I'm a movie star!

Do you remember this? Well, the promo video where I was an extra came out. If you look really really closely, you can see me at the robot show around 0:55. Yeah, I'm ready for my Oscar now.

...

Gotta say it's a little more ostentatious than the "enthusiastically rocking out at robot show with half-naked ladies doing Japanese-kawaii Gangnam-style in seizure-inducing strobe lights" filming experience made it feel like, but I probably should have expected nothing less from a university with Todai's reputation. I will not complain, but I will embarrassedly joke about it. So as a proud 東大学生, I suppose it's time I go get high.

Very high.

Yoyogi park is awsome (First walking tour of Tokyo)

Okay, let's get one thing out of the way right now: Tokyo is big.

Right. Duh.

How-Evvuhr, it is BIG, 'mkay? Not just big like, "oh my this certainly is quite big". Not even "holy shit this thing is really big!". 

It is big like the Beatles. Like the moon. Like your mom.

"One of the most organized and orderly 
countriesin the world"

Big enought that I've been sorta terrified of it. I feel like I could start walking in one direction, and then keep walking until I'm dead, and still be surrounded by crazy tangled electrical lines and vending machines. 

This will be the last thing I see.

If I lose focus for one minute, I will be lost without any hope of return, doomed to wander the infinite spider web of tangled streets until the small pebbles that get stuck in my shoes have grown into great rocks and become covered in moss*.

*JFGI

So I've been a bit hesitant about going for walks, is all. Today I fixed it! Finally got a map, which also helped.

I knew that Harajuku should be within walking distance and that it is awsome on Sundays, so I set off to find it. After a small half-hour of wandering while forgetting to take photos, I arrived in the amazing awsomeness that is Yoyogi park.

I've been there before, but I never tire of it. It is a spectacle of picnics, parties and culture. In Yoyogi park, you can do pretty much whatever you damn well please. Like this guy:

Haters gonna hate

If bongos aren't quite your thing, how about the digeridoo?

It might also be a giant bong. Hard to tell without the audio.

Or the bagpipes:

Might also be a gigant bong. 

I think that since Japanese apartments are so tiny, poorly insulated and crammed together (especially here in Tokyo), people take to the park to practice any hobby that might otherwise disturb their neighbours, or require physical space in any way. The result is enormously entertaining, a tourist attraction entirely in its own right. 

I saw groups of yoga-people, ball gamers of every kind, practicing cheerleaders, good and bad dancers, and a group of teenagers working on their catwalk-strut. I'm sad to say that I didn't get a photo of the 30-ish jugglers, but I did ninja a photo of these guys:

It's a little hard to tell from this picture, but they are actually practising pizza-spinning.

Of course music is and will remain the thing that's closest to my own heart, and this park really delivered. I saw a guy sitting by the pond playing his guitar, and another playing and singing on a bench. A large group of people had an orchestra of sorts, with wooden flutes, guitars and violins. An ukulele-club. Jazz bands, complete with electric equipment. 

There was a group of people playing drums:

And a person playing a group of drums:

That. Right there. That is what awsome looks like.

Looking at the joy of sound present in this place makes me really wish I'd brought an instrument over with me, or that I could afford to by one here. 

Once I left the park behind to have a look at Harajuku proper, I ran into a gay pride parade.

I think this was just the end of a larger event, yet nevertheless seing these guys relegated to a single lane, "forced into a corner" so to speak, seemed kind of symbolic to me. It's not easy to be gay in Japan, so I really had to admire this crew for standing up for themselves. You go girls/guys/persons of unspecified gender!

I kept wandering.

A wild pikachu appeared.

Great to see Japan finally embracing some Norwegian slang terms:

Den plassen er "Lav Azza"

Kinda planned to take a look at the most famous street in Harajuku, but decided against it at the last moment. I dunno, maybe you can see why.

Nope.

I get enough of that shit on the subway, thankyouverymuch.

The only thing I ended up buying the whole day (apart from water because I like myself better alive), was coffee from an import-shop somwhere between Harajuku and Omotesando (yes, I was trying to get to Shibuya. I took a wrong turn. Whatever!)

Sweet mother of beans, no more shitty vending machine coffee for me!

So tomorrow I'll bring my Bodum french press cup to school and at long last all will be as should be. Praise the Bean!

Also of note was this random farmers market right next to a major road. Tokyo is not very polluted at all, yet still... Vegetable stands between a big fancy hotel and a large thoroughfare? Because why not, I suppose.

