Manga making - Digital VS analog!

Hello there! Recently I have been working pretty much every day on my last manga for school. This time I have finally been able to make my manga semi-digitally. I say semi-digitally because I did most of the line art the old fashioned way on paper and then scanned the papers. But after that I have done everything digitally.

I wanted to work digitally on my previous manga as well but since we hadn't started that class yet I did not feel comfortable venturing out to the digital manga making world all by myself. But now, after having just had a small number of classes I am already well prepared for what the digital brings!

The program we are using at school (which I also bought so that I can use it at home) is called "Clip Studio Paint", but in English it's usually referred to as "Manga Studio". This program really is fit like no other to deal with the making of comic books and manga in particular and it has a lot of functions that programs like Photoshop and Paint Tool SAI just don't have. I really like this program and I would definitely recommend it to anyone who wants to draw comics digitally!

I knew things would be a lot easier and go a lot faster with this program, rather than doing it all by hand the original way, but I was still surprised about just how efficient it was. It did not take long for me to never want to cut out another tone by hand again. Digital is great!

It's not just that putting the tones on the manga goes much faster, but also, if you made a mistake in your lines while drawing them - no problem! You can erase and delete and copy and redraw as much as you'd like once you've scanned the page!
Just today I when I was working on a page I cut out the head of a character and made it smaller, then put it back, and voila! Suddenly a drawing that I had hated (because the head was too big) had transformed into a nice-looking dude!
I have also, made atleast one drawing bigger for more impact (it seems like in Clip Studio making drawings bigger does not changes the quality of the lines, it just makes them a lil bit thicker). And I have changed the eye-sizes of many characters, and so on effortlessly.



Something good about putting on tones by hand though is that you have a lot more tones to choose from. Even though I have downloaded probably more than a hundred tones into Clip Studio, there are still many times when I wish I had a particular tone, and I cannot get it because it is not in the program.
But it is a minor problem and I can live with it.

So now I just wanted to show you some of my previous manga pages compared to the manga I am making now (the digital manga) (though I don't yet have any scans of my previous manga so there are just shitty pictures):

This one I made during my first year and has almost no tones!

This manga I made during my second year and I tried to use a lot more tones

Digital:

Maybe it's hard to compare since the quality of the photos are sooo bad compared to the computer-made manga. But when using the computer I have added a lot more gradation tone than I would have otherwise (for better or for worse) and I have also colored the characters eyes with tones and not just markers even if the eye is small. The characters also have more shadows on them, even if they are small.
(Sadly it seems like after turning these files into PNG's to upload them some of the tones faded and have disappeared and some you can barely see. The original files have a lot more depth.)

I still suck at manga, but digital sure is getting me another step in the right direction!

Mental stages of creating a manga

 

A piece from my last manga

 

I am at the last stage of finishing up my last manga for the year (at my school we have to write two each year) and I am probably further ahead than anyone!

I made sure to get this one approved as quickly as possible and then get to this last stage as quickly as possible and now I am far ahead compared to many people. There are still people that haven't even finished their first manga for the year and I really do wonder how it will go for those guys.

If you don't finish 2 mangas before the 20th of December you will not be allowed to graduate, which means you kinda spent 2 years on this education for nothing!

Anyway, that is not what I am here to talk about. I was thinking the other day about how much I hate my manga and wish that I never had to lay eyes on it again. Which is weird because when I came up with the idea for this manga I thought it was going to be my best one so far and that it was a great story (even though it's very short).

That is also what I tought about all my previous mangas (except for the first one cause I never really liked that one)! For all my mangas I really loved the plot in the beginning and was really excited to draw it, but somewhere halfway I just started hating it, thinking "This is the worst crap ever why did I write this? I should have gone with this story instead!". Why do I have this recurring patterns for all my mangas? I wonder if it's because they really are bad or just because I got tired of it.

