I feel sorry for my little blog, being left all abandoned for this time. I really do. My last post was from Japan, on my trip, and after a ton of things happened there, a pile of things just started accumulating, along with new series, new happenings, a relationship (I shit you not) and now a change of jobs, after 3.5 years.

What reminded me that I started this blog originally, was, to go through new series — at the time Mitsudomoe and Madoka. Which turned out mainly into Madoka. And then randomness. But from this season, I hope to do some more of this. Maybe it’s a phase thing, maybe not. Any case, time to start doing this again.

There’s a ton of nice stuff starting — like Nisemonogatari and Milky Holmes S2 for instance. After next week’s Desucon, I’ll be able to concentrate on this once again. (´・ω・｀)

Also—happy first birthday to Madoka, the series that changed my life into one of an assburger. All kidding aside, this series introduced me into a ton of new and interesting people with too little to think about—thanks for that.

Fuck yes you were the best in a long time.

((´^ω^))ノ

I think this’ll be the first anime related post in some way, for the longest time since… well, I don’t know. The reason for this being that I’ve been to two offline Hidamari Sketch related meetups, as well as been to Fukuoka to meet some awesome people. More on that later, though.

By the time of this writing, I’m making my return from Fukuoka, towards Sendai. Since I don’t really want to rush that much, I’m staying the night at Shin-Osaka, and leaving towards sendai tomorrow, effectively dividing that 8-hour-long train trip into two. (Edit: staying for one extra day in Shin-Osaka, for the sake of yukkuring)

But I digress—if only a little—time to get to the core. Mainly, the two Hidamari Sketch meet ups!

What are they? They’re practically just meet ups with people with a common interest (Hidamari Sketch), getting together. The first meet up was at Nagoya, back on the 17th of July—”Tokai Hidamari Meet up, the 2nd” (orig. 東海ひだまらーオフ会第２回). We got together at the Nagoya Station during the day and then when the night came, we moved on to The Place—which was essentially a huge karaoke room at the Kanayama Joysound Karaoke Bldg.

It also involves having the correct stuff lying around. <3

This was the first in a long time to re-introduce me back to the concept of a “social hangover”; something that I use to describe an event or meet-up that’s been fun to the extent that there’s only one thing to describe that feeling afterwards; FOREVER ALONE.

In total, we were almost 20 people. This was the first time I met anybody that I’ve talked to on Twitter, so incidentally, to say that I was a bit nervous would’ve been an understatement of the century.

Also, glowsticks. Glowsticks everywhere!

Even though we went to a huge karaoke room for the get-together, there was no singing involved, which was kind of a relief for me (more on this later). Traded some of my freshly designed business cards with other people and talked a bunch of people (also; japanese is difficult to speak if you haven’t spoken much of it. But it was good practice).

After the meet-up, the people with some time to spend (almost everyone), went to a neighboring karaoke place to have some more, where we spent a good while singing Hidamari Sketch -songs in a choir of 15 people.

Oh, and every place we went to, involved glowsticks. Lots of glowsticks. Everybody loves glowsticks around here. But it’s awesome.

This is the road to the future.

I’ll start straight out; the past days after arriving at Minga Village have been the best days of my life so far. There’s only a handful of days left until my work ends there and the second part of my trip begins, but in a way, I’d like to extend my stay at the farm.

Due to the lack of updates recently, I’ll give you the full run-up of what’s gone down. I’ve been doing voluntary work, via an organization called WWOOF, in Minga Village, located in Ohmi-Takashima, next to lake Biwa.

There's also the Takarabune Onsen at a mere 500 metres from the house.

Minga Village is an international project for autistic people, a kind of “healing therapy”—or more easily put, a place to escape the world’s stress. The Minga branch is run by a family of four, with a few WWOOFers helping out with different things around the house and outside.

