Sheer satisfaction

Since my safe and comfy lifestyle in sweden just changed into a vibrant reality in Shinjuku overnight, I thought the timing of breaking my poor blog activity is now.
I set off upon my journey two days ago. The moment I sat down in my flight chair I felt my nerves tingling and my excitement growing and growing intensively. I know it`s impossible to mentally prepare yourself for a trip like this anyway so I disconnected my nervousness and decided to just realx and enjoy the present instead. One of my silliest pleasures in life is for example In-flight food, and having drinks sky high by the window seat looking down at vast landscapes of clouds. When the beer and wine (I exploit every chance of getting more of course) starts to kick in it feels even more surrealistic. Listening to the mellow, hypnotic and playful tunes of turkish folk music and playing tetris at the same time didn`t exactly change that fact either haha..

My transit was in Istanbul and my flight was delayed for two hours, but I didn`t really care. I used the time effectivly by tasting different turkish delights and drinking deep black coffee while I sat down in front of my laptop watching a deathnote episode. Perfect combo! And a good way to get my lingo flowing. Oh by the way, one company producing turkish delights was called "Harems delights" haha.. omg can you imagine seeing that brand name on a company van?? Anyway I got my delights, otherwise I would probably have turned into that spoiled brat Edmund from the chronicles of narnia in that scene when he meets the witch.

The flight to tokyo took about 12 hours, but it felt more like 12 minutes. I started this one with some wine and hazelnuts watching gentlemen prefer blonds. It was entertaining, especially watching monroe`s elaborate yet innocent-looking attempts of getting her hands on even more bling blings. I also saw deathnote and the secret garden so time flew fast. All of the sudden I was crossing eastern china. Then breakfast, and swish I was in tokyo!

After a brief but quite serious discussion over the motives of my 2-month visit with the customs officer I was free! Why do I always get the moody ones? Come on.. next time I`ll write an essay about my damn motives. I`m not really the devil in disguise. Well, he was only doing his job and maybe he had a bad day or something I don`t know. Problem solved.

When I reached the guesthouse around 7 pm only the tenant was there waiting for me. He was cool and everything went smooth. The jetlag had taken it`s toll on me so I was planning to go to bed early. That`s exactly what didn`t happen. A nepalese guy named Lama (hehe) came home from work and we started to chat. He seems to be a nice balanced character. I went out to buy us some beers for the both of us to relax with in front in front of the TV.
But before that I celebrated my new life with a big bowl of tomyam raamen with bean sprouts and fresh coriander at a restaurant just around the corner of the guesthouse. Sooo DELICIOUS!! When I got back another room mate had shown up. She`s chinese, about my age and her name is Mao (XD what`s with these stereotypical names?? hilarious!). I like her, she`s smart and funny. Anyway we stumbled into a conversation about the political relations between China and Tibet.. this is gonna end up bad considering the nationalities I thought. But nope it didn`t Mao just emphasized that the government of china doesn`t quite reflect the opinions of the citizens. And yeah, that`s sad facts and very old news I`d say.

After a while an 18 year old super energetic french guy named Pierre showed up. He proposed karaoke in the terms "crawl out of the building by dawn". How could I say no to that!? So me, mao and pierre met up with some of their friends and ran off to a cheap karaoke-bar nearby. We kept filling glasses to the brim and sang for hours. I was still in this hazy bubble somewhere between dream and reality so this was a fantastic first day in tokyo for me. It didn`t end there though. Afterwards it was afterparty at one of pierre`s friends`s apartment nearby. The "host" bought ridiculous amounts of beer so we drank some more and talked nonsense for a few hours. One of which was Taka`s (the owner of the apartment) paranoia over a slight pain in his lungs. So he went down to the hospital in the middle of the night/morning, then when he got back he said that the doctors had told him that it was just a normal harmless cold.. hahaha that was entertaining! The last thing I remember us doing before I went home to sleep was that we were playing around with this creepy marionett doll taka had bough in germany. It was dressed in a bizarre feathered bird dress. He striked poses with it to the rythms of a bongo drum in the hallway and the play was finished with a delayed interpretation of a pose to "kamehamehaaaa!!!" HAHA if laughters could kill... I slept for 15 hours.

