Todoroki Keikoku

I wonder where all this time vanish. Just a moment ago t was 1st and now is already 26th... Oh well. I wanted to share with you one of my experiences around Tokyo: Todoroki Keikoku walk. In the middle of the huge city of Tokyo, there is always a surprising small green places, where you can forget the city around you. Todoroki Keikoku is one of those. A little bit aside from well known Yamanote line, you find a small Todoroki station and after maybe 100 meters walk a pretty red bridge and stairs that takes you beneath it. Welcome to Todoroki Keikoku park walk.

The view is like you would walk within a forest, only voices surrounding you are made by nature, no car voices down here. The walk follows the river where you can wash your feet if feeling like it. Some locals make almost the whole way walking in water instead of the path. From the path area you can find a Buddhist temple that has a special place for pets that have gone to a better place. Also a small riverside traditional Japanese tea house that sells kakigori (shaved ice) during summertime as well as other traditional sweets and of course tea. While moving forward on the other side will also be a Japanese garden, that has a tea service for visitors if you are lucky with the day you pick.

Todoroki Keikoku walk ends to a suburb area, but if you keep walking straight forward though it, you will arrive to another green area. A bigger river and green fields surrounding it. I still find it pretty weird scene in Tokyo, since close to place I live there is nothing like that. Warmly recommend this walk if in need of nature while living or visiting in Tokyo!

First days in Japan

We have been now in Tokyo for 3 days. Our flight arrived to Narita airport 27th of December, half hour late from schedule, but this time it felt tike the whole flight took much less time than before. I even managed to sleep two hours in plane which is pretty spectacular for me since I barely ever am able to sleep in anything which moves.

Tip for people coming to Japan and thinking about money exchange: do it in Japan. We got some money in cash as a christmas present and I'm so glad we didn't rush to change it in Helsinki-Vantaa airport or any other location in Finland. The airport offered a course of 126 yen / 1 euro. In Japan the airport exchange rate was 146 yen / 1 euro. a Huge difference, saved money right there.

(Another tip in finnish, since I know it to work in Finland, but not sure about other countries: Toinen hyvä tapa vaihtaa rahaa todella hyvällä kurssilla (verrattuna Forexiin sun muihin suurempiin valuutan vaihtajiin), varsinkin jos haluaa vaihtaa suuremman summan kerralla, on ottaa suoraan yhteyttä omaan pankkiin. OP:llä, sekä Nordealla on ainakin niin kutsuttu "matkavaluutta" palvelu, jonka avulla voi nettipankissa valita toivomansa määrän vierasta valuuttaa, vaikkapa 100 000 jeniä ja pankki veloittaa suoraan tililtä summan euroina. Nordealla valuutan noutopaikka on oma konttori, OP:llä voi valita oman konttorin tai Helsinki-Vantaan lentokentän noutopisteen välillä. Minimi aika vaihdlle on 24 tuntia ja kurssi on todella paljon parempi verrattuna muihin (itse kun vaihdoin, kurssini oli 143/1, kun Forex olisi tarjonnut samana päivänä 134/1). Siirrosta menee n. 10 euron verran palvelumaksua riippuen summasta.)

We didn't hurry too much out from the plane and were lucky enough to walk right to the passport check in. That was were the fun begun. We first tried to ask from an airport employee who directed the passanger traffic, where to excatly go when we didn't want to register as tourists, but to get the Residence Card. She didn't know right away, but put us side from the line and after a moment ordered us back to the same line with others. After walking about 20 meters in a line, another emplyee comes and asks "how long time". We response "one year" as it stands in our visas. The employee tells us to wait again side from the line and goes to another female employee. She asks her "doosuru" (japanese meaning "what do i do") so that even we can hear. After a moment of husstle, showing our passport, COE and visa tags for multiple people (for some people twice) we were guided to a line which said "recidence card". I couldn't help but to think why was it so hard in the first place.

It took only few minutes and it was my turn to go to a register. A female employee took my papers and with few word instuctions told me to watch to the camera and give the finger prints. All that went in a pretty same way as it goes when you come as a tourist. Then she kindly told me to wait for a little longer and soon my Recidence Card was printed out. I'm glad they used the same picture as in COE, becouse I for sure didn't look very sharp that moment after the flight. I moved along and it was Mikko's turn.

Our luggage were already took off from the luggage line, since it obviously took much more longer time from us to get though all the paper work. Everything was here and undamaged. The person in Customs seemed as surprised as the employees before when told that we were staying for a one year. I'm starting to wonder if it really isn't that common as I though it was?

We choose the JR Keisei-line as our transportation to Nippori, becouse Skyliner had just left 5 minutes ago and the next one would go after an hour. It was really nostalgic to arrive to Nippori. It was the first station I arrived when I first came to Japan and it looked still excatly same. Our journey continued with Yamanote-line to Shinjuku and from there by Chuo-line to Koenji before reaching our destination.

Koenji is amazing. I promise to load up photos very soon! Nekotalo is amazing too. The room was really much bigger than what we had expected and also warmer. Our landlord was there to show all the manners and machinery from our apartment and then we singed the contracts. Water, electricity and gas bills would come separetly from the rent so we also made contracts for those. I wait anxiously how we are going to sort those down for the first time ^^.

Exhousted we were. And quite frankly I haven't really got over with the jet lag yet and experience a lot off tiredness, nausea and dizziness even after these few days. I'm so glad we came here so early, it would have been pitty to go to school feeling like this! Well, jet lag like this usually goes way in 3 to 5 days, so keep thumbs up for me.

Mata ne!

ps. We found out that the City Hall is not open from 29th of December to 4th of January becouse of long New Year holidays. So we can't go to register our Residence Cards or get the health insurance. For anyone doing this, a small tip, estimate the days so that the office is actually open, becouse we will be in a quite hurry when it opens ;) (RC has to be registered in two weeks from landing)

Fuji-san

2 months left!

Today there is only 2 months left until our take off. The last month was rough between waiting to get some good news about job situation and doing some one-day shifts as a bartender and studying Japanese. Though the last mentioned received terribly small amount of attention between everything else. I have now settled down all the arriving details with our landlord and now we are only waiting for our visas. They should send then COE data for us in the end of next month (November), so that we can do the last payment (payment for 6 months of school) and after that receive our real visas from the embassy here in Helsinki.

I have been forming a bucket list for Japan for a year now and been able to gather plenty of interesting cafés, restaurants, city areas and also events that I would like to see in Tokyo, but also in other places in Japan. We already know where our holidays (two weeks at the time) are settling, so if we just have enough money we want to visit Osaka during spring and maybe Kyoto at the autumn. We also have a list of our family members as well as some friends that are planning to come to see us while we're there. My greatest concern is that we're too busy with school to actually guide people, but that is left to be seen in January. The school comes first after all.

I miss Tokyo so much and I can't even express how excited I'm to get there so soon. Piece by piece we are having everything done for the trip. I already stopped my contract with the gym I've been using due to two months expiration time and also arranged our internet to end few days before leaving, after all we're going to hand over the apartment keys days before actual depart so that we can spend some time with our families.

Here is some autumn pics I took few weeks ago <3