Rövaren Espoo Finland

Went camping to an island in Espoo




The small island called Rövaren had some very interesting rock formations along the coast


The shapes are a combination of the ice age and thousands of years of waves hitting them (?)




You find these kinds of rock formations on top of mountains in Japan. I thought why not have one in Espoo too.


Camping food, tastes so good outside, but wouldn't eat it at home




Panorama of what I would call a typical Finnish nature view

Name change (again)

Well I decided to change the name again for a few reasons　such as.

1. I will be leaving Japan soon
2. I didnt really post a picture per day

The new name is '写reality (Sha-reality)' which comes from the Japanese word 写真 (shashin) which means 'photograph'

写　sha basically means 'photo'
and
真　shin is 'truth' or 'reality'

写　(sha) - copy, be photographed, describe
真　(shin) - 真 truth; reality; genuineness; seriousness; logical TRUE; printed style writing; star performer

I did some serious mountain climbing with my swedish daniel for the past few days.
We climbed many mountains on the central alps, highest of which was 駒ヶ根　(komagane) at 2956m

We climbed all of the mountains in this picture except the two leftmost ones, the third one from the left is komagane.
This was maybe around 2/3 of our trip so there were a few more mountains to climb ahead.

More mountain pictures later

高尾山・紅葉 Tokyo's own mountain in autumn colors

This tree must've thought it's spring (it was warm this week)

Traffic light colors

A winged (buddha?) warrior

Tengu, very interesting fellows

The top at 500m or so, (there's a ropeway until like 400m)

ぴーす

View at the top, if it weren't for the clouds Mt. Fuji would show up nicely

Kamakura - Yuigahama

Went to 由比ヶ浜 in Kamakura. Kamakura has alot of great old temples and a huge statue of Buddha, but forget the dusty temples. I wanted to see the pacific ocean!

This was actually the first time I saw surfing live. And surfers. And there were alot of them. Probably around 100 hundred. Japanese people don't swim during this season anymore. So every other person on the decently crowded beach was a surfer. Even though the sea is as warm as the sea in Finland during the summer, the reason not to swim seems to be Jellyfishes. I don't really know what a jellyfish is and why it would hurt you. Maybe I should see Wikipedia? Anyways I didn't see any jellyfishes. But the Japanese indeed didnt go into the sea without a wetsuit. Only people I saw in the sea with normal swimsuits were a few foreigners and a few kids. I took my friends warnings of jellyfishes carefully and didnt go swimming, although I really would've wanted (another thing was that i was alone so my luggage wasn't exactly safe).

Anyways walking by the beach and looking at the surfers was fun. Really made me want to try it. I suppose the season is going to end soon too. A wetsuit would be needed, and a board. Some people were using kind of easy boards, you don't have to climb to stand on to. That would work for starters. Probably rental is also available. Then there is my friend Hiromichi, who's hobby is surfing. Just can't seem to reach him.

Surfers (in the upper right corner, the surf dog, on the bottom right corner a girl I wish could teach me how to surf :)

Beach to the west

Beach to the east

Im pretty sure it's trying to tell not to throw away cigarettes, but I don't really get the explanation



This is how you transport a surfboard on a bicycle (notice the hooks)

And lastly a video showing the magnificent waves and some surfing action.

Tokyo at night and karaoke overnight

Had fun yesterday, first went to Sunshine building in Ikebukuro and had dinner, afterwards karaoke until 5AM in the morning with the exchange students in Aobadai (where our dorm is)


Aobadai station at dusk. That's a long shadow.

A dramatic traffic light

Blood-vein of Tokyo?

The area around Ikebukuro train station from the sky.

The eye of Tokyo?

Moonspin

Sake from a straw

Viktor, Audun, Chris, Daniel

Japan - Sapporo

I took a trip in Japan from 9th of September to 19th of September. There's alot to cover so let me get to it:

I took a plane to Sapporo on the 9th of September, with a plan to come back to Tokyo on land and sea.

Let the pictures do the talking. Here's what my new Canon Powershot S5 is cabable of :)
Sapporo was a much bigger city than I thought, had a very nice and clean athmosphere in the central area.


