Day to Day 一 Japan

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I’m little bit pissed off… I just wrote a very nice blog post and when I tried to publish it, I got an error and it disappeared !

Let’s start again..

Normally everyday I wake up about 4am-6am and fire up my macbook pro, ipad and other gadgets to do my stuff and since I wake up so early, I eat breakfast early as well like 5am-6am. In Aomori as in most of Japan the grocery stores have these awesome bakeries inside them. Depends on my mood but I buy something from the local bakeries daily.
Like these things.

I will try later to capture couple of shots at the small bakery I like so you can see all the other tasty goodies they have.

Couple of weeks ago we visited in this old traditional Japanese house here in Aomori.
That tatami floor get’s me every time ! it feels so goooood !

(Kitchen/dining area)

(Shower/bath area)

(Traditional Japanese Toilet)
Sometimes I have problems using the Japanese toilet but most of the time I can manage with it to do my business. I do prefer a western toilet or ToTo “robot” toilet even more.

What do we learn from this photograph?

Later I will make bigger posts about stores in japan but here are few little info messages.

Book-Off — Probably the second best place to buy DVDs and Manga in Japan
For used DVDs I prefer Tsutayas DVD selling area, it’s cheaper and usually better condition
For Manga I like Enterking and Mandarake more.
Book-Off sells a lot of stuff like:
-Manga/Magazines/books
-DVDs/VHS
-Games for consoles
-Phones/PSPs and other devices
-Gaming cards
and more

100 yen Shop — One of my personal favorite store in Japan
What ever you need they have it, very cheap and stuff you buy from there don’t break so fast as you might think.
as the name goes 100yen store it means that about 90% of things in this store costs 100yen
In Aomori and other “Country sides” the stores are much bigger and that includes the 100 yen store. One 100 yen store here in Aomori is the size of 4-6 normal size 100 yen stores in Tokyo for example.

Bought a ice cream on a hot day from Lawson, it was not that good but it said “NEW” and I’m a sucker for new things.

What do you learn from this photo?
Do not wear a jacket that says “Bad Man” in Japan or you get in trouble.

One day my girlfriend wanted to visit a Apple factory in Hirosaki which was a very nice place. In there I saw this bond full of Koi (鯉) the Japanese fish that you can find in pretty much every park in Japan almost. This place was a bit special because you could actually feed the koi with the food you could buy at the reception of the cafe near by.

I bought couple of bags of them (50yen a bag) to play with the fish a bit.

I wanted to try what happens if I throw all the fish food from one bag in at the same time, all the fish went crazy as I expected! I have a video of it and I will upload it to you tube when I get back to Tokyo.

This is me feeding the koi

Soon as we ran out of fish food we went inside to do some pottery. I made a cup ( at least I tried to make it look like a cup) and my girlfriend made an ashtray.

If you follow my twitter or facebook page you might have seen a lot of photos of a cat called Chibi which means “small” in Japanese. She is 18 years old (human years), one of the cutest cats in the world.

When I take her outside she goes crazy with all the grass and tries to eat all of it like this.

One day when I was outside with her and it was time to go back inside, she pulled a cute but annoying stunt. She started laying down in the ground and not getting up.

When she is not laying down on my chest she likes to sit near the window and watch outside.

One last cute photo of her !

In Japan you can see lots of interesting English everywhere. Sometimes the sentences don’t make any sense and other times you have to think a little.
Here are couple funny photos I found.
1st. Liquid – Like a hair … Liquid is a good name for a bar but my girlfriend said that the place was a hair saloon. That name for a hair saloon is just confusing.
2nd. don’t touch it… Why can’t I touch it !! I want to touch it ! what is it that I can’t touch!

Sometimes when we are bored at Hirosaki center, we go to this mall where we play this coin slot mario game. Excellent way to pass the time.

You can play Mario game while dropping coins to the slots.

Luckily Hirosaki center has Baskin Robins as well where we go from time to time to relax and eat some delicious ice creams. I usually have my shake because the Baskin robins shake is deeelicious !
My girlfriend usually has this one

and I have the shake of course

Thank you for visiting my site again ! I’ll try to get more posts up here asp.
Our plan is to go to the city called Hakodate tomorrow that is located in Hokkaido but now a huge typhoon is closing in to this area and could be that our ship will not leave the harbor for safety reasons but we will see that tomorrow.

