Japan

Epilogue

2009-04-10T03:18:00.004+09:00

Now that it's months later and I still haven't finished writing up my stories, I've been bitten by the writing bug (that and I'm at work with nothing else to do). I should probably start by saying that I will now forever be one of those people who constantly refer to that time they lived abroad. I've noticed myself doing it a lot even all these months later. I complain about Chinese chopsticks not being as good as Japanese ones and I mention how good different foods were when I had them IN Japan. I'm not proud of this situation and I'll work to remedy it. At least I've recognized that I have a problem.

In my return home, I was again struck by something that happens every time I travel. I marveled at how many miles I had traveled only to end up right where I had started. Back home in Philadelphia, in my room. I traveled halfway around the world to end up in a place that not many people have been, somewhere that I feel completely secure and comfortable. I get this feeling every time I return home after a trip. It's compounded by the fact that travel can be done so fast now. You can cover thousands of miles in a mindbogglingly short amount of time, for relatively little money. (Now I realize it's not a trivial amount of money, but considering how much it costs in the grand scheme of things, air travel is a bargain.)

I think what hit me more this time than in past trips, was the fact that someone else would soon occupy my apartment and there would be another new face in the neighborhood. The cashiers at the Papasu Pharmacy would start seeing a new regular, the folks at Sakiya would have a new customer, basically life would proceed exactly the same in Komagome whether I was there or not. So while feeling that geographically the world has become very small, I simultaneously felt that I had been scaled down with the world and was now also very small. I'm accustomed to living in a world with my friends and classmates where I can go different places and run into people I know. But now I see that I had left a neighborhood I had lived in for 2 months and my departure didn't matter in the slightest. I'm not trying to imply that I had expected or should expect that my presence would fundamentally impact Tokyo, but that doesn't mean I can't feel small at realizing that I had no impact.

There's probably a lot more I could say about this, but I probably would make it all up to make myself sound smarter than I am or something. Japan is awesome and my appreciation for it has grown since I got back.

Tsukiji Market

2008-09-04T10:00:00.002+09:00

One of the famous tourist stops in Tokyo is Tsukiji fish market. It's the largest wholesale fish and seafood market in the world. It basically supplies the 30+ million people in the Tokyo metropolitan area with food. The main attractions for tourists are the tuna auction and sushi breakfast. The tuna auction got so popular that they actually had to set up areas for tourists to watch from because it was affecting business having tourists standing around everywhere.

The main problem with the market is getting there. Work begins at the market in the early hours of the morning, but the trains don't start running until much later. This poses the problem of how to get there early enough to see the real action. The tuna auction is open to tourists between 5 and 6:30 am. So you pretty much have to get there in that time frame. The subways to the Tsukiji stop only start running a bit after 5 am.

We met up at 5 am at Akihabara so we could take the Hibiya line down to Tsukiji. I got on the Yamanote line at 4:30 am. I actually got to the station just as it was opening. Not surprisingly, it was pretty empty. As it turned out, no matter what method of getting to Akihabara i thought of, they all involved me leaving my apartment at the same time. I thought of riding my bike to Akihabara, but that would take about an hour. I thought of walking to Tabata and getting a different train, but the added time walking just negated any other benefits.

By a stroke of luck, Steve and Matteo ended up getting on the train in the same car as me at Uguisudani. That might have saved a bit of trouble locating them at Akihabara, but it was completely empty at that time of day. We had planned on meeting at the Shouwa Dori exit, so when we got there we just waited around for Laura and Rob to show up. Once we all assembled and I introduced everyone to Rob, we headed to the subway and to Tsukiji.

In Tsukiji we had a mild idea of where the market was. Laura, Steve, Matteo and I had seen it from our cruise down the Sumida river. Other than that we weren't sure, but not too concerned. When we got there we actually just followed some signs. At one point, we decided to just turn down a side street and figured we were close enough that as long as we walked along the river we'd find the market.

We walked down the side street and soon realized that we had in fact found the market. We were dodging scores of motorized carts whose drivers were really skilled at maneuvering them, but were also not going to slow down for us. Rob pointed out that it felt a bit like Frogger. We kept walking around and saw some of the sushi restaurants that you can get breakfast at. We noted the location and kept going. We eventually found a couple other tourists who had a map of the market and got a bit better oriented. From their map we saw that we just needed to start walking down the rows and rows of stands, because the market isn't very orderly. You sort of just walk in and wander around. If it seems like you shouldn't go somewhere, that's actually where you should be walking. If you start going somewhere you shouldn't, someone will stop you.

So we had found the market and started actually seeing fish in various states of being alive. There were also tons of clams, mussels, conches, and abalone. They have band saws for cutting the fish down and some 5ft knives for it as well. Most of the fish comes in to the market frozen directly from ships.
We still hadn't found the tuna auction though. We went to where we thought it was, but only saw a door that said "Authorized Personnel Only." So we headed outside to get our bearing again. We found another guy with a map, but this time a guy who worked at the market came up and asked us where we wanted to go. He just took us there and pointed the way. Apparently, we were supposed to go through that door, because you ARE allowed in between 5 and 6:30 am.

The auction was almost over by the time we got there, but it was still interesting. I took a video of one of the auctioneers because he was so animated. Since the auction was winding down we decided to walk around the market some more and to get some breakfast. It probably took us another half hour to wind our way out of the market, all the while dodging the motorized carts.
We got back to where we had seen the restaurants and the one that had had a line outside when we walked by earlier, still had a line out front. We couldn't really tell why there was a line, since all the restaurants looked the same. I just looked on Wikitravel, which said that a few restaurants make it a point to only serve fish that has never been frozen. From what I could tell, the fish next door that had been frozen were still delicious. We ate and left and there was still a line at the place next door.

On my way back home, I passed through Akihabara station. I was pleased to see that the giant line of people waiting to get to the Yamanote line platform weren't heading my way. They were heading towards Tokyo and their 6 days-a-week, stressful day jobs.

Dinner last night

2008-09-03T11:17:00.003+09:00

Towhata-sensei took us visitors out to dinner last night to a very small out-of-the way restaurant. I think he wanted to get us all together before we leave and while he was actually in Japan. He's probably one of the busiest people I've ever met, but also one of the nicest. He's one of the top earthquake engineers in Asia, if not the world, and he still manages to impress you with how down to earth he is. Topics at dinner last night ranged from the resignation of the Japanese prime minister to his favorite cartoons. He's apparently a big Flintstones and Looney Toons fan. Looney Toons was a good segue into classic music. He explained that he knew the entire William Tell overture by the age of five from watching Road Runner and Wylie Coyote. When I brought up Spike Jones, the composer, and began humming "The Merry Go Round Brokedown" he picked up humming right where I left off. Also interesting is that he teaches many classes in both Japanese and English, at the same time. He just translates everything as he goes.

Anyway, the point of this blog was to relate a story about his recent trip to Iran. Before going on this trip to Iran for a conference and for a bit of historic earthquake damage sight seeing, he convinced another professor (the one I met at Kyoto University) that he should grow a mustache, because in the Middle East men should have facial hair. This was actually a joke by Towhata-sensei, because these days in Iran there is not much difference if you have a mustache or not.

So on this trip to Iran, they visited Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran. They met with the civil engineering faculty and saw the faculty photos. Apparently Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has a doctorate in civil engineering and was a professor at the university. His picture is hanging up and beneath it it says "Assistant Professor." So Towhata-sensei asked the department head why they didn't promote Ahmadinejad. After all, he had accomplished so much, he was governor and is now president. The department head's response was that he did not have enough publications.

I found this story really funny and I'm hoping other people will see the same humor in it that I see. Towhata-sensei went further to explain that in Iran many of the well-respected international civil engineering journals are not considered as being rigorous enough in their reviews of papers. Some of these journals are reviewed by people not in the specific field of the paper. No, in Iran they believe that the journals of the American Society of Civil Engineers are the best place to get a paper published, since reviews are done by people in the field of the paper's topic.

Towhata-sensei joked further that maybe ASCE should reject some of Ahmadinejad's papers and send them back as "provisionally accepted" as long as he promises to terminate the nuclear research in Iran.

Wandering

2008-08-31T21:32:00.006+09:00

Today, I had very few plans for what I wanted to see and where I wanted to go. I set out for Ikebukuro to return some ping pong balls I had bought to teach the Italians how to play beer pong. We had played and the balls were still in good shape, so I cleaned them and returned them. I had thought that I might want to walk around Ikebukuro a bit or eat lunch there, but once I was done my errand I decided to leave.

The taste of last weekend's döner was still fresh in my mind and the weather was so much clearer today that I decided to give Harajuku another shot. I figured I'd get lunch and see if I could find some cos play people or greasers (there are legit greasers who hang out in Yoyogi park on Sundays).

So I got my döner and headed back to the park. I saw more cos play people than last weekend, but ended up walking into the wrong part of the park. I just kept walking farther into the park and was hoping that I could make a loop back to where I had entered, but alas I never made it back there. No, after entering the park, I embarked on what would be a 3 hour journey walking around Tokyo.

Further into the park, I caught sight of Takashimaya Times Square, a giant building in Shinjuku. Harajuku is just two stops south of Shinjuku, so I figured I'd start heading north again and see where it would take me. I contemplated trying to walk the whole way back to Komagome and probably would have done it if it hadn't started raining around 5 pm.

I set out from the park with a vague idea of where I was headed and set the plan to just walk towards the tall buildings of Shinjuku. The plan ended up being a good one because soon enough I was back near the Krispy Kreme in Shinjuku. Luckily for me there are area maps all over Tokyo near train stations. Once I reached Shinjuku, I reassessed the lay of the land and looked on the map for streets that might lead me home. I saw a few that looked like maybe they would work, but I wasn't sure. Instead, I just started walking towards a river that was on the map.

I wandered through parts of Shinjuku I hadn't seen yet. I saw a bunch of cool sky scrapers and Shinjuku Chuo Park (which is just Shinjuku Central Park, since chuo means central). I saw a bunch of skaters and watched a dude juggle a soccer ball while jumping rope. I was mega impressed. I continued through the park to the river and decided to follow the river since there was a path along either side of it. I followed the river for a few kilometers and checked the maps posted along side the path. I saw that the paths led to Takadanobaba, which I knew was a stop on the Yamanote line. I figured I should head there and then decide where to go.

Along the river path, there were a few public bathrooms. The men's room of one of these bathrooms had completely open urinals. I mean, people walking down the path could look right in on the urinals.

So needless to say, I totally used this urinal and enjoyed the fresh air. I wandered the path and kept going towards Takadanobaba. I relied on the area maps and my sense of direction. In Tokyo you're never too far away from some type of public transportation. A few weeks ago I was able to get the Tokyo subway map onto my iPod, so that was my back up plan. If I got utterly lost, I'd just look for a subway or train station and head back to the nearest large station. It never came to that though.

I made it all the way to Takadanobaba and was prepared to press on, but it started drizzling. I jumped on the JR line and headed home. I took the photo below from Takadanobaba. You can see the cocoon building, which I had walked right by in Shinjuku.

Spanish Restaurant

2008-08-31T10:00:00.004+09:00

Laura and I headed out to dinner with Carlos and his friends tonight. All I knew was that we were going to meet near Omote Sando. When I got there I waited with Carlos, Adrianna, and Laura. Eventually their friend Alberto, from Spain, came and we waited for the others to come. We then headed in to the subway station to wait for the remaining members of the party, who included I-chun, Surjith and a Japanese guy I didn't catch the name of. The other guys were all from the chemical engineering department at Todai. I-chun was doing a short post doc at Todai and in January is heading to NYU to do another post doc.

