MistarOblivion

Weekend Lab Trip

2006-08-28T00:11:00.000+09:00

First of all, apologies for my month long lack of updates. The last stretch of my research was grueling and frantic, for various reasons. Also, before things became hectic I was taking care of most of my blogging at work. However, work is now over (and yet nowhere near finished...), and I've left Osaka for Tokyo! As I type, I'm sitting in the lobby of a hostel in the Asakusa ward.

There's of course a lot to catch everyone up on, so now that I have a little free time, I'm going to try and do just that. The weekend after our Kyoto Trip was an eventful one, and I daresay the most fun that we have had in Japan.

When we heard there was to be a weekend-long lab trip, we were excited, but when they told us the price tag, we balked at the idea. We had been trying to be frugal with our allotted spending money, and had thus far been fairly unsuccessful. Marshall was the most skeptical; he had gone to visit friends in Tokyo, and was further through his cash than the rest of us. However, Cathy's boyfriend Eric, who had been to Japan on the same program last year, insisted that we go, and assured us it would be well worth it. I can now say unequivocally that he was right, and I'm glad that we were able to convince Marshall.

Most of the lab accompanied us - many of our supervisors and those who we had met at the CMC, as well as three Dutch students who were also working there that summer. The trip started in a charter bus that took us out of the city and to all our stops in southern Kansai. The bus ride itself was quite fun - we watched movies, sang karaoke, 'revelled', and played some wireless handheld games.

The first of our stops had initially been billed as a river rafting adventure, but it had rained non-stop for the week prior, making boating a risky proposition. We instead visited a famous waterfall atop a mountain, at a place called Yoro Park. It wasn't too bad of a hike, and the place was absolutely spectacular.

Our next, and main stop, was a Japanese hotel and onsen in a sea-side resort town in Aichi prefecture. An onsen is a traditional Japanese bathhouse, fed by fresh spring water. It was quite beautiful, both inside and out. We had a traditional Japanese room with tatami mats and futon matresses, not to mention an amazing view.

After we picked our jaws up off the tatami, we visited the beach at the foot of the hotel in the afternoon, then went straight to the baths. They were amazing - marble rooms with crystal clear (and scalding hot) water. We weren't briefed on the whole onsen 'ritual' before we arrived (if you're interested, read the wikipedia link above), so the idea of washing off before entering the bath (at little shower, while sitting on a stool) was a little confusing, and we probably messed up a bit on the ettiquite. Despite this, it was a wonderful experience - topped by the fact that we had an amazing view of the sandy beaches and coastal forest surrounding the sleepy town. Unfortunately (and for obvious reasons) no pictures of the inside.

Squeaky-clean and wearing traditional Japanese summer bathing-robes called (yukata), we proceeded to our amazing dinner feast. The food (much of it unidentifiable, uncooked, or both) kept coming and coming. We all had to give a short speech introducing ourselves, which went alright.

After stuffing ourselves, we went to the roof to light fireworks, including my previously mentioned favorite, senko hanabi.

All of us then retreated to our room, where we partied the night away. I had some wonderful conversation about all manner of things - philosophy, politics, art - as it turns out, Shimojo sensei, the head of the labratory, had read my favorite book!

We awoke the next morning, visited the onsen once again, and then had a big buffet breakfast. I tried natto, gooey fermented soybeans, and it wasn't really for me. Everything else was delicious though. After we left the hotel, we visited an island called Takeshima. It's not the more famous of the two, which is disputed between Japan and South Korea, but a tiny and remarkably shaped island on Japan's southern coastline. Besides the interesting dome shape, at low tide the water level drops far enough to let you walk across the strait. There's a beautiful temple hidden inside the forested island as well.

Our final stop was Nagoya-jō, a famous feudal castle. The inside is a museum, housing Japanese medieval weapons, armor, and artwork. The castle, like most others in Japan, burned to the ground in the bombings of World War II, only to be rebuilt afterwards. Here are more pictures.

The weekend trip was without a doubt one of my favorites of the summer. We spend so much of our time in the big city, so it was nice to go out and enjoy the country's natural beauty and traditional culture for a change.

Next time I'll talk about our excursion to Nara, so stay tuned!

Sunday in Kyoto

2006-07-26T05:32:00.000+09:00

Well, it's been another amazing few weeks. It's scary to think that we're already halfway through our adventure here. I've been meaning to write a blog entry earlier this week, but work has become increasingly hectic as we inch toward our final report. Because it's been a while since I last wrote, I'll be splitting this one up into multiple posts. This is the second oldest post. The newest will be at the top.

Before I continue, let me say that my camera ran out of juice that day, so most of these pictures are courtesy of Marshall and Robert, but mostly Robert. He took some beautiful shots! You can see more under this tag in my photo gallery. I'm trying out a different layout this time, with larger pictures and smaller paragraphs. Let me know what you think.

We spent the Sunday after Cathy's party in Kyoto. There, we met Daisaku and his girlfriend Junko, who we met through Marshall. We had met Daisaku once before towards the beginning of our stay in Osaka, when he accompanied us to our first Izakaya.

Our first stop was the famous Fushimi Shrine in Kyoto. I had stumbled upon a few shrines before in Osaka, but this one was something else. First of all, it was huge: a giant complex of at least two dozen structures, with paths leading through the forest to the top of a mountain. In the two hours we spent there, we only saw a third of it, at most.

