Beer

Quite a few weeks ago when I went to a bar, I stumbled upon something I had never seen before.



Heineken Dark Lager! I had to get one of course. Tastes a bit like Newcastle Brown Ale but a more weak taste and not as good. It's not too bad though. You have this one back home also nowadays?

Japanese beer in general is so-so. Most brands are like american beer; hardly any taste at all. If you want to try a Japanese beer which you'll probably find abroad, go for Sapporo Beer, it's good I'm telling you!

English texts in Japan

In Japan, it's really popular to put some short english text on products, outside stores and as slogans for companies etc.
Sometimes, the texts makes no sense at all because the english is too bad to be understood. Sometimes the language itself is understandable and in some occassions it's even pretty much perfect.
However, even if the grammar is good, the context those small english texts are placed in often doesn't make too much sense. It's like their just put there because it's cute or cool to have some english text on the product.

As a foreigner who consider myself to have quite decent knowledge of the english language, this is quite amusing.
Not in the sense that I make fun of the japanese inability to write english correctly (uhm okay well a little bit to be honest), because I actually think this is quite cute and I appreciate it. I don't want the japanese companies to change and start using the english language in a more professional (and boring) way. It's part of the Japanese culture and I enjoy it.

By now, unless you've already visited Japan or read my previous post about the Scandinavian bread store, you're probably quite confused and wonder what the hell I am babbling about, so I'll just give you a few examples.

My frying pan:

"One petal was found.
Some petals gather and it becomes a flower.
They gather and support each other and make a living.
We have to value "GIVE AND TAKE".

Sure, I get the message, and it's a nice thought you know. One may just wonder what it does on the bottom side of my frying pan?

A bag of candy I got at a birthday party:



Like with the frying pan, quite an amusing, cute little text, isn't it?


Mints I bought at the supermarket:


Dry Hard (with a vengeance?) Mints.
Actually contains caffeine also it says.

Ash trays from a bar I visited:



"Have a good time" "Can you make smoke rings?"
Actually this is just cute in that special japanese way.

Busy days

Started school on Monday, so my first week of learning Japanese will be accomplished tomorrow (writing on Thursday night, but can't post now due to no internet connection at home). It's been busy days for sure. Actually, my days has consisted of waking up, eating breakfast, studying a little, going to school, coming home and having dinner (finally figured out how to use the timer function on my rice cooker, so the rice is done when I come home, just need to make some sauce etc), relaxing for 30 minutes or so and then studying and going to bed.
But hell, I ain't complaining. I want to learn the basics of this language as soon as possible so I can even have a decent dialogue with people other than swedes and the few english speaking people I meet. I'm here to learn Japanese after all.
Don't have much things to do anyway, so I'm fine with studying most of the day. Life certainly gets quite different when you don't have a mobile phone, no Internet connection, can't understand what's on the tv, hardly know anyone other than a few other people who are also studying, and if you want to talk to someone else, you can't manage to have a conversation consisting of more than a couple of sentences with 99% of the people you meet.

My class consists of 12-14 students or so. There are some Chinese and Koreans, then there are one person each from Thailand, Taiwan, Australia, Russia, Spain and Italy, and finally two swedes except for me.
We have four lessons per day, 45 minutes each. Starting at 1 in the afternoon and finishing at 4.30.
So far, it's a good group and good teachers I'd say. Mostly, we're practising saying basic sentences and responding properly.

Most of the things we've gone through so far I already knew (but had put them somewhere in the back of my head), but it takes some time anyway to get used to using such a different language.
What's taken most (all) of my time outside school is the writing. It takes hours and hours just to write a bunch of pages of homework. When you're not used to writing the Japanese characters, you constantly have to think for a short time about which character you're going to write and how it's written. When writing a few pages, that short time adds up to hours. And that's only the kana characters so far. But of course, it's necessary to learn the basic characters very well first, so you have something to start with. It certainly helps that I've practised this stuff a little bit before. It's not really difficult things, but this time it really is about bashing stuff into your head time after time until your brain stops complaining and chooses to remember those essential things as something for daily use. A bit different from learning it in Sweden and storing it far back in your head.

