The free riders?

I have to admit that it's really interesting to se how people react when the proffessor enters the room. They bend their head and keeps on nodding...no comments on anything he says and IF they say something they say it as shortly as possible. He keeps on interrupting them while they have the presentations and so on.

I figure this out way to late. I did criticize an experiment two weeks ago and he did not turn out to be happy about it. Then I got quite and now he asked me something else and I just keep on nodding. But before he left the room, he said something about "I am to nice but I try to be harder. You are a hard student and I do not like it so I should not be nice to you".
Waz???


Ok, just to make a long story short, here’s what happened. I found out one week ago that I had to pay 74 000 yen in situation fee here in Japan. The problem was that my university in Sweden were suppose to take care of that so the asked my to send over the bill. The problem was that the university here did not accept that. They want the students to pay the fee so they can se that it’s from the students. Ok, so I paid from my Swedish bank account 74 000yen plus 20 euro+ the receiving bank fee. Fine.

Three days ago, the office called and asked for their money, they will arrive I said by the end of this week. But No, now!!! The deadline was the 29th anyway so why did they get all so excited? Relax, they’ll arrive, and as I said, 10 days after the transfer the money arrived today.

Three days ago, I had to transfer another 74 000 yen from my bank account. Nice. So I paid 40 extra Euro and got the transfer directly here in Japan at a bank.

Now, they will refund me the university, but only 69 000 yen. Nice? They try to give you the idea of being so official with everything and that we foreigners all are some kind of cheaters. I told my bank that I would pay for the whole transaction fee, so why do I only get 69 000 yen back.

They say that corruption is weak here. I say that it’s not. It’s just invisible. Another instance is my apartment. The extra fee I had to pay for cleaning (was not in agreement when I signed the contract) or the different depositions fees for everything?
Either that or the fact that there are free riders?

(BTW, the phot is taken outside the fountain of the unviersity, really cute turtles...)

First we had coffee and then we had life

Fast life means fast coffee. Normally back home, that means powder coffee, but not here. Fast coffee means filter coffee...

What if Global banking could strike two days before the day after tomorrow?

Globalization has already started as we all know in many areas. But at the same time, there still are a couple of areas where we have a long way to go. For instance, in the global banking area. Easy, efficient and cheap way to do transaction between countries do not exist.

1. Let’s start with the costs; to transfer money to a bank account in another country cost around 20 Euro. Often, you have to pay the cost of the receiving bank so the price will normally be between around 30 Euro, JUST for the transaction. And IF the foreign bank wouldn’t receive the money, you still have to pay the fees and pay to get your money back!
To take money out of the ATM cost you around 4 Euro each time you take the money from that stupid wall.
When you pay with your Visa/MasterCard, they don’t charge you extra but they take an extra fee for the exchange rate.
2.About easiness; if the people who’s working at the bank has problem with the transfer, than the problem has to be changed or everybody who’s working at the bank
3. Efficiency. That word is unfamiliar to the banks.
4. Service; they don’t have to provide you with service. You have to pay anyway.

It’s like the “Soup Nazi” (in Seinfeldt) in reality.

Considering the fact that there are so many people living abroad, I am amazed about the fact that no one has reacted. Or at least, they could speak.
The banks are really genius and I feel really stupid! If I was Bill Gates, I’d start an efficient, cheap and easy bank. Yes, I would charge people, but at least reasonable amounts. I’d have so many people choosing my bank instead of the other ones. It will be like the “ryananair” or global banking.

So the word “Global Banking” is a word you can eliminate from your dictionary. It does not exist IRL!

Bad luck

Here is my day so far, Imagine solving all the problems when you’re on the opposite side of the world! And I am not allowed to be pissed off or sarcastic because people don’t get pissed off or sarcastic here!!!! (don’t read this if you’re on a good mood).

I have to pay the fee to the university and I did it last week but the problem is that it takes 10 for the money to get transferred. The thing is that my university in Sweden was suppose to pay for it but here in Japan they want the students to pay for it so they can se their names! What a fucked up system! No one else in this university has "Uppsala University" who's paying for them! Anyway, so I had to CALL the bank and wait in line for 12 minutes. Finally after on and off, the lady didn't even know what a "swift" is or what a "branch" is, we managed to transfer and they faxed the recite to the university. Now they want me to pay again in cash because they wont’ get the fee before Friday, witch means that I'll have to pay extra!

