Me me me

Hallå. So i started to write an introduction about myself to a work thing, but it ended up way too long, so i post it here instead ahah.

I like writing so i probably end up telling my whole life story so bear with me.. 🐻

My name is Minttumaari, but only my mom and her best friend call me that. You are free to use it if you can pronounce it =) i am 32 years old, and I was born in Kerava, which is kinda like Randers of Finland. Its about half an hour train ride from the capital Helsinki. Kerava has a stinky reputation for some reason. One time i was riding a taxi with a friend from a neighboring city and the taxi driver literally didnt want to take us to Kerava. I dont remember where we ended up though (i was drunk). 

Anyway, I work with websites in the content department, which i love. I made my first website when i was about 10 years old to a service called expage.com. Back then i learned how to steal code from other websites, classic 2000s stuff like <marquee>. That website i made was a virtual cattery called Sateenkaarikenneli (rainbow kennel) where users come and take care of cats by writing to my guestbook. After that ive always had some kind of website going on, for example as a teenager i created a role playing community called Enelya, where everyone was elves in a magical school..for some reason it blew up and suddenly it wasnt just a school anymore but a whole world. Eventually i got bored with it and left, but it just continued to live on its own for a while. 

I lived in Kerava in the same house for 23 years until I moved to Denmark. I have 2 older brothers who have also lived abroad. Other one was a professional ice hockey player and through hockey deals he has lived in like 10 different countries. He quit hockey about 2 years ago tho. 

The other one is my favourite however, because he didnt tease me as much as the hockey one when we were kids. Hes also a nerd just like me. When i was about 14 years old or something, he showed me this japanese movie called Battle Royale. Ever since that i became a huge weeb (fan of japanese stuff). My brother went to Japan as an exchange student and studied japanese language before going and I learned it together with him. Then I became a fan of J-rock and K-pop, watched J- and K-drama and anime all the time as well as drank matcha and ate ramen. Im not doing those things anymore, but still love Japan and other asian cultures. I have been to Japan 3 times now. Next time i wanna go to Hong Kong tho, it looks like a trashy version of Tokyo! So cool. 

When i was 18 years old, i got my first grown up job at a beer factory. Kerava is known for this factory so i was very proud! It was also very interesting for people at parties when they found out, because well..im making beer! I was still living at home, so suddenly i had lots of money. I started to travel around a lot. I travelled all the time between ages 18 to 25. I was also very stingy with money, so i only did budget traveling. Sometimes to the extreme. I have slept in boat corridors, airports, lobby of a hostel, couch surfing at random peoples house etc. Worst one was this 10€ dirty hostel where homeless people and hookers actually lived in. And one time i hitch hiked from denmark all the way to belgium and then back again. 

At 25 i became a foodie and started to use my money on restaurants instead of plane tickets. I actually started to hate travelling at this point. The packing, the anxious waiting, bus rides, plane rides... Everytime i travel now, i keep asking why havent they invented teleports yet. 

I moved to Kolding in DK 10 years ago to study multimedia design. I just saw an ad on the newspaper and i was like "hey, i wanna study that and i wanna live abroad!" I knew nothing about DK, so i went to Wikipedia and found out that danes eat hot dogs and drink Cocio in the streets. Then when i came here and saw that they actually did that, i thought that was hilarious. I found a nice danish boy from my class and thats why i accidentally stayed in this random ass country. I did some freelancing and had my own e-commerce site for a while where I sold wine for cats.. i was the first one to do that in Europe so business was blooming for a while. 

We moved to Copenhagen because i got a job at Traffic Lab in 2018. My bf is a frontend developer and his company conveniently had an office in CPH too so he just got moved there. First we moved to Rødovre and recently we moved to Ørestad....both names are horrendous to pronounce. I love CPH and my favorite place is Tivoli! 

When i started in Traffic Lab, we just spent our days writing reviews and seo-texts! And then uploading them. Those were some simple days man. 

Then i had a coronababy in 2020. Her name is Lumi and she is 1 year 4 months old now. I wasnt a kid person before, but after having her, i suddenly love all babies and toddlers. Some weird mama thing happened. Lumi keeps waking up at night and i NEVER get a full nights sleep. Do you know that feeling when someone wakes you up, how angry you get? Well im so pissed off every night. Luckily shes cute during the day. When shes not being a troublemaker. 

Random stuff:

- cats are the best and my cat Nalle was the best cat to ever exist

- im into dreams and i can trigger lucid dreams easily (ones where you can control the dream) i even got a tattoo thats says "dreams" in japanese. I have once achieved out-of-body experience too!

