Rushing

The past weeks have passed with the speed of light, leaving me and my mind running somewhere far behind, huffing, puffing and feeling desperate.

I started some new hobbies, including parkour, classic yoga and asahi (a tai-chi -like exercising form invented by two finnish guys). Incredible craziness with my cordination skills, but I was/am hoping it might better due to these hobbies. Parkour seems hopeless, yoga I haven’t given up yet, asahi is awesome (surprisingly; it’s said to be suitable exercise for everyone, including elderly people…).

I’ve also been busy with my game researcher -aspirations. On the side of the obvious stuff (lectures, exercises etc.), I’ve participated in numerous great events, partially thanks to the people at my faculty. First was MindTrek09, which seemed a bit fruitless at first, but turned out to be worth my time and the efforts of the people who got us students there without having to pay the fees. Inspiring.

Even more inspiring was a panel discussion in an event called manSEDANse09 . With the topic being “Games as Art” I obviously had to be there. The discussion itself didn’t give me too many new perspectives or information, but the resulting conversation with a peer and the thoughts it provoked were definitely priceless.

I also have to mention one study-related ‘event’, although there have been quite many of these outside the usual stuff. The thing is, I finally played my first traditional text based rpg (role playing game), due to a course I’m having at the moment. Yes, we actually have a course where it’s compulsory to participate in such a session. We got to decide the game and gather up by ourselves, and chose the legendary Call of Chtulhu. Obviously not with the original rules. The experience was very immersive and enjoyable, definitely more my thing than any tabletop or live -rpg ever. My imagination needs plenty of space for immersion to work, although this doesn’t seem to apply to digital games…

Also study-related, I participated in the opening of the new research center that resulted in the coalescense of the former Hypermedia Laboratory and Faculty of Information Studies. Plenty of lectures, some very inspiring and good, others not so. The new name of the fusion was also revealed: TRIM – Tampere Research Center for Information and Media. After the formal part, everyone got to see the new premises of the faculty, with the zest of an excellent buffet, some Beatles Rock Band and so on. Unfortunately, I was forced to leave after quickly munching a bit of everything in the buffet and singing “A Hard Days Night” in the latter.

I say unfortunately, but it’s possible I actually had more fun at the next place. I was invited to the 7th anniversary of the biggest console gaming magazine in Finland, Pelaaja, by the main man, Thomas Puha. A great party in all possible aspects: good music (due to people playing DJ Hero), good gaming (they had Tekken 6 there!), good food (and a totally awesome and huge tiramisu-cake, Thomas seems to have an excellent taste with desserts) and great people (both charcteristically and gaming business -wise). On top of everyhting else, I finally got to meet some of the people I work for/with, and they turned out to be even more awesome than I had expected. Plus, I had some interesting conversations and played Rock Band til the break of dawn. Perfect.

Whew. I didn’t even tell about evertyhing I’ve done during the past few weeks, and the upcoming weeks don’t seem much quieter. My birthday is coming up this saturday, which means travelling back and forth for the next two weeks, plus I have to finish some courses during that time too. Plus a ton of things I don’t even want to think about yet. Don’t get me wrong though, this is absolutely great. I’d just require an extra me to have some time for resting too.

PS. Check Teething Trouble goes Master Thesis for some more profound and research-oriented writings of mine.

Autumn is here.

Instead of going biking today, I decided to go out for a walk/jog in the nearby jogging routes. After walking for just a kilometre or two, I saw a small forest road I hadn’t noticed before, and decided to see where it leads. I’m glad I did, the forest was incredibly beautiful with the warm light of morning sun filtering through leaves and a bit of mist still dangling over the ferns. I continued jogging down the sand road and came to a small field, apparently someone’s past time with various food plants growing in the field. I continued on the path that went past the field, and noticed a small wooden bridge crossing a quiet beck. The water in the beck was incredibly clear, and had some autumn leaves floating on the surface, with the sunshine creating a fairytale-like feel to the scenery.

I continued for a whole hour, and just couldn’t stop admiring the beauty of the forests and the autumn here. I’ve always loved the finnish autumn with all the amazing colours, but after missing it last year due to being in Japan, it feels even more beautiful than ever. And the air, the air is so clean and fresh, the only thing you smell is the forest with all the wonderful scents. The temperature is also perfect: chilly enough for giving you an excuse for wearing your favorite woolly, or wrapping yourself in a blanket and drinking loads of tea. Chilly, but not too cold just yet.

