Application for JLPT N1 is completed

As the headline says.

It was an easy process to apply for it on the internet, just go this page and register an account. Then the application process is a walk in the park. If you are thinking of taking the test you have to hurry up with the application because the deadline is 1st of May. The fee is 5500 JPY.

Too bad that the Juli test only is given in Japan, China, South Korea and some other Asian countries. All people who wants to do it in Europe have to wait for the December test. And make it possible to take it in Sweden already!

If you don't know what the JLPT is you can read all about it here.

A Small Jump In Time

Uh, I had an awesome spring break and did a lot of breaky things.

Now when that is done, Hello again!

School has started and this semester I will study some Japanese. My plan is to challenge N1 (the highest grade of the Japanese Language Proficiency Test) in July, so I need to review grammar, and practice reading. I did the old version of the JLPT in December 2008, but failed quite badly and have ever since wanted to to it again. I think I'll do better with studying Japanese now when I actually am in Japan again than try to hammer my brain with grammar and stuff in Sweden where it feels kind of pointless.

The weather is getting better every day and the sakura (cherry blossoms) is in full bloom, but sometimes the weather is really acting strange. Two days ago it was snowing! And last week we had 25 degrees! I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked out the window.

Sakura in full bloom (I cheated and uploaded a picture from my vacation in Tokyo)

SNOW!

I have also practiced reading though manga a bit more lately and I am currently reading the latest released volume of Claymore (do you remember?), volume 23 and it is awesome.

There is also an anime that is airing right now called Shingeki no Kyojin, that is also a recommendation from me to all of you.

Just a rainbow cloud in a circle around the sun. Nothing special here

Day of rest

No training today, so I decided to take a walk (in my new shoes) into town to buy t-shirts that I can train in, and maybe a new bag for school stuff. The one I have is from like 2008 and have seen its better days.

Puma

They said it would be 17 degrees and cloudy, but it was more like 8 degrees. LIES.

I met with Arthur who came from the lab and we went to a store called Graniph, which has a lot of nice
t-shirts and I found four to be to my liking. Two T-shirts is only 4200 yen (280 SEK), so it was totally worth it. After that we went and had some casual lunch at Higashiyama, a yakiniku place, that has a lunch menu including 300g of mixed meat (beef and pork), rice, salad and soup for 1000 yen (67 SEK). The downside with that lunch offer is that the meat is pretty fatty, but pretty good anyway. I will try something else next time though. When I lived in Sendai last time, I went there a lot during lunch with Tobias, and thinking of that reminded me of getting a new point card.

Said T-shirts

The Lunch, with a big L, as in meat

After lunch I realized that because I had bought nice t-shirts, I still did not have any to train in, which was the target of this visit to town, so we went back to UNI-CLO, and there I bought four no-name t-shirts for 500 yen each. Perfect to kill with my sweat.

Oh, we went to the arcade and played some jubeat as well. I'm sorry Arthur that I have made you addicted (mohahahahaah). I unlocked Kung-fu mama last time, a song that is available on the European iPad-version, and I got an A on advanced level 7 on the first try! The guy in the youtube clip plays extreme level 9. I tried that as well and I aaaalmost got a C (which is pass). Damn it's funny

Exhibit A

Sukiyaki!

Yesterday I went out with a couple of friends to a restaurant to have some shabushabu or sukiyaki. When we arrived we noticed that you could choose a combination (both of them in the same pot) for only 200 yen extra. That seemed like a splendid idea, but if we wanted some other taste of the broth than kombu, it was an additional 200 yen. By an unanimous decision we then decided to only go with the sukiyaki, with tabehoudai and nomihoudai and it was really awesome. I could barely walk afterwards because my stomach was so full.

When you make sukiyaki, you first melt some fat in the pot and fry thin slices of meat. When they are getting ready you push it to one side, add vegetables, tofu (It has to be separated by sort and look nice!) and then pour a mix of sugar, soy sauce and mirin over it. Then it is left to simmer for a while before you pick the tasty meat and vegetables with your chopsticks and dip it into whipped raw egg. Then NAM NAM NAM.

Photo of sukiyaki with focus on the meat

Just some meat in egg

After the dinner we met a few more friends that couldn't attend the first party, and walked to a nearby izakaya for another nomihoudai. We got french fries included, but who could eat anymore?
Anders had brought his iPad and we played a kind of game on it where someone writes a yes/no-question. When everybody has answered the result is shown and it's fun to try to guess who answered what, specially when you make strange questions. It's similar to the "I have never..."-game.

Where did we go after that? ABOO of course!
As usual I initiated the famous card drinking game "higher or lower" and everyone got pretty drunk (thanks to me). Unfortunately I did the mistake to drink only beer the whole night which my stomach didn't like that much. Also, the smell of the garlic popcorn didn't make it better so to speak.