One of our teachers said that you write manga you have to be fast, especially if you are writing comedy, because "neta ga kusaru" which means "the story will begin to rot". So if you write a joke in your manga and you think it is the most awesome thing ever, just wait a little bit when you have been around that joke for a while and you will wonder why you ever wrote something that dumb in the first place.

I suppose even if it's not comedy, a story will begin to rot if you stick around it for too long. But I still think it is odd, since I've written many novels and never had this problem.
Maybe it is because when it comes to manga, I also have to look at my own characters and see the reality of how my drawings turned out, and they never turn out as good as hoped.
When I look at the drawings in my manga I feel like I've failed, because this is not an acceptable level for a real manga: Granted I am not trying to sell my manga or anything, but still. We all want to feel that we have created something great, so when you see that it's not turning out great you want to quit.

Now I am at the last stage, just a little more and I will be done, and hopefully this will be my best manga so far, even if I hate it.

Don't wanna work!

Hello there! This post has nothing to do with Japan, it is just gonna be me talking about my future!

Here is the basic gist: I don't wanna grow up! I don't want to have a job where I have to wake up at 7am (or earlier) and be at work at 8, and do not get to leave until atleast 9 hours have gone by. Plus, there might even be some overtime in there, eh.

This is not the kinda future I want. A future where you work 8+ hours a day 5 days a week, with only a 5 to 6 weeks holiday each year. Think about it if you could choose would you choose a life like that?

When I come back to Sweden I want to study something to do with programming and I think I found just the program for me. It is not at the university I first wanted to go to, but it is still a program at one of the top uni's in Sweden.

Thing is, I do not really want to study programming just for finding a job, I wanna study it because it seems like a lot of fun and I want to be able to make my own little games in the future.
Buuuut of course if you study programming (well, software engineering, really, but let's just call it programming) that is what you are going to be working with in the future, right? There are loads of programming jobs and the salary is quite good!

Yes, working with programming seems like it could be lots of fun but it really depends on the company. One company may work with programming for wheel chairs (like where my dad works) while another creates games. The chance that you will get to work in a gaming company though seems pretty low. Everyone wants to work there! (I think?)

Anyway, with programming it doesn't really matter where you work, you will probably have to work overtime. Not always, but if there is a product supposed to be delivered at a certain time you have to pull through and get it finished or else you have failed the customer and the company you work for. Therefore - overtime!

I don't want to work overtime.

Even now, going to school here in Japan where I only have six hours of school every day, I come home some time before 17.30 and more often than not there are a lot of things I need to do, cooking and cleaning and homework etc. I have barely no free-time left to just do what I want to and it really gets to me sometimes. I think about my future and how I don't want it to be but there really is nothing to be done...

What I can hope for is a job that is so much fun that it doesn't even feel like work. But how can I know what such a job would be when I don't even know what I want to work with in the future?

So for now I am really looking forward to going to university, but dreading working life.
Sorry for complaining, haha.

Teachers wise words?

It was last week or something that all the students in our class had a one on one chat with the teacher about their grades. When it was my turn I first got shown my grades and stuff and my teacher asked me how I liked school and so on.

Then he went on to small talk and asked me "you don't drink, right?" and I said that I don't. My teacher said that when he was around 20 like me he didn't drink that much either, but now he wouldn't be able to live without alcohol. "Nai to muri" he said, lol.

"So maybe that will change for you too" he said, and I smiled and said yeaa maybeeee...

So he thinks that I will probably start drinking and then when I am 40+ like him I too will not be able to live without alcohol?

I guess he didn't realized how sad what he said sounds! Who wants to end up like that? Saying something like that just makes me wanna keep away from alcohol even more. Don't wanna end up feeling like I need alcohol to keep going, that just seems like a very sad life.

Cat Island Ainoshima in Fukuoka, Japan

Last month I went on a small trip to Fukuoka, and on the last day I went to Ainoshima, which is the cat island of Fukuoka!

I have always wanted to go to a cat island and I didn't even know there was one near Fukuoka, so good thing I checked right before leaving.

