In the beginning of May, during the Golden Week holidays, so many eager volunteers headed towards Iwate and Miyagi prefectures, that the volunteer centres in the area had to send some people home straight away. Since then, the flow of volunteers and donations has diminished.

“There’s a need for at least ten times more volunteers than what we can now get,” says Akira Uchimura, the director of Nikkei Youth Network.

Uchimura’s organization mainly works with communities of youth of Japanese decent outside Japan, but since May Nikkei Youth Network has organized volunteer dispatches to Ishinomaki for foreign students cooperating with Gakuvo, an organization for Japanese student volunteers.

The Nikkei Youth Network’s and Gakuvo’s dispatches to Ishinomaki are a part of a wider program called Road, funded by the Nippon Foundation, that covers all disaster affected areas in North-eastern Japan.

Another organization that accepts volunteers not fluent in Japanese is Peace Boat. According to volunteer coordinator Meme Watanabe, Peace Boat was one of the first organizations to reach Ishinomaki.

“We sent a team to assess the situation in Ishinomaki six days after the quake. Now our plan is to stay there for at least two years,” Watanabe says.

Peace Boat has several projects going on in the area, including cleaning houses and delivering meals. They are also seeking company funding for household goods donations for people who have been able to move to new temporary housing.

The volunteer organizations work on site according to the needs of the locals. The tasks vary according to what kind of help is needed, and cancellations due weather may occur. The three main tasks for volunteers right now are clearing houses from mud, clearing debris and delivering food.

“The number of volunteers has drastically fallen. With the number of volunteers we have now, cleaning the houses alone will take more than two years,” Watanabe says.

“Ishinomaki was one of the first areas to accept volunteers. Because of media attention, people know about Ishinomaki and send their donations there, but other less known areas are in much more difficult situation,” Uchimura points out.

It is especially hard to find volunteers willing to work in Fukushima prefecture.

“Without the accident at the Fukushima nuclear power plant everything would be much more easier,” Uchimura lets out a sigh.

The Japanese media is still full of disaster related news, but recently the focus has been on the bickering between the opposition and the ruling party about wether or not the prime minister Kan should resign now or later.

“When the news dies down, people forget. And because of that, our work becomes more difficult,” Watanabe says.

In March, the Great Tohoku Earthquake and the tsunami that followed showed us the vulnerability of an advanced industrialized country. The areas worst hit by the disaster are still without access to clean water and electricity. According to various sources, almost 500 000 people are still displaced.

The village of Fukiurahama.

Saturday, June 11th. It’s been exactly three months since the earthquake. I’m one of the 57 youngsters that have taken a weekend to participate in volunteer work in the area ravaged by the tsunami. There’s ten of us foreigners, the rest are Japanese. We are on our way to a small fishing village of Fukiurahama, about 30 minute drive from the city of Ishinomaki.

It’s 8 o’clock in the morning and I’m staring out of the bus window to Ishinomaki, without knowing what to think or how to feel. A surreal landscape opens in front of our vehicle. Supermarkets with walls full of gaping holes and emptiness. Three cars crushed like soda cans underneath a tall heap of wet wood and miscellaneous furniture. Houses and parts of houses tossed around like broken toys. Along an empty road walks an old lady, dragging a canister of water.

We get off the bus,  climb on the fishermen’s small pic up trucks and continue driving. We look like a strange army of construction workers, with white helmets, antibacterial masks, goggles, waterproof boots with steel toes, thick working gloves and rain coats.  The morning is chilly and the grey sky spits thin rain. I can feel a faint smell of sea and something rotting through my mask. The car stops and we get off.

We’re standing on an opening in a small valley, with one end by the sea. In front of us, the valley goes on for a few hundred meters. On the opening there’s a high pile of all kinds of debris, mostly wood. Next to it is another heap of bicycles, refrigerators, and other household appliances. By the heaps lie buoys and large white sea shells in neat rows, attached to each other with iron wire like large necklaces.

The first harvest of oysters is soon ready to be planted.

