Day to Day 一 Japan

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.

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tokyo to Hirosaki

Hellooooo my dear readers !

I arrived to Hirosaki about 2 weeks ago but I haven’t yet updated photos of the journey here!
This trip went well like most of my night buss travels.

Morning started nicely, drinking cold strawberry yugurt drink with my girl and talking to a cool Japanese guy who had this very cute doggy with him.

As an early lunch we went to eat ramen to a very nice place that is in Asakusa main street near the ginza station.
My friend Sam was with us who never eaten “real” ramen other then cup ramen.

this is how you open the chopsticks 😀

His first ramen ever.

My girlfriend had this tasty dish

and I had my normal Curry ramen.

If you are in Japan now you notice that these Dragon Ball cans are in most vending machines. they used to be just 100yen and you could only get that can that is in the photo but it changed couple of days ago that when you buy one you can get one of 7 different dragon ball cans but because of this the price went up 10yen (now it is 110yen).

Watermelon & Sky tree ice cream

You know how I have been telling you about the best Japanese fried chicken place (karaage) in Asakusa, well we went there again before our buss in the evening.

This is us before starting our trip to the north.

Ginza line 🙂

We were in a super hurry so we had to change for JR to get to Tokyo station more faster.

My luggage! This time I don’t have that much to carry.

Night buss is the best way to travel in Japan, this buss cost me 3000 ish yen one way to Hirosaki.

Highway stops are awesome, full of products from the area it is in and a lot of vending machines!

When we arrived to Hirosaki station at 8am we were both hungry so we stopped at Doutor.

Sucks that I can’t use my Suica at the station tho 😦 but at least I can use them at the combini (family mart,sunkus etc.)

The train was very small that we took from the Hirosaki station to the station that is near my girls home.

Gotta love the station 😀 (nothing there)

We took a taxi from the station to my girls place.

That was our trip to the north where I still am. I have taken a lot of photos here that you will see soon!

Today we will have a Japanese style barbeque.

Sky Tree & Party in Shinjuku

This day was awesome because I had a party with my friends whom I haven’t seen for a while and also I visited the mall of Sky Tree Solamachi with my girl.

Since my girl wasn’t in Tokyo for the grand opening of the sky Tree she wanted to visit there before we left to Aomori and after 40 minutes walking around the shops there I had to take her to get that smoothie/shake shop I found on my last visit there.

I had my favorite which of course is Strawberry shake

and she had the pineapple one.

I preferred mine tho since mine was more sweeter 😛

Later that day we went to omote sando to shop some clothes and after that we went to Shakeys pizzeria. (you know I love that place)(we don’t care about the pizza that much but the onion rings are the best)

In the evening we had our party at a Izakaya called Wara Wara in Shinjuku.
Always happy to see friends and make new ones at these parties !

This is actually kinda funny, I normally love wasabi but this evening my throat was hurting so eating it was a little bit more difficult than I thought.

1st. This is me with the Wasabi before I ate it. ( you can see there is quite a lot of it)

2nd.Ok so now it’s in my mouth, all good so far..

3rd. Here it got me since I could not swallow it and the hotness was getting higher and higher. Luckily I had a nice cold beer in my hand to help.

Normally, like now I could eat that piece of wasabi and not blink an eye.. just saying 😀

Here are some food photos of what we were eating.

Don’t you just love these things at the izakayas? 10 minutes after the tray arrives to the table, it’s empty.

If any of you are ever in Tokyo while I’m there and not busy, send me a message and you might get invited to one of my great parties 😀

for the last note, have you noticed that in Japan they have changed the sprite can for “older” looking design. I normally don’t drink sprite but the cool looking can made me get one.

Curry Ramen in Asakusa

My friend Matti who is Finnish-American had his last day in Japan so we wanted to eat something special and I happened to see a limited time offer of Curry Ramen.

It was actually very good 😀 When I get back to Tokyo I need to have it once more.

Doesn’t that just look delicious !

The waiter took a photo of us and you can see that cool advertising poster in the back as well.
That’s myself, Matti and Juan ( I think it is written like that 😀 )
He didn’t want to be in the photo and I wasn’t sure how he felt that I would post it here so I blurred him a bit 😀

After my friend left to Narita international. I went back to the hostel to clean my bed area a bit since my fiance was arriving to Tokyo that same day.

In the evening I took my girl to my favorite bar at Asakusa called err.. Shot music bar asakusa (or something like that). When I get back to Asakusa I will make a video for you to find it since it is kinda hidden in a small side street second floor.

Great music and all drinks 600 yen except some special imported beer.

Who was watching AKB48 2012 election yesterday ? 😀

Happy life in Tokyo

These couple of days were great, Cat cafes and delicious food !

Coming home after a long drinking night in Tokyo is always interesting. First train comes around about 5am-ish and in that train you can see a lot of weird things.

I arrived to Asakusa at 5.40am and the streets were so quiet and peaceful, very good time to take photos.

I went straight to sleep but I did saw people getting ready for the Sanja matsuri.

In Ginza there is a famous waffle shop that I never tried before and now I understand why there is a long queue everyday. They were deeeelicious and Cheap !

I’m absolutely mental about Ice cream ( you should know that already), in a hot day in Tokyo I normally eat 3-5 ice creams and most of them are macha (green tea) ice cream.

One of my weird traditions is to go to Shakey’s pizzeria and after I’m full I go to the cat cafe !
Shakeys pizza is a good place to go if you want ok tasting pizza, very tasty onion rings and 300yen drinks.
ps. that place is very cheap.

Here are some very cute photos of the cats at my favorite cat cafe at shinjuku called Calico.

In the last post post I wrote about the best Japanese fried chicken place (唐揚げ)
that is located in Asakusa. The chicken is very cheap so one evening I ate a lot of it 😀

M.O.S Burger is best fast food restaurant in the world. Just look how tasty it looks ! When you visit Japan you have to go to eat there even once !

I went to the famous One Piece event in Roppongi Hills which was great but the entrance fee was 2000 yen and you could not take photos inside there and it was in the same floor as the Tokyo city view but you could not enter to that side without paying 1500 yen more so I gave up and went only to see the One Piece event. It was worth the money but I would have been happier if I could have taken photos inside.

Long line of people getting the tickets to the event that was held in the 52nd floor if I’m not mistaken.

I did get a lot of One piece merchandise from there tho 😀

If you are going to the Solamachi mall in Tokyo Sky Tree you have to check out the kyoto green tea ice cream shop ! Look what I got and you understand why.

Also when you visit the tokyo Sky Tree you absolutely have to buy a Tokyo Banana Tree from there, they sell these almost everywhere in there so would not be too difficult to find.

As a nice end to this post, here is a homeless man with an expensive Finnish design bag called Marimekko. 😀

I hope you liked this post ! check out my facebook page “photographer ari helminen” where I will add details about my trips, life and photography.