A thought

In Tokyo people don't look at me so much, at least not compared to when I was in Osaka. Here they never stare at me. Sometimes I notice a glance, but they always divert their eyes quickly.

I had dinner with Tomo and Sachi yesterday. Yakiniku at Shibuya. A really good moment. I hadn't met Tomo for about half a year and Sachi for more than 2 years and it was really, really good to see them again. Both seem to have gotten used to Tokyo, which is nice since they thought that the big crowds of Tokyo seemed like a crazy festival in the begining. Tomo's opinion is that people here are more cold, more closed. Maybe this explains why I don't feel stared at. That, together with the fact that there are a lot of foreigners here. I guess poeple here are used to all kinds of faces. After the dinner I took the night-train home to the dorm. A classic packed subway. I didn't really need to hold on to anything, I couldn't fall over anyway. And when I arrived to my station I realized that I was on the wrong side of the wagon and just barely made it out to the platform before the doors closed.

Yesterday was the first day in the lab. Everyone is nice and kind to me. And Professor Kato seems like a very good supervisor. Things are moving on very, very fast. I used some of their equipment (polarized optical microscopy, they call it "pomu") to look at Ichikawa's liquid crystals (LC) the first day. And today I began some experiments to synthesize my own LCs. Note that this is the second day in school...

Tomorrow Natsuko is coming here.

Good night!

I've arrived

So I'm back in Japan. Took the train from Narita Airport to Ueno Stn, the Skyliner express. It takes something like 1 hour. Most of what I saw at first was rice fields, small houses and shrines. Then more houses. The city getting more and more dense. Office workers in suits, school children in their uniforms, housewives in soft trousers and square-shaped jackets on bicylces. After 30 minutes this all felt normal again. No problem adapting. Another half an hour and I was in culture chock. Tokyo isn't Osaka. It's more. More intense, more chaotic, more of a mess. I had to look hard to find a straight angle. Subway trains shot out of tunnels under me. I could have touched the buildings we passed with the train, if only the windows were possible to open. The city doesn't look as if it's built, it's more like an organism. Growing, moving and puffing.

Still, maybe this is only true for Ueno. Tokyo is a huge city. 10 million people live here. The number of places to visit is overwhelming.

Me and Ichikawasan (my tutor here) went around a lot (7-8 train rides in one afternoon) to register me at a number of places, get me an insurance and so on. He's a really nice guy! I'll meet with Prof Kato tomorrow. That's gonna be cool.

My aparment is small and cosy. 13 m2. It doesn't feel that cramped. Dark wooden floors and a balcony facing down-town Tokyo helps keeping the atmosphere up. And it's cheap! 10 000 Yen / month. There are some very japanese solution for the lack of space. 1) I have a shower unit. This is a toilet, a place for washing my face and a shower, everything crowded on 1 m2! It features many movable parts and a high risk for flooding! 2) My bed is foldable and becomes a shelf when I don't use it. 3) My desk unfolds like a transformer... Ok, that last was a bit of an exaggeration ;)

So everything is fine. But I'm tired and jetlagged.

Take care.

Last morning in Sweden

Ok, I'm leaving.

See you!

Getting emotional

So it’s 10 days left until I leave and I am, maybe not surprisingly, having mixed feelings about this. After two years in Sweden I kind of got used to living here … again. It was just yesterday that I walked up through campus to my lab and got the feeling that this was really normal, you know, as it should be. I had found my everyday life. And then I realized that, in two weeks this will have changed, my life will change, again, and I couldn’t help feeling a bit sad about it. I like what I’m doing now, and I like the people that I do it with. The safest way to play would have been to stay with this.

But, as some might now, I always want safe, but I never choose it. Luckily, I’m not walking out on the thinnest of ice. I've done this before in a way. And I’ve heard a lot about the place where I’m going and it seems very all right.

And really, there’s nothing else I want to do. This is it. I got lucky.

To leave my family and friends here will of course be hard. I'm not getting used to that, eventhough this isn't the first time. I am truly grateful for all the support. I will miss you.

So, take care.

Genkidene.

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