Sayonara

I have spent the last week in bed sleeping and I kind of just woke up. I have had a really high fever and other symptoms that imply that I was sick! Today I’m feeling better but I’m still mostly sleeping. It feels great to be able to just sleep and not have a bad conscious afterwards. I think I got sick because I’m starting to feel quite stressed. I have to pack my entire life that I’ve had here for the last 10 months in small boxes and it’s not that easy. I have already sent one box home by boat but I have to sent at least one more.
Saying goodbye to all of my friends is another thing I have to do and I was planning to have a farewell party but now I’m rethinking because I don’t think I have the time nor the nerves to organize all that. I’ll maybe have a dinner when my friends from Sweden come in next week but other than that I don’t think I will do anything. I’m glad that I’m feeling better now because I’ve been invited to a party at my friends company and it seems as there will be a lot of embassy people coming there. It’s a great opportunity to make contacts and I really want to go!
Finally I got myself facebook so now you can add me, I’m under ‘Indra Sharma’. There’s two of us but I’m the first one. Please add me so that we can stay in touch!
People around me are getting very sad and depressed because they soon have to go home. It seems especially difficult for the half Japanese exchange students, they have a special connection with Japan that makes it very hard. I think that it’s the prices you have to pay being biracial. Others are leaving their girlfriend/boyfriend behind and that must really suck since they don’t know when they’ll see each other next time. But it’s said that real love survives everything and I actually believe that, lets hope they do too. I’m very glad that I’m not in that situation though.
This is the last time I blog but I’ll continue posting photos in my photo album!
I don’t know how to finish this, it feels so strange. I’ve had an awesome year and I believe that going on this exchange has been one of the best experiences in my life. I’ve made so many good friends and met so many different and interesting people. Many of my friends and family back home have also come to visit me here and that makes it even more special since I should share all this with them. I’m going to miss so many things: the city, the food, the weather, shopping, my uni and my friends. My life. Still, It feels okay to return home mostly because I really want to get my real life started. Now that I’ve seen more of the world I can’t wait to finish school and start working. I’m starting my last year at Uppsala University this fall and it feels nervous but also good. This year has been like a dream, I’ve just had so much fun.
I don’t know when I’ll have the time to come back to Tokyo but I hope it will be soon.

I LOVE TOKYO!!!
Matane
/Indra

Count down

Now it’s soon time to return back to Sweden, it’s unbelievable. Today it’s almost exactly one month left! My feelings are very mixed, I’m very sad but also content in a way. And I have three friends coming to visit me in Sweden in august so I guess that it feels good in a way. The time between my arrival in Sweden and school starting is quite busy. I have planned so many things to do (as always) and there is so little time (as always).
I was feeling homesick last week because my brother and my cousin graduated from high school and I missed it! I really wanted to be there because I remember my on graduation and honestly it was the greatest day of my life.
In about two weeks I have another friend who’s coming to Tokyo. He’s staying for about one week and I have to start planning what I should show him. I think that he already knows quite a lot about Tokyo already so he might be hard to please.
There is so much to do in this enormous city and almost everything includes spending money. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I’ve visited so many places and met so many people. It’s amazing how I can feel so at home in city that is so different from what I’m used to. I feel really cool when I know when I can find my way around crowded places and when I see other foreigners getting lost I just laugh inside of myself. The language feels much better now, I can get by with daily conversation but of course there is still a lot to learn. I never get used to the kindness of Japanese people. When Hanna and I where in Kyoto we got lost and this man interrupted his power walk and took us to the place that we where looking for. It took him almost 20-30 minutes to get us there but he insisted. My friends in Tokyo have taken really good care of me, they are probably the main reason why I like Tokyo so much.
I have been teaching in Tokyo to earn some extra money and yesterday I met a new student. I told him that I only teach in Ikebukuro, Shinjuku or Takadanobaba so we decided to meet in Ikebukuro. When I arrived there he called me and wanted me to get into his car and go to his place where I would teach him Spanish. I told him what I already told him and that it was written in my presentation online that I only teach in public cafés. To get into his car and go to his apartment would probably be one of the most stupid thing a female teacher in Tokyo could do. So he parked his car and came to the café I had selected. Maybe he’s harmless but you never know. Tokyo is very safe, I mean we have to consider that it is one of the worlds biggest cities and I believe it’s safer than Stockholm. But there are still things that are accepted here that I don’t have to confront in the same way back home. For example there was this man who’s at least 20 years older that me, he has a girlfriend and a child but he’s still trying to seduce me (in front of his girlfriend). I’m not saying that it doesn’t happened in Sweden but at least people would think that he’s weird but here it seems more accepted. This man is not Japanese but his girlfriend is and I’ve talked to my Japanese friends about infidelity and it seems much more accepted here. I might be wrong but it’s my impression. One of my girlfriends told me that I should get a Japanese boyfriend even though I had a boyfriend in Sweden at the time. She said: “He will never find out”. None of my friends in Sweden would say such a thing. Everyone is allowed to have their opinion concerning infidelity but I’m to conservative to believe in anything else than monogamy.
I have changed a little bit since I came to Japan in the sense of shallowness. I’m super shallow now, I’m thinking about my skin, cloth etc. so much more that back home. Some might think it’s good but I don’t because it steals very much time from other things but I can‘t help it. No one can ever again tell me that advertisement doesn’t effect you because it really does and not only mass media but also the signals people around you send out. So everything you do gives a message to people around you. Always.

