東京 - Tokyo
Hey!
So how do I start this? Well, I haven´t had time to write every day as I planed... It has been a tight schedule here in Tokyo, a lot of things that I wanted to do before I´m going south. So... this post will be along one, hehe.
Thursday: My dad and I went into Tokyo, and the plan was to walk in Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is the largest park in Tokyo, which include Yoyogi Park and Meiji shrine (please correct me if I am wrong). It started with that we went off too early (at Yoyogi station) when you actually should get off at Harajuku... So if you are going to Yoyogi park, Harajuku is the right station! It was extremely warm outside and my dad and I were sweating like pigs, haha. Inside the park, we were met by a sound of probably thousands of crickets. It was so peaceful in the park and almost no people, which probably was because we went to "the wrong" entrance. But it was nice, no tourists :3 We went to Meiji Shrine (visited it in 2017 also), but this time it was fewer people there. Maybe it´s not high season for tourists? We continued our way to Harajuku for lunch, but we didn´t get far, near the entrance to Meiji shrine is there Meiji Jingu Inner Garden, and we decided to go in there. It was a walking path in it and it was a pound with a lot of yellow water lilies, gha, it was so beautiful. After our visit to the garden did we continue to Harajuku for some lunch. We found a great place in an alley, around five minutes from Harajuku station. One annoying thing is that a lot of people, compared to only two years ago, speaks English. If you are a foreigner, they will try to speak English to you. Good for tourists who don't speak Japanese, but bad for us who are trying to improve our Japanese ^^'. I´m wondering how the situation with my host family will be like. In one way it´s good if they know English because then they can explain stuff. But in another way, if they don´t speak English, then I kind of will have no choice than to try and speak Japanese, and maybe this is the best situation to improve my language skills. Hmm, dono...
Well back to what we did more. After our late lunch ( we ate around 3 o´clock), we headed to Takeshita street, a big shopping street which I wrote about here. I found a store that sold shoes for us with small feet, yaay. The store of heaven for us people with small feet. I ended up buying 3 pairs for around 600 kr (under 60€). Yup super cheap! Before I went to Japan I was told that they all have small feet here. I would say that's not the case anymore. Of course, there are not many that have size 40 and over, but the normal sizes are 36-39, which I think is the normal size also in Europe. Last time I was here, the shops didn't even have sizes under 36... We also visited a 100 yen store (Daiso), I read somewhere that the store in Harajuku is the largest in Japan. They sell most of the stuff for 100 yen (now around 9 kr), and its good stuff, not just crap! I didn´t buy so much though because I already have a lot of packing, but when I arrive in Osaka I will definitely visit one to buy some stuff. One thing I noticed is that they had a lot of things with "M" on, anyone knows why that is? Of course, I had to buy some, like socks and a super cute keyring haha. My dad ended up buying 2 belts, the same as he bought last time, I would say it´s his favorite :). After our shopping tour, we headed back to Omiya to meet a friend of my parents, who they met back in 1976, for dinner. We ate at a nice Japanese restaurant, which was delicious, as always. We ordered a lot of different foods that we all shared. After dinner, before heading home, we went to a café. I drank some sweet ice drink with matcha (green tea) which was delicious. I so need to drink that again!!
Friday: On Friday we were going to a company that I had got invited to. The company is a Swedish company but the head office is located here in Tokyo. The day started with us getting lost on our way to the train station... We had to ask for the directions to a train station and apparently, we had gone in the total wrong direction -.-'. We ended up missing the train, so we took the next train, which was the wrong one haha... After a lot of switching trains, we managed to arrive at the company, sweating like pigs again. So how did it go? hmm, let´s just say I don't think I will get an internship or job there, hehe. Anyhow, they asked me a few questions, got books about the company and then we went for lunch. I was kind of nervous so my Japanese sucked... :( One weird thing on the restaurant was that all tables had small baskets with raw eggs. Apparently, you should take one raw egg and mix it with soya sauce and then put it over the rice, then itadakimasu! It was actually delicious, will probably start eating it when I get home.
After lunch, we had planned to go to Odaiba. We got help from a Swedish guy who worked for the company so we didn´t get lost again haha. We also got help buying Pasmo cards. I don't understand why our Japanese friends haven´t told us to get them... You can apparently use them all over Japan for buses, trains, etc (maybe not in the countryside). So much easier to have one, instead of buying new tickets every time we are going somewhere. It is super easy to use, you only choose which amount you will load onto the card, then every time to go by, for instance, a train you only use your card and when you get off you use it again and the right amount will be taken from the card. When we didn´t have this card, we had to figure out how much we should pay to every station, which is not that easy when most stations only have the names written in kanji. So if you are going to Japan, get this card directly at the train station!
