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)!