Welcome Party tonight, and more photos.
0 Comments Published by MistarOblivion on Friday, June 30, 2006 at 10:42 AM.
Robert's Xanga Page is up, and along with it, his photobucket site, with tons of great pictures. Above is a great one our delicious Okonamiyaki dinner last Friday, which was detailed a few blog posts back.
Going with the food theme, Wednesday night we went to a conveyor belt sushi place. It's a very unique experience. Everything just sort of floats by on the conveyor belt, and you grab whatever looks good. If you are impatient and want to order something by hand, there's a little intercom at the side. Then when you're done you press another button and the server comes to count up your plates. I ate quite a lot of sushi, and I tried some very interesting stuff - raw baby squid and raw octopus. 
The picture above is the squid. Looks interesting eh? Well, it was delicious - surprisingly soft and sweet. So far, discarding my weird-food apprehensions has paid off in spades. The meal itself was cheap too, only 100 yen (less than $1) a plate! As you can see, there were quite a few plates at the end. We finished it off with some flan, which interestingly is the only mexican cuisine I can find here. I saw some avocados at the store, so I was thinking guacamole, but apparently they don't sell tortilla chips here. Shame, Shame.Tonight is the welcome party, and Shimojo-sensee (the head honcho at the Cyber Media Center) offered to introduce us to some different types of sake. That should be interesting. We'll also be partying with some Dutch students who are also doing a project here as well. We're the guests of honor, so that's rather exciting.
Laundry last night was quite an ordeal. It was mostly trial and error, as we couldn't read the instructions or the buttons. The washing went mostly fine, but the dryer didn't do it's job after half an hour and 100 yen. I put in another 100, and still, my clothes were soaking wet. So I put hung them up to dry in my little bathroom, and turned on the dryer switch. They were still a mite damp this morning, so hopefully they'll be done when I get back tonight after the party, so I can use my shower.
If you've seen my flickr photostream then you've already seen all the pictures of my apartment and read the captions. I'm not going to bother explaining it all again here, but definitely check them out - they're all tagged 'apartment' - if you haven't yet.
I haven't said much about work so far, because I can't say much without it sounding very technical and boring. Marshall just sent me a neat picture of our molecular surface mapping software in action though, so I figure I'll explain a bit. Our goal is to simulate molecular interaction between proteins (like the one in orange to the left) and potential drugs. Proteins perform all the functions in your body - they're like little molecular machines. The white thing in the middle is a ligand - it interacts with the protein. Ligands usually activate/deactivate proteins, and so finding out how ligands fit into the protein's 3D structure will help us develop drugs to change how they function. The blue dots approximate the surface of the protein, defined by the Van Der Waal radii of its atoms. The program we are using just tries to fit the ligand into the protein as best as possible, taking into account this surface, as well as chemical complimentarity and electric charge. These are pretty big molecules, and we're trying to test ligand in a high-throughput manner (like 100,000+ ligands at once) so we get to use the supercomputers here at Osaka University to perform the calculations. It sounds exciting, but it pretty much involves us all sitting at these desks being frustrated by compiler errors all day. Still, its fun when things work.That's more than enough for now. Here's to hoping the party goes well tonight. I'll post the details here this weekend, along with anything else we do. Cathy told us she's never seen a baseball game, so that might be an adventure there....
I got flickr set up, check out my photos here. Can't say much now, but I'll try to get some blogging in tonight, after work.
I got a little creative with breakfast today - a doughnut-dough pastry filled veggies and curry, followed by a ice cream belfian waffle sandwich. They seem to have a thing for belgian waffles here. I also got a chance to Skype with my family this morning, which was nice.
I know you're all yearning for pictures. I'm still grappling with photo problems; mostly I'm debating whether to drop the $24.95 a month on a flickr account so I can have more space. When I called today, David suggested I check out PhotoBucket, which I will probably do right after this. For now, you'll have to do with Cathy and Marshall's shots, which are top notch, anyway.
Work on our project has begun this week. We've planned out our schedule and deadlines, and all four of us gave an introductory presentation to Date-san, Ichikawa-san, and some others associated with the project. There's quite a lot to be done, and it seems that we have our work cut out for us. It feels good to finally begin real work though, even if it does make our days rather sedentary.
