Yes, I am aware that I have posted pictures from this temple (Hasedera) before. Yes, I know this might make me fall into the post-too-much-too-soon-trap. This is the trap that makes girly bloggers (especially the Norwegian ones, for some odd reason or another) post five, six, seven, eight or forty-six pictures of their own face from the same photo shoot, and all of the pictures look almost alike. And viewers get bored. (Every time I see a post like that, I keep thinking how much better the post and the pictures would look if I was presented one or two of the best photos from the set instead of fifty shades of boring in the same blog post. Maybe it’s just me. Maybe I have ADD or ADHD or OMG. Oh wait. I went off on a tangent here. Back to the post. Sorry about that.) I know variety is the spice of life and all that jazz, but one of the main reasons I started blogging was to… *dumdumdum* document my life *insert sad violin music here*, so bear with me, here are more pictures from Hasedera in Kamakura. Because I went there. And I have pictures to prove it.

Tokyo consists of 23 different central wards packed into one, called 区 (pronounced “ku”) in Japanese. Because most of my daily life the past months basically revolved around eat-sleep-school-delete-and-repeat, I hadn’t been around to more than 3 different 区s in the middle of Tokyo for several weeks. This was naturally quite a sad and terrible state to be in, and it made me feel boring and dull. Remedy: trip to Kamakura. Because they have this magical thing called the ocean in Kamakura. I reminisced about seeing the ocean in Norway as a child (and played more sad violin music inside my head) and felt quite sorry for my ocean-less self. (I also saw the ocean back in March of this year in Norway, but for some odd reason this didn’t enter my mind as relevant when it was time to indulge in self-sulking.) But on this particular day in May, 2013, I would no longer be ocean-less!  Climbing up the hill inside the Hasedera temple area you can see both beach and never ending ocean! Seeing the ocean from top of the hill was like seeing a watering hole in the middle of the desert. Ok, not quite, but you get the picture. It was N-I-C-E! And beautiful.

Apart from the fresh air that made me all kinds of giggly and high on life, I also saw a bunch of tadpoles that all went away when I picked up my camera and tried to snap a picture of them.

And we saw serious statues…

…and happy statues…

…and more oceaney goodness! (Ok, I know oceaney isn’t a real word, but it should be.)

Super wheel-chair accessible, of course! Just like the rest of Japan. At least it was really pretty.

No day trip is complete without a mandatory walk through a bamboo forrest. Pretty, no?

Exams are definitely over; yesterday I painted a box light blue for no reason (not worth taking a picture of), then I painted my face with a ton of makeup and snapped pictures of myself (I do have pictures of this), washed my face clean (no pictures of this though), concluded that I could not spend my days applying color to random stuff including my face, I had to get out! Of course I did. Jajamensann.

I walked to Shinjuku, got caught in a thunderstorm (I DID bring an umbrella, thankyouverymuch!),  and got soaked in the rain. (Seriously, it was raining sideways, it made me feel like I was back in Bergen, Norway. Yay. Or nay. Hmm.) I escaped into Isetan with wet hair and a dripping umbrella. (Isetan is a high-end department store. No, I mean HIGH-end department store. As in, even in the their food section on the B1 floor is presented like jewelry on silky little pillows. Mmm. Tasty jewelry.) Surprisingly, I did not receive that many nasty looks from the shop clerks despite my unfashionable appearance reminding myself of a drenched cat. I walked around and considered spending 1600 yen (that is like… 100 kr for you Norwegians) for a loaf of dark bread. This was only because I was excited to see a loaf of dark bread. My first spotting of dark bread in months, possibly in all of 2013!!! I concluded that I should manage my money better, and went and bought a bottle of Cava instead. Good girl.

I went home and preceded to drink the bottle of Cava. The Cava had the unfortunate side effect that it weakened my fine tuned super-motor skills just enough so I could officially become a member of the avocado-related-injuries club when I managed to slice into my thumb removing the stone. Bummer. But kind of cool when I realized that it must have been YEARS since I cut my fingers the last time. The irony was that as I was cutting the avocado, I actually thought about avocado-related-injuries. Now, this lead me to an albeit small, but yet enough to make me gasp, existential crisis. Because O-M-G – I thought bad stuff didn’t happen if you constantly thought about it very hard. (For example, this is why I freak myself out whenever I go on an airplane. I visualize how it will crash into the ground, and by doing so and being aware of the possibility of me plunging to my death in a metal tube, It will not happen in real life. Makes total sense.) And now, I cut my hand while thinking about cutting my hand. I have to rethink my entire being now. (Good thing it is holiday-time.)

After a rather unexciting night cursing avocado-stones and how impractical bandaids are (like – how DO you shower with bandaids?!), I finished up with a similarly unexciting breakfast, cottage cheese and blueberry sauce. Or, actually, for being in Japan it is quite exciting. I was stoked to find cottage cheese here in the first place, and the blueberry sauce actually almost tasted like Norwegian blueberry jam. Score!

I think I might have found my first decent and yummy Spanish restaurant in Tokyo, El Pulpo in Kagurazaka. They specialize in Spanish seafood. The mussels were huge(!), fresh and moist, the pate was absolutely delicious, the olives were decent quality (compared to what you usually find in Tokyo), and even the shrimps were moist and not overcooked.

