Settling back

So I've been back in Sweden for about two weeks now and some stuff has happened. Normal stuff that feels weird :P The flight back home went great. It was a cloud-free sky that Saturday and everything was on time. The 12-hour flight to London I spent watching too much TV and films and watching all of Russia and Norway/Sweden from above :) and ofc sleeping about 5 hours. When I got to Heathrow things started getting a little worse though. The plane was delayed by half an hour and it had gotten cloudy. When I arrived in Copenhagen my parents were late because the bridge had been partly closed off and the speed was extra restricted. When we got home I handed out my souvenirs to everyone and after having pancakes (Yummy!) I feel asleep about 9.30pm.

The day after my grandparents came and it was as nice as usual. And on Monday Love got home from Korea :) Everything back to normal. Me and my boyfriend spending too much time at his place being geeky, playing games, discussing games and "Niichan" and I tormenting the boyfriend with Japanese pop culture \o/ On Saturday I got to meet my best friend Kajsa for the first time in 5 months and it was great :)

On Friday and Sunday I started working again and now the summer really has gotten started :) Although it's still pretty cold here... This Tuesday I started driving again. Hopefully I'll pass the test this time!

Something that hasn't been great is being back with my parents. I've felt so independent for three months and it's been so nice. Now I'm back with them telling me stuff. Especially when it comes to flats. I will hopefully move out and live with Kajsa this autumn and I honestly can't wait. But my dad keeps telling me off and wait until I have a real job etc etc. But after I talked to both "Niichan" and Kajsa I decided with their help to just ignore him. If I'm gonna do it like he says I'll be living with my parents 'til I'm 30... And there's no way I'd do that :) And I just wanna get out of this 18000 inhabitants shithole.

The End

Since Wednesday it's been all about everything ending. My last class with Okada-sensei on Wednesday. My last class with my favourite teacher, Suzuki-sensei, on Thursday. My last trip to our Curry House and my last trip to our kaitenzushi place. My last trip to Shibuya. My beloved Shibuya... Today was ofc the worst day with exactly everything ending. My last breakfast. My last trip to the tube station Kudanshita and up the flight of stairs to the third floor for class. My last time seeing the teachers and my friends. Actually even my last day having canned coffee xD At the end there was the certificate "ceremony". It was me and two more students "graduating" today :) After an awesome lunch at Freshness Burger (kind of like a Japanese version of Max) Ebu, I and Julian went to Korakuen. A Japanese styled garden close-by. It was very nice walking around there. Here is one picture. The rest are at facebook ;) Got home and started packing. My suitcase weighs 22.5 kg which is almost precise. 23 kg is the limit... But on top of that I got a heavy carry-on luggage :( Hopefully that won't matter too much. Tomorrow I'm getting up at 5 am to get ready and have breakfast before taking the bus at 6.20. The trip from Shibuya to Narita airport takes an hour and a half but the way I get there depends on if the bus to Shibuya takes me there fast enough for me to be in time for the airport limousine bus or if I'll have to take the tube to Ueno to take the Keisei line to Narita. Both takes 1½ hours, but I would prefer to make it in time for the limousine bus. A bus all the way is much easier and more comfortable than having to go through the trouble of getting on the right train :/

I've thought a lot about what I will miss and what I will be grateful of coming home to.

I'm going home to:
¤Swedish food (meat balls, pancakes, strawberries!)
¤Delayed buses and trains
¤Buses and trains every once an hour
¤Swedish
¤A temperature of less than 30 degrees
¤My own bed
¤Late summer nights
¤Sunset at 10.30pm

I'm going away from:
¤Sushi, curry, tempura, ramen, yakisoba...
¤Over-crowded trains in the morning rush
¤Trains every three minutes
¤Not being able to read anything
¤Built-in mosquito nets in the windows
¤Sleeping on a futon
¤See-through umbrellas

I will never ever complain about the bus or the train being crowded, because Sweden doesn't even come close to Tokyo. Not in the slightest! Here I can sleep on some guys shoulder without him caring because it's that crowded. On the other hand I will complain even more about the time schedule and the delay xD Built-in mosquito nets are awesome. That means you can have the window open as much as you want with the lights on after dark and no damn bugs can get in either way xD (Well, they seem to find a way. I still haven't figured that out). I will miss the food. The Japanese kitchen is incredible and I don't think any other place has that many things that I like and can eat over and over. Except for real meat and steaks, the Japanese kitchen is complete. Another thing I'll be coming back to is swimming in the ocean. People don't do this in Tokyo and I understand why... I wouldn't wanna swim in Tokyo Bay xD Would be like going for a swim in the River Thames xD

That's all from Tokyo for this time. But I will come back, when I don't know but I will definately come back to Japan some day :) It's been a wonderful time here.