To quit a job politely

A few days ago I sat outside on the porch staring at the phone in my hand. I was preparing a speech to my employer about quitting. Since I was given the offer of working at least 75% at the tourist centre (starting in a few weeks) I knew I would have to confront the clash between my sporadic shifts at the grocery store with my coming steady job at the tourist centre. However, I dislike the fact that I might strike the employers at the grocery store as an insincere and calculating person, even though they know I don´t work there very often and also that I need to save an immense amount of money to be able to pursue my future goals. So I brainstormed over how they might respond to my situation in order to make cunning counterattacks and give them qualified reasons to justify my decision.
Maybe it sounds ridiculous, but this is important for me because I`ve grown more attached to my coeworkers and their efforts to improve the system and to please the customers. Anyway the contract binds me for three months, and then whether I wanna extend it or not is solely up to me. Finally I make the call and Pernilla answers as usual.. After I´ve explained the situation she says with an earnest voice:

- Daniel I understand, anyone would have done the same.

When the short conversation was over I though to myself, next time I face this mild dilemma I won´t waste time on describing personal affairs. Business is business and clearly speaks for itself.


PS: Things worth mentioning today!

1: Today a customer (I had nooo idea we had it) bought a "big foot anywhere comfortable mat" hahah??.. my first thought was, who would buy such a perfect example of crap like that?? The mat had the shape of a giant foot with short spikes on top, it was turquoise and made of some synthetic plastic material.

2: I heard on a radio program that some people have a religious belief which regards orgasm to be as close as you can get to feel the presence of god, or experience enlightenment.. the second stupidest thing I´ve heard in a long time. I guess it depends on how you define the loose term enlightenment though haha..

"Labeling the affect"

I found a rather interesting piece of article about how to control or ease distractive brain activity. I´ll paste some of it.

A flurry of articles this week about the neuroscience research showing that labeling your feelings can quiet your brain and increase impulse control.

During the day make mental notes such as "I am eating," or "I am pleased," or "I am thinking about the deposition." If you practice daily, your skill in mental note taking will grow and you will be able to engage in it, no matter what is happening. By labeling the affect, by taking mental notes, a self-leader can become calm in the middle of a storm.

Haha! I´m gonna try this with the tiniest and most insignificant feelings I have. "I´m staring lifelessly into the big white wall" And that will still help :) I´m more the kind of guy who repeat false claims in my head until my brain is tricked, and then I feel bettre. I´ll have fun with this a few days to come and see how it works out^^

Good prospects

Spring is unmistakable now, there are greens gushing up from the ground and trees everywhere! In exactly a month now I and two of my closest friends will travel to Italy and have a taste of the atmosphere of Rome for almost a week. I´m very excited, we´ll have the best time! :D On top of this, Tomo is coming to visit Sweden this summer!!! And ex-locals are coming back to Nyköping this summer to visit their families or to work during the holidays. These are people I normally hang out with very often with so we´ll definately have a lot of catching up and partying ahead of us!
Soon enough I´ll finally be able to save some more money due to the at least three months 80-85% employment at the tourist centre starting from early June. Plus, I believe that Ooishi, an old japanese classmate of mine will be off to Scotland for 6 months of studies on an exchange program. We talked about meeting up in Edinburgh, that would be awesome. Or he´ll flee to sweden as he put it and then I don´t have to pay for the ticket ^^ I´ll stop now before I come to think about something bad that might ruin my enthusiasm or many plans!

Hell girl fanaticism

I stumbled across the hell girl or "jigoku shojo" series while living in Tokyo last year. It was regularly shown on TV on wednesdays in the late afternoon which was much too early for my everyday schedule so I couldn´t time it too often. The reruns were on weekends so that was also doomed. Anyway now I´ve started so watch it from scratch on the web and I´m spellbound! The artwork is an aesthetic goldmine, the characters (Enma Ai a.k.a. hell girl in particular) are quite attractive. I`ve always liked horror movies with deep gloomy tensions. Those feelings are a common ingredient in hell girl, well the plot doesn´t really allow much else haha... I also saw that they´ve produced hell girl as a live-action. Still unexplored, but my expectations are low. It Would be interesting to have a glimpse though.

