Author Archives: Antti - Page 2

8:15

Posted by on June 8, 2011 No comments

In spite of having hit the hay relatively early, the suimin busoku gathered the night before prevented me from getting up for the breakfast buffet. Obviously I would have had to pay for it, skipping free meals just is not my style.

On the way to work, I noticed a hairdresser called “Loves hair”, a name which my weird mind found slightly disturbing. It would seem to imply that the owner has such a fetish with hair that customers do him a favor by letting him keep their scalps as some kind of macabre trophy. Or claim the hairbrush afterwards and pet it like a cat. I tend to believe that the intention in the name is different, but my vivid imagination will not let this thought out of my head anymore. How would it feel if a practicing proctologist called his establishment… never mind. While sniffing around for ramen, this was also found:

The title of a new hit TV show in Finland?

As promised, I returned to the buffet again that very evening. The discovery that nothing had changed was a source of both joy and frustration. The sasebo steaks were still there, but on the other hand I had to go through the exact same array of condiments to satisfy my hunger for variety. The only innovations were found at the dessert counter, and I have a strained relationship with the thought of eating sweets right after a complete and satisfying meal. I’m not sure if the personnel have began watching my movements yet but if they have, they must have labeled me “the guy who comes in looking ronery and tries to eat us into bankruptcy”.

Ice Cream & Sadness

Wednesday morning made me reiterate my trip to the Peace Memorial Museum, originally made two years prior with a merry group of friends. I remember us being less merry afterwards. The experience is so sinister that it’s difficult to accurately describe, which is probably why I didn’t even attempt the feat after the first visit. There should be a complimentary showing of Tonari no Totoro at the end, to repress people. Repress is the opposite of depress. So it has to be positive. My blog, my logic, my vocabulary.

On that day, 66 years ago.

Quite similar to the profound sadness you feel when seeing Littlefoot’s mother die in The Land Before Time, walking through the Peace Memorial Museum makes you realize you have a soul. And that soul is vulnerable. By the end, merely hearing the date of the bombing sent shivers down my spine. I’m actually shivering as I write. I ended up spending a good couple of hours walking through the museum, zigzagging between excited middle schoolers and cursing at the obvious shortcomings of my N95’s camera. In order not to deviate from the path proper to man, the Aioi Bridge and the former Hiroshima Prefectural Industry Promotion Hall were chosen as the next destination. As always, the Genbaku Dome was an impressive sight.

Unreachable Haikyo

I also discovered one coffee house that was located dangerously close to the Peace Memorial Park. The proximity of Café Ponte to the touristical Holy Land had hardly_any_causative relationship with the inflated prices in the shop. A cup of joe cost ¥450, and Japanese coffee is, in general, almost as bland as Finnish coffee. It made me chuckle. I subsequently trekked back to the hotel for a pit stop and continued on to… the office.

Later that night, in my effort to learn to complain about things, also sometimes called giving feedback, I confronted the steak chef regarding why the steaks were so much less tender on Wednesday than they were on the two previous nights. He apologized and cooked me three rare ones on the spot, out of which two turned out perfect. I like it here.

Syö, juo ja ole iloinen. Huomenna laihdutamme!

-Antti

 

Paradise Awaits

Posted by on June 6, 2011 No comments

The sunken city of R’lyeh

The shinkansen arrived at Hiroshima station sometime after 11, and having checked the itinerary to the assigned location beforehand I chose to trek the remaining 2 kilometers instead of looking for the right train. With all my luggage, feeling like a heavy weapons guy was unavoidable.

My observations from two years ago were still valid; Hiroshima is a rare Japanese city where one can actually find something similar to espace verts, and in addition, the streets are wide and pleasantly organized. The initial joy I drew from the physical aspects of the city was quickly lost as I realized that the internet at my special outpost was non-functional. One conbini lunch and a lot of cursing later, I managed to get everything connected and was actually able to begin working. Besides the challenging start, the rest of the day at the empty office was dull and uneventful.

Wide Island

After checking in at ANA Crowne Plaza and checking out the gym thereof, I opted to try the casual dining buffet of the hotel. It was very reasonably priced at ¥3000. A well kept secret among westerners with a huge appetite is that the energy & micronutrient / yen ratio is always superior at a tabehoudai or buffet, given that the stomach capacity of the attendee exceeds a certain level. There is a very complicated mathematical formula for choosing the optimal place to eat, but tonight I clearly made the right choice.