For those of you without much knowledge of the Japanese language, the kana characters are some hundred or so characters which makes up the syllables of the Japanese language, they're mostly used as particles for the more complex kanji characters and to write foreign words.
Next week we'll start with the kanji, the more complex chinese characters of which we should learn a bit less than 2000 during the coming two years. As you might know, they have different meanings and are used in other ways in the Chinese language, so you don't get Chinese as a bonus when learning to write Japanese.

Please note that I'm not whining at all, actually I'm happy ­with everything so far and see it as a good challenge to learn Japanese.I'm certainly looking forward to the day when I'll be able to use the language well enough to express most of my basic thoughts, feelings and needs. Hopefully it won't take too long.

Being a foreigner in Sapporo

Around here, you don't see that many non-asian people. If I go to the downtown city area, I can probably see 3-4 western people in a few hours, so no wonder most people you will give you a quick glance or two when you're a tall, blonde swede. The Sapporoans are quite shy and quiet people though, even more so than in the other parts of Japan I've visited, I'd say. Practically noone will start talking to you even though some certainly seem curious. This probably also has something to do with the fact that people in general don't speak english or are too shy to try speaking english. These situations certainly makes me curious at least and I'd like to figure out what goes on inside the head of the average Japanese. Not just their thoughts about foreign people, but the whole culture. This is my main motivation for learning Japanese at the moment.

At the local Coop store (yes, same name as the food stores in Sweden, but as far as I know, the Japanese Coop is not a sponsor of Hammarby) where I buy my food they seem to say all their polite phrases extra loud and often to me, compared to to Japanese customers. As if they're happy to have a Swedish guy coming every other day to their food store? Or It might as well just be because I always seem a bit lost, look at everyone and everything, compared to the Japanese customers who just hurry up to find the stuff they need and buy it.

My second theory is that this feeling that many Japanese seem curious or have some thoughts about foreign people might partially be constructed by myself. It's easy to feel alienated and looked at when you 1. certainly do look different and 2. don't understand many of the things that's going on around you. Maybe people just cast a glance, notice that there's a different looking person in their surrounding and get back to thinking about what to eat for dinner.
At least, everyone treats me very well and is just as respectful as to Japanese people so far, and I certainly appreciate the Japanese respectfulness.

Some slightly funny situations that you can get into as a foreigner in Japan;
Last weekend, I was in the city with two other swedish guys. Some young Japanese guy who walked by was obviously curious on the foreign people, so he walked by really close and kind of 'accidently' touched my swedish friend's back a little and then kept walking. It was quite obvious though since he had a big smile on his face. I don't know what his purpose was, but it was certainly entertaining.

A few days ago, I was taking a run before going to school. I ran to a park not too far away. A tv-team was in the park doing an interview, looked quite serious wearing a suit etc. When I ran by, I kind of thought they turned the camera towards me slightly, but I wasn't sure.
I didn't find my way around there well, so I came to a dead end and had to run back after only a few minutes. When I run by the tv team this time, they did turn the camera towards me, and the guy doing the interview raised his voice until he was almost screaming and spoke quickly like a sports commentator. I had no idea what he was saying, but I could understand the word 'kaerimasu!!' which means returns.
Probably it was more fun with a foreigner taking a run than the interview. Japanese tv-shows are all about instant entertainment, so probably I'll end up on one of those entertainment shows, who knows.

Food-porn and Commercials

Since I've had a ­terrible cold the last days and spent all days in bed and don't have an Internet connection, I've had too much time to spend on watching tv.
Now I thought swedish television wasn't very good, but compared to japanese, it's outstanding actually.
'But that's just because you don't understand much japanese at all' one might say.
Well of course, to a certain extent, it's true, I might not be totally correct with this report, but usually it's quite easy anyway to figure out what kind of a tv-show it is.

From my research, there are three main categories which you always seem to run into if you browse through the channels.

The most common are japanese entertainment shows, and they are all about quick entertainment and quick laughs.
Something 'funny' takes place, for example someone is supposed to run 3 laps around the studio accompanied by some cute pop music, and a screaming commentator. Afterwards there's always a bunch of people making comments for a good while about what just happens.
In my opinion, funny entertainment for 3-4 minutes or so, then it gets boring.

