Call of Cthulhu RPG #2

Sorry for the total lack of blogging lately. I'll try to change that  for now :P

A week ago Love lead his second Call of Cthulhu RPG. The first was on Halloween and it was a great success. But at the second he failed a little at the sensations. However, still being a horror RPG I was sitting at the edge of my seat in the end, and it was thrilling and cosy all at the same time - just the way a good horror story is supposed to be.

The story of this RPG picked up where the last one ended, although only the priest (I) and the occult professor were kept as characters. All the others had made new ones. The story starts with the priest and the professor examining the journals found in the last house.

Then the new story kicks off and we are in a hospital room with an old dying man called Rupert Merryweather. He asks everyone  (even his stupid son) to leave the room and then tells us his story. When he was a youth he was part of a Brotherhood that experimented with the occult. He tells us how the last experiment goes terribly wrong and they conjure something that only wants to kill. The creature is bound to the house, but will be let free when all the conjurers are dead and Merryweather is the last one still alive. We are given a box and then asked to leave. When we leave the room everyone is introduced. It's ofc the priest and the occult professor from before, two private detectives; Nunez and Cover, a librarian called Fog and a psychologist.

We all gather at the professor's office, which is really small and we can't really fit all of us in there. In the box we were given there's a small black nothebook and a small golden box shaped as a sarcophagus with hieroglyphs on it. The notebooks is a list of all members of the Brotherhood and journals from the meetings of the Brotherhood. Cover opens the sarcophagus, but it's empty. The psychologist tells us that the signs inside of the sarcophagus are said to originate from a vanished continent called Mu. The notebook tells us that the Brotherhood bought a house outside Ross's Corner to perform their experiments in peace. The leader carved protective runes all around the doors and windows of the house. It says that in 1882 (this is 1920) the leader bought the golden sarcophagus and inside it was a big amber with some kind of creature trapped inside. The perform the experiment to conjure the creature and it's described in the notebook as a great black hole with lots of claws and mouths. One member instantly got mad and one instantly got killed. The others fled the site and the mad one was placed at an institution. There are years written next to the members' names; which turns out to be the years they died. There's only one member left with no number and that's Merryweather who also seems to be the one who's been writing in the notebook. In that moment we get a phone call saying that Merryweather just passed away. A book is mentioned in the notebook but nothing more.

The priest, Fog and the occult professor heads out to the library and to the library's occult division. The professor remembers that she has heard of that book before and knows that she will need the key to a locked room to get it. The chief of the library has it and while the professor tries to persuade the chief to give her the key, Fog and the priest try to force their way into the room by picking the lock. They get the door open and the alarm sounds. Both of them manage to hide themselves, but no book and they return to the office. At the office the professor examines the sarcophagus and Fog tries to translate the hieroglyphs, which proves impossible. The three others, who have been out doing research on their own, shows up later and tells us that the powder used to make the pentagram needed to perform the ritual to conjure the creature vaporates when it leaves the house. The priest remembers that it has been mentioned in the journals from the other house and that it's called Powder of Ibn-ghazn. It's used to conjure or dispel creatures in rituals. They have found out the cause of death for all of the members except two and the priest calls all the communities in the city asking for the cause of death of those two members. One of them died of a falling piano and the other of natural causes.

We meet up again on the morning the day after av leave for the house. In Ross's Corner we stop to ask about the house. The children think it's an exciting haunted house and there have been children dared to go there. No one seems to remember anyone coming to visit the house. We find out that a middle-aged woman has disappeard during the night. The house is situated on a hill and it's only one floor, but seems to have an attic. The professor, the priest and Cover recognises the protective runes, and after examining the house on the outside and the grounds we enter through the back door, which happens to be open.

We see one staircase leading up and one leading down, a fireplace, open cans and a blanket. Someone has spent the night there. The professor and Cover hear something from the basement and Cover starts heading downstairs with the only torch available. The professor stays upstairs to guard the door and the rest of us follows Cover downstairs. When we have almost arrived down a bum tries to hit Cover with a table-leg. We all try to hit him but all of us miss and the bum manages to hit some of us. Finally Nunez hits the bum and he falls down unconscious. Cover puts first aid on him and he wakes up. His name is Jake and he keeps talking about some darkness that wants to kill him. We bind him and enters the next room where we find a cigar box full of Powder of Ibn-ghazn. We also find 10 papers turned slightly yellow. 6 of them are copies of a chant. 3 seems to come from the book we couldn't get a hold of and the 10th paper show the symbol. It's not the same handwriting as in the notebook.

Nunez hears something from the attic and while Cover, the priest, Fog and the professor stays in the room to prepare the ritual, Nunez and the psychologist leaves to examine the attic. We hear screams and rushes out into the hallway just in time to see Nunez's body getting dragged up to the attic. Then we hear sounds as of eating. The psychologist falls down the stairs and can't stop laughing. He stops when Cover hits him in the face. We all leave for the room with the ritual and lock the door. When the sounds of eating stop Cover opens the door a little and sticks out his head to take a look. Then he quickly pulls back and we see claws where his head would have been. We close and barricade the door with furniture and explosives and then we wait for midnight to perform the ritual.

The story fast-forwards to midnight. The priest, the professor and Fog are chanting. The other two keep a look-out. The first 20 minutes go by without trouble and then we hear something move upstairs. After 10 minutes it becomes more violent and the house starts to sway. The the creature starts screaming and the walls starts leaking some weird fluid. Then everything suddenly becomes very quiet. We hear someone pounding on the door and a voice says that it's Nunez and he wants to come in. We don't open the door. We see Nunez pounding the windows but it's not the real Nunez. He has a hole where his heart should be. We continue chanting. There's goo coming out of the walls. Everyone steps away from the goo. The Nunez-zombie can't get inside. The ritual continues and the psychologist falls down shaking. A female zombie shows up next to Nunez. Fog starts running towards the door and Cover beat her down. When there's only five minutes to go the creature appear in the middle of the symbol on the floor. It can't move outside the symbol. Finally it disappears but we continue chanting for 10 more minutes. There is no trace of the creature. We put the powder in the sarcophagus. Cover opens the door. We run to the cars. And there's a dead Jake in Nunez's car. We drive back to Boston in the other car and walk to the closest police station. On the way Cover leaves his explosives, the psychologist and Fog at his place. The police station is closed and no one is there. We go back to Cover's flat and the professor calls the police who won't listen. We all fall asleep and the psychologist calms down.

