Crime rises in Japan

There are over 2 million vending machines in Japan (Of which around 50% are from Coca Cola). Last year there were over 90,000 cases of theft in the vending machines. A new system to monitor the vending machines has jointly been developed by the Vending Machine Association, the Soft Drink Association, Osaka prefecture PD and Coca Cola to prevent the thefts.

Whether it is theft in or theft of the machines I am not sure of. At least they had a very illustrative picture of the theft preventing procedure. =)

やっと！

よしよし！５連敗でストップ！今年強い竜と巨人を追いかけて倒せ！昨日東京ドームでの試合を見に行った。１-６負け。金本２４打席連続ノーヒットやっと止めたけど。今日の東京ドームの再試合また見に行った。６－２勝ち。金本３ヒット、さらに２点２塁打。今岡3らホームラン。

Finally! After 5 consecutive losses Hanshin wins! Went to see the game at Tokyo Dome yesterday (together with Oskar and Kalle), lost 1-6. Saw todays game too at Tokyo Dome (Together with Oskar), won 6-2. Kanemoto 3 hits, one 2-base hit, 2RBI. Imaoka a nice 3 run homerun.





Earthquake count: 1 (Confirmed at 03.03am, Friday April 21st, Richter 4, Gotemba)

Una grande cerveza por favor! Schnell!

I have never been in Sweden as much as I was in Sweden this time. Angelholm, Helsingborg, Goteborg, Linkoping, Norrkoping, Uppsala, Stockholm, Malmo and Lund. Meeting as many of my friends and my family as possible in such a short time, I am pretty proud to say that I managed to see a lot of you. Some of pure coincident, but nice likewise. =) Sorry to say that I don’t have time to write about it all, but I had great fun and thank you for letting me stay at your places! The one from the family side I didn’t meet was Kikki. Sorry about that! I tried to call you, and the time in the south was pretty short. I hope to see you in Tokyo soon! And dad, we missed each other with a few couple of days. Hope to see you soon too!

Well, I am not the one that likes to stay in one place for too long, and since I got tired of snow and rain pouring down my neck for three consecutive weeks, I decided to fly Spain for a couple of days. A couple of hours in Madrid to meet Nicklas from the Bengtsson-side of the family, and then Malaga, for a little longer than a couple of hours, to see my sister and her family down there. It was great fun to see you all and we’ll see each other in November again!

Via Vienna Airport, that by the way probably has, if not the only, at least the biggest sex shop ever seen in an airport, I finally arrived in the land of suits, white gloves, automatically rotating chairs on trains, guys that "heiki ni" reads porn on trains, mobile phones with 3.2Mpixel camera and TV, computerized heating system in the bath tub and whiteboards with CF cards so that you can transfer whatever you decide to write directly to your computer from the whiteboard. TP Gotemba only had an older version where you could only print directly from the whiteboard, pretty boring, right? People complained, too much paper work… Me myself was a little disappointed that they were not WiFi connected. What has happened to Japan and innovation? Am I sensing a slowdown? People here even says that the Japanese are getting rude and that Japan is getting dangerous. I can nothing but agree, on the train to and from Gotemba, the train master only bowed when entered the wagon. Not one single bow when leaving the wagon. How rude isn’t that!?

Well, here is the country where iPods are sold at 7-Eleven, where banks and convenience stores are run by the same management (Seven & iHoldings), where you have the best chocolate milk ever, Van Houten. (In a Tetra Pak carton of course =)).

You have car elevators at the parking, everything is packed in tens of thousands layers of paper and plastics, a game that probably uses half the worlds steel production annually - pachinko (A stranger way to waste time can’t possibly exist), earthquake-safe building and 2 feet between the building in the cities due to some strange regulations (I bet the unused space between two buildings in Tokyo is more expensive than a large apartment in Stockholm).

Speaking of earthquakes, I think there was an earthquake last night. I remember that I woke up around 3 am because something was rocking my bed. But it rocked so calmly that I fell asleep again. Waking up this morning wasn’t that bad either, in a hotel room in Gotemba with the best view ever seen, Fuji-san only a couple of kilometers away.

Since I am not in a country with a information flow controlling government (Hint: Not Sweden or Spain) anymore, I can finally use my blog again. I have moved my Shanghai part to http://www.themokkun.com/Tiki-In-Shanghai (Without pics and comments though). I will start to write a new blog about the Japan part with this as the first post. But right now I get error messages all over so I won’t give you the link until finished. I will continue to post here at resdagboken for a while but gradually move to my blog. I won’t send out emails from that one so please check in a little now and then instead. My aim is to write shorter and more frequent posts.

I’ll tell you more about my situation here in Japan later but for now I am going to watch some strange Japanese TV.

So long!

Btw, I don't have one single picture from Sweden, Spain or Japan (Yet) since my camera got stolen. But as soon as I get my registration card saying I am an alien in Japan, I can get that mobile phone I told you about earlier, and the some pictures. =)