Almost a backpacker

My friend Hanna left me this Friday after have been here for over two weeks. I had so much luck because my University was shut down for one week because of a measles epidemic. We have done so many things and now I’m totally exhausted. We went to Osaka, Kyoto and Kobe for four days. I liked Kobe the most but I was very disappointed about Osaka. I don’t know why but since it’s the second/third largest city in Japan I thought it would be awesome but it wasn’t at all. I wrote second/third since Yokohama is believed to be bigger than Osaka because there are about 9 million people going there from other cities just for working everyday. But Osaka is bigger if we look at the actual population living in the city. I really liked Osaka Castle though, it was beautiful. We went to Kyoto by bis and it was quite fast. When we arrived we didn't have a hotel but we found a really good and cheap one almost right away. It's very unlike me to travel without reserving a hotel before...it was an adventure, never done anything that crazy before ;)
Of course I showed Hanna Tokyo and she loved it. I organized a dinner in her honor so that she could meet my friends. We where about 20 people having dinner and she really liked my friends. Hanna also did me a favor because she got in an argument with a guy that I had invited who wanted to take me on a date. Now I don’t think he will ever want to take me on a date again! That’s great because I don’t want to date him at all. After the dinner we went clubbing. The first club we went to was located in Roppongi and it was really weird because about one hour after we arrived the music was shut down because the police was standing outside. It seemed as the club didn’t have permission to be open after a certain hour so they had to hide that they where still open. We wanted to dance so we got our money back and went to another club and Hanna was surprised since one of the guys we went there with said that it was a rather small club but compare to Swedish standard it was quite big.
I took her to different type of restaurants and places. I’ve spent so much money! We also went shopping and I’ve bought so many things. I was worried before because I hadn’t hardly bought anything here but now I think that I have maybe bought to much.
Taku also took Pia, Hanna and me to a Sumo game. It was an amazing experience and one old Sumo-san liked Hanna! He was a bit to old and fat ’cause Hanna kind of like skinny guys her age. He said she had greats curves for a vegetarian!
I’ve now been single for about two months and I’ve been confronted with a new type of problem that I haven’t had before (since I haven’t been single for about 4,5 years!!). I don’t know how to turn guys down. Before I could say that I had a boyfriend but now I can’t use that excuse anymore specially if the guy asking me out is a friend of a friend. It makes it even more difficult if it’s a Japanese guy because Japanese people almost never use the word ‘NO’ in their language. You have to say something that implies a no but I’m really bad at that. In Sweden you can say ‘No, I don’t want to’ but in Japan you can’t because it might be to direct and that’s being rude. My Japanese girlfriends have taught me that I should just ignore the messages or that I should say that I’m too busy. I’ve tried both ways but none of them works so I think I should go back to my usual mean me and just say:’ Sorry, I don’t like you’…