We headed to a Spanish restaurant that Alberto had found and vouched for it being the best Spanish restaurant in Tokyo. He said there were really only about 3, but this was hands down the best.

The owner was a great host and was fluently speaking Spanish with Alberto, Carlos and Adrianna, English with Surjith, Laura and I and Japanese with the last guy. He was from Spain and from the sound of his accent he was from Catalonia (it didn't hurt my detective skills that the restaurant was also called El Catalon or something like that). He had that slight lisp that I know is common in that area of Spain.

The food was great as well. The owner took the time to explain the origins of gazpacho and paella to us. Apparently, the poor make the best gazpacho because they keep it simple. You start with cold water, then you add some tomato and a few other spices, like salt and pepper and that's about it I think. (I'm writing this well after the fact, so my memory is failing me.) He also explained how you make sangria out of cheap wine because the fruit makes it taste better. Then he showed us how to drink out of a wine skin. I almost had a chance to drink out of a wine skin, but I was sitting on the wrong side of the table. I learned that eating rabbit is much more common in Europe than I thought. I had eaten some on Poland and my Polish friend's dad had explained to me how he and his brother had raised them to sell for pocket money when they were young. I'm not sure how easy they were to get in Japan though.

The restaurant itself was also pretty cool. There were messages written all over the walls from people that had been there. The waiters all seemed to be Spanish as well. Sadly, the building was going to be torn down and the restaurant was going to have to move.

The entire night we had been talking about where we lived and it became more necessary when it was time to leave and make our way home. I had been told that I-chun also lived in Komagome, so we started talking about where we live in Komagome. Long story short, we live in the same building. So I had some one to head home with on the last train.

After dinner, Laura, Alberto, I-chun and I headed to Shibuya, which was a short walk away. We were going for a last drink. We tried to go one place, but decided it was too loud to talk. We ended up going in one of many tiny bars in Tokyo. There was room for about 10 people in the entire place, which had 2 floors. These places define "hole in the wall."

We had our drink and just barely made the last trains home.

Last weekend: Sunday

2008-08-30T00:25:00.003+09:00

At long last I made it to Harajuku today. Steve, Matteo, Laura and I went to try to find some cos play kids and basically gawk at the freaks. Harajuku is well known as a place young people go on weekends and dress up as comic characters. It was one of last destinations on my list of places in Tokyo to see before I left.

As it turns out though, we picked a bad day to look for cos play kids. It was a bit rainy, but that probably didn't matter too much. Actually, when we got to Harajuku we discovered that there was a giant dance competition called Super Yosakoi. It seemed to be sort of traditional Japanese dances mixed with some more modern stuff.

There were stages all over the place. We'd walk away from one stage and find another. This happened about 5 times. We'd go to leave the stage and see something else and we'd just find a new place where they were dancing. They even had a whole street closed and were dancing up the street following huge trucks with PA systems. On the trucks were members of the dance group who's only job was to sing. The odd thing about these groups was that they all danced up the street to the same song. The people on the trucks all sang their own variation of this song. The majority of the song just consisted of them saying "hey" on the downbeat, but there were a few other sweet parts where they would sing "sore, sore, sore, soreee" (that's sore -ray, not a muscle ache). The remainder of the lyrics to the song can only be described as what sounded like Japanese old school hip-hop. The guys would sing pretty fast and melodically.

There was one group that had more of a ska feel. They sang a different song. I took some video with my camera just to record the song, but I think it was so loud that it overwhelmed the microphone. You can still make out the melody, but not too well.

Anyway, we walked around Harajuku all afternoon. A few other highlights included finding a döner stand and me speaking German to avoid taking a survey or something. The döner stand was probably my favorite find in Harajuku. I was so psyched to see it that I made everyone walk back to it for lunch. The guy who ran it was really nice and was wearing a red cowboy hat with the symbol from the Turkish flag on it. As it turned out, his wife is Italian so he was able to speak Italian with Steve and Matteo. I devoured my first döner so fast that I had enough time to get a second one before the others finished their first. I got it with a mix of spicy and garlic sauce because I didn't know how spicy it would be and drink options were limited.

The speaking German part came after the kebab. There were people on Omote-sando Dori trying to stop us to ask us questions. I'm not entirely sure what for since we didn't stop. I avoided some of them and was aware of their presence. When one finally did get me, I just spoke to her in German, which I think really confused her. She was guilty of a crime I myself had begun to commit, namely, assuming all white people you see in Japan speaks English. I just stonewalled her with German and continued on my way.

In our wandering around Harajuku I learned that Shibuya is really close by and that's where we got the train home from. Actually, we took the train to Shinjuku and went bowling first. The bowling was pretty much just like home, except all the score keeping was in Japanese and it was on the 7th floor of a building. Also, this particular alley used animations of penguins during your turn to show splits, spares, strikes, etc.

Last weekend: Saturday

2008-08-30T00:24:00.007+09:00

Saturday was not terribly exciting last weekend. We went to Asakusa and to the Asahi Sky Room and to Senso-ji temple (all stops I got to make as tour guide on my 3rd time to Asakusa). This time however we did see a guy with a monkey that he trained to do tricks. I was pretty conflicted about it because it seems like a crappy life for the monkey, but it was still entertaining.

The point of going to Asakusa was to take a boat cruise down the Sumida River to Odaiba, which is a man-made island in Tokyo Bay where a bunch of people from the lab live. Sadly we weren't able to get the boat that was fashioned to look like it was a spaceship from the future. That future boat is what people would think of or expect to see in Tokyo. We just got the regular boat and cruised on down the river. The boat went under at least a dozen bridges over the river, each of which had its own character, most of which were painted bright colors. We even went by the backside of the Tsukiji fish market.

When we got to Odaiba we had to take a monorail across to yet another island. We didn't meet up with any of our friends, but we at least got to see where they live and take the monorail that they have to take every day to leave the island to go to campus.

In Odaiba there was some type of festival going on. There are some really ridiculous buildings. I think I have some photos up of them. We wandered around and ended up getting in to a line, which we found out was a line to enter a toy store. Once inside said toy store, we basically stood in a line to snake our way through the store. It was surreal. We basically wandered around and took in the sights, which included a miniature Statue of Liberty.

We went into a mall and I bought some strange flavored Pringles at a Toys R Us. We then found the food court, where Laura and I both got Cinnabon. Steve and Matteo weren't quite as excited for the Cinnabon and got some tempura instead.

More wandering ensued and we eventually took the monorail back out of Odaiba and headed back to Akihabara. We grabbed some Becker's burger and looked for a place to get some sake, which was quickly accomplished down the street from Laura's new apartment. We had some sake, which was served in the ever popular bamboo shaped carafe and cups. I've encountered this style carafe before. It's made to look like it's just a piece of bamboo that's been cut and has a natural cap on the bottom to keep drinks in. I have no idea if it actually was bamboo or not, but it seemed more likely that it was plastic.

It was after this evening in Akihabara that I decided it would fun to walk back to my apartment using my newfound knowledge that I lived on a road that lead directly between the two places. It was raining slightly, but I had nowhere important to be.

If I hadn't walked I might never have noticed the temple I passed on the way back. Or I might not have been lucky enough to follow a completely drunk guy for a few blocks, watching him stagger and stop on the sidewalk a half dozen times, before I had to just pass him and keep going. I walked Hongo-dori the whole way home.

Last weekend: Friday

2008-08-30T00:12:00.000+09:00

I'm going to do my best to recount the events of last weekend. You can refer to my photos for a better idea of what I did. I'll also note that I was with my friend Matteo, who has Nikon D300, so I took fewer photos and am banking on copies of his. On a further tangent, Matteo takes copious photos of Japanese children. Sure they're cute, but if other people find his camera, he might have some explaining to do.

Friday night, we went out to Gyu Kaku, which is a barbeque chain. There happens to be one by my apartment that I have now been to 3 times. The English speaking waitress knows Laura and I now because she is always the one to serve us, since she's the only waitress with good English. Now when I say barbeque I don't mean that they serve you barbeque food like ribs, steaks, etc. I mean that they bring a charcoal grill to your table and you grill up meat that you order. You can also order vegetables, which is a big part of why we like the place. It's pretty difficult to get many vegetables here in Japan, at least in restaurants.

So we took Steve and Matteo there because we promised them it was good and we knew they have an English menu. Laura and I start by ordering some of our favorites. Steve and Matteo picked few things as well and we began cooking. As it turned out, our first grill was a bust and it had to be replaced. Our favorite waitress was nowhere to be seen when we walked in, but she eventually came and found us. She hooked us up with a fresh grill and kept checking on us to make sure things were good. She even offered to move us to a new table, since the grill sits inside the table and there is a whole air flow system built into each table.

We grilled what we could and managed to make due with a bum table. The waitress asked Steve and Matteo if they were also from University of Tokyo (which I'll add is like the MIT of Japan, people get really impressed when you say you are working there). Things were going well, but I was developing a headache. It kind of sucked, because I was having a good time and didn't want to bail and I was comforted by the knowledge that I was only 5 minutes walk from my apartment.

Laura and got pretty full on the first few rounds of food, however Steve and Matteo had other plans. They decided they would order one of the big plates of meat; one that serves 3-4 people. Laura and I protested, but the food was ordered anyway. So I'm sitting there with a headache, wanting to leave, but stuck eating more meat after I was already full.

The big plate of meat comes and goes. I'm still feeling pretty awful, but I wasn't as full as I thought so the meat wasn't a big deal. I just want to leave and go home and sleep off this headache, which seems like it might be a migraine. What happens when the meat runs out? Steve and Matteo order another plate, almost the same size but this time they listen to our protests and get a smaller plate. So we're now several plates of meat each into this meal, I'm dying with a migraine and more meat is on its way.

We get through the next plate of meat and I'm thinking I'm finally in the clear. No. Now it's time for dessert. I really can't blame them, because the dessert there is really good. You can get these fish shaped things that look like waffles, but you grill them and they're filled with some form of red bean paste. Despite that potentially unappealing description, they're pretty tasty. The guy at the table next to ours folded an origami crane out of the paper envelope that the fish are served in.

I did eventually make it home and subsequently passed out. I woke up the next morning feeling much better, but not looking to eat any meat for a while.