The next morning the professor discovers that the sarcophagus has vanished. Merryweather's son comes knocking with a lawyer and asks for the box his father gave us. Cover slams the door in his face. Half an hour later the police knocks on the door. The police take us all down to the station where the professor leaves with the son to give him the box (empty). The others convince the police of their story that they had nothing to do with the dead bodies at the house (because the police have already been there) and that we had left the place when Nunez was dragged up to the attic.

Gaming

I'm back after a ridiculously nerdy weekend. It all started on Friday when I asked to be taught to play Heroes of Might and Magic 5, because I had seen Will and Love play it and thought it seemed fun. So they taught me and now I can't stop. I wanna keep playing all the time because it's so funny xD

So when it turned out we neither had work nor RPG on Saturday we went back from my parents house to our flat and on the way we met up with Will and had lunch at the best hamburger restaurant in town (you all know which one). When we got back to the flat they called up Lars, another friend, and later he showed up. I suggested we could start playing Heroes together and they all agreed. So we started up a mission and while waiting for it to be their turn at the game the guys played Borderlands on the PS3 and I played Fruit Ninja on Love's iPhone (another game I can't get enough of). That way the whole Saturday and the whole Sunday continued.

When Will and Lars left on Sunday evening Love helped me install Windows 7 on my laptop (finally!) and while the computer installed it we watched some more episodes of Grey's Anatomy :P

Today, on the other hand, has been a busy study day. I just finished a rather big assignment in Spanish, due today and in a two hours I'll hand it in. Love is still not back from school and I'm getting rather bored... Maybe... Play some Heroes...?

Harry Potter and Disturbed

Two things have happened since last time. Two major things anyway. First was that I saw Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows pt 1 at the premiere on November 17th and I must say it was incredible! I've disliked all of the other Harry Potter films but this one was special. They had managed to make it so much like the book and they managed to fit so much into those two hours. Probably because they split the book in half and made two films. Too bad they couldn't do that with all the other ones :P Ofc there were things that bothered me, details, but the good parts overwhelmed the bad parts. I'm really looking forward to the next part that premieres in May. For this film I had almost no expectations, but now for the second part I have very high expectations and I juts hope it will be as good as the first part :)

Second was that Love and I went to see Disturbed live in Copenhagen! Except for the train being late and thus we arriving a little late everything went fine getting there. The first band on stage was Halestorm, a, to me, unknown band that didn't manage to convince me they were worth continue to listen to. Next up was Papa Roach. I knew about them but I haven't listened to them before and they were awesome. They managed to get the crowd going and already before Disturbed got on stage we were sweaty and tired and thirsty :P We had got ourselves places really close to the stage and as to not lose them I snuck out of the crowd and bought us some water and then snuck back in again (I think I'm good at that). The crowd went crazy when Disturbed got on and then they started performing. In total three songs off of their latest album; Asylum, two from Believe, two from Indestructible + Stricken, Land of Confusion, Ten Thousand Fists and Down with the sickness. All in all it was an incredible time. Although it wasn't as good as a live usually is. I think it has something to do with them just having an hour to play so they played as many songs as possible and didn't interact much with the crowd. If they had had more time to interact with the people it would have been a better live I think. But they were still awesome and I don't regret spending all those money at all.

Three days at a castle

This Friday my gran had invited me, my family and Love to a goose dinner at Svaneholm's Castle. It was a fancy dinner with all us girls in dresses and my dad and Love in suits :) The food was great, except for maybe the dessert that I (for once!) didn't enjoy very much. But I thought it was all very solemn. That evening I was the chauffeur for the first time and it felt nice knowing that I really could drive the car packed with people :P

Yesterday I worked with my dad at the first Christmas display of the season at Svaneholm's Castle. All those other times when I've worked during autumn or winter it's always been awfully cold so this time I came prepared dressed in three layers of clothes. I hit the jackpot with those three layers. Spent the whole day outdoors without wearing a coat :P Except for working I also visited the display of course. I really like walking around in castles or at historical sites, because to me it seems like I can feel history. If I had walked through that castle in my dress on the day of the dinner, in my head I would have been wearing a delicate 18th century dress and moved graciously through the halls. But this day I wore jeans, boots and a wool shirt so I felt more like a horse boy tip-toeing through the halls peeking at all the fine folks :P The most awesome thing of the day was this:

Today was the last day of the Christmas display and it's been a very interesting day. Around noon it started raining and it kept on raining all day. It's very ineresting selling sugary sweets, sweets wrapped in paper and non-waterproof helium balloons while it's raining. But that makes it fun and interesting. It's fun to be challenged by the elements. But nothing yet has been quite as crazy as the time when I was selling sweets at a farm auction in early December a few years back and it started snowing and was real windy at the same time. I was hanging on to the ceiling so it wouldn't fly off and Dad was packing away all the stuff in a hurry - that was a lot of fun xD
The evening turned even more interesting when it was time to pack up. We got all the stuff away, closed the trailer and put it on the car. Dad was going to use the tractor mode on his SUV to pull the trailer out of the swampy lawn. It worked for about three meters. Then there was a mud puddle and we got stuck. Dad decided to leave the trailer behind and pick it up tomorrow when they were moving the small cottages of the Christmas display away with the help of a truck. The staff at the people agreed to move his trailer with the help of the truck. Good. So we took the trailer off the car and then we were going to drive home. Nope. The car was stuck in the mud and despite the car's tractor mode and four-wheel drive Dad couldn't get it to move. So he went to fetch some planks and put them next to the wheels to help the car move. Didn't help. More planks. Didn't help. Try to push the planks further under the wheels. Didn't help. Fetched the rubber mats from the floor of the car and put them close to the wheels. Didn't help. Went to get a friend and his car to pull our car out of the mud. While waiting Dad tried to turn the wheels, give full gas and still have all the planks and rubber mats by the wheels. The car moved a little out of the mud. The friend showed and they put the towline between the cars and started up. That pulled our car out of the last of the mud and we could be on our way home. Half an hour later. What a thrilling evening :P

Some pictures from today. The castle, our counter and our stuff and the last one is just a cool picture :P

Current fandoms

A few months ago I did a post about my old fandoms. Well, some stuff has happened since July and now I feel it's time for an update :)

Pokémon: Love bought Pokémon SoulSilver version for my birthday. Just when I had stopped obessing over my Pearl version he gives me a new one. What's more to it is that it contains the new Pokéwalker, which is almost like a Tamagotchi but with a Pokémon that you transfer from the game and then take for a walk. I'm having a lot of fun with it! SoulSilver and its twin HeartGold are remakes of Pokémon Gold and Silver and that means loads of old Generation 1 and Generation 2 Pokémon. From back in the day when I actually collected the trading cards!!! ^_^ And look what I found!

