2/12 Krispy Kreme, gingerbread and a trip to the roof

Before coming to Japan, I had heard how the opening of a Krispy Kreme store in Tokyo genereated hours and hours of lines. Naturally, I got very curious about their donuts and decided that I'd try them out at least once when I'd go to Japan. There's neither Starbucks, Cold Stone or Krispy Kreme in Sweden, which is really strange since we import so many things from the States anyway. I'd say, swap McD's with Cold Stone Creamery!

1. On a weekday afternoon, almost two years after the store opened, there's still a line outside.
2. The donuts! Or at least the remaining two when I realized I hadn't taken a picture yet.

The Krispy Kreme donuts are really sweet, a pure bliss if you like sugar. But you'll feel full for a couple of hours after that, so I don't think it was a very good idea of us to have them before dinner... Oh well. I still prefer Cold Stone over these donuts. :D

A and I picked E up at Shinjuku after getting the donuts, she was coming here with all her luggage cause she'd be staying at my place until my course ends and we leave for Kyoto for a couple of days. Nevertheless, we didn't ride the rush hours train but you still feel like you're a lot in the way when you board the train with huge suitcases. How do the other traveling Tokyoites do it? I've seen people with small, carry-on sized suitcases from time to time, but very rarely the large ones. I think there's this delivery system where you can have your bags delivered to the airport (or home if you're coming the other way). Before coming to Japan, I was seriously considering that alternative but I think we'll just take an early train when we go to Narita in a couple of days.

Back at the apartment, we threw a mini Swedish party. E had bought glögg in IKEA (she went there and to Disneyland without meeeeee! ;o;) and O had told me that you could buy pepparkakor at one of the supermarkets around our area, so I wouldn't have needed to go to Ame Yoko to get them before. How strange how Annas Pepparkakor managed to find its way to a normal, Japanese supermarket in Shimotakaido, Tokyo, Japan.

Later, when O joined us, he told us that you could actually go up on the roof, so we thought, why the heck not? Thing is, I don't think you are supposed to be able to go up there as there was no proper staircase. We had to climb over the corridor wall which is well over a meter tall and then walk (or crawl in my case...) up a steep section and then another (imagine a flight of stairs but without the stairs) of the building to get up. It's especially scary when it's pitch black dark outside and you don't really see the ground below you. But it was well worth it. We had so much space on the roof just for ourselves which left us wondering if we really were in Tokyo. Overwhelmed by this feeling, we started jumping around like little kids. And in the horizon, the lights from the city that never sleeps kept blinking away.

Dance, dance, dance on the roof.

30/11 Shibuya Red Walk

On Sunday the 30th, we were invited to join the Shibuya Red Walk event, organized by wAds, which one of the volunteers is a member of. The purpose of event (and all other events that are organized by wAds) is to increase the awareness of AIDS among young people in Japan.

1. On our way to the meeting point. Shibuya clearly needs to work on its Christmas decorations.
2. Weird speaker Christmas tree. Very... "modern".

Not knowing for sure where the meeting point was, we kept a lookout for anything red - the color for the World AIDS day (or 世界エイズデー in Japan). It turned out we didn't have to look very hard, they had people wearing red and holding red balloons stationed everywhere to guide us lost sheep to the right place. There, we each got to write a sign to hold for the walk. Oddly enough, writing the organization's slogan, "Stop AIDS" was not encouraged. Surely that's the most straight forward message there is, so we all found it strange that we were refrained from writing that.

Getting things organized.

After getting everything set up for the walk, we listened to a couple of speeches, I imagine it was the higher-ups in the organizations speaking. They also had an AV-star as a spokesperson, and she just seemed... gone in the head. A bit robotish. Everyone received a flyer and condoms with her autograph on. Why you would want that on a condom is a mystery though...