And now for something completely different

2008-08-30T00:11:00.004+09:00

I was just having a conversation with my sister and I had to share it because it was ridiculous. We're talking about politics and about John McCain announcing his VP choice.

pontoon: so joe biden's speech has a catch phrase that sounds just like an infomercial to me
pontoon: people keep repeating it and it sounds like "set it and forget it"
Kristen : mccain looks like he's announcing sarah palin as vp
Kristen : which makes things interesting
pontoon: whhooa
pontoon: nice curveball john
Kristen : she's only 44, too
pontoon: nice work trying to get the woman vote
pontoon: this totally proves the point i made earlier
pontoon: that republicans love exploiting interesting members of their constiutency
pontoon: like colin powell, condoleeza rice
pontoon: etc
pontoon: now a female VP candidate
pontoon: they know how to play their cards
pontoon: how people don't just see it as slight of hand I don't know
Kristen : it strikes me as a little opportunistic, i know.
Kristen : they're pointing out now that being from the middle of nowhere (she's governor of alaska) she's also big on rural issues. it will be interesting.
pontoon: weird
pontoon: so they'll lock down the pesky alaskan vote
Kristen : like we were saying earlier, though, she's been govenor for 1.5 years. how does that prepare you to be vp??
pontoon: i can already see the "barack's folly" headlines
pontoon: it doesn't i didn't that barack was also in the IL senate for a full 6 year term
pontoon: and taught a constitutional law class at the unversity of chicago
pontoon: for like 4-5 years
Kristen : oh, yeah. but that would be like george kenney running for president
pontoon: or longer
pontoon: nah, it would be like hank salvatore
pontoon: george is just a rep
Kristen : true. hank's been around longer though
pontoon: ha, yeah, i know
Kristen : and has his own rootbeer line
pontoon: but i'd say that 6 years in a senate is better than 4 years as governor
pontoon: or 1.5 years
pontoon: ha, so the republicans had to pick someone young
pontoon: to offset mccain's age
pontoon: and they picked a woman to show how progressive they can be
Kristen: yeah, i don't know what she did before. all the info they have is that she's 44 and is the first woman and youngest person to be Alaska's govenor. i'm assuming she was in local government first
pontoon: probably
pontoon: it's hard to become governor if not
pontoon: this is such a ploy
pontoon: not to discredit her qualifications
pontoon: but come on
Kristen : ooh, she was runner up in the miss alaska pagent at some point in her life
pontoon: no offense to her, and I don't like saying it, but hilary is the only woman who could realistically be in the white house
pontoon: as president or VP
Kristen : i agree. condoleeza or maybe nancy pelosi could possibly do it
pontoon: because I'm not 100% sure she's not a dude, and that's why she's so good at what she does
pontoon: maybe them
pontoon: but they don't have the popularity of hilary
Kristen : hillary is kind of an anomaly
pontoon: and there's no way in hell, the republicans are going to capture any of hilary's supporters
pontoon: from barack
pontoon: those women are wayy to liberal to go near mccain even with a female running mate
Kristen : ooh, her husband is an eskimo
pontoon: ncie
pontoon: nice
pontoon: this is totally the old republican trick
Kristen : one of her sons has downs syndrome. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sarah_Palin
pontoon: bring out a woman who is married to a minority (interracial couple), a woman, young
pontoon: and parade her around in front of everyone to prove that not all republicans are stodgy rich white people
Kristen : i disagree - andy's parents LOVED hillary (his mom being a lawyer and all) and they were really disappointed she lost. Obama is very liberal; if you have more moderate woman who feel this is an important issue, you might get them
Kristen : oh, another son is in the army
Kristen : she's like the perfect running mate
pontoon: ok, i think this woman is a robot
pontoon: and probably will win the election for mccain
pontoon: with that laundry list of things that have nothing to do with running a country
Kristen : he's supposed to be deployed to iraq in september. she's also a lifetime member of the NRA.
pontoon: holy crap
pontoon: totally a robot
pontoon: or she's a republican mad lib
Kristen : maybe she is a robot and they created this page yesterday
pontoon: they might have just put everything republican into a hat and picked out what her description would be
pontoon: she probably is a devout christian
pontoon: husband a minister
pontoon: converted half an eskimo village while working as a missionary
Kristen : she is. she was also a sports reporter on a local anchorage stations and was a commerical fisherman
Kristen : SHE IS RIDICULOUS
pontoon: also that down's syndrome son is her ticket to the pro life upgrade armor
pontoon: for her robotic body
pontoon: probably gave birth to him in a blizzard
pontoon: while driving herself to the shooting range
Kristen : yeah, the wikipedia page says as much. and no blizzard, but she did return to work 3 days later
pontoon: of course
pontoon: she's the T-1000
Kristen : just read the wikipedia page. she's like davy crocket
pontoon: must be
Kristen : that baby is only 4 months old!
pontoon: what, ok the dems need to play up her motherly duties
pontoon: not saying that she's unfit, but that she should be spending the next 4 years raising her kid
pontoon: holy crap she's 44 with a 4 month old
pontoon: is that the one with down's syndrome?
Kristen : yeah
pontoon: should someone maybe have told her that chance of birth defects increases with age
pontoon: so instead of raising her special needs son, she should be vice president
pontoon: makes perfect sense to me
Kristen : her eskimo husband can help
pontoon: i suppose
pontoon: but it takes a village
pontoon: they probably have one of those though too

Apparently I'm not the only one who sees the robotic connection. See the first item here.

My latest earthquake

2008-08-29T22:26:00.002+09:00

I sat through my latest earthquake last Wednesday. I was sitting in the lab going over details for our testing and I felt some shaking. So the shaking continued and it sounded like there was a truck driving by. Laura and Dr. Gallagher were standing on the shake table, which is isolated from the rest of the floor so that when IT shakes, the rest of the building doesn't. So since it's isolated, they didn't really feel the earthquake.

So I've officially noticed 2 earthquakes. There have been about 4-5 since I've been here.

Lack of posts

2008-08-29T21:30:00.002+09:00

I must apologize for my lack of posts recently. I got really burned out on recounting multiple day adventures. There was just so much to tell and trying to remember it all and type it out became a chore. Now, however, I'm avoiding doing work for my research, so I have a renewed energy for writing. I'll skip the pleasantries and get back to the stories.

My bathroom

2008-08-20T09:00:00.004+09:00

I've been meaning to post about this for a while. I wanted to describe the my bathroom. I know it's a little weird. For some reason, maybe energy savings I don't know, one of my bathroom lights likes to go out after a short amount of time. Sometimes they alternate which will go out. Other times they'll alternate going out. First one goes out, it come back, then the other goes out. Granted my bathroom is the size of a large closet, so one light serves me fine.

I do however have a problem when both lights decide to go out. I have no idea how or why this happens, but it does. You'll be in the shower for a little while and all of sudden, no light. Now my bathroom being an over-sized closet, there are no windows. Some light can come through under the door. I've gotten to the point of just not caring any more. I can just leave the door open and get light that way. I have even just showered in the dark since I know where everything is. Nothing is more than an arm's length away anyway.

Hoagie

2008-08-19T08:06:00.005+09:00

The only thing that got me through the boring day at work yesterday was knowing that I planned on making a hoagie when I went home. I had planned to make one on Sunday night, but got to lazy to collect all the ingredients. So yesterday right after I got home from work, I went out to the stores and got the necessities.

The grocery store provided me with tomato, lettuce, cheese, pepper and meats. Lunch meats are not easy to find in Japanese groceries stores and the ones you do find are limited. I got some form of sausage and what looked like maybe turkey. I should have known it wasn't turkey since the package said it was ham, but the packages called everything ham, so I thought that might have been a brand or something. I also got mayo, or what I thought was mayo, but if I had bothered reading the package would have seen was butter.

I then headed down the bakery to buy two loaves of bread I had been eying up to use as rolls. I'll say now that they worked very well. I'm glad I have that bakery because otherwise these hoagies would have been less satisfying.

I got home and began preparing everything. I have picture I'll add later. My 1 sq. ft. of counter space was in full use while I was making these sandwiches. Luckily I have a sharp knife and cutting board in my apartment, because the cutting board gave me more space since I could place it over the sink and the knife was just really useful.

Having cut the roll and prepared the lettuce and tomato, I looked to my "mayo" to start the sandwich. It was then that I realized I had gotten butter. I could not tolerate such a mistake and left everything mid-preparation to go procure some mayo. I went to the drug store this times, since I had searched the grocery store already with butter as my closest find. I'm sure they carry mayo, but I just wasn't going to spend more time looking there for it.

I found the mayo quickly in the drug store and returned to my work. I layered everything on the roll, topped it off with some pepper and cut it in half so that it would fit on my plate. I sort of wish I had oregano or hoagie oil, but I have to move in 3 weeks and I would not use that up in 3 weeks.

It was just the other day that I was talking with my Italian friends Steve and Matteo about my limited cooking abilities. I likened myself to Arthur Dent in Douglas Adams' Mostly Harmless. If transplanted to a foreign place or in Arthur's case planet, the best skill I have to offer from my home is the ability to make a good sandwich. So I played Arthur Dent last night and got a little taste of home while watching Olympic baseball and softball (somehow both games were Japan v. Canada).

Katakana

2008-08-12T18:02:00.002+09:00

I stumbled across this website while trying to find "Happy Anniversary" in Japanese for my parent's anniversary card. It really helped me get a better handle on Katakana, the Japanese alphabet for foreign words. I still need some practice, but I've already gotten a lot better and it's much more comforting to be able to read at least a few things in Japanese, since I'm constantly surrounded by words I can't read, let alone understand.

Katakana can be tricky though, since even if you can read the characters, you might still be clueless as to what the word is. You basically have to remember that the Japanese only have a set number of syllables to work with, so a lot of words end up with extra letters in them. Also, it's important to know that there are no "l"s in Japanese. L is usually replaced with some form of R, like "ri" or "ru" so remembering that tends to help. Context can also be useful for these situations.

I'm hoping to start on Hiragana soon so that I can read even more. Hiragana is the Japanese alphabet for Japanese words. It's about the same difficulty as Katakana I think, but I know absolutely no Hiragana, so I'll be starting from scratch.

Wikitravel.org

2008-08-12T17:58:00.002+09:00

I'm not sure how I found this site, but it has been extremely helpful so far in Japan. I've definitely gotten some good info from it and you can't beat the price. I would say that sometimes the directions provided aren't the greatest, but I think it's more like Wikipedia in the sense that it's a good starting point. You find the names of places and then you investigate a bit further to find more details.

Otagi Nenbutsu-ji

2008-08-12T17:57:00.005+09:00

Kyoto is supposed to have something like 2000 shrines and temples. I don't doubt this number, but I will say that I got burned out on temples and shrines a few days ago. Given that I'm not Buddhist or Shinto, these shrines and temples hold basically no meaning for me other than a cool building. Sometimes you get to see monks or other cool stuff, but you can't usually take photos inside, so that sort of makes them slightly less appealing and distinguishing. They all sort of look the same in the end, if you'll pardon what might be some cultural insensitivity.

Despite this feeling, I had seen a shrine in Wikitravel that they highly recommended and said that it was left out of most guidebooks, but very much worth the trip. It was in Arashiyama, which may or may not still be in Kyoto city, but was very much suburban. There is also a Monkey Park in Arashiyama where you can feed monkeys, so the trip to the area seemed full of promise. The monkeys were a secondary objective since we had even less of an idea where they were in Arashiyama.

We set out on the train and arrived with no problems at Arashiyama station. It was then that we realized that despite the temples in the area and the touristy things, the usual visitors to these places are Japanese. Thus we found no English maps or directions at the station. We did find a map with pictures of different places. One of the pictures looked sort of like where we wanted to go, so we decided to start walking towards that one. There were other temples on the way and we figured that they would make good resting points. We had read on Wikitravel that you could get to this shrine by the #62 or #72 bus, but we didn't quite know where to catch said buses.

Shortly after setting out from the train station, the first temple came into view. We were pretty happy to see that as we had learned from other tourist maps, was pretty small. The distances were manageable and this particular map may have actually had a north arrow. (In other parts of Kyoto we had found maps, tourist maps mind you, that were not north oriented. They were very confusing until we realized that for some reason north was actually towards the bottom of the map).

The first temples proved to be pretty nice. The Buddha statue there was like 600 years old or older. They discovered 50 years ago that the statue had fake organs inside made of silk. We walked around the grounds a bit, saw some more typical temple sights and continued on our way.