One of those chains of sea shells  weigh around one or two kilo, and to the local fishermen they are priceless. They are used to plant oysters, for which Fukiurahama and other seaside villages of Ishinomaki area are famous for. Oyster farming has gone on in the region for generations, and has made the villages wealthy.

Our job is to collect those chains of sea shells from the surrounding forest area and nearby ditches. We also collect all usable fishing equipment and ropes, and clean the forest from larger debris.  We start working in silence. Some local fishermen are keeping a watchful eye on us, smoking cigarettes and talking in lowered voices.

I’m collecting ropes from the woods with  Dennis and Jennifer, two of my friends from the university. Our work is accompanied by steady sweating and silent grunting as we slowly pull heavy sea shells and bundles of rope out of the mud. The rain has ceased, the day is getting hot very fast.

During the lunch break we are asked to get to the cars, and the fishermen drive us to the village of Fukiurahama. The scene at the village is devastating. Built along a beautiful bay, the village of ca. 20 houses has only five of them left standing, and most of them are missing the lower floor. Parts of buildings, furniture, fishing gear, cars, and carcasses of stranded boats are everywhere.

However, people are bustling by the shore. Men and women are sorting out sea shells covered in oyster larvae with steady hands. The first harvest of the summer will be planted today. We talk with the villagers while following their work. Everyone here has lost their loved ones to the tsunami, but he men have the spark to joke about all the fine men now left alone without a spouse.

After a while we get back to the cars and continue working for a couple of hours. When it’s getting near 3 pm, we gather to the clearing. At 2:46 pm we turn to look at the sea and stay silent. It’s exactly three months since the disaster. After the silence a leader of the local fishing villages, Mr Isimori holds a small speech.

“These sea shells that you gathered today represent our whole life. In April we didn’t know if we would be able to ever farm oysters again.” “Today we planted the first harvest of the summer. It is thanks to you volunteers that we still have a future.”

The remains of a house in Oshika peninsula.

Sunday, June 12th. We are asked to work by the sea, somewhat closer to the city than yesterday. We’ll clean a small harbor and it’s surroundings from debris. While we wait for further instructions about today’s mission, I walk around the area with Kathleen, one of our group leaders. We find the remains of a relatively new house. All that’s left of the building is the concrete founding, some tableware, two large bottles of sake and an expensive looking bottle of whiskey. Kathleen lifts the bottles from the ground, wipes off the sand and places them on a rock. “It is useless to think that you could accomplish anything here during one weekend. The cleaning will go on for years,” she says.

The sun is shining and there’s a fresh breeze from the sea. We are allowed to take our masks off. The whole group is energetic and on good mood. Cheers of “Ganbaroo!” “Let’s do it!” cut the air once in a while. My group is given the task of building two rafts out of the material available and to gather all kinds of  debris floating in the bay. The atmosphere starts to resemble a kids’ summer camp when the group leader Jay, with two other members Kenji and Taiji set sail while singing pirate songs.

Our group working on one of the two rafts we built.

Because of the earthquake, the ground at Ishinomaki area sank for almost one meter, so the high tide reaches further to the land. For the most of the day, we work with the dirty sea water reaching our ankles, and when we are told to call it a day, most of us smell of sweat, seaweed and traces of engine oil.

Before we head back to our lodgings, someone suggests that, instead of heading straight to Tokyo tomorrow, we should return and work for a couple of hours more. “Some of the group are experiencing a ‘volunteer high’. They want to do as much as they can in a short time, even if it would wear you out. In principle it’s a good idea, but in practice it’s hard to accomplish,” group leader Jay says.

Monday, June 13th. We clean up our lodgings in the morning and squeeze into the buses. Before we head to Tokyo, we’ll pay a visit to another city damaged by the tsunami. The Onagawa city is in a narrow valley by the sea, and the tsunami wave was almost 35 meters tall when it gushed trough the valley. We make a stop by a hospital that sits high on a mountain side with a view down to the city. There’s nothing left of the city with a population of 10 000 or so.  The scene resembles pictures of Tokyo in spring of 1945.

Just one glimpse at the destruction in Onagawa.