2.Then I got an article published in Sweden that I clearly said that I DID NOT want to publish! It’s already been published by someone else.

3. The girl I am renting my room back in Sweden is gone to England, she doesn’t answer my e-mail or my phone calls. She is according to the law supposed to rent to the end of December but she took of and I have no time to look for her. Now I have to find someone else while I'm in Japan.

4. My experiment went sooo wrong, so here we have a week of work for granted!!! I could have gone sight seeing for a week instead! 3. I can't login on my internet bank because the "dose" we out of order. The number "2" don't work. 4.My salary from the pharmacy that I just got for working in august is wrong! It's a lot of money missing so now I have to deal with that to.

5.Tomorrow I have to bear my landlady (se received e-mail below, sent by a German guy who had to deal with her today).
Pissed off white trash redneck liberal cynical, but not optimist right now!

Here’s the mail about my landlady!
***************************************************************************

Alright, now listen: One of the secretaries of my Prof got a call from THE Lady in our house. I should come over immediately for “room check” and payment of the last months rent. ???? Hä?? What’s going on here? I will move out tomorrow, she can do whatever check she wants tomorrow? No, .. today, she got no time tomorrow. In the end I went home to find this Lady sitting in front of the TV. I just read your email before and thought about this issue the whole way back. My adrenalin level was rising. Those kinds of people really getting on my nuts. I knocked on her door; she was asleep. Nice. She is calling me at work to come to my room immediately and she’s sleeping. I didn’t clean my room so far and I didn’t put my stuff together, so I was curious about her reaction. She came to my room with a huge folder. She started to ticking one of her hyper-important blanks. “ …. Bed….. hm, exist, ….. writing table, yes…. Air conditioner, …present…. Toilet, yes exist….. lamp..uh, yes…” I wasn’t sure whether I should laugh or damn her. What was that?? No, I don’t take the bed with me. And usually I don’t tear out the toilet. Well sometimes I destroy hotel rooms when I had too much of alcohol, cocaine and sex. But otherwise I’m kind’a relaxed guy. Well, in the end I had a good laugh. She kept on talking Japanese in one piece. I thanked her a thousand times and we agreed on handing over the key tomorrow. Smiling. Honestly, I’m not sure whether you need to be like that when you’re a caretaker of a student house. I had the same experience with my old caretaker in Germany. My hypothesis is: They only employ people with an IQ below 70. During the job interview they will ask sth like that: “Are you flexible? Yes? Oh, you’re overqualified. … Do you speak at least a little English? No? You’re our man. …. Can we see your brain CT scan? Ah, you just got a walnut in there, excellent. We’ll give you double salary.” This is ridiculous. I once helped an Arabic student back in Würzburg. Our janitor kept on talking German, even insulting him on his inability to speak German! I was furious, there is a smart guy from somewhere, coming to Germany to learn the language or another subject. And the moron of janitor is insulting him. Unbelievable. I bet this German caretaker never travelled to a foreign country.

Polite? Yes, right!

Whenever you ask Japanese about the way, they do pretty much EVERYTHING they can to help you. If hey don't know the way, they ask someone else who's passing by, look in the phone book or ask the neighbor. They are simply the best embassies for the country. Back home, if a tourist asks for the road and the people don't know, they just say "I don't know " and keeps on walking. That's why I'm skeptic to this courtesy test!

The result of living a life of unliberty for youth-poor Japanese kids!

Going out for a beer in Nagasaki is NOT easy. Back home, we just go to any of the open pubs downtown. But not here. The clubs for Japanese are complicated and the few clubs for foreigners are really hard to find. The pub “Ayers bar” is mentioned in “The Lonely Planet” so I and the German guy, Torsten decided to go there. The thing about that club is that it had only one little sign outside, and it was placed in a basement without windows. You couldn’t even hear the music outside the club. It’s as if the youth are “hiding” the fact that they go out and have fun. On the surface, the Japanese youth are really calm but when they go to these clubs, they freak out completely! For instance, there was a totally naked Japanese running around the club.

About the naked guy, I don’t dare to publish the photo of him on the blog (I can send it over to you by e-mail) but as far as I’ve seen the photo, the reputation about some certain Japanese male body parts is true…

The pressure on the youth is enormous here, both in academic, sports, music. Yes, they just simply have to be best on everything. The hierarchy system between the teachers and the students is strict. I find it really interesting to se how people behave when the professor enters the room. Most of them bend their heads and keeps on nodding. If they get bad recommendations letters from their professor, than their whole career is ruined.

