Konnichiwa!

Well, let me start of by saying sorry for not updating for such a long time. I've been meaning to update it for some time, but I never quite got my finger out... so もうしわけありません as they would say in japanese.

As you can imagine, a lot has happend since since my last post. Among a lot of other stuff, I've traveled to Osaka and Kyoto, had a 2-week vecation to Taiwan, and currently I've started on my second and last quarter at school.

Osaka is truly a big city. I didn't take long for me to get tired　and stressed by the never ending sea of people. We saw some of the sights of the city, rode a large ferris wheel by the harbor, and enjoyed the view from one of the skyscrapers.

After Osaka we travelled on to Kyoto. This trip was meticiulously planned by one of the taiwanese girls which we, imo, accurately have named "the boss" (shachou). She had us constantly moving from the one sighseeing spot to the next (there are A-LOT of temples and old buildings in Kyoto) . We (at least I) was quite worn out by the end of the day, but we got to see and experience a lot in a only a few days. And each evening we would all gather in one of the hotelrooms and relax, eat some cup-ramen and joke around. Going on vecation with the taiwanese girls might be a bit tiring, but it's tons of fun :)

3 days after returning home, me and Peter jumped on a plane headed for Taiwan. If you wonder where or what Taiwan is, it's an almost independent chinese island located south-east of China. Being the remnant of the old Nationalist China which lost to the Communists back in 1949, part of population is still unwilling to declare independence as they still see themselves as the rightful representative of China. The younger people on the other hand leans toward independence (probably as they don't have to strong a realtion to mainland China). (Digression: Wow, I find writing about this is much more fun than writing about the stuff I've been doing..) Anyhow, apart from a small aboriginal native population, most people are Han-Chinese and the main language is Mandarin.


We were really lucky and we got to live free of charge in an apartment owned by one of the taiwanese guys at school (Kelvin-san, aka abe) in the middle of Taipei. We stayed in Taiwan for 12 days. And thanks to the great guides we had (もしこれを読んだら、ありがとうございまずガイドさんたち！), we saw alot and pretty much travelled all over the island. The bullet-train from Taipei to Kaoshung (second largest city located in the south) at it's fastest is only 1.5 hours, which goes to show that the islands area isn't that big. While it was quite cold in Taipei +-10 degrees, Kaoshung was warm and I even had a swim in the ocean :)

I've started my last quarter at school. It's probably going to be a bit thougher than the last class, but I don't think i have to break to much a sweat getting through with a good result. I have to learn pretty much by heart 34 new kanji (chinese signs) by tommorow, so I think i'll start on that right after finishing this post.

Oh, almost slipped my mind, japanese fun fact: Japanese television is pretty much 90% humor and entertainment shows, and the rest is news. Pretty much which ever channel you switch too, you're hit by alot of strong colors and text filling the screen, and a prgram where they are either eating something, or making fools of themselves in some way (or both at the same time). It's actually kind of funny :)

See ya,
Lasse