The bus is silent on our way home. Most people sleep or talk quietly, only one group of friends is bold enough to joke and laugh loudly from time to time. Once in Tokyo,  Jennifer, Dennis and I drag our backpacks to the train and decide to have a well deserved beer break at the next station. We’re tired, but we’re also glad that we came.

Shinkyo Bridge. The first glimpse to the rich historical monuments of Nikko.

Nikko is most famous for its UNESCO World Heritage site of the mausoleum of the first Togukawa shogun, Togukawa Ieyasu. The World Heritage site includes one Buddhist temple and three Shinto shrines, built in a unique and colorful style, and most people who visit Nikko come to on a day trip to see these treasured buildings.

An example of the colorful decorations of the Toshogu shrine.

However, in addition to the World Heritage shrines and temples, Nikko is full of smaller but equally interesting historical and religious sites on two routes along the Inari river and Daiya river, all the way up to the mountains. On my first trip with T, we were supposed to check out the Inari route, but the short daylight time of winter surprised us and we had to turn back to our lodgings. On the second trip with N we partially covered the Daiya river route by visiting the Tamozawa Imperial Villa and its garden.

A scene from the Emperor's quarters in the Tamozawa Villa.

Unfortunately, the elements were not on our side this time either. It probably rained for 24 hours between Friday and Saturday night, so N and I were unable to realize our initial plan of taking the bus to Lake Chuzenji and do some hiking along the shores. Instead, we spent the afternoon at the atmospheric villa, listening the rain hit the bronze tiles on the roof.

Roofs of the Tamozawa Villa.

Apart from mountains, temples and shrines, Nikko is all about onsen.  The most famous natural hot spring baths on Nikko area are probably the Kinugawa and Yumoto onsens, but even the town area of Nikko is full of smaller, budget friendly and peaceful bath houses. There are also several small and mid-range hotels in the area that have their own onsen, and they are usually open also to guests who are not staying in the hotels.

When in town with T, we visited one rather large hot spring that belonged to a hotel. With N, we spent time in one spring that was actually inside the hotel and one that was on hotel grounds but was operating independently. The one that was inside a hotel  was by far the most modern – and also the most disappointing one. The other two were of course very clean, but smaller and they had seen the flow of bathers for some time. The atmosphere in the older bath houses felt more informal, down to earth and somehow more welcoming than in the new, sleek and shiny hotel spa.

A detail from the Rinnoji Temple garden.

When I first visited Nikko in January, it was supposed to be low season, but the World Heritage site, the onsen and the town restaurants were all bustling with tourists. The guest house where T and I stayed was full booked for weeks ahead. There was no sight of crowds this time, even though April is supposed as busy in Nikko as the Autumn high season. Most of the restaurants and the shops were closed and the train station region was very quiet when we arrived on Friday.

We stayed in the same guest house as with T, and the wonderful owner Sato-san told us that he had had no bookings for some time. We had lunch in a restaurant serving organic vegan food that three months ago was the busiest place in town, but on late Saturday afternoon it was completely empty. Luckily for Sato-san and the other businesses in Nikko, more tourists -including foreigners- started to appear when the weather changed for better on Sunday morning.

The vegan restaurant in January. The atmosphere was way more gloomier on the next visit.

Before we left for Tokyo again on Sunday morning, Sato-san asked us to write a small message on a piece of paper and pose for a picture that was published as a part of Smile Japan project. Writing the message was an easy thing to do, as we could easily agree with the aim of the campaign. That is, a wish that travelers won’t abandon Japan, for most of Japan is completely safe.

A couple of days after the quake, I flew back to Finland to calm down my loved ones, but I returned to Tokyo a week ago to start my final semester in my university.  And what a welcome I got: the cherry blossoms were in full bloom, the weather is close to summer already – and everything is mostly back to normal.

Of course there are still the daily aftershocks, but after living through the big one and the two days after it when the ground was trembling every five minutes a couple of small tremors are just an inconvenience. In the Western media there has been a lot of talk about blackouts, fuel shortages and stocking up on food even in Tokyo, but after a month has passed since the quake, there are hardly any signs of a major disaster in the metropolitan area. The situation is completely different in the North-Eastern parts that were devastated by the tsunami the most, but in Tokyo life goes on as always.

