Hello Kitty and Moomin

I'll be boarding in the Moomin one soon. 5 days trip to Finland is on. For some reason posting here from my phone wasn't working last week...so as a summary: my friends from Finland Miika and Maikku spent a week in Tokyo. We went to beach and mt. Fuji and now they are in Osaka (me too for a 45 minutes more).

Over night boat

Now on way to Shikinejima island using a over night ship with Markus. No tickets for beds or etc. left so just took basic ticket to the ship. As picture shows they gave us plastic sheets at the counter when bought the tickets. So we started our camp in the ship and laid down. These sheets must be japanese idea for camping matrice...so Janne, dear brother, just let me know if u want to make ur bag lighter for hiking from now on! Next trip to Finland I can bring few of these.

More from this trip later. Time to dream about clear water and big waves.

Love beach!

Beach time! What a Friday, just floating in water 98 of the time spent at the beach. Can't think anything more important I could have done today...not A single one.

Olympic bar

Slept over this morning. Was supposed to wake up at 9 to go to gym before heading to beach. Woke up 10 past 10. Exploded to motion - packed my bag for gym, beach and weekend trip to island. Ate or actually drank my breakfast (2 bananas, 3 eggs and 0.5 liters of milk mixed in blender) and headed to gym at Ookayama campus. Took few running steps to save time at the campus. My shirt was totally wet. They said that today is the hottest day of this summer, +36 in shadow. What a great day to go to beach!

I had 1 hour to finish my program, without taking shower, to meet the planned schedule with other people. Made warm up as usually, loaded the bar for bench but had to postpone it because was missing the spotter. Started to load the bar for squatting. Did warm up sets and moved to todays goal 115 kg. Relaxed my mind and went trough all 20 repetitions to get to right fighting mood. Raised the bar and started squatting. After 3 reps started to see small stars - usually they appear around 10 reps. Around 9 rep the weight started to feel REALLY heavy. After barely raising up from 11th rep the legs were jelly. 12th rep I could only control the speed how fast gravity pulled my ass to the floor. Safety bar took the weights of my back.

Breathing DEEP I thought how is this possible! On Tuesday I did 112.5kg without proplems so this shouldn't be this hard. Thought that today just isn't a day for squats and started to unload the bar. Middle of the job I realized that I was using a olympic bar weighting 20 kg... I had loaded the bar without thinking as I always do in the other gym...which has bars weighting 10 kg. No wonder it felt heavy today. Left gym smiling after finishing the rest of the program - on time.

Beach time

After sleeping looooong felt back in full power and it was time for another trip to the beach. It was so much fun! Wonder why I haven't realized this before. No need to think twice what to do if there happens to be a free sunny day.

Summer Sonic part 1

3 punk bands during one day is enough. Feet and legs are blasted...luckily I'm on my way home. Bath time for sure tonight.

live on now

A free DAY

Can't even remember when I have had day like this. No school, no appointments, no nothing. Slept 12h straight last night. After breakfast took 25 km bicycle ride, ate well and sat down here to update my dear blog without any hurry.

今このパソコン日本語で書くは大丈夫。でもぼくはまだへたです。修士論文はおわった！　。。。あとでもっと書いて。

As I told earlier on Monday I had the final presentation. Feels like it was month ago. For some reason have had many small things to do this week and nights were too short for proper sleeps. From now on that will be corrected! :)

Did I tell already that started to go Tai Chi lessons to Yoyogi park every Tue, Thu, Sat and Sun morning. Also doing now hard power training in gym. Yeasterday did succesfully squats 20x105kg. That gave full shot of adrenaline and endorfines in my blood. Heh, didn't know before that training at the gym could be this fun. After ~3 months I'll have the power test for my left leg. If it's power is 80% compared to right leg, I can start judo. That'll be my biggest goal for next 3 months! Miss doing judo alot!! Want to be stronger that ever when I return to the dojo. ;P

On Thursday we made a small visit into one of the labs of Tokyo University in the campus located in Chiba. Mikko is doing there his post-doc so we could see him at the same time. His professor gave really nice introduction for the research they are doing there.



Here we do Tai Chi.



Saw this funny looking but convenient machine this week.



Tokyo University's building in campus located in Chiba.


PLD-machine.

Ok, that's enough for today. Tomorrow I'll be heading to some beach if the weather is same as today (+32 in shadow). またね。

Mid Summer Festival...

...eli Juhannus Tokiossa.

What can I say...all the elements of proper (=normal) Finnish Mid Summer Festival were there. Here few pic which passed the sencor.


From here everything started...


"Picnic" next to the Odaiba beach.


The major part of the solid food at this time of year for us Finns.


Heavy rain (rainy season is unfortunately still on at the time of mid summer festival) forced us to look for cover.

Finland Fest 2008

Finland fest was held in Tokyo on last May. 4 Finnish band came to play in Tokyo. Of course all live music loving Finns living in Tokyo were heading there, so me and Antti were there for sure. Actually Antti gave me ticket as a present when I was in hospital...hee, feels like it's ages since I was in hospital. :) ...greeeeat party. Enjoyed it like last year.


Sturm Und Drang exploded the liquid room first.


Naturally after party in Current Shinjuku.


Ari and Antti.


These young guys know how to ROCK!!