Next time, I’ll bring my camera. Things like these are too good to be kept just for myself.

Immersive

I should blog more. I hope someone’s still reading this, although I am a bit doubtful. I’ve just had too much to do and think due to returning to Finland, moving to Tampere and entering a new university and a new master course. Sheesh. I also got my laptop stolen while I was in Germany, in the GamesCom game-exhibition, and was mostly computerless for two weeks.

I’m starting to settle down finally though, with bureaucracy taken mostly care of, most of my stuff here with me in Tampere, and a new laptop. Still loads to do, and getting used to studying in a big university will probably also take a while more.  On the other hand, I seem to have excellent chances of meeting international students, they’re all over the cafeteria. Allows me to keep up my skills in english, and hopefully there are some japanese students too, so I won’t forget the skills I gained during my stay in Japan either. We’ll see.

In other news, I got my copy of Mac OS X Snow Leopard today. Hours ago. Instead of inserting it to my MacBook, I took my MacBook with me to the kitchen and read research articles about, among other things, immersivity, until it was 10 pm. Talk about immersive. Sometimes I wonder if being this excited about research is a good thing, but on the other hand… I don’t give a flying rats ass* about whether it’s a good thing or not. I love it, it isn’t harmful to anyone (except possibly me), and if I actually become a researcher, my theories might end up being of some use to someone.

* a line from the movie Night at the Roxbury. Oh yeah man!

Still continuing on the research subject, I decided to start a separate studies/research blog, obviously focusing mostly on my rocky road towards writing a master thesis. It doesn’t really affect the original Teething Trouble, since this never was a ’serious’ blog to start with, so I’ll continue on updating this on unregular basis. After all, I need a place where to babble about random stuff that I can’t babble about elsewhere! Plus, I’ve got tons of Japan-stuff I haven’t covered yet.

A more comprehensive entry might be coming up soon, or might not. Most probably it will be coming up later, since I still haven’t written the first entry to the thesis-blog, and I should also probably contact Anime-magazine about some more spesific plans of me writing for them.

In any case, it’s bed-time for me now, so I’m off to read some Diary of a Mad Old Man by Junichiro Tanizaki. It’s hilarious.

P.S. my thesis-blog can be found here: http://kenkyuushajin.wordpress.com/

Cultural differences

When we passed the Koelnemesse -complex with the train, we couldn’t believe our eyes: it seemed to go on and on forever. Everytime we thought the last building had been passed, there was another one behind it. And we didn’t know even half of it.

The vastness of the place hit is at the same time as the last bits of my illusions were shattered: the world-known effectiveness of German people is a myth. I didn’t get the papers I was supposed to get beforehand, and although was told it’d be ok, was forced to walk from one end to the other in the ridiculously huge exhibition area. Walking from one end of the building where GamesCom is held to the other took almost 20 minutes, and in total, walking just half way around the area took us half an hour. It’s frigging huge.

Once I finally got my things sorted, it was time to dive in. First, I took a dip in the business area. Although I kind of like the idea of having it separate from the public areas, my liking took a negative turn once I got in. Walls, hallways, logos and more walls. That’s basically all I could see. Two halls full of these. Now, this might be just a personal issue, but I don’t find it very inviting if the exhibitors are fenced in so that the only way to even see what’s going on in there is entering the place through a narrow entrance. This might be perfectly fine with people who have appointments, but for someone like me who likes to see everything and then choose what to write about, it doesn’t really work. How can I find anything interesting if I can’t even see what they’ve got to offer?

So, I escaped. The public area seemed to be closer to what I was looking for, even if the size of it all was a bit intimidating. Four huge halls plus this and that going on outside. Luckily, the cultural differences between countries also affect the way the exhibitions are done. In here, they actually have realised that people might need space to move and breathe in, and maybe even relax every now and then, unlike in Japan where the areas were as fully packed as ever possible. Here in Cologne, the exhibition area was arranged so that there was enough space to move around, and every hall had an area or two just for relaxing: dozens of beanbags lying around, just waiting for the tired visitors to lean back, kick of their shoes and enjoy the buzz going on all around them.

I only managed to go through the first two halls, so two more of the public ones and two of the business ones to go. After getting my fill of nutritients in Starbucks (did this come as a surprise to you), I’m ready for the second day of GamesCom craziness.

Travelling

Just a quick post to let everyone know I’m alive and, mostly, doing well (although I feel like someone beat me up bad, results from too little sleep and too much luggage-dragging).