- i like to paint acrylic paintings, but after having a kid i dont have time for anything

- i wanted to become an animator

- i love edm festivals

- when i was like 7 year old my favorite kind of music was gangsta rap

- i miss having a sauna at home and will definitely build our own sauna when i have money

- i saw ufos when i was a small kid probably. It was a winter evening so it was already dark outside and only kids outside playing in the snow. Then everyone was pointing to the sky and there was these lights in formation. Then soon they were gone again. Realized only few years later that it was actually kinda weird

tokyo has become too mainstream

my third time going to japan happened this summer 2019 – with my bf! previously i have only gone with friends and mostly partied and was drunk most of the time, so it was a bit different this time. also the weather wasn't as good this time. only about 18-25C. we had only one day when it was 30C. there were rainy days as well. still, japan was good as always. 

oh, i noticed that there seemed to be a lot more people in certain spots, where i remember from previous times there weren't so many people... so we looked at statistics and apparently the tourist amount has tripled since my last visits (2009 and 2011) so that was kind of a bummer.

first i wanted to go to harajuku for some shopping.

and got my beloved matcha latte! i had planned to go to this harajuku rooftop starbucks someday and then we accidentally just ended up here without even planning it haha

there were cool views from that rooftop

our hotel had a cute little park next to it

we enjoyed kombini food a couple of times lol, the food is such good quality! in here we had yakiniku and omuraisu

then it was time to go to akihabara, but it was raining so much..

so many gachapon. and since in japan they still use cash everywhere and you get pocket full of coins, so its pretty easy to just use those coins on useless figures that you can collect from gachapon.

japan is the most materialistic country probably in the world. even when youre just visiting you feel like you need to collect all these weird characters, its such an odd atmosphere

and damn they waste plastic SO MUCH. everything useless is wrapped in plastic. and everyone uses one time uses utensils for food everyday.

this alley was so low he couldn't walk straight in there hahha

japan makes the cutest plushies

welcome to our room tour! there were standard slippers at the door + one time use slippers, which i used after shower and then the cleaners actually changed them everytime they cleaned the room.. once again such stupid waste. i mean they probably threw them in the trash.

i love japanese hotels, cause they are always well equipped with face cleansers and such

we had cute pink pajamas too

we met up with my bfs dad and he took us to a cool sea side restaurant near shinagawa

this tuna was one of the best things i have tasted in a while!

there was this danish bar, but the pastries they made had nothing to do with denmark

this is from akasaka, the city where we lived. pretty cute streets full of restaurants that were full of salarymen

some kombini stuff + socks (dont look at my bra..)

i have seen this shit on the internet and now i saw it live. this old geezer puts his cats on random places to "sleep" and tons of people think its cute and take pictures. but i dont think those cats are happy

so as maybe someone guessed from that previous hachiko statue, now were in shibuya for some shopping. i always feel so insecure and ugly when i go here, since this is like the capital of fashion.

shibuya has the coolest looking people and so many loud ads everywhere

we went to a matsuri in asakusabashi and had the best takoyaki i have ever had in my life. and some yakisoba, as is tradition at a matsuri

there was this super good ramen place near our hotel!

it was just raining and raining so much.... now it was REALLY rain season and not fake one like my previous visits

we went to an awesome kaiten sushi in shinjuku if i recall correctly and i ordered sashimi and holy hell that was some delicious stuff!

i didnt even remember how much better and actually different japanese sushi is compared to our mediocre ones here in europe! you can actually taste how fresh and fatty the fish is!! its just SUPREME.

oh and we found this gourmet shop that had seriously amazing foods. like look at this sashimi they had oh gawd.

we went to this huge pokemon center deluxe and i got a fluffy sleeping eevee from there.

this guy was so cute too, but i have a problem with buying too many plushies, im not a kid anymore!!

japanese sandwiches are SUPERIOR to anything else in the world. its so fluffy!!!!!

that crab on the wall was moving its legs!

im realizing how stupid it was to take so many upright pictures. i guess i thought i'll just post it to instagram, but i didnt lol

shinjuku is the best part of tokyo, i think it never sleeps.

i think it was windy

we found godzilla on top of that building

this place is my love!

their tiger had bags with "halløj shinjuku" and other city parts names, just like in copenhagen! so i had to get a shinjuku one ahah..even though i think these ones have a little bit different design sadly

then we went to a izakaya and i had calpis sawaa after 8 years of waiting! and some yakitori on the side. it was an assortment with all the weird yakitoris included.

the neon lights looked pretty cool when the ground was wet. i wish i brought my real camera. could have made some badass cyber punk images.

heres my 2 expensive shoppings: anello bag and adidas shoes. we noticed that ALL japanese people had these anello bags and i thought they looked cute, so i researched a little and found out that they are pretty good and come in a huge variety of materials, sizes, colours etc

first time trying teppanyaki! its usually expensive, but we did a trick and went during lunch time when it was pretty reasonable price! the chef cooked everything on the table.