Mental magic

A couple of days ago my dad listened a radio broadcast where they introduced this swedish guy (can´t remember his name right now) who had recently won the national championship of "mental magic". I hadn´t heard of that particular concept before so I got interested . I´ll try to describe it shortly. There´s no hocus pocus or supernatural abilities/practice behind it as you might have guessed. Magicians are a bit different since they almost exclusively play with visual illusions. The people devoted to this sport, entertainment or whatever you wanna call it, focus on psychological methods, subconscious associations and also stereotypical estimations of how a person might work mentally. When the mental estimation of the chosen person is done the "magic performance" can begin. Mostly it seems to be prepared like this, or simply like a genereal devious experiment on random people.

The practice is a bit tricky to explain so I´ll just show you a video of an example and you´ll get a clear picture. The swedish champion is apparently inspired by a quite famous british guy named Derren Brown. He´s incredibly skilled in his art. The truths or flaws he proves and the sensations he creates in his many experiments are both hilarious and scary!! If you have a few extra minutes to spare check out the video linked below. It´s a mind-game on a film student.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ws54lrylm7c

Letters from afar

During the first quarter of this year I`ve unexpectedly received a few personally designed letters from certain friends. I love the feeling of knowing that this very untraditional and slightly time-consuming message has been especially made to me. That piece of extra time you`d most likely spend on dozing off on the sofa seeing a film or whatever has instead been spent on writing me a creative letter. It`s brilliant! And (notably) unselfish. The daily deja vu`s break with a rare thrill. It`s kind of a mixture between a most welcome surprise, euphoria, and a dash of self-importance. And not least the fact that the mail is for once substantial and doesn´t consist of the regular 1`s and 0`s. Keep on posting letters or envelopes, they`re much appreciated! I will write back to you of course. If not, what am I wishing for any haha..

Warm thanks and best regards friends!

Latest motto: much time to use, no time to lose

In the recent weeks I´ve had an incredible amount of spare time (job hunt). No important obligations, no economical problems nor any annoying obstacles standing in my way. These circumstances combined have put me in a quite rare situation. All daily perpetual questions about how to live one´s life, future prospects, passions, hopes and essential truths inevitably become clearer. Fortunately it´s been mostly positive for me. I could might as well gone miserable or indifferent for some time. But I chose to be superactive and to set up small goals.

Not being distracted by everyday-must-do´s jobs or whatever that keep your mind occupied, I´ve had the luxury to concentrate and focus all my energy on myself which created this long-term insight. I´ll skip the spiritual stuff becuase that´ll be looong and dull. anyway it was very liberating. When it comes to practice I´ve noticed for instance that Books are superrrrb and can contribute to A LOT. Perhaps studying subjects that didn´t intrigue me at all in school killed some of my pleasure in sucking knowledge from thick books. A few weeks ago I read a book about japanese history, partly because I need it in order to pass an entrance examination for a university I´m gonna apply for. Now I´ll start reading it it japanese as well.

Right now I´m reading a book called "Latin, the culture, the history, the language" (in swedish). It covers those areas in a very smart, sensible and rich way. You find out more about everything that has coexisted with the language and other earlier languages/societies relatively related to Latin. So basically it´s origin, development, cultural and linguistic significanse in modern european languages. But also plenty of history about how normal people lived during the antiquity, relations between powerful kingdoms etc. There´s even information about what roman emeperors knew about swedes by the time we probably first started to call oursleves swedes (not literally "swedes of course") haha... On top of that the book consists of descriptions and explanations of how latin is gramatically constructed (pretty complex sometimes!) famous qoutes and a glossary with verbs, adjectives, nouns, substantives, all mentioned quotes bla bla and all what grammar includes.

It´s amazing how influenced many of european languages are by Latin, much thanks to the church and it´s missionares of course. I read that around 80% of the englsh words in usage today derives from latin. In swedish the percentage is 40%. This fact become even more obvious when you reach the the latin glossary section. In most cases the stem of verbs and loads of adjectives are origins to modern words with just a different ending or modification. For example descendere - descend, or: desperare - despair or: divinus - divine. Learning latin means thus learning for example a bit french, spanish, italian or german too in a sense. Did I bore you yet? Anyway to me this is fascinating. I´m thinking about improving my german, and then start studying some french, Italian or spanish. That`ll be my next project after I´m done with applying for admission to TUFS in Tokyo! I hope I can get that %#¤& scholarship because then I don´t have to worry about not affording the semester fee haha.. It´s kinda fundamental.