The walk started and we all tried to keep the lines neat, but people kept dropping off so in the end we were quite scattered. It's the first time I'm taking part in anything like this, I didn't even do it in Sweden, so it was quite interesting seeing the reactions from onlookers, a role which I am usually taking. Seeing things from the other side was refreshing. During the walk, the AV star would chant "今日は何の日ーー？" ("What day is it today?", she kept saying "today" even though the World AIDS day was actually tomorrow) and we would respond with "世界エイズデー" and it all went quite fine until the amp/speaker broke down. The cord got rolled on too much and decided to stop working. Without a speaker voice, no one wanted to raise their voices. I thought, what the heck, does our commitment only reach as far as the speaker cord? So I took the initiative and did the 今日は何の日shout and it worked a couple of times. Then we stopped, because apparently it was time to move on to the next activity on the event. (And it was getting awkward without a speaker... What did I say about commitment again?) But before that, one of the JLSP guys got interviewed by the cameraman. I suppose they wanted the gaijin perspective of this all as well. @_@

We took the train to a temple close to the Tokyo Tower. Goodie bags were handed out containing mineral water and brochures about HIV and AIDS, which of course were cutely illustrated because we're in Japan.

1. On our way to the train. Follow the red balloons!
2. Jizo-san in front of the shrine, all prepared for the cold to come.
3. Another shot.

Inside the temple, we got to hear a talk by this head priest who clearly didn't have any idea of what the event was about. The monks beside him had to (not so) discretely remind him that it was AIDS he was talking about when he got stuck, but suddenly he (the priest) just started babbling about cancer, forgetting all about AIDS. Awkward much? ^^; After that, we listened to a performance to... eh, a famous traditional arts performance guy. We only noticed he was famous afterwards when girls rushed to him and asked to take pictures together. Hm hm. So we asked for one too. :D Hehe. With this, we left the Shibuya Red Walk (they had more activities planned for the day) and went to get some lunch. Btw, I found this video on Youtube from that day! For the 30/11 event, watch until 3:07. We show up quite a lot (check 3:06)!

Anyway, the lunch. It deserves its own paragraph! S, Sv, A and I went to Tokyo Dome City in Suidobashi (where they have that roller coaster we rode on A's bday) to eat at Ichiran, a ramen restaurant. But not ANY ramen restaurant! First of all, they have this ordering system where you get this slip of paper while you stand in line (of course) to fill in your preferences about the noodles - the thickness, spiciness, how much taste the sauce should have and so on. When you reach the ticket machine, you buy the base ticket and any extras you'd want, I went for extra noodles on the recommendation of S. When you get in, you see (well, not actually, I'll get to it in a moment) you sit beside other customers in lines, except everything is being shield off! It's quite difficult to explain, but they had four lines and they all had a wooden board shielding off from curious eyes. On the board for each line, there's a monitor thing to see how many seats are empty. It's quite difficult to explain the layout, so I recommend going to the Ichiran website (link above) and check out the picture at the "Taste Counter" section, they explain it all there. It was all very surrealistic/futuristic, and I felt like I was in a Satoshi Kon movie. And the ramen! Was it good! It's another you-have-to-experience-it-yourself thing, it was really, really, awesomely good! If anyone goes to Japan, I recommend Ichiran very strongly, but it's better if you know some Japanese (to fill out the form).

My ramen.

Tokyo Dome City was illuminated with blinding lights for Christmas as well.

On #5, we went to this place called Gindaco, which serve delicious takoyaki! Also a recommendation if you happen to pass by it. Will probably have lines outside.

Hair check before taking purikura.

We had a hard time deciding if we wanted to go to karaoke afterwards, since heaps for schoolwork had to be done by the day after. But realizing that we don't have many days left (Sv and A are staying for another semester), we went anyway and sang Christmas songs för hela slanten. :D

Getting back to Shimotakaido, we went for a quick stop at the Seven Eleven and ran into the hairdresser who did my hair yesterday - I wouldn't have recognized her if S didn't say "thank you for yesterday". Woops. that was close. ^^;

ただいま

Sorry for the long wait - I'm back in Sweden now. I still plan on catching up with the blog, for memory's sake, cause it's only a matter of time until everything eventually fades away.
So yeah, stick around for a little bit more.