the lunch offer included a whole setto and it was so good!

then we went to look at this huge shrine that was very close to our place in akasaka

this alley was the best part of that shrine! so cool!

found the weird vending machine corner in akihabara. it was literally in a hole in the wall that was full of garbage..

there was some weird shit in those machines like fake beetles.. we didnt buy anything

tempura with some rice and tsukemen! that tempura was sooo amazing.. it doesnt compare to anything our restaurants in europe try to do. i seriously cant with this japanese food in JAPAN. so good.

we almost went up to tokyo skytree, but it was too cloudy and too expensive so naaahh. maybe next time

asakusa shrine. it was quite nostalgic in here, i used to live here during my previous visit!

we drank from the vending machines everyday. this also partly because of all the spare coins

and we saw a geisha in asakusa! i dont actually remember seeing a geishas face so clearly like i did now! i have seen them before in kyoto, but always just briefly from behind or something like that. so this was a first!

train trip to hakone with cute country side views

hakone train station was promising with this amazing view where we immediately had to pose

this cute seaside village was super cute too

i wish we just stayed in this place for a little longer

we took a cruiseship to look at some sights in hakone

and we actually saw fuji-san with its snowy tip!

then had some omurice with a nice view

we were supposed to go look at owakudani volcano crater. it was actually the whole reason i wanted to go to hakone. but apparently it had some volcanic activity and it was CLOSED. then we werent sure where were supposed to go now and we got a little bit lost and annoyed, not gonna lie

we rode this cute old train though, which is apparently gonna retire completely next month

back to tokyo with very good seats in the train!

had some lovely bento in the train as apparently is a tradition

metropolitan government building in shinjuku is free and has 365 view of tokyo

there was a 15min wait in line to the elevators. i do not remember waiting that long last time i was here with some locals. maybe its just the tourists that are taking over or maybe last time i came during a slower time?

even though the sky looks kind of white, we actually saw the tip of fuji-san again! its so crazy how big that mountain is that we can see it all the way from here!

piss alley in shinjuku, full of tiny yakitori joints that we didnt even wanna try to go in

met up with my friend and went to izakaya that didnt even have any signs on the door or anything, you just had to know it! we ordered soo many tasty izakaya foods and drinks

i havent seen this boi in 8 years

i seriously love ramen in japan. we only ate ramen 2 times. we should have eaten it more.. sure, we have a few ramen joints in copenhagen, but you know, ITS NOT AS GOOD!!!!!

this ramen place had a speciality: cheeze gyoza, so ofc we had to try it! it was good

i used to love tokyo metro for some reason, but now i dont care anymore.. i guess back in the day i still lived in small kerava, where we didnt have metro lol. now that i live in copenhagen i HATE all metros. so crowded and pisses me off ahahah

in tokyo i still love all the announcements and chimes in metro stations! and i love that every station has a worker (or several) and they make some hand gestures and announcements to every single train that arrives! what is that, what do they even do?!?! i just love it!! in copenhagen theres literally NO staff anywhere! not even the train itself, since its automated.

we had a tub, so we had to use some bathbombs! i miss having a tub at home... or sauna =(

went to look at meiji shrine and was shocked at how many people there were compared to my previous visits

then we went to a kaiten sushi which was amazing once again. this is scallop with some sauce!

salmon that was marinated in something..cant remember what, but it melted in my mouth!!

eel with some sauce! i fell in love with unagi during this trip! oh yea, this sushi place had that little train (shinkansen) that brings your special orders in front of you when you order from the screen haha.

broiled tuna. cant remember what was on top, but holy hell all of these sushis are all champions. why cant we have real sushi in here!!

totoro shop, where i wanted to bring home a huge yelling totoro, but my bf said i cant.

hanging out at an 60s tokyo izakaya!

i wish that station was actually a teleport station. i would go to tokyo everyday man!! to eat ALL the food!

watched the sunset at odaiba beach ahaha that was kinda cute! it was full of japanese youngsters enjoying summer!

then we tried to find food from the nearby malls. literally MALLS, there were many..

the beach had some blinking christmas lights and everything seemed like were on a holiday

we found a vintage arcade place! it was a big place and so much to explore!! too bad it was so late when we found it! gotta come here next time with better time. btw check out this chick with anello bag..i TOLD YOU everyone has it!

finally found food. it was our last dinner and apparently we decided to not eat japanese.

rainbow bridge and main parts of tokyo all lit up!

found a fake statue of liberty there too lolol.

overall i think it was cool in japan this time, specially because it was so cheap for me. but i think im ready to go explore other asian metropolitans now, like south korea, singapore and malaysia!