Another thing I have time for now is to watch films that have haunted my mind for a long time. Films I want to watch. The french movie "Persepolis" (linked below) was on that list. For those who like black humor, innovative filming or political depictions I think you should see it!

Yesterday I had a small house party with a specific dress code: alter-ego. Not everyone showed up transformed though as I more or less had expected, but that didn´t matter. It turned out to be a relaxed evening drinking together with extraordinary and funny looking friends haha.. For example "sonic the hedgehog" who later on forced "the robber" (armed with crude cutlery) to go outside and roll around in the snow as a punishment during a drinking game. Then there was of course "Katitzi" (what we usually call her :)) a tough and independent little gypsy girl from an old TV show, and a detective with a fierce trench coat and a huge magnifying glass. They were impressive! Creds for the effort! I was a vampire, a character I considered to be perfect in order to express my temptations of scaring people, behave sociopathic, and radiate some kind of dark attractive charisma hehe.. But unfortunately even with the exterior of a vampire I couldn´t convert my mind into the ideal state ^^ It was a good get-together and I loved just having a party at my house for once, especially when I´m currently the emperor of this adress until my parents get back home from Spain.

I was supposed to go to a home party today and later on go clubbing, but I felt a bit drowsy and worn out so I went down town through a path along the coast, drank some hot cofffee and then rented some movies instead. Aah great way to finish off the weekend. I feel veeery satisfied.

Late night chat

Being partly alone in a big villa living in a a town that has gone into a winter lair makes me think about what I could have been doing in Tokyo this time of year. If it would be possible for me right now to get a really cheap round-trip ticket to Japan for just a day or so, then I would definately spend that precious time in Shimokitazawa, one of my favourite districts in Tokyo. I would visit the "Free factory" and seclude myself with some certain friends in the private lounge area up the stairs behind that bookshelf and let the ours pass talking about.. whatever comes to mind with a strong drink. That would be SOMETHING!.. Dreaming is not healthy for me..aargh! I need to find a job now. These are not empty complaints, I am searching and I am putting my soul into it. Soon enough my efforts will show results.

Today I received a call from the school where I studied japanese for roughly a year. Together with some eager friends I´m waiting for a letter containing the test results from JLPT and another proficiency test to land in my mailbox any day now. Apparently they had sent my results to another guy in my former class whose name is too similair to mine for them to see the difference!! Aah! Now I have to wait about 5 days extra. However, seeing it from the bright side, now I know for sure the letter is on it´s way and I got to do some small talk in japanese! (normally asleep somewhere in the back of my head).

Resurrected

FINALLY!! Seeing pictures from christmas of 2007 has tormented me for soo long now. I have nothing else to blame but sloth so I guess that I risk going hell for my behaviour. Just for the fun of it I recently did that test again that determines which level of hell (it´s evident by terms of capital sins that NO human can possibly go to heaven) and I wound up in the burning hot city of Dis -lvl 6 "the heretics" so I couldn´t have sent a more apt judgement myself. The descriptions of each level is very vivid, raw and dense but at the same time funny and amusing. That Dante really knows how to write that´s for sure. I remember that I found his "la divina commedia" to be pretty interesting when we studied some of his work in school. I guess that´s why I still have pictures from illustrations for his texts in my head. The most bizarre thing is that his idea of hell reflected the imagination people of his time and world had of the afterlife. God I don´t even know why I´m still writing about this haha... anyway here´s the link if you wanna see what awaits you FOUL SINNER!! :D
http://www.4degreez.com/misc/dante-inferno-test.mv
The

It´s almost spring, but not just yet so I thought of a fair picture of it.

PS: Yeah my posts are far from always entertaining, obviously. Simply because sometimes I write for myself, sometimes for you and sometimes just for the sake of getting rid of inner mortifying or vexing tensions that must destroyed. The bottom line is that just like any other blogger I like to write about what´s on my mind despite how pathetic it might be. Cheeerz