29/11 Got a hair cut

It looks like this now! When it's properly styled, at least...

S, Sv and I went to a hair dresser close to our Shimotakaido station (and we're talking real close here, just 'round the corner basically) and getting a hair cut in Japan is a whole another experience of its own! I think I got my hair washed twice or three times there. And the hairdresser always asks you "Would you kindly let me do..." and I would just nod my head away. I just told her (the only female hairdresser in the salon) to do whatever looks good. Everyone was quite talkative as well, even though you could sometimes notice that they just asked the questions for the sake of asking them, but that's how small talk goes. That was the part I was most nervous about actually, but it went okay on the whole. ^^; They were really friendly.

I've been trying to put wax and style it myself for the last couple of days but I never seem to get the same look. Ngarhhhh. :<

Tomorrow (Wednesday) is the last day of the JLSP program. It's time to say good bye to everyone. T_T

28/11 Roppongi illumination

So on Friday, we had our last D class lunch adventure - except it wasn't really lunch - we went for dinner this time, at a pretty high classy Korean place in Roppongi. H-sensei brought her husband and son with her, and I sat mostly with them throughout the dinner. The meat was so soft and it just melted in my mouth. *w* Korean food is a bit hotter than what I'm used to eating though, but on the whole I enjoy it! H-sensei's husband is quite a yakinikuer, has just the right timing too! He's charismatic but me being me I didn't make much effort initiating a conversation. Get out of shell, self!

Us JLSP:ers + a volunteer parted ways with H-sensei's family after dinner (her son had to attend classes the day after, a Saturday!) and we decided to stroll around the Roppongi area to check out the illuminations. Once Christmas strikes Tokyo, the whole city just lights up with all sorts of pretty and unpretty lights.

Kinda tacky when they go overboard with all the blue lights, but hey, it's Christmas, you're allowed to be tacky! Oh, and check out the huge spider in the last picture. It was right in front of this huge sky scraper department store building too, somehow didn' feel like it belonged there.

Tokyo Tower!

It was getting late so we headed home, about to spend or last weekend as students in Japan.

27/11

Procrastination art.

22/11 Climbing Mt. Takao

Shinjuku station is plastered all over with them. Huge posters showing a Mt. Takao covered in autumn colors, that is. After seeing those posters everyday for a couple of weeks I thought it'd be nice to go, so I suggested to E that we'd do that, and so yesterday we hopped on the local train heading for Takaosanguchi to climb our first (?) mountain. When speaking about seasons in Japan, autumn is well known for its beautiful striking red, orange and yellow hues. Depending on which part in Japan you are, the trees usually change colors from late October to some time in December. Tokyo entered the kouyou (紅葉) season a week or two ago, so it was perfect timing to go see the leaves in Mt. Takao.

We originally wanted to get out by ten, but were too tired and went out an hour later later than planned instead. Which was good, for a reason that will be mentioned later in the post. :D There's a local train from Shimotakaido going straight to the Takaosanguchi station, so we hopped onto that one. Sitting on the train for around 90 minutes lets you see a lot of the suburbs of Tokyo, and even if it was my first time seeing these places, I still got this sentimental, natsukashii feeling. At times we almost had the whole train for ourselves.

E and I took a lot of pictures, and most of them are of the same things. E's camera caught the colors much better though, so I hope she won't mind me showing them here on the blog. :D Oh, and I also need to say that the colors were much more intense than shown on the pictures, for most of the cases. It was impossible to catch, so if you think the colors look amazing on the pictures, just imagine how stunning they were in real life!

1. Such beautiful colors already in the start! Seemed like it was worth coming here after all! This is the billboard the climbers were greeted with once you exit the station.
2. Just a picture of the surroundings.
3. We've started walking! The first part was more like a shopping street in terms of both crowdiness and atmosphere. It was still beautiful though.
4. We hadn't even started actually climbing yet and we already went photo-crazy! Greens, yellows and assorted browns and oranges all mixed up.

