Stuck in autumn

It's autumn, perfect autumn. Cold, crisp days with blue clear skies, to be substituted by fog and rain once in a while. The leaves on the trees are red, just as they are in any country in the world when the autumn comes, but still, Japanese love to praise their red leaves and spend their money on going to a mountain or forest where there happen to be trees. I think, that within the square kilometre that surrounds my house back in Sweden, there are more red trees than in the entire Japan. Well, they are masters of overrating their own country. But then again, who isn't.
So, during these chilly autumn days I've been busy looking for work and studying Japanese. In the mornings I go running, the usual sling along Kanda river. It's a little bit lonely, and lately Tomoya has been returning late every night, although his boss wants him to go home earlier. There is more work than time I suppose. Since I'm not working now I don't have too much money either, which limits my pleasure budget to a coffee a day. That means, that even though it's Friday today, I'm at home watching TV and waiting for Tomoya. He is currently out buying clothes and equipment for tomorrow's golf trip, to which he forced to attend . I think though, that when he comes home he has to go straight to bed since he needs to get up at 4:30 tomorrow to be picked up by a co-worker who will take him to the closest golf lane. Which would be some hours away, I reckon. Well, no reason to be negative. Who knows, it might be fun to golf, although I myself would hardly call it a sport, but rather a waste of money and a weird and complicated way of perform a normal promenade. But who am I to judge other peoples hobbies. Anyhow. I'm currently searching for another internship to do in Japan during the spring. Actually, some companies seem interested, and I have an interview planned next week. But still, how easy is it to get inspired to stay here, when it is as grey and lonely as it is? At least I have my little Japanese girl friends to chat with and hang with at cafés. Sometimes we meet for a coffee and a snack at Starbucks or some other café that offers good coffee. I'm also reading a lot nowadays. Right now I'm in the middle of Jane Austen's Emma. It's a nice novel, and makes me long for England and fluffy dresses á la the transvestites in Little Britain. The thing I am looking forward to the most right now (besides from celebrating christmas in Sweden with my parents and dear sisters(and the cats)) is this weekend's sine long planned gingerbread and Lussekatt baking. I will go to Tomoya's parents' house tomorrow, while he is golfing, to prepare the gingerbread dough. We will bake the cookies on Sunday, and since we also have real Glögg (Glu wine, kind of) to accompany them, the first of Advent (as we Swedes call this Sunday) might feel really christmasy. I must admit though, that I do suspect that the glögg might be swapped for green tea and the gingerbread for rice crackers, but "one takes the custom to where one comes", as we say back at home.

Nande mo neee

So, my internship has come to an end. It's been 6 fun weeks, and I've learnt alot, Japanese and other stuff as well. Last Wednesday we had a farewell party at nice sushi bar in Nagoya, and it was really fun. I felt quite appreciated. I returned to Tokyo last Friday and now I have 3 weeks of holiday. I'm going to study for my JLPT (Japanese language proficiency test) that I have in the beginning of December and also try to find another internship or something to do during thi spring. This weekend Tomoya had a test in accounting on Sunday morning, so the entire Saturday he spent studying. Sunday afternoon he had to work and didn't come home until 7. Working on Sundays, that's just too depressing. Japan is depressing. This and yesterday morning I've been jogging along the river some meters from our apartment. Today I ran something like 3 kilometres. On the way I saw 4 homeless guys sleeping on benches or crouching in a bush. That's even more depressing than Tomoya working on Sundays. There's a lot in this country that's quite questionable. Like the discrimination against, or rather for, foreigners. Look at the picture and you'll see what I mean. Interesting. It's not unusual though.
A good thing about Japan though, is as always the food. Autumn is the nabe season. Nabe is maybe the easiest and maybe the tastiest food there is. You take the nabe sauce you want, for example sesame taste, salt, soy sauce or soy milk, heat it with water and then put in the vegetables you like. It could be anything really, cabbage, carrots, mushrooms. Easy, plain and really tasty.
Well, my life right now is not the most interesting. The next planned thing is a "1st advent" celebration at the Taniai's, including gingerbread and lussekatt baking on the 30th of November. I think it will be fun.

Discrimination?

Halloween and Christmas

JIMTOF, the tooling exhibition is finally over. It's been 6 stressful but fun days. My work mostly consisted of explaining the ice sculpture in our booth to curious Japanese visitors. I've been practicing my Japanese a lot and I’ve also met many interesting people. Some people came in the morning to watch the sculpture, and then returned in the afternoon when it was finished. Our booth was popular. Another of my missions was to be in charge of our Yellow bag competition. At the exhibition we handed out yellow bags, and 5 times a day I went to find someone with one of those bags, present him or her with an iPod Shuffle and then take a picture in front of the ice sculpture with the happy winner. It was fun, since many winners got really happy. But some though, just said "I don't want no iPod" and fled. Weird. I've also been told, like 235 times that I'm fluent in Japanese. By some, when I've been having longer conversations, and by some when I've only said "Konnichiwa", which is the word for hello. It sort of makes the compliment pointless in the end, and I'm not sure if I'm really good at Japanese or if it's just a way for the Japanese to be polite. Anyhow. The work alone hasn't been the only nice part. I've also met a lot of nice Swedes who came to Japan only for this event. The Swedes from the Ice Hotel in Jukkasjärvi were really nice, and I got a long particularly well with Tjåsa, the ice sculptress. I took her to a sky bar in Shinbashi one night, were we had dinner while watching Tokyo from above. One funny tradition about Japanese exhibitions it that every company has its own presentation girls. We had ours aswell, ofcourse. They were dressed in Yellow and were wearing white boots with high heels. Once in an hour they held a presentation about some of our tools, something that they of course knew nothing about, but they had somehow managed to learn the texts and presented it perfectly. Interesting. Some other companies had ladies that must have been Russian or so. Miniskirts and 20 cm high heels on a 2 meter tall, fake blond girl. And this is a tooling exhibition, not even cars or motor cycles. Well. This is Japan. Last week was Halloween, by the way. There have been preparations everywhere; cookies in orange in the bakeries, decorations in the shopping windows and pumpkin costumes in the stores since over a month ago. But, the day of Halloween, the 31st, the only thing that happened was that the orange changed into red. I was in a shopping mall at that very day, and there were Christmas trees everywhere. I think Japan is the most extreme country in the world when it comes to commercialism. It was the same thing with Christmas last year, and it will be the same this year as well. The good part though, is that this year I'm spending Christmas in Sweden. All the built-up Christmas spirit will come in handy when I get home to a probably rainy Sweden in the middle of December. The Christmas spirit actually got me the day before yesterday, when I had my first Gingerbread Latte at Starbucks. It tasted exactly as it did last year, and since the time around Christmas in Japan might have been the funniest time in my life, it made me feeling quite sentimental. I'm planning on going to Starbucks today as well. They even play Christmas music, but it makes me quite happy and confident about returning to Sweden quite soon. So, today I'm having a Starbucks date with Haruka, a girl from the university I went to. Tonight we are probably going somewhere to celebrate Tomoya’s birthday that was yesterday. I had bought a lot of presents and a nice cake, but since he was out on a forced drinking party until 3 A.M. the night before, he didn't manage to eat any. Well, maybe next year.