Photos from the summer vacation

Did some travelling during the summer vacation in August.

Firstly, here's a few pics from the Iwate prefecture on northern Honshu (the main island of Japan).

All photos are clickable for high resolution. Photos may not be used for any purpose without my permission.




A famous cave called 龍泉洞, Ryusendo. Pretty cool stalactites huh? (thanks wikipedia for reminding me it's called stalactites).





Signs in funny English are always appreciated. Luckily they can be found at many places in Japan. Even in caves!





Because of the high humidity and hot summers, the greenery in Japan is just incredibly dense. Just have a look at that tree, there's not just leaves on the branches, the whole tree is covered with leaves. The greenery on Hokkaido is a bit less dense because of the colder and more dry climate, but still more dense than in Sweden.
In the foreground, my dad, who came to Japan together with my brother to visit me and do some travelling together.




An interesting car in Morioka, the main city of the Iwate prefecture.





Two boys on bicycles in Morioka.





From Morioka we took the Shinkansen to Kyoto, the place where you will want to go to see the old Japan and visit lots and lots of temples and shrines. Here's one of the Buddhist temples and a more modern building in the background.




三十三間堂 The Sanjusangendo, a temple with 1001 Buddha statues lined up inside. Definitely a place worth visiting. No photos allowed inside the building. According to my brother, one of the monks inside the temple started hitting an old woman with a stick who didn't follow this rule.




My dad eating soba noodles. He clearly need to practise his slurping skills though.




Gion, the old parts of Kyoto.




Gion again. I have more nice, authentic looking where there are no cars to be seen. However I was really annoyed about Kyoto city allowing cars drive on these narrow streets with old houses packed with tourists. It's such an effective way to ruin the atmosphere that I just had to take a photo of it.



Gion, Kyoto.




Salarymen doing fishing after work.





Swedes eating their fill.




Number 1 selling sports bicycle at Bic Camera was a... Saab! Since when do they make bicycles?




Bamboo.




Kyoto station. Modern beautiful architecture in a city packed with old, beautiful temples and shrines.



The machine for cleaning the floors can be used in the stairs as well, how cool isn't that?



The Shinkansen.




Delays are unacceptable. We're setting off for climbing Mount Fuji, will upload photos from that adventure next time.

Bureaucracy

In Japan, you practically need to write your address and phone number on three papers and put your personal 'hanko' stamp on each of them and then wait one week for your application to be processed to be allowed to go to the toilet. Then there's two additional papers to sign for using the toiler paper. Well not really, but almost.

I'll be returning to Sweden during the Christmas vacation for a few weeks.
Since I'm studying here, I'm holding a visa for staying in Japan until the end of March next year when the new school term starts and then I'll have to renew my visa. However if you're leaving the country for and coming back, you'll have to get a re-entry permission visa, even though you're having a valid visa. I'm not a big fan of excessive bureaucracy so it got me grumbling a bit, but at least it didn't seem that complicated, only it'd cost 3000 yen (>200kr).

So I got on my bicycle and rode down to the immigration bureau building, fill out two papers and show my foreigner registration card and passport. The man wearing a suit in the very official looking building tells me I have to go to the basement floor and pay the re-entry fee to receive a stamp that I put on another paper and fill out to prove that I've paid the fee for the visa.
At least it's a big relief that I can understand enough Japanese to understand these kind of instructions and even fill out the paper in Japanese and write my address in Japanese. Of course, you can't expect the staff at the city's immigration bureau to speak English, no way, this is Japan.

Anyway, I get in the elevator and go to the basement floor, expecting to see another office with official looking people wearing suits. Coming out from the elevator, there's a guard with a uniform sitting at a small desk, bowing to me and pointing out the way, so far everything as expected. I walk by the guard and continue 30 meters, finding a.. Seiko mart convenience store! Look back towards the guard, who nods towards me and points towards the convenience store with his hand. Why is there an absolutely normal convenience store, like those you see absolutely everywhere in Japan, selling official visa application stamps and papers in the basement of the immigration bureau? Anyway, the young typical convenience store clerk girls shouts their typical 'welcome' in Japanese and I get in and buy my official stamps.
After a little while, it starts making sense. Japan takes their bureaucracy seriously, but what their really fanatic about is consuming. You have to be able to buy anything at any time with good service.

