Woohoo! When I came home the other day I got so happy I had to do a little dance. I found a big package with my name on it. I knew it was from my parents because I had asked them to send some papers for school and some contact lenses, and if possible some kind of food. But I had never expected this! There were a lot of Swedish food, including three kinds of bread, serials, mashed potatoe-mix, pyttipanna, waffle mix, jam, shrimp-cheese, cheese and different kinds of sweets. Aaah! I instantly prepared a sandwich with knäcke-bread (a kind of stale crispy bread which I don´t know the english word for) and shrimp-cheese and gulped down with a happy frown. then another one. Then I prepared one and took it down to the manager and gave it to him. He went to the

There is a brand new show with Takeshi "Beat" Kitano and George Tokoro called WaFuu. The name means "Japanese style" and in the show they have gone to different countries and dug out things related to Japan. Takeshi and Tokoro-san then compete with eachother with the aid of different celebrities, answering different questions about the subject. Last time they had been in Finland. First of all they showed some Japanese influences like the Geisha choklad bar, and then some things for which Finland is famous in Japan like xylitol chewing gum and Santa Claus. Swedish people sometimes get surprised by the latter but there is a Santa Village in a small town in Northern Finland which is very famous in Japan. I wonder why. In Sweden we usually say he lives in the North Pole. Then the program continued with an interesting subject - the language. Europeans who don´t understand Finnish and Japanese often think they sound similar and as it turns out, they have many words in common. Only the meaning differs... It was a bit confusing when they presented the Finnish meaning of the words so if you notice something wrong please contact me. Puutalo means babywagon in Finnish and beggar or homeless in Japanese. Futari means (i.e. soccer-)player in Finnish and two people in Japanese. Shika means pig in Finnish and deer in Japanese. Then comes the really funny part - personal names. There were several people with names with funny meaning in Japanese but the funniest were two girls with the names Minna Ahonen (meaning something like everyone is stupid) and Henna Pantsu (meaning weird underpants).

Talking about Takeshi "Beat" Kitano, if you know of him, those of you who outside Japan probably know of him as the director and actor in films like Violent Cop, Sonatine, Hana-bi, Kikujiro, and the recent film Brother. Most of these films are serious and violent and he always plays a silent serious man with a tendency to suddenly break out in violence at times. In Japan, however, he is not very known for those movies, but rather for his presence at various shows. He almost always wear strange funny clothes and acts like a clown. And he never stays serious. There is one show (also with Tokoro-san) where he always show up in really strange outfits like a frog suit with small mechanical frogs around or as a big pie or something like that. It is really hilarous. 

The breakfast here in Japan is somewhat different from that in Sweden. Unless you eat puffy toast you eat rice and miso soup and something complementary, which is usually fish. But the fish here is not like fish in Sweden. Breakfast fish is usually a whole small fish (about 10 or 15 centimeters long) with bones and all except the head and fins. It is really difficult to sort the bones out, especially since you eat with chopsticks, but I got praise by the woman (I don´t know what to call her) who showed me to my room when I came and who cooks food and does other things (there are others who help cooking the food but they leave after that). She said I handle the chopsticks better than most of the Japanese guys who live here. 

There is a beautiful flower which is blooming now in different colours at different places, but I don´t know it´s name. I must find out! Anyway, now that summer is beginning here (the real summer period in Japan is July-August) the corn carts are crowding Odori Park. Sapporo is famous for selling corn as a summer snack and they call it tôkibi in contrast to the regular Japanese tômorokoshi. This week is YOSAKOI week. Those of you who haven´t been in Sapporo probably don´t know what that means. Well then, you just have to read the next log then...