Firefly: As much as I dislike Sci-Fi I love this series. I have the last episode left to see and most of the episodes have been great. Although all my friends seem to be completely in love with Kaylee, my favourite is River.

Vampires: Don't get me wrong, I'm not talking about urban fantasy, sexy, pale, glittering (or whatever) vampires. I'm talking about the legend. The legend of vampires is one of the most enduring legends of history. When I found this book I got interested, then I got it and started reading it and now I'm even more interested than I used to be. I mean it's a guy from National Geographic that's written it and apparantly the book is based on some program that was broadcasted on that very channel some time ago. It's really interesting. Strongly recommend!

H.P. Lovecraft: Love bought Necronomicon for my birthday last year but I hadn't got around to actually reading it until after his Call of Cthulhu RPG. That was the spark I needed. The day after I made my research on Lovecraft himself and started reading his copy of Necronomicon. I really like his way of writing and his cosy stories. They're supposed to be horror, but I find them more cosy than actually goose-bumpening :P And I that made me read this web comic called Hello Cthulhu as well. It's very cute. Cthulhu is a demon god and he arrives to a world to destroy it. There he meets Hello Kitty and he falls in love with her. Then the evil thing walks around with ribbons in his tentacles all the time! xD

Avatar: Not the film with blue aliens. The anime with elementals. Love made me watch it during summer and then it escalated from there. I've seen all the episodes. I'm looking forward to the next series and I really really wanna watch the live action movie M. Night Shaymalan did this year to see how badly it sucks.

Harry Potter: Love wanted to re-read the series before we watched the first part of Deathly Hallows. All this re-reading and looking forward to the film has made me re-live some of my fandom :) It doesn't help that this video is a masterpiece!

Grey's Anatomy: Yup! We've been watching a lot of series recently and I made Love interested in this one. We have now watched the whole first season (third time for me) and that first season just keeps getting better and better :P

Hello Kitty: If the Lovecraft part didn't reveal it... I bought a Hello Kitty scheduler when I was in Tokyo. The year is coming to an end and I need a knew one. So I bought one from eBay :P I also love the evil Hello Kitty that shows up in Hello Cthulhu :)

That's about it for now :P

Writing

So since I have so much free time nowadays I have taken up writing again. It's pretty fun and it's going well. In two days I've written two chapters :) I feel proud. If I keep writing in this pace I might have a book finished pretty soon. I don't think it's great but it's better than some other stuff I've written and it's obviously a book for youths. I didn't want it that way, but it's hard to write like an adult when I'm a youth myself :P That's where it is. I'm trying to sound more adult-like, but I guess I usually don't?

Anyway I write in Swedish and if anyone wanna read the finished product and give me some feedback, just give me a nudge at facebook or msn or IRL ;)

Children of the Night

I hid them under the floor

for them being here made me sore

And on that day I felt kind of hazy

Now they still gotta be there

cause they are not going anywhere

with severed limbs - or call me crazy

But there are voices in the darkness

in my house, everytime I close my eyes

In the dead of night I hear 'em sigh

The children of the night are calling

Hear 'em cry, they still defy

endlessly

I feel like falling

Now they're all

my children of the night

These skulls are so small

There are seven of them in all

I swear to God, now they're deadly silent

But still there's voices in the darkness

Getting louder all the time

In the dead of night I hear 'em sigh

The children of the night are calling

Hear 'em cry, they still defy

endlessly

I feel like falling

Now they're all

my children of the

Now little feet tap at the end of my bed

Remorse I seize

I feel there's someone leaning over my head

Seven breaths, they freeze

In the dead of night I hear 'em sigh

The children of the night are calling

Hear 'em cry, they still defy

endlessly

I feel like falling

In the dead of night I hear 'em sigh

The children of the night are calling

Hear 'em cry, they still defy

endlessly

I feel like falling

Now they're all

my children of the night

It's that day

Since it's that day as well...

Remember, remember

the 5th of November

The gunpowder treason and plot

I know of no reason

why the gunpowder treason

should ever be forgot

Too bad I don't have the film V for Vendetta or I would definately have watched it tonight.

Role-playing Call of Cthulhu - a horror story

So I thought since I do role-playing almost every week I could blog about it :P Gives me something to blog about and it's pretty fun :)

As you all know yesterday was Halloween. So Love thought he'd do a one-shot horror role-play Call of Cthulhu with us. That was his first time leading a role-playing game but it went really well :) Since it was a Sunday and people had work/school the day after we started out early and met up at 4.30 pm. After being given one character sheet each from Love we started making our characters and setting our skills etc after his command and with the help of our dices. When the characters were done our group consisted of two scholars; one professor researching the occult and one university gymnastics teacher (so he was our Mr. Muscle), one doctor; he was also a scholar (strictly speaking) but more of a pharmacist and one priest.

In Call of Cthulhu everyone gets a specific sanity level depending on what the dices show, and as supernatural, occult or simply weird things show in front of our characters the dices will decide if that level gets lower. The lower it gets the closer to a complete mental breakdown is the character. Ofc the characters also have hit points and the more times a character gets hit in a battle the lower health it gets and the closer to death it becomes.

After our characters were finished it was time for dinner and then the game itself kicked off. By then it wwas dark outside and to create the appropriate atmosphere we used no electricity and simply had big lit candles on the table. And then: the story.

We were all assembled by a landlord who had bought himself a house really really cheap, because no one wanted to live in it. Reason for that was what had happened to the family who had lived there. The father had gone insane and now lived at an asylum 4 miles off town, the mother weren't very stable either and she stayed with her mother. The two sons were doing pretty okay and all lived with relatives. This was all the landlord knew and we set out to find out some background information to our case. Our job was to "fix" the house so the landlord could rent it to someone. The priest (that's me) and the doctor went off to the asylum, since the priest was the only one who could drive (the game takes place in 1920's Boston). Mr. Muscle went to The Globe's news paper archives and the professor went to the city archives.

What the priest and the doctor found out was that the family had all had dreams of a man with burning eyes and both the mother and the father had felt an evil presence from the bedroom furthest from the staircase on the second floor of the house. The evil presence seemed to dislike the father the most and had used cuttlery and religious symbols to throw at him. The family was strongly Catholic, the mother even more so after her experiences in the house, the father on the other hand had abandoned his faith as a consequence to his experiences. He was considered gravely schizofrenic. Both parents talked about the man with burning eyes. The mother had only seen him in her dreams but the father had had hallucinations of him after he had awokened and in mirrors. They had both seen bleeding walls and had objects thrown at them.

