Back to uni. One more semester. I am tired. I have no words. Here are pictures.

New lenses. I wish I could find a brand that would be a bit more blue, but the blue ones tend to look a bit strange towards the middle of the eye, so I went with a darker blue color instead.

Yakiniku with friends. // Ramen alone.

Hello nihonshu!

Hello sushi!

Hello Tokyo Tower! Hello Nakano!

Hello small kitchens. // Hello instant food for the days you just can not be bothered to cook anything up.

Always lagging several months behind. It is ok. Above, the view from the hotel window in Niagara Falls. Cheese plate at CN tower in Toronto.

All of the sushi pictures are from Take Sushi in Toronto. Very Japanese-style sushi, and all the people working there were also Japanese. The uni was of remarkable quality. I used the opportunity to order tobiko with a quail egg on top – they do not serve it many places in Japan (despite having both tobiko and qual eggs on the sushi menu), but it is one of my favorite pieces. I had a nice chat with the chef, and he gave us little origami penguins to bring with us back home.

Walking around Niagara, it was almost like getting a little taste of Japan again with all the flashing neon lights and the crowds of people. I missed Japan for an hour or two, and wanted to go back home for the first time in weeks.

We found an amazing food store in the gay district in Toronto. I don’t even like cupcakes.

Doodling with new pens and noticing that even the banks in the gay district in Toronto had rainbow flags. Adorable.

We finished off Canada with even more drinks and started planning our return to Japan.

Final seaweed salad in Toronto, and *boom* – I was back in Japan. It still felt like summer.

It was as though we never left, yet something had shifted in me.

Heading into a traditional sushi shop around the corner from our house, I felt blessed that I have gotten to see much of the world and made myself familiar with places and people I never thought I would encounter. If someone told me 10 years ago that this would be my life, I would laugh at them. Moving is easier than one might think. After you have picked up your things and ran half across the world once, nothing seems impossible. I ate my uni and thought that just a week before I had eaten the same dish, 8500 km away.

The days rolled by, the earthquakes were back, and I am still trying to hold on tightly as the world starts to spin faster and faster around me again.

Because I am a *little* obsessed about birds, I begged to go to the aviary in Niagara falls, and I got that wish granted as well. The birds had plenty of space, and the place looked better than I expected.

One of the first room we entered were a room of predators and non-birds. Seriously, there is nothing as scary as turtles when they… get into a “good” mood. You have hereby been warned before you look between the the turtles legs two pictures below. He looks like he is about to attack you.

After being slightly fascinated and quite scared of randy turtles and egg-eating Toucans, I went on to my favorite type of birds, the parrots. Look at these handsome creatures! I wanted to bring them home with me.

Below; a room of smaller birds, some poisonous frogs and birds from a large tropical and humid room.

I think the guy above was my favorite! Handsome and studly and fluffy!

“The dark does not destroy the light; it defines it. It’s our fear of the dark that casts our joy into the shadows.”

While in Niagara Falls, I wanted to get some use out of my ESTA (and say I have been to New York State!), so I pleaded and begged to walk over the bridge to the US, and I got my wish granted! Tsktsk. Now, I do not mean to say anything mean or disrespectful about the US side of Niagara Falls (and this is meant in a very light-hearted way), but oh boy, the Canadian and the US side were not very similar!

Walking over the bridge, I saw Maid of the Mist! I still have never been on board. Third time is a charm, right?

One of the first things that met me after I had entered the US, was this little booth with this fine poster. Dorothy, we are not in Kansas anymore! It was just one of those tiny things where you realize how culture vary so much from country to country. I took a 10 min stroll over a bridge, and holy smokes! There are gun commercials! I had an Oz-moment there. Seriously? You don’t call the cops? You use your colt?! I have never seen posters like these before, since there are virtually no hand guns in neither Norway or Japan. I haven’t seen that many of them in Canada either.

My US escapades continued to a somewhat dingy mall where we ate oversized portions of some kind of asian-fusion food on paper plates.

After finishing our lunch, and simultaneously starting to realize that Niagara Falls NY is somewhat of a ghost town, I wanted to go back to Canada.

THANK GOD I FOUND CANADA! Back I went!

I still took the time to stand in two countries at once. That felt… pretty exciting, actually!

And back to Canaaaannnda! Where the restaurants are more expensive, where the live-bands are playing and where they have pretty flower beds and shrubberies and all things nice. (Yes, I am biased!)

Although certain things in Canada also seems a bit backwards and upside down…

But certain backward things are pretty neat! Since I am in North America, I can request cheese on my seafood pasta! This would have been considered blasphemy in Italy, right? But not in the land of plenty and its hat! I actually really do love how people are super helpful if you want to change or modify your order in the US and Canada. In Japan, usually what is on the menu is what is on the menu. If you ask for extra X or less of Y, they don’t always accommodate you. Rules are rules, you know.

I went back to the hotel room and considered how expensive and time consuming it would be to paint my own ceiling like this. Then I fell asleep and forgot all about it.