More sweets

If anyone wonders about traditional Japanese sweets, here they are:

The first ones, the yellow ones are made from sweet potatoes. These are not sweetend European-kind potatoes, but rather these:

They are naturally sweet, and there are many different kinds of sweets made out of these, such as cakes or buns. They even use it as a filling in ordinary bread buns.

The second sweet, the pink one, is made of rice. As I understood, they cook rice, and then batter it for couple of hours, until it becomes one solid, sticky mass. Then they form it and add other ingredients. Usually sold as odango:

A bit sweet...

Today I experienced a major dissapointment. Does everybody remember an anime Spirited Away? The one that got an Oscar? In any case, here's a reminder:

Well, I remember one scene, where Lin is feeding those little black fluffy balls with some kind of colorful candy:

And ever since I saw them in the Japanese shops, I was eager to buy some. So, as you can guess, I bought those today.

To my (and probably your) dissapointment, these small candies are made of melted and colored sugar... The advantage of this experience is that I became even more curious about Japanese sweets ^^

Out there...

What I especially love about Japan are the vending machines:

These are literally everywhere, in the streets, shopping centres, game halls, etc. As somebody, who has survived the Japanese summer, which just ended now, I can say that these machines are undoubtedly convenient. The beverages cost from 100 to 180 yen, dependent on the location of the machine, and they are selling everything from water to beer. As far as I know, there's also a possibility to buy canned coffee in a special cans that can warm the coffee up.

There's only one inconvenience - there are no trash cans in Tokyo. Well, not entirely everywhere, sometimes there is a trash can for bottles and cans close to one of those vending machines. Sometimes there are some in front of a convenince store, and of course, in university full of exchange students :D But most of the time you can circle around the whole block (and these are a lot bigger than in Denmark) withought finding any. Conclusion - wear a bigger bag, so all of your trash can fit in there, until you'll get home.

Weather updates

I promise to write something soon, during this week ^^ But right now I can tease you a bit with the weather forecast:

Groceries

I thought it would be interesting for all of you to read about the groceries. No! Japanese do not sell only rice and sushi. There is a big range of western-syle food, many French bakeries in supermarkets and at a train stations, and a lot of western sweets. The are certain differences. For example, they sell yoghurt plain, without any fruits or other additives. The sizes of all that you buy are two times smaller than the ones we're used to in Europe. The biggest chocolate you could buy in a nearest store would weigh arround 100 grams, bread is sold in a packages with 6 realy large slices, müesli is in a package of 425 grams.

The only thing they sell in a realy large package, is rice. Rice is usually sold in 2-3 kilo packages, and would cost around 2000 yen, which is realy expensive, compared to Europe.

The least thing, I expected, is that Japan has a realy small variety of fruits. The most of them are a lot bigger, then we're used to, and also a lot more expensive. I put a phone besides those two, so you could see, how big they actually are.

So, this one apple costs 100 yen, and the other fruit (I have no idea, what it is. It has a shape of peach, the texture of a pear, and it tastes like pear and orange combined.) was 150 yen. And they were discounted. Usually, the yellow fruit costs about 300 yen.

On the other hand, there are a lot of vegetables. I have never seen so many different kinds of mushrooms in a supermarket! All vegetables are cheaper then in Europe, and there's much more to choose from.

I mean it !!!

Schools and grading system

This is my second week of school now. In Japan a school year begins in April with a Summer holiday starting in mid-July. The second semester begins in late September, with the last exams in the beginning of February.

So, compared to Denmark, the attendance in the university is compulsory. If you're late or not attending 4 or more lectures without any reason, you'll automatically get a D. Grading system resembles the universal one, with A, B, C, D grades. Sometimes, there is an S grade, which stands for excellent, remarkable. Therefore, a D would mean that you have failed a subject.

For most of my subjects a grading system looks like this:

I don't mind. It's certainly more fun to attend more classes and participate in discussions; the most of the lecturers encourage us to tell them our own opinion.

Furthermore, there is no dress code in Rikkyo University. You can dress as you like. Though, I think, most of the people dress up to the ethical standards of the country.

Almost all elementary, secondary and highschool students wear uniforms, and sometimes the rules are even stricter, such as: you cannot dye hair, use any decorative cosmetics or nail color.

