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.

Last day before midterms is here, and I have just finished writing up 5 A4 pages of grammar points (30 of them) I am suppose to know for tomorrow. On top of that I have to memorize 4 essays, 2 opinions, 176 kanji (where I have to write 63 of them). They manage to cram a lot of things into 5.5 weeks of studying. Japanese are diligent people. Now, back to the books. & happy 17th of May, everyone! I will celebrate once these tests are over and done with.

& I haven’t studied enough for today’s interview test. I guess I have to write up three things really fast now, and cross my fingers. We get the strangest topics to talk about. Today, I will either be asked if I am for or against alcohol and tobacco in vending machines (自動販売機の撤廃に賛成/反対ですか。), if I believe that dinosaurs could roar or not (since reptiles can not really roar) (恐竜は吼えたか。), or what I think about standing to one side in the escalator (エスカレーターの片道を開けて置くについて。). The truth is that I am not sure what to answer, even in English or Norwegian, so trying to have an opinion about these things in Japanese is ridiculously hard. I always feel like I just have to fake having an opinion when I am asked about such things during a test.

My weekend have been absolutely perfect when it comes to being social and actually having a life, which means that Japanese study + blogging had to put a little bit in the background. I know a lot of people hate Eurovision, so if you are one of them, feel free to skip the rest of this entry. but I love the yearly party. It is all in good fun. It is actually quite ok with the whole Eurovision circus if you can just get into it. I have been avoiding absolutely all news including facebook all of Sunday until I had watched the Eurovision finals. Before I knew who would win I liked Azerbaijan a lot. Good chorus! Also, kudos to France for actually daring to send that type of song to the final. Sending an Opera to Eurovision! Almost as good as two years ago when France sent Patrica Kaas. I love how dead serious France has been the latest years about Eurovision, it is actually quite a refreshing thing to see something like that in Eurovision it sets France apart from the average Eurobeats. Finland was cute, but not a very good voice. Also, I don’t really like songs with a political message about how we ruin the environment, but the melody was cute nonetheless. UK and the man-band was 10 years too late and can please go home. Lituania needs vocal lessons. Surprised Spain did not get more points, and surprised Sweden got as many as they did though. Blablabla. Next year – Asiavision! (Since the winning country isn’t even in Europe. Not the first time that happened though.) Happy with the result, it was a worthy winner.

We went for a great little walk around the neighborhood a couple of days ago. The sun was shining and it was getting hot outside, so we figured it would be a waste to just sit indoors and do homework and work. I love that about Tokyo, you can go right outside your door, and you will always find someplace new and interesting to explore.

I think the house above is actually lived in. I tried to find the entrance, but it wasn’t that easy because of all the greens.

I think that those stairs must lead to the entrance of the house.

People have small and strange things on display in tiny windows.

I love how people actually put small and cute things in their potted gardens.

We found this really strange and almost abandoned street. It must have been bustling in earlier days, but now half of the shops were closed up.

Still, the usual street decorations were up. I almost want to get something like this to decorate the house with. I know it is flashy, but I figure, if I had a big white room this would liven it up. Yay? Nay?

& I am always interested in typography, and I love the font they used for Toyland in the picture above. Unfortunatly, Toyland seems to have closed down, but I need to figure out the name of this font, or if it is specially made for the shop.

English conversation school in shoddy back street.

I am not sure what this display is about, but around the entire house there were small displays of cans and bottles.

There was also lots of shoddy stray cats.

And if you shop is too small to fit all of your goods, you can always get some extra storage space by opening up the back of your car.

It was dark by the time we went back home.