What Mr. Muscle and the professor found out and the different archives were that the house and been built by a man who had soon after fallen sick and sold the house to a Walter Corbitt. That's why the house was also called the Corbitt House earlier, but now no one knew of that name. Walter Corbitt had been sued by his neighbours for being weird and involved in the occult. In his will he wrote that he wanted to be buried in the basement of the house. In 1880 he had disappeared after a raid on the church he was involved in and a priest had been sentenced to prison. The priest had escaped said prison in 1917 and no one had seen him since. The church that Corbitt was involved with had meetings in a chapel not far from the house. In his will Corbitt had also written that he wanted the house to be empty for as long as possible, preferably forever. But despite this people had lived there and they had all gone crazy, become invalid or died.

After the characters had met up and told each other what they had found out we decided to go to the ruin of the chapel and see what we could find out. The priest drove them all there and on the waywe bought lamps and spades (shovels). When we entered the area the first thing we see are two walls on each side of the pathway. They are both washed clean and there's a symbol carved into them. When we walk past them we all get the feeling that were being watched. We let Mr. Muscle stand guard outside the ruin and the three of us enters, when we do that we all get a headache (except Mr. Muscle who is still outside). The doctor is very sure to try the floor with his umbrella before we walk on it and thanks to that we didn't fall through the floor into the basement. In the construction papers of the chapel there was no mentioning of a basement so ofc we all go down there. Down there we find a room with to victims from the fire caused by the raid and also some old journals from meetings and one old mouldy book in Latin with description of the churches believes etc. This book the professor brings with her. Then we leave the chapel.

After that we have a discussion whether we should go investigate the house as well although it's already dusk or wait until tomorrow. We decided to go to the house. When we get there we take a walk around the house to see it there are any alternate entrances. The coal cellar as well as all the windows are covered with boards and the back door can't be opened from the outside. So we enter through the front door using the key we've been given by the landlord. When we enter we see a lot of closed doors and a staircase leading down. We decide to first investigate the first floor and enter the first room. It's a storage room with old bicycles and a cupboard. The cupboard is covered with boards as well and we all find this strange so the doctor goes out to the car to fetch a crowbar. We open the cupboard and in there we find three journals belonging to Walter Corbitt. The priest, the professor and the doctor all start looking through one each (and as a consequence lose some sanity points). The professor keeps the journals and we keep on going to the next room, by now we all start to hear a loud thumping coming from above. The thumping continues as we investigate the rooms on the first floor. When we get to the living room we find the staircase going up and we all see how one wall starts to bleed (and we lose some sanity points) and then the loud thumping stops. We go upstairs and start looking through the bedrooms. Nothing interesting until we get to the furthermost bedroom. We open it and the doctor walks in to open the only openable window in the house, but he never makes it cause the bed rushes from the wall and into him. The professor and the priest start to investigate the wall the bed came from and at that time Mr. Muscle sees how the doctor tries to hit the priest in the head with his umbrella. Mr. Muscle stops him but the doctor has no recollection of what he was trying to do. We finish the last bedroom and decides to go down the basement to find Corbitt's grave. Down there Mr. Muscle finds a beautiful, but dirty, dagger and picks it up. When he does that the dagger flies out of his hand and hits the professor's leg. The doctor takes care of them both and then we walk into the last room of the house. This room is completely empty save for a bench in the middle. On this bench is a dead body and above it hangs the same symbol we saw carved into the walls at the chapel. The whole room stinks and the doctor moves forward to take a closer look on the body. When he does that the body wakes up and looks at him. The doctor throws his umbrella at the corpse and the final battle erupts. We manage to defeat the corpse with not too many casualties, except for the priest accidentally shooting his gun at the professor and making her faint and Mr. Muscle being controlled to attack the doctor once.

In the end all the characters survived, which isn't the standard of Call of Cthulhu RPGs :P The upside is that we can keep these characters and reuse them in another game. Maybe a fullscale campaign of Call of Cthulhu if it comes to that :)

During this game we were all affected in different ways by the scary story, but the atmosphere was definately perfect and I love the catharsis horror gives when the tensity is released at the end of the story.

The most positive upside about this game is that it made me genuinely interested in reading H.P Lovecraft's work. Something I've been planning to do for a year now but never had the motivation to. When Love and I got home I borrowed his copy of Necronomicon and read the short story that he ahd recommended; The Rats in the Walls. And it was... cosy :P It defeinately caught my attention and I wouldn't want to put it down but the story didn't really scare me. It was cosy and interesting. I think I like his way and I will start reading Necronomicon from the beginning this evening :)

Skulduggery Pleasant

Started and finished the second book in the series today. Still incredibly funny to read and extremely well done for being a children's book...

"I'm not weird like that.
I'm good weird.
I'm cool weird."
- Stephanie

"My parents have gone to work, you know.
You could have used the door."
- Stephanie
"Doors are for people with no imagination."
- Skulduggery 

I Will Be

There's nothing I could say to you

Nothing I could ever do to make you see

What you mean to me

All the pain, the tears I cried

Still you never said goodbye and now I know

How far you'd go

I know I let you down

But it's not like that now

This time I'll never let you go

I will be all that you want

and get myself together

cos you keep me from falling apart

All my life I'll be with you forever

To get you through the day

and make everything OK

I thought that I had everything

I didn't know what life could bring

But now I see, honestly

You're the one thing I got right

The only one I let inside

Now I can breathe, cos you're here with me

And if I let you down

I'll turn it all around

Cos I will never let you go

I will be all that you want

and get myself together

cos you keep me from falling apart

All my life I'll be with you forever

To get you through the day

and make everything OK

Cos without you I can't sleep

I'm not gonna ever ever let you leave

You're all I've got, you're all I want

And without you I don't know what I'd do

I could never ever live a day without you

Here with me, do you see

You're all I need

And I will be all that you want

and get myself together

cos you keep me from falling apart

All my life I'll be with you forever

to get you through the day

and make everything OK

Old fandoms

I feel like I need something new to go crazy about. Everything I've ever been nerdy about is coming to an end or is set on hold. What to do?

Harry Potter: Practically over. I mean two more films and then what? Guess I gotta go to Orlando sometime...

Heroes: The season finale of season 4 turned out to be the show finale. So it's over. Suddenly. Without warning. Only a rumour of a made for TV-movie to keep us hoping.

Code Lyoko: Was over almost as soon as my nerdiness caught me. Four seasons of great story. Properly finished, though.

Jonas Brothers: Ended about a year ago. Nowadays I only listen to Love Bug sometimes. And for some reason Nick's wailing has started to bug me.