I returned to Finland yesterday, only to leave the home contry behind again early this morning. At the moment, I’m finally sitting at the cafe of my hostel in Cologne, Germany, and planning on heading to GamesCom 2009 as soon as I’m done with this entry. First something to eat though, I feel like I’m starving.

Wrapping up

Trying to finish catching up on my doings before leaving the LAnd of the Rising Sun behind.

School ended on 27th of July, which means I’ve been on vacation ever since, at least in theory. My finals could’ve been better, but I wasn’t feeling too well for the last few weeks of school because of the heat, so I’m quite content with the results. Luckily I did get used to the temperatures eventually, so I’ve been able to enjoy my holiday, even if I’ve used a lot of time for packing up stuff, throwing useless stuff away, and sending stuff back home. Plus making some last purchases, of course. I think I’ll make a whole entry to all the game stuffs I’ve bought while in here, so I won’t be writing about them this time. In stead, I’ll tell about the kimono I bought.

The nice thing about Japan, among all the other nice things, is that the second hand -clothing market is blooming. Whether you want a breathtakingly beautiful (and breathtakingly expensive) vintage kimono, or a very very cheap yukata (summer kimono), it’s all there. A very inexpensive second hand -store called Chicago has one corner of the Harajuku-crossing full of all sorts of traditional japanese clothing, and the prices are often ridiculously cheap (only on weekends though, in case someone wants to check it out).

On the other hand, the clothes are not in the best condition possible, with stains and wrinkles, but looking around carefully enough, one can definitely find some good ones. Especially their obi-selection (belt worn over kimono) is incredibly vast. I had already bought two obis earlier, and was thus now trying to find the actual kimono. And I did, a very beautiful one, for only 4000yen (about 30€ ). To be able to wear a kimono one needs all sorts of things, so that wasn’t the final price of the outfit, but I’d say that in total the whole outfit cost me less than 100€ in total. I also bought the compulsory wooden shoes/slippers, called geta, to be worn with the kimono, and I bought them new. I happened to come across a very nice model while visiting Nikko a bit over a week ago.

Geta aside, Nikko was beautiful. Everyone goes to Nikko to see Toshogu with the famous See no evil – Hear no evil – Speak no evil -monkey carvings on one of the temples. I wasn’t too impressed by it, but found Futarasan, the oldest building in the temple area, a whole lot more impressive. The view from the gate that led to the garden and the temple stairs was just breathtaking. The gates and the temple itself were also a lot more beautiful than Toshogu, even though Toshogu was impressive in its own way. I also visited one of the tallest waterfalls in Japan, called . A whole 98 meters tall, it was definitely worth the visit. On the other hand, Nikko was kind of harsh on my budget, for I finally gave in to the desire for buying one of the handmade dolls, a Nikko specialty, and a bit of other things (which are not for me and thus remain secret).

On top of everything I already wrote about, I’ve also seen some incredible fireworks during the last month. For Japanese, summer means one thing above everything else: omatsuri (traditional Japanese festivals). In August, it’s time for the Hanabi -version of the festivals, meaning fireworks. Yesterday, I got to witness the most amazing fireworks in my life this far, although I almost missed out on the whole thing. We were planning on going to the rooftop of the building that a friend of a friend lives in, but it was residents-only. Luckily, we chatted with the right lady on our elevator ride back down, and ended up recieving the vital red ribbons that would grant us the entry to the rooftop. Already sure of our defeat, we got out on the rooftop, only to notice we only missed 2/3 of it. Doesn’t sound like much, but the fireworks lasted for 1,5 hours in total, with 12,000 rockets, so one third of that was plenty for filling my hanabi-needs. I mean, can you believe that? 12,000 pieces of firework, many of them bigger and more beautiful than I’ve ever seen, amazing!

With this many nice things, something less good had to be in store too. First of all, I wanted to see the fussed-over 1:1 -sized Gundam -robot in Odaiba. Hidden in the middle of trees, placed in the centre of a huge field of, well, mud, was standing a quite impressive -looking and nicely-sized Gundam. We waited for a while in hopes for a show of sorts, and sort of got it. If you can call head turning from one side to another, lights blinking and coughing up a cloud or two of steam a show that is. My deepest apologies to everyone who liked it, but I certainly wasn’t impressed.