I had totally forgotten how awesome just hanging out with cats is! It was the best day of the trip and the best day I've had in a long time. Just sitting down anywhere you want, with a bunch of cuddly cats around you, is something I truly wish would be possible in my daily life.

Even though being with cats is pretty much the only thing you can do on this island, it is more than enough. The time went by so fast before I suddenly had to leave all my new friends, and for days all I could think about was cats, haha.

I had a great time on the island, and even though I didn't bring food with me there were several cats that seemed happy with just attention and cuddles. One kitten even slept in my lap for a while.

Some of the cats look sick, and some are really skinny, but there are still many that are in quite a good shape for strays. Still, if you are like me, you will probably feel bad for the cats and want to take them all home with you anyway! 

One thing good to know is that the people who live on the island seem to like the cats, I saw a fisherman sitting by the port fishing, petting a stray cat next to him. It looked like a really nice moment.

There were some tourists there, but it was certainly not crowded. Most of the time I was alone with a few cats at a time, so you don't have to wait for your turn to pet them etc most of the time.

All in all, had a great time, wanna go again. Time for pics:

This one was my first cuddle-buddy! Haha

I decided to walk around the island, but I don't really recommend it, there was nothing to see (then again I didn't have a map) and I felt like I missed quality time with the cats from this trip.

This snot faced skinny baby was super tiny, but really cuddly and playful. Wish I could've taken it home with me..

What it takes to succeed!

Yello, humans!
This post is kinda about my procrastination again and doesn't really have anything to do with Japan but, w.e. My boring blog, my boring posts.

I've always been looking for ways to help me learn the things I wanna learn in the most effortless way possible. I thought that if I had a piano teacher I would get better at playing the piano a lot faster (because that is what happened in Sweden when I took guitarlessons). But when that didn't really happen with my first piano teacher, I thought that that teacher might not be for me. That she wasn't really teaching me the things I wanted to learn.

So when I got this new piano teacher who is really good (my old one was good too ofc) I thought: Yea, now I will finally learn what I wanted to learn for so long! (which is to read sheet music btw)
But so far, I am still at the same stage I was when I first started the lessons. I can't play the piano, I can't read sheet music. I can't do anything. And then I log onto facebook and see a guy I know has put up yet another piano video, like he does like every other day. And he is teaching himself!

I'm pretty sure he started around the same time I did, but has gone so much further than me. Why?

How come I am not improving at all even though I got this new teacher and have been taking lessons for atleast a year now? Weeeeeeeellllll, my friend (talking to you myself!) you are lacking the DORYOKU!

I have just realized that to succeed at anything you need to make an effort, and I am not really making an effort, am I? I go to my lessons 2 times a month and as of right now I probably only practice playing at home like 3 times between every lesson. And when I do practice it is only for a short period of time, and then I forget all about it.

It's like this with everything I do right now, I don't ever go out of my way to do more than the bare minimum of what I have to. I only need to practice these three parts for my next lesson? I don't even need to know them by heart? Well then I guess I only need to practice for 20 minutes today!

It doesn't matter what you use to learn something, if it is with a teacher or by yourself, by watching youtube videos about it or reading about it. It doesn't make any difference in your learning! All that matters is how much effort you are actually putting into what you want to learn.
Just doing the bare minimum will get you nowhere.

It's the same with manga, and that's why I wont become a mangaka. At school we were told that you don't become a mangaka by creating one manga a year, you become one by creating atleast four times more than that, on a consistent basis. That's how you show the publishers you mean business, you wont give in under pressure and you got what it takes. Effort is how you show that you want something, and that is how you get something in return.

So far I've gotten nothing, nowhere. And I'm the only one to blame for that.

pic from google

Random quitters in my class

Our school started again after the holiday on the 1st of September and already 2 more people in my class have quit. The weird thing this time though is that both these people were not slackers, they came to class on time and did not skip a lot.

