Sunday Walkabout in Tokyo

Hej!

First I should say that I didn't go to Akihabara today and by that I luckily avoided the knife-wielding lunatic that went berserk on the main street of that area around noon killing and injuring several people. The whole thing is very sad and scary!

I took a walk with my camera to a rather posh district called Daikanyama, situated between Shibuya and Ebisu. On my way over there I saw a space ship that had crashed into to the roof of a small supermarket.

No-one else seemed to pay much attention to it.

As I got closer I realized that it wasn't a space ship, but a gigantic robo-grasshopper!

It was stuck there on top of the building, entangled in the phone-wires and couldn't budge.

A view of the head of the beast.

Pretty cool thing, but I'm sure that I would have a lot of nightmares if I was 10 and had this monster as my neighbour...

That's it!

Take care!

Osaka Jazz Weekend

I made another short trip to Kansai this weekend. Took the shinkansen (bullet train) down on Friday evening and the night bus back home to Tokyo yesterday night. For having made no plans at all we did a lot. The highlight was the jazz club on Saturday night; Suntory 5 in Umeda. The band, New Orleans Rascals, is a bunch of old guys playing Dixieland jazz and they are so good at it that they've received the honorary citizenship of New Orleans. They started playing in 1961 and I wouldn't be surprised if we actually saw some of the original members this weekend

Apart from that we sang karaoke, watched a movie, cooked and played/listened to piano. Pictures!

Experimenting with macro.

Biker girl.

Back alley of N's apartment.

New Orleans Rascals at Suntory 5, Osaka.

Guess the drink!

That's it.

Take care!

Return to photo

After the photo exhibition last weekend I decided to take more pictures. At least one per week that I like. Last Friday I was playing around with my reflex in the balcony door. This is the result.



Actually I have been doing this before (see my avatar on msn or facebook). I took something similar in Osaka when I was there with Daniel and Karin last month. It's Osaka as seen from Umeda Sky Bluilding.


That's it for this week!

Take care!

Kamakura

Hej! Just got back from my Sunday sento after a day walking the streets of Shibuya, Harajuku and Shinjuku. I happened to run into an open-air photo exhibition and that made me realize that I haven't been taking many pictures lately. Very sad! So I promised myself that I will do that, and also that I will put them here. Enjoy. ;D

I went to Kamakura this weekend with a Swedish friend. Kamakura is a tiny city south of Tokyo famous for its temples and that it once was the capital of Japan (from 1185 to 1333).

This is probably the most famous temple of Kamakura, the Kotokuin with the Daibutsu (big buddha).

A beautiful "noren" of a temple called Kenchoji.

Momiji (red leaves) on the Daibutsu hiking course.

A family enjoying a beach called Yuigahama.

A cosy house seen from the Gion-san hiking course.

Less text more pictures! Full size versions are available at my Photobucket.

Take care.

Back in Tokyo

It's been a while since I wrote here... 2 months! Wow, time flies and all that...

I went back to Stockholm for about 3 weeks in March. It was soooo good to see my family and friends again! A little bit of change of environment was just what I needed. I spent my Easter vacation at my grand mother's summer house in the inner part of Stockholm archipelago and ate a lot of Swedish food (herring, salmon, a mutton steak and potatoes) and had a bunch of Easter beers from small breweries in Sweden and Norway. :P

I managed to get some work done as well, but I won’t bore you with that. ;)

Not many days after coming back to Tokyo (the 2nd of April) I got some distinguished guest; my friends Daniel and Karin. They spent two weeks roaming Japan by train and I did my best to show them around the places I know; streets of Shibuya, bands in Harajuku, sakura in Shinjuku and Ueno, bars in Ikebukuro, electric.... stuff... in Akihabara. I hope I didn't wear you out with all that walking! :D And thank you for taking me to the sky bar of Tokyo Tower Hotel. Very, very Tokyo-esque!

A week passed after D&K left and then I met up with Jacob and Elisabeth from Denmark and Matt from USA. We had a weekend of art/culture with visits at the National Art Center Tokyo, NTT InterCommunication Center and a club in Roppongi called SuperDeluxe. Now this place was the definite highlight for me. We had been told that there would be noise music (what's that? you wonder, then check this video from another event at the same place http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eMOR3Fzi2Ck) but I don't think anyone of us four was prepared for how experimental it would be. Seven (7!) hours of... noise. Guitars, computers, mix tables, record players, a fluorescent lamp, a girl screaming (almost) ultrasonic and a cello, strapped to table and disciplined with a brush and a stick... Absolutely crazy and maybe the best introduction to this genre that anyone could ask for. The weekend was wound up at a restaurant where we, thanks to Matt's unbeatable ordering skills, had the chance to try raw horse meat and small squids (also raw?) in soy sauce.

