First and foremost; I found the exit. I don’t remember where I found the exit though. Or why I needed to find an exit. But I found it. This made me happy.

I also tried a new sushi place. It was ok. Not the best place I had been to, but not the worst. Nothing to write home about, so I won’t write about it on the blog. // On the right – one of the super-duper big trees at the uni campus. Which I don’t have to see again until September! Hooray!

Even in sunlight the light inside the classrooms seemed dull and dark. This is what studying does to you. Remember to be grateful for your summer vacation kids! // On the right; it’s Gokiburi-hoi-hoi-time. Or in plain English; you buy little hotels for the cockroaches with sticky-tape inside of them. The roach goes into the hotel to eat, and ends up spending all time until eternity stuck on the floor. Poor guys. We don’t actually have much trouble with roaches where we live, but all of a sudden the temperature went up a whole lot in a matter of a day or two a couple of weeks back, and two small guests found their way into our house. (Welcome to Japan!) But fear not, we have top service and plenty of options which our guests can choose from, including The Bellagio, The Venetian and Caesars Palace. The Bellagio, located right next to a small crack in the wall seemed to the top pick for our summer guests. The other hotels seems to suffer, not a single guest have visited them for weeks. Bad for the service industry, good for us.

Quirky flower shop in Mintato-ku. I wanted to buy one of those deliiiish-looking basil plants you can spot in the front of the picture there, but then I remembered I had to enter the overcrowded highway to hell, *cough* the Oedo line *cough*, and the chance of bringing the plant home in one piece during rush hour made my heart sink. I would end up torturing the small thing, which I had already appropriately named Herr Basillusk den 18. (Yes, this implies that I might have killed of 17 basil plants before contemplating buying this one. No comment.) Pictures getting my newly acquired basil plant stuck in the train door floated vividly through my mind, and I opted out of buying it. On the right; I reached Shinjuku without the basil plant, but with enough time to snap a picture part of the skyline.

I tried a fancy new drink from one of the automated machines. Think of Kiwi fruit. With all the kiwi-seeds intact. Then think of yoghurt. Then think of them together. Yay? Nay? It was actually far more delicious than I anticipated. I might have to take the train to this station again just so I can buy another box of juice. On the right… recognize this guy? I finally got to go to the Studio Ghibli museum again! More pictures and text about this will come.

It’s Saturday. But I forgot to post this on Thursday, and I am in holiday-mode, so I am posting it now instead. I was looking through the archive, and I can not believe it has been five years since this picture was taken. Jeez. Time flies. I guess five years have left me with less eye makeup and less lipstick.

Holiday makes everything go slow and I am not sure if I like it or not, because I end up doing a lot of random things at random times (hence the box I painted for no reason, or my face I painted for no reason, or the doodles I doodled for no reason..). In any case – I decided to learn how to make snowflakes. The real deal, with six points! (Not the silly ones with 4 or 8.) I found a video by Vihart and I had to try it myself. Nothing like festive christmas decorations in July.

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!

We need to talk. The honeymoon-phase is definitely over. At first you were exciting, I loved everything about you, how you were so diverse, always ready for an adventure, went out of your way to surprise me, dished up delicious food and took me to a new place every weekend. Lately, I haven’t been paying too much attention to you, maybe I have started to take you for granted. Almost four years into our relationship, I feel as if you are not opening up to me, you seem closed off, despite all of your craziness. Maybe I am seeing a different side of you. A more tired side. I can see that you hardly have time for any of the exciting things you still try to offer. Maybe you have moved on, found a new girl to love, and left me behind. I keep running after you, trying to catch up with you, but you seem moody and hasty and you don’t have time for me anymore. It is like we are co-existing, but not really doing much together anymore. Maybe it isn’t you, maybe it’s me. I still love you, I am just not in love with you. Yes, I am talking about you, Tokyo.