But after the summer holiday one of them just didn't show up at all for all this time, and when I asked another classmate about it they just said it had something to do with youtube and collabs and that they didn't know or couldn't tell me anything else. Now this person has quit school, and they left our class group chat on Line without saying a word.

The other person who quit had been coming to school as usual and just sent a message on Line yesterday that they would quit school because of something concerning their faimly situation, and then they just left the chat.

This all just seems very weird to me, especially since they have been paying for this education for 1.5 years and now only have 6 months left until graduation and their diploma (or w.e it is you get). Now all that money will basically have been wasted. Then again, I don't know if a certificate of having graduated with manga as your main subject would give a lot of jobs, but still.

Procrastination strikes, and it strikes hard!

I have been drawing manga while watching "Supergirl" since I got home from school today, so now I really have to do something else and that is why I am here! Writing yet another post!

I am a person who likes to be very organized and I always make lists of things to try and keep track on what I need to do every day. I also make lists that I then totally ignore, until I make a new very similar list and ignore that too.
These are the lists that contain things I wanna do/learn during my freetime that I do not have to do, no one is forcing me to do them and there is no set goal or deadline.
In fact, this blog is yet another list, for me to look back on in the future! Ok, here goes:

Things I wanna learn/other things I wanna do:

1. Learn how to program in Java - not sure what I wanna learn but I'd like to make some games.

2. Learn more about webdesign such as HTML and CSS to finally be good enough to make beautiful, interactive websites by myself.

2,5. Learn other languages related to web programming like Javascript, MySQL, XML, etc etc

3. Start writing books again and finish writing a full book that might eventually be good enough to get published.

4. Learn how to play the piano

5. Finish all the drawings/paintings I started.

6. "Working out" (just to counteract future backproblems caused by drawing/sitting infront of the computer so much)

7. Read more books

ETC ETC

The list goes on but right now it's number 1, 3 and 4 that I would like to do on pretty much a daily basis. But what do I do instead? YOUTUBE! I watch youtube videos!! When I am not doing schoolwork I am watching videos on youtube as well as movies on other sites and it's taking away all my time.

When I actually do some of the things on my list I give minimum effort, and most likely wont stick to it for even an hour a day and I'm honestly fed up with what I am doing with my life! Why can't I just make an effort?? Why can't I be as diligent with this as I am with my schoolwork when there is a deadline to keep?
Is it really so hard for me to focus on something that I need something like a teacher or employer to give me a serious deadline, or else I wont do anything?

I am sick of this, I am sick of myself and I wish writing this post would make something in me change, and get me on the path of productiveness, but I know it wont. I have already tried things like Leech Block and RescueTime etc, but there is always a way to get what you want (for example I can't block youtube on my tablet as far as I know cuz it's not in the browser!) and I cannot stay productive even with these countermeasures.

There is not really a point with this post, I just simply wanted to get this off my chest and say that I am really disappointed in myself right now..

Japanese people hate chinese people?

Sooo I got back to Japan on the 31st of August and have since then had to deal with being unable to sleep and also being constantly hungry, all thanks to jetlag! But that seems to have passed now and I am starting to get back into normal daily life, that's why I decided to write here!

When I came back to Japan I took the airport bus from Kansai Airport to Umeda and from there I had to take the subway to where I live. As I carried my huge bag in one hand and my smaller bag in the other down the stairs to the subway, a girl stopped and asked if I needed help and she helped me with my smaller bag.

A man must've seen her cause he offered to take my bigger bag, and thus the two helped me get down to the subway a lot faster. While standing in line I thanked the 2 and we started talking. Turns out the girl was from china and did not speak Japanese (but her English was great!).
The guy didn't really speak any English but when he understood that she was from China he said that China was no good.