I have been trying to find decent Spanish restaurants in Tokyo for quite some time, but a lot of places have totally let me down and made me almost irritated that I left money in their establishments. I have been using tabelog and reviews on several social networking sites in Japan, but I guess that Japanese people’s idea of good Spanish food is overpriced, overcooked and and overcomplicated, and incredibly small portions compared to the stiff prices. I just can not believe how decent ratings several Spanish restaurants have gotten despite the sub-par food. This goes against other types of cuisines I have tried in the Tokyo area, I have found decent, tasty and correctly priced French, Italian and even Mexican restaurants. I don’t know if I have just been really unlucky with the Spanish restaurants I have tried, or if there is some kind of Japanese curse that seems to target Spanish restaurants specifically. Every single place have been consistently bad. Except for this one. Finally something decent! I will definitely be back to El Pulpo very very soon.

(I should mention – It can not be compared to some of the Spanish food I have had around Europe, but my expectations for Spanish food in Japan have dropped so much that finding anything decent is a mere bonus for me at this point.)

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Stuff eaten recently; Eggplant with super yummy toppings. Strawberry + banana ice cream. The strawberry is sorbetto, and the banana is creamy. I have no idea if they have this type in Europe or the US, but if you can find it, try it! Absolutely awesome! The mix between the sorbetto and the creamy icecream is absolutely delicious. This is def. my new summer favorite!

I rarely watch movies that I am really touched by anymore, but I watched this Japanese movie from 2002, Oriume, and I thought it was beautiful and I wanted to share. (Terribly sorry about the horrendous picture quality, but it was all I could find online.)

The movie is about an elderly Japanese woman who moves in with her sons family so they can take care of her, as her Alzheimer’s progresses. It shows so many different aspects of Japanese family life, how the wife works part time and is the only one taking care of the house and the family, how the husband is overworked but under-involved with his own family, how Japanese people feel that they should take care of their elders and the shame and guilt connected to sending someone off to a nursing home. The movie is everything that Japanese film can be at its best. Slow, with time to think and time to be moved. I rarely feel that Japanese actors and actresses really do a world-class job, but this movie is both well directed and shows good acting.

Unfortunately, it is not available on Netflix or Youtube or anywhere else I could find on the internet with English subtitles. I think it is possible to order the movie with English subtitles from Amazon though. The only trailer I could find was one with Korean subtitles, since the movie was released in South Korea in 2011. If you know Japanese/Korean, I think it is possible to watch the movie here on this Chinese site.

Here is the trailer for the movie, in Japanese, with Korean subtitles:

I had the absolute honor of being invited to a Japanese wedding. I wish I could post pictures of the ceremony and the couple itself (gosh, gorgeous gorgeous kimono and temple and I don’t know what!), but I don’t want to publish someone else’s private moments here without consent, so I figured I could post some pictures of the food we got at the reception afterwards instead. Isn’t it beautiful?

I was pretty nervous about going to this wedding, I had no idea what to expect, what to wear, how much money to give or what I should do at the wedding. The shrine was beautiful, and walking across the the shrine area as part of a wedding was a memory for life. I couldn’t take a picture of that part myself, but I am sure that all the tourists who snapped away pictures with their iPhones managed to catch me on camera 😉 The actual ceremony inside the temple was also beautiful. Among other things, the priest gave the the couple sake to drink as part of the ceremony, and two other helpers in beautiful outfits poured sake into little cups in front of us, and we had to drink as well. I am probably not describing this very well at all, but it was all just very surreal and flowy with the chanting, the smells and the beautiful kimono on the bride and, and, and… I am really grateful I got to experience this!

Uni and other delicious sashimi is never wrong at a wedding reception.

Oh, I thought I should mention this part, just in case someone is interested: When you go to a Japanese wedding, you give a special envelope at the reception, and you tuck money (crisp, brand new bills) inside of it. When you buy the envelope (at any store, including kombinis), it will most likely say how much money you should put into it on the package. So do not buy the most gorgeous envelopes unless you plan to leave a … gorgeous amount of money in that envelope! I spent 30 min trying to figure out how to fill out the envelope the right way. Who knew that a Japanese culture class I took two years ago would come in handy all of a sudden? I should had paid better attention in that class, but I managed to figure it out in the end.

…and before I knew it the whole thing was over and I was on my way home with the metro again.

…BUT! In Japan, the guests get gifts from the bride and groom when you attend a wedding. So I went home with both a flower and some mystery packages. Time to open and them and see what is inside!

The worst day of the week filled with countless exams is over, and I am still alive. Funny how that works. A lot of things seems less important once they are over. Three more exams left to go. Two more days. The end is in sight.

I was contemplating staying up all night to study, but I just don’t have that much more to give right now. I took a deep breath, reminded myself what a good night’s sleep can do, and just went all 80/20 on myself. 80% of the work takes 20% of the time. The last 20% of the work takes 80% of the time. I choose sleep, and I choose to have a life. I am going into that exam room tomorrow with a smile on my face. Good night.

I came home the other day, fell asleep on the floor in the sunlight. It was nice. One more week to freedom. // 最近、なかなか宿題や試験が終わらなくて、大学に戻るから、急に眠らなくなって、昼間をしました。もう一週間あとで休むことができま〜す！

My pants match the veranda floor. (Well, technically it is not a veranda, nor a balcony, but it is outside our house on the fourth floor.)

Goya and egg and spam and everything else that is delicious. Right; Korean pancake.

Chinese stirfry and fried rice. Below, super yummy sashimi and a small starter.

Good ideas always seem to come to me at 3:30 in the morning in the middle of my last week of exams, so I redesigned Sushibird. It looks a lot cleaner and less cluttered than the previous version, and the pictures are quite a bit larger. Yay? Nay? Vad tycks?