Truth be told, since solving the internet issue at the makeshift embassy right after my arrival, I’ve been all smiles. Smiles, that, once again, I have utterly failed to conceal. I was grinning to the elevator mirror on the way to the restaurant before noticing the security camera watching me. Someone at the other end had probably already began suspecting that the Joker was still alive.

There's wild Pokémon in the tall grass!

Quand l’appétit va, tout va!

When in a hotel, do as the rich people do. Eat. And never stop. All things considered, the buffet was sublime. I began with several servings of different salads and cold entrees, after which I quickly discovered a huge bloc of parmesan cheese and a young chef grilling sasebo style steaks in a corner where nobody dared venture. Don’t ask me what a sasebo style steak is, I have no idea. But it was delicious. I didn’t initially believe my luck so I needed to confirm with the chef whether these really were part of the buffet menu. His nonchalant answer allowed all hell to break loose.

Relinquishing all sense of shame I returned to the steak counter 4 times and tried most of the other foods in between these cherished beef moments: hakata gyoza, crab korokke, beef tendon, shrimp sushi, roasted chicken, horse mackerel, mozzarella tomatoes. This is really beginning to resemble the diary of a hedonist, which it is. I felt like going on forever but decided to quit while I was ahead and chose one funny looking piece of green tea spongecake along with a dangerously large espresso to close the deal. My only cause of distress was that I left my phone and only camera in my room on purpose, thinking “I’m just gonna eat, no point to immortalize anything”. How wrong I was. I would label the whole evening as epic if it didn’t involve paying the jar. And tomorrow’s dinner venue calls the kimeta rule function.

-Obélix

Hiroshima へ

Posted by on June 6, 2011 No comments

Morning of the Journey

Waking up at 5 am is rarely a treat, yet this particular dawn it all felt like a necessary evil that would prove well worth my while in the long run. Or even the immediate run, depending on your perception of time. Not　even staying up until 3 watching the 4th season of the Big Bang Theory could have deterred me from jumping up unprompted at the first rays of sunlight to scavenge the fridge for anything of value　in order to prepare me for the long train ride ahead. This great nutritional treasure hunt included two packs of natto and the humble remains of the only reasonably priced full fat yoghurt I’ve ever found in the land of the rising sun. Also coffee and butter. Don’t ask.

The streets were relatively quiet at that ungodly hour, but similarly to last week’s Tsukiji visit, both the Seibu Line and Yamanote Line consisted of man’in densha from as early as 6 in the morning, an epiphany that made me cringe, though silently. At Shinagawa after buying the shinkansen ticket, I noticed that the potassium iodide pills from April had completely disintegrated inside my wallet, forming something not completely unlike cocaine both in color and texture. I should know, I have cocaine in my wallet all the time. The remnants of the pills had to be disposed of, rendering me vulnerable once again to the exaggeratedly deadly winds of Fukushima. A few moments later I boarded the train while making sure to avoid the smoking car, a skill I had learned through trial and error a few years earlier. Nothing compares to paying ¥18000 for a 4-hour smoke-in-your-face experience.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Nozomi shinkansen bound for Hakata.

To be perfectly honest, it only took the sentence above to divert my thoughts from the original target city and contemplate continuing all the way to Hakata, Kyushu, in order to sample the eponymous thin noodle tonkotsu broth ramen in its natural habitat. And not only for the ramen, either. It turns out that despite having lived in different parts of Japan for well over a year in total I still haven’t set foot outside of Honshu. Luckily, the responsible side of my brain, which is noticeably small, was able to stay in control. Thus, I soon relented and continued the journey to Hiroshima as planned. Old MUCC songs collected from my ex-roommate as well as the more recent Fairy Tail soundtrack kept me company.

Camaraderie, adventure and steel on steel. Or rather, EMIT on control point.

In non-local news, there is now less than a fortnight left before the traditional Jukola orienteering event and I am currently gathering anxiety in relation to the fact that I’m unable to attend possibly one of the most legendary sports events of (not) my life. Marko has been able to whip the team into shape and get people to commit at a level I could never have dreamed of, so clearly there is much to yearn for. Hopefully the deer in Miyajima will help me overcome this loss. I hereby refer everybody to the valiant adventures of Team HeiaHeia.com, the most versatile tongue-in-cheek yorozuya sports team in the world.