Avril Lavigne: Ended with The Best Damn Thing. Although, if her new album puts up to the old standards I might go crazy about her again.

Hello! Project: The current line-up fails to catch my attention in the same way the Elder Club did. Without them H!P is nothing much, although fairly unique.

Pirates of the Caribbean: So long as there's love there's hope. But although there'll be a fourth film and presumably a fifth, they wont be the same. Sure Jack Sparrow makes the story but without the other two in the line-up it will feel strangely empty I think.... So that one's probably over.

Mythology: Had it's peek in 8th grade when I tried to make a family tree of the Greek gods. Proved exceedingly difficult. Since then I've had my fair share of Greek, Egyptian, Celtic, Japanese and Scandinavian mythology.

Eddings: I started reading The Belgariad when I was 13 and that's when it escalated. I wanted everything he'd written. I even have that one book that's not fantasy... I try to delay the fact that after I've finished his latest series there will be no more. That will be the definite end of it. The end of an era for me.

So to sum it up. I need a new book series, a new TV-series, a new anime, a new musical artist, a new film series, a new author and a new historical thingy to be crazy and nerdy about. Any suggestions?

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.

About Swedish and snails

I overslept today. Was awoken at 8am by my host mother. 8am is the time when I usually leave the house so in ten minutes I got dressed, swallowed a banana and some juice and half-ran to the train. I actually managed to find some time to buy a bread and an onigiri at a konbini (japanese word for convenience store... easier to say) and then get on the train. Everything went fine until the train left Nagatacho, which is the eighth station from my home station and still two more stations to go. When I just by standing still got dizzy and warm and shaky and the world started to turn black in front of my eyes and I felt like throwing up. I managed to sit down at an empty seat and it all went away. But that was scary! I've never felt close to fainting before but that was just horrible... I don't know why either... I've managed to skip breakfast before without any problems... Maybe it was with the combination of running? I don't know. But I managed to be in school on time ;)

Anyway, after that I felt anemic all day so when it was finally time for lunch I wanted meat. But since Japan recently got a fling of mad cow disease no real meat is to be found anywhere... Which meant I had to make do with chicken tonkatsu... And it did feel a little better after a real meal :)

After lunch (that I had with Julian and Ebu) Ebu wanted to go to a bookstore and by a book he wanted. This turned out to be a real treat for me :P As I don't have any room to spare in my suitcase I have strictly forbidden myself to buy anything besides food but seeing all those books... There were so many I wanted to have... Like Alice in Wonderland in both English and Japanese (in the same book)... or Dante's Inferno or some Dickens... It was fun to see how many Swedish writers they had there; Camilla Läckberg, Henning Mankell, Steig Larsson... And what was even more funny was when I went to the language books section. I found a section where they had practically any major European language (excluding English, French, Spanish, Italian and German); Portuguese, Polish, Russian, Danish, Norwegian and Swedish :P A fair few of the books considering Swedish is quite a small language... Ofc I had to take a peek in one of the books... And the dialogues were so funny! People really, really, really don't talk that way. Not even if they want to make it simple... After the bookstore I took a trip to Shibuya to make a reservation for the airport bus and to buy packaging tape. My package is finished and will be sent tomorrow. I think my host mother will call and make my airport bus reservation too tomorrow. Turned out that you could only make a reservation by telephone and since I'm not very skilled at telephone Japanese, I asked her to do it for me and she said she could :)

And just now the weirdest thing ever happened! I found a snail in my room. I've heard of bugs and flies, but snails?!??! Anyhow it grossed me out so I asked my host mother to deal with it for me... If it's been a bug or a fly I would've simply killed it and thrown it out but a snail is just gross... How did it get in anyway? My window is locked! :S

Last week

I know I haven't posted a lot lately, reason is it's been kind of normal stuff that's been happening. Nothing special at all, but I'll give a review of the past week so you'll know what I've been up to anyway :)

Monday started out kind of unusual. The school has to buildings and the building we usually have our class in was under construction work or something like that. So we had our class in the other building. In this building the classroom looked like it was taken right out of the 60s! xD After a fairly entertaining class that left everyone, especially me, saying "yosh" all the time we went to have lunch at Ootoya together with Ebu. This is a restaurant that Julian and I discovered after Sam recommended it to us one day. It serves various Japanese food, it's delicious and cheap! A whole big meal for 600 yen :) Then we all split up and went home.

Tuesday we had a new student in our class, Sabrina from Taiwan, and we were also back in our normal building and classroom. Since it was Suzuki-sensei the time flew by and then we went and had lunch together with Sabrina in Shibuya. Then we went around the place to find a record shop Julian had heard of. It turned out to be an awesome retro store with lots and lots of old records. Since I still hadn't thought of a souvenir for my dad I thought a record would be nice but it was all weird electronica music :/ But the shop looked cool, though! On Wednesday the lesson seemed to drag on for forever and when it was finally time for lunch and today it turned out to be on the Italian/Japanese buffet place! Because today Massimo wasn't in a hurry for work :D So I, Julian, Sabrina, Massimo and Lise spent a nice lunch at the buffet and then we all separated and went home. At the house I brought out my suitcase and started packing. Turned out that I had too many things and couldn't fit it all, so this coming week I'll be sending away a package of books and winter clothing.

Thursday we had Suzuki-sensei again so the time flew by. For lunch we went to have sushi. I, Julian and Sabrina met up with Ebu and one of his friends on the way. After lunch I wanted to go to Asakusa to buy souvenirs for my family and friends and Julian and Sabrina decided to come along. On the way to the train Sabrina randomly bumped into her old Japanese tutor and he tagged along with us. When in Asakusa it suddenly started raining heavily out of nowhere and we took shelter in the temple while waiting for the rain to pass (about 5 min). Then we walked around in Asakusa's souvenir shopping street for a while and I bought souvenirs for some people. When I got home I continued to try to put together a suitcase that wasn't too heavy and a carry-on luggage that I could actually manage and trying to make a package that wasn't too heavy. Now I have everything decided (hopefully).

Friday, as usual, dragged by. The minutes seemed to be hours, everything beacuse the teacher sucks and no one likes her. When it was finally lunch-time we went to an Indian all-you-can-eat buffet. It has the most delicious naan-bread! Can't stop eating it! :P Had a nice time with Lise teaching us bad words in Japanese xD After lunch I went alone to finish my souvenir-shopping. So that turned into yet another trip to Asakusa and then a trip to Shibuya before going home. In the evening I started planning how to get to the airport with the help of my host mother. Can't believe I'm going home in two weeks...