Hei, her er jeg. Eller, her er en veldig travel versjon av meg. Jeg har en bacheloroppgave som skal skrives på norsk, om japanske ord, og alle kildene mine er på engelsk. Og språket bare… forsvinner. Verken japansk, norsk eller engelsk fungerer optimalt. Hva søren var det consonant cluster het på norsk igjen? Og loanshift? Og loanblend? Hvordan forklarer jeg hva en mora er uten å bruke mer enn 100 norske ord? Jeg blir matt, jeg tar meg småpauser, jeg skummer gjennom bloggposter som jeg ikke rekker å kommentere, alle fra fine folk, og kjenner jeg blir grønn av misunnelse når fine folk skriver om søndager som går sakte med egg og bacon på frokostbordet som er pent dekket på med obligatoriske blomstervaser og sølvbestikk.  Jeg leser at de spør om råd om hva de kan finne på på en fredagskveld de ikke har blitt invitert på fest og sitter hjemme. De skriver at de kjeder seg. Jeg vil også kjede meg. Dagen i går bestod av skole 08-19, jobb 20-23, og lekser som ikke kan utsettes lenger fra 23-01. Klokken 01 følger 10 minutter med dårlig samvittighet for husarbeidet som ikke ble gjort, og 2 minutters stillhet for bacheloroppgaven som ikke skrev seg selv i dag heller. Så søvn, delete and repeat, i morgen blir som i dag som ble som i går.

Not much love from me to this poor blog over the past few months, so here is a couple of random cakes from Japan. Everything is fine and dandy, I have simply chosen to not prioritize to update the blog until I have gotten a majority of the work for this semester at uni done. I am slowly getting better at prioritizing. I used to feel guilty when I couldn’t do ALL the things ALL the time, but then I realized (little by little) – good girls sometimes create a lot of stress in their own life, stress that is not necessary. Nobody dies if I don’t update the blog for a couple of weeks. Nobody gets hurt if I put down the camera for a couple of days, and choose to do other things. All that aside, I remember the quote I wrote in my Moleskine a couple of years ago “I make things because I get sad if I don’t”. With that in mind I returned to my blog here today, and felt like updating. Hope you are all having a great fall!

I took these pictures on my birthday a week or so ago. I was busy studying for my last exam, so no birthday celebration for me. (It would have been too sad to admit that I was slaving over linguistic books ALL day on my birthday, so moving my birthday to a more suitable time and forget all about it seemed like the best strategy.) Maybe I am finally starting to look all grown up, haha.

Hello lovelies! As you might have noticed, the update rate at sushibird has decreased drastically in the last month or so, and I wish I had some sort of exciting story about why, but to be honest, it is due to the fact that I have been super-busy with studying until my eyes fall out of my head. (I am currently attending a Norwegian university, and a regular course load is 30 points, however, I am super-sushibird, hence, I am taking on double load, 60 points! Go Go Go!) The fact that I might be a tad bit of a perfectionist *cough* means that the time I have had for fun things like internet has been almost zero. That being said, I have had such a grand time in Norway compared to what I thought I would! (The weather is not included in this calculation, mind you.) I have met so many nice people in the past months at uni, I’ve had good sake several times, I have had nachspiels with my mother, petted a cat repeatedly, enjoyed the wonderful Norwegian coffee almost every day and eaten fresh pasta and lots and lots of cheese. I have felt all grown up when I can make my own phone calls and have no trouble getting across my message because I actually KNOW the language, and I could send text messages with all my friends via cell. How amazing isn’t that? And I have learned a lot of Japanese, of course. Bit by bit, things are falling into place, and this fall I read my first novel in Japanese.  I have learned to love the feeling of being so busy that your head is spinning and you are forgetting what day it is – is actually more exciting than stressful.

I can feel that something is lacking despite the tight schedule, I want to pick up a camera and take lots and lots of pictures, I want to draw and paint and cut paper into a million pieces and make food from scratch and put on nail polish and tweeze my eyebrows and put on makeup and shave my legs and sort my bookcase and go running and read books for fun and create pretty things. My mind is bursting over with ideas, but I have no time. Right now I have a small notebook, and I am writing it all down, and once I ace these exams, I have plenty of ideas to keep me occupied.

I had my first exam today. It went fine. I have three more to go in the next two weeks. And I guess what I am trying to say is:

Don’t forget about me!
I will be back within a month.
Promise.

Kisses and hugs and all that jazz;