Lee Jones (blog URL:) wrote that the youth are constantly being watched by the school or their parents, something that never gives them any freedom and that could be one of the reasons why the crime rate is pretty low here.
That’s maybe true, but also the fact that they go to these underground clubs and freak out. They are just simply like all other youth in the world when it comes to having fun (I know it’s not really breaking news).

There was an American band that played at the club, sounded a bit like “Linkin Park”. They dragged me up onstage so I could sing (beat that you karaoke singing people. I don’t dare to publish those photos either). People seem to like American music here though. And covers and Elvis. You can still smoke in the bars and restaurants here (we’ll se if Abe will do something like Gulliani did to NY) and they don’t place the booze bottles behind the bar but in front of the bar instead (talk about trusting people).
And then they gave us an “entrance band” that looks like the ones you get whenever you’re hospitalized. The drinks are really weak, mostly because of their really bad enzyme system.

This is pure fascination. I’m a convinced solipsist right now. It feels like as if the whole world is a creation of my own mind and I’m about to wake up soon…

Lost in Japan

I have been talking way too much politics lately so here are some up dates about other things.I have to say that there are a few highlights every day in Japan. For instance, shopping.

1. About moderation…when it comes to commercial I guess the slogan is “modesty is boring” (I think David & Victoria Beckham would like it here). I went to buy a mouse for my laptop today at a really huge electric store. And everything in that store had some kind of “special offer”. Have they ever thought of the “don’t cry wolf” domino effect?

2 Let’s continue with the sea grass! Obviously there are different forms of sea grass and obviously people can make a psychological analyze of a person by looking at the choice of sea grass (back home in Sweden, I do that by looking at peoples laptop on “the previous visited pages”). But not here. I thought that I should have something else than Takanara (Japanese dish). So I bought sea grass to have on my egg sandwich (I’ve seen people eating it here). And since I’m a poor student, I picked the cheapest sea grass for 100 yen (0,7 euro), I mean, it comes from the same sea as the fancy 1000 yen sea grass. When people saw the sea grass they looked at each other and started to speak Japanese. The Japanese are really polite so they never tell you about your mistakes (for instance they never told me that I killed a mouse because I gave it to much Phenobarbital (=we give that in order to make them fuzzy before surgery)). But they started laughing later and said, you shouldn’t pick that sea grass. Why not I asked…and in bad English she said…”wiji gjiv animall thiz”. How was I to know? Back home we put the animal food in a separate shell, not the rest of the shells.

3. After dealing with so many animals, I don’t find it discussed by their urine and poo (adjustment time is 3 weeks).

4. The old people who keeps on talking Japanese even though my Japanese is bad. When I tell them “nihongoga skoshiwa kadimas ka”, they just keep on talking anyway. They clean up the streets every morning. It’s actually early in the morning that you’ll see them. My favourite is actually a guy who looks exactly like Mr Miyagi in the Karate Kid movie and who sell Bonzo trees outside my building.

5. Names of the streets. Since they don’t name their streets here but buildings instead, it feels like as if I’m in the middleeast (but in the middle east, they don’t even name the building, they just call it “the building where Abu Jeans has his fruit store”). I’ve been lost in Nagasaki so many times.

6. The evening ritual. At around 6 or 7 pm, there’s a big traffic jam outside the university. I asked my lab mates if that’s a normal time to get off work. But they say that it’s a normal dinner break from work. So, I have a lunch break and a dinner break (with the ritual of buying things at the supermarket with 20 % off).

7. When I asked people here what they do on their spare time the answer has been; “Spare time, what is that?”

8. Since I look like a foreigner, people have asked several times if they can take a photo (mostly girls). Imagine what would have happened if I was blonde or blue eyed. Well, this is really god for the self confidence at least. They should send all people with bad self confidence to Japan.

9. The irony. Don’t be ironic here. They don’t understand the jokes and you’ll have to explain everything (and we all know what that does to the joke. They think that “the book of the rat anomy” is fun when you say that you want to read every page of it).

To be continued...

Farewell Koizumi

Junichiro Koizumi, the former prime minister of Japan is a true inspiration source in many ways. He was until today the leader of the Liberal Democrat Party but has now retired.