In Odaiba we went to Digital Art Museum, you can find more info here. It was amazing, I can really recommend you to go there. This museum had a lot of art in water, which was heaven for our feet. It was hard to take good pictures, but I will share some videos of some of the attractions down below. If you own a digital camera, bring it, you can probably then get amazing photos! We also stumbled upon a "Sweden House", which was a company that sold Swedish houses, imported from Dalarna. The salesperson was so nice and let us take a look inside the showhouse and gave some information about the company in a mix of Japanese and English. Apparently, they have a whole village in Sapporo consisting of "Dalahus", a typical house from an area in Sweden. It lived around 800 people there, and only approx. 8 people were foreigners, the rest were Japanese people. Another thing we also stumbled on was a summer festival "omatsuri". They celebrated one year until OS, which will be held in Tokyo next year. I got to play table tennis with a guy who had played in a competition in my hometown, and who had even played in my old club, small world right? They also had a small farmers market, where we bought some brown rice and miso to bring home. We also bought melon pan = melon bread, but I was not a big fan, only tasted sugar, hehe.
The day ended with us going to Tokyo bay. We walked around and ate dinner at a Korean restaurant with a view of the water and the lights from Tokyo.
Saturday: On Saturday we went to Tokyo to go to a harp concert. It was a relative to our friend Misao who was playing. It was beautiful music, but it made you a little bit drowsy. I really had to keep myself from falling asleep, not because it was bad, more because it was so peaceful. There where actually a lot of Japanese who fell asleep for a while there. xD After the concert we went to Harajuku because it was a summer festival there, yup there is a lot of festivals in Japan. They had performers with a lot of different dance groups, and they all were amazing (will post a video I filmed). The sun was really hot this day so I dragged the whole group (me, my parents, Misao, a guy from Vietnam, another one from the Netherlands, and one from France), to get some Bubble Tea, (my new drug haha). We then went back to the festival to wtach some more performance, until we headed to Shinjuku for some dinner before we headed home. The dinner place was in a roof garden, gha it was so cozy! Don´t remember the name of the place though... On our way back home, the guys talked about sake and Izakayas, they had apparently only been to one Izakaya during their stay here :O (How?! they are like everywhere, with super cheap, but tasty food). So on our way back, Misao took us to a local Izakaya where they had sake tasting. I´m not much a fan of sake, so instead, I took umeshu :3. After a short visit to the Izakaya, we headed home to our beds.
Sunday: Yester we took it easy and just walked around the area of Nishi-Omiya. We stopped at a secondhand store who was owned by two cute older ladies. I didn´t by much, but my mum did some shopping. We also stayed for lunch at an Izakaya. I ordered randomly some dishes, wasn't 100% sure what it was. one thing was Shumai, it was so good! A dish originally from China. Tiptiptip, eat it!!
Later in the afternoon, we started to pack our bags, and then we ate our last meal in Tokyo with Yasushi and his family. for a "welcome to Japan dinner". His wife can´t speak any English and his daughter can only speak a little, so it was nice that I could make a conversation with them in Japanese. His wife was so surprised and glad when I answered in Japanese, haha. So cute :3. We ate again at an Izakaya, and he ordered a lot of small dishes that we all shared. But then dishes kept coming xD In the end, or at least what we thought was the end he ordered big onigiris (rice balls) to us all + some nudel dishes. But it didn´t end here, one more round of big onigiris came in. Even his wife and daughter was surprised and said "what? more?" (in Japanese ofc). Anyway, the last onigiris didn´t anyone have room for, except Yasumi-chan, she can eat a lot o.O The rest of them did we get home, which we ate today, yummy in my tummy!
Now I´m at a hotel in Hirakata, only a bus ride from my University here in Japan. Tomorrow will the introduction week start, and in the afternoon they have a placement test in Japanese. With that said, I have to study now, ja mata ne!
p.s. scroll down for photos from Tokyo!
/マレーネ
So how do I start this? Well, I haven´t had time to write every day as I planed... It has been a tight schedule here in Tokyo, a lot of things that I wanted to do before I´m going south. So... this post will be along one, hehe.
