Reading spurt before 2020 ends

I've been falling behind on my reading challenge on Goodreads this year so figured I'd do a spurt consisting mostly of comics to finish the year on top. Here's what I've read:

1. The DC Universe by Neil Gaiman. This is a compilation of the DC comics written by Gaiman. I am a Marvel girl at heart, but I've always had a soft spot for Batman simply because his universe is so damned detailed. I love it. So out of the stories in this compilation my favourite has to be the final one Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, but I also really enjoyed the Penguin origin story and the little tidbit called A Black and White World where they pretend that the Batman and the Joker are just characters played by people and they're complaining about the daily grind while acting out their scenes. That was a pretty neat spin that I really liked.

2. Cinnamon, by Neil Gaiman. One of his most recent teeny tiny children's books. I rarely read children's books for small children, save for when Gaiman writes them, because I love his ability to fit lots of story into small spaces. My favourite is still The Wolves in the Walls, but Cinnamon was very sweet. I just wish there was more to her story so I'm hoping we'll get more Cinnamon at some point. Like we got more Chu. Pretty pictures, sweet story. Definitely a thumbs up. 

3. Odd and the Frost Giants, by Neil Gaiman. I've been putting off reading this for so long and I don't know why. Guess the cover didn't really call to me or something. But I finally did and I loved it. I loved the spin on the Norse mythology and I loved how Chris Riddell almost certainly was inspired by John Bauer's trolls for the Frost Giants. It's also very fitting reading this now when I only recently finished playing Assassin's Creed Valhalla and my head is stuffed full of Viking stuff. This story was just really my speed at the moment. It's a classic fairytale of talking animals and gods and magic and happy endings, but it also has all the adult hints that children's stories usually do about love and alcohol and wanting things you can't have even though you're old enough. I could definitely read this over and over again.

4. A Study in Emerald, by Neil Gaiman. Sherlock Holmes meets Lovecraftian horror and it's brilliantly done. It starts out as the first Sherlock Holmes story; A Study in Red, but soon turns Lovecraftian as it becomes obvious that it's common knowledge that all the royals of the world have green blood. A few pages more and it's obvious that the ones they call the royals are in fact the Old Ones who returned from the deep 700 years earlier. This is absolutely brilliant and incredibly well done. And that twist at the end? Wonderful.

And I still didn't manage to complete my reading challenge for 2020. I fell short on three books. 

2020 recap

This whole year has been so strange. I remember we welcomed 2020 with Year Zero as the first song played after midnight. It seemed fitting. And in January this year seemed to be like any other year. I got my only international trip done in January and it was a success! In February I went to visit my parents and to celebrate my grandmother's birthday as I usually do. 

Then corona came. At first it seemed like it would be something happening all the way over there. In Asia. Far away from here. Then it broke out in Italy, and when all the Swedes came back from their Alpine skiing trips it broke out here in early March. It was so strange. March is usually a very busy month at the hotel where I work and this year was no exception. We literally watched the hotel go from fully booked to almost empty in less than a week, and for the following weeks all we did were cancellations. Getting a reservation, any reservation, was a cause for celebration. My two following trips to visit my parents were cancelled, the music festival we go to every year was cancelled, and any planes of going abroad again this summer were cancelled. Along with everything that happened came the fear of losing our jobs, and there were a lot of people being let go (with the promise to be reinstated should things return to normal) and most of the people that weren't let go were put on furlough. But even with all the restrictions and all the things happening there was a hope that this would just be a quick thing and by September we would be up and running as normal again. We were basically at war with a virus. An enemy that seemed to have all the advantages no matter what we did. But I dreamed of the day I'd be able to proclaim that we did it! And happily go to work facing a fully booked hotel and 120 arrival rooms on a Monday. Raise Your Horns became my soundtrack for the entire spring of 2020.

The summer came and the amount of new cases went down. People relaxed and with the summer holidays came the summer guests and things almost seemed normal again. July to October was incredibly busy for the amount of staff we had left. The whole summer disappeared in a daze and somewhere around September it started to feel like five years had passed since March. With numbers slowly starting to climb back up to normal and still with the diminished staff caused by corona we all had to work so very hard to keep the place running as smoothly as possible. Head Above Water became my soundtrack for this period. It was the perfect song to make me feel strong enough to face more. 