Also, this made me really wish I had a proper camera. My phone is cool and all, but there is a painful lack of wide angle to the shots I can get.

I did eventually manage to find the now increasingly familiar pseudao-chaos that is Shibuya station, and decided that I was tired so fuck walking,

I can see Shibuya station from here, but you can't. Because my camera is inadequate, and because you are a n00b.

I'm training home from here.

These shoes ain't made for walkin'

So I think my new off-day hobby is going to be just walking around. When you just take the trains everywhere the city never really gets less scary. I need to get a tanglible grasp on the distances involved; uncover the map like my life is a video game, get to know my surroundings. It's tricky when I'm so busy every day - maybe I should try to take school a little less seriously so I can better enjoy and experience this magnificent city while I'm here. Just a thought.

"Exotic" foods

Having been a bit under the weather this week, I decided to tackle my homesickness by throwing money on it, splurging on some rare foods so that if nothing else at least my stomach would feel at home.

First, bread.

I cannot overemphasize the sheer unadulterated sucktitude of Japanese bread. It's like they've fundamentally misunderstood the concept. First off, there is no crust. Even if it looks crusty, that is a lie. It will be soft, squishy and awful. They'll serve MASSIVE thick slices, but the size is incredibly deceptive; the doughy white substance compresses to almost nothing at the slightest touch. Yet that is probably a public health requirement or something, because the small amount of solid matter that actually is there is made almost exclusively of butter. It tastes like nothing, contains nothing and will make you fat. BLERGH!

While I do like rice, my stomach grew up on BREAD goddamnit, DARK NUTRITIOUS FILLING HEALTHY DELICIOUS BREAD! With SALTY STUFF ON TOP.

And finally, finally,

Real, crusty, crumbly, rich, fragrant, delicious. Even though it did turn out to be kind of stale, my bread-starved digestive system was all appretiation. But wait, it gets better.

YAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY!

I could hardly believe my eyes.

And my luck continued!

KOS!

Along with bread, cheese another thing Japan does with less than stellar expertise. Most of it is really weird - like an imitation cheese made by someone who only heard tales about the stuff from a drunk sailor*.

*who took out his foot and said "THAT. IT SMELLS LIKE THAT!"


But locating a familiar brand, I figured that heck, I can be French today. Let's cheese and wine this bread I found!


And since I still didn't feel like I'd blown my daily budget quite enough, I also got some smoked salmon.

Yuuuuuuuuum!

"So what is Norwegian culture?"
"Basically this picture."

Got home and dug my old and careworn yet still perfectly delicious brown cheese that I save for special occasions, and got ready to feast.

Viola*:

Violas never get enough attention.

Look at my face so happy!

Mmmmm fooood

Yes!

YUM!
But seriously, you have no idea how rare a simple meal like this is here.

Homesick-level: Reduced.

Happy-level: Increasing.

Feeling like such an obvious stranger wherever I go these days, it was really good to tangibly remind myself that there is a place where I do belong. Makes it easier to keep on not belonging. Beh-long. Be long. Blong. 

Go suck a cheese slicer!

GOODNIGHT!

Rush hour life and other adventures

Jeezy creezy I've had quite the week! Sorry about the prolonged silence, but I've had to give myself some time to process the fact that I am living in Tokyo. It has taken a bit of getting used to, I can tell you that.

I arrived, all starstuck and amazed, to find that my dorm is very conveniently located on university campus. Of course, it's the wrong campus, so I still have a one-hour commute every damn day. Fun times. I especially love the rush-hour treck through Shibuya and onto the Ginza line. It's so nice to get to be so intimate with total strangers! Sometimes, I almost can't breathe for excitement. Or maybe that is because I've got some dudes hip jamming my fallopian tubes and another lady's elbow firmly planted in my solar plexus while the wall is doing it's best to leave a permanent imprint on my face. You never know.

The thing about Tokyo train cars is that they are never full. Oh, they look full, don't get me wrong. But some dude will always find a way to squeeze his somehow-not-fat ass in, frequently by turning his back to the jam-packed sardine-can of human body odor and then litterally pushing against the solid mass of humanity until it deforms enough to make room for him.

The staff will help.

And in case you're unfamiliar with Shibuya; it's only the second busiest train station in the world, but I think that's enough really. Every day, it services abooooout twice the population of Oslo. Here's what the outside (the infamous Shibuya crossing) looks like at night:

A wednesday night, mind you.