He then went on to talk about (in Japanese and VERY bad English) how in Japan people always think about others, they always care about others, but in China people only care about themselves.
He pointed to someone working at the station that helped a person in a wheelchair get on the train, and said: "This is the standard in Japan. In Japan we think about everyone." And he went on to talk about how Chinese people don't think about anyone other than themselves and so on and so forth bashing Chinese people saying they would never help like this. EVEN THOUGH THIS GIRL HAD JUST HELPED ME?

I don't know this girl and we only talked for a little bit but she seemed like the nicest person ever, also she was the first person to even offer to help me with my bags ever in Japan. I have been going up and down long flights of stairs maaaany times with those bags and no Japanese people have stopped to help me. In fact, I doubt that he would've stopped to help if he hadn't seen that girl help me first.

I didn't want to translate all the stuff the guy said to the Chinese girl, but I tried to show her I didn't agree at all with what he was saying.

This is not the first time a Japanese person has told me about their disliking of the Chinese, and how they think Japanese people are so much better than Chinese in every way. But to do this in front of a Chinese person who just showed that they are in fact an awesome human being is just too much! Where are your manners?

Anyway, I realized afterwards that the guy was probably drunk, which does not excuse what he said, but might explain why he was so pushy about it.

Not all Japanese people have this "superiority complex" but there are certainly some who do, and they are most likely to tell you when they are drunk about how Japanese people are better than others. And sure, some things they say might be true some times and make sense but you can't drag an entire people through the same comb, right?

Like the girl said to me: "No matter what country you go to there will always be people around who wanna help, and people around who don't care. It just depends on your personality" (That's extreme paraphrasing btw :))

So lets see eachothers personalities, not each others countries, ok?

Picture of friendly Japan and China :) 

In Sweden (again)

I haven't been posting cause I've been in Sweden since the 18th of July. I have a lil less than 2 weeks left now, which is sad, but I think it will be easier to go back to Japan this time since I only have like 7 months left. Also I'm looking forward to playing Pokemon Go in Japan, lol. In Japan I don't have internet on my phone though, so I gotta fix that problem first...

Anyway, this vacation has not been as eventful as the last nor has the weather been as good, but this one is a lot longer so I really feel like I have gotten to spend a lot of time at home which feels good. I've also gotten the chance to see some old friends that I only got to see for like an hour last year. This year we've been hanging out 4 times already, and there will probably be a 5th.

I caught a cold 2 times which sucked, but the first time I had medicine so it didn't get that bad.

We got to come to hear the band our dad is in play, and watch people dance, and eat good food.

My siblings taught me how to play Magic the gathering, but there are still things I don't get yet.

We went to stockholm 3 days in a row (unplanned) while we were down in the more southern parts of Sweden.

I got to see my little cat Mio again!

We went to the hippie festival called "Urkult" again.

etc etc, pretty normal stuff (but the cold was the only bad thing) compared to last year, but it's been fun. Happy I could be here for a longer time than last year.

I really do hope I wont feel too sad when going back but it's hard to leave it all when you get used to being here. It feels like my life in Japan doesn't even exit, cause here it's so far away that it's easy to forget it all. But if I didn't go back I'd be a criminal, never allowed to enter the country again, lolol.

Man I hope my apartment hasn't been robbed...... o.o

The Japanese Language - My likes and dislikes

(pic from google)

One of the reasons as to why I wanted to learn Japanese is because I thought the language was really beautiful, but as you learn a language more and more you'll realize that there are both really cool and somewhat annoying things about it. I've been thinking about my likes and dislikes about Japanese as a language and decided to write them down.

Like - No need to use pronouns! In other languages (though not all ofc) you have to say he/she his/hers and so on to indicate who owns/does something etc. So sometimes you will call people by the wrong pronouns and stuff like that, which some people care about. But in Japanese that wont be a problem. You will basically never hear yourself saying he or she or have someone say that about you and I like that!