Saturday, yesterday, was a boring day I spent watching the second semi-finals in Eurovision and a George Carlin video, as well as writing.

Today I had promised myself I would go do something if the weather was nice. But it's been cold and rainy all day so I spent yet another day watching some clips from the Eurovision finals, another George Carlin video and also writing some. I also unpacked my suitcase of all the things I need to use everyday until I go home. Hate to live in a suitcase! :P

Meiji Jingu Shrine

Yesterday was a horribly warm summerday, a day when the heat didn't leave much air to breathe. Today on the other hand it's been raining all day and summer rain is nice :) So today I decided to go to Meiji Jingu Shrine. I think it was about the only shrine in Tokyo I hadn't seen yet and I thought today was a good day to take care of that :) Turned out it was a much better idea than I had originally thought.

The shrine is situated in central Tokyo, in Harajuku to be precise. But it really didn't feel like it! After crossing the Jingu bridge I found myself at the foot of a forest. And when entering that forest the sounds of the city vanished completely (Tokyo has a way of doing that. Everytime one enters something natural or sacred the city vanishes). Everything that existed was the forest, the gravel and the smells of the wet woods. When I arrived at the temple I immediately realised that there was a traditional wedding going on. The ceremony seemed to be over, but the groom and the bride were being photographed so I took a picture myself ;) among lots of other tourists. When walking around the temple taking pictures I also realised that it had Totoro-trees :) And the whole woods, seen a little from above, seemed to be taken from the film. It was a really cosy feeling. I also saw this procession inside the temple. Don't know if it had something to do with the wedding, but the bride and groom didn't participate so maybe it was just a normal mass? Since it's Sunday... When I got home I was still in quite a cosy mood so I changed into an overly big sweater and soft pants and crawled to bed with Neil Gaiman's Stardust. Started reading it then, read about half by now and I think I'll go back to my book now :)

Happoen, dinner and drinks

Tuesday was a warm day of about 30 degrees and clear skies so that day I decided that after lunch I wanted to go to Happoen Garden in Shirokanedai. Happoen Garden is a traditional Japanese garden that I found in a tourist brochure. When we stepped out of Shirokanedai's tube station we couldn't believe that was Tokyo. It was spacious and quiet and green :o

Happoen Garden was so worth the trip. It was incredibly beautiful all of it. I just wanted to stay there, stay and relax. Even the shrine there felt like a real one, not like those big commercial stuff they have in the city that have been somewhat converted into tourist attractions. After walking through all of Happoen Garden, which wasn't very big, we decided to go to the big park we had seen on the map on our way to Happoen. Turned out to be a disappointment, no way I'll pay 1100 yen to enter a park just because it's connected to a museum... But anyway it turned out to be quite a nice walk anyway and I did manage to get a slight tan that doesn't seem to be falling off :o Imagine that! ;) Yesterday my friend Andreas, whom I hadn't met in three years, had invited me to dinner in Ebisu. His treat. He first thought of going to a restaurant he knew of, but then changed his mind and we went to a restaurant that his friends had talked about. I can see why they had talked about it. You sat in armchairs while eating on a glass table. There was a shark tank and the candlabre in the ceiling had real candles and real fire. Except for the main dish and the desert I let him decide everything. It was his money after all and I really don't know anything about drinks. But for appetizer I got to taste oysters for the first time! Same consistency as mussles, only bigger, and it tastes exactly like sea water xD Champagne along with the dinner consisting of Japanese beef - lovely, but once again designer food, fancy food :P And for desert; limoncello and tiramizu :D When we talked he found out that I yet hadn't been to any bars in Tokyo so ofc he also brought me to his favourite bar in the neighbourhood while he was at it xD There we had one white absinthe each, 55% the strongest I've tried yet. That was pretty fun xD I liked the interior of that place. On the shelves with bottles there were signs. Some (most) said 'Absinthe' but there was one shelf with the sign 'Dangerous bottles' on xD Some of the bottles on that shelf had skulls on them and one bottle was even shaped as a skull xD Awesome!

When I went to bed yesterday I hoped to not be too tired when I woke up today, and no I wasn't too tired but I still had no desire of getting up. It's summer here! I want to have my vacation now! Now! :P

So... the best conversation of the night:

"Interesting with stairs up to a bar."
"Keeps you from getting in if you're too drunk."
"Keeps you from getting out too."
"Well, that's a later problem!"

25th floor

When I woke up today I was alone. Audray was going home. Since it was her last day yesterday she, I and Yoshiko went out to have lunch together. Yoshiko had reserved a table at a fancy restaurant on the 25th floor in the Tokyu building in the middle of Shibuya. Of course 25th floor meant incredible view over Tokyo. Since it was a fancy restaurant the food was also fancy. You started out with a bread/salad buffet which was nice. First time in my life that I ate vegetables that were pink xD Then there was the food and fancy food is always a disappointment. It's always just something small and nice to look at in the middle of a HUGE plate. The desert was even more so... But that small piece of cake was delicious! So now I've asked around and looked around and I've come up with some places to go during my last month. I think it could be fun. On top of all that I was invited to dinner with a friend who lives in Tokyo xD This last month might not turn out as boring as I expected :P

Nothingness

Sorry about the silence but nothing's been up for a while. Trying to change that, though, asking my friends on Facebook on tips about what to do with my last month here. Except for the wedding my time back in Tokyo has been pretty slow. But still it feels pretty good to just relax and take it slow for a while, but I do have that nagging feeling that I should do something with my last month. But everything I've wanted to do, like really, really wanted, I've already done.

Julian is the only friend that's still here since I arrived and he too feels like he's been everywhere, so none of us have any motivation really, which doesn't actually help the problem here xD We switch our lunches between sushi and curry and that doesn't matter because there are so many different kinds that it doesn't really feel like we are eating the same thing all the time xD

The only thing I have planned right now is my last week when I will buy souvenirs and presents for everyone and at the same time try to fit everything into my suitcase (that will be interesting). I've seen Audray's progress these last few days (she's going home on Saturday). Two packages sent by air mail and still loads of stuff to pack. On the other hand she's been here for six months and bought much more stuff than I have so I hope I'll be OK :)

Wedding

Sorry about the long silence, but nothing interesting has really happened since I got back from Korea. Except that Friday was Gan's last day so we went to Sweets Paradise again xD