-Antti

Trickshoth

Posted by on June 1, 2011 No comments

It’s been a while since I wrote something really inspired, but this Tuesday offered plenty of topics. After a nice sleep of 13 hours I was completely revitalized after my weekend mishaps and decided to browse local outdoor basketball courts. What drove me to this was my lack of proper conditioning which could prove fatal to the Epic ASM’11 Basketball Team in as little as two months’ time. A harsh training routine was therefore in order. Thanks to courtsoftheworld.com, two locations were quickly identified: the famous Yoyogi park as well as a more obscure and smaller Jordan court in Mitake.

I had my doubts about the latter, and although it was slightly closer to work, I was fully prepared to go to Yoyogi, were Jordan park to turn into a disappointment. My fears were not completely unwarranted, as a despicable standard practice in Japanese society raised its head. The Jordan court was only open during work hours, i.e 10 to 5, after which the caged streetball court was closed, locked and left to rot. I walked around the court a couple of times cussing loudly in disbelief. I did it all in Finnish so it accidentally opened a portal to hell. Moving on. Basketball courts are already a rarer commodity in Japan than cheese, yet decision-makers feel like preventing people from using public facilities more than 7 hours a day. What the fuck, honestly.

All work and no play makes Jack... pretty damn irritated

I subsequently resumed my scouting trip and headed to Yoyogi park, a supposedly bulletproof option. On the way, I crossed the path of the Girls’ Generation marketing bus that was playing the Japanese version of Gee Gee at full volume in the streets of Harajuku. I cycled beside it and stopped in traffic a couple of times to take pictures, effectively strengthening my established position as possibly the worst nerd ever. In my defense, there were many local otakus around trying to claim that very spot. As far as actual music was concerned, the Japanese version couldn’t hold a candle to the original.

Gee Gee Gee Gee Baby Baby Baby Baby (sit se luuppaa)

After that brilliant coincidence I finally made it to the Yoyogi basketball area where lots of Japanese several years younger and many times more adept at the sport than me were gathered to shoot trickshoths. Lacking a ball of my own, I sneaked in to play with some koukouseis who claimed to be beginners. Their definition was, amazingly, correct, and not just false modesty. It was uncharacteristically cold and windy for late May, and my sleeveless second hand shirt was not enough to keep me from freezing, so after a few 3 on 3s and OvDs I was back on my way. Although I then proceeded to go to the weekly Muteppou dinner and head straight to the gym afterwards, I’ll instead post an anachronistic picture of the Tetsuya shouyu ramen meal from a few weeks prior. It was delicious.

I am gonna miss these so much in two months

The updates have been erratic and shorter than usual for a while but I’m going on a work trip to Hiroshima on Monday so that should open some fresh blogging topics that may, or may not interest anyone.

-Antti

It’s 3 a.m. and I’m drifting

Posted by on May 30, 2011 No comments

Every so often I feel like reminding myself that I no longer am 14. The proper assessment method is to pull an all-nighter for no apparent reason and realize once more that such initiatives should never be considered in the first place. What may once have been a feat of strength at LAN parties with other guys sporting long, unkempt hair, is nowadays nothing more than a measurable burden. Speaking in scribbles, wondering whether one is asleep or awake and especially passing out at a family dinner while leaning on your own fist are all occurrences that should be left in the past. For a reason.

But what choice did I have? We went drinking with the Embassy Trainee Squad (ETS) on Friday. As Friday turned into Saturday and I woke up at 5 in the afternoon, I realized that it would be quite difficult to come back from the admittedly self-caused predicament. The only sensible way I could think of was to play Rift until dawn and pull an all-nighter Sunday night in order to then “get up early” and go straight to Tsukiji for some world class sushi first thing on Monday. Plan set in motion.

You can't really miss the general fish market area.

Whoop Whoop!