Hanami crowd of Ueno on April 10th.

It actually feels quite strange to see the people having hanami parties under the blossoming trees in parks, the newly employed young salarymen drinking in izakayas, the middle-aged women doing their groceries and the teenagers flocking in the streets of Harajuku, because when I left the country, the overall mood was  completely different. Even though only few showed it openly, people were really afraid in March. I only notice it now, after having been away for three weeks.

:3

When I told my friends and family that I’m going back to Japan, most of them were only glad that I wasn’t panicking and running away from the country. However, I also understand those that were not so happy about the idea of me returning to a country that’s trying to cope with what is now among one of the worst nuclear power plant accidents in history. I must admit I was having mixed feelings on the night before my departure.

Now that I’m here, I’m happy that I’m back. It’s not just the amazing weather and the fact that I get to meet all of my friends who were brave enough and stayed, but it’s also because I believe that by being here and continuing sending reports to newspapers and talking to people back in Finland I can work to alleviate the concerns and fears that float around the topic. Like I said earlier, even though the situation is unbearable for the areas hit by the tsunami and affected by the radiation from Fukushima reactors, most of the country – including the capital area- is perfectly fine. The Kansai area and Kyushu were not affected at all, and Tokyo is getting back to its feet as fast as it can.

I’m not trying to be overtly positive, but I just want to remind you that Japan didn’t sink and it’s not going to burn. I have had my share of arguments about the situation in Fukushima and  whether or not to trust the official sources of information, so I don’t want to discuss them here. There are a lot of rumors and paranoia going around, and a lot of propaganda from both pro and anti nuclear power camps as well, so I’m not going to even try to cover that discussion here.

All I want to say is that Tokyo is rising, and Japan will rise.

Speaking of near future, I’ll be making a short detour to South Korea next week to see a friend I met back in Tampere almost two years ago and explore Seoul. Kimchiland is calling, and I’m planning to update from there as well.

After Tokyo, the Seoul subway doesn't seem so disorienting.

But before getting into the vacation mood, I’d like to share some thoughts about my experiences in a Japanese university so far. And as I’ve mentioned in the previous post, I’m not too impressed.

When I first arrived in Japan I assumed that because Japanese study so much in high school, the academic education must be as demanding as well. The girl who was studying in this university two years ago told me that there would be a lot more homework than in Finland, and that the Japanese classes would also be super hard and time-consuming.

At the same time other people, books and journals were telling me that university is like a 4 year vacation for most Japanese students before entering the harsh realities of company employee life. Before arriving in Japan, I was rather skeptic about that kind of statement.

With these contradictory images in mind, I entered the university, mentally preparing myself to work hard and party hard. The reality has turned out to be something much more complex and much more frustrating and annoying than I could expect.

My thoughts exactly...

To start with the positive, the Japanese classes have so far done their job well. I’ve learnt a lot and I’ve gotten the urge to learn much more, especially after I’ve gotten confident enough to talk with my Japanese friends, random people at izakayas and so on, and I’ve realized the current limits of my vocabulary. However, the classes are also repetitive and relatively boring, and in our tiny group of three I’ve more than often felt really frustrated either because of myself not being fast enough or the class being too slow and foreseeable.

The other courses, with the exception of two excellent classes, have been a total disappointment. The first one was supposed to be easy, and it was brain numbing experience. The other one, however, was supposed to be an advanced level class. I was expecting challenging and interesting class, I got a girls’ chit chat circle. Bitching about things sure is fun, but I’d like to use my class time to actually learn something new and to challenge my way of thinking.

I’m not the only student in my university that feels disappointed and frustrated with the fluctuating quality of education. Of course I’ve had terrible classes while in Finland, but the variation has never been this drastic.

The amount of and the time consumed by inefficient bureaucracy also never stops baffling me. For example, the course registration procedures for every term in this university requires me first to do my course registrations online, then to print a hard copy of my schedule for my advisor to check, the advisor has to sign it and only then I can take the signed hard copy of my schedule to another administrative body for final check and approval…

Yotsuba shares my disbelief.