Onitsuka Tiger - my favorite shoe brand :)

Nice park in the middle of Sapporo, forgot the name of course.

Girl doing bar-tender training in the park, Japanese seem to like to show of their skills by doing their hobbies in public places

View from behind ;)




And a few other pictures from Sapporo. (it's a flash slideshow so you wont see it if you are using an RSS feed reader)
The night pictures from high up are from Moiwa-yama, where i went on a ropeway.

Shinjuku

Shinjuku, Tokyo shot from my friends motorcycle, summer 2005

University Rankings

University rankings are always something to talk about. Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT) where I'm going to exchange got into place no. 99 (99 is also the name of a great song by Tak Matsumoto ;) ).

In Japan TIT is thus Uni no. 6 and loses to of course Tokyo (20) and Kyoto(22) universities, but also to suspicious places like Osaka (67), Tohoku (76) and Nagoya (94) Universities. Oh boy I'm not impressed.

Finlands top is of course Helsinki University at no. 73 between the UK Sheffield University and USA Arizona University :P
My own beloved Helsinki Uni. of Tech. is somewhere in the last hundred 400-500 (Waseda is almost as bad) I don't even care, I know my uni sucks.

This study was made by a Shanghainese University and it ranks top 500 universities based mostly on quality of research and also things like Nobel prices (finland has ever got only a few), considering that Finland doesn't have so much funds for research we do pretty well it seems.

source

Japan Parliament Upper House Elections

Japan's Parliaments Upper House elections took place just this weekend. Prime Minister Shinzo Abe's (or Abe-chan as I like to call him) Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) experienced a crushing defeat as newspapers and tv-channels have been reporting worldwide.

Abe's party still has the upper hand in the Lower House (Upper Hand in Lower House...). Especially since as far as I know the Upper House doesn't command so much power in the parliament, similar with the case in UK. However Abe-chan certainly isn't doing well, and the Japanese people have proven that with their votes. Abe-chan has refused to resign from his post as he "wants to keep his promises to the Japanese people" It will be left to be seen though if Abe-chan will be forced out of his office.

Anyways that is just to tell you that there were elections in Japan, the real thing starts here.

So I was looking trough the extremely interesting voting results. It's basically a list of the people, with their names and pictures and amount of votes they received.

I was excitingly going trough this list full of typical looking dull Japanese politicians faces, when something catches my attention...

I get a feeling there is something unusual in here...

Hmm, what could it be....

Kind of like a Japanese, but still somehow unusual.....
The red rose means he got in the Upper House
His name is written in Katakana and it sounds strangely Familiar.
TSU-RU-NE-N MA-RU-TE-I
Birthplace....FINLAND

そうそう、皆さん、このメガネのおっさんは、Ｍａｒｔｔｉ　Ｔｕｒｕｎｅｎ　フィンランド出身の日本の議員。
なんてすばらしいでございます！
実はＭａｒｔｔｉ　Ｔｕｒｕｎｅｎさんは日本初めての外国人の議員ですよ。（彼の前に韓国人は議員になったことがありましたが、その方は日本人として国会に入りました）。

よ～～くみてください！
まるでArnold Schwarzenegger みたいでございませんか？

Yes, he is Martti Turunen! The first foreigner even to sit in Japans parliament, he is finnish and reminds me of Arnold Schwarzenegger, not due to his looks, but due to his achievements. Now is not the first time he got in Japan's parliament. He is a member of the Democratic Party of Japan that got the upper hand in the Upper House in this election.

CONGRATULATIONS & GOOD LUCK MASA!

homepage(japanese)

wikipedia english

wikipedia finnish

wikipedia japanese

and while we're talking about elections I'd like to remind Japanese readers to take extra care when talking about ELECTIONS in English. I wonder how many conversations around the world took an interesting turn lately when a Japanese gentleman or lady took up the topic of JAPANESE ERECTIONS, in the dinner table.

Hiro: "So John, have you heard about the erections in Japan"
John: "Umm, erections...? I think I haven't"
Hiro: "At the moment everyone in Japan is talking about the erections, how are the erections in your country?"
John: "..."

(well, it's not so funny, but it's been prove to happen...)

もし、英語で選挙について話すことになったら、気を付くてください。