We've spent most of our time since Monday in the lab room, working on our laptops while listening to music. We use Skype from our desks quite a bit - the only reliable and fast internet connection we have access to is in the lab.
Food on campus isn't too bad either - much better than the UCSD cafeterias - and mighty cheap. Yesterday was カツ丼 (katsudon), breaded pork cutlet with egg, over rice. Today, I had はかたラメン (hakata ramen - ramen noodles with pork), which cost me about $2.50. Good times.
Speaking of good food, last night's dinner was amazing. Date-san enthusiastically a local yakiniku place, where they bring high-quality raw beef to your table and you cook it yourself, in a grill built into your table. It was delicious, but a mite expensive. Ordering ourselves was a bit tough, but Date-san wrote down the kanji for some things that he thought we should try, and Cathy did a great job speaking with the waitress, even when they didn't have some of the things on the menu, and had to substitute.
That's all for now. I'll keep posting, and hopefully get my pictures up for viewing soon.
I know you're all yearning for pictures. I'm still grappling with photo problems; mostly I'm debating whether to drop the $24.95 a month on a flickr account so I can have more space. When I called today, David suggested I check out PhotoBucket, which I will probably do right after this. For now, you'll have to do with Cathy and Marshall's shots, which are top notch, anyway.
Work on our project has begun this week. We've planned out our schedule and deadlines, and all four of us gave an introductory presentation to Date-san, Ichikawa-san, and some others associated with the project. There's quite a lot to be done, and it seems that we have our work cut out for us. It feels good to finally begin real work though, even if it does make our days rather sedentary.
We've spent most of our time since Monday in the lab room, working on our laptops while listening to music. We use Skype from our desks quite a bit - the only reliable and fast internet connection we have access to is in the lab.
Food on campus isn't too bad either - much better than the UCSD cafeterias - and mighty cheap. Yesterday was カツ丼 (katsudon), breaded pork cutlet with egg, over rice. Today, I had はかたラメン (hakata ramen - ramen noodles with pork), which cost me about $2.50. Good times.
Speaking of good food, last night's dinner was amazing. Date-san enthusiastically a local yakiniku place, where they bring high-quality raw beef to your table and you cook it yourself, in a grill built into your table. It was delicious, but a mite expensive. Ordering ourselves was a bit tough, but Date-san wrote down the kanji for some things that he thought we should try, and Cathy did a great job speaking with the waitress, even when they didn't have some of the things on the menu, and had to substitute.
That's all for now. I'll keep posting, and hopefully get my pictures up for viewing soon.
Cathy and Marshall have pictures
0 Comments Published by MistarOblivion on Sunday, June 25, 2006 at 9:35 PM.
It's been quite an interesting few days since my arrival. Except for a few snags, its been wonderful. I've met lots of people, traveled all over Osaka, and eaten some amazing food. Quite a lot has happened, so it'll be a long entry...
I've had some problems uploading to flickr with Picasa, so for now I only have one set of photos online, from my first trip to the supermarket. Anti-climactic certainly, but they will have to suffice for now. I'll upload pictures to accompany this post as soon as possible.
On Friday, we met more researchers and had lunch with everyone for the first time. The campus is a ways from our apartment - a 5 minute walk down the street to Ryokuchi-koen Station, then a 10 minute subway ride to Senri Chuo, then a 5 minute monorail ride to Shibahara Station, where the campus is. It sounds daunting, but I think I'll get used to it.
After lunch, we toured the school and were shown around our lab. Osaka University's Toyonaka campus is large and wooded, and bordered by a pond. It's a welcome change from the rest of the densely urban city. Our laboratory building, along with most of the campus, is very old, but the lab itself is roomy, and has couches and coffee table off to one side. We all have our own desks, set facing each other, with our supervisor, Ichikawa-san, at the head, looking over everyone, as is Japanese custom. We chatted up the afternoon in our lab with a Japanese snack called warabi mochi, which are skewered roasted goopy translucent rice balls covered in a sweet sauce. Good stuff.
After touring the campus and the lab, we went to dinner at an Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is often called a Japanese pancake, but that does little justice to this amazing dish. It's meat, fish, veggies, and sometimes noodles fried into a thick rich batter, smothered with a teriyaki-like sauce, then drizzled with mayonnaise and sprinkled with fish flakes. Absolutely delicious.