However, yesterday was Ruri's wedding day (the daughter of my host family) and Audray (my room mate) and I were invited to the party after the ceremony :) I've never really been to a wedding before but I can guess that it was pretty different from Sweden. They had the party at a huge place. I guess it's pretty popular for hosting wedding parties, since we could watch another couple getting their pictures taken :P I also got to meet the son of the family, Jun, for the first time. He was so cute xP And Yoshiko (host mother) looked so cute in her kimono :D When it was our turn we went up to the second floor. First we payed for the party and then we had our picture taken with a polaroid and got to write messages on the pictures and put them in a box for the couple to read later :) Then we went downstairs where they had food and drinks. So we got our welcome drinks and took some pictures and then the couple arrived. Everyone was going crazy with the camera. After they had sat down and then when they had cut the wedding cake all the guests got to take pictures with them. All the while a kind of PowerPoint was rolling on the big screens full of pictures and some messages that Ruri had made before. Turns out Masa and Ruri met in high school 15 years ago ;P When everything had calmed down a bit we went to get food and while eating, some Japanese guys that were friends of Masa's started talking to me. It was pretty fun and relaxing to realise that I did understand what they were saying without concentrating too much :D There were two other "gaijin" (foreigners) there; a French-American couple. They were fun talking to and Audray talked a lot to the French guy. I was trying to listen and make any sense of what they were saying, but that didn't go very well xD After a few hours of games and talking Masa and Ruri read their vows (at least I think that's what it was. I heard "dreams" and "I love you") and then thanked everyone for coming. Audray and I hung around outside and talked to some more Japanese people, while waiting for Yoshiko to come back (she was changing from kimono to normal clothes) and then we went back home :)

I had been kind of worried about this night. Mostly because I thought it would be just me and Audray and a lot of Japanese people speaking real Japanese; not tape-Japanese or teacher-Japanese or slow host family-Japanese, but the real thing. I was worried I wouldn't understand anything and would just hang around there waiting for time to pass... But everything went well :) I was also worried about the clothes. I wanted to wear a dress, but I didn't have any dress that I didn't think too short to be appropriate so in the end I went there with a skirt. Yoshiko had said before that since I have blond hair and blue eyes I wouldn't have to dress up a lot because my natural colours would be fancy enough for them xD

I have uploaded pictures from Korea to the wedding in the albums :)

Namsan

Today I had decided I wanted to be cultural and historical so my first goal today was to go to the old prison. Turned out that since it was Monday, it was closed :( I don't get it. In Japan too all the tourist stuff and the museums are closed on Mondays, it's weird :P So instead I walked around the Independence Park and took pictures from outside the prison, I also took a trip to Dungnimmun (I think that was the name), which turned out to be a huge disappointment. It was supposed to be a huge stone gate, but it was pretty small :/

So since everything I wanted to go to was either closed or disappointing I decided to go to Namsan, which is a huge mountain. The trip there had me change tube line twice and I had to walk up huge slopes to get there. I haven't been to San Francisco but I can imagine Seoul's something similar -.- So when I got to the "station" I was exhausted from climbing all the slopes. But it was so worth it afterwards. I took the cable car up to Namsan where they had several view points, restaurants (ofc) and a teddy bear musuem for some reason :S I didn't go inside the teddy bear museum, though, but I had some weird ice cream. I saw it yesterday at the aquarium too but today I tasted it. It looked like Solero Shots but it had the taste of banana split xD There were other flavours too, but I thought banana split sounded the most interesting.

When I went back to my "home" station it started to rain. Not much but it was heavy so I walked around in Seoul's greenery for a while in the rain. Pretty cosy ^^

Tomorrow I'm getting up early to get to the airport and go back to Japan. Maybe I can get revenge on my Canadian roommates. I went to sleep around midnight yesterday and they all came home drunk from the wedding around 1am so I got about an hour's sleep. Then they were loud, turning on the lights and running in and out of the dormitory until about 4am. When I could finally get some sleep, before they woke me up again around 9am -.- Not considering other people at all... I chose the biggest dorm because I thought I'd get some friends that way, never occurred to me that they would all already know eachother and treat me like I'm interfering -.- Oh well, after tomorrow I will never have to see them again ^^

COEX Aquarium

So for today I wanted to take it slow and get up when I awoke on my own. This was made very difficult by my Canadian room mates who were getting up around 8am to get to some friends' wedding :/ Nice for them, but couldn't they have been more quiet?

When I really woke up it was around 10.30am and after showering I decided to go on a little adventure and explore Seoul's tube. It was kind of easy when I started getting used to it :) I went to Samseong to go to an aquarium I had looked up on the Internet. For some weird reason it was located inside a huge mall and it was hard to find. But when I did it was so worth it :D Except for fish it also had small mammals and reptiles and spiders and scorpions :) I've never seen a beaver so up-close before ;) But the best part was the underwater tunnel. That was the biggest aquarium there and it had sharks and huge sea turtles and other small fish in it :) That was just great. Apparantly that aquarium's main thing was the African manatee and I managed to catch it just when they were feeding them...

They also had some weird things. Like a two-headed turtle and hedgehogs. I just had to take a picture of the hedgehogs, cause since when do you have hedgehogs in an aquarium? They are everywhere! xD

After the aquarium I had some more time so I originally planned on going to a second location I had looked up on the net, but I happened to take a wrong turn at some point and ended up spending an hour in a huge bookstore. I bought a Korean textbook for English users who wants to learn Korean. So I'll try to get started with that again. I'm getting sick of not understanding anything xD

Tonight there's a Korean BBQ party at the hostel. The food is delicious and ofc there's booze. But after drinking just two days ago, I don't really feel like it today so I'm just gonna socialize a little tonight ^^ There are some new people and the German boys left just an hour ago so it could be fun, although it feels kind of quiet without the Canadian people here :P

Korea - day 1

Yesterday it was time for me to go to Korea. So everything went as well as it could considering it was me. It started with me getting on the wrong train line in Nippori, but in the end I got to the airport, but much later than I would have wanted. The plane was leaving at 6pm and I was there around 5pm. Luckily I didn't have any luggage to check-in so it went smooth after I had panicked for a while for not finding the flight for Seoul leaving at 6pm on the board :P Turned out they listed the flights according to when the boarding closed, which is 15 minutes before departure.

When I got on the plane everything went fine. I filled out the landing permit and the customs form and when we landed I knew the drill so I could get in line for the entrance to Korea pretty quickly. Korea seems to be more open than Japan, they didn't take my photograph or fingerprints and they didn't ask anything at all. Everything went smooth getting on the airport coach and after around 40 minutes they announced the station. I thought that the bus would, like the bus in Japan did, stop at every station. But it didn't. Two stations later I found the stop button xD Luckily I had printed a map so I could find my way there after taking a wrong turn a few times :P

When I arrived at the hostel the time was about 10.30pm and after paying and choosing a bed I sat down in the living room to socialize with the people. Especially three Canadian girls and three German boys :) Already when I got there they had booze up and I joined in the drinking pretty quickly, which turned out not too be such a wise decision since I hadn't eaten anything in almost all day xD So around 1am I went to bed and just a little later the rest of them went out clubbing.

