Facial tissues are really a thing in Japan. When in Sweden I would use kitchen paper we here use facial tissues. When in Sweden I would use napkins, we here use facial tissues. Facial tissues are everywhere, even in some restaurants you get a package of facial tissues on the table (oh I long for …
I am bemused by the way winter is perceived in the not so cold parts of Japan. Sometimes I feel like an alien who landed on a planet where I admittedly recognize the climate of my home planet but where the concept of seasons and what they mean seem to follow a different set of …
Since our son now is old enough to start to eat normalish food, we got a pamphlet in the mail with some easy recipes and tips for how to prepare and cook home made baby food. On the cover of the pamphlet it says easy even for dad, which made me laugh and at the …
I have vivid memories of my grandmother washing clothes in the sea during our long school holidays that we spend at her summer cottage. It was in the north of Sweden, and the sea water was still beautifully clean although she was very vocal about the industries polluting the sea – that was forty years …
One of the cultural challenges I experienced when moving to Japan was when visiting the post office. I could not speak much Japanese, and they could speak no or very very little English. Add to that the need to fill out form after form when sending parcels or express documents to Sweden, and we have …
Before moving to Japan, one thing that fascinated me is what I call talking home appliances. When visiting Japan I could hear baking machines speak, bath water control panels sing, rice cookers play songs. I thought it cute and dreamy and fancied living in a home where I was surrounded by those friendly machines instead …
With a four months old baby and all the joys and challenges he brings maybe I should be too busy to miss anything, but this week I have been overcome with nostalgic feelings from the time before the face of the world changed. Maybe it is tiredness, maybe it is that autumn is coming, maybe …
How did I manage to do cooking all those years in Sweden without the number one most fantastic indispensable yet most simple kitchen utensil ever created? What I am talking about? Cooking chopsticks – long wooden chopsticks that have completely transformed my way of cooking and have me enjoy my time in the kitchen like …
Children are really celebrated in Japan, a dear friend in Sweden pointed out when I explained about the 100 day celebration for our son. I felt it was a very accurate statement, and I found myself noticing that I had not thought about it myself for a long time – perhaps I have already been …
At the same time as the second wave of Corona infections is unsettling Tokyo, a heat wave is sweeping through Japan. Even the nights are too hot for a walk outside with our baby, but being in a one room apartment day and night is also not ideal, so we have been taking walks underground …
Whether it is my age or the humid summer in Japan I do not know, probably a bit of both, but since moving to Tokyo I have come in contact with skin problems I never had before. Those and the accompanying visits to the doctor, together with all the hospital visits that having a baby …
Having been engulfed by the baby bubble, my awareness is now on things I did not think about before (and vice versa I am sure, like having to think really hard to know what day it is). Being a first time father, I have no experience of being in the Swedish baby bubble, so instead …