Golden week was great but I didn’t study as much as I should have done (as always). At least I did the grammar but I still have all the kanji and vocabulary left. I had a grammar test this week but I don’t think I did very well because I didn’t know even half of the vocabulary! It’s impossible to get the particles right if you don’t know the words…At least I feel more confident that I did when I first started studying Japanese. I’m not the worst one in my new class and in the end it’s all about what you’ve learned. During golden week I also had a lot of fun and spent way too much money. On Wednesday I went to one of Pia’s friends dinner in Omotesando at a Brazilian buffet restaurant. They had an amazing salad buffet so it was worth the 4200 yen we paid. Afterwards we went to a bar to have some drinks and we finished the night screaming at a karaoke place. The day after I went to Asakuza and shopped for some Japanese traditional things that I want to bring back home. We also had dinner with Tatsuki ad his friends that took us to an amazing Japanese restaurant in Omotesando where we ate until e were so full that we couldn’t walk. I think I’ve told you that I wasn’t feeling very well before and because of that I haven’t been eating hardly anything so I decided that I had to start eating fish again. In the beginning it was very difficult and I still only eat shrimp and sometimes salmon. Now it’s much easier for me to find food at restaurants since fish is very popular here. After the dinner with Tatsuki and his friends we went to a bar which was quite interesting but very dark. The day after I rested the whole day because in the evening I was going to have dinner with Pia and some friends. We went to a Izakaya in Shibuya where Pia had preordered a tabehodai (all you can eat) but I was quite cranky and said that I was leaving if I didn’t get a vegetarian tabehodai. This is quite difficult in Japan since the term vegetarian hardly exists. But Pia handled me great and got me some veggie food (no fish!). After dinner everyone where talking about what we where going to do. I was as I said not in my best mood so I said that I was going to go home if we didn’t go clubbing. So we went clubbing. It was great fun and we danced all night.
Andreas and I met a really handsome waiter a few months ago in Shinjuku and I felt that it was time to see him again. So Andreas talked to him and decided that all three of us where going to have dinner together in Shinjuku on Sunday evening. When I was on the train to Shinjuku my phone rings and it’s Andreas that called and says that I have to meet the waiter by myself because he can’t make it. I paniced of course! Andreas had of course planned this all along because he knew I wouldn’t agree to see the waiter by myself. I couldn’t do anything except than meet up with him in Shinjuku and tell him about the situation and he smiled at me and I saw in his eyes that he understood that it was a setup. I felt so ashamed and it wasn’t my fault! He took me to a nice Izakaya and we had so much fun. We sat there talking for over 5 hours and in the end he said that he felt as if we’ve known each other for very long time. Hahaha! I’ve always been good at talking! I discovered that he’s not really a waiter. He was just helping a friend and in real life he works at a company doing something I don’t understand. He’s 30 years old and works in Roppongi.
I’ve also been teaching quite a bit and I really like my students, they’re so great. One of them is very special. He’s a businessman that works in Shibuya at a company but he’s also a shrink. I only meet him once a week but it feels as he knows me so well. Better than many people that I’ve known so much longer than him. He says it’s because he’s a shrink and that he knows how to read peoples minds. He told me that I was very special because I look like a girl but behave as a man! He also said that I have the character of a man and that it might lead to difficulties for me but that it’s also what will take me where want to go. It might sound as bullshit but when he said it, it made so much sense…I only know one thing for sure and that is that I don’t EVER want to be a man!
I got a haircut today and I think that it looks okay. Last time I cut my hair I started crying because the hairdresser cut of all my hair. This time I brought one of my friends, Yuko, and she explained to the hairdresser how I wanted my hair and most important: how I DON’T want my hair, I don’t want it short, I hate short! I also brought a picture from a magazine and he looked at it very carefully and cut it just like the picture. After the haircut I went shopping for a few hours with Yuko and I bought a pair of jeans. Japanese women are very small but since I’ve lost weight I can get into their big sizes. I went to a shop and asked if they had size 28 and the girl in the shop looked at me up and down and said: “28! We don’t have that big sizes here! It’s to big”. 28 in Japan is about 26-27 in Sweden…
Next week my friend, Hanna, is coming to Tokyo and she’ll be here for about 3 weeks and I don’t think I’ll have the time to write anything while she’s here. So I’ll talk to you in the beginning of June!