I get in the elevator and go back up to the first guy, hand over my papers, hoping he'll check them for a while, put an official looking re-entry visa paper in my passport with a few stamps on and things'll be settled. Of course it wasn't that easy, I had totally missed out that I need a paper from my school that they allow me to leave the country during the vacation. At least the immigration guy with the suit told me my application papers were correctly written and I can just hand them over again as they are when I come back, hope so.

So, next step were going to school and filling out an application paper for getting the paper proving that they allow me to leave Japan during the vacation. At least I have no problem remembering how to write my address in Japanese after filling out all these papers. Also I had to write the reason for leaving the country and hand over a copy of the flight tickets, which of course was impossible since I have an e-ticket, but could be solved by e-mailing the e-ticket info to the school. Then I just had to wait one week for receiving my very official looking 'The school allows this student to leave Japan during the vacation'-paper with a couple of stamps and signatures on.
Tomorrow is time for round two at the immigration bureau.

If they finally allow me to leave the country, they'll be taking my fingerprints and photo when reentering, as the politicians have decided recently that all foreigners entering the country are potential terrorists. Not that there has ever been an act of terrorism by foreigners in Japan, but the main reason they've given is to prevent terrorism. One would think they should have checked up already if I'm a terrorist or not when they gave me a visa to live in the country..
Well they do take their bureaucracy seriously...

Humidity and cleaning the bathroom

Japan is a very humid country, especially in the summer. If you're in central Japan, for example Tokyo, in July-August, don't expect to be able to walk more than 10 meters without being soaked in sweat. Japanese people call this 蒸し暑い (mushi-atsui), pretty much meaning humid and hot.
That was a big reason for me to go to Sapporo, on Hokkaido in the north of Japan. The climate is quite a bit cooler and a lot less humid here, also it's always windy which is nice in the summer, but not so nice in the winter.
However compared to Sweden, even Sapporo is a lot more humid, which has some consequences.

• Everything here in Japan is packed in lots of plastics. If you buy a pack of cookies, of course it comes in a plastic bag like anywhere in the world, but here, each cookie is in a small plastic bag of it's own also, or there's one of those small bags included that absorbs moisture, that only comes in shoe boxes in Sweden. Partly because of the humidity but also because Japanese people are obsessed with having all food very fresh.
  It becomes a lot of plastics, I am telling you. Just too bad that you can only throw away plastics once per week here in Japan. All refuse is sorted into burnables, non-burnable and plastics and has specific days when you're allowed to throw it. So you need to keep your garbage in your apartment until the day when it's supposed to be thrown.
  

• Here in Sapporo, the laundry might be dry after about 24 hours if you're lucky. Sometimes 24 hours is not enough. I wonder if it's possible at all to get your laundry dry in southern Japan in the summer?

• There's always some funny pink stuff growing on the floor in our bathroom. The Japanese bathrooms are entirely made of plastic and has a bath tub and a shower next to it. Japanese people love taking a bath, but showering in the bath tub is not okay. Anyway, the floor's surface in our bath room is not even, which is good since a perfectly flat plastic surface would be a lot more slippery. However, the cute little pink colored stuff loves the small bumps in the floor, combined with the humidity and no window in the bathroom, it's obviously very good conditions to grow quickly, and it's an absolute pain in the ass to get rid of. We have some kind of bathroom cleaner, on the bottle it says you're supposed to just spray it on, wait a few minutes and wash with water and you're bathroom is clean (not that I can read it at all, but my girlfriend says so). Hah! More than one hour of rubbing the floor like a maniac with a sponge is what it takes to get rid of the pink bastards. And within a week they'll be back again...
  

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.