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The topic above is a metaphor only a few can decipher.

Now that I’ve finally caught up with the updates, it will be time to stay silent for a few days. The reason is that I’m going to goddamn Tokyo tomorrow. Eight years after Piro & Largo reportedly attended the Tokyo Game Show, I will attempt to duplicate the feat. Depending on how successful the journey is, there will be a comprehensive photo-filled entry about what I did in Tokyo and how insanely expensive the weekend eventually turned up to be sometime next week.

Until then, yahoo!

-Antti

Kuzuha-mooru returns

In all honesty, I must admit that Kuzuha mall didn’t return, I returned to Kuzuha mall. Twice. We made a morning run there with Will on Thursday and we returned there on Saturday with Henrik to prepare for the Koen-party. And to have fun. The amount of fun to be had in a Japanese supermarket is indirectly proportional to the intellectual activity of the persons involved. Luckily that wasn’t much of an issue for us as we concentrated our efforts to find anomalies in several items the shop had to offer. Little Engrish was to be found and it provided minor chuckles but I will dedicating a whole page to that particular topic soon so for now I’ll talk about something else.

O-sake. Alcohol. More specifically, beer. For all I know, Japan has the largest amount of different sized beer servings available. The general concept of “pics or it didn’t happen” has a strong grasp on me so here is a photo of the option for less experienced drinkers. Notice our test dummy on the verge of tears:

Soul-crushing disappointment

The other side of the spectrum was offering something quite different:

Life worth living

Believe it or not, the small cans were also sold in six packs, which allows for the use of infinite verbal distortions when quantifying your alcohol use: “I had four six packs and didn’t feel a thing!” for the boastful moron, or “I only had one beer!” mumbled to the vigilant authority figure who realizes you are not walking straight when trying to find your way home.

Here comes the winner, though: A 2,7 litre plastic bottle of Japanese whiskey. Disregard my content smile, I would not want to taste that putrid concoction. A whiskey that costs under 5€ a litre cannot possibly be made for human consumption.

Drowning in whisky

I know I could have omitted myself from the photos and it would have improved this entry by a margin, but I sort of love myself so the end result was unavoidable.

You must gather your party before venturing forth

There was a big party in the park on Saturday night. Alcohol was involved. Nobody died.

Not-Kobe

In other news, we were supposed to go to Kobe on Sunday, but it was raining so we didn’t. End of story.

-Antti

Kappazushi

It might sound a bit weird, but I had never been to a kaitenzushi before Friday. Obviously, that shameful record had to be modified, so after a short after-school workout, Elliot and I cycled to the highly popular Kappazushi, a conveyor belt sushi restaurant that sells any plate of sushi at a modest price of ¥100. The experience was enjoyable, and the concept was proved not completely worthless because when dinner was over I had 12 empty plates on my table and a bill that rose to ¥1260 tax included. That was still only around 1/5^th of the price one would pay for a similar sized sushi meal in Finland, except the choice at Kappazushi was by far wider than anything you could find in the Cold North.

The conveyor belt system was supported by something hilariously handy. Above every table was a small touch screen through which customers were able to place orders. Those orders, whenever applicable, were not brought to the table by service personnel but by a miniature shinkansen that had its own rail track above the sushi belt. When we returned to Kappazushi the following week (I’m living in the future) with a larger gaijin-posse, we were able to capture the curiosity on camera. Until I actually get the photos, please look at this kappa.

© Alex Wald

-Antti

“Les jours passent et la vie suit son cours

La politique reste la même que tu vote contre ou pour”

The message I want to convey by quoting Mc Solaar is that it’s not intellectually stimulating to write entries about standard schooldays and other things mundane. In order to avoid feeling guilty, though, here’s a little something to read until I do something actually worth reporting.

Supôtsuman desu kara!

What the fuck is wrong with me. Last week I went to work out at the gym thrice, went jogging for about 8kms twice at 6:30 in the morning, played ultimate and basketball whenever the opportunity arose and attended the sports festival on Saturday. Not to mention the n+1 times I cycled to Hirakata station and back. Clearly, I’m losing it. I want to go back to Azeroth.

The Christmas in September

I haven’t had any kind of culture shock here until now. This is not something I say to comfort myself, it’s the truth. Quite on the contrary, I’m already getting depressed about having to go back home next year, study all those goddamn accounting courses from scratch with people 3 years younger than me and write my bachelor’s thesis about a topic I don’t care about. I haven’t been specifically missing anything from Finland except a Tiskiharja (“Dishbrush”, something foreign barbarians have never heard of, written with a capital letter because of its holy nature), but when I saw a message in my CIE mailbox stating that I had received a package, it definitely made my day. I biked home whistling joyfully trying not to disturb the neighbors too much and opened the treasure chest that contained some Finnish greatness. See for yourself:

Kyl mää täl pärjän puol vuat. Kiitoksi vaan kauhia pal!

-Antti

Easy like Sunday Morning

I hadn’t planned to do anything on Sunday, but Visa was going to Kyoto with a few Japanese acquaintances and had asked Henrik and me along earlier during the week. I had originally agreed to go, but after staying awake until 3 am on Saturday, I had chosen the path of sleep instead. Fortunately, Visa didn’t readily agree to my selfish change of plans and kept calling both our keitais a few times on Sunday morning until I was ready to wake up (2 hours later than what had been planned). Thus we went to Kyoto, met up with Visa & the girls and went to take some purikura pictures. After all the important procedures were over, we headed for Arashiyama-district, more specifically the Iwatayama Monkey Park. Going to Kyoto to visit temples had become a standard of sorts, so going there to see monkeys instead immediately heightened my interest.

Who’s been touching these monkeys?

By the time we got to Arashiyama I was getting really hungry and decided to Gaijin Smash through the behavioral norms by buying a hot dog and some fries from the nearby konbini and eating them on the run. Mind you, eating in public is frowned upon in Japan. It’s just not supposed to be done. Ever. However, cultural norms don’t come between me and food. That’s my policy. Eventually we arrived at the monkey park entrance. The admission cost ¥550 and included a map of the area, as well as an important notice concerning the monkeys:

-Don’t stare at the monkeys in the eye

-Don’t touch the monkeys.

-Don’t feed them outside

The first thing not to do would never have crossed my mind had it not been written down, but after reading it I got an irresistible urge to actually try staring them straight in the eye. The walk up the hill to the monkey residence was long, though, and my dementia kicked in long before getting to the top so I forgot to accomplish my mission. The path consisted of many sets of stairs, a few mountain slopes, stairs again and so on… The girls were getting a bit tired of the uphill walking in high heels and considered giving up when suddenly, monkeys! Thousands of them! Well not thousands, but once we arrived to a certain point on the mountain path, we realized that the surrounding forest had become infested by monkeys. I immediately started taking pictures but was soon disrupted when a baby monkey tried to climb my leg. I wasn’t ninja enough to get a picture before he ran away realizing I wasn’t a tree. However, he soon came back and tried to chew on my shoe. Bad idea. I wonder if that one is still alive. I mean, my socks could probably melt someone’s face off and he was chewing on the unholy shoe.

We stayed on the top of the hill for about half an hour, taking hundreds of pictures, a few videos, feeding the monkeys inside the very commercial “feeding shack” and watching a random guy shooting some badly behaving monkeys with his slingshot. I wonder what kind of academic degree you need for that kind of work, especially since the monkey-shooting didn’t seem to follow any specific pattern at all. He just shot them once in a while for good measure. The career path of my dreams.

I guess I could babble on and on about the monkey park but I have other matters to attend so enjoy the pictures and wallow in jealousy.

-Antti