Japan has been the strongest economy in the world, mostly because of it’s openness and their god diplomacy with their neighbours. Within Japan, Koizumi has pushed for new ways to trigger the moribound economy. He has been aiming to act against bad debts with commercial banks and the most controversal; privatize the postal savings system. He has also reorganize the factional structure of the LDP, moving it from it’s traditional agrarian base toward a more neoliberal as the poulation grows in major cities and declines in smaller ones. He spoke of the need for a period of painful restructuring in order to improve the future. By privatization of Japan Post (which many rural residents fear will reduce their access to basic services such as banking), Koizumi has also slowed down the LDP's heavy subsidies for infrastructure and industrial development in rural areas. These tensions have made Koizumi a controversial but popular figure within his own party and among the Japanese electorate.
Internationally he has become famous as the assertive prime minister, for example when it comes to the Japanese self defence force for Iraq. The stance against China and South Korea, the pursuit of pro active negotiations with North Korea and emphasizing Japan’s claims against Russia has characterize He has also created a friendly relationship with the United Stats and George W. Bush, even though people here in Nagasaki are a bit ambivalent against the USA (probably a memory of the atomic bomb).
It’s not a coincidence that Japan has one of the strongest economies in the world. I can compare the Japanese economy with the future Swedish one now when the shift in the parliament has taken place.
Today, Shinzo Abe took over. Let’s just hope that he’ll keep on doing the good job.

(The picuture is not taken by me, the first picture on this blog actually not taken by me. Ok, it's 2345, I came at 9.30 this morning, 14 hours at a lab and you can get 15 spinal cords and read some japanese news, if you ever wounder what to do one day).
Gozaimas

The invisible land

Ok, three days after the election (I promise that this is the last time, everyone else is writing about it) I have to say that I am kind of disappointed about the media here in Japan. The Japan Times haven’t even mentioned the election in Sweden, even when we’ve changed the parliament. In Sweden, the media at least attend the election in Japan.

This is the second election I’ve been able to vote. The last one, I was an exchange student in France and it was harder to follow the election. When you only have access to the papers online (by then, they didn’t even publish the whole paper), you’ll only get to se one side of the coin. Thanks to all the blogers this election, it’s been easy to know what’s been going on. I just want to thank all the bloger that made it possible to do it this time (whenever I know how to put a list of my favorite blogs, I will do so). And at least in France, the media reported about the result. But on the opposite side of the world, Sweden is just the invisible land.

Hierarchy!

The hierarchy system here in Japan is incredible. My job here at the lab is to do some behavour test on animals, and investigate if the substance that we’ve injected has been up taken by the body. And write their article in English.

Yesterday, I did some test on animals where I investigated the threshold. The results were not perfect, but they were ok. Not the way we expected them to be. Another colleague had done the test the day before and she almost got the same results.

Out of power!

I just wanted to send this photo, freshly taken form the Typhoon that sweept over the city, to our former prime minister, Göran Persson, who's been ruin the country for about half my life.

I want this tree to symbolize the hugeness and the amazing power Göran persson has had for the past 10 years.

Even a big (and fat) tree will eventually fall!

Back from the Typhoon, electricity cut and “out of the world cut”!

A strong Typhoon swept over this Sunday, cutting off all electricity an internet connection. It has been frustrating not to know until now what’s going on in the real world. I just found out that the left wing side lost the election back home.
As far as I know, from now on, I’ll have respect for typhoons. This Sunday when they told me about it, I thought; “it’s not a hurricane exactly so I’ll go out shopping”. Everything was closed and people were looking out of the window giving me the “go home look”. And I’m glad I did, 2 minutes after I arrived home, the hypocenter of the typhoon swept over and blew off a three outside my house.

That was a real close to life experience!

I was impressed by the police who knocked on everybody’s building and asked if they were all right. They even brought candles and ordered us to use them with safety.

You know you've been in Japan for too long when..(partI)

-you think it’s normal to drink green tea for lunch and dinner
-you think it’s normal to drink green tea
-you think it’s normal when an elevator sounds like an old Nintendo computer game
-you think it’s normal to thank someone 10 times for borrowing a clip.
-your basic food is fish
-you think that the average height is 150 for woman and 167 for man.
-you think it’s normal to work until 10 pm on a Friday night when it’s your 25th birthday!