I was even more amazed when I learned that my university is actually a very demanding one compared to, say the prestigious Tokyo or Keio Universities. That means that the students here are more serious about their academic achievements and some of them actually are very bright and ambitious people who are here to study, not just to take part in club activities and find a girlfriend or boyfriend. But if this is the more demanding university, how lame are the not so good ones?

One thing about Japanese (and Korean, as far as I know) thinking I find rather odd is the idea that when you are a child, you are supposed to study as hard as you can and as much as you can to get into a good university, but once you’ve achieved that goal, you can just sit back and relax for a couple of years until you start working like crazy. I’m not an expert in psychology or education, but aren’t you supposed to do it the other way around (take it relatively easy until high school, get to uni and get serious –>nice grades –> nice job)? Or is university just another ladder in Japanese meritocracy, as it seems?

The only reason to study at a university?

Another thing that slightly disturbs me, is some female student’s lack of professional ambition. For example, my Japanese tutor -a smart and hard-working 20-year-old- said that what she would really like to do is to become a Japanese teacher and teach foreigners, but because you can’t find a husband from a graduate school, she’ll try to get into a nice company and find herself a man before she turns 25 because that’s what her parents expect from her. Then, after she’s married and given up her work in the company to become a full-time housewife, she might be able to pursue her own dream.

It’s not easy for a girl to be professionally ambitious in Japan , for a variety of reasons, to begin with, but if people just follow their parent’s or society’s expectations, how can they ever expect any change to take place? It’s okay if these girls want children and want to give up their other goals, but those who don’t should have more opportunities to follow their professional paths as long and as much as they want to.

World also needs ambitious bitches.

To conclude my rant, my experience of Japanese universities and their students reflects my other experiences of the Japanese society. The parts that work well, work extremely well. The bureaucracy is everywhere and makes everybody’s live uncomfortable. And those parts that don’t work, and even the Japanese agree that they don’t work, stick there because of tradition and/or lack of initiative.

When I waddled to the JR Narita Airport Express on the morning of December 22nd, I wasn’t completely sure if I was doing the right thing. One side of me wanted to stay in my comfy life in Mitaka and I also felt like I was missing out on travel opportunities by choosing to go home to boring, boring Finland. The other side of me, however, was as anxious as the other one, but because of different reasons. I was afraid I wouldn’t want to return after the New Year.

One of the reasons I wasn't so keen on going back home...

After a decent flight I landed in Helsinki in one piece, and in relatively good mood as well. Once I got out of the airport, however, the counter cultural shock hit me with all the might of the gloomy, freezing Finnish winter. It was cold, it was pitch black even tough it wasn’t even 4 pm, and the bus trip from the airport to the train station was unimaginable. In just four months I had forgotten how rude, ugly, loud and selfish my fellow countrymen were. All of this in 20 minutes. I was already missing the silent Chuo-line trains…

Speaking of trains, after arriving in Tikkurila railway station to catch the train to Tampere, I was missing the efficiency of JR even more. The train was running 20 minutes late, and there I stood on the platform in my ballerina shoes. In the end the train came before I went to hypothermia, and once inside I became the main attraction of the car after I mentioned the person sitting next to me that I came from Tokyo.

The next day me and my boyfriend Mr N.  continued to our hometown of Jyväskylä in central Finland to spend the holidays with our families. The following two weeks went smoothly, including a chilling tabletop role-playing session with our old friends and a party to celebrate our engagement (5 months late, but who cares, we had fun!).

Chilly river Tammerkoski.

During those two weeks I kept on feeling like I was just having a funny dream about all of my friends and relatives, and not actually being there. Some of that feeling might be because of jet lag, but I believe there was something else going on as well. I knew I had to go back really soon, so I believe I somehow distanced myself from the whole affair somehow. At the same time I was in a rush to see all the people I wanted to, and still I felt like I wasn’t properly engaging with them.

When the day of the parting came, I was unbelievably cheerful compared to N when I saw his face for the last time at the platform of Tampere bus station. I felt happy about coming back, almost like actually going home from some place very alien and strange. My flight went fine, and I was feeling amazing until the next morning when I had to go to class again.