While the map we had was scaled oddly, it was at least accurate and we were able to navigate pretty well. We eventually found the shrine pictured on the map and went in. As it turns out, it was not the shrine we were looking for. It was interesting, but after giving it a brief once over, we decided to keep looking for the other shrine so we asked the people at the entrance where the other shrine was. Fortunately for us, it was nearby.

Walking up the road, we came to a fork. This fork had been unexpected so we picked left. We walked a little ways up the road, realized we didn't see any taxis heading up the road, so rather than walk farther we turned around. We then took the right fork, which did have taxis, indicating that there was something actually worth heading towards.

At long last, we reached Otagi Nenbutsu-ji and it was worth the trip. There are 1200 carved statues made between 1981 and 1991. They are all different interpretations of what the founder of Buddhism looks like. They are also, all waist high and basically caricatures. Here are some highlights:

Kyoto

2008-08-12T17:56:00.001+09:00

I was able to go to Kyoto for 4 days using my JR rail pass. Our official reason for going was to visit Prof. Iai of the University of Kyoto. The trip was very long and so much happened that I put off posting about it. Now that I'm trying to post about it I'm feeling overwhelmed with the magnitude of the task. I think I'll try to write up an outline to whet your appetite. (I'd like to add that I just found out where "wet your whistle" came from. In Olde England, you used to call to waiters with a whistle. When you wanted more drink, you would "wet your whistle" and blow on it to call them.)

I stayed in a Japanese style hotel room the first two nights. Tatami mats and futons. I have photos on my Picasa account. You can see what I mean by Tatami mats and futons. That hotel was near the Heian shrine and the Budokan (The oldest standing martial arts training building in Japan. Don't be too impressed, it's only a little over 100 years old. Most building here burn down or fall down in earthquakes). At the Budo Center, I watched guys practice with their samurai swords. My friend Matt told me that it can actually be faster to attack by drawing your sword for each strike.

I went to a ridiculously nice tempura restaurant with Laura for lunch. We spent $50 each, but ended up with a 7 course tempura meal in our own private room to eat in. We also had basically our own waitress. It was sweet and I'll post pictures of it as soon as I can.

We found a restaurant run by an American ex pat with his wife and son that served the "best meatball sandwich in Japan," or at least that's what Wikitravel told us. It's a distinction isn't that hard to earn, but they definitely earned it. It was really good.

Our second hotel in Kyoto, which was paid for by our travel grant, was right next to Kyoto tower. We were also right across from the Kyoto train station, which was awesome and had 2 underground malls connected to it.

Rikuzentakata

2008-08-12T17:52:00.006+09:00

I spent Saturday going to visit my friend Sarah, who just got to Japan to teach English for a year. I had to take the train for four hours north of Tokyo to get to where she lives in Rikuzentakata. I had to transfer from the Shinkansen to the local train about half way and the local train, despite being named the Rapid Dragon, was neither rapid or dragonlike. It was basically a glorified trolley. The ride was pretty nice and I got to see more of rural Japan.

The weather in the north was about 100x nicer than in Tokyo. Cool breezes and sunshine. Less haze in the air from humidity (and smog probably). I had to wait a few minutes for Sarah, but the nice weather made the wait okay.

Sarah finally came and we headed back to her apartment, which is much bigger than mine and cheaper. She also has one of few apartments in her town that has a heat in the winter (I'm not 100% sure about this, but I think that's what she said). I dropped off my bags and we headed back out to Lawson, the only convenience store in town and I don't mean the only chain in town, I mean the only store. There was also a grocery store, etc., but this was the only convenience store. Coming from Tokyo, where convenience stores are on every corner, this was a big change. We got some lunch and got some supplies for the hike we were going to take that afternoon.

We ate lunch at her apartment after spending way too much time trying to figure out how her microwave works (the buttons are all in Japanese). The plan was to hike to the top of the mountain behind her apartment. She had a map that showed some trails, one of which went to the top of the mountain.

We set out with the mountain in the distance as our goal. I learned that day that when you see a mountain in the distance and you want to get to the top, you should plan better. I also learned that mountains are called mountains for a reason, they're freaking tall.

After an hour and a half of climbing up a gravel path, we finally reached the trail head. Once we had gotten up to certain point on the mountain, we at least got a view of the valley where the city is. You could see the sea and the mountains on the other side of the city. The place is in a terrible position from an earthquake standpoint. On one side you have the sea and its potential for tsunamis and on the other you have mountains and the potential for land and rock slides.

We headed back down so that we could be sure to get back before dark. Those provisions we had bought for the trip never got used. I had actually forgotten to bring mine. We got back with plenty of sunlight to spare and went to find a restaurant.

The entire day we had been navigating using a photocopied, handmade map that had been given to Sarah. We went to where we thought the restaurants were and picked one. We went in, sat down and realized how difficult it would be to order without any English or pictures. The waitress/owner informed us that one of the dishes was meat. It ended up being yakitori (chicken meat). It seems assumed that foreigners tend to prefer meat to fish, or at least that's what they assumed for us.

I, for some reason, decided to order something that I knew would be in a bowl, because I recognized the Kanji. This was a mistake. Our food came and Sarah's looked really good. Mine had the customary egg on top that gets put on most bowl meals. I also have no idea what the contents of the bowl were other than rice. It might have been mushrooms. It might have been oysters. I have no idea. I decided that had I at least known what it was I wouldn't have cared, but not knowing whether it was oyster, clam or mushroom made it harder. I did okay though and ate most of it. It was part of the adventure of being in a town in the middle of nowhere.

I left early the next morning to head to Kyoto. So I got to here the chime that Sarah said they play every morning at 7 am. Every morning, in the streets of the entire town, they play a chime that sounds sort of like a grandfather clock. Glad I don't live there.

Shinkansens

2008-08-12T17:43:00.003+09:00

I had my first opportunity to take the Japanese super express trains this weekend. The "bullet" trains are pretty famous, but I had no idea that they are basically the standard for travel in Japan. If you have to travel any normal distance, you take a Shinkansen because they go pretty much everywhere. They make Amtrak trains look like Soviet surplus. The cars are huge, there is food service in the cars and you get a ton of leg room. I would prefer to travel by train too if we could have Shinkansens. They definitely beat airplanes in size and comfort.

I have a rail pass from Japan Rail for the week that basically lets me go anywhere in Japan that the trains go and luckily most trains within city areas are also run by Japan Rail. So once you get somewhere you can still get around with that pass, with some limitations.

13 Hour Time Difference

2008-08-06T16:39:00.003+09:00

I've been discovering the pros and cons of being at a 13 hour time difference from home. Mainly, it's not too hard to figure out what time it is at home and people at home can pretty easily figure out what time it is here.

In general, though I am able to find time to talk with friends at home, there is no way to avoid the afternoon dead time when everyone is asleep. Some afternoons I have things to do to keep busy. I'm at work and then I'll get home and eat dinner so that by the time dinner is done, people will be awake. However some afternoons, like this one, get very long. Sitting at my computer, doing searches through databases of journal articles puts me to sleep. I exhaust my usual methods of time killing rather quickly. Also, don't think that having no one online to talk to just counts for instant messaging. I don't get any many, if any, new emails, messages on Facebook, and no one is really posting anywhere. So I checking my email gets old because there is nothing new.

I do like being able to have the evening and mornings to talk with friends at home. It's pretty convenient. I have found a few silver linings to this situation. Having friends in multiple time zones helps delay these effects. I am also lucky enough to have enough friends in college, who are still on late night schedules and also help me kill time.

Why I'm even in Tokyo

2008-08-02T16:51:00.003+09:00

It occurred to me that I might not have ever explained to some of you why I'm even in Tokyo. I may have just said I was doing research. Well, I think I'll try to give a better explanation now, since I finally do have an idea what we're trying to do.

First, I'll say that some of my work does not require me to be in Japan at all. I could do it from anywhere with an internet connection.

I'm working on a literature review for the 10 year update to the ASCE Ground Improvement manual. What that means, is that I look through databases of technical journal articles for ones that seem pertinent to the topics that will be covered in the manual. I then read the articles and try to summarize all of their contents in a few pages or so to give practitioners an quick and dirty idea of what each type of ground improvement involves and some potential pitfalls they should avoid.

Second, the reason I am in Tokyo is because at the University of Tokyo they have a 1g shake table. What this means is that you can build scale models of structures and foundations and soils and then mimic an earthquake. The professor who runs the lab, Prof. Towhata is world-renowned for his knowledge of earthquakes and is frequently called in to advise on earthquakes all over the world. He also has experience with the stabilizing grout we plan to use in our tests. We're hoping to test some piles in a loose sand and see if treating some of the sand with a grout will have any impact on the pressures created by the seismic forces. A lot of the more technical details are a bit beyond me, but I'm sort of here as a pair of hands and to help build the model.

Towhata-sensei himself

Hopefully that made some sense and helps explain what I do all week when I'm in the lab. I could provide a lot more details, but they would probably just be confusing.

Lab Summer Trip: Part 2

2008-08-02T09:44:00.005+09:00

The second day.

We got breakfast at the hotel and I further learned that the Japanese haven't quite mastered breakfast foods yet. The spread looked remarkably similar to dinner, however this time there were scrambled eggs and some rolls with jam and butter. I opted for some lettuce (the Japanese think lettuce by itself is enough of a salad) and the rolls. I think banked on the hope that we'd be stopping at a rest stop at some point in the morning, at which time I could procure some actual food.

We piled on the bus and head out to see the remnants of an earthquake from 2004. This day turned out to be much more interesting, as we were taken to different construction sites and got to walk around and hear about the different ways they were repairing after the earthquake.

We saw a lot of soil nailing and retaining walls. We also saw a lot of erosion control measure, from revetments to flood control dams. We also got to visit a few tunnels, I'm not entirely sure why we visited the tunnels, but they're underground so I guess that counts. The one tunnel had been hand dug by the people who lived near there and didn't like getting snowed in in the winter. The tunnel was pretty dark even with flash lights, but you could still see the marks on the walls from the pick axes. For the most part, the tunnel had dirt walls, though some parts had shotcrete or chicken wire on the ceiling.

We ate lunch in Yamakoshi Village, where they are known for bull fighting. Bull fighting in Japan however is not at all like the Spanish version. In Japan, the bulls literally fight each other. The village was also a major koi farming area, with the best fish selling for 1-10 million Yen, which is about 10 - 100 thousand dollars. After the earthquake, everyone had to be evacuated because the landslides had stopped the river and caused flooding. We saw video of dead koi and cows stuck in mud that had to be left in the village. About 70% of the residents have returned in the past 4 years.

For the sake of story telling, I'll omit the remaining details and just say that we headed back to the hotel and found that we had some time until dinner would be served. My roommates and I went to our room and were thinking of playing cards. Jina came over and said that she wanted to go take photos of the rice fields further down the road from our hotel. That suggestion slowly gained more followers until we all ended up going to take photos. It was a good time and I got some good photos.

After dinner, we had another party. It started much the same way the previous night's activities had begun. The Japanese guys drinking and playing games and everyone else socializing. They actually use Rock, Paper, Scissors as a drinking game. I'm not positive how it happened, but I was volunteered to show the Japanese how we drink in the US. I was told to show them out to shotgun a beer. I accepted the position with slight hesitance because we were in a carpeted room and I didn't want to make a mess. I asked around for a key, since I didn't have any on me. I got a room key and the first full can of beer I could find and proceeded to prepare the can under the watchful eye of the Japanese kids. I shotgunned the beer and put the can on the table. A few of the kids near me checked the can to see if I had finished it all, which I had because otherwise it would have been spilling out of the can.

