Metal in Japan!

Yesterday was an awesome day. First I had a nice calm morning with breakfast and a shower. After that I brought my guitar and my amp to the other guest house in Nishi Kawaguchi to play music with Bill. It went way over my expectations in awesomeness, and we discussed plans and ideas about the band.

Later I went to meet Ayako in Akihabara, and we went together to her friend's place in Seijogakuen-mae to play and listen to music and eat food :)

:D

..........

And this is how my desk looks at the moment. I really like it :) If I want to do something at the computer, everything is already set. If I want to study, all I have to do is to put my books on the desk and open them. No cleaning or rearrangement required!

Morning routines in Japan

I've just been out on a run, followed up with a slow breakfast. It's a really great way to start the day I think, to take more time than you need before you have to leave for school, start working or something similar.

And I can recommend to at least try a morning jog or a morning exercise of some kind before school/work/other life. It gets you energized and more effective, and it also feels great to have the exercise done almost before you've even started the day! Now that I'm living in Japan it's a really nice way to explore the place where I live as well.

Another great thing to try in the mornings:

When I wake up, I sit up, pull away the curtains, put a pillow behind my back, and just sit there for 10-15 minutes.

I'm sure some people think: "Why don't you just hit snooze and sleep another 10-15 minutes?". The answer is: Because then I'll be back where I was when I woke up the first time again; tired, wanting to hit the snooze button. Again. Instead of just sitting there, still having the warm, cozy feeling under the blanket, still being in the bed, but at the same time slowly waking up in a nice pace, having a bit of calm before starting the day.

Of course you should even try to sleep enough as many nights as you possibly can to get the most out of any day. I try to get 8 hours of sleep every night, and I've noticed my study results are better than those in high school when I only slept 6-7 hours. That small difference has made a big... difference in my everyday performance.

Sleeping and exercising is great ways to increase performance in almost everything you're doing, so give it a shot! You might surprise yourself :)

Impressive minimalism

Many times when people have entered my tiny room here in the guest house, they've been surprised of how clean and nice it is, and often say that they'd like to have their rooms in the same way. I can't blame them, I really like how my room looks and feels. Thing is it's not very hard to fix.

Solution:

1. Don't buy more stuff to put in

2. Get rid of stuff you don't use

And if you follow step 1 and step 2 every once in a while, you'll get there :)

The only thing I really miss with my 1.8m x 2.5m space (which is mostly being covered up by a built in closet, a built in bed, a refridgerator and a desk) is a place to hang by laundry.

Even though the point with living with less stuff and buying less isn't that, you can actually be admired for having less. Lots and lots of people think it's precisely the other way around, how mixed up things can get!

When I went here, I brought nothing but one backpack of essentials and my guitar (in a guitar case), and far more people have been (I think) inspired by that than would I've brought 2 fat travelling bags packed with things I don't need.

If you want help on how to let go of stuff you don't use or need but you still want to keep, you can check out this post by Leo Babauta's mnmlist. He's also written a post about how to easier follow Step 1.

Why would you even think of doing this? There're lots of reasons! There are many people writing about them, like Everett Bougue, Leo Babauta and Tammy Strobel.

The person who got me to start think about this stuff, and change my life for the better, is no one less than my awesome friend André Fohlin. Thank you, André! :D

Remember: Live life, don't fill it with crap!

WriteRoom

Lately I've been fighting to get back to routine; Keeping the same sleeping times each night, wash my clothes before it piles up, and study just a little bit more :)

I finally cleaned my desk today, and it actually feels WAY better sitting here now. I didn't use my desk very much until I made this change, and now it feels more productive just sitting here! I strongly recommend to clean your desk, and KEEP IT CLEAN.

I was talking with my friend this morning about saving papers from school, and neither of us are doing it. No one back home will be able to read it anyway ;) It's really nice to know, when you hear your friends whining about their rooms getting filled with piles of old papers, that your room is free from it, and will still be clean when you get home to it!