Training

I'm back on track!

After no training during my trip to Tokyo, and then because of the cold I got two days before I came back to Sendai, it felt really good to go to the gym and kill my legs. I have a problem to walk properly today, and it's going to be even more difficult tomorrow. Lovely feeling!

Skip leg day, and you will end up like this

I was feeling a bit "uäääää I don't want to train today!!!" yesterday, but I started to watch some motivational videos on youtube and thought "of course I will go to the gym today!". So pro-tip: if you don't feel like training, watch motivational videos on youtube and remember WHY you are training.

One of the videos I watched featured a lot of chins, pull-ups and other exercises including a bar, so yesterday evening I searched the nearby area for such equipment. I remembered that most of the schools I've seen has like a bar-rack on different heights in the school yard, and as we have a school across the street from where I live, I went to check it out.

There they were, the beautiful bars shining in the darkness, a construction with two different heights. Unfortunately, they were too low for me, but then I noticed another set to the right which had perfect height. I noticed a sign below that said: 「危険です。危ないですから使わないでください」or in English: DANGER! It's dangerous, so please do not use these.
I don't know if the reason behind that was because it was late, and they put up the signs every night, or if you just can't use them for som other reason.

I will use them (evil laugh).

Gaming day

Today I woke up at 5:30 after a good nights sleep with all the lights lit on max (yes I fell asleep while reading. again.). I decided to play some company of heroes today instead of just watching streams as I usually do, but I think it is boring to play 1v1 if I don't have any interaction. Therefore I decided to try the free streaming software OBS for a change. It feels kind of a waste because I have bought a license for xsplit, but it seems that OBS don't use as much CPU.

It worked like a charm and I had 30 viewers at one point!
I only played as PE and started as lvl 8. became lvl 9-8-9-8 and ended at 9 again. That's when I decided to stop.

How's that for nerdy computer gaming talk?

Oh, and I have gotten a big blister on my foot for some reason. I mean, a little walk for one hour shouldn't do that. It has stayed the same size for 4 days, but today I killed it by puncture it and drain it from liquid. Mmmm, blister liquid.

Just look at that!

I also received the rest of the Claymore manga which I ordered two days ago, so now I have more awesome reading to look forward to.

Oh, and I also joined the dark side and signed up for spotify premium.

Slow-paced holiday

I wanted to complete the series from my visit to Tokyo, but due to lazy and tired, I won't!

So what has happened since?
After I came back from Tokyo, I have spent my time watching shitloads of anime. I finished 67 episodes of Hunter x Hunter in two days for example. It's a nice anime, so If you haven't started watching it yet please do. The downside with catching up to the latest episode of a series is that you have to wait a whole week for the next episode! And I think you appreciate a series  more, whether it is an anime or a TV-series, if you are watching a lot of episodes in a row. If you have wait a whole week in between a bit of the magic disappears.

Lately I have also stepped up my reading of manga. I had a lot of trouble to really get into the story in the beginning, probably because I haven't read comics for like... 18 years or so, but I didn't give in to my urge to quit after a few pages. "This is ridiculous! I don't understand every single word and therefore I should give up!" - No, I was steadfast and continued reading. In the beginning I was looking up a lot of words (like every second that I didn't know the exact meaning of right away), but that didn't help me getting sucked into the story, so I stopped doing that.

After a while I realized that most of the words, although I haven't explicitly studied them, are already known to me. Either I know the meaning of one or both of the kanji (but haven't seen them together) or I have heard the word while watching anime. I have to say that my reading speed has doubled, almost tripled after these 11 volumes of Claymore that I have read so far. That doesn't mean that I read fast, only that I sucked before - insufficient reading practice does that to you. So kids, if you are studying Japanese, don't forget to read a lot because it takes time for your eyes to get accustomed to read Japanese.

Oh, and speaking of manga, I also went to BOOK-OFF here in Sendai, and found a package with the first 30 volumes of Katekyō Hitman Reborn! for only 3500 yen! And as I've finished the 11 volumes of Claymore that I have bought I tried the online version of BOOK-OFF and ordered the remaining 12 volumes. Too bad that the series is not finished yet because it seems to be like 4-5 months between the releases of a new volume.

Well, you probably thought "wait, what? no food porn?"
I won't make you disappointed.

My breakfast at a place next to the capsule hotel in Shinjuku

Meat for しゃぶしゃぶ (shabu-shabu)

And the set shabu-shabu table

This is a small bowl at Ramen Jiro. I could barely finish it, and they have a large as well!

Some fried things with mayonnaise

Curry at Coco house. I tried a new one, so it is fried fish with fried shrimps. It was really good

Tokyo: Day 7

As you might have noticed, I stopped updating the blog everyday in Tokyo, so I'm batch-updating now.

