Water

This time I thought I'd write about water. It is the most important element for me, and something I've always felt comfortable with. Water has been always there - in the land of thousand lakes you can't really avoid it. 

I think I learned to swim when I was 6. Maybe 7. When I was a kid, I lived 500 metres away from the nearest beach, and also enjoyed swimming at our summer house.

When I write really cheesy poetry, I mostly write about rain. When I'm looking for a place to relax, I want it to be by a lake or a river. 

There is nothing better than going rowing in the middle of a white summer night when it's all quiet and the water is a mirror. 

I live in a city where there's water everywhere. There's a big lake in the middle of the city (as in many cities around here). I never thought I'd miss water that much, but being abroad where all the water was either the vast sea in the coast or rivers in the inland made me think that I really want to be close to this "tame" water. Not flowing rivers or stormy seas, but lakes. 

Dreaming wide awake

I went to see Inception yesterday. It was a good movie.

After the movie the return to reality was a painful one. I usually dream a lot, but lately, as I've been suffering from insomnia, I haven't been able to dream that much. Watching a movie all about dreaming made me exhausted as I realised how I lacked dreams and proper sleep. I went home, took a shower, and went to bed. I woke up 13 hours later. I don't think I dreamt much, because I can't remember any of the dreams.

Ok, sure, everyone dreams all the time, but only occasionally those dreams are remembered. I've been able to remember my dreams almost every morning, because of which my friends have been labeling me as a freak. I like dreaming, I like sleeping, and remembering dreams comes naturally.

Insomnia is my worst enemy. Sleeping little may appear as if I had a lot more time to do things, but the more I stay awake, the less I get done, and the more restless I become. I need healthy, natural sleep. It's rare these days. In addition to stress, the weather is keeping me awake. The air in the room is stale, but the air outside is too hot. Freshness is found only in the water.

Next time I'll write about something more interesting. I'm still groggy after those 13 hours.

Fantastic!

Hi, I went to Finncon over the weekend, and it was awesome. 

So many thoughts about science fiction and fantasy and different fandoms in general started going back and forth inside my head, and now it's like... I thought I knew where I was, and what I liked, but now I feel that I'm a newbie, and that I don't know the stuff I should know. 

I read a lot of different stuff these days, but I have to admit that I haven't been reading "classic" science fiction. Maybe I should. I've been more interested in the weird fantasy and science fiction without the science, so where do I actually fit in the scene? 

Anyway, I wrote a longer rant about scifi, fantasy and stuff in the writing blog, so if you're into that, check it out.

Pictoresque

Ok I'm supposed to get something done, so I'll just write something here and pretend that I'm busy doing something. 

I have always been a visual person. I have photographic memory, I remember maps easily, and at reading for an exam I used to remember what part of the page a thing was written. When I was a kid I used to go to an art club, and at school I loved arts. When I started writing something, I had to design the world, costumes, people. I drew maps of the world, pictures of the leaves the trees have, the clothes the people wear. Occasionally I just painted with colours until the mess turned into something. I designed and made my own clothes at some point. Everyone in my family predicted me to become an artist of some kind. 

I'm about to have an M.A. in linguistics. Where did I go wrong? 

Anyway, I still like drawing. I doodle something every now and then, but most of the time, if I bother to start drawing something, I draw floorplans for the house of my dreams. The house I'll build when I marry a rich dude or win in a lottery or get a real job. I love planning houses. I don't think I could design a home for someone else, though, which is why I think I never went to design school.

And there's a new hobby too! This new visual hobby/love/obsession has crept from behind my shoulder in the past 4 or so years. It's photography.

When I was a kid, I had had an old Minolta 7s which I got from my uncle (RIP), and I remember taking that to a summer camp. All the other kids had really funky cameras with zoom, and I had this huge thing. I felt really clumsy with the camera, as taking pictures took ages. But, if I hadn't had this baby with its functions, I would not have understood the chances I'd have 7 years later.

I remember when I got my first digital camera in 2006, and started playing with the functions. It was so much fun seeing the product right there. The camera was a Canon PowerShot A530. It served me until its unexpexted death on an Airbus A330 in 2009 on the way home from Japan. This is one of the first pictures I took with the camera. And that pretty house in the corner was torn down last year.

After that camera left this world (well, technically it still works, if I have a desire to take pictures with a lot of black and weird stripes in them), I got a Canon DIGITAL IXUS 100 IS. I thought of buying another PowerShot, because they have funky functions, but this time I decided to go for small and light and less battery consuming. (Really, PowerShots apparently get their power shots out of batteries, and damn those cameras can drink!)

