My first year

Okay, so I’m gonna waste a couple of hours of my day today, trying to make some kind of review of my first year here in Japan.

Lets start with..

March 31

On this very Monday I got in the car with my mother and sister, said good bye to Västerås and headed of for Stockholm, Arlanda. I remember it was pretty cold and even quite snowy if I’m not mistaken, and being scared I would miss the flight we arrived at the airport like 4 hours early or something like that.

After some dining, chatting and saying good bye to my mom and sister i went through the gates and I met my soon to be room-mate Kalle for the first time, I don’t remember if I walked up to him or if he walked up to me, but I can assure you we were both just as confused and nervous but looking forward to the trip. We also met another Swedish guy at the gate named Johan who had been going to Japan back and forth on regular basis with just the tourist visa for a long time doing some kind of work in the land far away. I clearly remember him carrying around his beloved PS3 as his only luggage together with a laptop he had over his shoulder. We formed a party of three and stayed together until Helsinki were we exchanged e-mails, said good bye, and boarded different planes to Japan.

On the plane they were showing ”Sanjuro” and I started to get really pumped up! I also remembering trying to find the courage to order one cola in Japanese from the cute Japanese stew-waitress, but I don’t recall ever actually doing it. I guess I never managed to do did, Haha.

April 1

So this is the day i Arrived in Japan! And my oh my was it a confusing day!

Me and Kalle got off of the airplane and went straight to checkout. We ended almost straight up in a long queue were we had to wait for what felt like hours. I remember all the weird doorbell-sounding noises that every counter kept playing over and over and over again, the funny guardsmen that walked around in hats made of net-fabric not to overheat their heads in the, just-arriving-from-Sweden-in-a-big-ass-jacket heat, and being really nervous about something that was written on one of my many important papers for some reason.

When it was finally me and Kalles turn, we simple showed our papers, got our fancy stamps in our passport and were welcomed in through the gates. I was finally officially in Japan! we headed out for the gate and met up with the driver the school had sent for us.

We got in his bus and headed for Kyoto! On the buss we also met two of our soon to be school-mates, they were going to live at the same place as me and Kalle.

This bus-ride is one of the most confusing bus-rides of my life (I know... how many confusing bus-rides can I have?... Anyway! It was darned confusing) I kept falling asleep and waking up during the whole trip, making me more confused every-time I woke up. I even forgot that I was actually in Japan and tried so hard to figure out were the hell I were and were the hell I was going. This is what is must feel like to be drugged and kidnapped i guess.

I noticed I had a movie from the bus-ride which has not been uploaded here before so here you are! (I even got a “Filmar du eller?” from Kalle, superb)

I don’t have the energy to to anything with the video, I hope it just works to put here like this, we’ll see.

After the... Interesting bus-drive we finally arrived at “Robin’s Kishina” the place that would be my new home!

Here is an old movie i created a few days after arriving, showing the place.

April 14

Two weeks after first setting my foot in Japan It was time for school-start!

All of my classmates seemed really friendly and the one i met first was my desk-neighbour, Elie, the man that from that day on called and referred to as “The Frenchman”. The Frenchman and i hit it of quite quick, we also shared the common “hatred” for the freaking Italians, the one in front of us that kept asking questions to the other Italian behind us. We bought thought it was really loud and very Italian. And we had many laughs about it.

The non English speakers in the class took a while longer to become friends with because of the language barrier, but we tried hard from the beginning with faces, pictures and sounds! These first months in this first class still is the most enjoyable memories I've gained so far. We were all started from zero together and it we had a great time.

The guy on the right is the “Freaking Italian” that kept asking questions, as you might be able to see he never really made it in to the whole “Class affinity”.

April 19

This day represents nothing really, except that i finally got my own internet connection. I was very happy... and round!

Ah frakk it, My head is starting to hurt, I’ll split this big post in to smaller ones! I hope you don’t mind!

Peace out!

Oh yeah by the way, all the comments on my page are gone, and they ain’t coming back.. I just got a mail from support saying they have no backups for comments (I got a one year subscription for the problem but still...) It sucks. For me the comments has kind of been the heart and soul of this page.

So thank you all for all the comments you posted during this year, now post a whole lot of new ones please!