The second less-good experience was a long-anticipated exhibition that was closing before I left, called Visual Deception. The Bunkamura Art Museum was hosting it, and did a very nice job too. The paintings were arranged into easily digestable -sized groups, and the information given about the art form was also quite well done. Unfortunately, the space and the number of people didn’t quite match, so more than once I found myself stuck in the middle of a sea of Japanese art lovers with no way out in sight. Damn was I tired after that. Good thing I got the finish the day of at the last Super Secret Geek Meeting, which, as usual, offered me the relaxation I was in desperate need of.

Next time Teething Trouble updates, I will be back in Europe.  Time to get a bit of sleep before hitting the road to Narita. I hope my train-swapping schedule isn’t too tight and things go quite smoothly, but you never know what might happen, so wish me luck.

Goodbyes and hellos

It’s already past midnight in Japan, but I’m not feeling sleepy in the slightest, and night is the best time to be creative, so here we go.

A lot of you are probably wondering, or at least I hope there is a lot of you (readers that is), what on earth could’ve kept me so busy for the past couple of months that I didn’t even have time for updating. Well. The answer is long, winding and complex, meaning this entry is going to be of the same kind.

Before getting all jiggy with it, I have to admit I did have times when I could’ve written something, but I didn’t want to write just for the sake of writing. June just happened to be quite eventless writing-topic -vise, although it definitely was eventful for me. I visited numerous restaurants, bars and nightclubs, some of them good, some of them not so. To be more precise, all the restaurants I ate at were good, but some of the bars and nightclubs were quite… not my cup of tea. Or glass of wine. On the other hand, I never was the clubber-type to start with.

Obviously I didn’t go to these places alone (well, it might not be that obvious, but oh well), but with friends, some of them old, some of them new. I’ve gotten to know so many great and interesting people here, that it would take ages to tell about all of them. I think you know who you are if you are reading this, and trust me, I’m definitely going to miss you.

July then. Nothing different from June happened until half way through the month, for the rainy season continued and continued. Cicadas where chirping like crazy, which usually means the rainy season is over, but apparently they can be mistaken too, for the rainy season still isn’t over in the Tokyo area. My friends got fed up with the situation, and decided to head for the beach anyway. After that, I’ve been beachin’ quite a few times, and definitely approve of Japans’ beaches. I know beaches are not the first thing that comes to mind when thinking about Japan, but there are quite a few nice beaches close to Tokyo. Here’s my list, from best to worst:

・　Oohama (Shimoda, Shizuoka-prefecture) is my absolute favorite of the beaches I’ve visited. With Japan being a volcanic country, the two beaches in Shimoda are a rarity with their white sand. The peacefulness and cleanliness of the beaches is also quite rare with the other beaches close to Tokyo being crowded and full of trash. Also, the city o Shimoda is perfect as a summer getaway from the hecticness of Tokyo, with its laid-back atmosphere and beautiful nature.

・   Hiratsuka (Hiratsuka, Kanagawa-prefecture) is situated very close to our university, including the dorm I live in, but I didn’t visit it until the end of July. I was very impressed. Granted, not the chilled-out, sleeping-on-the-beach-is-the-best-thing-ever -type of a beach, but I’m not that type anyway. The thing I love about Hiratsuka beach is that it really feels like you are on the edge of the Pacific Ocean. The wind is strong, the waves are high, and even the bulwark is massive. Also, the beach continues for quite a few kilometers (I tried to walk all the way, but failed), although swimming is dangerous outside the marked, narrow area. Kind of filthy and very crowded and restless in the marked area, but elsewhere very nice and seems to be a perfect place for surfing.

・    Kamakura (Kamakura, Kanagawa-prefecture) seems to be The Place for all beachparty-looking Tokyoites. For a good reason too, with the soft sand, shallow water and beach cafes aplenty. I visited the beach when they were having the annual Oooze -beach party in Day Dreamer’s Deck, and it was definitely worth the trip. The beach isn’t good for swimming or surfing though, and is also very crowded.

・    Fujisawa (Tsuji-do, Kanagawa-prefecture) was kind of filthy and full of families and older people, but with good company and a short walk away from the biggest crowds, it’s actually a pretty nice beach. The waves were quite big and seemed surfable, and the beach was also a bit cleaner once you got further away from the crowds, so no bigger complaints in the end.

・    Enoshima (Enoshima, Kanagawa-prefecture) is known for it’s crowdedness and filthyness. I’ve only visited it once, during the Golden Week, but even then, completely out of season, it was quite crowded and looked unclean. Smelled too. I really don’t have anything good to say about this one, apologies to the possible Enoshima-lovers.