I woke up and met Jun in the onsen section and had a quick soak before checking out from the hotel, then we went to the Korean town which is really close to Shinjuku. Jun loves Korean food so we went to a restaurant and had breakfast/lunch. Unfortunately, the batteries in my camera had died the day before, so I charged it at the restaurant, therefore no food porn of my lunch.

After we had eaten, we walked through Korean town, and slowly back to Shinjuku. It was really good weather, so we went to a cafe and sat in the sunshine outside. I was still a bit tired and I realized suddenly that I was sleeping. Very comfortable, almost like a fine summer day.

A happy, cute rabbit found on the walk

Back in Shinjuku he went home, and I went back to the hotel for some reclining. I was really tired, so when I received a message from Umi-chan, that she was going to be a bit late I was relieved. Instead of 15, we ended up meeting at 17 at Shinjuku east exit. She brought three Swedish friends and we went together to a restaurant and had okonomiyaki and monja. Okonomiyaki is a Japanese savory pancake containing a variety of ingredients, and monja is a runnier version of okonomiyaki.

Okonomiyaki engulfed in mayonnaise

Closeup

After that we bought beer and went to one of the Swedish guys, Jimmie, and had a pre-party. Two other Swedes arrived, and later Jimmies girlfriend. Poor Umi-chan, surrounded by Swedes. As she had to work the day after she left a bit earlier.

Where did we go after the pre-party?
アルプス！
A lot of beer and food was consumed and we had a really fun time and a lot of intriguing conversations (yes, I'm citing you Tatsuki Momose).

Half of the Swedes at アルプス

The other half

More cheesy food porn

We felt that we wanted to party some more, and a part of the group wanted to sing, so we went  to a karaoke place that had soft drink nomihoudai until 10 in the morning. Well, acually there was some alcohol involved. Like 700 ml of Nikka Whiskey bought from the family mart nearby (mohahaha!). There was a lot of singing, and Elin, Jimmies girlfriend knew a lot of Japanese songs which was awesome. I tried one that I had almost learned two years ago, but I had forgotten quite a bit. Or I was too drunk. Probably an evil combination of memory-loss and alcohol. Other than that, I did my usual lineup of Soundgarden and a couple of others, but as I only know songs that they don't have in the karaoke places, I had to choose songs that I don't know that well. That combined with drunk is a bad idea. And as usual when you go to karaoke, interactions with rooms nearby also occured.

Because it was free drinks I felt like experimenting: melon soda with whiskey. Please, whatever you do, don't try this. It was abhorrently horrible (At last I could squeeze in that beautiful word in a sentence, abhorrent).

Fun at karaoke. You can see my almost untouched melon soda / whiskey. It was also time for some coffee

So kawaiiiiiiii

Suddenly a wild seven a'clock in the morning appeared and we said goodbye to each other.

Conclusion: I think I will have to learn a few Japanese songs.

Tokyo: Day 6

After a long nights sleep I was genki again (genki = healthy; stamina; spirit; courage) and went to Yoshinoya for lunch. It is a place where you buy a bowl of rice with meat on top of it, very delicious. It becomes even more delicious, in my opinion, if you add red pickled ginger, like a lot. I mean like a mountain damn it. I love that ginger! In Japanese, its called benishouga. Remember that kids.

Gyudon with a mountain of benishouga

I also decided to do something fun that evening, so I hooked up with a Japanese friend who lives in Tokyo, Jun, and he took me to Kanda and a restaurant that have nomihoudai (drink all you want for a fixed time for a fixed price) but instead of the cheaper Japanese beers, this was with Belgian beer!

The place was a bit fancy, and on weekdays it's usually packed with people due to the high percentage of salarymen in the area, but because it was Saturday it was not that crowded. Amazingly, it was also no smoking, thanks for that.

We chose the 4000 yen alternative with seven kinds of beer and started drinking from the top down. The beers was like 1200 yen each, so we reckoned if we drank more than five or six, we would make a huge profit! They also had a great variety of food, and we ordered quite a bit. Very tasty indeed (oh yes, incoming food porn. Brace yourselves!).

Salad with smoked salmon

Oh yes, this is a 36 month cured ham from Spain, and the most exclusive one. I present to you the jamón ibérico de bellota! Bellota = acorn, and the name originates from that the pigs only eat acorns during the last period.

This was the chefs choice this week, a hamburger in tomato curry. Really tasty as well

One of the beers. It was a cherry one, so it was average

Venison stew. This. was. AWESOME! Just look at that tasty bone. Doesn't that make you wanna dig in and eat like a pre-historical caveman, ripping the meat from the bone with your teeth?

It sure made me want to do it

A map of Belgium was plastered on the wall as well. 

After that place we went to Shinjuku and アルプス (Alps, do you remember?) because it has become my favourite place so I want to go there like, a lot. When I was there during the new years holiday, we went there three days straight, and the waitress commented "are you here today as well?" so I thought she would remember me, but she didn't. So sad.

