I've been around...

Recently I've come to realise that I have travelled quite a bit in my life :P Pretty much every year since 1996.

1996, 1997, 1998: Tenerife. Three years in a row at the same hotel every time. I don't remember which one, but one of the times we celebrated my birthday there. I think it was my 7th, but I'm not sure. Anyway we went out for dinner as per usual and in the evening we went by horse carriage around the town. And I also got a hand painted spray coloured painting from a street salesman. I had it in my room for years (until I moved I think), but it got faded by the sun :( One year we also went up to the volcano, Teide, and brought home some lava rocks. I don't think I have them anymore, but those rocks are cool - they float on water :)

1999: Lanzarote. Next Canary Island. I don't have any specific memories from this one. I think it's the trip where the whole family got sick :P

2000: Fuerteventura. Third Canary Island. Think this is the one we rented a car and then got lost in the country side xD We went to a Bird Park here :)

2001: Lalandia, Denmark. Although I live close to Denmark this is quite far away :P Water adventure land, along with a play land for kids.

2002: Gran Canaria. Fourth Canary Island. This is the one with over 200 steps between the hotel and the beach. The one with pepper trees everywhere and a fallen lampshade from a street light looks like a dinosaur  egg (or I had just watched too much Jurassic Park). Here we went on a glass bottom boat and watched dolphins :) Dad also wanted to go shark fishing, but Mum said no.

2003: Lalandia, Denmark. Back again. The water land was still awesome, but I had grown too old for the play land :(

2004: Iceland. Geysirs, volcanos, hot springs, waterfalls and circle-shaped churches. And horseback riding on Icelandic horses. Iceland has been one of my favourite vacations and I really want to go back there sometime. One of the weirdest photos from the trip is my little sister in a big winter coat standing next to a banana plant. Iceland was/is self-supporting on pretty much everything thanks to their geothermic energy :)

2005: Berlin. Confirmation course trip. I didn't much enjoy Berlin, but maybe I wasn't there long enough. The trip to Sachsenhausen was cool though and left a deep impression.

2005: Amsterdam. I remember it was crazy trying to find your way in Amsterdam since everything is named after the damned canals xD Canal name + central/south/north/east/west = hard time. I loved the Anne Frank museum.

2005: London/Torquay/Exeter. My first trip alone and also my first language course. 14 years old and thought I knew English. I figured out pretty soon that I didn't :P But it was my first time in London (London Eye!) and I loved the bus trips we took through the Devon countryside. It felt so incredibly Celtic :3 The three weeks I spent in England were some of my most memorable weeks abroad.

2006: Tenerife. We took a trip back to Tenerife. Mostly, I think, because my little sister (born '94) didn't remember much of the place and we always talked about how fun it was. For the sake of it we stayed at the same old hotel. Went to a Butterfly house/Bird house and were generally nostalgic. The street salesman with the spray coloured paintings were still there :) One thing different was that we spent more time at the beach than at the pool this time. Probably cause it was easier for Mum and Dad to keep us in sight at the pool when we were little.

2007: Nice/Cannes. First trip to France with Mum and sister. We went to a Sea park and saw a performance by killer whales and dolphins. Favourite animals :3 Also remembered a waitress being impressed with me cause I ordered our food in French :P

2007: Alicante. First trip to Spain with my family. My dad has business contacts down there and combined a business trip with a family trip. Alicante is quite small, but it was a pleasant trip.

2008: Paris/Nantes. School exchange program trip to France. Bus down. Stayed in Paris for three days and did everything that you're supposed to do in Paris: Le Louvre, Sacre Coeur, Hotel de Ville... Then we went to Nantes and stayed with our respective student's family. The students were younger than us, which was noticeable... On our way back home we stopped in Paris for half a day and went up the Eiffel Tower. This is also my first trip with my digital camera :P

2008: Stockholm. My sister had never been to Stockholm so she pestered us about going there for summer vacation. Which we did. And we did everything: Old Town, Royal Museum, Gröna Lund, Skansen, archipelago tour, Globen, the guard shift at the Royal Palace...

2008: Edinburgh/Inverness/Drumnadrochit. Our three weeks long project work trip went to Edinburgh, along with a sidetrip to Inverness and Drumnadrochit because our project work was about Nessie. The Loch Ness museum in Drumnadrochit was boring, but despite the distinct smell of countryside I liked the Scottish countryside. And Edinburgh is one of my favourite cities of all time. Dying to go back there.