Besides trying out different beaches, I also had my last month of the Ultra Super Extra Intensive Japanese Language Course, and actually survived. School ended on 27th of July, although I still don’t really feel like it. My finals could’ve been better, but I wasn’t feeling too well for the last few weeks of school because of the heat, so I’m quite content with the results. Since we didn’t have any real graduation ceremony, and we won’t recieve our certificates for ages, I’ll probably realise it’s over once I get back to Finland.

Don’t get me wrong though, it was crazily exhausting but at the same time a very efficient way for learning japanese. Do I regret taking the course? Definitely not. Would I do it again? Hell no. On the other hand, same goes for all the schools I’ve attended in my life so far…

Time flies…

…When you’re having fun. Such a cliché, but so very true. I was fully aware it had been quite a while since my last entry, but two whole months…

I will write a more proper entry as soon as I’m over and done with the finals, but for now you have to settle for a short briefing. I’m doing fine, life is good, weather… sucks at the moment, and vacation starts in a few days. My flight back to Finland will be on the 19th of August, and on the next day I will fly to Cologne, Germany, to attend GamesCom for a few days.

I have a huge numer of photos waiting for uploading, but have totally and utterly run out of disk space. So, until I get an external hardrive, no new photos for you.

‘Till then, and my next entry!

One busy weekend

Why is it that usually there seems to be nothing interesting going on, and then all of a sudden all of it is happening on the same day? There has to be some sort of a Murphy-style law that applies to this. In any case, two weeks ago, I had five places to go to; two big events during the daytime, and three parties in the evening. Design Festa, Thai festival, a friends’ birthday party, a get-together in a bar, and clubbing.

Design Festa was The Event I had been waiting for, so Thai festival had to wait. Besides, I had company, so I couldn’t not go. So I went, and am definitely happy I did. Design Festa is, in short, a humongous art exhibition held annually in Tokyo Big Sight. Anyone can rent a spot to show off their work, and this year almost 800 exhibitors had had the money and energy for it. Good for them, but way too much stuff for looking through in just one day. Somehow we still managed to walk through most of it, and I also ended up buying stuff. Not too much though, just two shirts, a cheap chiptunes’ cd, and some stickers and postcards.

After getting exhausted swimming in the sea of art and… “art”, it was time to decide which party to attend to. The friends’ birthday party was certain to be great, so I decided to play it safe. Also, I could easily continue the night in one of the other alternatives if I started to feel like.

The party was indeed great, although, due to certain circumstances, I arrived there an hour late and had a weird feeling in my stomach. The feeling passed, I chatted some with people, and then it was 11pm. Meaning, I had to decide wether or not to leave to the get-together with a friend, or stay for half an hour – hour longer and then go sleep in another friend’s place.

I decided on going to the get-together. A bit of a mistake really, with Havana Café, the place where it was happening, being packed. Mostly with people who I wasn’t that interested in spending time with. In the end, I ended up joining a group of two swedish guys, one french guy and three japanese girls, because we all shared the same hope: to find something more interesting. After a late night snack and a lot of pondering, it was decided that we’d try out Velours. Which turned out to be a place that would normally be pretty nice, but was having a bad night. Luckily it is situated one block away from the sofa I was supposed to spend my night on, so I could easily leave whenever.

On sunday, I was still feeling art-overdosed, and decided to go and try healing it with plenty of Thai food. While waiting for the departure, I got to try out my friends’ Playstation 3. We played some Marvel Ultimate Alliance, an old acquitance from the PS2 -days, and after that I decided to give Valkyrie Chronicles a try. The story and the characters seemed quite… worn out, but the fighting system was quite interesting. A whole new version of turn-based battling, and a complicated one too. In the beginning, it just got to my nerves. Just as I was starting to get the hang of it, I got fed up with the other elements, and decided to change to Ninja Gaiden.

The first problem with Ninja Gaiden was that they twist and turn and cut and paste elements of the japanese fighting culture as they please. Once, one succeeds in ignoring that fact, it is actually an awesome game, and great fun. Until the first boss anyway. Holy crap that nunchaku-dude was ridiculous. Although, I wasn’t laughing much because he was not only ridiculous character-vise, but also ridiculously strong as an opponent.

Just as I was getting totally fed up with the Gran’ Ol’ Master of Ass Kicking, it was time to leave for the Thai festival. Nothing much to tell really, we just ate and ate and ate all the delicious stuff they were selling. I even managed to find my favorite fruits, mangosteen, on sale there, and thus my weekend was made perfect.