Then came the second wave in the beginning of November and any hope of us beating this thing within the year dimmed and died. Around the same time I grew sick of all the stupid platitudes people in charge kept feeding us. All the "stay strong"s and "hold on"s made me sigh and roll my eyes. I don't need platitudes anymore, or reassurances. I don't think any of us do. We've been holding on the entire year. We know we have to just bite down and keep on going. What else can we do? Telling us to do so is just a pat on the head, as if we didn't already know. I'm sick of hearing about it, I'm sick of thinking about it, I'm sick of wondering whether I'll get it again. I'm just sick of it all. 

This recap somehow became a fuck 2020 post. But I'll go with it.

There's nothing anyone can do. There's nothing anyone can say. There's little can be done right now to make this go away. Clichéd simple platitudes do naught to quell the dread and the breadth of gravity just send me crawling back to bed. It's useless in this moment to say we'll get through this somehow. There's time enough for action but that time isn't now. Soon we can stop planning for what may come to be, but what I could really use right now is a bacon roll and a cup of tea. I don't need positive affirmations, I need to scream and bawl. The unrealistic expectations won't help with this at all. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. You're trying to be helpful and that is always nice. But right now your logic only grates so don't try to give advice. I need someone to rant at who'll not judge or take offense of my incessant fucking swearing and my unfiltered sentiment. So stop the pragmatic intervention just nod and say you'll understand. Pretend I'm not being an unreasonable arsehole and hold on to my hand. This is shit. Oh, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. So let's just sit and quietly get pissed and drunkenly attempt to overanalyze all of this. We may now be bidding the old times goodbye so let's not feel too embarrassed to have a bloody good cry. This is shit. Well, this is shit. I'm not expecting answers, because they're out of your remit. I'm not looking for solutions just someone to admit that this is shit, this is shit, this is shit. 

Game completed: Assassin's Creed Valhalla

I loved this game. It took me 132 hours to complete. I wasn't planning on getting this game. I was going to keep working on my backlog until Cybperunk dropped and then dive straight into that. But then I figured why not and bought Valhalla and started playing. And it was amazing.

The game starts right away and I thought I had been an idiot and missed the point where I could change whether Eivor was male or female. But I figured I could try to play as a man since that's where the game starts; with a boy. But after just a few minutes I realised it would be way too jarring for me to have a man with a grandmother's name. But just as I was about to restart and try to figure out where to decide on Eivor's gender the cutscenes ended and I was able to choose. Phew!

Female Eivor has recieved a lot of criticism for being too manly, too try-hard, too butch, but I loved her. She was rough, sure, but she had to grow up rough. She played with the boys and she grew up a warrior, which wasn't all that unusual for the time. 

The story intrigued me from the start and I wanted to keep it going, but I can't move on to a new zone until I have completely covered the zone I'm in and getting every single collectable, every single side quest, and explored every inch of the map. So it was over 10 hours before I actually completed the prologue and left Norway for England.

Once we got to England the story really kicked off. The whole Order layout reminded me of Shadow of Mordor and I really enjoyed working my way through it. I did not expect that part of the game to end as it did.

The first time I travelled to Asgard I thought it was so cool! And it was after that first trip that I started to suspect where the story was headed. Except I absolutely did not figure out Basim's role in the whole thing and so was pleasantly surprised at how the story unfurled. In hindsight I really should've seen that coming smh. 

The side things to be done in each zone consisted of wealth (ingots for equipment improvement, skill books, equipment and materials for upgrading your settlement), mysteries (cairns, flyting, offering altars, legendary animals, treasures of britain, daughters of lerion, lost drengr, fly agarics, world events, standing stones and animus anomalies), and artifacts (flying papers, rigosogur fragments, treasure hoard maps, roman artifacts and cursed symbols). The wealth and artifacts were mostly just go here and figure out how to pick up the thing. Mysteries were usually either battles or tiny side quests. I ended up hating cairns, offering altars, animus anomalies and flying papers. Still, I did them all. Cairns is always at a place with a great view requiring you to stack stones into cairns the way RL Vikings did, and I hated it because it always took too much damn time and they always fell over :@ Offering altars weren't that many, but some of them asked for fish and I despise fishing in any game. Flying papers required you to chase after a flying paper over the rooftops of towns and I suck at jumping puzzles, which is also why I hated the animus anomalies because they were jumping puzzles deluxe. 

The game broke my heart so many times as so many characters grew close to you just to be taken away, and it always made me so sad. But I also got to sleep with a bunch of people and that always made me giggle :3 Eivor's conquests in my game became Randvi, Broder, Petra, Vili and Tarben. I really wanted a relationship with either Vili or Ubba, but I had to make do with Tarben. 