The Headquarters

And with “different things”, I really mean different things. What the household does is pretty impressing to somebody who was mainly stayed in the City for all my adulthood. This means almost all vegetables we eat are of our own produce. This produce is also sold, and grown without pesticides or insecticides. Instead of milk we use organic soy milk, the oil used is self-pressed rapeseed oil (which tastes really good on self-baked bread, by the way) and the hot water is boiled once a day by wood. Oh yeah and all of the drinking water is also spring water we get from a local well.

Nothing to complain about the scenery here.

At first glance it seems like a really primitive environment (there is electricity though) and many of my friends have wondered; “What do you do on your free time?”. I didn’t really think of this before, but I just realized it’s the same as I’ve done home in Finland when going to the countryside. It takes a few days to get out of the stressed city mode and into the Chill-the-Fuck-Out -mode, and after that, your mind really starts to work like it should be, taking its own time.

The Window View

Even though I might’ve put emphasis on the “relax and chill out” part, there’s no slacking involved. On the contrary, I’ve probably never worked as hard in my life as in the past days after arriving here. Tasks including planting herbs and new sprouts, picking weeds, harvesting vegetables, putting mulch and fertilizer on sprouts. I kid you not, but every single day my clothes have literally been soaked out of my own sweat. And the really awesome part of this is; I love it. And I wouldn’t want to have it any other way.

Part of a day's harvest

In the past week and a half, I’ve learned a lot of new things that have made me appreciate this kind of work more and already started getting thoughts fly around in my head, in a good way. Hell, I’m this close in changing my return date so I could stay for longer. And on this note, this has been the best spiritual restart of my life.

Onwards!

Oh yeah, on another note, I was initially supposed to get my rental SIM card after arriving, but seems like my iPhone was carrier locked. I’m on the way back to the airport to try again, now after prying the carrier lock off of my phone. Screw you, Sonera.

EDIT: In the end, I didn’t get that rental SIM after all. I got a prepaid SIM card and a new phone instead. Now I can use mail. ♡

I might not make it in time, but after I get this sorted, I’ll be going to listen to some live jazz to Gion-Pickup, where a good friend of mine is playing as bassist. Can’t wait.

Take for example the simple task of getting on the JR Kosei Line. It’s not like I’d ever get anything wrong or anything, but suddenly I found myself on the JR Biwako Line. And instead of being right on time, I was suddenly late as hell. (*´Д｀)

Where I was supposed to be

...and where I ended up.

At the time of this original writing, the time is 13:29, which is a bit over a good three hours from when I was originally supposed to be at the Ohmi-Takashima station. Arrived, called my host, who kindly noticed that everything was OK and I should just get on the train to Makino Sta. to get a ride. ヾ(* ° Д ° )ノ

I’m still having seriously mixed feelings about what the hell I am doing, but there some special things to look forward to, even if everything goes to poop. This of course isn’t a desirable outcome, to have everything go to poop. (Late edit note: Things are awesome here)

Currently, what I’m looking most forward to, is meeting a dear, dear friend, whom I’ve originally met on Twitter and started chatting with through Skype. My current schedule is looking almost overbooked, even! Not that I’m complaining, though. Meetings and parties both in Fukuoka and Osaka, where I’ll be meeting a ton of cool people.

Also, it feels good to finally put my Japanese language skills to use, how rusty it may be. I haven’t really studied at a school or anything, and most of my Japanese language skills have come from Tweeting and chatting through Skype. JEDict, the OSX built-in dictionary, Google Japanese IME, Rikaikun and Jisho.org. (Basically JEDict, Rikaikun and Jisho.org use the same dictionary but function a bit different in their own ways). Maybe there’s hope for me speaking better Japanese after all!

What feels the most strange with using the Japanese language, is that it’s already started feeling like there are sentences forming automatically in my head, without having to think about sentence structures or some particular words. Same is with listening; there’s a kind of understanding without having to think about what it means in a different language. It feels strange, since this is the first time that I’ve noticed this kind of thing with languages—probably since the other languages I’ve learned have been at a young age, and didn’t really think about it back then.

