Hello my dear neglected blog! I have good news for you, I am done with my tests for now! Which means I can update you more. Looking forward to interacting with you again.

The test today consisted of writing an essay about the IT-generation (is indirect communication a good or a bad thing?), 3 pages of vocabulary, around 30 new grammar points and the latest 200 kanji I have learned. (In total I am suppose to know about 1000 in total right now. Suppose is a keyword here). Last week I had a reading test (trying to decipher Japanese newspaper articles sure is fun), I had to conduct and interview in keigo (that is the very very polite Japanese that everyone keeps on hating), give a short oral resume about the extencive over-packaging culture in Japan, write up two conversations (one of them in keigo, one of them in good old fashioned friendly Japanese), two other interview-conversation-tests (one of them in keigo again), write an essay about Norway’s English education, and last, but not least, I had a wonderful listening test where the talking is deliberatly set up in order for you to pick the wrong option, I am sure of it. And all of this without using a dictionary. They sure like exams at my school. I should be used to this by now, this happens every third month.

In any case, my head is pure mush at the moment, so I will take the evening off, and start sorting my lists over everything I am suppose to do from this point forward which have been ridiculously neglected. When I say I am done with my tests for now, it is not entirely true, I still have the JLPT coming up in a couple of weeks, but right now that seems far away and doable. That is, after all, only one test.

& totally unrelated and just for fun: Here is a picture from some dinner I ate a little while ago. The sashimi was niiice. /over and out.

♥ learn at least 3 Japanese karaoke songs by heart just so I can charm the old ladies at the neighborhood bar the next time I go there. ♥ finally write a real letter on paper ♥ paint pictures on big canvases in my underwear while listening to Gene Pitney on repeat ♥ pretend I am a tourist even though I live here and take the train to random places in Tokyo and be amazed ♥ answer all of the absolutely wonderful comments I have gotten here on the blog lately ♥ make a decent dinner for my sweetheart from scratch ♥ drink wine in the morning just because I can ♥ spend lots of time in the bed and thinking about how beautiful people look when they sleep ♥ draw draw draw draw draw ♥ plan amazing photo shoots for the fall (and maybe, just maybe getting a little bit more serious about taking pictures again, who knows) ♥ make a list over what is important in my life, and by that find out all the things which are not important and I can be without ♥ sort all the files on my BFF-Mac and have it in immaculate state ♥ take pictures of all the the-palm-of-my-hand-size-butterflies that are fluttering around in the park down the street ♥

I always get a “Lost in Translation”-feeling from these.

& it is not really visible, but in the right picture above, the sun is setting over Mt. Fuji.

These are taken from one of my most favorite places in the world, the top of the Mori Art Center in Roppongi. If you ever go to Tokyo and you want the view, go here instead of Tokyo tower. It is far more spacious, and the 360 degree view is absolutely stunning.

A super quick post, I just had to share this beautiful sunset right outside the windows here. ♥

Some drawings in progress for two different projects. I have been drawing until my hand hurts. Luckily, I am left-handed, so my right hand still works so I can use the mouse for the mac. Unluckily for me, I have a to-do-list (langt som et ondt år!), and it involves homework, which involves handwriting, which involves my left hand. Time to do some hand-exercises and get back to business.

YAY! I am happy! I knew I had seen these illustrations on the internet somewhere with a download link for the entire book, but I lost the link some time ago, until I found it again today! So! This is a couple of scans from “Kunstformen der Natur”, and since I love both science, design and art, my inner nerd officially very satisfied atm! One amazing person has scanned the pages and you can see / download them all here in BIG SIZE! Oh, the joy 🙂

Yesterday I had one of those days where I just wasn’t up to par, and had to spend most of my day nurturing a throbbing headache while watching Dexter. And missing class (which meant missing a test, oh no)! It was time to practice what I preach, so when the bad conscience hit me with thoughts like “I probably could have dragged my ass to class” and “at least I could have done more homework”, I just had to stop myself and think “Some days will not be all you want them to be, but if you relax and accept it, you will be back to business in no time.” So that is what I did. And now I will get ready for today. (And my headache isn’t half as bad as yesterday!) Hope everyone out in the world is well, and if you are not entirely ok, give yourself a break so you can get well faster.

Mindrelic – Manhattan in motion from Mindrelic on Vimeo.

This made me want to go to New York! I probably will not be able to go for quite some time, but wow, this video made me lust for it. I wonder if I will ever find more places like Tokyo, where you just feel so at home. I love the way both New York and Tokyo looks, but I also love the feeling of politeness, safeness and security and not to mention the cleanliness that Tokyo provides. I feel safer in Tokyo than I have ever felt anywhere else, including smaller cities in the north of Europe.& completely unrelated, I want to shoot time-lapse movies as well, but I have to say that I do not understand all of the equipment.