Anyway, after the digital age started, I've been carrying my camera practically everywhere. I mostly like taking pictures of sceneries, curious details and other "art", but most of the time I end up taking pictures of my friends doing something stupid... 

Ok, I'll share a picture. One of my favourites this year. 

Taken at my family's summer house, by the lake at 3am or something in the morning. White nights are lovely. Mist is lovely.

I started a daily photography blog at blipfoto.

Teahouse

I love tea. 

 

 

Two weeks ago I was in possession of 25 different kinds of tea. Most of them are teabags, of which I don't like anymore. I prefer to have my tea as loose tea, as it is more proper. I have also moved away from sweet teas that taste fruity. Too bad good green tea isn't available in most of the cafés around here, and I have to choose some fruity - yet nostalgic - bag tea.

 

A few years ago I used to have my tea with 4 spoons of sugar. Nowadays, if I happen to drink tea that isn't green - automatically without sugar - or plain black, I put half a spoon of sugar. Or one cube. And a bit of milk, depending on the kind of tea. It was the only tea I knew. 

 

My favourite tea is Japanese sencha, and the most tasty kind was the one I bought from the Kansai airport, where I had to get rid of the last yen I had. Within the past couple of years I've been drinking mostly green tea. Sencha, shincha, ryokucha. In Japan I fell in love with maccha, the powdered green tea that's used to give flavour to everything from candy to cake and to chocolate and even coffee. In addition to the normal tea ceremony way of drinking it, I was at some stage introduced to maccha latte, which is basically a caffe latte made of green tea. The best maccha latte café so far has been Doutor Coffee. Their maccha latte is deadly. Starbucks makes a nice maccha frappecino, but I still prefer Doutor. There's something artificial about Starbucks's drinks. 

 

Green tea - to be drank with or without milk - comes in different kinds of powders in addition to the real thing. These powders can be used for baking, or as a drink. There is also maccha latte powder - add only hot water! The taste isn't of course the same as in a café, but pretty close. 

 

The green tea available in Finland is... well, let's just say that Twinings and Lipton are the primary brands, and their green tea... Well, yeah. There's a smaller Finnish company that sells "Japan Sencha", but that tea has not seen Japan or sencha. The few times I've drank it... I do not intend to anymore. 

 

Out of black teas, I have always had a loving relationship with Earl Grey. It is one of the few black teas I really like, and one of the kinds of tea I have to always have. I drink my Earl Grey with honey and milk, but I often forget about the honey...

J.B.Honey

Because it's too hot in the room and I can't sleep, I'll write a short introduction. Third entry in a short time, but... Haha, my blog, my rules.

I blog a lot. Occasionally I think I blog too much. This is my 6th blog on Blogspot; 3 of them show in my profile. 

I want to think that I am an aspiring writer, and I rant about writing in Typewriter Adventures. I also want to think that I can speak Japanese, and I blog in Japanese in 地下室のメロディー. I thought of combining all three into one MASSIVE SUPERBLOG, but I didn't want to lose the Japanese layout on 地下室, so they're separate.

I also have a blog on Livejournal, but it's full of private stuff such as naughty dreams, embarrassing photos, and hazy reports of nightly hangouts (I do go out sometimes!). Private things. I am on Facebook and on Last.fm, and I follow way too many pointless Cheezburger blogs that prevent me from getting any work done. 

My Blogger name (also the name of the Japanese blog) is Jonathan Jet-Coaster, which is a song by BUCK-TICK. No, my real name is not Jonathan, but if I were to change my name, Jet-Coaster would be an awesome last name, don't you think? The name for this blog, jetblackhoney, is a reference to a song called J.B.Honey by a Japanese band called Lucy. Lucy is awesome, but you need to know who 今井寿 (Imai Hisashi) is to really get the awesomeness. And to know Imai Hisashi, you might just become a BUCK-TICK fan. 

English is not my native language, nor is Japanese. I come from the northern wastelands of Finland, where at the moment nights are white and making my insomnia even worse.

I am currently reading Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier, a lovely Finnish translation from 1939, and my deceased grandmother's name on the first page must be from the same year.

三味線

I ran into something too much awesome today.

The only thing that's disappointing me slightly, though, is the fact that cat skin is used to make shamisen.

Combining traditions and modern things is something I've always loved about Japan. I love seeing traditional crafts, traditional clothing, and hearing traditional music. In Finland hearing traditional music... Well, I don't want to say that it makes me feel embarrassed, but I'm not used to it. And I don't think it's that beautiful either. And what it comes to traditional clothing... National costumes are only worn on very special occasions by very old people.

Entering.

Wikipedia says that the word "typewriter" is the longest [English] word that can be typed using only one row of keys.