If there is one track that I could use as music for my mood while traveling by train, for some odd reason, it’s this track. Soft, mellow and warm. (*´Д｀) In general, today has been pretty much filled by a feeling that can be summed up in one word; comatose. Jet lag is a bitch.

Two weeks later, you still tired of jet lag.

I met up with Ms. Mihhi Usako tonight as well—we went to have some green-tea filled goodness near Kyoto Sta. at a place which name has slipped my mind already (sorry! (TдT)). Usually I get nervous when having to do some live-chatting in Japanese—my vocabulary is still at a derpy level—since I don’t have a) Rikaichan/-kun and b) an electronic dictionary, like when I communicate over the internet, but we had a great time and were able to understand each other even without the looming presence of neither of the two aforementioned tools.

Also, today is the end of my “normal” travel days. At least up until the 22nd of July, since starting tomorrow, I will be starting my voluntary work at a WWOOFer’s place. Wish me luck.

Time to get some sleep, brb.

I lied, this photo is actually a sunset. Sorry.

Considering last night, I feel surprisingly un-herpy right now. At least thanks to having a few ice coffee’s a while ago. Thanks to modern medicine, I managed to catch at least some 3 hours of shut-eye during the flight.

I was originally planning on renting a SIM-card for my phone (actually, work phone). It didn’t cross my mind that it would’ve been SIM-locked. I could get it figured out now, but then on the other hand, I’m suffering from a lack of motivation about calling back to Finland to my service prover and asking them to lift the lock (which was supposed to be automatic, but it didn’t work). On top of that, rental SIM-cards are only available on the airport, which is 90 minutes away from here. What’s that, motivation?

Good thing about being a nerd and living abroad.

While in Kyoto, I’ll be staying at K’s House Kyoto; everything seemed really really in the beginning. Also extra props for a receptionist with an excellent taste in music (Boards of Canada, Aphex Twin) as well as musical gear (Kaossilator, Kaoss Pad).

Most of the day has been a struggle about staying awake, but when I finally managed to get to the Hostel, my sleepiness was nowhere to be seen. So, throwing my things into the hostel; OK. Off to downtown. Today’s result: healthy deep-fried pork with curry (カツカレー) and bought the August issue of Kirara Carat (Hidamari ♥).

I think I need some sleep. BRB, sleeping in a proper bed!

I-I-I-It's not like I wanted to give you light or anything, baka!

Something that flew right past me was the change in baggage regulations to Finnair flights; only one piece of baggage allowed. That means if I want to take my tripod with me, it’ll cost me 80€. My solution: screw that shit. Left the tripod at home, getting a new one in Japan when I need one.

Right now, chilling at the Airport Café, leeching off someone’s internet, and getting my body ready to hop on the airplane. My body will never be ready.

See you on the flipside! Next stop, Osaka. Follow me on twitter and drop a line. ♥

Tomorrow, I will be getting on a plane, that will take me straight to the Kansai Int’l Airport from Helsinki. After I arrive, the following two and a half weeks I will be spending at a farm doing voluntary work (through WWOOF) next to Lake Biwa. After that, the “second” part of my trip begins; going around Japan from Fukuoka over to Sendai, with plans going to see the origins of Train-kun. On the way, I’m planning to meet a bunch of twitter buddies that I’ve learned to know and love. On top of that, I’m going to attend some events, offline meetings and ultimately Comiket 80.

I’m intending to post as much as I can, but the first weeks may be a bit shaky; I have no idea over how much time I will have while working and how much energy I will have, but after that, it’s high gear kick-in!

Now, I’ll finish my beer, go to buy a few necessities and then get going home to prepare.

Fuck no my body is never going to be ready. p(´⌒｀q)

Tomorrow is the last day for a part of the finnish population to turn in one’s tax return forms. I happen to belong to this part of the population. Normally I wouldn’t really have to do this, but ever since I started my own company last year, I… kind of have to.

So, let this be a nice reminder for myself to do your shit in time ( ﾟдﾟ )

Also, thanks to Nichijou for helping me keep my sanity for the past weeks after Madoka aired.