Dislike - Limited ways of expressing yourself. In English for example there are so many ways to say so many things and so many words and expressions that do not have an equivalent in Japanese. This becomes really clear when you watch a movie with Japanese subtitles and they say something really funny that just becomes something bland or boring in Japanese. When I watched the Avengers with Japanese subs in the cinema here this became very clear and it kinda sucks.

Like - Kanji! Yep, it's true, kanji has helped me a lot! Every time I hear a word I don't know I try to think of what kanji that word is made up of, and if I can find out the kanji then I can get an idea of what the word means or in fact remember that I know this word and now thanks to the kanji it has been restored in my memory!

Dislike - Kanji! Oh? Yes, kanji is not all fun and games as we all know. I really hate it when I am reading something and there is no furigana and the text is full of kanji I do not know. I can't read when that happens, I can't understand the story and I can't even pronounce the kanji I don't know! Sucks.

Like - Not just a different accent - different words! People in Osaka (for example) use a lot of words that people from Tokyo don't. Wherever you go in Japan it seems like each new prefecture has their own way of talking, kinda like their own language in a way. In Sweden we don't really have this, accents can vary a lot by tone etc, but the words people use are pretty much the same all over.
Osaka dialect:
 Sehen = shinai (normal dialect)
Donaisho = doushiyo
etcetc
                   
Dislike - This is just a small one but I dislike that there is no way of differentiating between for example your grandma on your mothers side and your grandma on your fathers side. This is not possible in English either, which is annoying too. In Swedish we can differentiate between these two, for example grandma on mum's side = mormor, grandma on dad's side = farmor. I wish more languages had this!

Dislike - Two ways to say everything! Thanks to kanji there are two ways of saying everything (you might have heard of kunyomi and onyomi). So "inside the car" can be said as "kuruma no naka" but it can also be said as "sha nai". "After school" can be said as "Gakkou no ato" but also as "Hou ka go. And this happens for almost everything! Which means that you have to learn two versions of everything, something that for example doesn't happen in english or Swedish. There are no two completely different ways of saying "inside the car", right?

These are just some likes/dislikes that I could think about now. Would like to know other peoples likes and dislikes too!

Talking cars and Teletubbie-land in Japan

There is a car that drives around my neighborhood every time I have a day off and sleep in in the morning, and it wakes me up. Not because of the sound of the engine but because the car is equipped with speakers and over and over it is playing the same message: We want to pick up your stuff, even if it's broken!
(Well it's a bit longer than that and by now I think I can almost fully recite it in Japanese).
It is not just this car, the truck that picks up everyones trash always plays a little song, kinda like the ice cream truck, but smellier.

There is another truck, that plays a song sung by children, and I simply cannot make out what they are singing about but when I once spotted the truck it looked like a small gas truck, which only makes it weirder..

In Sweden we do not have any talking cars, and no cars playing music or singing, or big trucks driving by blastering K-pop to promote a new band. But in Japan this is commonplace,
Doesn't matter wether I am at home or at school, there is always a truck around singing in an old mans voice that it's selling grilled sweet potato, or warabimochi icecream.

There are also lots of cars roaming around promoting local politicians, these also usually come around in the mornings and wake me up, as if annoying me would make me want to vote for that person!

In Sweden I cannot see something like this happening (just like the Japanese way of standing outside their shop screaming about discounts would never happen either), these cars are annoying and would not be tolerated.

When I thought about these weird cars my mind also went to another thing - the public announcements (or w.e I should call them) that happen in various places in Japan.
On Zamami, Okinawa, where we went on vacation there was a message every day at five that you could here from speakers from anywhere on the island, telling kids it was time to go home for the evening.
My mum said that it reminded her of the Teletubbies, I guess because there are things in teletubbieland that tell the teletubbies what to do too. But I'm not sure since I don't remember much of the show.

It's not just Zamami, but other places too that have speakers set up to remind kids of things, or remind you of some law that you shouldn't be breaking, etc etc. It's not as common as the cars, but it still happens a lot and just reminds me of how different some things here are compared to Sweden.
How some things can be so very common here, but could never take place there, because it would be seen as rude and intrusive. I'm glad this doesn't exist in Sweden, but I can't say that it's not pretty entertaining from time to time!