I need a volunteer

Here’s the deal; I’ll inject a substance in your body, whose effects are unclear to humanity. Take samples of your liver, lungs and blood. As the final touch to it all, I’ll be in need of the white substance in your spinal cord (ryggmärg). And you’ll die. Any volunteers?

Well, that’s pretty much what I’ve been doing now. It would be nice to watch what's happening in the real world.

Fair? We're woman

This should make any hardcore libertarian as mad as Michael Moore on an empty stomach.
I wrote about population drop in Japan. This is the reason why population drops.

If a woman works at a company, she can get fired for being pregnant (that happens often), since it’s not illegal to fire because of that cause. Once she’s fired andt has a child, it’s often very hard to go back to work since employer seldom hire people who’ve been, according to them, “unemployed” (because that’s what you are if you give birth). Many researcher here on my lab are very young and very talented. If they’d have a baby, they’d probably loose everything they have worked so hard for.

Being pregnant is a burden men can’t bear. Since women are the ones to do it, it would be fair to let them keep the job (most of the people would agree on this). But on the other hand, to let them keep the salary is not ok, since they’re not working. It’s not a human right to have a child, but in order for humanity to continue, we need to make sure that babies are being born. And this theory is unfair in a way, since men don’t have to loose anything. But it would be even more unfair for the employer to pay when someone has a child.

Either way, there is no solution to the problem. The best way to solve this is like this; The woman work thought the whole pregnancy, in case of illness because of pregnancy, same rules will be applied as in any case of sickness. When she gives birth, she can take “vacation days” or other free days. After work, she can start working if she’s not sick, same rules will be applied as in any case of sickness.
This is actually what career woman have been doing. This is the cynical reality, sorry to say that if you haven’t figure it out!

They say that having a child is the most amazing thing that can happen, and that includes men. So society, men and woman will be winner by changing the rules here in Japan at least.

So when I asked the Japanese if they found it fair, they answer was;
-Fair? We're woman.

The rules of the game-about gambling in Japan

The economist wrote in the 7/29/2006 (Vol. 380, p60-61) issue that Japanese pastimes of pachinko and pachislot. The gambling machines eat approximately $260 billion of Japanese income a year. They mention a couple of cases where children have died in the car as a result of the parents playing. And many parlours are run by Japanese Koreans, some of whom are said to evade taxes and divert funds to North Korea.
I tried out my luck on one of those games, and to tell you the truth, after only 2 minutes, I was 2000 yen poorer (around 14 Euro). This is not a common case, most of the people win in the beginning but loose everything later. Pretty much all the people next to me who were playing had plenty of slots.
The economist wrote that the government might give up on attempts to regulate the industry if it finds itself missing the tax revenue generated by pachinko players.
Every individual should be able to take responsibilities for their own lives. The social democrats defend the Swedish monopoly by the argument that the monopoly protects people from being playoholics (what other word can be used?). In what way is that possible? Why is gambling where the government has the monopoly safer than the one in a free market?
I stopped after 2 minutes, when I had lost 2000 yen. People who don't stop have a disease. Just like other diseases, they should be treated. I just don't think I want to pay for it. I can pay for the treatment of cancer patient, but not playoholics. It's wrong to pay the treatments of the "playoholics". Many critics mean that a disease is a disease so why not help those patients as well. The critics would probably add "the found the playoholic gene".
There is no playoholic gene and people have to take responsibilities for their own lives. That's how the world works. Only naive people crawl to gamblers.

Too much ado about nothing.

Japanese are really funny sometimes. Like for example now when I just asked if anyone had a painkiller for my headache. The whole lab gathered around, looked in their boxes for pills and medications. Read everything there was to read on the boxes, asked each other for advices, and looked at the internet. They just stopped working for half an hour and started a huge debate about which painkiller I should take or not. Everyone in this lab knew that I had a head ache and everyone was involved. If I would have known that that would have happened, then I would never have asked for a painkiller. I felt like a character in “Seinfeld”. Finally, they picked up the big pharmaceutical box and agreed on the fact that I should take…salicylic acid. I just smiled and thanked them. (I guess that the only ones who will understand this joke are pharmacists).
It’s really the thought that counts.

Blog recommendation

http://pro-test.org.uk/StandUpForScience.html

for people who are intrested in animal research!