Thursday: My dad and I went into Tokyo, and the plan was to walk in Yoyogi Park. Yoyogi Park is the largest park in Tokyo, which include Yoyogi Park and Meiji shrine (please correct me if I am wrong). It started with that we went off too early (at Yoyogi station) when you actually should get off at Harajuku... So if you are going to Yoyogi park, Harajuku is the right station! It was extremely warm outside and my dad and I were sweating like pigs, haha. Inside the park, we were met by a sound of probably thousands of crickets. It was so peaceful in the park and almost no people, which probably was because we went to "the wrong" entrance. But it was nice, no tourists :3 We went to Meiji Shrine (visited it in 2017 also), but this time it was fewer people there. Maybe it´s not high season for tourists? We continued our way to Harajuku for lunch, but we didn´t get far, near the entrance to Meiji shrine is there Meiji Jingu Inner Garden, and we decided to go in there. It was a walking path in it and it was a pound with a lot of yellow water lilies, gha, it was so beautiful. After our visit to the garden did we continue to Harajuku for some lunch. We found a great place in an alley, around five minutes from Harajuku station. One annoying thing is that a lot of people, compared to only two years ago, speaks English. If you are a foreigner, they will try to speak English to you. Good for tourists who don't speak Japanese, but bad for us who are trying to improve our Japanese ^^'. I´m wondering how the situation with my host family will be like. In one way it´s good if they know English because then they can explain stuff. But in another way, if they don´t speak English, then I kind of will have no choice than to try and speak Japanese, and maybe this is the best situation to improve my language skills. Hmm, dono...
Well back to what we did more. After our late lunch ( we ate around 3 o´clock), we headed to Takeshita street, a big shopping street which I wrote about here. I found a store that sold shoes for us with small feet, yaay. The store of heaven for us people with small feet. I ended up buying 3 pairs for around 600 kr (under 60€). Yup super cheap! Before I went to Japan I was told that they all have small feet here. I would say that's not the case anymore. Of course, there are not many that have size 40 and over, but the normal sizes are 36-39, which I think is the normal size also in Europe. Last time I was here, the shops didn't even have sizes under 36... We also visited a 100 yen store (Daiso), I read somewhere that the store in Harajuku is the largest in Japan. They sell most of the stuff for 100 yen (now around 9 kr), and its good stuff, not just crap! I didn´t buy so much though because I already have a lot of packing, but when I arrive in Osaka I will definitely visit one to buy some stuff. One thing I noticed is that they had a lot of things with "M" on, anyone knows why that is? Of course, I had to buy some, like socks and a super cute keyring haha. My dad ended up buying 2 belts, the same as he bought last time, I would say it´s his favorite :). After our shopping tour, we headed back to Omiya to meet a friend of my parents, who they met back in 1976, for dinner. We ate at a nice Japanese restaurant, which was delicious, as always. We ordered a lot of different foods that we all shared. After dinner, before heading home, we went to a café. I drank some sweet ice drink with matcha (green tea) which was delicious. I so need to drink that again!!
Friday: On Friday we were going to a company that I had got invited to. The company is a Swedish company but the head office is located here in Tokyo. The day started with us getting lost on our way to the train station... We had to ask for the directions to a train station and apparently, we had gone in the total wrong direction -.-'. We ended up missing the train, so we took the next train, which was the wrong one haha... After a lot of switching trains, we managed to arrive at the company, sweating like pigs again. So how did it go? hmm, let´s just say I don't think I will get an internship or job there, hehe. Anyhow, they asked me a few questions, got books about the company and then we went for lunch. I was kind of nervous so my Japanese sucked... :( One weird thing on the restaurant was that all tables had small baskets with raw eggs. Apparently, you should take one raw egg and mix it with soya sauce and then put it over the rice, then itadakimasu! It was actually delicious, will probably start eating it when I get home.
After lunch, we had planned to go to Odaiba. We got help from a Swedish guy who worked for the company so we didn´t get lost again haha. We also got help buying Pasmo cards. I don't understand why our Japanese friends haven´t told us to get them... You can apparently use them all over Japan for buses, trains, etc (maybe not in the countryside). So much easier to have one, instead of buying new tickets every time we are going somewhere. It is super easy to use, you only choose which amount you will load onto the card, then every time to go by, for instance, a train you only use your card and when you get off you use it again and the right amount will be taken from the card. When we didn´t have this card, we had to figure out how much we should pay to every station, which is not that easy when most stations only have the names written in kanji. So if you are going to Japan, get this card directly at the train station!
In Odaiba we went to Digital Art Museum, you can find more info here. It was amazing, I can really recommend you to go there. This museum had a lot of art in water, which was heaven for our feet. It was hard to take good pictures, but I will share some videos of some of the attractions down below. If you own a digital camera, bring it, you can probably then get amazing photos! We also stumbled upon a "Sweden House", which was a company that sold Swedish houses, imported from Dalarna. The salesperson was so nice and let us take a look inside the showhouse and gave some information about the company in a mix of Japanese and English. Apparently, they have a whole village in Sapporo consisting of "Dalahus", a typical house from an area in Sweden. It lived around 800 people there, and only approx. 8 people were foreigners, the rest were Japanese people. Another thing we also stumbled on was a summer festival "omatsuri". They celebrated one year until OS, which will be held in Tokyo next year. I got to play table tennis with a guy who had played in a competition in my hometown, and who had even played in my old club, small world right? They also had a small farmers market, where we bought some brown rice and miso to bring home. We also bought melon pan = melon bread, but I was not a big fan, only tasted sugar, hehe.