And if not that, then maybe it might atleast be a good alarm clock to some people!

Pic from google of a ishiyaki-imo truck

Egg pizza in Japan

I think it was yesterday that I walked through Tenjinbashisuji shoutengai shopping street on my way home from school and saw a pizza (you know a fake one that looks totally real) on a pedestal outside a random restaurant. From afar I watched it, suddenly craving pizza, but as I got closer I saw that it had a boiled egg on top, and the yellow goo from the inside was pouring out onto the pizza. Appalled I had to look away and I no longer felt like eating pizza. And just as a side note: they love to put eggs on their hamburgers here, I have never seen that in Sweden and I do not feel like eating that either.

This is not the first time I have experienced Japans strange pizza, I have heard J-vloggers on youtube talk about how Japan can not do pizza but apart from this egg instance I have to disagree. I like the pizza here!

So a lot of people have complained about corn on pizzas here, and yes, there is corn on pretty much every pizza ever here but I don't mind that. It tastes good.

There is also pizza with potatoes on them, which I had never seen before, but turns out it wasn't bad.

Once I got invited to an Italian restaurant and got to eat lots of great pizza - but not Italian pizza, because among these pizzas were pizzas with tarako sauce (fish egg sauce) and mayonnaise...

Asparagus, zucchini, eggplant etc are also something I have never seen on a pizza and therefore I don't know if either is a normal topping in other countries, but it is pretty normal in Japan and it tastes nice!

In Sweden there are a lot of pizza places but not any pizza chains like what they have in Japan (PizzaLa, Domino's, etc) which sucks for me because I especially love Domino's pizza. In Sweden I hate pizza, it is just not good at all (I'm probably alone on this tho), it has a very home made feel which I don't like in this case (do I sound like a crazy person already?). So in Sweden I would rather eat frozen pizza that's been shipped in from who knows where. In Japan I don't have to buy frozen pizza because the ones from pizza chains like domino's deliver a pizza that must have come from a machine rather than a flawed human being.

Okey, I realize I am pretty bad at explaining the appeal of pizzas here but just trust me, they are good!

Ever the rainy season, and finally got my ticket!

I always forget when the rain period in Japan takes places when someone asks me, but now I am reminded again that it is in June. It doesn't rain every day, some days are sunny even, but if you compare the weekly forecast during the rainy season to when it's not the rainy season you can definitely see a clear difference.
Right now the whole week promises to be cloudy. I don't mind that at all, since it's already hot enough here without the sun.

I have been busy drawing on my manga every day now because I want to finish it before the summer holidays. We actually don't have to hand it in until the 23 of September, but I do not feel like working on it during the holiday since I will be going back to Sweden, and after the holiday I have to start working on a new manga anyway.

While I've been working I have been watching various TV series and now I'm about to finish watching the first season of Arrow (yeah, I'm late!). So my life lately extends to watching TV series on my laptop while drawing manga. Also tried to cut down my food expenses to afford piano lessons so now I am eating dry chicken with dry potatoes or rice almost every day!
Maybe future me can understand why I haven't been able to come up with any interesting blog posts, lol.

But even though nothing interesting is going on right now I am not feeling down! I feel a lot better than I did before when I was still homesick.

Oh, and I finally bought my ticket home for a big sum of money!! But it did not look like the price was going down so I just got the one that looked the best, but wasn't THAT expensive.
So it seems like unless you buy your ticket around six months before departure, it's going to be more expensive. Atleast if you are going to travel during the summer holidays in Japan.

I am guessing it's because people are off from work/school and Japan is friggin hot so they want to travel somewhere not as hot - like Sweden!

Last year when I went back my mum found a ticket for around 83.000 yen, but this time we just had to be happy for a ticket for 115.000 yen because we were out too late..