Pain with capital P

I study pain here in Nagasaki. The physical pain is pretty much the worse thing you can experience and for that reason, we need to find god methods to reduce the pain.
When you study pain, you need to do some pain test on animals in order to se if the substance they’ve been given has a pain relief or not.
Today, I preformed a test called the EPW. Briefly, you have electrodes attached to a Neurometer that conducts small electric waves. The electrodes are being placed at the animal and the electric strength is being increased until the mouse start moving (that means that the mouse can feel something).
I have to say that I felt like an evil dictator. On the other hand, they didn’t really feel that much pain since the intensity of the electric shock wasn’t high. And imagine how many people there are around the world who feels more pain. So I guess I shouldn’t feel like Saddam Hussein, he didn’t torture for knowledge, he just did it for fun.

Skyroping- Deuxieme photos

Back from the short weekend (went from lab at 19 on Saturday).
Sunday was great. In many cities in Japan, you can take a Skyrope to se a beautiful view of the city. Here are some photos I took of Nagasaki. Can you imagine that the plutonium bomb pretty much destroyed everything here 61 years ago?

The highlight of the weekend (believe it or not) was actually the Atomic Bomb Museum. It is among the best museums I’ve been to (I hate museums normally). A report about that is to come later.

Saturday night was kind of interesting; I pretty much spent it alone in “Muchi Machi”, a computer game hall playing “drum mania V2” (a drum playing game). The sad thing was that I wasn’t the only one alone there. Many old men and women were there alone as well, playing and smoking. A good advice, bring earplugs with you to those places.

Saturday lunch

After being tortured by our professor (we have a presentation on Saturdays), we threw a big lunch part today at the lab. The Japanese made Jakisoba (a dish with noodles, pork and vegetable), Okonom (vegetable, pork and egg) and my absolute favorite, sushi.

Population drop population growth

The worlds population will grow to well over 9 billion by 2050 but Japan's is to drop by staggering 16 million in the same period. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) predicted in its annual report. Japan is the 10th most populated nation which is similar to several of its Asian neighbors such as China, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But its negative population trend matches those in the West, particularly European nations. A growing population and in Europe and North America in particular, combined with a shortage of nurses and doctors are driving up demand for health workers and causing an influx of skilled female migrants from poor countries, was written in The Japan Times the 7th of September.An open and tolerant world where countries with shortage of people allow immigrants from countries with an overpopulation to work is that the world need.People need to look at the advantages and freedom that globalization and free-market world can offer. That is pretty much the only thing that can solve this future problem as far as things are now.So, start learning Japanese, because there will be plenty of jobs here in the future.

Shopping in Japan part II

This bottle contains almost pure salicylic acid. It's bought at the supermarket and is really good for people who wants a skin like a baby. The amazing thing about this bottle is that I don't think that they would sell it in the States or in Europe. One of the labmates insisted on doing our own commercial for the product.

Why do they sell gallons with 4 L of Sake at the grocery store when most of us are working at 10 pm on a friday night?

A day at the lab

A Chinese colleague and I went to get two albino mice to perform surgery to study why cancer patience won’t get a pain killing effect from morphine. We did put them in the same “cage” and went to the lab. We started by giving the female mouse some analgesia and made sure that she was unconscious. Since we wouldn’t perform surgery on both at the same time, we made sure that the male mouse was alert and could play in the cage. So, we gave her the analgesia and put her back in the cage with the alert male mouse. In the meantime while we prepared for surgery, we didn’t put any attention to the mice. So when we went back to the cage, we saw that the male mouse was “raping” the female one while she was unconscious.

If animals should have the same right as humans then that means that we should be able to report that to the police.

Not many men would have sex with a woman if she was unconscious, because they are raised not to. But of course, as we all know, there are some rapists that would. Animals are not raised to follow a certain behavior, they just follow their instinct.

Happy Kingdom, thank you lord!

Imagine this situation: A princess gives birth to a girl that can not heritage the monarchy because she’s a girl. The second child turns out to be a boy, the kingdom is happy.
Now, let’s say that the girls becomes a transvestite an eventually changes sex to become a boy, shouldn’t he/she/it be the one to take over the kingdom?
This story is just as stupid as the fact that the heritage of a kingdom depends on the fact that if there is a penis growing inside the princess stomach or not.
They say that seasons change, time change, well everything’s change. Maybe it was about time to change the monarch rule of Japan and many other countries as well.