Lately I have been thinking that I want to write a couple of things that can be useful for other people to read. Of course it is nice to post pictures and write about what is going on in my own life, I will continue with that as well. I thought that after I moved to Japan I learned a lot of things about how it is to live here that I wasn’t really prepared for, so I decided to write a little list of things I wish people would have told me before I moved. (these are only my own experiences, feel free to disagree with me!)

10 things you may or may not know about Japan

1. The laundry. To do laundry in Japan is a fun experience. There is usually no warm water connected to the washing machine. There is only cold water. When I first moved to Japan I was worried that the clothes wouldn’t get completely clean, but now I think the cold water washing machines are grand. The colors last much longer and the cold water is not as hard on the clothes. And oh, usually the washing machine is placed on the veranda, not indoors.
2. Your clothes and your hair and your apartment in the summer. Speaking of laundry; Japans summer is very humid, which makes it hard to dry clothes. They kind of get almost dry, but not completely. Same with drying your hair. Even when you use a hairdryer, I often find that my hair doesn’t completely dry. The humidity also makes awesome conditions for mold and fungus. And the Japanese black mold is not like western mold. It is mold on steroids. I have no science to back me up on this, but I sincerely believe it can form over night. That is why you usually try to have a gap of a couple of cm between the wall and the furniture, so the air can pass through and no mold will form. And don’t get me started on the dust. I have no idea how or why the dust gathers so quickly, but prepare to clean a whole lot more if you move to Japan.
3. The kitchen. There average Japanese kitchen does not have an oven. You can not roast a turkey or bake a pizza. I am sure kitchens with ovens do excist, if you are willing to pay the rent for such a place though. (A lot of the microwave-ovens here have a toaster-oven function though!) You cook with gas, and I still find the open flame incredibly scary.
4. Smoking. Smoking is forbidden in public places (at least most of Tokyo), however, smoking is totally legal inside restaurants and bars. Sometimes there will be a non-smoking section within the restaurant (especially if it is a family-resturant), but a lot of the izakayas are all smoking seats. Very many bars allow smoking in the entire bar.
5. Eating on the street. Eating on the street is not illegal of course, but it is kind of frowned upon, Japanese people have a tendency to sit down and then eat. You almost never see people eating on the train or the bus, or walking down the street eating. It is kind of strange since Japanese are very busy, you would think they would always walk and eat, but that is not the case. (You can see young people in Harajuku and Shibuya eating crepes and kebabs and walking though.)
6. Drinking on the street. … however, drinking alcohol on the street is totally legal. Hurrah!
7. Opening hours. I have only lived in Tokyo, so I am not sure how the rest of Japan works in this area, but basically, Tokyo does not really close. The bars stay open late, and there are even bars that open when the other bars close, so the staff that works at the first type of bar can go and drink at the second type of bar. Grocery stores stay open until 11, 12, 02 and 05, depending on what grocery store it is. All the combinis (like 7/11, FamilyMart, MiniStop, Lawson etc.) stay open 24/7. However, the last train leaves between 12 and 01 to most places, so the people who do not catch their last train, can stay out drinking in bars (and take little catnaps with their head resting on the counter) until the trains start going at 05 or 06 in the morning and they can get home.
8. Buying bulk. In most other countries, buying bigger packages usually means that the price goes down pr gram/kg. In Japan, half of the time the price goes up. It is often more expensive to buy a bigger package. Example from the supermarket yesterday: 100g pack of chocolate = 168 yen. 400g pack of chocolate = 800 yen. Why? I don’t know. It teaches modesty, at least. (I am sure there are stores like Walmart where buying bulk is cheaper, I am just talking about the average supermarket.)
9. Addressing other people. You probably already know that Japanese people always address people whom they are not very close with by their last name. This is absolutely true. I actually do not even know the first name of half of my teachers, and I would never ever think about using a teachers given name to them. Friends are of course a different thing all together. To stay safe, add -san after people’s last name, but never after your own.
10. Names that end with -ko. Speaking of given names; until about 40 years ago, most girl-names ended with -ko. Yukiko, Aikiko etc. Nowadays there are other names like Eri and Nana etc, but finding a woman over the age of 45 with a name that doesn’t end in -ko is not that easy. To learn the given names of women over 45 is not always easy either (unless you become good friends), see previous point.

I haven’t posted to lookbook in forever, but I finally got over myself and posted there for the first time in a year or so.