The morning of January 6th was one of the worst I’ve had so far, and I wasn’t hung over. When I woke up in my bed I felt like the past two weeks had just been, like I said earlier, a funny life-like dream. I believe I know now how it feels to be on withdrawals from something. I had to struggle to keep myself together during the class, and I kept on telling myself not to cry on the way back to the dormitory. It wasn’t the culture shock or jet lag, it was the anguishing, painful home-sickness that turned me into a sobbing lump for one day, and it took me some more time to actually get on my feet again.

Ilmari, the hilariously crazy cat of my in-laws to be. Picture totally unrelated to the topic whatsoever.

After the break, I’ve been thinking of what a professor and a mentor of mine said to me before I left to Japan. She was absolutely against the idea of coming back in the middle of the exchange because “it would break the integration to the culture”. She did have a point since for a week or so I felt quite lost in Tokyo and with the Japanese language, but it has come back now, perhaps even stronger because the classes are getting more boring every day. However, I believe that by coming home for two weeks I also gained some insight on what keeps on drawing me to Japan, and about the things I’d rather not deal with – and vice versa with Finland.

First of all, I realized that besides the Japanese language studies, I have been very disappointed by the level of university education. The topics of the courses might be interesting, but more than often they are dealt with superficiality and students are not encouraged to e.g. criticize the readings or the textbooks, no matter how controversial the issue.

Secondly, I really hate the way Finnish people behave in general. We’re rude, impolite, impatient and there seems to be just no way of getting good customer service. The Japanese politeness sometimes feels over the top, but I prefer that rather than the stone-faced shop clerks that persistently ignore their only customer. And not to mention the people at bars and pubs…

Thirdly, in both societies, many things are made so awfully convenient you stop thinking for yourself. I’m not yet sure if that is a pro or a con, but it doesn’t give me a good feeling.

So here I am, back at the land of the rising sun! Stay tuned, because last week I went touristy all over the town with my friend Miss T, and we found out how fun Tokyo can be without actually doing much.

During the past month or so I’ve started to feel more and more at home in Japan. My language abilities have soared (even though my English remains as clunky and broken as ever), I feel like I can live my everyday life without that much of a struggle  and I’ve gotten more and more independent in terms of taking care of more complicated errands like going to a bank or registering my bike (Yeah, you are obliged to do so.).

I’ve formed my circle of friends, even though I still wish to learn to know more Japanese people.  I’ve also come to terms with the quirks of holding a long distance relationships. I’ve rarely been homesick. In other words, I’m truly enjoying my life here. Then why am I so damn nervous about going home for two weeks?

Takao-san in mid-November. Beats the mid-November in Finland any time.

An (un)educated guess would be that I’m scared of facing the people and the places I’ve left behind, and that I’ve started distancing myself from them unconsciously. Another reason is that I believe I have changed and I know that people back home have changed. It would be stupid to think that things would stay static when you’re not personally present, but at the same time I’m quite honestly afraid of facing that change.

I think it’s quite natural for someone who spends a lot of time away from their country of origin to become gradually less involved and less interested in things back home. I don’t mean that all people lose all interest in their old friends and family, but I feel like its only inevitable that you tend to focus more on people who are present in your everyday lives than to those who are hundreds and thousands of kilometres away.  However, at least in my experience, this does not necessarily mean that you stop liking and appreciating them. You just don’t think about them as often as you perhaps used to.

Of course it also depends on how much you and your friends are willing to make effort in keeping in touch with each other. Curiously enough, during the past four months I’ve felt closer to a couple of my friends than I have done in years. Those people make the effort to stay in touch, and I’m happy to return that effort.

Distance can sometimes bring people together.

I know I sound selfish, and I know that I could be a better friend for certain people by staying in touch with them more actively. However, I don’t expect people to constantly think about me when I’m not around and I think it’s only understandable if they don’t.

On the other hand I can’t wait to go home and meet all those people I haven’t seen or haven’t really been even thinking about for four months, and I’m eager to catch up with what’s been going on in their lives . On the other hand I’m afraid of facing the fact that they and I have changed, and I’m not sure how we’ll deal with that. With relatives, I just have to live with the fact, but friendships are much more fragile constructions.