Sushi Dai is a renowned and ridiculously small sushi stand at the Tokyo Tsukiji fish market that has been given rave reviews online. Upon arrival it became clear that the store appealed more to foreigners than locals, immediately setting off my tourist trap alarm. The clock dinged 6:45 when I arrived, yet I still had to queue for around 45 minutes for my early breakfast sushi. I was too tired and hungry to take any pictures of the meal, and since other bloggers with better skills and tools have done it before, I refer you to EdEdition and Paul’s Travel Pics for lengthier illustrated reviews of the place. I really can’t be bothered at this stage.

La queue (queque)

I do agree with most reviewers that the sushi at Sushi Dai was definitely the best sushi that I’ve ever had. Unfortunately, due to the immense hype surrounding the place, I was pretty much expecting to get raptured while my taste buds sang songs of praise. That didn’t happen. The problem wasn’t in the quality of the sushi, but merely in the experience as a whole. It is also possible that I found my limit as a sushi lover.

The place has 12 seats, and queues of 1-2 hours to get inside are not uncommon. Those two things combined create a barrier that effectively prevents people from enjoying Sushi Dai as a lengthy social experience. Maybe with the exception of people who happen to like the queue simulator. ¥3900 for a dozen pieces of excellent sushi after and hour’s wait in a remote location is not entirely worth it, at least more than once. The sushi was excellent, but I’ve had excellent sushi at other locations which offered additional perks. The slight increase in quality does not justify all the fame surrounding Sushi Dai, merely some of it. But since freshness is such a selling point and there are 50 other sushi stalls at Tsukiji, there should not be that big of a quality gap between Dai and all of the rest. The next time I venture into Tsukiji, I’ll try to find a cheaper, less gaijin-infested sushiya. I’ll also try to sleep the night before.

-Stark Dålig

Beefcake! BEEFCAKE!

Posted by on May 23, 2011 No comments

“I actually don’t treat life any differently than an RPG. I’m always thinking of leveling up myself, which in this case, is actually myself, not my World of Warcraft character.” -Brian Wang, co-founder of Fitocracy.

What can I say? Someone has unknowingly answered my wishes. I alluded to the lack RPG-type real life achievements in the last couple of sentences of the first Sebaattori post, more than half a year ago. If I had had any functional knowledge in coding I would’ve attempted to create such a service myself. It would appear that in addition to not being possible, it is also no longer needed. Fitocracy is a service that has now been in beta since February. It offers its users experience, quests and achievements for logging real life physical exercises and sharing them with others. Tsumari, it’s like a HeiaHeia for gaming nerds and objectively the greatest invention since those cat ears that read your emotions.

At least that’s the image I’ve gotten from surfing around the site. I’ll need to test it in practice later tonight but it’s needless to say that I’m enthralled by the mere concept. Originally I was slightly reluctant to go to the gym today because it’s raining and the place is boring, lacking in fundamental equipment and whatnot, but the possibility of leveling up from doing a couple upper body exercises is far too tempting. Therein also lies the danger.

Yatta, yatta!

According to Owen Good of Kotaku, “[Fitocracy developers] are of course exploring ideas like mobile applications so you can ‘play’ at the gym; the community constantly asks if nutrition will be integrated into the XP system, and they’re considering that too. The manner in which I created my new weights workout was absolutely intended, and Fitocracy wants to grow that out in the quest system. “Character classes” or something approximating that are also a possibility, for those who want to specialize in, say, running, or weight training, weight loss or toning up or whatever.”

If Fitocracy is as effective an incentive as I currently believe, I may well die from exhaustion in the next couple of months while relentlessly trying to multiclass into a Runner/Leaper. I wish I was pumping iron already. That’s a first.

-Antti

Update: Reached level 3. Ding! Grats! Ding! Grats!

Motor Crazycycle

Posted by on May 21, 2011 2 comments

Mille Bornes

One more workweek over. Several milestones were achieved, out of which none at the workplace. I managed to save more money on travel costs than ever before by cycling to work for five days in a row. The end result was 170 pedaled kilometers and ¥3300 less to pay to the private railways. After now having zigzagged between cars for over a thousand kilometers during my first three months here, I’ve thoroughly began to enjoy the peculiarities and advantages of cycling in Tokyo. Five days straight really took a toll on my leg muscles, though, so I most likely will not repeat the feat very soon. But I need to do something to keep myself in shape and that is one of the simpler, cheaper options.

