Arrived in Sapporo (updated with photos!)

After a long journey, all in all, 28 hours or so, I finally arrived at my dormitory room in Sapporo. Quite big (big for a japanese room that is) and clean and nice. Even have a toilet that can wash my buttocks with water, real japanese style.

Firstly though, let me tell you about the journey. Except for the long waiting in Denmark, things went quite well, could travel business class with Sas, so I could certainly eat and sleep well.
Took a bus from Narita, Tokyo international airport, to the domestic airport Haneda, there awaited the cutest Boeing 747 anyone has ever seen, ready to take us to Sapporo.

The entire aircraft was painted with Pokemon figures in bright, cute colors. Also, the interior of the aircraft was Pokemon everywhere. Even the cups for drinks and the epilon of the flight attendants had Pokemon creatures on them. Only in Japan.

Another Pokemon-edition Ana Boeing 747 passing by:

Life in Sapporo so far has been quite confusing I have to say. In Tokyo, you can find information in english easily, people speak english and signs that doesn't have english at least has Japanese text written with western characters.

In Sapporo, I have in two days of walking around the city seen three western people except for me, one of them another swedish guy who lives at the same place as me. The two others were americans at a cafe. 99,5% of all Japanese people I meet insist on speaking only Japanese and all signs are written with kanji characters only, meaning I can't read them. So it's easy to feel lost, feels good to have another swedish speaking person to talk to sometimes, and my girlfriend who can help me understanding all those damn kanji characters.
I think Sapporo will be a very good city to learn Japanese though, since you are totally lost as a non-japanese speaking foreigner here.

So far, I enjoy my life here though. Food is very good (fruit is 100 times better tasting than in Sweden), 90% of all products in stores are cheaper than in Sweden and the japanese service just makes me really happy. I'll get back to the Japanese service though. Hopefully I can get an Internet connection at my room some time soon.

Why I dislike the danes

Have been waiting pretty much all day now at Cph airport for the Sas flight to Narita to depart.
The fueling staff decided to go home, so all flights are delayed a few hours, the airplane we're (hopefully) getting on is currently being refueled though and the boarding staff said there would eb seats left. So unless any other problems appear I'll be off to Japan in an hours or so.

(please note that this was written during a long day of waiting and i was hungry and tired, so my dear fellow danes, sorry about it)

Ready for departure!

Big lack of updates, I have been busy lately with my last days at work, getting a visa for going to Japan and settling things here prior to departure.

My excuse is that the point of this blog anyway has always been to write about my life in Japan, and I'm not even there yet.
But tomorrow the time has come to take off for Japan and Sapporo!

Well hopefully at least.
Since I've been working at Sas ground services (part of Scandinavian Airlines), I can get to Japan quite cheaply. However, staff tickets have standby status, meaning that I can get on if there are free seats available at the time of departure.

Just too bad that we're (me and my girlfriend who is Japanese and coming with me) going to Japan in the middle of tourist season. Just like me, Japanese people are starting school by the beginning of April, meaning many of them have vacation at this time, so most flights are fully booked.

Tomorrow looks a bit less terrible than most other days though, so I keep my fingers crossed.
Worst case scenario is we'll have to sleep for a few nights at Copenhagen or Frankfurt airport,
I can live with that if I can just get to Sapporo before school starts on the 5th of April.
Hopefully though I'll be sitting in one of the business class lie-flat seats of Sas' Airbus A340-300 series aircraft bound for Narita, Tokyo international airport tomorrow afternoon.

From Narita, I can hopefully take a flight directly to New Chitose Sapporo airport. I might have to change airport in Tokyo though and go to Haneda, which is the domestic airport of Tokyo and has alot more flights for Sapporo.
Haneda (Tokyo) - Chitose (Sapporo) actually happens to be the most busy air route in the world with some 45 wide-body aircraft arrivals and departures per day. For you non-airline workers or aircraft geeks, widebody means a big aircraft, usually carrying 200-550 passengers.


That's it for now. Need to start packing some clothes!

Shinzo Abe

Have to say, I am really starting to wonder what kind of man the prime minister of Japan is.

Read an article today about him refusing to apologize for crimes commited against women during the second world war, he even goes as far as denying that the crimes took place.

(There's a few more articles on the same subject which can be found at the bottom of the article I linked to).

Now in english

I decided to write this blog in english instead of swedish to reach a wider audience.
Therefore, the 'about me' -page and the first post has been translated to english.

I hope my knowledge of the english language is good enough to not affect the quality of the blog too much.

Beginning of the end?

During almost 3 years. I have been loading airplanes at Stockholm Arlanda airport for Sas ground services.
Yesterday I decided to quit.
I have 3 weeks left before I work my last day and about a week later set course for Sapporo in the north of Japan.
My plan is to study the japanese language for two years at a language school there.

Why do such a thing you might wonder.. Why not? Souns like a neat thing to do, doesn't it?