at first thought it would seem silly to change the font into something smaller and less easy to read… But lately the words have just not come to me, and I have been wondering why, I couldn’t quite figure it out. I have so much I want to write and say, but I haven’t quite dared, or the words just haven’t really come to me. Then I thought – my own handwriting is also very small, and writing things with a too big font-size just made me feel some kind of performance anxiety. Or maybe not performance anxiety, but the font just felt to big and bulky for the words I wanted to write. The type of things I want to write. Silly, but none the less, I need a smaller font-size to feel more at home, so sorry about the inconvenience, hope you understand, I know it is not that hip or kosher to write in a tiny font on the web anymore. Maybe I will change it back when my mood changes, but for now, this font-size seems to fit the words I want to write better.

& completely unrelated 2: Earthquake while I write this. I hope it passes. It is a long and slow one.

1. Å kjenne lukten av sommer-Japan, og nyse konstant i flere uker fordi man er allergisk mot en helt annen type pollen enn i Norge.
2. Å se bestemødre sope foran inngangsdørene sine og langs veien, bare fordi de liker at det ser pent og ryddig ut rundt seg.
3. Å kjenne solen varme ansiktet for første gang på to dager, men at det ikke gjør noe at det regner, fordi man vet at det ikke regner hver dag.
4. Å drikke kaffe og se på trash-TV til frokost. (Ja, jeg ser på Paradise av og til, alle har guilty pleasures.)
5. Å kjenne lukten av hjemmelaget middagsmat fra et hemmelig sted i nærheten selv om klokken bare 9 om morgenen.
6. Å spise seg mett på sushi til rundt 40 norske kroner.
7. At riskokeren min spiller “twinkle twinkle little star” når risen er ferdig.
8. At naboen kommer på døren med en diger honningmelon i gave, bare fordi de hadde en ekstra som de ikke klarer å spise selv.
9. At bestevenninnen min i Sverige alltid er lynkjapp til å svare på meldinger via facebook, og bestevenninnen min i Norge som absolutt ikke er like kjapp logget seg på skype for første gang på et år.
10. Å kjenne at man virkelig trives i sitt eget selskap, helt alene, av og til.

There is this beautiful temple close to my house, I have no idea why I haven’t walked in there before. I finally did last weekend and I snapped some pictures while I was at it.

& totally unrelated; a couple of pictures from resturants in Nakano-Sakaue and Nakano below here:

The anti-climax after finishing a test; everything is eerie and quiet and the words will not come to me. A thousand thoughts in my head, but no means to get them out. I find myself walking alone and contemplating everything I have ever done right or wrong, silently judging and praising and rethinking. I find myself jealous of all the people who … just are … – the masses of people who walk back and forth from work to home to work to friends, not thinking about the posture of their bodies, not thinking about the vast massiveness of things there is yet to learn. The people who do not plan what they will say in their next conversation, the people who get pleasantly surprised from being pleasantly surprised. I feel like my life is a fixer-upper-project, I am like one of  those old apartments that you will spend a lifetime renovating. Once you are done panting one room, a pipe leaks, one you are done fixing the pipe, you changed your mind about the color of the room you just painted. And so it goes, day after day, trying to reinvent oneself to the best of one’s ability.

I’ve been such a bad blogger lately! After the mid-term this week, I have kind of been wandering around in a haze. Eating sushi, editing a little bit of pictures, trying to keep up with the insane amounts of Japanese studying I have done. I wonder if I will ever get to a point where I feel like I am on top of things instead of constantly trying to catch up… For Christmas this year I wish for about 2 extra hours pr 24 hours, thank you very much Santa.

I made this a little while back, and it was surprisingly good, so I thought I would share the super-simple recipe. Basically, you need chicken, honey, mustard, onion, mushrooms and peppers. I have absolutely no talent or interest in cooking food (I have a huge interest in eating it though), so whenever I manage to make something that taste half-decent I feel pretty proud of myself. Here is how you do it: Chop the onion, mushrooms and peppers into cubes and fry it in a pan with olive oil, salt and pepper. Put honey and mustard on the chicken, and grill/fry the chicken. Tada. Done. Make some rice if you want more carbs to go with it. It doesn’t get any more simple than this. And it was  surprisingly good.

I feel like all I do is study, sleep, drink and then eat my way through Japan. Above: Raw sea-urchin. (Rå kråkebolle.) Nam!

Various pickled vegetables. (Or vagetables, as they often write here. I wonder where that spelling mistake comes from. )

Sashimi makes my heart skip a beat ♥

Ebi&avocado salad ♥

Grilled mushrooms, tasted like heaven.

More sashimi called for a more happy Sushibird.

& to finish it all of, instead of dessert, I ordered… more food. Tomato and bacon. I am truly blessed to be able to eat food like this on a weekly basis. ♥

♥ Happy birthday Norway ♥

Enjoy your day a little extra for me today!

I found these cute drawings right next to Nakano station. It is probably to help kids read katakana by the help of cute drawings. I snapped way too many pictures of all the cute things. The fish in the last picture is an ocean sunfish, my favorite fish of all time.