Golden Week

Today I’ve been to heaven! It’s true, Izumi took me there. Heaven is actually located at the Hilton Hotel in Shinjuku where they have a “all you can eat in cakes for only 3000 yen”. As I said we went there today and I went crazy. It was so good. If you know me well you know I’m a sucker for sweets and I’ve never had so much cake at once before. Today was a great day with even greater weather.
This week is the so called “Golden week” in Japan. I don’t know why it’s called that but maybe it’s because there are so few long holidays in Japan. This week Monday, Thursday and Friday are holidays and that means that I only have school one day this week! It’s great because I need to catch up with Japanese class and I’ll try to do some serious shopping too. I need new jeans because the ones I have are to big for me now. This weekend I’ve done some shopping, I’ve bought a dress, a pair of shoes and some makeup. Last week I was sick for a few days, I think I caught a cold, so I couldn’t go to the gym but now I’m feeling better so maybe I’ll go tomorrow.
This weekend I went out with Pia and some other friends. We went to a new club in Roppongi called “Flower”. It was fun. As soon as we entered the club a man came up to Pia and gave her his business card. He said he had a house in Omotesando (!!!) and that he wanted her to contact him so that they could talk more. Pia was very polite but I doubt that se will call him. Well, I also got an admirer and he was actually the person in charge of the club. He introduced me and Pia to a lot of people and gave us a VIP table where we could sit and drink with our friends for free. He was really nice and we had a lot of fun that night. Of course he wanted my number and to dance with me etc. I did dance with him but I told him I had a boyfriend (Which I don’t!) and he said he was satisfied with a smile. Cheesy but nice. Still, I’m glad that I have a brain so that I don’t have to depend on some man with a house in Omotesando or a club in Roppongi. But sometimes it’s nice being spoiled and treated as a princess. I haven’t felt appreciated (by a man) nor like a princess in quite a long time but this Friday I did!
Saturday I spent at Mika’s friends house close to Shibuya. Sometimes I forget that Waseda is one of Japan’s top universities and that the Waseda students come from rich families. But I was reminded when I saw Mika’s friend house. It was gigantic with a pool and pool tables etc. I was too tired though because of the clubbing the night before so I didn’t stay for very long. It was fun though and I learned that there are not only 14 square meters apartments in Tokyo but also houses!

Nightmares on 2-8-35:street

Since I came back from Sweden I have had trouble sleeping. I hardly ever remember my dreams and ever more seldom I have nightmares but lately I have been having nightmares almost every night. I don’t always remember the content but I sleep very badly. Tonight was the worst night ever because when I woke up I realized that I had buried my nails deep into my own hands and left blue marks. It really hurt but its quite cool that I could do that to myself without waking up! I have to start relaxing because the lack of sleep is leaving me very tired.
Yesterday I went to have dinner with Ayumi and her friends. We ate at an Italian restaurant and it was really good food. Tonight I was supposed to meet Pia and some friends but Pia is feeling sick so we cancelled. I was also feeling sick the other day, maybe it’s a one day flue.
It’s very warm in Tokyo at the moment. Today it must have been around 20 degrees Celsius. There’s been a storm lying over big parts of Asia but Tokyo hasn’t been effected that much. The weather is great.
I’ve been upgraded one level in Japanese class. So now I have new teachers and new classmates. I’ve only attended the new class once so I don’t know what I think about it but I’m sure that it will be alright. They’re a few chapters ahead of me so I have to study grammar and Kanji. I hope I will learn just as much this semester as I did during the last.
I’ve realized that there’s not very much time left in Tokyo and I have still many things to accomplish. I will travel when my friend Hanna comes to visit me so I‘m not worrying about that. I talked to one of my friends in Sweden who was in Japan last year and he told me that I had to start shopping. I haven’t shopped that much yet and he told me that I should start now because I won’t have enough time later. I just don’t know what I want…

Blood is sure thick

Today is one of those great days when everything just seems to go right. I don’t know where to start but a while ago I found out that my grandfather has cancer. But today I talked to my aunt and she told me that the cancer was treatable and so did my mother. I also talked to my grandfather and he denies that he has cancer, he says that it’s a lie that his big mouthed son, Jorge Jr, has made up. Haha, he’s so funny even when he has cancer! But he’s going to be alright if we believe the doctors.
My aunt also told me that my cousin, Juan-Carlos, is moving to Spain in September. He’s going to be so close! Usually he lives in Mexico or Chicago but now he’s going to be living in Barcelona! And guess who’s going to visit him?
I also received pictures from my new born nieces Archana (Pikku’s daughter) and Leela (Sushma‘s daughter). I will soon post the pics in my photo album. It seems as Sushma had a 36 hour labor…not looking forward to that!
Moreover, it seems as I’ll work at Octapharma again this summer and I’m so happy about that!
I have a lot of things planned for this weekend, both work and fun, and I also have to study. One of my students wants to take me out for dinner but it will have to wait until next week, too busy right now.
Well, it’s really late right now and I have to go to bed because tomorrow I’m going to a pharmacy seminar in Odaiba with Andreas. Looking forward to that too!