Towards the end I made sure to pick up both Excalibur and Mjölnir (Thor's Hammer) so I ended the game wielding Excalibur in one hand and Mjölnir in the other. So badass! :3

I finished pretty much everything, but Uplay says my completion is at 91%. The only things I haven't done are the fishing deliveries (because I hate fishing), the hunting deliveries (because I couldn't be bothered), the dice games and the drinking games (because again I couldn't be bothered). Maybe when the DLCs drop and I have a reason to play it again I'll work on completing those as well. 

When the game ended I both felt like I was happy that it was done and like I needed way more. Can't wait for the DLCs!!!

I haven't played all of the previous AC, but I've read up on them enough to know the protag's names and their general roles in the grand scheme of things. I really appreciated all of the nods to Altaïr, Edward Kenway, Desmond, Bayek and Kassandra :3

The Final Table

I love cooking shows. But not the Jamie Oliver or Kitchen Nightmares kind. I love the skilled chefs are competing against each other shows and I used to watch multiple reruns of all the different MasterChef shows when we still had a TV box and channels. 

One day I really wanted to watch something like MasterChef and so I turned to Netflix to see what was there that could be similar. I found The Final Table. A cooking show where experienced chefs pair up to cook national dishes from around the world in a competition to earn a seat at the final table alongside legendary chefs from all over the world. One team has to leave at the end of every episode until the finale where the remaining two teams are split up and the four contestants compete against each other.

I had a lot of fun watching this show and I wish they'd do more seasons of this.

I absolutely did not agree with the winner, but what do I know :P Charles was my favourite, but I also really liked the Australian guys. 

The Rain

I've been curious about this show for a while. It's something as rare as a Danish post-apoc show and it's really good. Especially in 2020.

It starts as a post-apoc story which turns into an origin story which in turn transforms into a redemption story. It's really something. 

So the plot for season one is that a deadly virus is transmitted in the rain and any and all water is deadly unless boiled first. The story follows siblings Simone and Rasmus as they're thrust into a bunker by their dad and Simone is quietly (and in confidence) told that Rasmus is the key and she needs to protect him and not let anybody know. She diligently follows her dad's orders for six years, but then they run out of food and they have to venture outside. And from there the secret comes out. 

How do you combat a virus that is almost sentient?

Being a Danish show of course there are both Danish and Swedish actors in it and they both speak their native languages and mostly understand each other. I had no issue understanding any of the Danish except when they talked really fast or mumbled or used slang that I don't know. But usually I could keep up. Toni didn't understand anything :P And they did poke fun of that in the show. Like mostly they understand each other, but some of them were constantly "what's she/he saying?"

The show takes place on both sides of the border, and interestingly 99% of all the Swedes they meet are bad guys. It makes me wonder if that's a trope or stereotype in Denmark? Because the trope/stereotype here is usually that the Danes are the drunken/fun/stupid people xD 

Anyway, I enjoyed the show overall, but in the last season they seemed to have forgotten about the rain and the water, and there's no explanation as to why the rain suddenly isn't lethal anymore. Or why Rasmus suddenly starts getting sick in the last season when he's been impervious to sickness before. Those are probably the only complaints I have about an otherwise excellent show.

The Crown season 4

I was wary for this season, because with the introduction of Diana we're heading into modern territory and although it's now more than 20 years since she passed what happened is still embedded in people's memories and it still seems so fresh. I was six years old when she passed and, as a child living in a different country not yet old enough to pay attention to news, I didn't even notice. I learned about what had happened many years later and I didn't think anything of it other than that it was sad. My interest in royals came several years later.

But I found that they had handled it perfectly. They didn't skim the fact that Diana was way too young and thrust into a situation way out of her comfort zone. The royals behaved as they were brought up to believe they were supposed to, but nobody bothered to tell Diana why. The whole situation was a mess. 

A lot of things that maybe should've been in the season got pushed out for the whole Diana and Charles thing. Like the IRA bombing in the first episode... Shouldn't there have been more Ireland stuff in the season if they start out like that? And the whole thing with the wounded stag seemed extremely exaggerated. 

I only noticed in this season that they completely skipped anything Anne related in the previous seasons. In this season she's suddenly married with kids and the marriage isn't going well, but nowhere in the previous seasons did they mention marriage or even dating or her having kids. I knew it had happened, but even so it seemed pulled out of the blue when Anne briefly discussed her marriage with the Queen. I really enjoyed the episode where the Queen had invidvidual lunches with all four of her children. 