Having seen this feat of drinking, they proceeded to call me "professor" because I had taught them something. They then tried to repeat my performance, with mixed results. Since they didn't chug much, they weren't quite ready to drink the as fast as I had. Most were able to finish the beer though, a few couldn't, but I would say that was because they were already drunk.

I spent the rest of the evening lying low, because I really didn't want to drink too much since we had to get up and take the bus home the next day. After that however, I think I've earned some cred with the guys in the lab though. It was quite the ice breaker I guess.

International Lab

2008-08-01T21:06:00.004+09:00

As it happens, civil engineering is one of the few subjects taught at the University of Tokyo in English. This attracts many international students. I've experienced first hand just how they handle teaching in English and basically, the professors say everything twice. Once in English and once in Japanese. If it's very simple English, they don't bother translating.

So, being a foreigner myself, I've found it pretty easy to befriend the other foreigners, if only because they speak good English. I have found them all to be very friendly. My first week there, I was sort of looked after by Ivan and Wayway. Ivan sits next to me and is from Russia. Wayway is Chinese, but from England, so she speaks English perfectly well and of course has a British accent. Ivan is married to a Japanese-American woman from Guam and Wayway is engaged to Frenchman.

Our lab also has Carlos, who sits next to me in the lab and is from Colombia. Umar and Aziz from Pakistan. Amin from Iran. There is a Sri Lankan guy, there was a visiting professor from Egypt, and another guy, I think is from maybe Nepal or somewhere in that area by the look of him.

I should also add Matteo and Stefano, two grad students from Pisa in Italy. They only arrived last weekend and are only here for the summer as well.

The other geotech lab seems every bit as diverse as ours. There is Co-san, who is from Korea, Adrianna, who is also from Colombia, Gabriele, who is from Italy, Choco, from Indonesia, Jina, who is Korean but was born and raised in Paris.

In this photo: Choco, me, Co-san, Laura, Jina, Carlos, Adrianna, Gabriele

The conversations took place in multiple languages at times with everyone of them working on their Japanese. Gabriele's girlfriend is Japanese and apparently now only wants him to speak Japanese with her. Co and Jina would talk in Korean sometimes. Carlos, Adrianna and Gabriele would speak Spanish. When the other Italians were around Gabriele would speak Italian with them. At times I felt I needed to put my iPod on and listen to just English because I was getting language overload.

Lab Summer Trip: Part 1

2008-08-01T20:53:00.006+09:00

I spent the last 3 days on a trip with the other students in my lab and the students from the other geotech lab at another campus. It was a fruitful 3 days and I really enjoyed getting out of Tokyo and seeing more of Japan.

Not everyone from both labs went and my two friends Ivan and Wayway weren't going, so I wasn't sure what to expect since I had had limited interaction with the Japanese students and I was going to have to room with four other guys for the trip. Luckily one of them was Carlos, who sits next to me in the lab and is from Colombia, was going and he knew the other guys. Basically the rooms got separated between English speakers (ie. non-Japanese) and the Japanese. It made sense since Japanese are all friends and the basically by default the non-Japanese are friends.

Going into the trip, I hoped that I could become better friends with the two guys who arrived earlier this week from Italy. Like me, they are only in Tokyo for the summer and seemed like nice enough guys.

We met at the lab on Wednesday morning at 6:45am and got on a coach bus. Our first destination was Niigata because there had been a major earthquake there in 1964 and we were going to see some historical sites. As it turns out, in the subsequent 50 years they had rebuilt the areas that were damaged (what a surprise), but we did see some interesting things.

Riding on the bus was an interesting enough experience. I think we stopped at every rest stop that we past. It seemed like every hour we were stopping again. At the first rest stop, I should have known that the bathrooms would be nice because there was a guy dusting the light fixtures on the outside of the building. Sadly I had left my camera in my bag that day, so it spent the day in the luggage hold of the bus and I spent the day without it. I more than made up for it on Thursday.

During the course of the day, I was availed upon to settle questions of English words for things. Like the English word for a dragon fly. I amazed them when they asked me the word for hypnotist. I told them what it was and then also explained about the verb hypnotize and the subject hypnotism. This was far too much for them and they assured me they would quickly forget such complicated things.

Wednesday night we got to the hotel and my suspicions were confirmed. It was a ski resort, literally on the slopes. I hadn't been sure what other type of hotel would rent rooms big enough for 5 people in the mountains in Japan. The room only had 2 beds, but there was an area about 6 Tatami mats and some futons for you to sleep on. I somehow ended up with a bed. I'm guessing they were being nice to be because I'm a visitor. Also, throw away your conception of what a futon is and replace it with fairly thick, roll up mattress.

Choco (more like cho ko, than chocolate), one of my roommates for the trip taught us a card game and we spent the time before dinner playing cards and trading off taking showers. There was also a party that night for everyone to socialize at. We had a big private room and drink and snacks were provided. Again, the room was fairly segregated in Japanese and foreigners, since we were sitting at 2 different tables. The Japanese girls were always more willing to sit and talk to the foreigners, but the guys were more interested in hanging out with each other.

I also got to talk a bit more with Stefano (Steve) and Matteo. We sort of talked about drinking for a bit. They taught me an Italian toast, which is roughly equivalent to "chug." It means "drink until the glass is empty." I'm a bit disappointed that in all the years that the English language has existed, we haven't come up with anything better than "chug," at least not that I'm aware of. The rest of the night went pretty well and we all headed to bed around midnight.

Evening came, morning followed.

RPGs

2008-08-01T20:34:00.002+09:00

Today, I had a realization that helped me make more sense of those old Nintendo RPGs like Dragon Warrior. The hotels in those games and even still some newer ones would ask you if you wanted to "Rest" or "Stay." When you said Rest, you would designate an amount of time you wanted to stay. If you said Stay, it would be an overnight stay. I think I remember a game where Rest did basically nothing but kill time. You wouldn't regain any life or anything, it would simply be later. I actually think this may have been one of the newer Zelda games.

So if you have read my previous posts, you might see that I have already posted about hotels here in Japan where the same options are available. The "Love" hotels are the main example, but also I've heard of places on Mt. Fuji where you can pay to rest inside, or pay to sleep there. I'll hopefully know more about those later this month after I climb Mt. Fuji.

Bikes

2008-07-28T11:20:00.003+09:00

I had a thought today and I think I actually followed it through to the conclusion.

If everyone rides bikes here so much why aren't their calves ridiculous?

So I used a little reasoning and add a pinch of personal experience with my bike I got here and came up with what I think is the answer: Gear ratios.

Gear ratios here are crazy low. So you're basically just spinning continuously. It makes sense that they use such low gearing for a lot of reasons. Most bikes are used to transport all sorts of stuff. There are all kinds of child seats, baskets, bags, etc and when you're carrying all that extra weight, you want a lower gearing so that you can actually pedal.

A corollary of this low gearing is less resistance while pedaling. This is what keeps you from developing Jan Ulrich legs. It's also better for your knees to pedal at higher RPMs and lower resistance.

I saw some fixed gears in a store this weekend and man were they expensive. The store also sold all the parts you would need for a conversion. All you would need to do is find a bike with horizontal drop outs and you'd be set. If I had been coming for a longer time, I most definitely would have brought at least one of my bikes with me. Probably just one, because I would probably want to keep it in my room and not leave it outside all the time.

Passion

2008-07-27T12:11:00.005+09:00

While wearing my black Passion shirt yesterday, my friend Laura and I were stopped by some Christian "missionaries" here in Tokyo. We had seen some American girls earlier in the day, who had asked us if we wanted to practice our English. We told them our English was fine and continued walking. They had been nice enough and had been holding signs that said, in Japanese, free English practice.

I figured that it was probably a decent enough way to meet people and learn some Japanese as well and that's why these girls were holding these signs.

Fast forward an hour or so and we walk past another group of kids holding these same signs. We walk past them completely and then one of them calls out "Are you Christians?". So then we're sort of reeled into a conversation with these kids. I reply automatically that "Yes we are," because it saves you so much time and effort talking with people like that to just agree with whatever they say.

She had guessed we were Christian because she saw my Passion shirt and once she read the back "This is our salvation" she was sure we were.

She then proceeded to ask if I had heard of the Passion movement, to which I just said I had to speed things along. Laura didn't realize to just agree with everything, and said no. So we got to hear about this big organization of Christians in the US, etc.

We then learned that this girl had been in Japan for a year helping with the Christian churches in Tokyo. She described her work as "Hanging out, talking to people about Jesus." She was maybe 18 or so. There were two other kids with her that must have just been on some type of missionary trip, because they were staying in hostels and looked like they were about 13.

We finally snaked our way out of the conversation without too much effort and walked away. It was only afterwards that I remembered the best way to get out of talking to Christians is to tell them you're Catholic.

I had tried to explain to the girl that Passion was a band I was friends with. But didn't want to try to explain to her that the name Passion and the line "This is our salvation" didn't have anything to do with Jesus.

In the process of all of this, we got distracted and walked the wrong way and nearly had to walk past them again to get to the subway, but were able to find an alternate route.

Adachi Fireworks

2008-07-24T23:30:00.003+09:00

After work today, I went to Adachi with Laura, the American grad student I'm working with this summer. She had seen online that there was supposed to be a fireworks festival from 7:15 - 8:45pm. Not having any clue what to expect, we figured we'd go and see, since there is going to be another big festival on Saturday. This was our practice run.

The place wasn't far, only a few stops on the train and then a few more on the subway. Tokyo is really easy to navigate on the public transportation if you have a decent idea of where you're headed. While waiting for Laura to meet me at the subway stop, I started noticing ton of people, male and female, in kimonos. It made me think of Oktoberfest where a lot of people, including many of the younger generation, wore traditional Bavarian clothing, lederhosen and dirndls everywhere. I'll also say that those lederhosen were expensive, the Germans wear darker color leather, that's partially how you can tell them from the tourists.

Anyway, I was watching all this kids, mostly girls, walking around in kimonos and traditional wooden sandals and it struck me that it was akin to people in the US dressing up like colonists for the 4th of July. It sort of stinks that we don't have any traditions like that, but at the same time, it's not such a big deal.

Back to the story. When Laura arrived we also sort of realized that everyone was heading to Adachi for these fireworks. This lead to my first experience of being packed in the subway like a sardine. Luckily for us, our car wasn't so full, but the train that left before ours had to have the transit workers help push the people in for the doors to close. Adachi was only 2 stops from Nishi-Nippori so we weren't crushed in for long. Once we got out of the subway, people had sort of fanned out so you weren't as overwhelmed by the numbers. We just followed the crowds and then eventually the sound of fireworks.

Now, when I said the festival went for an hour and a half, I mean there were fireworks in the air exploding for an hour and a half. This year was apparently special too, because it was the 30th anniversary of this festival or something like that. They had about 15,000 fireworks. Now, I might be exaggerating a little when I say there were always fireworks in the air, but I'm not when I say it went on for a long time. There were a few lulls in the action, but for the most part it was ridiculous. I saw at least 4-5 displays that were equivalent to a finale in the US. Some of the fireworks I saw I had never seen before, some were just regular but there were so many of them the entire sky was brightened. They had shot so many up and had them exploding simultaneously that it was really impressive.