After a long week of sitting in front of a screen for no purpose, I awarded myself with finally deciding to try the services of Domino’s Nakamurabashi. Upon entering the place, it looked eerily vacated, but a quick yelp of “sumimasen” solved the service problem and an incredibly apologetic pizzaiolo dashed to the counter confirming that the place was open. I had already set my eyes on the Italian Traditional pizza after weeks of looking at the flyers they keep stuffing in my postbox (Yes, spammarketing works). It was only traditional in a Japanese sense, though, as the fillings lay on a millefeuille-crust which was further cut in squares, something they specified in the booklet, as thought anyone gave two shits. Maybe someone does. But I don’t have much respect for people who judge take-out pizzas based on how they are cut.

À emporter

Take away (or one of the other options) cost 20% less than the listed price, which was ¥1700 (->¥1360), affordable but not exactly cheap. I also have concerns over the marketing aspect of listing your prices at their peak and lowering them on not-so-special occasions. Online orders get -5%, take home gets -20%. Considering there are no seats or tables in the restaurant which is more reminiscent of, or veritably is just an ordering counter, one would suspect that most people go for the take-out option. Instead, while being pleasantly surprised on the spot, the list price almost acted as a deterrent and made me avoid going to Domino’s altogether. They could revise those flyers.

It's dangerous to go alone, take this.

Once I had received my dinner, I cycled to the small park next to my apartment, sat down and dug in, returning the occasional baseball to the neighborhood kids playing nearby. The Italian Traditional was a very pleasant surprise. Unlike all other pizzas in Japanese restaurants till the end of time, this one managed to both look and taste like a pizza, never mind the millefeuille crust. It was so appetizing, actually, that as I let my vigilance level drop for only a few seconds, a huge crow appeared to claim a stake in my cheesy goodness. That came out wrong. As did the crow. We quickly exchanged a couple of Finnish curses and the crow was on his way again. I did most of the talking.

Gym? What’s a Gym?

The real challenge of the day was still looming ahead. Following a quick pit stop at home, I headed to the Nakamuraminami gym, finally carrying the only proof I had for living in Nerima, my new and shiny Alien card. The lady at the first counter taught me how to use the ticket dispenser, after which I was able to go down the stairs to the training room area. I was instructed to fill in some sheets about general contact information and how susceptible I was to injuries. Then, the gym guide guy (GGG) proceeded to present me each and every machine in the room. To my great disappointment, there was no standard bench press. In fact, there were no barbells altogether, no pull-up bar, and the heaviest dumbbells weighed a measly five kilograms each.

Thus, every exercising opportunity was based on those boring machines where you have to sit down and lock yourself up as to prevent people from pulling off any stunts where they could drop a heavy barbell on themselves AND DIE! That meant that there were going to be no squats, no deadlifts, no lunges, no pull-ups and no bench presses, ergo no possibility of doing anything I would’ve wanted to. What they did have was a free blood pressure measurement with the GGG offering to keep statistics of the results, so that was a positive surprise. They also had two of those Japanese… rodeo… machines that make you look mental when you ride them. They may or may not be of any use. The gym costs ¥200 a pop and for a reason nobody explained to me, shampoo and soap are not allowed to be used in the showers. Obviously. Despite its self-explanatory shortcomings as a gym, it’s either this or paying ¥13,900/month for a private gym in Hiroo, so I guess I’ll just adapt and force myself to enjoy machines that aren’t exactly ideal for people of my height.

-Antti

 

One more workweek is now happily over. Several milestones were achieved, out of which none at work. I managed to save more money than ever before on travel costs by cycling to work every weekday. The end result was 170 pedaled kilometers and 3300 yen more in my pocket instead of the railway system. After having zigzagged between cars for over 1000 kilometers during my first three months I’ve now thoroughly beginning to enjoy all the peculiarities of and advantages of cycling in Tokyo. 5 days straight really took a toll on my leg muscles though so I most likely will not repeat the feat very soon. But I need to do something to keep myself in shape and that is one of the simpler, cheaper options.