How to live in a metropolis 2

We were recently in one of the skyscrapers in Tokyo, in Shinjuku area. Seeing the view from the 45th  floor reminded me of Aarhus. With one HUGE difference - from the suburb, I live in, you can see the whole town from:

If you look closely, the white tower, you can see on the horizon - it's the city hall, the center of the city, only 5 minutes walk from the pier. I love living in Viby, it's a nice area, and the night view is just fantastic.

But it is no match for this:

There aro no words to describe the feeling, when you're looking outside the window, and all you see are buildings - until the horizon, no matter from which side do you look.

It's even more impressive to stand beside a skyskraper, and looking all the way up. The head starts to spin, and you realize, how small you are and how powerful a man's hand can be.

How to live in a metropolis

Could you imagine yourself living in a city, where's not a lot of space, the most parks are a train ride away? Possibly, you wouldn't have a space to have a pet. There's been found a great solution to the problem here, in Tokyo. It's so-called Cat-caffés. Rules are simple - you come inside the caffé, play with a cat or two, or three, or as many, as you like, while drinking some coffee, soda, juice, etc. Or you can enjoy your drink sitting by the table, eating snacks and looking through the albums with the pictures of the caffé's pets. These were just so cute:

Language

There are 3 different alphabets in Japan: katakana, hiragana and kanji. Katakana is used to spell the foreign words, like these:

Hiragana is the simple language. It's possible to spell everything in hiragana, but it would be hard to distinguish the words, as in Japanese you do not use space between the words. Therefore, hiragana signs can be joined to kanji, like these:

Hiragana is mostly used for a suffix of the word.

RUID Dorm

Some exchange students have a possibility to live in the university's dormitory. Rikkyo University has it's dormitory in Saitama, it's about 20 minutes ride on the train to Ikebukuro. Not so far away, as I first thought, and considered to buy a bicycle. They are quite cheap here, you can buy a new one for about 10,000-20,000 yen. But in reality, there are approximately 17 km between the two stations, so I decided to stick with the train.


This is how the room looks like:

- Why does the toilet look so weird? -The toilet seat is heated, if you turn it on. It does a lot of other things, which I do not know a thing of, because I do not read Kanji.

Transportation

So, how do the Japanese travel around Tokyo? As some of you know, there are about 34 million people in Tokyo metropolitan area. Even so, the roads are not overfilled with cars - the Japanese prefer to use the trains and metro.

This is a crossing near Ikebukuro station, as you can see, there are not so many cars around :D

One thing that nobody can survive without is a Pasmo or Suica card:

Other cards will be probably without all that blue print on top of it. It's a magnetic card, which you can fill up with cash in ticket machines and use it for any train ride. Well, there aren't any discounts for any train rides with this card, it just spares you the time you would use to buy a ticket. It is one thing you realy come to appreciate, when the rush hours begin.

A little more about university

So, if you don't want to spend 820 yen to see the view from the Tokyo Tower, there's a great possibility for Rikkyo students to see a great view from McKim hall:

This is the tallest building of the campus, and from its 12th floor you will see this:

Rikkyo University

This is the main gate of Rikkyo University, where I'm studying. Unfortunately, I didn't take a better picture - there are always too many people around and, as you can see, there's a construction site on the right. The history of the university goes all the way back to the end of the 19th century, where it was established by a missionary Channing Moore Williams. Later, in the beginnig of the 20th century, the campus was moved to Ikebukuro district. Many of the campus-buildings are influenced by wester-type constructions:

- the main dining hall

- the main library

- the chapel

First days

It's not Europe, obviously :D Therefore, I finally got to enjoy some summer-warm days, which I hadn't had a chance to experience in Denmark this year. Well, there were some sunny days back in DK, but they were not enough.

- weather at 8 AM. And it's even not the highest temperature I've experienced. Upon my arrival there was about +32-35 degrees Celcius. Now it's around +20 degrees - the autumn begins.

The first impressions

My trip started from Germany, Hamburg. This is a picture of a German hostel where I staid for a night before the flight. Well, it was exhausting - I had no sleep at all in the plane and all the bags that I carried were too heavy. But you begin to feel it was all worth it, when you finally get into the bus headed to Tokyo.

- the view from a window of the bus. Amazing, isn't it?

Sooo... Finally

Well, as I promised long ago to some of you, finally, I created a blog. Here will be posted only subjective thoughts, feelings, etc. I hope you'll enjoy it :D