I have this exercise app on my phone. It is a daily five minute work out -well, if I do it everyday it is- and it should tone my body in a way so I could even get to look good naked. It is a good and tough work out and I try to do it every day.
It has become my wife's favourite app, but not (only) because it tones my body. No, mostly because I always find ways to procrastinate the exercises and often do house work instead.
And I have nothing much to say, so I'll say it. “Nothing much”.
Today would have been my mothers b -day. Would have, she isn't alive anymore.
She would have been 87 years old today. She died when she was 66.
21 years ago. I was 34 years old back then. The following year I left Denmark to go to Spain and study. I have never moved back.
How would she have been like, had she lived until now? One of those question you can never find an answer to. So why try?
Maybe because I visited one of my uncles and aunties in Denmark this summer. And they are the age my mother would have been now. Well, my uncle is one year older. And he is fine. Absolutely fine. Healthy, witty, interested and curious and has a huge growth mindset. So has his wife. She must be the age my mum would have been and she still roams around in the kitchen and make and bake and cooks and cleans, and argue with her husband and he is nagging her back. They have always been this way. I think they need it like that.
I must write to them. He gave me his email address. Imagine that. He is 88 and he has got an email.
I must do that, soon. This weekend. Okay.
Outside my window lies an urban landscape so very different from any European urban areas. At the first sight it reminds me of the Star Wars "Death Star" surface as Luke Skywalker peace over and through it in the first Star Wars movie.
I am in Tokyo in the Shinjuku district in a room in a hotel. Well, room is perhaps not the right word. Probably bedroom could do as it is simply a queen size bed with a bathroom attach. And a TV. Yes, the room I've booked is that small.
From high above the city seems so sterile and empty. Grey concrete, glass and metal structures as far the eye can see. On the surface though, when walking the streets, it is lively colourful and inspiring in this certain Japanese sense of being inspiring.
This is my 3rd time in Tokyo and even this time is only a brief stop over on the way to a rock festival in the mountains, it still leaves an impression.
Typical Japanese impression I could say, but what is that?
Is typical Japanese the way the houses are build and the way it all look like it has been randomly built, with no greater plan and concept?
Is typical Japanese the bright colours and light and noise coming from speakers and shops and the numbing number of neon signs and advertisement boards?
Or is all this what it means to be typical Japanese?
At least for me this seems to be what I recognise every time I get to Japan, either the main islands in the north or Okinawa further south.
There is a certain feel and vibe about Japan. Japan to me is a mix of new and hyper and extreme old fashion.
It is hard actually to explain this, but on street level it all seems so ultra modern and cutting edge. Extreme fashion statements and technology from all corners. When you get inside a post office or train ticket office, you suddenly feel like boosted some years back in time. There is paper folders and old fashioned computers and calculators. An a lot of paper. Piles of paper and grey cub bards. Nothing much cutting edge or 2017 like here.