I loved everything related to Thatcher. She tried so hard and fought for what she believed in and really thought she could improve the country. And the country went against her every move. I was teary-eyed when the Queen awarded her the medal at the end of the season. 

This is still one of my favourite shows.

Watching old, old movies part 13

I'm going through this list, and here are my previous entries.

37. Pit and the Pendulum (1961)
Based on the story by Edgar Allan Poe starring Vincent Price. I don't even know what to say about this movie except that I really liked it. It's the classic Poe story of love, despair and madness and how one can lead to the other. My modern ass immediately starts to pick through the mental aspects of the characters. How Nicholas probably suffered from PTSD from experiencing what he did as a child and how that affects him as an adult. And how his experiences with his wife and her death makes his mind split on itself and create a dual personality. It's all really interesting stuff and the storytelling is superb. On a silly note; I really don't mind seeing Vincent Price run around in tights. In hindsight I would've loved a haunted house that was actually haunted or if it turned out there were vampires, but the way this story unfolded was so intimitely Poe that I can't be anything but pleased with it. One of the better movies on the list.

38. The Plague of the Zombies (1966)
This movie was a b**** to find online and it was so not worth it. It makes no sense storywise and it even made me laugh out loud several times because of pure ridiculousness. The continuity is a mess and the characters make no sense and the acting is stale and stiff. I'm hoping that this movie only has the rating it has on IMDB because it helped shape the zombie genre and not because people think there's anything good about it. Because if there is I thoroughly missed it. So an old doctor and his daughter receives a letter from a previous pupil and they go down to Cornwall to visit him and his wife. The pupil writes the doctor because a lot of people have died lately from an unknown illness and he'd like his previous teacher's insight. As soon as the doctor and his daughter gets to the town the whole story is a mess. There's a pack of fox hunters who for some reason rides right through a funeral procession because the daughter told them she saw the fox run that way, without any regard for the funeral. Wut? They arrive at the house and it's immediately frickin obvious that something's wrong with the wife, but nobody notices. Wut? The wife then decides to go wandering in the night and is killed by a zombie, who turns out to be the guy that got buried in the beginning. So the doctor and his pupil decides to do a little gravedigging only to find the grave is empty. Surprise! Suspicion somehow falls on the rich guy and his pack of fox hunters who abduct and attack the doctor's daughter and then lets her go for no reason, only to have the rich guy visit her later and get hold of her blood. And she lets him in just like that. Wut? The doctor somehow draws the conclusion that it's due to black magic and conveniently finds that the vicar has a book about voodoo. Wut? He reads that one book and decides that it's all due to voodoo and that the rich guy is to blame because he has *gasp* travelled. Wut? The wife awakens and threatens to kill the pupil and the doctor, but the doctor swiftly cuts off her head with a spade. Wut? The zombies awake en masse and the doctor breaks into the rich guy's home to find evidence, which he does and then sets the whole place on fire. Wut, why? They then find out that the rich guy uses the zombies as workers in his mine, because apparantly they aren't dangerous to him. Wut? The fire then somehow spreads into the mine and the zombies start to attack the rich guy once their coffins catch fire. Wut, weren't the coffins still in the earth on the graveyard? As the mine collapses in the fire all is well and the movie ends. Wut? I was in disbelief for most of this movie. 

39. The Masque of the Red Death (1964)
Another Poe story adaptation starring Vincent Price. While I have really enjoyed the other Poe story adaptations on the list so far; this one kept disappointing me until the last 30 minutes. It was unusual to see Vincent Price playing the obviously and outright bad guy, since in every other film I've seen him he's played a gentle but twisted person who the world takes for a very bad ride resulting in destroying his morality. But in this one he was just a depraved person from the start. The heroine is so very pretty but awfully dumb. The original Poe story tells of a prince who is really into extravaganza and likes to flaunt his wealth, but for some reason the movie makers involved a Satanist plot that adds absolutely nothing and that there's literally no point of having. Both the story and the movie are morality plays, but it's a version that's been done to death in everything from fairytales and Disney to modern thrillers. The Poe story is good, but the movie doesn't own it. The Red Death comes to the nearby village and kills everyone within days, The remaining villagers go to the castle to beg prince Prospero for aid, who naturally tells the guards to shoot the remaining villages but the Red Death has already spread to the castle. As the illness spreads Prospero gets a visit from literal Death and has a conversation with him about gods and faith, which ends in Prospero trying to outrun his fate and yet he, too, falls victim to the Red Death. 

It's Price. It's Poe. And I was hoping for greatness. Instead I got disappointment. Or this movie just hits a bit too close to home this year.