The day ended with us going to Tokyo bay. We walked around and ate dinner at a Korean restaurant with a view of the water and the lights from Tokyo.
Saturday: On Saturday we went to Tokyo to go to a harp concert. It was a relative to our friend Misao who was playing. It was beautiful music, but it made you a little bit drowsy. I really had to keep myself from falling asleep, not because it was bad, more because it was so peaceful. There where actually a lot of Japanese who fell asleep for a while there. xD After the concert we went to Harajuku because it was a summer festival there, yup there is a lot of festivals in Japan. They had performers with a lot of different dance groups, and they all were amazing (will post a video I filmed). The sun was really hot this day so I dragged the whole group (me, my parents, Misao, a guy from Vietnam, another one from the Netherlands, and one from France), to get some Bubble Tea, (my new drug haha). We then went back to the festival to wtach some more performance, until we headed to Shinjuku for some dinner before we headed home. The dinner place was in a roof garden, gha it was so cozy! Don´t remember the name of the place though... On our way back home, the guys talked about sake and Izakayas, they had apparently only been to one Izakaya during their stay here :O (How?! they are like everywhere, with super cheap, but tasty food). So on our way back, Misao took us to a local Izakaya where they had sake tasting. I´m not much a fan of sake, so instead, I took umeshu :3. After a short visit to the Izakaya, we headed home to our beds.
Sunday: Yester we took it easy and just walked around the area of Nishi-Omiya. We stopped at a secondhand store who was owned by two cute older ladies. I didn´t by much, but my mum did some shopping. We also stayed for lunch at an Izakaya. I ordered randomly some dishes, wasn't 100% sure what it was. one thing was Shumai, it was so good! A dish originally from China. Tiptiptip, eat it!!
Later in the afternoon, we started to pack our bags, and then we ate our last meal in Tokyo with Yasushi and his family. for a "welcome to Japan dinner". His wife can´t speak any English and his daughter can only speak a little, so it was nice that I could make a conversation with them in Japanese. His wife was so surprised and glad when I answered in Japanese, haha. So cute :3. We ate again at an Izakaya, and he ordered a lot of small dishes that we all shared. But then dishes kept coming xD In the end, or at least what we thought was the end he ordered big onigiris (rice balls) to us all + some nudel dishes. But it didn´t end here, one more round of big onigiris came in. Even his wife and daughter was surprised and said "what? more?" (in Japanese ofc). Anyway, the last onigiris didn´t anyone have room for, except Yasumi-chan, she can eat a lot o.O The rest of them did we get home, which we ate today, yummy in my tummy!
Now I´m at a hotel in Hirakata, only a bus ride from my University here in Japan. Tomorrow will the introduction week start, and in the afternoon they have a placement test in Japanese. With that said, I have to study now, ja mata ne!
p.s. scroll down for photos from Tokyo!
/マレーネ
Me outside of Meiji Shrine.
Inside of Meiji Jingu Inner Garden.
Inside of Meiji Jingu Inner Garden. Reminds a little bit of Monet´s painting, right?
Kiyomasa´s well.
Mum and dad inside the Digital art museum, this was a room filled with gigantic balls that shifted in different colors.
View from the train, somewhere in Odaiba (notice the rainbow in the background).
View from Tokyo bay, bilden ger inte utsikten sin rättvisa
Another picture, but this one is from above. Our view from the restaurant.
Smygfottarn, hihi. This Japanese guy was sleeping standing, don´t know he managed to stay at his feet without xD
The performers at the harp concert.
Two cute girls that had performed on the festival in Harajuku.
So beautiful Yukatas.
Me, Netherlands, Misao, Dad, France, and Mum.
Popup store for "Sailor Moon watches".
Sunday lunch at an izakaya.
Whiskey anyone? The "small" bottle is the big size in Sweden haha, 750 ml. The big one is 4000ml.
Dinner with Yasushi and his family.
Me and Yasumi-chan :3
Dinner, last Thursday, a mix of everything
Dinner last Thursday, me, Dad, Masataka, Mum and Misao.
Fun decoration of an elevator dor in a mall by Tokyo Bay. Any One Piece fans?
Inside Digital Art museum
Another video from the Museum.
Performace from the festival.
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