1. Official starting point! I just need to say it again, the colors were breath-taking.
2. 3.8km to go. よしっ！行こう！
3. But before that, another picture...
4. Autumn Wonderland.

As we climbed the mountain, we noticed that the higher we got up, the greener the trees were. Except by the cable car stations, where the trees suddenly got red again. Hm, conspiracy anyone? And oh yeah, you could actually ride the cable car up to the top if you didn't want to walk by yourself, but then again what's the point? Of course E and I chose to conquer Mt. Takao with our own feet! :D Though we were very tempted to just hop onto the lift a couple of times... There were a lot of people climbing the mountain that day, and there were actually lines forming on the climbing paths. Orderly, too. The ones going up kept to the left and the ones going down (at 13:00?! How early had they been up?!) kept to the right. As expected from Japan!
To think that even mountain climbing would be crowded... I got tired pretty fast and it was mostly me who begged E to stop for a chocolate break. ^^; Hohoho...

1. Our first stop! Still quite a bit left until the top.
2. Lots of other people taking a break too.
3. Every single one of the ojizo-sans that we saw had gotten red hats put on. They'll be able to survive the winter now!

Actually, the halfway point was just around the corner (around 15 minutes after we took the pictures above) and that's where people changed to the next cable car. Needless to say, E and I felt very proud of ourselves having gone all this way by ourselves. Spurred by this energy, we didn't even think of taking the optiton of going up with the lifts/cars! But who could say no to a food break? :D

1. People getting off the cable cars.
2. Mochi dango being made!
3. They were d-e-l-i-c-i-o-u-s. :D Mmm mochi! I want to eat it again...
4. Closeby to the lift station. What are people looking at?
5. Oooh. This tree. With the sun in the back, it really stood out. But I don't think it warranted such a huge crowd. If I gathered a group of people and just stood somewhere looking at a plain rock, I bet lots of people would join us just for the sake of being in a crowd.
6. Fading mountains in the distance.

The rest of the road up wasn't as harsh as the first half. We passed a shrine (of which I'm too lazy to post pictures of because it's getting late ^^;; hohoho...) and saw typical shrine-y goodness. I'll just skip to the end!

The last obstacle was this flight of stairs!

At 15:47, around two and a half hour of climbing (including breaks) we finally reached the top! Yaaaaaay! We did it! And this is the good thing about getting out later than planned which I mentioned before: we timed the sunrise! :D

1. Colors, colors.
2. Incredibly red leaves. They've sort of got a blue tint to them on the photo, but imagine the brightest red you know and you've got the color of the leaves on this tree!
3. We were really there!
4. The reward of our hard work comes in the form of a sign proving that we got to the top. Yay!
5. But the real reward would prove to be a couple of steps ahead...
6. Fujisan! (Barely visible, but if you squeeze your eyes you'll see a faint shape a little to the left of the center.) I'm glad we made it to the top. :D The sight just seemed to be so much more meaningful when you've worked your way to it!

We walked around the area a bit and felt proud of ourselves, until we finally decided to head down. Thing was, we were so exhausted that we were ready to throw this pride away and ride the cable car down, but it turned out that it was 30 minutes from the top so we just decided to walk down and see if we'd find it. When we did, the line was so long that we just decided to walk down all the way instead. But not before we had a manjuu (饅頭) each! And then we ended up buying another one to share because it was sooo good. *w* (Mooom, can we eat 叉燒包 when I'm home again? I really miss it!) By the time we were finished with the manjuu, it had already gotten dark and we walked in almost complete darkness. Luckily we just needed to follow all the other people going down. A lot of them brought flashlights so there was no problem getting down safely.

Feeling dead tired, E and I slept most for most of the train ride back to Shimotakaido.

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23/11
Today, we got out and really felt the pain reminding us of the exercise we got yesterday. Well, at least me because I ignored the stretching. Also, after the JLSP course ends on the 3rd of December E and I are going to Kyoto for a couple of days! \o/ Bought tickets for the night bus and booked a room at an inn just today, so we're all set! Yay, Kyoto, we'll see you soon!