It's amazing how much crap you keep in your room without thinking of it. I'm trying to stay aware of it and keep it clean, but I still find papers, small cell phone decorations, more old papers and similar things lying around. But they're not making it until the end of the day after I've found them!

Right now I'm trying out a new writing application for OSX. It's called WriteRoom. All it is is a full screen of a black background, and green text and a marker in the middle. It's really relaxing and it brings focus to your writing. It actually works pretty well.

I will shut down now and study for a bit before I start reading my book and go to bed. I can recommend the book I'm reading, called Focus. It's available for free, written by Leo Babauta. Much of it are already on his blogs, but lots of new stuff as well, so be sure to read it even if you've read his blogs!

Mr Man!

Yeah, that's me!

Yesterday in Warabi, a sports festival was being held, and the different blocks here competed in different games. It was really funny and I met a lot of new funny people. Mostly small Japanese children. We played catch, only when I was the one being hunted, everyone else was the hunter, and when I was hunting I was alone. It was great fun! And I did an amazing promotion with my fivefinger shoes in the 100m sprint!

I also got my Amazon Kindle that I ordered a few days ago together with some friends who also felt that reading some books would be nice. It's amazingly awesome this far, and it's hard to tell you're reading from an electronic device really.

We're almost done with the first book in school and according to everyone else the next one is gonna be harder, but they said kanji would be hard too, so I don't know if I can trust them anymore ;)

Tomorrow's plan is to go to Lilla Dalarna to have some real Swedish food and mostly just to check the place out. It's located in Roppongi, which means "Six Trees" if you want to know.

My hand washing is going pretty well except for that the clothes dry up reaaally slowly afterwards. I do my very best to squeeze the most out of them before I hang them up, but it just won't do. Any suggestions except for a dryer?

See ya, rockstars!

Omedetou gozaimasu, Marcus-chan!

Yesterday we had a birthday dinner for Marcus who joined the "23 years and awesome" - club. We made tempura and Emma made marängsviss. It took some time to make the dinner though, and since you have to be out of the dining area before 0.00, we had the dessert in a nearby park. It's still around 19-23° at night here, so it was really nice.

Some interesting theories by various Japanese people:
- Drinking cold drinks in summer time lowers your body temperature so the risk for catching a cold increases.
- Eating natto makes your blood flow better.

Schools is going okay. My new class is a bit more noisy than the old one, and I liked my old class, but I wanted to speed up a bit. Unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case with all of our new teachers. Yesterday we didn't learn anything new at all. No words, no grammar. We made old things in the book, and now we're almost at the same chapter in the book as my old class. Sometimes I want to skip school so I can actually study, but I'm aiming for my 100% attendance so I can get a few extra coins after a year.

I've been out running a few times a week lately, and I can already feel the increase in my daily energy. I've had a problem with being almost sick for about one week at a time, and it's been stopping me from getting good routines on running.

I've also started to start my mornings with just waking up, and sitting up. Just sitting for 10-20 minutes, and calm down and just have some quiet time before breakfast. It's really refreshing!

When we went food shopping yesterday I also bought a loaf of seemingly dark bread, so I'm gonna go try it out now! Bai bai!

Achievement Unlocked: Complete a guitar set

YES! It's complete! Now I have a fully functional guitar amp (VOX) and a fully awesome guitar (Ibanez) and all for less than 3000 sek. And it's really good stuff as well, so don't you worry!

I just found that myspace has finally updated the video section so I'm posting a link to Ultimate Awesome's videos right HERE! Check them out now! Because now me and my friend, Bill, are getting ready for creating some new brutal awesomeness here in Japan!

If you want to see some pictures my friend took from the national museum of Tokyo (and some other photos) you can check my friend Erik's blog.

Oh, and I'm sorry for being really bad at updating. I guess I don't live an interesting enough life here to have anything to tell you about. Or I'm living a too interesting life to have time to write blogs? Well, I'll leave the answer to your imagination and have a great night!

And remember to live your life you want, not the one others expect you to live! (Think about it ;D)