I have stop blog on my lunchbreak. I always arrive late to the cafeteria and the onlyt hing I have been picking up for lunch now is suchi and shoppi.

Building Buildings photo blogg

My favourite building of all time! The Tv-house in Tokyo, baby, The Tv house in Tokyo! Sc**w all the other Tv houses in the world...

I think this building is a bit pervertly made...

Spaceship? No, just a sports building in Tokyo

Did George Lucas get inspired by looking at this building when he created R2D2?

Is this Legoland in Denmark? No my friends. Even tought Legoland is among the biggest tourist attractions in Denmark, This building is just a tyre building. Imagine having tourist in a country just to se a tyre building.

Turning tower? No, Twisting tower!

Why is Crime rate in Japan low?

It’s well known that the crime rate in Japan is really low.

Murders per 100,000.
1. Russia Federation 18.072.
United States 6.323.
Malaysia 2.73
Taiwan 1.17
Spain 1.08
Japan 0.58

Rape per 100,000.
1. United States 34.20
2. England and Wales 14.69
3. France 13.38
Taiwan 8.82
South Korea 4.38
Spain 3.23
Japan 1.48

Serious Assault per 100,000.
1. Australia 713.68
2. England & Wales 405.20
3. United States 357.94
Taiwan 37.30 Spain 23.94
Japan 15.40

Robbery/Violent Theft per 100,000.
1. Spain 169.85
2. United States 169.02 3.
France 144.10
Taiwan 14.35
South Korea 11.74
Japan 2.71

From The Analysis and Comparison on Statistics of Criminal Cases in Various Countries
http://www.moi.gov.tw/W3/stat/english/etopic/89criminal.htm

Once again, why is the crime rate this low?

I have asked some Japanese at my lab why they think that crime rate is that low. The answer is that they could never imagine taking something from someone or hurting someone. They are raised not to.The family is important here in Japan, you are dependent of you family and you family depends on you when you get old. Respect is one of the first things that is to be taught at school.

Does it mean that we don’t raise our kids in Europe well enough?

Since I arrived here, I haven’t broken one single rule. To cross the street when the light is red would be one of the things I’d never do here. I would feel like dead woman walking across the street…
Families and society are important when it comes to reducing crime. To invest capital by giving more police would not necessary mean that the crime rate would fall automatically. But to invest some kind of human capital would maybe give a better chance to reduce the amount of crime. That is what we can learn from Japan.

Ahhhhh-frustration beats

This is so frustrating...I can't mange to communicate correctly with my labmates when my professor is out of office. Right now, I wish I had my experiment plan and time schedule ready *crying*.

I just meet the animals at the lab for the first time and they don't seem to like me! I thought at least that they were the only ones I would be able to communicate with here.
Semmimasen

Premier pictures

Outside my building on my way to the university this morning. It's impossible to capture the greatness of the surrounding mountains because of the blocking buildings.

The weather is nice, 27 degrees. But it's really damp aswell.

This photo was taken outside my building. It's really cool when the buildings are built not only on top of the mountains

Has the enviromental party been here?

One thing is sure in Nagasaki, it’s hard to find information in English about pretty much everything. You can not find information in English about how to call, how to get copy card or how you go to the doctor etc etc.
There is only a few things you can find information about in English here. And one of those thing is about how to separate garbage . That proves that Japanese are capable of providing tourist with information. When they want.
Swedes are always talking highly about themselves and how they separate their garbage. The only thing I can say about that now is; HAHAHA!

I just want a simple cell phone!

Ok, let’s getting started!
This blog will mostly take place in Nagasaki, Japan by a student who's writing the undergraduate thesis and will start a phd. The language is soo different, people speak worse. The students at my university work really really hard.
I haven't left the lab until 21 for two days now and I haven't even really started with my project.

The first werd thing that took place was actually when I tried to buy a cellphone.

Mobile shopping in Japan:
Me: Hi, I would like to buy a simple phone, for text message and calling.
Shop assistant (with really bad English): Well hwe gjot thizone fore youho, velly god, for text message, for calling, camera san, for e-mail, internet without cable, work all around the woljd. velly god.
Me: ok.. do you call that a simple phone?
The funny thing about that Hi-tek phone is the fact that the phone signal sounded like old nitendo computergame music. Well, everything here sounds like old nintendo computergame music. It's like being in a Hi-tek supermario world

Gozaimas!