But this time I am flying with Turkish Airlines, which is going to be a new experience that I hope wont be all too tiring (cuz I gotta fly for forever and then take the train or something for half forever to get to where my parents live in Sweden!).

Anyway, just remember to get your tickets in time, and let the old Japanese people at the same transit as you give you snacks and praise for your Japanese skills (oh it happened)!

Donkeys in Japan

For some reason there seem to be a lot of different stores in Japan that include the word "donkey" in their name.
A few days ago I walked past "Snack Donkey", where I am guessing they sell snacks, but it was in the red light district so I didn't enter, lol. I've already walked by "Candy Box" in the red light district hoping they were selling candy. Turns out they were not..

Also there is a very strange chain restaurant here called "Bikkuri Donkey" ("Surprised Donkey") which has nothing to do with donkeys! Neither the interior nor the food is donkey related. How the heck did they come up with this name?
And by the way, Bikkuri Donkey's restaurants look friggin scary, inside and out, I have nooo idea who came up with this concept and why.

Not my pic but I know where this Bikkuri Donkey is, I've seen this scary building irl lol

In Japan there is also of course a store called Donkihote which might sound like it has the word donkey in it but  really it's from the word/name/idk anymore Don Quijote. No idea why they picked that name either..
But people usually just call the store Donki, which sounds like donkey..

Anyway, apart from the 2 mentioned above there have been so many more instances where I have seen stores with the word "donkey" in it and it is just plain weird. Why donkey? Why?

Why the sudden lack of interest?

I haven't really been feeling like doing schoolwork lately, though I guess no one really ever does, eh?
But I realized my lack of interest probably lies in a couple of things - first being that I no longer want to work with manga.

gasp!

When I came to Japan I really did not know anything about manga. I have always drawn manga characters ever since reading my first manga, but I never really knew how the acutal comic was made.

I didn't know that you use these pens you dip in ink, and I had no idea what tones were! It was all new to me.
Another thing I didn't know was that people who want to work with manga all move to Tokyo (which seems like common knowledge among Japanese people)! I don't want to move to Tokyo, dude!

Also, I've heard more and more stories from teachers working as manga assistants, how it is the worst job possible and a really low point in their lives. But if you want to eventually work with your own manga you need to first work as an assistant, and if you want to be an assistant you need to be good at things such as: tones, drawing backgrounds (buildings etc), and I suck at those things!

It's not like I am good at drawing characters either, one of my new teachers told me that I should get better at drawing with the fountain pen, but what the heck, I can't get better just like that even if you tell me! It takes time, all I can do is keep trying.

If I suck at all things assistants need to do, I will not be able to have that work. Probably better if I didn't get it though, cause I know how hard it would be. If it were Sweden it would be fine, but in Japan it's just too crazy and demanding for me.

So basically I've given up on my "dreams" of working with manga, and have put it aside as a hobby like it always has been. The internet is where my manga will be seen, at sites like DA etc.

Apart from this I have also finally found a university program (that also happens to be at my favorite uni) I feel really excited about. I never really knew what I wanted to do, but now I feel pretty sure, and I wish I could enter this program as soon as possible.

With a new goal in sight my will to focus on manga is not that strong. But there is nothing I can do, I've got another year left and I would never forgive myself if I gave up just because I don't want to work with it anymore.

It's hard sometimes, and I forget to be thankful for this opportunity. But if I had never gotten here I probably would never find another goal, because I desperately wanted to get here. So finally I have come to the point where I've moved on from "JAPAN JAPAN JAPAN!" to finding other things I want to do and experience, and that too is a great thing! Gotta keep on fighting because I know that these 2 years here have gone by sooo fast, and so will this last year even though it doesn't feel like it right now.

I miss Sweden, and I know there are so many things I will miss about Japan, Osaka, my friends here, my apartment, my school, my old school etc etc etc. I shouldn't complain, should probably go watch Hetalia instead.. lol

One last hetalia pic