Golden Week

Well. I had quite a Golden Week. This entry is pretty late though, since the actual week was from 1st of May until the 6th. Anyway, figured I should make the best out of it, since it was (as far as I know) the last vacation-ish thingy before this semester ends at the end of July, so I spent all days except one somewhere else than Tokai Daigaku-mae. Highlights:

Talking geeky stuff until 4am. I’ve been going to The Weekly Geek Meeting on thursdays quite frequently now, and the start of the Golden Week was no exception. The exceptional thing was that, after a moment of hard thinking, I decided to skip the last train. I was expecting an all-nighter alone, or sleeping in an internet cafe, but instead got to stay in a professional geeks’ (meaning he’s working in the gaming business) School Girl Torturing Chamber, to use the lovely name he himself gave to it.

BBQ and Late Night Karaoke. On friday Yuki, one of the male japanese staff members, threw a barbeque-party for everyone. Quite a few people came too. Nothing much to tell about the party really, just chilling, chatting and enjoying the great weather we had. After we had to leave the dorm, everyone decided to go to karaoke, meaning 40 people tried to get into one of the three small karaoke-places we have here in the middle of inaka. After waiting for a while, we did in fact succeed, and took over three big rooms in Do-Re-Mi.

Yokohama and Giant Robot Spiders. On saturday I finally got to go to Yokohama. Guess I just needed a good reason, and a couple of weeks ago that reason arrived to Yokohama: La Machinas’ giant robot spiders. They are a part of the festivities of Yokohama Ports’ 150th anniversary, but we sort of skipped everything else and headed straight to the Spider Area. Although, for some reason, we only saw one of them, although I am pretty sure there was supposed to be two. Even with only the one to be seen, it was still the coolest thing ever. Not only was the actual spider the absolute coolness, towering 12 meters above us, stomping around in its sturdy feet, and blowing steam, but there was also a nice hint of doomsday panic that gave the show the finishing touch. You see, people went too close to it in the beginning, of course, so when the robot actually started moving, everyone started running away, trying to avoid being getting wet and stomped on. All that panicing made us hungry, so we headed to Japans’ biggest China Town to fulfill our needs. One word: delicious. No comments on the level of conversation though.

Hunting for The Naked Statue of Enoshima. On monday, I lured a friend to accompany me to Enoshima. The mission: find the rare naked statue situated somewhere on or inside the island. The day didn’t start too promisingly though, with my friend getting stuck in the Golden Week traffic jam. Of course, we got stuck in the same jam again once we got closer to Enoshima. After sitting in the blazing sunshine for ages, getting our faces snburnt, we obviously needed some food. After the munching, we got finally in to the actual island. Climbed a thousand stairs, checked out some shrines and a garden, but no hint of a naked statue. As we were reaching the other side of the island, we started to lose faith. Untill. We finally came across a set of caves, with a nominal entrance fee. Obviously, there had to be something worth seeing, maybe even The Statue! So, having our hopes rejuvenated, we walked through the first cave, and felt kind of dissapointed. Decided to still give the second (and last) one a try, and something… interesting awaited at the end of it: click. I’m out of words. If I’d have to define it, I’d call it Tacky On Top of Tacky with a Tacky-frosting and Pinch of Tackyness. Or simply: The Tackiest Thing I’ve Ever Set Eyes On.

Dancing the night away with Tokyo beneath us and Guy in a Space Suit aka Genki Rockets giving us the beat. Tuesday was a day with too many parties to go to. An oldfashioned omatsuri in Odawara, a housewarming party in Yokohama, and a very promising clubbing night in Mado Lounge, Roppongi. Well, I felt like clubbing, so off to Tokyo I went. Had to skip on the other things, but damn it was well worth it: the club being on the top of Roppongi Hills, on the 52nd floor, overlooking Tokyo, with huge windows. Genki Rockets and TT (the DJ of m-flo) as the stars of the night, and on top of that all, the Genki Rockets dude was in fact wearing a space suit. A space suit! To conclude, I gladly paid 3500 yen for it.

Going back to the classroom afer all that felt even more depressing than before, but luckily I got something interesting planned for the weekend that got me going. Photos of the week are sort of on their way, but unfortunately no photo of the space suit. Don’t know why I didn’t take one, but I’ll try to get one from someone, just to prove I’m not talking bull. ;)