After the hard week of sitting in front of a screen I awarded myself by finally going to try the services of Domino’s Nakamurabashi. Upon entering the place, it looked eerily vacated, but a quick “sumimasen” solved the service problem and an incredibly apologetic pizzaiolo ran from the backroom confirming that the place was open. I had already set my eyes on the Italian traditional pizza after weeks of looking at the flyers they keep stuffing in my postbox. (Yes, spammarketing works). It was only traditional in a Japanese sense, though, as the stuffings lay on a millefeuille-crust which was further cut in squares, something they specify in the booklet, as thought anyone gave two shits. Maybe someone does. But I don’t have much respect for someone who judges pizzas based on how they are cut.

A emporter

Take-away (or take-out for all you native English speakers) cost 20% less than the listed price, which was 1360, affordable but not exactly cheap. I also have concerns over the marketing aspect of listing your prices at their max and lowering them on not-so-special occasions. Online orders get -5%, take home gets -20%. Considering there are no seat or tables in the restaurant which is actually just an ordering counter, one would suspect that most people go for the take-out option. Instead, while being pleasantly surprised on the spot, the list price almost acted as a deterrent and made me avoid going to Domino’s altogether. They could revise those flyers.

Once I had received my pizza I cycled to the small park next to my apartment, sat down and dug in, occasionally returning the odd baseball to kids who were playing nearby. The Italian traditional was a very pleasant surprise. Unlike pizzas in Japanese restaurants, this actually was one, millefeuille crust or not. It was so delicious, actually, that after concentrating for 5 secs to throw a baseball back to some kids (far too hard as well, poor fellows had to run to the other side of the park to get it and I was the one who ended up apologizing) a huge crow had appeared to claim a stake in my cheesy goodness. That came out wrong.

What’s a GYM?

Yet the real challenge of the day was still ahead. After a quick pit stop at home, I headed to the gym with my new and shiny Alien card, which proved where I lived and the info of an emergency contact so someone could save my if I die exercising. At the local gym, the lady at the first counter taught me how to use the ticket dispenser, after which I was able to go to the training room area. There, a linguistically challenged but friendly guy made me fill information sheets about general stuff and how susceptible I was to injuries. Then he proceeded to introduce me each and every machine in the room. To my great disappointment, there was no standard benchpress. In fact, there were no barbells altogether, no pull-up bar, and the heaviest dumbbells weighed 5 kilograms. Every exercising opportunity was based on those boring machines where you have to sit as to prevent people from pulling any stunts where they could drop a heavy barbell over themselves AND DIE! That meant that there was no squatting, no deadlifts, no pull-ups, no benches and no lunges, ergo no possibility to do anything I would’ve liked. They had free blood pressure measurement which they keep statistics of though, so that was interesting. And also two of those Japanese rodeo machines that make you look relatively daft when you ride them.

The gym costs 200 yen / pop and for a reason nobody explained to me, shampoo and soap are not allowed to be used in the showers. Despite its obvious shortcomings as a gym, it’s either this or paying 10000/month for a private gym in Hiroo, so I guess I’ll just adapt and learn to enjoy machines that aren’t exactly ideal for people of my height.

Not Fasth Enough

Posted by on May 16, 2011 6 comments

This spring has been a good spring for Finland, and me, when it comes to ice hockey. Naturally, I’ve also experienced the frustration of being on the other side of the world when all the good things have happened. Last night, the Finnish ice hockey team won the IIHF World Championship for only the second time ever, after losing finals in six different championship tournaments (Olympics and World Cup included) between 1995, year of the last championship, and 2011. In late April, HIFK, the only group of burly men I’ve ever called myself a fan of, won the Finnish championship after a 12-year drought. You had to be there. I fucking wasn’t. And as an additional bonus that only I give two shits about, we will get at least one Finn as a Stanley Cup champion in June. Sounds like a moderately good hockey year for Finland. But let’s get back to the IIHF World Championship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dll9THt4Vgs

After a very satisfying win over the Swedes in the final, the country erupted. A score of 6-1 helped right all wrongs that our Western neighbor had inflicted upon us in the rink during the years, and people partied all over Finland until dawn. This shows how much unparalleled joy was drawn from winning, and serves as a premise to the following rant.

Äbäwäbä näin kolmelta aamuyöstä

What really grinds my gears is that some people feel an obligation to criticize the significance of the game, of the tournament, and of the victory. They somehow feel it is important to analyze ice hockey from an international perspective, and point out how this actually means nothing and everybody should calm down and go to sleep.