I had been warned by WayWay in the lab, that somehow Japanese people tend to overreact to fireworks. Tonight I saw what she meant. Every time there was something mildly impressive, a great "Aaaaahhhhhh" went up all over the area where we were watching. We didn't even get that close to the fireworks because we had gotten there a bit late and there were so many people.

I'll just say that if Adachi could put on such a show on a Thursday night, I'm really looking forward to seeing what Asakusa comes up with on Saturday.

My Friend

2008-07-20T18:21:00.003+09:00

I went to Asakusa today just to check it out. When I got there I read in my guidebook that Asahi has a bar (as it turns out, it's not just a bar, you can get other food there) at the top of a building just across the Sumida River from the subway station. Having been to the Guinness factory with it's bar at the top, I figured this place probably offered a great view.

Now, you have to order something to be able to get in to see the view. There were also a few other restaurants on the same floor. It was the 22nd floor and for most of Tokyo that's pretty high, high enough that you can see quick a bit, except that today was hazy.

Basically, the view has nothing to do with this story anyway. I sit down in an empty seat in the corner and get settled in to enjoy the view. I get my drink, everything is going fine. I'm taking some pictures. So I'm about half way done my drink when a guy sits down next to me. This isn't odd, it was an empty seat and this is Tokyo. Their definition of personal space is worlds away from our definition in America. There are just too many people around for anyone to bother caring how close they are to you. It's pretty normal to get bumped into in line at the store by the person behind you.

Back to me sitting there and this guy sitting there. I don't know how it all started. I think I was taking some pictures, when this guy decides to start talking to me. I'm a friendly person, I don't mind a random conversation with a stranger. Of course, when the two people involved in the conversation don't speak the same language things get a bit hairy. I know a tiny bit of Japanese and I think I used all of it today with this guy.

From what I gathered from my broken Japanese and his broken English. He was from southern Japan and had flown into Haneda airport that day. He seemed to be sightseeing as well, which I think is what made him decide to talk to me since I had a camera. So he rambled on for quite a while, some of which I followed, most of which I had no idea but I nodded politely. He asked me if I had been to the big temple they have in Asakusa and I in my confusion said that I had been there, despite the fact that I hadn't. We continued on for quite some time. He asked where I was from and I said America. His first reaction to that was "Red Sox". It took a bit of work, but I finally told him I was from south of New York, though he may think I'm from south New York. I had a phrasebook with me, but I could only get the word for south.

The phrasebook became quite a conversation piece though because as soon as I pulled it out. I had wanted to a to ask him if I could take his picture. I was hoping the phrase book would provide the words I needed. Instead, it became English practice time. He looked through the book and read the English to me, sort of showing off that he could read English. We went through how to rent a car, some desserts, and a few other parts of the book, before I regained possession of it and put it away. We then talked about what time it was and how to say it both in English and Japanese. We went through the months. It is in fact July, the 7th month. The 20th day of that month and so on. It was interesting, but my patience was wearing. Then he pulled out his A game. He began talking about movies, which really only consisted of him saying John Wayne's name and pretending to have two pistols in his hands. He then repeated the same motion after saying Steve McQueen. Then we moved on to a brief talk about Tokyo being the capital (I think, because he mentioned the emperor.) This led us to Washington and to President Johnson, then Kennedy, then Clinton, then Bush. Nothing really being said here that I understood other than their names. He also could have been talking about Bill or Hillary, I have no idea. We got in some topical conversation when he brought up Obama (again, I have no idea what, if anything, was said besides the name).

At this point, my patience had run out. I didn't want to be rude to him, but I didn't want to stay there any longer. I gathered my things and said I had to go. He then said, "Good bye" and "have a nice day" which served as final flourishes to our meeting. I returned my best "Sayonara" and left as quickly as possible so as to avoid further conversation.

I decided to head to the bathroom before I left since the building was rather nice and I figured had a nice bathroom. I was not disappointed. On my way out however, I noticed that my friend was about to leave as well, so I decided to take another tour of the bathroom. I'm glad I did because not only did it save me from talking with him more, but it also lead me to the most advanced toilet I've seen yet. Not only did this have a bidet with 3 settings (I've since deciphered that one is really only for women) but it also had a blow dryer option. Yes, that's right, you can have a nice warm stream of air blown directly across your bottom to dry it off after you use the bidet. Oh Japan, how I marvel at your technology.

Kyu-Furukawa Garden

2008-07-20T10:04:00.002+09:00

I finally went to one of the gardens by my apartment yesterday. I'm usually at work while they're open, but since it was Saturday and I had some time to kill before my friend Matt arrived I spent the morning at the Kyu-Furukawa Garden. It's literally up the street from my house, not half a mile.

I'll put the pictures I took in my albums. I've also been working on understanding the setting on the digital camera I have with me. It's nice to be able to take some time to play with the manual modes for scenery, but also good to be able to just take quick shots in the auto mode.

Anyway, the garden was sort of centered around this "Western style residence". It was basically a big house. These gardens had been created for the house, while it was still a residence and now they're both open to the public. As with Shinjuku Gyoen, there were a bunch of fish and turtles in the pond at the garden. I've been getting attacked by a lot of mosquitoes and been thinking that maybe I should have gotten that vaccination against Japanese encephalitis.

I sat in a corner of the garden reading for a while. At one point, I felt like I was moving. I didn't quite understand how, since I was sitting still. It continued for a while and then stopped. I kept reading, thinking that maybe the heat had gotten to me or that a big truck had gone by or that I was sitting over a subway tunnel. I thought little of it and kept reading.

After a while, I head back to my apartment to drop my stuff off and to go meet my friend Matt at the train station. When we got back to my apartment I discovered that a kid from Penn has been living in my building, but is heading home next week. I guess it's the end of the term here so everyone is leaving. He was wearing a Wharton shirt, so I basically had to stop him and talk to him. He asked me if I had felt the earthquake that morning.

So I experienced my first ever earthquake and didn't even recognize it as one. However that did help take care of one of my hopes for my trip here. I wanted to feel an earthquake. I was ok with this one, it was probably a good beginner earthquake. I don't know if I'd care for a bigger one, but since I have no control over the matter I guess I'll just have to wait and see.

Keep Left

2008-07-16T22:24:00.002+09:00

As everyone knows, in Japan they drive on the other side of the road from the US and many other places. For some reason this works well on islands, I don't quite follow why it's worth it for the auto industry to continue allowing this trend, but I guess they can't change it now.

What might be less obvious to observers, is that staying on the left pervades all aspects of life here. Things we don't even think about, like which side of the escalator to stand on, are reversed here. So while, you may get harassed in Washington D.C. for standing on the left side of the escalator, (This side is for the super important people who need to walk up the escalator. If they were really in a hurry they should just take the stairs.) in Tokyo, you stand on the left and walk up the right side.

This foreign (literally) concept also applies to sidewalks, though with less success. Technically, bikes are supposed to stay in the bike lane, but realistically they go where ever they want. Bikes in the bike lane should then keep left and pass right always. Generally this rule is followed, but what throws me off, is when I try to get out of someone's way by going right, but they go left and then we almost hit each other. It's completely ingrained in my head, that to get out of the way in traffic, go right. It's situations like this that lead me to just ride in the street where possible, because there's more room and fewer obstacles.

School Kids

2008-07-16T22:05:00.002+09:00

Everyone knows about the stereotypical Japanese schoolgirl uniform. It's been in movies, cartoons, etc. Well I just want to add that those girls are everywhere. There are multiple versions of these uniforms depending on which school you go to and apparently they never take them off. They are like an entirely different subset of kids over here. I see plenty of kids with normal clothes on walking around and then there are the uniformed kids. Maybe it's a private school thing. I don't know. I was in McDonalds around 8 pm tonight and there were girls there still in uniform (there was also kid who couldn't have been more than 12 working the register). There are also uniforms for guys (not as revealing, but equally distinctive).

What may not be as well known are the hats that younger Japanese children wear to school. These also come in many varieties. I also discovered that when school has ended there are tons of these little kids basically roaming the streets going home. Unattended like 5, 6, 7 year olds just walking home. At first I thought that there must have been adults nearby that I wasn't seeing, but no. These kids are like cattle coming home from pasture at the end of the day. They just wander around with their backpacks and their little hats held on by the elastic bands under their chins.

Laundry

2008-07-16T21:49:00.002+09:00

I did my first load of laundry tonight. I discovered two things.

1. I overpacked. There were clothes I didn't wear yet and most likely didn't need to bring. I had an idea that I was bringing more than I needed when I was packing, but I added a few things because I psychologically thought I needed more. I only brought about 10 T-shirts, but that was about 4 too many apparently. Knowing that I could do laundry, I should have brought less. I only brought two bags with me as it is, but I still feel like I brought way more stuff than I'll need.

This discovery also made me realize, I have too many clothes in general. If I can get by for 2 months in another country with so little, I should be able to get by at home with not much more. Ignoring my need for work clothes, I definitely have too many casual clothes.

2. My laundry area is probably the dirtiest place I have seen in Japan yet. It doesn't help that it's connected to a Chinese food restaurant. The washers have a little overflow area that they sit in and it seems like the water lines just drain into this area. Then there is a small, barely functioning drain that drains the overflow area. Needless to say I was less than thrilled to clean my clothes in this tiny place (about the size of my bathroom at home). So I must always be on guard against dropping anything into the moat that surrounds the washing machines. The dryers were ok and rather new it seemed. The part that is a pain, is that they only take 100 yen coins and there is no change machine.

Bicycles

2008-07-15T14:55:00.002+09:00

Since one of my hobbies at home is riding and fixing bikes, I was pretty interested to see what the bike situation over here was. It seems like most people just ride cruisers or beaters to get from Point A to Point B. There are all sort of baskets, bags, fenders and kid's seats. For the most part people seem to ride step through frames that we in the US generally associate with women's bikes.

I guess in a culture where everyone has a bike it's not worth caring about whether a frame is intended for women or not. I have seen regular men's frames. I've seen some higher end road bikes and a few mountain bikes. I've been keeping my eye out for fixed gears or Keirin bikes as they're called here, but I only saw one on my first day here (and yes it had deep Vs). There are some hills here, but I really expected to see more of them. I even scanned the bike racks at the University, expecting that they would be more popular with younger kids as they tend to be in Philadelphia.

I can't say I'm disappointed by what I've found, but I do have some thoughts.

Why in a culture where everyone rides bikes are all the bikes so nondescript? (Ignore the fact that I'm in Japan and everyone here is almost required to be modest). You would think that in a sea of hundreds of parked bikes, you would try to make yours look a little different. You would maybe want it to stand out so it could be more easily found. I haven't noticed anything of the sort. You can walk down a row of bikes and see 10 of basically the same bike.

I'll also add that bike theft does not appear to be prevalent here. Most bikes have only integrated rear wheel locks. I haven't seen one U-lock. So given this added aspect, why not make your bike a little flashy. It's unlikely that your bike will be stolen for looking a little different.

Appearance is very important here. Until recently, facial hair was usually only seen on Yakuza. Tattoos are still fairly taboo. Almost everyone dresses well. There are hoards of young girls who can be seen with fake tans and bleached blond hair (I haven't seen many, but I hear they're out there). To these girls, the western image is important it would seem. There are all sorts of youth trends in lifestyle and fashion. So I would expect that these groups would be more likely to customize their bikes to mirror their own styles. Still, I haven't seen this type of behavior. I will keep an eye out for it, but I have a suspicion I won't find it.

