Follow me to school! In January I took a bunch of photos of the neighborhood but forgot to post them here... let's have a look! This is the way I take to go to school every morning. Small houses and narrow streets. Beautiful winter day, probably over 10 degrees that day.


















Recently completed block of apartments, currently being visited by couples (newly weds?) and furniture is being moved into the rooms on display.


















Big blue house. Very big actually. First I though it must belong to a wealthy family, but then I saw there are actually three entrances... most likely it's shared by three families and I'm quite sure they don't have too much space after all.





Just a normal orange tree in some one's back yard, in January.








There is some sort of animal park close to the train station, where kids go with their parents on weekends. There is usually a car standing outside selling roasted sweet potato, yaki-imo. They always play a VERY ANNOYING tape of a little girl yelling out "YAAAAAAAKIMOOOOOOOO" again and again. I feel like getting violent every time I hear it.



Another car with a megaphone message; coming to pick up your broken computers, TVs etc. They always play a recorded message asking people to put out their garbage for them, but it's unnecessary - everybody already knows!!! It's the same with most announcements really. If you just moved in, you can get that exact same information just by reading the local newspapers or simply asking your neighbour. Even a non-Japanese speaker could find out just by looking at what his neighbours are doing! But they rather yell it out and disturb the peace...
Central Kichijouji, not far from where I live. This is where I take the train to school. The "city" is actually pretty nice. You can get a lot of things done here without going to Shinjuku or Shibuya. All the big department stores, lots of restaurants, cafes, love hotels...

My bicycle parking lot. It costs a little to park here, but I can leave my bicycle for as long as I want. Parking in the street only leads to the bike being taken by the police...




Ticket vending machines. I don't buy tickets, though, I use a card that I just tap on the ticket gate. Money is charged and I pass through. It takes a second or so. Practically the same system as in Singapore. Much easier and faster than what we're used to in Sweden!! I heard that the same method of paying is coming to Stockholm in the near future... Right now there are new phones on the market that can be used to pay for lots of stuff, at the ticket gates, in restaurants, taxis etc.

On the platform. Guess what, WAY too many announcements presented to you in a very annoying fashion, every 10 seconds or so.. I can understand why, almost every week, some people jump on the tracks and commit suicide...


Look at this advertisement! It's for some sort of makeup product I think... the ladies are supposed to look nice, in the role of TV announcers in a studio. In a studio, you don't use big microphones like that!! Normally they use smaller, discrete microphones that are either standing on the table or are attached to the clothes. Pretty silly mistake, I think.



A little map of some of the train lines belonging to ONE railway company in central Tokyo.







Outside my university. Lots of students cross this street every morning. Nothing interesting in the surrounding area except a few restaurants and cafes.

The whole trip takes about 50 minutes but feels shorter if I read or listen to music while on the train.






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