It’s true that ice hockey is a relatively insignificant sport internationally. Less than a dozen countries realistically compete for the championship, which, to trivialize it even further, is held every single year. In addition to this, the best players in the world have often little interest or possibility to join the tournament. The NHL playoffs are still ongoing, with arguably the best teams and players still competing in North America. Even players whose teams never made the playoff phase are either injured or find it very difficult to find motivation to play in a yearly tournament after playing a season just short of 100 games (pre-season included). Even Teemu Selänne has stated that the reasons given when opting out of national team duty are often just excuses. These are the facts. I don’t argue against facts. I argue against idiots.

Some besserwissers, often Finnish football fans, feel the need to point out how, objectively, we should not give a fuck about the IIHF World Championship. “Why do Finns get so excited about a sport that only a few countries play?” “Stop the hype, the tournament is worthless!” “There are so many sports that we neglect and instead concentrate on stuff that nobody else in the world cares about, like ice hockey, ski jumping and javelin throw!” I remember my basketball coach 15 years ago telling me that there are more registered ballers in Spain than there are hockey players in the world. He made the statement to prove a point about basketball being meaningful, whereas hockey supposedly wasn’t. I disagree.

What's not to like? © Mika Ranta / Helsingin Sanomat

Choo choo, here comes the clue train, last stop is you

Sports are not something that people can forcibly try to enjoy just because they’re internationally popular. Might as well tell a Finn not to enjoy salmiakki (or even better, Salmiakkikossu) because nobody else in the world does either. Countries and cultures have their own traditions, games they’ve played for decades or centuries and that the locals happen to be interested in, no matter how much they are bashed on the head with ridiculous slogans to the contrary.

Should all countries strive to only play and follow the internationally important activities, like football? And how do you measure importance, anyway? By prominence per country times amount of countries? By the amount of money circulating in the major leagues? By the amount of registered players worldwide? I bet cricket and ping pong would score pretty high on the latter. I haven’t really heard anyone complain how Finns don’t concentrate more on cricket.

And let’s suppose all governments made an effort to promote sports directly relative to their worldwide notoriety. Smallish, nationally and culturally relevant but internationally obscure sports (sumo anyone?) would slowly fade, and in the end we would be left with football & pals. How exactly would this achieve anything positive?

In general, I hate the widespread football vs. ice hockey mentality going on in Finland. Unlike some, I fail to see it as a zero-sum game. Why would enjoying ice hockey somehow be detrimental to football? Football is big, but we suck at it. Ice hockey is small, but we’re good at it. Personally, I like both games. Promoting football in Finland is certainly something I’d like to see increase. However, the key to that certainly is not to cry a river over everything ice hockey.

History will be made. © Yle

I know the world is global and international, but ignoring all locality in a field such as sports is beyond ludicrous. Finns are often internally accused of trying to suck up to other, larger countries and constantly wondering how others see us. Isn’t downplaying the importance of ice hockey, to us a nation, just an extension of this sycophancy? “Let’s play what everybody else plays, then people will respect us!” How about we just keep on playing a game that others don’t care about and be proud of it. Never mind the tournament, never mind the players, in 2011 our team won!

People get emotionally involved in sports even though they’re not actually responsible for any of the events that unfold on the field. The first purpose when following sports is to draw enjoyment from something that other people achieve. Rational thinking is thrown out of the window anyway. Why should we, as a nation, feel guilty about getting excited over a world fucking championship? Oh, wrong sport. And wrong championship. And too excited. Who the fuck decides these things? Despite all its shortcomings as a sports event, winning the IIHF World Championship Tournament is not entirely without merit, and even if it were, the only thing that matters is that people care about it. Watching sports, getting excited by sports and celebrating when your team wins is not a novel concept. If you can’t accept that, just pull a hood over your head and flee to the mountains.

-Antti

The author is a dead sea monkey and ice hockey enthusiast

What do you think the next happen now?

Posted by on May 13, 2011 No comments

If I haven’t made any game-breaking mistakes in my personal study plan, I am now one mouse click and four months away from graduation. All I need is for my last essay to be graded, after which I’ll just have to wait for the summer vacation to be over to officially receive my degree. Also, the last essay, which I wrote today, was called a maturity exam, so if it actually measures maturity I may never pass it.