The Portal of Evil

I’ve been to a maid café, I’ve browsed through the stores full of computer parts and bizarre consumer electronics, went through most of the anime and manga merchandise stores and so on. I guess there’s only two things that are missing from my geeky to-do list: a visit to a doujinshi shop and a drink at the Gundam Cafe.

And so far I’ve felt like I’ve been lied to.

It feels a bit ridiculous to be disappointed in a place I had only heard of via entertainment in addition to some rather vague stories from my friends who had actually visited the place. I also had very few expectations – except that I expected everything to be completely different. Or bigger, or less kitschy at least.

The line to the Gundam Cafe in mid-September.

Based on all the (nerd) hype going around about the place, I was expecting that the actual otaku part of town would be at least as twice as big as it is, with many more stores dedicated to the bizarre niches of Japanese popular culture than there apparently are. At the same time I was perhaps looking forward in seeing somehow much more “underground” feeling in the place and the stores, but how do you combine underground with big and bold?

What I did get to see, were the creative outbursts of the occasional otaku.

Besides press conferences and sporting events, I’ve never seen so many people with huge professional cameras and objectives walking around the same neighbourhood, taking pictures of all things imaginable: one guy was passionately shooting the trains at the station, another had apparently made a hobby out of photographing people when they stop at traffic lights, and then there was the obligatory group of guys taking pictures of all the girls that happened to pass by, especially if they were wearing school uniforms or the outfit of an office lady. Not to mention the doujishi stores tucked further away from the station, even though I still haven’t mustered the courage to actually walk into one of them.

And then there were these:

The Rei-Mobile. Asuka-Mobile was behind the taxi.

You’ve probably seen pictures of cars decorated with anime character themed and rather decent looking paint jobs before, but the vehicle pictured above just blew my mind with the way it screamed “SO RONERY!” A pale blue minivan, decorated with small glittery stickers of  Rei Ayanami of Neon Genesis Evangelion, matched with bigger stickers of the said character. All the better, the Rei-Mobile was followed by an Asuka-Mobile, an orange minivan of similar design, decorated in similar fashion with pictures of Asuka Langely Sory from the same series.

A closer look at the Rei-Mobile. Notice the passenger seat.

I’m not sure which is more disturbing: this cheap and scary pair of cars or the more expensive cars with elaborate paintings of e.g. Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha and Hatsune Miku driven by men as old as my dad. Both can be found in the streets of Akihabara any given day with a bit of luck.

Speaking of cheap and creepy, I have to admit I was quite looking forward to a visit to a maid café. Once again, the expectations fed by a couple of maid café enthusiasts (and certain manga…) were let down by the rather uncomfortable reality. I’ve only been to one café so far, so I can’t really judge all the maid café’s in Tokyo and Akihabara based on this experience, and to be honest, I don’t even want to. It was so bad.

As a common rule in maid cafés, you aren’t allowed to take pictures inside the café except of the food, and in this case it really wasn’t picture worthy. The interior of the café matched well with the food and the drinks: kitschy, pink, cheap and most of the times just plain ugly. Nobody  comes to these cafés for the food anyway, but it was still quite an understatement (though the chocolate parfait was decent). On top of that, even though it might have been because we were a group of weird foreigners, the maids were impolite or even plain rude, and (above all!) their uniforms were ugly. So much for the illusion of owning a manor house with a full staff of pretty maids…

Don't believe what the advertisements say...

Despite of being somewhat creepy, cheap and smallish, Akihabara still manages to be an interesting part of Tokyo. The in-your-face nerdiness, the combination of the attempt to make the place a marketable tourist attraction that goes well with the “Cool Japan” package and the de facto sleaziness of not so small part of the merchandise sold there, and all the weird, amazing and disturbing stuff and people that can be found there make it a place worth visiting. Like junk food, you know you´re not supposed to eat it or like it, but you still want seconds.