Secondly most common are commercials. It just never ends. Which actually is not too different from the entertainment shows.
Usually, something is funny and there's some happy pop music and some male voice screaming or very cute female voice speaking and then a company logo. Other common commercials are women's clothes, food stores and fast food.
One commercial I actually found kind of funny (it wasn't supposed to be funny though) was for dog's clothes. Not some kind of lame blankets, oh no, this was only designed fashion clothes, and it just went on and on for 15-20 minutes or so. Jeans, shirts, socks, you name it. Of course, everything accompanied by cute music and a cute woman's voice and another cute woman caressing the dogs. There even was a punk style dress that covered the entire dog with black leaher with just two holes for the eyes (hopefully some kind of opening in the back also, I didn't notice).

Thirdly is what I'd call the food porn. Some people, more commonly women than men, try different kinds of food, the camera zooms in to an extreme close up of the piece of meat (or whatever they're going to eat) when it's picked up by the chop sticks and put in the mouth, followed by the person eating exclaiming 'oishii!!' (delicious!) while still chewing the piece of food. Also, I have seen eating contests a couple of times. Of some reason the competitors are always slim, cute women, which really makes me wonder how they manage to eat so much. I have no idea if it was faked, but one of them had 60 pieces of sushi without any problem. In another contests, the poor women had 8 big bowls of ramen noodle soup each.
The food porn is often found in the commercial breaks also.

So far, I've managed to see three tv programs that actually seemed to be quite serious.
First one was the news, second one was the weather forecast which followed the news. This was actually more serious and detailed than the weather forecasts in Sweden, and swedish people are known for taking weather forecasts seriously.
Thirdly, I finally found something that actually seemed like a serious documentary.
I had no idea what it really was about though.

The spirit of Tomte

One thing that can always entertain you as a foreigner in Japan ­­are the hilarious english texts you'll run into every now and then.
Me and my swedish friend ­found a chain of bread and bakery stores here in Sapporo that market themselves by selling Scandinavian bread.

It's just a surprising fact for me, being a Scandinavian, that we eat buns similar to donuts with ginger and some kind of white cream cheese on top, and the inside filled with squid and some kind of vanilla cream.


Ehm well, actually I have never ever seen such bread in Sweden, and I hardly believe it can be found in the other Scandinavian countries either.
All the bread in those stores were sweet, white bread, sometimes with chocolate on it, sometimes just with other strange stuff.
However, the funny way they market themselves and the absolutely hilarious texts on their plastic bags just makes me want to visit them again and again!

The text on their plastic bags reads:


"Scandiavian natural roman - best bread message. Our little friend "TOMTE" use magical secret power for delicious BREAD that. Well enjoy in next morning. Children who living in NORTHERN EUROPE tell us secret that just baken BREAD. Yes... TOMTE's secret.
HOKUO as. BREAD country SAPPORO is very similar with TOMTE's land."

And the second one I found:""We are tomte." The Scandinavian region of northern Europe is the fabled home of gnomes called Tomte. Tomte love children. At night, when everyone is sound asleep. Tomte go about casting magical spells to ensure the next morning's freshly baked bread will be especially delicious for the children. Cherishing the spirit of the Tomte, we at "Hokuo" take a highly skilled and gentle natured approach to bread making."

Why Japan?

Why does anyone decide to go to Japan to study Japanese?
Since this is a question people tend to ask me, I meant to write an answer to it before leaving Sweden, but I just never got it done.

The truth is just that I find it just as hard to answer every time.
I could start writing all the clichées about an interesting culture and a mix of the old and new and so on.
Well, I don't know really. I had visited Japan twice before and it did seem interesting in many aspects, so it seemed like a good idea to go there and stay for a while and see what I discover, instead of working with loading airplanes for 30 years and ruining my body.
I need an adventure and a challenge­. Learning the Japanese language and getting some knowledge of the Japanese culture seemed like a challenge good enough for me.What it'll lead to eventually, I have no idea. Maybe I'll stay here and study at university or work or go back to Sweden to study or end up somewhere else.