To make the situation even more hilarious, taking an exam abroad at a Finnish Embassy has a set fee of 100€, which I was told was a foreign ministry policy. For once I decided that I was not going to take any kind of arbitrary crap willingly, and took advantage of our foreign minister being one of the rare Finns on twitter by questioning the policies of the institution he’s responsible for. Considering he had replied to a friend’s earlier tweet about casting a vote for him in the parliamentary elections, it was not surprising that he answered me within the hour despite the sarcasm with which I had expressed my disdain for the system. I subsequently sent him a mail which he transferred to one of his assistants. It has now been two days with no further replies. I will resume spamming them on Monday until I receive an answer that satisfies me. That, or they cancel my passport.

Once I was done with proving my maturity by reproducing some of the main topics of my thesis on a couple of sheets of paper, I spent an hour chatting with other trainees at the embassy. The topics covered, among others, duties in Japan, the unenviable task of soothing relatives after a massive earthquake, and how to improve communication between trainees in the future. To make life even more interesting, my boss also offered me the possibility to go to Hiroshima for a week in the beginning of June to look after our emergency embassy facilities. Someone needs to go, and I’m not exactly the most critical human resource at the Tokyo office. Truth be told, my immediate answer was centered more on the efforts of trying to contain my grin than the words that came out of my mouth: something along the lines of  “surewhynot”.

-Antti

Glxblt

Posted by on May 9, 2011 1 comment

Entries have been a little rich in gaming and ramen stories lately, so let’s start with something else; noodles will follow soon enough. With Golden Week nearing its end, I proceeded to do something extravagant on Saturday, and went out to a Sakurahouse Fiesta in Ikebukuro in order to socialize. It was about time as well. Nothing makes you realize you’ve been deprived from civilization too long like putting cooked sausages in a coffee mug due to all other dishes being unavailable. Or biting off a chunk of butter for cooking purposes with your teeth because the knife was almost out of reach. These are fictional examples and I definitely, definitely didn’t behave that way.

The problem with going to meet lots of new people is that I tire quickly. I’m fortunate enough to have lots of good friends, and while they are not here with me at the moment, I tend to get slightly complacent. To quote the great Peter Cook, I’m very bad at being interested in people. And if the new people I meet happen to be uninteresting, I have a very hard time concealing my boredom. Booze does help though.

Despite all my fears, the evening proved quite a pleasant one. The earthquake was a major topic of discussion, as were different nationalities and awkward gaijin situations in Japan. As a bonus achievement, I was able to communicate in Japanese extremely efficiently after eight beers, much like speaking Italian only requires a moustache. I returned home before the last train and was in high enough spirits to buy a box of half-priced sushi at the station Seiyu and enjoy some midnight fishy goodness.

Ota ja Nauti

By accident, I woke up at 5 in the morning on Sunday, the only goddamn day when the Tsukiji fish market is closed. Then Murphy did something, and my internet connection went down as well. Around 9 I finally stopped caring about the router and walked to the station to enjoy the sunny weather accompanied by some curry bread and one of those awful cold canned black coffee things. There was “best” written on the can, but it must have been for irony.

The weather was perfect for cycling, and thus lunch was had at Tetsuya Ramen near Koenji station. I had been passing the shop on my way home from work for three months now, and it had lately become very difficult to refrain from stepping in, so it was ultimately a good thing to get that over with. I don’t really even know what I ordered. Somethingsomething tonkotsu was the name on the ticket dispenser, but weirdly enough the broth tasted more like fish, making me immediately think that something had gone wrong during the ordering process.

Mother's Day Lunch

Unlike Kiraboshi, though, the broth had a pleasant fishy taste. The noodles were really nice and chewy and the neatly placed chashuu slices were excellent as well. The ajitamago (egg) cost extra, rendering the meal as a whole relatively expensive at ¥1290. A serving of rice would have been available for free, but rice is not exactly a rarity in these parts of the world, so I passed. By the end of the meal, the intense saltiness of the broth had began slightly bothering me, but I was satisfied on the whole. This won’t mark my last trip to Tetsuya, as the renowned shop offers several other types of broth (miso, shoyu) that I need to get to try later.

-Antti