I'll try to put up some pictures from SuperDeluxe later and maybe a video on YouTube (if I figure out how to do that).

Until then, take care!

And now I'm 26...

Going home

I've been here for more than 4 months now, and it's time for my first trip home. Actually, I feel rather good about that, looking forward to get a break from everything going on here for a while. I have to admit that I'm a bit bored with being able to do absolutely nothing besides being in school during the weekdays...

To not loose all of my integrity I've been fighting for my weekends, and made sure to keep busy enjoying my free time. Two weeks ago we had another national holiday and I took the chance to go to Osaka for two days. Natsuko was rather busy so I spent my time meeting up with friends from the OUSSEP and visiting old familiar places; like the sento “Oyuba”, a public bathhouse on the way from my old dorm to Osaka University. To take a bath there and then walk the road up to school where I went soooo many times on my bicycle was very, very nostalgic.

Last weekend I hung out with Tomo and Sachi most of the time. We went downtown for some udon (thick, white noodles) for lunch, played some ping pong and sang karaoke. Tomo kicked my butt in the first games of ping pong, but then I remembered how to play (after all, I spent hours and hours in the Osaka dorm practising) and in the end I was making him run and sweat. ;D In the afternoon Tomo and I went to a sento in south Tokyo and after that we went playing basketball with some friends. Busy day, huh? The next day we took a rental car to Hakone (close to Mt Fuji, where I went with Natsuko in November), did some shopping in a huge outlet and then took a bath in one of the numerous onsens (hot springs) around there. Note that I went soaking 3 times in 8 days, which must be a personal record. This bathing is an addiction!

This weekend I'm just staying at home, getting ready to move out of the apartment and go home to Sweden. I'll be back the 11th of March and stay for almost a month. I hope it will not be too cold in Stockholm...

Now I've gotta take care of my laundry. Can't hang it on my balcony because the air of Tokyo is full of sand! There are some pretty strong winds blowing and I've been told that this dust has come flying all the way from some China desert...

Take care!

Akemashite Omedetou Gozaimasu...

... and a good continuation of the New Year!

Plenty of stuff has happened since last time I wrote. I went to Osaka over Christmas to be with Natsuko and we celebrated just the two of us; eating good, singing karaoke and watching movies. She got me a Nintendo DS v(^_^) and I got her a piano, with help from my family. Since coming back to Tokyo I've been listening to her playing through the phone.

I went back to school for a couple of days after that, cleaning the lab and finishing some stuff, and then it was winter holidays for more than a week. Yes! We went to Natsuko's parents over New Year (Oshou gatsu) and her sister and brother with families came during the first days of 2008. We were mostly just taking it easy, eating traditional Japanese food and playing games together. Oshou gatsu is the (only?) time of the year when Japanese mothers take a break from cooking. They make a lot of different dishes in advance, and all of the food is made so that you can keep it for a long time without it going bad. This is called Osechi and we had it from the 31st to the 3rd, but even though we had the same style of food for almost 4 days I didn't get bored with it, because there were so many different kinds to try. Small (pickled?) fishes and shrimps, smashed chestnuts, beans and so on. Some of the dishes have meanings, like, they will give you happiness or good fortune for the coming year.

After that we went to Nagoya with Natsuko's sister and her husband. The highlight of that trip was the aquarium, where I saw a killer whale for the first time in my life. The dolphin show was also very cool. I didn't know that you can train a dolphin to catch a frisbee! Just imagine how hard it is to judge the position of a flying object when you are swimming at ~20km/h and look up at it from under the water surface!

I've been back at the lab for about 2 weeks now and things are moving forward. I've managed to make two different molecules to bring home and I've thought of my own design for a third one. This week I was trying to invent a strategy to synthesize it and looking up chemicals for that. It seems I have it under control now and I will start with the synthesis next week. I am pretty sure that something unexpected will happen that will force me to rethink most of my plans, but you know... that's how it goes. As Prof Peter Stilbs keeps reminding me in his emails:
"If we knew what we were doing, it wouldn't be research!"

Until next time!