Lunches

Last Wednesday we went to an all-American place in Shibuya for lunch. It's called T.G.I.F, which is short for Thank God It's Friday :P The staff was really nice and the food was great, especially since I've wanted to eat real meat for so long now and I could finally have my rare food. It was a small lunch size dish so it wasn't that expensive, fortunately xD This is also my first picture of Sabrina, the new girl from Taiwan :) Then the day after, Thursday, we had decided to have lunch at Massimo's again :) Same menu as last time with only a slight change of company :P And it was great :) This time it wasn't raining and this time we watched comedians on YouTube on his big-ass flatscreen HD-TV xD Last week the time spent after lunch was always spent walking around in Harajuku or Shibuya. Harajuku mostly because of Lise meeting a friend and Ebu needing to do some shopping. Ebu is also the reason for Shibuya. But walking around looking at clothes and shoes with friends are nice :) And walking around in those guy stores made me realise how much I want to be able to wear real guy clothes - because the fashion I'm into looks so much better when it's made for guys -.-' Hence the change of layout and name on the blog...

Today for lunch we went to Shin-Okubo, which is the Korean district of Tokyo. Lin wanted to eat some Korean food and she knew of a place so we all went there. The food I ordered sounded and looked nice on the menu - it wasn't. I knew from experience in Seoul that Korean food isn't something I especially like very much, but I try anything here xD It was spicy and it was tofu and cheese... And it was weird... After that people separated I first thought I'd go to some museum with the guys but in the end I went home and then it started raining :P I've realised now that I will feel cold when I go back to Sweden on Saturday. Because today it was 23 degrees and I was wearing a sweater when going to school...

I think I'll post next post on Friday. Now the rest of the week will be a lot of "last time..." so I'll just put all of that sad stuff in one post ;)

Shakey's and Eurovision

Rokugatsu tsuitachi de~su! ６月一日で～す！(It's June 1st!) :) And it has been summer here all day; sunny and clear skies and about 25 degrees.

For lunch today we went to a pizza buffet place Julian had heard of called Shakey's. It was an awesome place and not just because the staff was very friendly and talkative once they noticed that we understood Japanese. The pizza slices were crazy! All kinds of tastes! Of course they had the normal ones like tomato & cheese and salami but they also had one with marshmallows, chocolate sauce and brownie crumbs xD Another one tasted just like sushi and I'm pretty sure the green colour on it actually was wasabi xD After lunch we went to Book Off, which is the big place for books, music, games, movies and second hand stuff. I'm actually considering buying two Game Boy Advanced games there just because those two together would only be about 500 yen xD We walked around on three of the five floors for a while and when they left for Hamacho I went to Starbucks and bought a Vanilla Frappuccino and walked around in Shibuya. I love that area :D

Today around 7pm "Mr. Postman" arrived to pick up my parcel and get it on the way to Sweden. In Japan you call the postman and he comes and picks your stuff up. Doesn't matter if it's weekday or holiday :) But I guess that's because not everyone in Tokyo has a car and it can be pretty far to the closest post office ;) But not having a car in Tokyo doesn't really matter because they have an awesome tube system!!! In the morning rush the train leaves every 3 minutes. Later in the day every 5 minutes. On weekends and holidays every 5-10 minutes... You never really miss a train in Tokyo... :D

So yesterday I noticed that the Swedish broadcasting company had finally uploaded the Eurovision finals on their website so today I watched it. Although I'm on the other side of the world right now I've been following it more intently than usual and ofc even before I watched the finals I knew that Germany was the winner and that for once the best song actually did win. But I wanted to see the finals anyway. And really it didn't matter that Sweden didn't make it to the finals because I would've cheered for little Lena either way (she's actually younger than me, how crazy is that?!?!) xD I love Eurovision when the Western half actually wins xD Too bad there are so many more countries on the Eastern side... But this very evening I wasn't sad that Sweden didn't make it and I didn't cheer for Denmark instead. Tonight I was simply Western European and I was so happy to see my two favourites; Germany and Belgium in the top :) And little Lena really did deserve her victory - a modern Cinderella story, I guess you could call it.