Just had to show of these pretty Japanese ukiyo-e (woodblock prints). These gorgeous prints (and many more) are available to download and distribute in big sizes from this nice webpage.

1. If you are in Norway and have a Nintendo DS, this webshop had great service for R4 cartridges. It took me 4 day in total from I placed the order until I got the package in the mail. (And for being Norway, that is really fast service!)
2. Reaching the stage of Conscious Competence in Japanese. A nice article about different stages of learning. (I will start writing articles about learning Japanese myself, I just have to get around to it. Until then, the above website is a super resource!)
3. A fun little article for the top 10 reasons to make gay marriage illegal 😉
4. This might not be funny unless you know anybody from Bergen, Norway, but basically the county has put out a long list of words and expressions used in Bergen. I had not heard about half of them, but it was a fun to see anyhow!
5. Spoonflower is a website where you can make your own fabrics! A dream come true, I have been wanting to put designs on textile for a long time, and finally a website that seems really promising.
6. And I am absolutely in love with these Jeffrey Cambell shoes. If anybody knows where to buy them offline, please let me know! I don’t mind buying shoes online, but this design is kind of special and I am not sure how the shoe would actually look in real life, so trying them on would be great.
7. And again, if you are in Bergen, these guys at Ichiban make fun sushi! It reminds me a lot more of American/Canadian style of sushi than traditional Japanese sushi, but still, a lot of fun rolls and combos!
8. This website is all about simplifying your life by getting rid of possessions and create smarter and smaller living spaces, both to improve the quality of your life, and to leave less of a footprint. A lot of neat solutions here! When I grow up, I want to live in a space with movable walls.
9. My friend sortenke has a nice little interview up (in Norwegian) about what type of tools she uses in her design process.
10. How much do genes matter? A very nice article about how talent only takes you so far from Scott H. Young, who is all about learning faster and achieving more. (Check out his archive as well, lots of goodies in there about learning techniques.)

Things that made me smile:

Fat bird balls resting up on the lawn enjoying the last streaks of heat from the sun // Norwegian creamy fish soup // Crossing out all the items I had planned for the day in teuxdeux // Rediscovering twitter all of a sudden // THIS // Have empty space in my bookshelves and closets, empty white space on the walls // Small rooms which can be heated up to livable temperatures within 30 min // Sparkling water (elixir of life!) // Some beautiful people who have uploaded a lot of documentaries to youtube lately, thank you ♥ // Norwegian, black coffee // The very big moon a couple of days ago

You guys have to see this amazing water clock at Osaka station! It is absolutely gorgeous. I want to go there and see it myself after new years, absolutely wonderful!

Another link list with internet goodies that I have discovered lately:

1. A cool way to figure out how old your globe is! 
2. Lina Ekstrand creates amazing illustrations. I first saw one of her illustrations on a freebie libresse-box, and the rest of her illustrations are equally wonderful! I love the pencil details, go look!
3. 10 Myths Many Religious People Hold About Atheists, Debunked
4. Google is hit by a sudden gravity. Especially fun if you actually move stuff around and search for stuff.
5. I did not know about the problem with alcoholic meese (moose?) in Sweden. Now I do. One of them stole a swing set. Another one got stuck in a tree.
6. If you have a lot of time left over, and just feel like getting smarter, you can read about linguistic relativity. Are our thoughts shaping our language, or the opposite way around? I came across Lera Boroditsky‘s papers, and especially this and this paper is super-interesting, it gives a lot of fancy examples about how different languages seem to shape our thoughts differently.
7. The Oatmeal has a new wonderful comic about what we should be taught in our senior year of high school.
8. Binka had a nice little entry about doodling a week or so ago I wanted to share further. TED-video in English is embedded.
9. Needless to say, I am not exstatic about my philosophy classes, but these three minute philosophy lectures on Youtube made my week a tiny bit easier.
10. My great Japanese teacher was on TV, talking about Japan after the earthquake and tsunami. (In Norwegian.)
11. What is lacking in modern medicine is human touch. A nice TED-talk.
12. Last, but not least, this documentary! (It is a couple of years old, but I just found it again.) It is about a woman who was born with a rare condition and have ended up with legs four times larger than those of the average person. This woman’s attitude towards life is just pure inspiration. She is so positive and such a go-getter (and really pretty too, but that is beyond the point), and I am just thinking – if she can have this sort of attitude towards life, then god damn – other people (including myself) should suck it up and be a bit more like her, the world would be a better place. Really inspiring lady!

I am such a sappy person at times, I love women who sing with a deep voice. I remember that somebody told me over 10 years ago that I would like k.d. lang, but I never really took the time to listen back then, but now I think I am getting hooked. gaah, her voice. //end girlish broadcast.

Time for a little link list again, here are some goodies I have found on the internet this week:

1. Look at this gorgeous folding-in origami. A great great idea, to fold the pages of the books so they create new and gorgeous designs.
2. I am pretty sure all Norwegians who read blogs have already read this, but I have to mention it again, hjartesmil has the best post ever (in Norwegian) about moving. Just do it. 
3. Museum of Obsolete Objects. The title says it all. I smiled when I saw the floppy disk.
4. A facinating little video about how to board a plane more efficiently. I have always wondered about this.
5. These photographs have so much personality. The wonderful Julia Galdo. I have no idea what she does, but it is all just pure magic.
6. I have to mention these pictures as well by Tommaso Nervegna.
7. Here is a collection I have put together with moleskine notebooks made by the talented people posting their work over at Behance. I always love looking in other peoples sketchbooks, but I have a hard time finding the really inspiring ones. So far Behance has been the best place to look.
8. I don’t really have time to enter myself these days, but I think that if you like doodling, drawing and illustration, head over to illustrationfriday.com and join the fun. They post a new challenge for you to draw every Friday. No real price involved, just for fun and exercise.
9. Beautiful papercrafts by essimar.
10. Finishing with a bit of a whacky link, a gorgeous and detailed collection over the people who were involved in freakshow back in the days + + +. A really extensive archive, I lost a couple of hours reading and looking at the pictures. I love what you can find in the corners of the internet.

Have a good week everyone! I am hitting the books again now!

Masaaki Hiromura is just pure genius! I love this project, where he has replaced certain parts of the kanji with what it means. I absolutely loved this. I also love what he has done with various spaces around Tokyo, you can see more of his amazing projects over at his website.

I can not believe it is 10 years since 千と千尋の神隠し (Spirited Away) came out. I was never really interested in anything Japanese when I was younger, and this movie was my first real meeting with anything Japanese. I am still not into Japanese anime, but the movies from Studio Ghibli are just amazing. Most people have probably seen this movie already, but if you haven’t, you can see a nice trailer here.

I went on a little etsy hunt to find some cute items (yes, this is fun to do when you are broke), and I found these cute sushi-related items. I wanted to show them, in case somebody with free spending money might like them. Click on the picture to go to the etsy page for each item.

(I really like the quality of the rice grains in the above pair of earrings.)

(& this would definitely have made me happy if I were to look down at my hand! I love love love the details!)

(If my imaginary dog Pugsley was real, this would be his collar.)

(Look at the cute tobiko!)

(Simple but cute pendant.)

(Not quite sure about the quality of this pencil case, but the idea is really great.)

(And another pair of earrings. A little to flashy for me right now, but I still love the concept.)

I just found this song again, after having forgotten about it for a long time. Rimi Natsukawa is from Okinawa, and she has a beautiful voice. I heard about her from one of my best friends (hi Kristin!), and I have loved her voice ever since.