I would bet that the only people in Tokyo who customize their bikes for appearance in addition to function are the fixed gear riders. This assumption comes from what I know of young fixed riders in the States and from some video I have seen of Japanese fixed riders.

I'll leave you with this weird belt driven bike I saw.

University of Tokyo

2008-07-15T11:26:00.004+09:00

I had my first day on campus yesterday. I met Prof. Towhata and the grad students in the geotech lab. I also got a desk to sit at. So far in the lab, there is an Asian girl named Wayway, who is from the UK. A guy named Ivan, I'm not sure where he's from. Carlos, from Columbia (the country not the University or the district). There are also Japanese students, but I'm not sure of all their names yet.

I'm going to need to start wearing my Reefs to the lab though, because I have to take off my shoes at the entranceway and my Starburys were annoying to take off yesterday. The campus is pretty nice, though the buildings are a bit old. I was at the other campus with Todd the other day and that was really new and modern.

In addition to being my first day on campus, I also took my first ride on the Tokyo Metro. I had to take the Namboku line a whopping two stops from Komagome to Todaimae. It was croweded, but I didn't need to get pushed on or anything. Now is also as good a time as any to talk about the door closing jingle they play. Every station has it's own little music that they play to let you know that the doors will be closing very soon. I didn't quite know what was going on until I Googled it and found some videos on Youtube. On the JR line there are no signs explaining it. However on the subway I found some signs like this one:

There was also this sign:

There really is a lot of wind generated. They have a second set of doors in the station that keep you from the track area. I had thought that these doors were to prevent people from being buffeted with wind as the trains come, but now I can see that it also probably lowers the amount of track maintenance from things (or people) falling on the tracks.

It turns out that the university is on Hongo-dori, which is also the street that I live on. Yesterday evening, I just walked home from the lab. It was only about a 40 minute walk. I passed a few random temples or shrines on my way home.

Sliced bread

2008-07-15T11:16:00.002+09:00

Continuing on my food theme, I figured I'd take some time to explain how bread is sold here. This description really just applies to white bread that I've seen. Basically, you have your choice of 4, 6, or 8 slices. Six and eight seem to be more common. The thing is, you always get the same amount of bread. They just slice it thinner or thicker depending. Coming from America, where if bread came in 4 slice loaves, you'd have to go buy bread every day, this system is weird to me. I thought of all this while eating some Skippy on white bread and watching the MLB home run derby on my computer.

I would bet though, that the 4 or 6 slice loaves would be great for french toast.

The other day at 7-11 I got a pre-made sandwich. It was something like ham with cucumber slices. It wasn't bad. It was on thin bread, but the weird part about it, was that I got 3 halves. There were 3 triangular wedges of sandwich in the package. I guess that just takes one more slice, but it was still a bit random.

Cup Noodle

2008-07-14T08:29:00.002+09:00

I bought some Cup Noodle the other day and only just now realized how great it is. I not only know the basic color scheme they use to show what flavor it is, but I also have the cooking instructions memorized.

You can't microwave the cup because it's styrofoam and will melt.

Boil some water.
Peel back the lid a little.
Pour in the water up to the line at the top.
Fold the lid back over.
Let it sit for about 2 minutes.

Enjoy.

Hopefully the other ramen I bought will follow this process. I did find the international food store near me though. I got some pasta and granola. I can get Cherry Coke and Pepperidge Farm cookies a mere 5 minute walk from my apartment. What more could I ask for?

Photos

2008-07-13T19:34:00.002+09:00

Feel free to visit my photo albums.

http://picasaweb.google.com/Pontoon

Fashion

2008-07-13T19:21:00.002+09:00

I didn't mention this in my Shibuya post, but Karl had been wearing Manpris and I had a discussion with Cidi about them. I said I saw no reason for them and that people should just wear pants or shorts. His thought was that they offered a more formal appearance than short, without being too formal. I told him that while that might be true, it is the easiest way in the US to spot a foreigner. No man in the US wears that particular cut of pants. While there are some that wear shorts/ pants that are a similar length, none are cut quite that way. I said it was fine for women to wear them, but men in the US would not wear them.

I have subsequently seen a lot of Japanese wearing Manpris. I had thought it was a European fashion, but I suppose things like that will catch on in other places.

There is another fashion here that I don't quite follow. Some guys will wear a big leather pouch on their belt. It's sort of like a wallet I guess. It's sort of like a holster, since it hangs from the belt, but its purpose is more like a purse. I'll have to ask Cidi about them some time.

While I'm on this subject, I would also like to say that in my opinion, blond hair is not making any Japanese people look any better. The women I have seen with blond hair can't pull it off and it looks pretty unnatural. I also have seen a bunch of women with the same nose as Gogo from Kill Bill Vol. 1. It's weird, it's sort of too big for their faces (again, in my opinion). I mean, it was one thing for her to have one, but I didn't realize it was a common thing.

I'd also like to add to this ramble that I'm pretty sure if you printed anything, I mean anything at all in English on a shirt, you could sell it here for a profit. I've seen a few shirts that made no sense at all. So if I ever get some extra cash, I'm starting a T-shirt business, maybe I can just go to American companies, buy their misprinted merchandise, bring it to Japan, mark it up and sell it.

Shinjuku

2008-07-13T18:13:00.006+09:00

After nearly ruining my sleeping pattern by sleeping from 6pm to 3 am last night (which can't even be explained by jet lag because that would have been 5 am - 2 pm at home), I decided to head to Shinjuku. I wanted to stop by my landlord's office to ask about the guest policy and pay the guest fee for my friend Matt's upcoming visit. So I hopped on the Yamanote line and headed to Shinjuku. I had only been Sakura house's office once before, but I managed to find it easily and take care of my business.

I left the office and decided to check out the Sunkus to see what they offer that might be different from 7-11. It turns out they have a few things that are different. I found Pepsi Blue Hawaii, which tastes like pineapple and lemon. Not the best combination in my opinion, but I promised my brother I would be on the lookout for things like it and try them.

I wandered around near the Sakura house office for a while, saw a VW dealer and found a few record shops, but saw that they didn't open until the afternoon. So I figured I'd wander around some more to kill time until they opened. I headed back towards the train station. I made a few turns and ended up in another outdoor shopping area. I was most surprised to find a sewing machine store. I didn't realize dedicated stores for sewing machines still existed, but I guess they do. I also came across, what might be one of my favorite parts of being in Tokyo, an all way crossing. All the traffic lights for cars turn red and pedestrians can just go where ever they want in the intersection, across, diagonal, you name it.

I found a bunch of movie theaters and restaurants. I even found some "soaplands". Then I stumbled upon what looked to be an ice carving competition. I stood around for a while to see what was going on, but nothing was too clear. There were tables set up all around this raised platform area. There were also people wearing numbers milling about. I saw a cute blond girl also wandering around taking pictures of the tables, so I asked her if she spoke English. It turns out she was Canadian, on her way back to school in Australia. She was killing time on a long lay over. She figured it looked like an ice sculpting competition. We chatted a bit about exchanging money and I told her what I could. In retrospect I should have talked to her longer or offered to take her to lunch if she was short on cash, but I didn't.

I decided that since I had nothing at all better to do, I would stick around and see what happened with the competition. I found a spot in the shade and waited. Workers began unloading blocks of ice from a truck. I watched this proceed for a bit and then realized that there were at least 100 competitors and it was going to take a while. I walked around a bit more. I went to a 7-11 to check to see if my debit card would work at the ATM there.

After learning that I would be able to get money out for the next two months, I headed back to the competition, which was now much closer to beginning. I'd like to take this time to comment about McDonalds in Tokyo. If people think there are too many Starbucks too close together in the US, they should check out McDonalds here. Within half a block of each other there are 24/7 McDonalds. I mean they're everywhere. I also found a Burger King and a Wendy's today. I had already seen several KFCs. Now if only I could find a Taco Bell...

The competition began with a whistle. Only half the competitors started (the half whose ice was in the sun). I watched them work and took a ton of pictures. I only stayed until the first set of carvers were done. They had worked for about an hour or so and by that time the record stores had opened.

I stopped at Mos Burger to see what they served and ended up with a Teriyaki burger. It was decent, but I'll probably try something else next time. This pickle guy seems to be their mascot. In the store, there were ads with this guy putting himself onto sandwiches, which seems a little odd really, but he is a pickle.

I checked out the record shops looking for any Naiad I could find. I didn't find any, but I did find some pretty cool record shops. Disk Union was probably the best, but the Tower was actually pretty good as well. Disk Union took up 8 floors and Tower was about 4 floors. But the floors that Tower was on were a lot bigger. It's deceiving here when you see a multiple floor store because you don't really know how big those floors are. I've also had to get used to going to a store on a random floor in a building. You have to pay attention to the signs outside, otherwise you'd never know a store existed.

I walked through Shinjuku some more. I passed a lot of high end stores and some really nice areas. I found an area map on the street and figured from it that I wasn't too far from Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. I headed over and paid my 200 yen admission fee and went in.

I had been trying to go to the gardens closer to my apartment, but they were always closed by the time I got there, so I was glad for the opportunity to check out these gardens. I have a lot of pictures of the gardens, but it was very similar to some parks I had been to in Germany. In Potsdam and Munich there are public parks right in the city where people head to lay out or have some open space to play sports. I love Fairmount park and all, but I don't think we have many comparable places in Philadelphia, maybe Lemon Hill or somewhere near the Mann, maybe.

I hung around the park for an hour or so taking photos and enjoying the sights. I did notice one thing that has been bothering me a bit about Tokyo so far. While there are crows, or ravens (I don't know) I haven't seen any type of ground animals. I guess I haven't seen any rodents of any type, but the lack of squirrels just seems weird to me.

Back in Komagome, I decided to check out a few shops I had seen but not gone into. I went into the international food store. I found Skippy peanut butter and a few friends from home (Hershey's bars, Snyder's of Hanover snacks, and Campbell's soup). There were a few other things, like I now know where to buy taco mix and cherry Coke. Of course the items in this store were a bit more expensive than a regular store, so I only got a few things. Then I went to the regular store. I also passed the bike shop and saw that I could get a single speed for somewhere between $200-300. I don't think I can drop that much on a bike here, so hopefully I can get some help finding a used bike from people in the lab.

Shibuya

2008-07-12T14:55:00.002+09:00

Last night, after getting lost in Komagome for an hour or so and doing a lot of walking, I went out in Shibuya with this kid Todd I met in the States. He's studying at the University of Tokyo also, but is working on a different campus than I am. We met up at Shibuya station and then went to meet some of his colleagues from the lab and his professor from the University of Washington.

The restaurant was in the lower level of a building right in Shibuya. I got to walk through the big intersection called Shibuya crossing that they drift through in Tokyo Drift.

So at the restaurant, we had to remove our shoes of course and sat at this table that at first I though you sort of crouched at, but then realized that there was a space under table to put your feet down into. I sat next to a Turkish guy named Cidi (not sure how to spell it but it sounds like chid eye). He was a PhD student and spoke completely fluent Japanese. There were also a few other students there, two of whom had to leave to go home since they were only in Tokyo for the day. The others were Daisuke and Christoph. Daisuke was great. We talked a bit about baseball and a lot of other things. Christoph, who is half Japanese, is also French or lived in France. So when he spoke English it was with a fairly heavy French accent. It was sort of funny to listen to, but not unlike my friend Nico, who is Bavarian but speaks English with an Irish accent.