Saturday, Ichikawa-san took us to the Umeda district, which is Osaka's newer downtown area. It was filled to the brim with humanity. We climbed to the top of the famous Umeda Sky Building, which resembles a gigantic futuristic Arche de Triomphe. We got some amazing pictures of Osaka from it, as well as from a Ferris wheel ride we took, on top of a building. We spent quite a bit of time browsing shops too. The highlight of Saturday was, yet again, the food. Ichikawa took us a very famous ramen-ya in Umeda by the name of Ippudo. It was, without a doubt, one of the most exquisite meals of my life. And it only cost 800 yen!
On Saturday night we met with some Japanese guys, Daisaku and Shinji. Marhsall had met Daisaku when he was studying English at UCSD. They were both from Kyoto, and weren't familiar with Osaka. I asked them where they wanted to eat (in Japanese, of course), and Daisaku-san responded with a contemplative pause, followed by, in slow strong English: 'I want to drink ... beer'. Needless to say, the evening proceeded swimmingly from there.
Sunday we woke up late and spent most of the day in our lab, using the internet, calling our families, and generally relaxing before work begins tomorrow. For dinner we went to a small restaurant by campus. I hesitate to call it Italian - a breaded steak of ground beef and spaghetti with rice and miso. Japan rubs off even on foreign cuisine.
My Japanese is coming along, and I'm trying to practice as much as possible. I've taken to carrying around a little notebook I bought at the hyaku-en shop (99c store) and filling it with vocab and grammar that I learn. So far, it's mostly full of food-related vocabulary - surprise surprise. Marshall bought a kanji dictionary for his Nintendo DS, which he's been addicted to so far. It looks very useful, and I might just succumb to purchasing a DS Lite.
We're leaving the lab for the evening soon, so I'll say goodbye for now. Hopefully I'll have some more pictures up soon.
I've had some problems uploading to flickr with Picasa, so for now I only have one set of photos online, from my first trip to the supermarket. Anti-climactic certainly, but they will have to suffice for now. I'll upload pictures to accompany this post as soon as possible.
On Friday, we met more researchers and had lunch with everyone for the first time. The campus is a ways from our apartment - a 5 minute walk down the street to Ryokuchi-koen Station, then a 10 minute subway ride to Senri Chuo, then a 5 minute monorail ride to Shibahara Station, where the campus is. It sounds daunting, but I think I'll get used to it.
After lunch, we toured the school and were shown around our lab. Osaka University's Toyonaka campus is large and wooded, and bordered by a pond. It's a welcome change from the rest of the densely urban city. Our laboratory building, along with most of the campus, is very old, but the lab itself is roomy, and has couches and coffee table off to one side. We all have our own desks, set facing each other, with our supervisor, Ichikawa-san, at the head, looking over everyone, as is Japanese custom. We chatted up the afternoon in our lab with a Japanese snack called warabi mochi, which are skewered roasted goopy translucent rice balls covered in a sweet sauce. Good stuff.
After touring the campus and the lab, we went to dinner at an Okonomiyaki restaurant. Okonomiyaki is often called a Japanese pancake, but that does little justice to this amazing dish. It's meat, fish, veggies, and sometimes noodles fried into a thick rich batter, smothered with a teriyaki-like sauce, then drizzled with mayonnaise and sprinkled with fish flakes. Absolutely delicious.
Saturday, Ichikawa-san took us to the Umeda district, which is Osaka's newer downtown area. It was filled to the brim with humanity. We climbed to the top of the famous Umeda Sky Building, which resembles a gigantic futuristic Arche de Triomphe. We got some amazing pictures of Osaka from it, as well as from a Ferris wheel ride we took, on top of a building. We spent quite a bit of time browsing shops too. The highlight of Saturday was, yet again, the food. Ichikawa took us a very famous ramen-ya in Umeda by the name of Ippudo. It was, without a doubt, one of the most exquisite meals of my life. And it only cost 800 yen!
On Saturday night we met with some Japanese guys, Daisaku and Shinji. Marhsall had met Daisaku when he was studying English at UCSD. They were both from Kyoto, and weren't familiar with Osaka. I asked them where they wanted to eat (in Japanese, of course), and Daisaku-san responded with a contemplative pause, followed by, in slow strong English: 'I want to drink ... beer'. Needless to say, the evening proceeded swimmingly from there.
