Friday, February 23, 2007

I’m getting a little bit nervous because my brother AND my cousin are coming to Tokyo on Sunday! Actually I didn’t know that my cousin, Sasse, was coming at all because he decided in the last minute. But I’m so happy he’s coming too, it will be double the fun! Too bad Nimis (my other cousin) couldn’t come! I really want them to have a good time.
The evening they arrive I’ve planned a dinner with my friends at the Christon Café that’s a really cool place. And on Wednesday we are going to Onsen with Taku. The rest of the time we’ll plan when I know what they want to do. I guess they’re not very interested in sightseeing and they actually know more about Tokyo than I do!
Tonight I’m going clubbing with Yuko, Rei, Andreas and David. It’s going to be fun because we are going to the club Air (from the movie ‘lost in translation‘) that I’ve been wanting to visit for quite some time. But I don’t know what to wear…

Monday, February 12, 2007

Svenne forever

This week has been quite busy, but next week will be less busy. I finished my Science Journalism course this Friday. It was quite an interesting course but I don’t think I would like to work as a science journalist. It seems as fun because you get to meet a lot of different people but it seems also as a very difficult field in the meaning of work opportunities. There are so many journalist everywhere in the world but very few jobs. I’m a work ant and I would die if I was unemployed.
Next week I will start working with my programming course and I also have to study some Japanese. And I will continue visiting my best friend right now, the gym! And I also have some students to teach.
My brother is coming in only two weeks, I’m so excited! He’s only staying for one week so I have to plan the visit very well. We have to do everything I did with my mum and more in only one week instead of two.
I’m also going home for two weeks. I decided to do that not very long ago. I want to see my parents and Lennart. It feels quite strange to go home, I hadn’t counted on going back at all. But when Lennart couldn’t make it to Tokyo I felt that I had to go home to see him. One year apart is too long. I think it’s worth giving us two weeks together even though it means that I have to leave Tokyo.
Andreas and I got an e-mail telling us that a journalist wanted to interview students from Uppsala who where studying in Tokyo. His name is Stewen Quigley and he works for the magazine Biz&Art. It seems as a very cool magazine that is trying to do a reportage about how people like Carl von Linné etc. traveled to Japan a long time ago and they want to link it to how people like Andreas and me are traveling to Japan now a days. Interesting.
We went to Asakusa to meet with him and I liked him a lot, he was very cool. He took some photos of us in Asakusa. Andreas was very happy because he felt like a movie star. Stewen had also interviewed another girl before us, Disa, who is studying at a language school in Tokyo and she’s born in Uppsala. In the evening the same day I went to a dinner party and there I met Disa. The amazing thing was that I knew this girl from before. She and I played together when we were younger and we also went to the same art school! It’s true what they say, the world is so little. Another interesting person was attending this dinner party. His name is Yuji and he has worked and lived in Sweden for 20 years and just moved back to Tokyo. We talked a lot with him and we also went to karaoke together.
Tonight we went to have dinner together. It was really nice, he took us to a cool restaurant and afterwards we took him to a bar where Pia and Yuji had some drinks and I ate cake with ice cream. I think it’s amazing how you meet people. You never know who you’re meeting next! Yuji is a doctor but he has now stared his own IT-company. He’s around 40 years old but he’s a lot of fun and young at heart.
Sometimes in Sweden I don’t feel very Swedish but always when I go abroad I realize how Swedish I am. I can also tell who’s Swedish just by one look, Swedes are very particular! The funny thing is that no one can tell that Pia and I are Swedish by our faces! Let’s say that we are wearing a kind of disguise. It’s fun being Swedish in Japan because Japanese people admire Sweden and our social system a lot. To bad that so many people in Sweden seem to want to change one of the things that makes us so special…well, the grass is always greener on the other side, isn’t it? I still love SVERIGE!

Wednesday, February 07, 2007

Okay, I know! I have to start writing again. It’s just that I’m so busy. I finished my exams last week and now I’m on holiday. I’m taking two courses. One at Waseda and one at my home Uni. and then I’m also working. So I’m quite busy.
The course I’m taking at Waseda is called “Science Journalism” and it’s a friend of my favorite teacher, Uchida sensei, that’s holding it. His name is Richard Stone and he works as a reporter for Science magazine. I know, it’s really cool! His career is amazing and he has been everywhere - even in North Korea! It’s such an opportunity to get to talk to him, he even knows my name.
The other course is a programming course in C++. I had forgotten how much fun programming was!
Totally I now have 5 new students to teach. I teach them English, Spanish, French and Swedish. It’s quite good money for not doing to much, but I’m glad I’m in engineering and not something that has to do with teaching. I really don’t think there is anything that would suite me better than engineering. But I might be wrong. I don’t have a lot of time for my friends but I try to see them once a week. Soon my beautiful baby brother is coming and I’m sure that he will love Tokyo. I’m going to try to show him everything!
Now I have to go to bed because I have school tomorrow!