2010: Tokyo/Kyoto/Seoul. Best trip of my life. Dying to go back there. I loved everything about Tokyo (no shit!), the geisha show in Kyoto was very special to me and I loved the aquarium and the mountain in Seoul :3

2011: London. Went back to London and did everything properly. Westminster Abbey, the Dungeons, the Aquarium, St. Paul's Cathedral, Tower of London... I like London a lot, but I've been in better cities.

Can't really remember if the earlier years are correct. But I think it's something along those lines... Then there are also some small trips that we've made that I don't really know when we made them... Like the roadtrip to the north. First time using a kick-sled and drinking milk fresh from the cow (disgusting btw). On the way up we stopped at the candy cane factory (Gränna) and got to taste all the different stages of candy canes. Or the trip to a drive through zoo in Denmark, which was really cool. Tigers up close and feeding giraffes (they have blue tongues) :3 But hmm... I guess I've been around quite a bit?

Oh and then there's the trip to Disney World in Orlando, FL that my parents made together with Dad's best friend's family in 1991. Of course I don't remember anything. It was my first birthday on the flight home. 

Why I ♥ Japanese merchandise

I'm totally in love with Japanese merch and design. Why? Mostly, I think, cause it's not terribly gender classified or age classified. It's cool when a guy can look like a girl, like this:

Keep in mind that these boys aren't transgender or transvestites. 

They're just cross-dressing cause they like it.

Here everything is so divided. You'd never find Hello Kitty in the ladies' department and you'd never see Mickey Mouse on a grown man's sneakers. In Japan I was so happy to find purple sneakers with glitter and Disney themes on them in the mens' department. My feet are too big to fit into the largest size of ladies' shoes :( The fact that I could find those kind of shoes made the possibility of me actually buying shoes a little higher, and I wasn't restricted to black Converse. 

Other than that I love that themes from manga, anime, Disney etc aren't restricted to children. It's no big deal if adult girls have Hello Kitty or Disney straps on their mobile phones. It's no big deal if a man has a cool teddybear strap. It wasn't a big deal when I was completely fangirling when I found this section full of One Piece merch at Kiddy Land:

Shounen Jump Store was filled with teenagers and adults. Here that store would almost be equal to a toy store. Here I'm almost embarrassed to enter toy stores, in Tokyo Kiddy Land was filled with teenagers and adults. I loved to walk around inside the Disney Store in Shibuya and I loved that there were as many teenagers and young adults out on dates at Disneyland as there were children with their parents. I loved that not only children were hugging Donald and Goofy when they came around, but teenage girls too. 

Something else that I really like is that cartoons aren't just something for children. But in Japan there are cartoons (anime) for all ages and it's alright to be obsessed with a cartoon. In my first year studying Japanese at the university I met a girl who absolutely adored Moomin and wanted all the merch she could find with the characters. This girl was in her 20's and it was absolutely nothing weird about it. And when was the last time you saw a new cartoon being advertised like this in the busiest areas of the city?

But what got me into Japanese merch in the first place was that they had perfected something that really spoke to me: the creepy cute. I fell in love with the Gloomy bears. Cute teddy bears that kills and eats everyone who threatens the girl they belong to. I have two: a pink and a black one. I would love to expand my collection with a purple and a white one too, but the Swedish store that sold them has closed down :(

I also fell in love with Junko Mizuno's dolls and art. It's beautiful and creepy at the same time. I don't yet own something of hers, but I would really love to - very much.

Then there's Skelanimals (which I'm not sure is originally Japanese, but anyway they are obviously inspired by Japanese style and art) and there's also h.NAOTO's fashion, which is so cool and incredibly creepy cute. Enough to spawn a musical group with two of everyone's favourite ex-Morning Musume members. 

h.NAOTO also come in dolls as I discovered in Kiddy Land. I think of these dolls everytime I see a CM for Monster High here. And I wonder why such cool dolls didn't exist when I was a kid.

Other than the creepy cute, Japanese merchandise has proved that to be cute it doesn't have to be baby pink. I like when things can be cute, but not necessarily the colour of cotton candy. My favourite merch as of right now is that of Sentimental Circus and Mamegoma. Sentimental Circus seems very inspired by Alice in Wonderland (which also is a big hit in Japan) and I really like that :)

I guess that's pretty much it. I love it cause you can never really grow out of it. I love it cause it's available for me, although I'm above the age of 12. I love it cause it's different from what we have and yet it's still very much the same, but with a twist.