I understand this, since I’ve come to realise that food is a very sensitive topic. For most people (including me), food isn’t just fuel. Not a small part of our memories, good and bad, have something to do with food, we sometimes are very emotional about food, we reward and punish ourselves through food – or by denying our access to it. And when you are away from your usual habitats, you become even more aware of all of these aspects simply because you can’t have something you’ve gotten used to or because, even though you had access to your favourite treat, it doesn’t taste the same.

Gyoza in the making.

When I’m hanging out with other exchange students, at some point the conversation tends to turn to food. It almost sounds like we are a bunch of people with very bizarre eating disorders when we talk about food: something we just ate, something we haven’t tried yet, something we tried and it was awful and, above all, something we really miss from back home that we can’t get here (without paying a ridiculous price, that is, because I think you can find pretty much everything from Tokyo if you have money) and what we really crave for. For example, I’ve had interesting urges for Finnish apples, rye bread, fat-free milk and  textured soy protein to replace beef. My British friend obsesses over cheese, the three Germans want their sausages and so on.

The Japanese are not any better, however. The Japanese television is full of food erotica that even creeps into serious and hard business news, not to mention the various entertainment shows that fill the air time for most of the evening. I almost spat my beer out when the midnight news had a lengthy feature about “the tastiest and most prestigious roll cake in the whole country” between a piece about floods in Thailand and the recent turns of Japan-China relationship.

The daytime television has hour-long programmes about the best ramen or curry eateries in Japan/Tokyo/Kichijoji etc. and of course there are the cooking shows for the housewives. The lingering shots of steaming fresh dumplings being dipped into that tempting velvet sauce, the talk show guests tasting the new varieties of this and that new weird and probably amazingly delicious snacks, the lengthy reviews of the most crispy korokke made since the Meiji Restoration… it really seems like the whole nation is crazy about food. One part of my unit mates Ms N’s and Ms K’s daily routine is to carefully go through the food ads that come with the newspaper and discuss in length what they would like to eat (but they can’t afford or don’t have time to make).

Miso of the day.

Being constantly surrounded by images of food feels sort of odd, especially in a country that (compared to my country of origin) hasn’t got a huge problem with more and more people getting more and more fat. And it makes me obsess over food even more than I did before, since every day I find out about something supposedly so awesome it’s newsworthy and I haven’t tasted it yet.

One of the great things in travelling is that you get to eat things you probably wouldn’t if you stayed home, and I seriously can’t understand people who travel across the globe and only eat in burger joints or chain restaurants you can find back home and constantly complain about how weird, terrible and inedible the other foods available are. In my culinary expeditions I haven’t gone as far as e.g. these guys, but while I’m in Japan I intend to try the notorious natto and fugu and try to get my hands (and teeth) on some whale (once I do, I’ll let you know).

I’ve also taught myself to cook Japanese food beyond instant ramen, among other reasons because following a western diet is much more expensive than just eating what everyone else does. I still haven’t mastered sushi or sashimi, but I’ve tamed the kabocha, figured out the ways of miso and introduced myself to the art of udon. I’ve also become rather skilled in turning traditional Japanese recipes into vegetarian versions, even though I still wonder how my vegan friends have been able to eat anything here, since every dish seems to contain some ingredients that have at least parts of fish or other sea critters in them.

Rice cooker - a girl's best friend.

It has been interesting to observe how the time abroad has influenced on my relationship with food. Food has always been a sort of obsession for me, in a good and a bad way, and I don’t think Japan hasn’t made me any less obsessive. I also don’t think this will be my last entry about food. I see how far I can dive into the Japanese quest for deliciousness, and can I survive after I return to Finland. One thing is for sure, though. I’m not leaving without a rice cooker!

To celebrate Autumn and to give you some sort of feeling of the surroundings where I spend most of my time, I decided to upload some pictures of the campus area, taken along the course of Autumn term here and there. Enjoy!

Talk about long time parking...

There's a traditional Japanese garden and a tea house hidden behind the dorms.

The actual tea house, but it seems it's used as a de facto storage room.

One day I was just walking around the campus, and from behind the administration building I found a strange pathway, and among the things that were lying along that path were:

This brick...

...And broken glasses.

The leaves are finally changing colour, my favourite season is here.