So. I’ve not posted an update on the site in a long, long while. As one might guess from the title of this post, my excuse is that I had been, until recently, preparing for an entrance exam for nearly half a year – that, and the fact that I am a lazy sod. Whatever you think of my excuses, I care not for I am here to give you, the reader, an account of my recent adventure to the city of Joensuu. But first, I’ll say a few (paragraphs of) things about my studies.
Author Archives: Penttini
Christmascaching in Finland (24.12.14)
You know how Christmas is the time of year that you’re meant to spend time with the family and just stay home? Yeah well, I spent a couple of hours geocaching before lunch. The lighting was great (the sun was actually visible for once), and the snow seemed like it was going to be gone soon enough, so I had to go get some pictures as well.
Having never parked around the area, I spent a good ten minutes thinking of how I should be parking my car when I got there. With the initial difficulties out of the way, I decided to wander in to the forest in hopes of getting a few good pictures before starting to hunt for the geocaches in the area.
Taking a shortcut through a swampy, snowy forest
For once, there was snow around Christmas, after it, and it would seem that it will last all the way until after New Year’s before it starts melting again. Since it’s so rare to have so much snow around this time of year nowadays, I thought I should go out to take some pictures of the woods and the lake nearby. I picked up my stuff, got appropriately clothed and started walking.
First, before wandering to the skiing paths in the forest, I decided to go towards the town. Why? Because the trees around the road were bent by the snow; it looked pretty damn cool. After I was done, I started heading back towards the forest.
A Tragedy Struck Tyrrelstown – How it affected me
Earlier this morning, in the small park area behind Tyrrelstown, a small boy of the age of five drowned.
The pond that I so adore has claimed a life of a little boy, and it would seem that there are talks of increasing security due to the frequency of these events; another drowning happened recently at another manmade pond in the north western area of Dublin.
I heard of this tragedy as I had finished my morn… noon jog, at around 13:30; I met a journalist who asked if I had heard of a drowning earlier in the morning. I expressed my surprise to this event, and after having said that I had no idea, he moved on to someone else. So I went on to continue my post-run walk until I reached the pond itself.
Tyrrelstown – Hive of Scum and Villany?
Tyrrelstown. From what I’ve understood, the name of this town seems to be connected to crime and poor living conditions. I presume that those people have never lived there, and if they have, they are doing ridiculous exaggerations for some unknown reason. Whatever the case, I’ll argue some points in this rant. After the rant, there’ll be pictures, so if you’re not interested in this, just skip ahead and look at the pretty pictures.
Day 32 – 29.04: A Farewell to The Lucky Umbrella
I woke up quite a while before even the first of my alarms started ringing, at around 06:00. I quickly put my laptop away after getting up and began getting ready to check out and leave for the train station. Some fifteen minutes later, I was ready to go and went ahead and double checked that all of my stuff had been packed up before going out and checking out.
There was one thing that I left back at that hostel locker: my lucky umbrella. We had a good month together, but it just had to come to an end at some point. Hopefully someone makes use of it rather than throwing it away.
The walk through Iriya (入谷) and Ueno (上野) was pretty quiet and uneventful in the early morning. It still seems quite weird to me that such a large city, a metropolis, can be so quiet. With the walk to the station done, I headed to the ticket machines.
Day 31 – 28.04: No, Not The Curry!
I woke up early-ish with my throat feeling a lot worse than it had the evening prior. I got to procrastinating, stuck to it for a while, and at some point I received a message from Brendan; he was asking if I was up already. After answering positively, he got out of his capsule and said that we should go for breakfast. I agreed and stayed behind to finish up my business as he went to check out.
I followed after Brendan, but instead of checking out, I decided to stay for one more night – something that Brendan had suggested. I handed over my keys after paying and we were on our way to get something to eat.
We walked towards Akihabara (秋葉原), searching for a place to eat breakfast at as we went. We eventually ended up going to a cafe to get sandwiches and coffee at the Akihabara station (秋葉原駅). With our breakfast dealt with, we started wandering around and looking at things. In the end, we didn’t find anything too interesting and ended up heading to see the Tokyo Skytree.
After having walked a little while after getting out of the metro station, we found ourselves at the Skytree. We decided not to get on top, so we just walked some more and stopped by a street performer called Stephen.
Tokyo Skytree (東京スカイツリー)
Tokyo Skytree is really damn high
Day 30 – 27.04: Beware The Crow and The Nigerian Scammer
The morning began with the familiar pain that I’ve – for better or for worse – started getting used to, followed by the usual procrastination – something I wish wasn’t as familiar as it is.
The day’s agenda was to go to the zoo for a second round with Jess and a few other people she had invited. Due to a pub crawl the night prior, we decided to meet up at 14:00 instead of 11:30. I also intended on going out to Roppongi (六本木) with my friend, Brendan, at a later point in the day.
Procrastination went on until about 13:00. That’s when I decided to go and take a shower and start moving towards the station. Pretty much right after getting out of the shower and having gotten clothed, I went out to walk towards the Ueno station (上野駅)… that is until I noticed that I was missing my wallet and my passport. I quickly returned to the hostel to pick those up and got back to walking towards the station.
On my way there, I remembered that I actually hadn’t had any breakfast, so I stopped by a place where I expected to get a quick burger to get the hunger out of the way – it took me fifteen minutes to get the burger and it tasted of disappointment. I continued onwards.
Day 29 – 26.04: The Way of The Wanderer
I woke up at some point in the morning and was reminded of the lovely sunburn in the back of my neck as I moved my head slightly. I procrastinated for a while before heading out to have a somewhat painful morning shower. After having showered, I headed out to get some breakfast from the Indian restaurant, Sewa (世話).
It was another lovely day with no clouds in sight and with the sun high in the sky. I walked for a few minutes until I got to the restaurant and, as always, ordered the spiciest things they have. After enjoying my meal, I headed back to the hostel to work on my blog.
After having worked on my blog for a while and after a little bit of procrastination, I came to the realisation that I had no plan for the day whatsoever. I knew that I wanted to walk around, so I decided to head out to wander aimlessly in Akihabara (秋葉原).
Popeye servers steaks in Ueno.
I wandered around for a while, going through various stores and their wares, but not really finding anything that I want to buy. When I got outside and started fiddling with my phone, I encountered an old man; a Buddhist monk scammer.
Day 28 – 25.04: Chilling With The Birds and Getting Sunburns
Getting out of bed has been getting more and more difficult over the past few days – must be because I haven’t been hurrying from a place to another for days. I got up around 11:00 to get myself some breakfast and more money to pay for my stay until Monday morning.
Instead of the normal breakfast I have, I took a light one with a couple of rice balls and some chicken. With it I take a bottle of mineral water. After getting my money and food, I got back to the hostel to pay my dues and started heading east to find a park by a river to stay and just chill at.
I walked, looking at the map every now and then to navigate towards the nearest park by the river. After a while of walking, I started getting hungry; thankfully I reached the park soon.