On Monday I went to the Maruyama park with Kaku and some of his friends for some hanami. They brought a grill and we had yakiniku (grilled meat), yakitori (grilled chicken on sticks), vegetables and other delicious stuff under the sakura trees. Unfortuately it was a bit chilly so I had to keep near the grill all the time to warm my hands. After eating for a couple of hours or so we went home to one of Kaku´s friends for some Chinese gyoza. For some reason I was really beat and had to sleep for a while. When I woke up the others had finished making the filling for the gyoza and was about to wrap them. I tried wrapping a few myself and they were not so bad. These gyoza weren´t steamfried like regular Japanese gyoza, but boiled. It was delicious but I ate a bit too much. After that we went to Susukino for some karaoke at a cheap place Kaku knew (200yen/hour). It was fun as usual and this time I tried singing Ue wo Muite Arukou. To my surprise it went quite well.

On Thursday I went to the Maruyama park for hanami again, but this time with two Korean friends from my class. They brought some Korean-style sushi which was really good. Every time a puff of wind came sakura leaves fell around us and it was very beautiful. It is very difficult to get on camera unfortunately. The weather was (contrary to what the weather prognose had predicted) really great and in the sun I could sit in a tshirt. For some reason a helicopter circled around above us, making it impossible to talk everytime it came close, but it went away after a while. In the evening we went to karaoke at a cheap place near where I live. For some mysterious reason they had a lot of Scatman songs at this place. I didn´t even know he had made more than a couple of songs. Besides, they´re completely impossible to sing.

On Saturday I went to Kaku´s apartment and made a classic Swedish meal - meatballs and macaroni boiled in milk - for me, Kaku and one of Kaku´s friends who was also with us on Monday. The meatballs were a bit dry and flavorless but I managed to make quite tasty macaroni. Mmmm! Unfortunately I made a bit too small potions. I would´ve wanted to eat at least three bowls but had to settle with one. I´ll have to make it again some time, and this time I´ll succeed with the meatballs too!

An issue that has become in the spotlight lately is the problems with crows in the cities. In Tokyo they have started a "war" against them. The reason there are so many crows in the cities is that the garbage bags are put directly on the street for the garbage trucks to pick up, and the birds can freely peck away at them, leaving the entire street full of garbage. If you walk the streets early in the morning you can see the huge crows (they are a lot bigger than in Sweden and completely black) having a snack among the garbage. It is not a pretty sight. It kind of makes me feel like I´m in one of those sci-fi movies about a future with deserted cities when I walk down the empty streets with plastic bags and other rubbish blowing across them. I don´t understand why there are no garbage bins. Maybe because people have so much trash that it wouldn´t fit. That´s another problem in Japan. Even though there is a pretty good system of dividing the trash into burnable, nonburnable, bottles etc, there is still little thought about cutting down on the producing of garbage in the first place. I don´t think there is any other country with so much packaging and throw-away-after-use products as in Japan. There is few things sold with less than two wrappings. For examle, if you buy a bag of rice crackers there is another little plastic bag for each cracker inside and a lot of times also a paper or plastic tray. Small portion packages are also very popular. Like 1 deciliter bottles or cans of drinks or single portion packages with cooked rice (This is wasteful not only in the production of packaging but in the volume per transport aspect). I wonder if there is some research done on how much energy people in different countries consume. The people in Japan has got to be in the top 5. Anyway, I am a bit bothered by the garbage throwing system, because the burnable trash is to be put out before 08:30on a specific day of the week, the unburnable another specific day etc, and I keep forgetting to put out the trash (mostly because I´m tired from lack of sleep in the morning) so the trash in my room is piling up... In Sweden you can just go and dump the trash in specific containers whenever you have time. 

As I may have written earlier, one thing I really miss from Sweden is the bread. Japanese bread is extremely fluffy and soft, providing no biting resistance unless toasted, and lacks flavor. One funny thing is that there is a popular bread shop called Hokuo (Japanese for Scandinavia) selling what they claim is Scandinavian bread. Of course it isn´t. It´s jut a lot of Japanese bread with different strange fillings (like sausages or cheese and spices). On a bag I got when buying some bread there was a very funny message (I have written it exactly as it was on the bag):
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.

It seems I write a lot of complaints about Japan. Hmm. Well, it´s just because I take the good things for granted now that I´m here I guess. When I was back in Sweden I couldn´t think of anything but the good things. Now I feel the same way about Sweden. 

I have finally figured out what days and channels the programs I watched last year are on. Like Koko ga Hen da yo Nihonjin and Sanma no Karakuri terebi. Karakuri consists of several parts like for example Salaryman Hayashirabe Quiz and Funniest English. All parts have one thing in common - people are either making fools of them selves or are made fools of. And throughout the show there is a panel of celebrities guessing what foolish things they will say or do next. In Funniest English there is an Englishspeaking guy asking Japanese people to tell a story about i.e. when they were very surprised, and then make them tell it in English. One of the sentences I remember since last year is "Hippu...issu...gurando mazaa (Hip is grandmother)" when a girl tried to explain that she had a bad hip. To make things more difficult for her the Englishspeaking guy acted like he didn´t understand anything and asked if her hip really was her grandmother and tried to interview the hip... Last time I saw it they had taken a new approach to the language: Funniest Japanese. The Englishspeaking guy went to Australia to ask students studying Japanese about embarrassing stories in Japanese. Of course they were just as bad at Japanese as the Japanese were at English. I really could feel how difficult it was. It wasn´t long ago I had the very same problems. (Not that I am completely without problems now of course...) 

Here´s something for you swedes:
Gillar du Killing-gänget bör du kolla upp Ensamseglaren. Det är en fejkreselogg med Johan Rheborg (känd för sin karaktär Percy Nilegård). Behållningen ligger i filmerna. Den ligger på Killing-gängets sajt Spermaharen som görs av Killing-gänget själva. Det lite väl mycket grova sex-skämt för min smak på Spermaharen, men det finns några riktigt roliga grejer där också (t.ex. Dagens namn, Stereogrammet och Optiker Berglunds spel).