So we sat there for 3 hours or so and ate and drank. Cidi kept ordering more food and then making Todd and I try it. I passed on the plate of chicken parts, which included heart and livers. I did eat a bunch of fish and some other stuff. At one point, I ate some form of tentacle and a ring of some sort, it seemed like cartilage. I also ate some chicken skin later. Todd and I both got complimented on our chop stick usage, which apparently was pretty proficient.

The waiter was pretty funny. He kept using an exaggerated English accent in such a way that it was hard to tell if he was making fun of himself or the terrible Engrish that many Japanese speak.

I also encountered my first run in with bathrooms marked only in Japanese. As it turns out, I picked the women's room. It wasn't a big deal, at least it wasn't to me, because it was just a single toilet and sink with a lockable door. There was a woman waiting to use it after me when I went out though. I also hadn't bothered to put my shoes on to go to the bathroom, because I wasn't quite sure where they had ended up. I realize now that not putting my shoes on completely defeated the purpose of taking them off, namely, to keep the area by the table clean from debris. On my next trip to the bathroom, I fared much better, both using shoes and going to the men's room.

We were more or less kicked out of our table as soon as our reservation was up, because in Japan when you reserve a table for a certain period of time, you have that table for just that amount of time. There may have been people waiting to get in and sit there, but we didn't really see any.

So we left, with Cidi leading the way. He took us straight in to this fancy looking building that seemed more like a hotel than what it really was, a karaoke place. Cidi gets us our spot, which as it turns out is on the 9th floor of the building. In Japan karaoke isn't like in the US, you get your own room and waiter. You get to sing in private and can pick up a phone to call the waiter or to ask for more time, which Daisuke kept doing despite the fact that we were all hoarse from singing. We were there for about 2 hours, during which time, I'm trying to mind the time, since trains back to Komagome stop running around 12:30 or so.

We sang a ton of cliche American hits. As soon as I walked into the room, I was forced to sing Bon Jovi's "It's My Life". Many more followed and since Todd and I were American and knew the words to most of the songs, we were tasked with most of the singing. We were also given two tambourines and some maracas to keep the beat with. Todd's professor, Karl, is from Germany, so I looked through the book and found 99 Luftballoons by Nena. So we put that on and sang that in German. He later put on a Scorpions song, but I think he was the only one who knew the words.

The night continued on in basically the same way. Songs kept coming on that I knew the words and melody to so I kept singing. I learned that whoever programs karaoke has most likely never heard the actual songs, because they scroll the words with really odd cadences. Christoph's girlfriend joined us later in the night. And with her there, more songs were sung in Japanese. Poupee de Cir, Poupee de Son came on at Christoph's request and despite my complete ignorance of French, I sang that too because I had heard it many times performed by Wizo as a cover.

Our time ran out and we finally left around 1 am or so. Having missed my train, I was now stranded in Shibuya and would not get to spend my first night in my apartment, actually in my apartment. I was having such a good time at the point that it didn't matter. Todd was going to head back and sleep on campus in a "rest" room anyway and as long as no one else was there taking up the second bed, I was welcome to go sleep there as well. So with my sleeping arrangement taken care of, we got back to our Friday night in Shibuya.

Cidi decided it was time for some burgers and took us to McDonalds. I ordered a double cheeseburger and much to my chagrin it was not on the 100 yen menu. I didn't worry about it, but didn't make the same mistake again when Todd and I decided to go for seconds. We both stuck to the 100 yen menu and got ourselves a couple McPork sandwiches, which tasted like sausage patties from breakfast sandwiches.

Having sated our hunger, we then headed out to get one last beer for the night. This whole time Cidi is trying to convince Todd and I that it's not that late and that if we head to Roppongi we could just stay out all night and get the train when it started running again at 5 am. (Since I'll hopefully get to Roppongi eventually, I'll cover that later, suffice to say it's an area of Tokyo, not just one place). We decide that it's too much trouble to go all the way over there and stay with Cidi, Karl, Daisuke, Christoph and his girlfriend.

Cidi takes us to this random bar that he used to frequent and is greeted by a friend of his at the bar. On the way to the bar we passed by a few "love" hotels, where you can pay to stay for a "rest" or pay to stay. A "rest" is generally a few hours and apparently these hotels will basically given you any amenity you ask for and have rooms with jacuzzi tubs.

The only other patrons in the bar are two couples, who from our estimation were Australian (which they were). The Australian women decide they want to dance and manage to get Todd and Daisuke to dance as well. Their partners just sort of dance for a while as well, but eventually stop and end up talking to Karl and I. Karl and I had been discussing Germany. He is from a small town near Baden Baden, which is where my great-great grandfather was from.

Around 3 am, we head out from this bar to head back to campus. Karl's housing is near there, Cidi had left his bike there, Daisuke was going to sleep in his lab and Todd and I were hoping to find the "rest" room empty. On the walk there, Cidi points out where I'll have to head to get the train in the morning.

Todd and I get to campus and head to where he thinks the room is. It wasn't there. We found a meeting room, the female rest room and walked around in the dark for a while, before finally finding the empty rest room. It's not almost 4 am and the trains will begin again in an hour. We both just lay down and pass out, without much concern for when we'll be waking up.

I wake up and fumble for my glasses and my phone to discover that it's 6 am. I figure that I'd rather be sleeping in my better ventilated apartment, where I can shower and get some breakfast. I collect my things, tell Todd I'd see him later and head for the train. Getting to the train in the daylight was much easier than finding the rest room in the dark. On the way to the train I buy a bottle of water, since I wasn't quite recovered from last night's events. If I had known then how I'd feel on the train, I'd have gotten two bottles.

At the station, I have little trouble buying my ticket and getting on the right train (the Japanese public transportation system thus far as been great and easy to use). I take the train 2 stops to Shibuya, where I need to transfer to the Yamanote line to get back to Komagome. I buy my JR rail ticket and get on the train home. Now last night, I had estimated that the ride from Komagome to Shibuya would be about 20 minutes and it had been. The ride this morning was also only about 20 minutes, but it might as well have been an hour. It felt like it took forever. Midway through the trip, probably just after Shinjukyu, I ran out of water. At that point, getting home was the only thing on my mind. I just wanted to be home and feel the AC and lay down.

Since I'm here writing this entry, I suppose you can tell I made it home OK. I did discover that I'm fairly sure, that if I sleep on this mattress for the next 2 months, I'll come home a cripple. So far it seems worse than a pull out couch mattress.

As for going out in Shibuya, Todd and I at some point intend to make a full night of it and just stay out until the trains start running. If we head out later than 7 pm or so, it shouldn't be difficult to manage.

Now that I've lazed away the afternoon, I think it's about time to go get lost in Tokyo again. I may try to find the campus I'll be working at, but I'm not 100% sure I know which way to head.

If I get any pictures from last night, I'll be sure to post them.

Apartment

2008-07-11T15:17:00.000+09:00

I am the newest resident of 1-53-13 Hongo Ave. Komagome 205. I officially moved into the apartment today after spending the morning filling out paper work. Some of the more interesting points:

1.) I am required by my lease to take my shoes off inside my apartment
2.) I have to sort my trash into combustible and noncombustible items, which are picked up on different days. I guess the lack of available landfill space has lead to the Japanese burning their trash still.
* On a side note here plastic bottles and bags are included in the combustible items.
3.) My apartment building has a "Refuge hatch". I have yet to determine what this is, but it's either a misspelling for Refuse or somewhere I should go during an earthquake.

I'll post pictures of the apartment later, or I'll just put them up on Flickr.

I'm lucky enough to have a grocery store across the street and managed to buy groceries without much trouble. I bought a few things based solely on their packaging. Such as this:

As the flames indicate, this was indeed a spicy snack. It was rings like the ones shown and they tasted like really hot Pringles. I tried to find Wasabi peas, but couldn't find them. I also bought something with Pokemon on the package, thinking it was some form of kid's snack. While it may be a snack, it looks more like it's some form of meal with rice. I was hoping for Pokemon fruit snacks or fruit roll ups.

One of the women working in the store sounded like the fake cartoon character voice you'd expect to hear in Japan. She was saying "Sumimasen (Excuse me)" when she was no where near you or anyone.

I've also realized that I need to start remembering to not speak English the random people on the street. I keep saying "Thank you" to people who hold doors and then realize I should be thanking them in Japanese. I sort of wish I had taken more Japanese and understood more, but I was able to buy food today so I guess I'll be OK. I did decide that Japanese seems a lot easier than Chinese to learn and understand. Chinese just seems completely overwhelming to me. Maybe it's because I haven't had any Chinese lessons, but it just seems so much more complicated. I will say that I'm glad I took Japanese, only because now I can much more easily distinguish between spoken Japanese and Chinese. While my understanding of Japanese is pretty limited right now, I don't feel like it would be impossible to pick up a lot more. I was thinking of trying to watch Japanese children's TV to see what I can learn.

Now that everyone over there is asleep, I can make my way outside to wander around Ikebukuro and get to know my new neighborhood.

Japanese Toilets

2008-07-10T20:51:00.005+09:00

I've already seen my first squat toilet. I wasn't daring enough to try it, because it was in the airport and I had all my bags with me. So seeking to avoid a mishap, I opted for a stall. I was glad to see it had been manufactured by Toto, the leading Japanese toilet maker.

In my hotel tonight, I've got a one piece toilet with a built in bidet. There's an option that says "shower" but I'm not sure how that works. I'll report back on that when I know more.

UPDATE: I did indeed use the bidet and the shower settings. The shower is a higher pressure version of the bidet. Both are quite enjoyable. I only wish we had things like this in the US. Sadly my apartment's toilet is not this advance, however I was at the University of Tokyo earlier and it looks like they may have the bidet/shower toilets. I will be living it up and using these as much as possible in the next two months.

UPDATE 2: I've discovered that the toilet near my lab is even fancier than I've yet encountered. There are 3 spray options on the bidet. It also has a heated seat, which until I realized it was heat, sort of weirded me out. Usually I don't like a warm seat, because it lets me know that some has just been there. I'm still not completely used to or comfortable with this heated seat, but I don't think I can turn it off so I'll have to deal.

All toilet seats should need a grounding wire.

First day in Japan

2008-07-10T20:33:00.000+09:00

So after leaving home at 10:00 am EST yesterday morning, I've arrived in Tokyo and have finally sat down in the hotel at 8:30 pm JST Thursday. I lost about 13 hours, since it's only 7:30 am for everyone else.

The flights were pretty good. No one sat next to me on my flight to Detroit. I discovered that the Detroit airport has an indoor monorail, as you can see here.

My flight to Tokyo went pretty well. It felt like it took forever. I was fortunate enough to get to see Fool's Gold and Run, Fatboy, Run. So I only had to entertain myself for 9 hours instead of 11 or so. The flight actually got in an hour early which was nice.

In Narita airport while waiting for the bus to our hotel, I had my first sampling of Japanese vending machine offerings. I had a drink called Pocari Sweat, which I only bought because of the name. This could very well have been the sweat of sumo wrestlers and I wouldn't have known. If it was, then sumo wrestlers drink a lot of Gatorade, because that's basically all the drink was. My first bottle actually came in an aluminum container.

Once on the bus, I ended up sitting next to some Japanese dude with an iPod. It turns out he was listening to The Roots. So 10,000 miles from Philadelphia, I sit next to a kid listening to The Roots. So I put on some Loved Ones and enjoyed the view and the irony.

My hotel also apparently has a Kneipe (that's the German word for pub) that sells wurst and German beer. So needless to say, the rest of my night will involve me drinking beer and wasting more time on the Internet.