If you liked this post check out my twitter and facebook page Photographer ari helminen

Soon in Japan

Posted on April 7, 2012 by Ari Helminen

Hi,

I’ll be going to Japan in the begin of may, to be more exact 15th if I remember right I guess that would be kinda in the middle but what ever!

I’ll be updating my site at least once a day and you can expect a lot of photos and videos as well ! sadly this time I can’t stay too long in Japan since this summer I have to go in to the Finnish military service which is mandatory for Finnish citizens. I have pushed it for years now because I truly do not want to go but this year I just get it over with so I don’t have to think about it in the future. It’s only 6 months so not that bad but that is still six months I could be living in Japan.

Again I will take a lot of photos on the day I will fly back to Japan! This time I will be flying via London and waiting there in transit for 5 hours. Sadly I could not get flights with JAL because they were just too damn expensive so I’ll be flying with Finnair and BA this time. I haven’t flown with BA for quite some time so will be interesting to see how good they are these days.

I have this tradition that I do before I travel somewhere that I stop watching my favorite tv shows and anime until the day I fly so in the airport buss, at the airport and in the airplane I have a lot of entertainment.

I’ll be making a izakaya party soon as I get back and you are all welcome if you are in Tokyo at that time. Since my girl has moved back to north Japan I will visit there as well of course so I will try to get some photos taken in there too.

I have been working some odd jobs to gather some more cash for this trip and to be honest I have done quite well that means there will be many asahi bottles and delicious food with my name on them !

Now I’m trying to sell my ipad2 quickly away so I could get the “new ipad”. I guess I’m just one of these apple crazy people who have to have everything “new” heh. Actually I will be going to few things when I get back to Tokyo from the apple store including the new ipad, ipod nano and a big maybe a macbook air as well.

I uploaded some photos from my childhood home to a website if you want to see My room in Figure fm. I know it is a bit Otaku-ish “geeky” . Since I’m traveling so much and planning that move to Japan I decided that I’m not getting a new place in Finland so I’m still in that room heh. I had my own apartment once but it got flooded so moved my stuff back here for a bit.

Also in that same website you can see photos from my apartment in Tokyo.

To conclude just in one month I’ll be back in beautiful Japan taking photos everyday and updating my site more and more. I hope there I can find someone who could help me make my site better ! 😀

Cherry blossom time is coming… 桜と花見

Posted on March 19, 2012 by Ari Helminen

Spring has come and the cherry blossoms are opening soon all over Japan. For many spring is the favorite time of the year in Japan and I’m no exception well I do like Autumn too with the beautiful autumn colors.

This year I won’t be able to see Tokyo blossoming in sakura (cherry flower) because I will arrive to Tokyo in the begin of May when the main season has officially finished but I did take couple of thousand photos last spring that I’d like to share with you!

Depends how my plans go but I might be able to see cherry blossom in north of Japan since there the season starts later than in Tokyo.

Little Japanese for you.
サクラ　(桜) = Cherry blossom (Sakura)
はなみ　(花見) = Flower viewing (Hanami)

Did you know that in Japanese TV you can see info when and where the flowers are at their best? .Well you can so keep you eye on the tv shows 😀

Little bit about Hanami (flower viewing)

One of the best things to do in Japan is to get together with your friends under the colorful cherry flowers and drink beer (or something stronger),eat tasty food and talk with your friends.
The first Hanami I went was organized by the Sakura hostel asakusa and since I was renting an apartment from Sakura house (basically the same company) I could join their parties without paying anything. At that time I did not know pretty much anyone in Tokyo but at the hanami where all of us were having fun and drinking I made lots of new friends.

Actually about 5-10minutes after this photo was taken it started raining a lot (and I mean A LOT) so everyone quickly packed their bags and ran back to the lobby of the hostel (I know I tolled this story like million times but it was such a fun night). At the hostel we were sitting at the lobby drinking and getting to know one another and after couple of hours someone got this great idea that we should go to a bar that was close called “Samurai bar” (hope I’m not mistaken about the name), in the bar we stayed until the last train. So even tho the rain stopped our fun under the flowers we still kept the party on!