In daytime, it's pretty much the same, except brighter.

So me, being more used to Trondheim Torg, have had a bit of adjusting to do. I'm coping like a native though, fishing my Kindle through the network of arms and purses to forget my social anxiety and general fear of an agonising death by crushing by losing myself in the world of J.R.R.Tolkien.

It bears mentioning that these jam-packed trains are prime fields for creepers. That is why, on some lines, you find these:

Removing the men entirely is the only way to ensure that the women can ride the train safely unmolested. How nice. My rides offer no such luxury, but I've been very safe so far. I imagine that the "pick on someone your own size" is something these men avoid, and I am in general their size or sizeier, so I'm not really worried at all. I do have a few things to say on the topic of gender roles in Japan, but that will be a whole different post indeed.

Anyways, once I do get to the campus it's a whole other story. The university grounds are gorgeous and have every ammenity. (In fact, I can't help but think "so this is what a real top-tier university feels like... I really don't mind).

There are columned archways remeniscent of western style universities, but also a Japanese archery range and a kendo hall. In the centre of the grounds there's a large park with a pond, where I enjoy going to get away from people (yes, I do that sometimes. I like people, but just not all the time, okay?)

Contrary to popular belief, this image is not
sponsored by Subway.

I love ponds.

The weather has also been generally spectacular (speaking as a Trønder), and since Japanese people generally want to avoid getting a tan, the sunny spots are always available for me to soak up that sweet sweet vitamin D.

Funfact: Contrary to our western fashion dictating tanning to a nigh-ridiculous
level, here, pale is pretty. The whiter the better. This means sitting in the shade,
using a parasol in summer and yes, I have seen whitening cream in shops.

No longer "pasty nerd".
The "pale is pretty" beauty standard really
does work in my favour.

When I arrived here the cherry blossoms were blooming, and I realized that the campus I'm living at was one of the places we visited while here on the trip last year. And last week, I was asked to talk to and guide around a new group of visitin class-tripping NTNU students. It really feels amazing to have come full circle like this. Almost like I've accomplished something.

So many tall blonde people! I just had to take a selfie!

I also got drafted to be "obligatory diversity extra #24" in a recruitment video for the university, in which my role was to be enthusiastically attending a robot show.

This was a rather amusingly awkward afternoon. The dancers were not overdressed, nor too far away to make out every detail. The show was also, at times, extremely disturbing and terrifying.

This guy was unapologetically
awsome.

Be afraid.

Be very afraid.

Now I would like you all to vote: Should I, or whould I not, buy this traditional-Japanese-style-toilet-shaped curry plate?

This is not the blog post you are looking for

Geh, I'll make some kind of introduction to Tokyo life later. Right now, I have a more pressing issue to address.

Dear all future mothers and fathers of Norway, and of the world.

Every day, it seems our world gets smaller. At this time of history we as a species are more connected than ever before, both indirectly through the internet, and directly, through our astounding ability to travel around the world in negligible time.

In days like these it is little wonder that international cooperation becomes more important than ever before. Therefore, I implore you; help your children in this regard. It is so very simple to do. All I ask is that you give them a name that can travel.

Seriously. 'Hanne Siri Amdahl Heglum'. Mom, Dad, I love you guys but what were you thinking?!?

Try saying that to an American. Then, after embarrasing yourself, try spelling it in Japanese Katakana. I've been filling out a lot of forms lately, so I've had to make it work somehow and it has been such fun. Not only is it ridiculously long, "Siri" also directly spells out "shi ri", which litterally means ASS. (I write it with a long i, "shi i ri", to marginally reduce the level of potty humour.)

In addition to that, do I have two last names, or three first names? I don't know. My passport says three first one last, but nobody's ever gone around calling me 'HSA'.

And I haven't even started on how to use this overlong namextravaganza in casual conversation. I've generally given up on 3/4 of it to make it easier, but it's still no walk in the petting zoo, I can tell you that.

"Hi, I'm Hanne!", I'll introduce myself with a smile.

"Hana?"

"Hanne."

"Hanna?"

"Ha - n - ne."

"Hana?"

"Yes."

And so I become 'Hana', which means 'Flower', my adorably quaint North European stripper pseudonym.

Every now and then, I consider just officially becomming 'Hana Shiri' - The Flower Ass.

And you will never know the horrors I went through to find this on google image search.

travel time!