I woke up around eleven today and had Korean breakfast that they cooked. I didn't feel too well so I spent the day playing DS, until the time was around 3pm and everyone else had gone out and I figured I might as well do the same. So without any plan I just started wandering around in Seoul. It's so different from Japan! To begin with it's dirtier and here are almost no skyscrapers and the buildings are more colourful, not like in Tokyo where almost all buildings are grey or white :P

It was pretty scary going out and I feel a little lonely here. Not lonely in the sense that I'm all alone, but lonely in the sense that I don't know the language. When I was ordering lunch I first asked the staff "English?" and when she said no I asked "Japanese?" and she said no again, so it was all up to pointing and nodding. I kind of miss Japan right now...

Can't upload any pictures so that will come on May 4th when I'm back in Japan :)

Disneyland

On Monday Gan and I skipped school to go to Disneyland. It's not that far away so the trip took about an hour all on all (at least for me). It was really awesome going there, it was really a lot of fun and it felt like I was about ten years old again. It was not like FujiQ at all in the sense that I wasn't high on adrenaline all day xD

We started out taking pictures of the Cinderella castle in front of the entrance. Then we started walking further in wondering what to do first. Turned out a parade was just about to begin so we sat down waiting for it, while we waited Gan ran off to get us fastpasses for Space Mountain. Then the parade started. A lot of familiar faces in the parade, ofc starting out with Alice in Wonderland. The whole park was in an Alice in Wonderland-mode, probably due to Tim Burton's film :) After the parade we went to Tomorrowland. Where we started out with "Buzz Lightyear's Astro Blasters". On this ride you sat in small space ships with laser guns and you were supposed to aim and shoot laser on everything with a Z on it. Z standing for Evil Emperor Zurg. We continued with MicroAdventure, which was kind of like a film. You sat in something looking like a cinema and looked at the big screen while Dr. Nigel Channing (the guy who always sings all the songs in the Monty Python films) were trying to give the Inventor of the Year Award to Wayne Szalinski, who only happens to be the father in the "Honey, I shrunk the kids" films. In the end the whole audience ended up being shrunk xD It felt so real! :O But it was kind of weird hearing Szalinski and the Monty Python guy speaking Japanese...

After that it was finally time for Space Mountain (the fastpasses have a certain time when you can use them). Space Mountain is kind of like a roller coaster ride through space. It's so dark you can't see anything, not the tracks, not the carriage - nothing. Just the stars all around you flying past so fast... It was really cool. We continued in the space track and went to Star Tours. Which was a flight to a moon with a random robot and R2D2, travelling by light speed through space hitting meteors as it went :) That was fun! xD

Then we went on to Adventureland/Westernland on the other side of the park, getting fastpasses for Big Thunder Mountain before going on Pirates of the Caribbean. It was a boat ride through Tortuga and other pirate areas. The dolls made to look like Jack Sparrow looked very real almost as if he was really there! :O

After Pirates of the Caribbean we decided it was time for lunch, but before that we got caught up in a new parade. We watched the parade and then went to Hungry Bear Restaurant (!) to have some curry. After dinner we took a ride through the Snow White story and the Pinocchio story on those rides. Then we went up to Critter Country to get fastpasses for Splash Mountain before going to the Haunted House (which was kind of lame - the Wicked Witch in the Snow White ride was scarier) and then we went to It's a small world, where you sat on a boat and travelled all over the world seeing the culture (Sweden was the first), North America wasn't in there though xD During the whole ride they were singing "It's a small world after all" ("Våran jord är inte stor") in several different languages. Then it was finally time for Big Thunder Mountain, it was a roller coaster and it was so funny! One of the best rides of the park! After Big Thunder Mountain we went on Jungle Cruise, which were real old steamboats travelling through something set up as Africa's jungles. It was kind of funny, though, because at one point we went through a temple and that temple must have been in India, unless there are tigers in Africa :P When we got out of the temple we were back in Africa xD Our last ride in Adventureland before going to Toontown was Western River Railroad. An old steam engine train going through all of Adventureland/Westernland/Critter country. It was kind of cosy :) On our way to Toontown we saw Goofy, Pluto, Minnie and Woody walking around and getting to hug children. I was looking for Mickey, because I thought that if I saw him I would most definately hug him although it would look kind of weird I guess :P Anyway Toontown was funny. It felt like stepping into Kingdom Hearts xD At Toontown we bought popcorn with caramell flavour which we ate in the 30 minute line to "Roger Rabbit's Car Toon Spin". We walked around Toontown for a while after that, but it only consisted of the houses of Donald, Goofy, Minnie, Daisy and all the classics. I also found Mickey - in his house. They had set it up as a "meeting Santa"-thingy and the line was for 1 hour. I refused to stand in line amongst all the children for an hour just to hug Mickey so in the end I didn't :/ Instead we went on the children roller coaster, which was so quick it was funny xD

When it started to get dark we went on StarJets, which is space rockets. They were really small and you were supposed to be two people in one! xD Fun, fun :P Then we rushed back to Adventureland to go Big Thunder Mountain one more time - awesome. Then there was the Dreamlights Parade. Which is a light parade when all the lights go on in the park - it was really beautiful. After the parade we went on a ride through the Peter Pan story before rushing back to the Cinderella castle to watch the fireworks :) After the fireworks we still had more time before our fastpasses to Splash Mountain were valid so we went on Grand Circuit Raceway. Which is a car you drive (almost) on your own through a curvy track :P After that we still had more time so we went on a ride through the Winnie the Pooh story and then it was finally time for Splash Mountain. When we got there the line's waiting time were only five minutes. But we used the fastpasses anyway. Splash Mountain turned out to be a boat ride through the Bedknobs and Broomstick story. In the first round we were in the very back and didn't get very wet in the final hill (just falling down from a huge hill into water), but in the second round (since there were no line we went one more time directly after the first one) we got to sit in the first row and had a carriage all by ourselves. That round we got really wet xD But it was so funny! Water is fun :) By the time it was over the time was 10pm and it was the park's closing time. I was home around midnight and school the next day was not funny. Luckily now it's Golden Week, which means a whole week with holidays off from school and I'm going to Korea for a few days :) I will bring my laptop and if my Internet works there I will blog, but otherwise you wont see me online again until May 4th :)

More photos in the second and third albums :)