Sunday we woke up late and spent most of the day in our lab, using the internet, calling our families, and generally relaxing before work begins tomorrow. For dinner we went to a small restaurant by campus. I hesitate to call it Italian - a breaded steak of ground beef and spaghetti with rice and miso. Japan rubs off even on foreign cuisine.
My Japanese is coming along, and I'm trying to practice as much as possible. I've taken to carrying around a little notebook I bought at the hyaku-en shop (99c store) and filling it with vocab and grammar that I learn. So far, it's mostly full of food-related vocabulary - surprise surprise. Marshall bought a kanji dictionary for his Nintendo DS, which he's been addicted to so far. It looks very useful, and I might just succumb to purchasing a DS Lite.
We're leaving the lab for the evening soon, so I'll say goodbye for now. Hopefully I'll have some more pictures up soon.
So, I'm here. Luckily, there is an unsecured wireless access point in my apartment building, so it looks like I'll be able to communicate with the rest of the world. Hurray!
My plane flight was uneventful, except for copious amounts of turbulence. So much, in fact, that we ended up missing our second meal because the flight attendants didn't want their food carts flying across the cabin. I flew with Marshall, Cathy, and Robert, but sat alone, and mostly read and slept for 11 hours.
Marshall and Robert met a Japanese girl from Osaka on the plane, who drew them a cute card and helped us get out of immigration and onto the bus that would take us north from the Kansai airport to the center of the city. It was very foggy and pouring rain when we landed, and yet it was at least 85 degrees outside. I likened the feeling to the line up to the top of Splash Mountain at Disneyland. But probably hotter. Not exactly pleasant, but bearable. It didn't help that I had forgotten to bring an umbrella, either.
It was a long bus ride, and the fog obscured most of the scenery. When we got into Osaka proper, however, it was amazing. We drove through narrow highways with gigantic space-agey buildings on all sides, covered in flashing neon signs. It was like something right out of Blade Runner.
Tomomi and Ichikawa-san met us at the bus stop, and took us to our apartments and then to dinner. I'll comment more about the apartment a bit later: it's a topic worthty of several posts by itself.
Dinner was very good, we ended up at a noodle shop. I had 天ぷら弁当 (tempura bento) - tempura shrimp and thick udon noodles in broth, something pickled (radish?), fried brown rice, and a sweet diced carrot and tofu mixture. Not a bad first meal.
We were all exhausted by the trip, so we didn't do a lot of conversing, which made things a tad awkward, but Tomomi and Ichikawa-san seem very friendly. In the next few days I'll be able to say a lot more about the people I'll be working with here in Osaka and what they're like.
We stopped into a supermarket in the same shopping center (not a strip-mall, more of a proper outdoor mall) and picked up food and drink to last us a few days until we could do some more serious shopping. Let me tell you, as difficult as it is for me to shop for food at home, not being able to recognize most of the food or read the labels doesn't exactly help matters. I picked up some sweet squishy rice balls, different sodas and juice drinks (Calpis included), and something called わらび餅 （warabi mochi), which are clear gooey spheres (some rice product , I'm told) that you cover with powder. I've been assured by Tomomi that they're delicious...
So now I'm back in my humid mini-apartment, and I'm exhausted, so I'm going to bed. Then it's shower, unpack, and meet with Date-san and the rest of the lab.
My plane flight was uneventful, except for copious amounts of turbulence. So much, in fact, that we ended up missing our second meal because the flight attendants didn't want their food carts flying across the cabin. I flew with Marshall, Cathy, and Robert, but sat alone, and mostly read and slept for 11 hours.
Marshall and Robert met a Japanese girl from Osaka on the plane, who drew them a cute card and helped us get out of immigration and onto the bus that would take us north from the Kansai airport to the center of the city. It was very foggy and pouring rain when we landed, and yet it was at least 85 degrees outside. I likened the feeling to the line up to the top of Splash Mountain at Disneyland. But probably hotter. Not exactly pleasant, but bearable. It didn't help that I had forgotten to bring an umbrella, either.
It was a long bus ride, and the fog obscured most of the scenery. When we got into Osaka proper, however, it was amazing. We drove through narrow highways with gigantic space-agey buildings on all sides, covered in flashing neon signs. It was like something right out of Blade Runner.
