Hey all! I haven’t written anything in ages because i’ve been ghastly busy during the last few weeks, and in Tokyo during this one.Let’s see. The time before my leave (R&R in UN-speak) went mostly preparing for the state visit of Indonesia’s president Susilo Bambang Yudhoyno. The visit was a Big Deal for Timor-Leste; it was the first presidential visit as a free nation, and it was from Indonesia. Everybody who worked to make the visit succeed worked insane hours, and it paid off. The visit was a success and everybody was patting each others’ backs when it was over.

As said, i am now away from my post, spending this week in Tokyo. No matter how much i like working in Timor-Leste, with the UN, with my colleagues and with my friends, it is r-e-a-l-l-y nice to give it a rest for a while.So why Tokyo? Tokyo i chose because i believed it to be the diametrical opposite to Dili. While Dili is a small and developing, rather dusty place, Tokyo, i reasoned, is a Big City with Blinking Lights and Urban Civilisation En Masse. And boy was i right. Also, my old project manager Ossi, who i’ve managed to keep in irregular touch with over the years but whom i hadn’t seen in years, lives and works in Tokyo, so there’s another good reason to go.

A flight out of Dili (that i nearly missed) and an eight hour stop in Bali, part of which i was taxied around various southen parts of the island. I probably paid an overprice, but what do you expect from a tourist. Still, the driver was nice and i had a good time, so it wasn’t that bad. And then on to the Tokyo flight, where i actually managed to sleep most of the trip.

Ahhhhh, Tokyo. Most of the time here, i’ve actually spent just absorbing. Absorbing those blinking lights, absorbing the city, absorbing the hugeness of it all. I haven’t really done any serious shopping, though i’ve been to bunches of stores. And i’ve discovered that Starbucks really is a nice invention and that you can get a huge drink only remotely related to coffee for ¥ 490 (about four-fifty in USD). Like the strawberry frappuccino, which probably does have some espresso at the bottom but reallly is just a milkshake for grown ups.Tokyo, for those like me who didn’t really know anything about this place, is huge. Wikitravel reports Tokyo is 2000 square kilometers big. That’s colossal, in Finnish terms. There are a whole lot of countries that are smaller than that. I visited the Tokyo Tower (which rather resembles a Tower i have seen in Paris) the other day, to look over the town from The Special Observatory (oh yes) at 250 meter, not including the small hill the tower already is standing on. The city Just Goes On. Apart from continuing very far into the sea, Tokyo just spans and spans as far as the eye can see, and then some. It is boggling.

There are a whole bunch of districts in Tokyo, and at least for the districts that this gaijin has been to, the different districts have different specialities. Shibuya has shopping (ok, so does a bunch of other districts), Roppongi is the Party District, Odaiba is a futuristic man-made island, and Akihabara is the geek mecca, the place they sell cables, cell phones and of course computers (and manga comics of all kind).And yes, i know these aren’t what officially is known as districts, wards, or kus.

The first night here, Ossi took me to Roppongi. First, we landed at the Maple Leaf pub, which is an irish pub that plays progressive rock. Yup. Heaven. A few pints later, and some chatter with the friendly prog-playing bartender Nils, we headed for a nearly opened bar Mojo and helped the staff to develop the drink which would later be known as The Mojo. The one we voted on contains, uh, alcohol, alcohol and some lemon (they didn’t have sake and battery), but we did sample about seven different iterations of The Mojo. I think the alcohol and the alcohol might have been rhum and triple sec. The lemon juice could have been lime. But it was all very good.

From there on, we went to the joint known as Gas Panic (described by Wikitravel on the Roppongi page). Though the music was rather generic, the crowd was absolutely wild and there was not a single low-key moment. I lost my voice chanting “Helsinki! Helsinki!” when the DJ played Darude’s Sandstorm as one of the last tracks of the night.A sign that neither of us was really getting old was that we left the place, not because we were tired or too-drunk-to-party, but rather because the establishment was about to close its doors for the night. It was five outside, and we popped over to the nearby McDonalds for some burgers.

The next day was painful. Ossi slept until half past seventeen and i decided to play the new kuha. record (for the first time!), since it was clear that the day wasn’t going to get any better anyway. My head hurt and my teeth resonated the pain. It was Not Good, and we decided that we will never drink again. Again. We also had our breakfast at another nearby McDonalds, went home through the am/pm store and the Starbuck’s, and geeked.

Another day, i visited Odaiba. While i didn’t consider Tokyo to be the place of my futuristic dreams when i sat on the train from the airport to downtown, this place changed my views. One way to get to Odaiba is by a self-steered train-on-buswheels kind of thing, and if this ain’t scifi enough, the tracks are laid out ten or so meters above the ground, running through the skyscraper landscape and over the Rainbow Bridge to the island itself. It was stunning. I stood at the front of the first car and gazed insanely around me, shooting pictures as we went. It was…. impressive.

In Odaiba, i spent half the day just smiling and absorbing the surroundings of a shopping mall and the almost surreal architecture. When darkness came around, i took a walk towards the big ferris wheel down there and visited a game hall and the Toyota design centre. The Toyota place was more an exhibition (many, actually) than a car shop. The most fascinating item was a car that drove itself on a track around the Toyota buildings. For ¥ 200, i took a ride. It felt almost like being Jeremy Clarkson on Top Gear, although a lot slower. 16 km/h might not have impressed Jeremy, but i was rather taken, and i’m not sure i would have wanted to do ninety-degree turns on a track not much wider than the car itself on 16 km/h — in a car which essentially is a computer on wheels, and decidedly not mine to scratch.

Right then. Akihabara (Apinaharava) is a place larger than yours truly can fathom in a days work. The place is stuffed with computer stores, home electronics, cell phones, radio scanners, portable digital music players, dvd- and manga stores (i stress, of all sorts), game halls and a whole area of small market stalls selling cables, soldering irons and any piece of electronic component imaginable. It was a tinkerer’s paradise. And i didn’t really buy anything! It feels so … wrong. But i didn’t really bring enough money for a trip like that, so it was mostly window shopping.

They have kawaii laptops that fit a hip-hoppers watch pocket and weighs 0.9 kg. They have flat screen televisions 55 inch (140 cm) wide in high-res digital TV that looked Just Amazing, and dedicated TV stools for optimal viewing and hearing, and a massage. Surely i’m not going to get a TV of any size back home but one of those laptops would be really nice, since i probably need to return the laptop i have kindly been allowed to borrow from the Australian government (thanks guys) since mine wouldn’t provice me with one.Anyways, i will need to visit Akihabara one more time before i go home.

There is plenty more to tell, but i can’t believe i still have any reader left. Like, for example, that different train stations have different little melodies they play so you are sure to get off the train on the right stop, or the toilet rings are heated here and it actually feels rather nice after the initial shock. Or that the girl in Starbuck’s, McDonalds or Wendy’s Just Can’t Talk English (and so i ended up ordering a BBQ meal by pointing on the picture by the cash till… and managing to point myself to a cup of cool green japanese tea as beverage — a taste i have yet to fully acquire).Or that i had forgotten just how nice a shower that showers a steady stream of water that is of a steady temperature and does/is so for just as long as you want is…. or a broadband connection that is 100 Mbps and Just Works (with it, Skype just works too — and Azureus).It’s just so nice here that i don’t feel i want to go back! Thankfully i have to