We had a variety of snacks there as well, and a lot of beer. I was really surprised that Jun could keep up with my pace. He was a bit more drunk than me, but hey, we had like eight beers at the restaurant in Kanda, and probably five or six at アルプス (do you remember the translation?).

Gyoza (dumplings)

I think this was some kind of fries with cheese

And it's not food porn in Japanese style unless you "open the food" and hold ut up in front of the camera. mmm, cheese

It was getting late and he decided to stay at the capsule hotel as well, so we had a good soak before bed.

Tokyo: Day 5

This day was a day of rest.
Slept until 12, walked around in Shinjuku to try and find some interesting restaurants or stores, but ended up spending two hours at a book off, looking at manga and stuff.

I had lunch at coco house, and then I went back to the capsule hotel for some reclining. I was really out of it so I did nothing the whole day. Got hungry around 22 or something and went for a ramen, then sleep.

Overview of the awesomeness. paripari chicken curry with sausages and a boiled egg. Spiciness degree 4

Food porn macro

Tokyo: Day 4

I started my day at Italian Tomato Cafe Jr. with a carbonara and lots of parmesan. The sauce was a bit on the thin side this time as well, but it was good anyway. After breakfast I headed to the game center again, to increase the size of my blister on my finger.

The daily Food Porn

After gaming, I went for an adventurous stroll around Shinjuku before I checked in at three. My only plan for the day was to attend the weekly Go! Go! Nihon - event they have on Thursdays at the british pub HUB in takadanobaba. I met Hans at 6.30 pm and went for dinner at a yakitori place called ban ban pretty close to the hotel. A guy recommended that place last time I was in Tokyo and it was pretty good. You really can't compare it to torigoya though, but they had ume sasami (the ume was not mixed with mayonnaise unfortunately). They didn't have tomato bacon, but they had asparagus rolled in pork (not bacon) and that was really awesome.

 After dinner we took the train to takadanobaba, and directly walked in the wrong direction. I remebered that HUB was located to the side of McDonalds, but it was Burger King, on the other side of the station.
When we arrived, I went for the happy hour menu, but directly got informed that it was only valid between 5-7. And I thought it was 7-9. Big disappointment. But I went for the jumbo sized Cuba Libre anyway.
It was a lot of people there as usual; Japanese, Swedish, Italian, American and so on. A really nice mix of people. Ko-hei came around 8:30, but unfortunately he couldn't stay that long. The harsh reality as a Japanese freelance designer.

Around 11, me and Hans decided to leave, which probably was a good idea because he was becoming really drunk. Out of respect, I won't post the awesome pics I have of him ;). When I got back to Shinjuku I wanted to party a bit more, so I loooked for a nice bar. On my way through Kabukichou no less than five black guys tried to lure me to a shady place.
- Hey, where are you going? What do you look for? Do you like boobs?

I found a nice looking bar literally 10 meters from the capsule hotel. It looked a bit fancy, but I noticed they had Hoegaarden there, so I decided to give it a shot. I started to talk to two guys there and the bartenders and I really had a blast so I probably will go there again. I think I left around 4 or 5, and I killed my wallet (the bill was 8600 yen. Hoegaarden: 1500 each). But if it's fun it can't be helped.

Yummy!

She recieved special make up from the bartender when she came to the bar

Enjoying the awesomeness

I hanged out with these guys and had a blast. Arm wrestling (damn I suck) and a lot of slapping each other in the head 

One of the bartenders 

Oh, and btw, I saw a homeless man sitting on the sidewalk with his leg spread out, peeing.

Tokyo: Day 3

I was a bit tired from the day before, so I decided to pay 1000 yen extra and check out at 12 instead of 10. Then I immediately went to Doutor and ate my awesome breakfast, a chicken and egg sandwich.
After breakfast I went to the TAITO-gaming center across the street, to increase my skill at Jubeat (Albin, beware. I'm gonna kick your butt so bad in august).

This is how your finger becomes after playing exessive amounts of Jubeat. I pretty much get C on all level 8 extreme now, even if it is the first time I play it

At three a clock, I checked in to the hotel again and started my favorite hobby, reclining. I slept like a baby for a good two hours, and then browsed interwebs until it was time to make myself pretty.

I had some ramen at a place near the hotel, and it was quite good. karamiso tonkotsu ramen (spicy misoramen made of pig bone). Then I went to Shibuya and Legato for the monthly "little saturday" that YCN arranges. A lot of fun, and I made a lot of new acquaintances with both Swedish, American and Japanese people. It was a good deal of fun.

The toilet in Legato has a... shower?

 I left around 11 pm, went back to Shinjuku and had sushi for 2000 yen before bed.

Food Porn: Mix of different tuna

Food Porn: Grilled salmon sushi. Just look at the size of  that sucker