I'm thirty

So there we go. I'm thirty years old and I can't believe it. I've left my twenties behind, although I still feel like I haven't changed since I was twenty-five. 

Turning thirty in 2020 absolutely sucked. I managed to get two weeks off from work which I had originally planned to use to celebrate. One weekend with friends, one weekend with family and maybe a staycation of two days in a city close by that I haven't really visited before. None of that happened because just as November started the second wave of covid kicked off for real and everything shut down again and multiple new restrictions and rules were put in place. I should've had my birthday in August or something when things were almost normal. 

Instead we celebrated at home. We watched a movie, had some snacks and cake and a fancy dinner, and then we played some games. I also got to celebrate a little bit with Toni's family since his older sister and one of his nieces have their birthdays in the same week as I do. 

I've heard a lot of talk from friends that your 30s are pretty much like your 20s. Time to find out if that's true. I enjoyed my 20s and I'm hoping I'll get to enjoy my 30s as well even if the start was crappy and unlike any other year I've seen. 

I made a Spotify playlist in the honour of my big day :P

The Haunting of Bly Manor

After the absolute amazing thing that was the first season I was really looking forward to the second season. Or should I say second anthology? 

As soon as the first episode started with the nanny's interview with the uncle I thought it all seemed very familiar. And that feeling lingered until I got to the scene where the nanny asks to get out of the car to walk the last part up to the house and she meets Flora by the lake. That's when it clicked. The novel that this anthology is based on is also the base for one of the old-timey movies I've watched: The Innocents from 1961. With that out of the way I could sit back and enjoy what was to come.

Except this anthology proved thoroughly underwhelming. Hill House had creepier ghosts, creepier house, and was overall a lot creepier. Bly Manor had the creepy kids that soon stopped being creepy and ended up being repetitive. The ghosts weren't creepy, just sad, and the characters had pretty boring backstories.

I was pretty intrigued by the ghost that followed the nanny around to begin with, but then he just up and left when she asked him to? Hadn't she tried that before?!?!?

The conclusion of the series was pretty neat and clever and I enjoyed seeing all the pieces come together, but the road to get there was... tiresome. 

Watching old, old movies part 12

I'm going through this list, and here are my previous entries.

34. The City of the Dead (1960)
I really enjoyed this movie. It was more of a thriller than a horror movie, featuring a very young Christopher Lee (young to the point where it took me half the movie before I recognised him). The movie opens on a village in New England in 1692 where a witch is about to be burned at the stake, as that happens she curses the village and everyone in it. Fast-forward to modern day and we're at college where history professor Alan Driscoll is giving a lecture on historic witchcraft in New England. One of the students wishes to make her final paper something special and tells her professor that she'd like to go stay in an old, rural New England village and dig through the history of the place. The professor sends her to Whitewood, where he says he knows some people, and from there the young woman gets entangled in real-life witchcraft. The movie was chilling and thrilling, and really holds up to today. Except of course the weird close-ups of staring faces that happened several times in the movie. I think they were supposed to be chilling, but they came off as ridiculous. All in all, one of my favourites on the list so far.

35. Mill of the Stone Women (1960)
Original title: Il mulino delle donne di pietra. To someone who finds dubbing to be jarring, Italian movies from this period are very hard to watch. This is because they used international actors, allowing them to speak the lines in their own languages while filming, and then recorded the sound elsewhere and just put it over the film. The Italian movies I've watched so far have had two versions: one with English sound and one with Italian sound. La maschera del demonio (Black Sunday) was good enough that it almost didn't matter, but this movie was jarring from end to finish. The plot was weak and the voice acting was absolutely terrible. I dislike the whole notion of "I met you two seconds ago but I love you and I want to marry you and spend my whole life with you" and the first half of this movie centers around that idea. In the second half it abruptly turns into a game of resurrection and murder and conquering death. It's like it made a complete turnaround from a silly romantic drama to a paranormal murder-mystery. The storytelling was janky and disjointed and I feel like they could've gone two different directions with the story, but chose the one that made the least sense. Turning it into a straight-up haunted house movie probably would've been better than the mess this is.

