First, here are some pictures of recent meals and snacks, just because I like taking pictures of food. The sushi above was 350 yen, which would be about 24 Norwegian kroner or about or about 4$. I don’t understand why everyone thinks Japan is so expensive.
Couscous! We found these great sun dried tomatoes soaked in peppery olive oil, it made the couscous so much better.
I got chocolate.
And I made mozzarella and tomato salad with olive oil, salt and pepper.
Apart from pictures of food, I had another reason to write this entry. I got the results from the December JLPT test in the mail a couple of days ago, and I was in the group of 50.8% that actually passed the exam. This week has just been crazy busy because of a midterm test, but the actual test was easier than it could have been. I think they went easy on us. Now, I am of to write a speech for tomorrows speech content. I don’t feel like entering it, but it is mandatory, 書かないわけにはいかない。(On a tangent here – why do Japanese love double negative? To NOT write it is NO good.)
明日週間テストがあるのに、今日は横浜に行って、あまり勉強しませんでした。(Tomorrow I have my midterm test, but today I went to Yokohama and didn’t study much at at all.) The blog have been a bit quiet for the past two days again (blame it on valentine and homework), but I am sure that will change as soon as my midterm test is done and I have some time to breathe again. In the mean time, I present you with crappy iPhone Hipstamatic shots because it was snowing last night and I did not bring my camera.
You get your own yukata at hotels in Japan.
Look, the Japan Railway family of birds!
Doing homework at Starbucks. I really don’t understand why everyone thinks Starbucks coffee is so amazing.
If it wasn’t for the clouds, you would be able to see Mt. Fuji in the background here. I saw it this morning, but I didn’t take a picture.
My class schedule, and me looking at it.
Pretty soap and pretty tea at the hotel.
And more of the funny smoking signs at the smoking area.
Today we went to chinatown in Yokohama and ate dim sum for lunch.
One of the gates in chinatown.
And then – lo and behold – we found a cafe called “The Cafe”. The Cafe actually had good coffee. After all the nasty coffee I have been drinking in cafes in Japan, I was in heaven for a little while. I think it was french roasted, because the taste was mild and round and not too bitter. Bliss.
An old illustration I dug up from god knows how many years ago, way to heavily inspired by the original “Can you pass the acid test?“.
I think it is fitting for this week.
I am sitting here, armed with coffee, cigarettes and Japanese books, and I am trying to figure out why the little squiggles on the paper don’t wish to be deciphered today. The strangeness of this week continues, I think there have been 3 earthquakes this week (small ones), it feels funny when the ground underneath you is literally shaking. Yesterday evening an ambulance stopped right next to the house, and a woman was carried out and put in the ambulance by paramedics. I think she will be ok though. I saw it all from the veranda, and I couldn’t quite connect the dots. There is just something in the air this week.
Do you remember the time on the internet when it was cool to photoshop your pictures to hell and back? I found some really old pictures, and even though I wouldn’t torture my pictures the same way today as I did back then, I miss the time when a lot more was allowed. It was fun to make alternate universes where the sky was green and the earth was pink. In many ways I envy people who have just started out with a new hobby (like photography), there is so much more room to play and make good mistakes. After a couple of years I think most people start to limit themselves, and don’t even bother experimenting anymore. At least I know I am one of them. Some of the joy gets lost somewhere along the way. Anyway, these pictures are not necessarily good, but I remember I had a really fun time taking them and editing them.
This is really inventive use of Norwegian language. It is probably of no interest at all to you if you do not know Norwegian, but wow, I was pretty impressed with how all of this added up and made sense in the end.
(These were made as a wall sticker set a couple of years ago, I thought they would look nice in a big white room with minimal furniture.)
Wikipedia’s article about sushi. This is a really nice article about sushi and sashimi. A lot of people think that sushi is the same as raw fish, but in fact sushi is the rice, and not the fish. This article about sushi is good reading if you want to know more about different kinds of sushi.
The Beauty Of Typography: Writing Systems And Calligraphy Of The World. This is a Smashing Magazine article about different exotic writing systems, mainly focusing on Eastern Asian Languages and Arabic writing systems. I learned a lot about how Arabic is written from this article, and the illustrations are beautiful. It almost made me want to learn Arabic, just to draw those beautiful letters.
Kari Bremnes lyrics. Kari Bremnes is my all time favorite artist. A lot of people just quote “Åpen Post” (Norwegian TV show that made a joke about her name) or mistake her for other people (why do people think she is Lynni Treekrem, there is nothing similar about them apart from having a northern dialect). If you have actually listened to any of her songs, you will find a beautiful melancholic and poetic voice. She is absolutely wonderful, and I found out that there is a part of her web page which has lyrics for most of her albums, and it made me so happy. I have been humming to myself all day, even if I can not sing, because her words are so beautiful.
Sinhala script. God, it looks beautiful. I first saw it in a bible in a hotel room in Yokohama last summer, and I wanted to find out more about it, so I found some beautiful examples doing a google image search.
Lang-8.com. Regarding language studies, lang-8 is absolutely awesome. You write a diary entry in whatever language you are studying, mark what language it is (by choosing from a drop down list), and then native people will correct your diary entry for you. In return, you can correct journal entries written in your naive language. I have found a lot of cool people learning Norwegian and English, and there have been so many kind people correcting my Japanese on this site. No matter what language you are studying, this web page is a great resource.
There is a strange dissonance in the air these days, this week, I feel removed, or simply… not quite here. I am observing it all from the outside, looking in, my life projected onto a screen, I have popcorn and wine and I am silently watching it all from the sideline. It has been a strange week. A woman down the street was screaming on Monday, glass was shattered – it is so unlike Tokyo. I got sick on Tuesday, I still felt sick of Wednesday, skipped classes, spent hours in bed waiting to feel better. Thursday came along, I spent four hours reading Japanese news articles and little tidbits, but the Japanese text just looked like little squiggles on the paper, a code, I could not decipher it. Friday is here, I am staring at the piles and piles of homework, my tests are coming up next week, the piles, they keep growing, and instead of treating said piles as weed and remove them, it is almost like I am nurturing them, like a plant or a small animal, I see it grow, and I do nothing about it. I simply observe, I do not act.
I have wondered a lot about time and space lately, what do those words really mean? We categorize time into hours and days and months and years, we compare events to each other by looking at the span of time in between them. Maybe time is like a movie reel – all the frames are there at all times, but we see them chronologically, one at the time, maybe it is just our way or organizing chaos into order in our heads.
I hope things will return to normalcy soon, I feel so floaty and detached.