Tomomi and Ichikawa-san met us at the bus stop, and took us to our apartments and then to dinner. I'll comment more about the apartment a bit later: it's a topic worthty of several posts by itself.
Dinner was very good, we ended up at a noodle shop. I had 天ぷら弁当 (tempura bento) - tempura shrimp and thick udon noodles in broth, something pickled (radish?), fried brown rice, and a sweet diced carrot and tofu mixture. Not a bad first meal.
We were all exhausted by the trip, so we didn't do a lot of conversing, which made things a tad awkward, but Tomomi and Ichikawa-san seem very friendly. In the next few days I'll be able to say a lot more about the people I'll be working with here in Osaka and what they're like.
We stopped into a supermarket in the same shopping center (not a strip-mall, more of a proper outdoor mall) and picked up food and drink to last us a few days until we could do some more serious shopping. Let me tell you, as difficult as it is for me to shop for food at home, not being able to recognize most of the food or read the labels doesn't exactly help matters. I picked up some sweet squishy rice balls, different sodas and juice drinks (Calpis included), and something called わらび餅 （warabi mochi), which are clear gooey spheres (some rice product , I'm told) that you cover with powder. I've been assured by Tomomi that they're delicious...
So now I'm back in my humid mini-apartment, and I'm exhausted, so I'm going to bed. Then it's shower, unpack, and meet with Date-san and the rest of the lab.
Preparations and Apprehensions.
0 Comments Published by MistarOblivion on Monday, June 19, 2006 at 6:42 PM.
Greetings, everyone. This is where I'll be relating my many dubious and colorful adventures. There will be quite a few photographs posted here, as well.
Rather than revive my old hosting account at OblivionX.net, I've opted to use Blogger for the time being. Other than its lack of image-hosting, it think it will work out swimmingly. As you can see, I loaded up Photoshop and wasted some of my valuable pre-departure time personalizing a template I found at Blogger Templates.
As far as image-hosting goes, I'll be using flickr. You only get to upload a maximum of 20MB worth of photos per month, so unless I cave in and purchase a Pro account, that will be about 60 low-res pictures a month. It might be sufficient. If not, Pro is only $25/yr for 20GB/mo. In any case, you can check out my photostream here.
Speaking of pictures, my current camera's LCD screen went kaput last week, after three years of faithful service. It still takes pictures, but you can't see what you're shooting at. No good. So tomorrow I'll be travelling to Fry's to pick up a new one. I think I'll be getting a Canon SD550. I'll also be picking up a external hard drive for my laptop (to copy all my music and movies onto) and a memory card reader so I can copy photos off my camera. And this time around, I'll also definitely be getting a case for said camera...
This all begins on Wednesday the 22nd. I leave from San Diego in the morning, then stop off in San Francisco, then fly for who-knows-how-long (I'll only be measuring by the number of in-flight movies shown) to arrive in Osaka at 6 in the morning, June 22nd. I'll be flying with Cathy, so I'll have company. It's all very mind-blowing.
Rather than revive my old hosting account at OblivionX.net, I've opted to use Blogger for the time being. Other than its lack of image-hosting, it think it will work out swimmingly. As you can see, I loaded up Photoshop and wasted some of my valuable pre-departure time personalizing a template I found at Blogger Templates.
As far as image-hosting goes, I'll be using flickr. You only get to upload a maximum of 20MB worth of photos per month, so unless I cave in and purchase a Pro account, that will be about 60 low-res pictures a month. It might be sufficient. If not, Pro is only $25/yr for 20GB/mo. In any case, you can check out my photostream here.
Speaking of pictures, my current camera's LCD screen went kaput last week, after three years of faithful service. It still takes pictures, but you can't see what you're shooting at. No good. So tomorrow I'll be travelling to Fry's to pick up a new one. I think I'll be getting a Canon SD550. I'll also be picking up a external hard drive for my laptop (to copy all my music and movies onto) and a memory card reader so I can copy photos off my camera. And this time around, I'll also definitely be getting a case for said camera...
This all begins on Wednesday the 22nd. I leave from San Diego in the morning, then stop off in San Francisco, then fly for who-knows-how-long (I'll only be measuring by the number of in-flight movies shown) to arrive in Osaka at 6 in the morning, June 22nd. I'll be flying with Cathy, so I'll have company. It's all very mind-blowing.