36. Dead of Night (1945)

When I started watching this movie I really wasn't sure at first, but it turned into one of the best films on this list. It starts with a man arriving at an old farm house where a bunch of people are having tea. The man is an architect who's been called down to a friend of a friend to do a reconstruction job over the weekend. The other people are old friends. The architect arrives and is immediately frazzled and when he explains that he's having a major case of déjà vu despite never having been there or seen these people before, but everything that's happening is part of a recurring nightmare that he's been having, the whole group starts to offer up their own tales of the supernatural. The first story "The Hearse Driver" didn't do anything for me. The second one "Christmas Story" was a classic tale of a girl who stumbles upon a ghost of a boy in an old house. Creepy, but predictable. The third story was "The Haunted Mirror", which was also a classic tale of a haunted object affecting the person using it. It was a classic, but this story is when my interest was piqued. Unfortunately, the fourth one "Golfing Story" was pretty dumb and my interest was lost and I started scrolling through my phone and only listening to the movie. Then came the last story called "The Ventriloquist's Dummy". Anyone who knows me knows that dolls creep me out, especially those kinds of dummies. So to me this story was creepy from the get-go. It turned into a classic tale of a possessed doll compelling a person to do its bidding. I know how these stories usually go, but this one had a very simple but also very elegant twist at the end that I really enjoyed. That last story was absolutely the highlight of the movie. After all of the stories are told, the scenario unfolds exactly like the architect's dream predicted, and although the sudden change of pace in the movie's storytelling at first seems kind of jarring, the end of the movie offers a completely unexpected twist (for my part) and I really enjoyed seeing the whole thing unfold. Definitely one of the most enjoyable movies on the list. 

The Umbrella Academy season 2

Can we all agree that Five is the best? Good. 

Moving on to the spoilers.

We both loved the first season, so when the second season dropped we were both really keen to get started on it. As much as we liked the show and the characters the plot this season seemed weaker. We both figured out pretty early that Vanya would be the catalyst again. The apocalypse didn't follow them. Vanya is the apocalypse no matter where and when she goes.

I really appreciated Klaus this season and seeing him trying to come to terms with his lovelife and the heartbreak that followed meeting his boyfriend and having him not know Klaus because they haven't met yet from his perspective. 

That ending promises a really interesting third season.

Ten years since Japan

It's been 10½ years since I was in Japan and I somehow can't believe it. I really believed that I'd find my way back there before a decade had passed. But life got in the way and here we are ten years later and I've been nowhere near Asia in that time. 

Going to Japan was my big coming-of-age adventure. I was 19 years old and I left for Tokyo in the last days of February 2010. 

The first day of March was my first day of class and the first half of March was spent just getting the hang of things and getting to know the classmates and going on adventures with them. I still remember the first morning I squeezed myself onto one of the metro trains in rush hour traffic. I've never experienced another rush hour like the one in Tokyo anywhere ever again. The sheer amount of people was daunting, almost terrifying, but unlike other places there was as little pushing and discomfort as possible because people subconsciously knew how to take up as little room as possible and how to stay out of each other's way as much as possible. The Tokyo rush hour is a great machinery working very smoothly. No other country can compare. 

March was when we went on several afternoon adventures and weekend day-trips. I especially remember when we took a trip to Kawagoe. It was also when two of us went on a weekend trip to Kyoto via Shinkansen. And it was the time for hanami. So much hanami. 

April was the time of Tokyo Tower, Odaiba, FujiQ and Disneyland. There was always something going on. Somewhere to go, something to see. Food to experience. Karaoke and purikura and Sweets Paradise and melon soda. 

I started off May in Seoul. During Japan's Golden Week when we had time off school I took a little sidetrip to Seoul, just three days. I figured that Korea and Japan would be similar enough. Kind of like Sweden and Germany or something like that. But Korea was like a whole 'nother world. I took the time to visit an aquarium, some historical sights, and I also took a trip up to Namsan, the mountain close-by the city.

May and June was when the activity tapered out. We still did things together, but it was less sightseeing and more hanging out in familiar spots. One highlight of May was the wedding of our host family's daughter. And I also really loved the exploration of Meiji Jingu Shrine that I did on my own one weekend, which coincided with the first time I dared to traverese the shockingly crowded Takeshita Doori on my own. 

I was only in Japan for two weeks of June. June was mostly a lot of dinners with friends I had made during my almost four months in Tokyo. But it was also the month when we discovered Shakey's pizza and had a great laugh about it. 

For months after I returned to Sweden I missed Japan. I would dream about Tokyo every night and the stillness of my hometown was seemingly driving me insane. Imagine going from one of the biggest bustling cities in the world to living on the edge of a village with farmland across the road? The silence was deafening, the stillness crushing. Going back to uni definitely helped me adjust back to life in smalltown Sweden, but I've never stopped missing Japan. Which is why this guy is great: