Pizza again

Swedish pizzas are bigger than Swedish dogs.

Bowling and steak

Some friends that I first met in Sapporo are now living in Stockholm. When I visit Sweden, we sometimes meet. This time, we met and played a few games of bowling. No one of us is very good at bowling but since everyone is more or less on the same level, it was quite enjoyable.

For kids that are too small to use bowling balls the normal way, a ramp was provided. You aim the ramp and then you roll the bowling ball down the ramp.

After the bowling, we went to a shop that sells specially imported goods from Japan. I can get all the Japanese stuff I could ever want without trying since I live in Japan, but for my friends in Stockholm there are some things that are hard to get (some teas, for example). In this store, I ran into a guy I know from high school who was there with his two children. He used to live in Kyoto, so I guess he also uses Japanese things in his daily life. I was happily surprised to see him. It had been at least 10 years since I last saw him, I guess. Though we talked over the Internet from time to time in Japan, for instance when the Swedish embassy called everyone living in Japan early in the mornings to suggest evacuating from Tokyo with some early flight during the Fukushima incident, even though we both lived very far from Tokyo and did not have to evacuate and if we wanted to could have done so much better without going to Tokyo first...

After the quick stop in the Japanese shop, we went for steaks. I also ordered deep fried cheese and habaneros. This was good, as was the steak. There was also an offer of all you can eat ice cream and ice cream toppings, so I and the kid in our group went for that. They turned out to have licorice sauce for the ice cream. In Sweden, almost everyone likes licorice. In Japan, almost everyone thinks it is the most disgusting thing they have ever tried if they ever try it, so it is not normally available.

Licorice!

Swedish fish soup, and fish

In Sweden, many people eat a lot of fish. If you are in a place close to the sea, the fish is usually very good. My mother made Swedish fish soup one day, which was good.

The fish sold in Sweden is slightly different from what I am used to in Japan, but there is of course some overlap too. Salmon and cod are common in both countries. Mackerel too.

When I lived in Sweden, I never saw these huge crabs being sold. They are common in Japan, though.

First time in a cigar club

When I lived in Stockholm, I used to do martial arts. I even ended up in some TV show teaching old historical fencing to contestants in the TV show because of that. I still keep in contact with my old teacher and we try to meet when I visit Sweden.

This time we had tapas for lunch, then Swedish pie for dessert. He knows lots of good restaurants. Recently he started smoking cigars as a hobby. He has joined a cigar club, and we visited the club together.

It was my first visit to a cigar club. They had posters on the wall showing Winston Churchill with a cigar in his mouth, which was pretty funny. Other than that, it seemed to be a calm and quiet place to relax in. There was Internet and drinks, I was told. What more could you need?

Cigar lighters

Instead of "cigars kill" or similar messages, this one says: "Cigars may cause people to take an interest in you".

This one says: "Cigars have a high risk of increasing your life quality".

There were lots of old pipes in front of the toilet

Coin magic in Stockholm

On one of the days I was in Stockholm, another magician I had not seen was performing at Magic Bar Stockholm, so I went there to have dinner and to see his magic. The magician is called Tommy Sköld, and I was told his specialty was coin magic.

Magic Bar Stockholm is more like a restaurant than a bar, and they usually have good food. I decided to try their hamburger. They used to have a rabbit hamburger on the menu, but now it was no longer rabbit meat. The hamburger was good. The soup I ordered as a starter was even better!

When I was waiting for my food, Tommy Sköld came to my table and showed me some coin magic. Later, he also had a magic show for 10 or 15 people in a small room they have for close up magic shows. I got to see that show too, which was nice.

Me and Tommy Sköld

Some other guests

Visiting my old university to talk shop

There was a new interesting looking building at the university.

When I visit Sweden I usually stop by my old university. It is nice to meet the people I used to work with and see what they are doing now.

Nowadays, a woman I first met in Sapporo also works at my old university in Stockholm (technically their group does not belong to the university but they are located in the same buildings). She used to have me climb active volcanoes and look for rare types of moss around Sapporo and I used to teach robots to make jokes, so when we were both in Sapporo our research did not overlap very much. Nowadays she works on environmental effects of traffic, and I was involved in a project on winter road management in Sapporo, so we actually ended up doing very similar stuff. So we decided to write a paper together, now that we live in completely different parts of the world...

But we had a nice Swedish lunch and talked about research for a few hours.

Swedish chocolate

In Sweden people eat chocolate. My brother recommended a new product from the Swedish chocolate maker: chocolate with salty almonds. It was great.

You can also find chocolate with licorice cream inside. This is great too.

I also stumbled across a store selling common chocolate bars but with non-standard text on the wrapping. These say "congratulations", "hug", "kiss", and "make out".

Swedish pizza

In Japan, pizza is considered Italian food, and since Italian food is considered fancy luxury food, pizza is also considered fancy and expensive food. So pizzas are small, come in refined taste, and cost a fortune. In Sweden, pizza is one of the few types of food that is cheap. They are big, unhealthy, and delicious. I try to eat pizza at least once every time I go to Sweden.

Smoking salmon in the back yard

My friend since forever had recently bought a smoking machine, as in a machine to smoke whatever food you think is best served smoked. We decided to go for something fairly standard, and smoked some salmon. The result was fantastic.

The process was quite simple. You put the fish on something flat and add salt (or whatever flavoring you prefer). You also put some wood chips on a plate and shove these into the tube shaped smoker.

Then you turn it on and let it be hot for 30 minutes or so. Then you turn it off and leave it for another 20 minutes. Then the food is done.

While waiting, we also put some potatoes in the oven and fried some mushrooms that my parents had picked in the forest.

The resulting smoked salmon was great. The rest of the food was good too, of course.

Best hamburgers in Stockholm

I have a friend in Sweden who I first met when I was too young to remember (maybe 3 years old or so?) and we still keep in touch. We like the same types of movies, the same types of music, the same types of food, etc. He told me he had found the best hamburger place in Stockholm, so we went there for lunch. They indeed had great hamburgers.

They also served ice cream. And the servings were pretty large...

Blood pudding (black pudding/blood sausage)

In Sweden we eat something that in Swedish is called "blood pudding" (in English it would be called black pudding or blood sausage, perhaps?). It is made from blood, and is quite popular. I remember most people being happy the days when this was served as school lunch. Not everyone likes it, though. My father likes it, but my mother does not.

All my Japanese friends that I have had visit Sweden have in general loved Swedish food, but no one has liked this dish. They all think it tastes of blood. One said that if no one had told her that it was made from blood it would have been OK, though not "great", but once you know it is made from blood it no longer remains as something you would want to eat. Considering all the weird stuff people eat here in Japan, they seem surprisingly squeamish.

Since this food, nor anything similar, is not available in Japan I often end up eating it when I am back in Sweden and have dinner with my father on some day when my mother has something else to do.

Mushrooms and bread

My parents pick a lot of mushrooms. Many of these are types of mushrooms that you cannot find in Japan. They serve them in many different ways, but one breakfast/lunch we had was fried bread with stewed mushrooms, which was very good.

Arriving in Sweden: cold, bread, plants, dogs

I arrived in Sweden in early October. It was already cold enough for there to be frost on the ground. In Japan, you could still walk around in just a t-shirt.

My parents seemed fairly happy to see me, but they recently bought a dog. He was even happier to see me. My brother also stopped by, and had his dog with him. I became friends with his dog the last time I was in Sweden, since people figured that I probably had nothing better to do than babysit the dog while everyone else had to work or hang out with their friends or whatnot. He was also very happy to see me. I was told that my parents' new dog was actually related to my brother's dog. A younger half sister of my brother's dog is the mother of my parents' dog.

I always end up eating way too much when I am in Sweden. One thing I like is the bread. The first thing that happened after reaching my parents' place was that they served me lots of bread.

My parents grow all kinds of things nowadays. They have an apple tree, a plum tree, a cherry tree, and much more. They had endless boxes of apples, and they were making plum wine in what used to be my hobby room. They also grow strong peppers, and had some peppers out to dry.

I found some Japanese mangas, one in Japanese and one in Swedish, from the very funny series "Yotsuba to".