The architecture and sculptures were amazing. The Fushimi Shrine is dedicated to Inari, the shinto god of rice, and foxes are it's messengers, or so says the internet. Anyway, exquisite fox statues abounded, as did fox-shaped wooden wish-blocks.

Shinto generally involves a lot of wishing. We saw millions of folded paper cranes, each string of which supposedly represent a wish, and candles which represent wishes. And a stone, which if is felt to be light, grants your wish.

Perhaps the most striking feature of the shrine are its countless thousands of shinto archways, or Torii. When Junko first told me there were supposed to be over 10,000 of them, I balked, but after walking through hundreds, one after another, like a tunnel through the forest, I believe her. Each was supposedly donated individually by and individual or company, and accumulated over the years. It's pretty surreal to walk through them all the way up the mountain.

The next stop after the shrine was the Gekkeikan Sake Museum. It was built in a traditional sake brewing house, and had lots of old equipment, barrels, labels, and paraphenalia. It was a lot more interesting than you'd think, actually.

The best thing about the museum was of course the sake tasting. Needless to say, it was quite delicious. Afterwards, some of the employees introduced us, chatted us up, and tried out their English: "My name is James Bond... my mission is impossible. Thank you very much."

We finished off the trip with a visit to a very fancy restaurant at the top of a very tall shopping center, from which we could see all of Kyoto, including the Kyoto Tower. The food was exquisite, also. Back in Osaka that night, we topped it off by celebrating Cathy's 21st in the proper American fashion... All in all, it was a pretty marvelous day.

Meeting the Chancellor, Gion Matsuri, and Cathy's Birthday

2006-07-25T15:20:00.000+09:00

Well, it's been another amazing few weeks. It's scary to think that we're already halfway through our adventure here. I've been meaning to write a blog last week, but work has become increasingly hectic as we inch toward our final report. Because it's been a while since I last wrote, I'll be splitting this one up into multiple posts. The newest will be at the top. What follows actually transpired two weekends ago, in case you're keeping track.

It's certainly been a busy weekend. Peter Arzberger, the head of the PRIME program, came to visit Osaka. We got a call from Peter last Thursday, letting us know that we were going to meet the Chancellor of Osaka University. Apparently, you don't meet the Chancellor unless you're 'somebody important', and because of the rather rigid social heirarchy in Japan, the encounter was a little nerve-wracking for everyone. His office was four or five times as big as my apartment, and was decorated with traditional Japanese art and calligraphy. Even Peter and Shimojo-sensee were palpably nervous as they spoke to him. That said, I think it went mostly fine. We got our picture taken at the end of the meeting. That night, a dinner was arranged for Peter and the whole lab attended. I met quite a few new faces that night and got a lot of practice speaking Japanese.

Friday at the lab, we showed Peter our work so far, and he seemed happy with our progress. He only had one day to spend in Osaka before his return trip, and Ichikawa took all of us the Gion Matsuri in Kyoto. It's an annual festival held there, and it's said to the most famous in all of Japan. It's a very ancient tradition, and it gave me a great opportunity to see some more traditional Japanese culture firsthand. Japanese men and women at the festival wear summer-kimonos, called yukata. For the week of the festival, the entireity of downtown Kyoto is closed to all but pedestrian traffic, and giant floats, called yamaboko, are assembled all over the city. We went there days before the festival's finale - a long ceremony and parade through the streets. Despite this, the streets were swarmed with people. The alleys were lined with stands selling food, drinks, and souvenirs. I sampled quite a bit of the former two, including some skewered yakitori (barbequed chicken) and fish-shaped cakes called taiyaki.

My pictures of Gion Matsuri
Cathy's pictures of Gion Matsuri

Last saturday was Cathy's birthday. We spent the day in Dotomburi and America-mura. For lunch we went back to the ramen-shop Kibo-ken, so Marshall and I could race to see who could finish the super-spicy bowl first. I won on a technicality - somebody called him on the phone during the contest. Cathy's birthday celebrations began that evening. Junko and her friend Yamaguchi-san joined us for the evening. First, we went to a Chinese restaurant for shaved noodles, which were delicious. After dinner, we went to a gigantic palace of fun called Beaverworld. It was a pool hall, a karaoke bar, a bowling alley, an arcade, an internet cafe/gaming lounge, a movie theater, and a few other things. This wouldn't have impressed me too much, except that everything is free once you're inside. For about 2 or 3 dollars an hour. Needless to say, we were in heaven for the evening. We finally got home at around 4 or 5 in the morning.

My pictures of the evening
Cathy's pictures of the evening

Fourth of July, America-Mura, more work...

2006-07-13T00:01:00.000+09:00

Another week has passed since my last post - time flies, I guess. I know it's been a while, but now that everyone is busy with their projects, things have settled down a bit. It's been mostly work, eat, sleep, aside from a few notable happenings. Also note that aside from the pictures here, I am now linking directly to Cathy's Yahoo photo gallery, which is updated daily (wow!), and Robert's photobucket page, in the bar at the right. Anyway, the picture above is from his gallery, and it hangs above the entrance to a store that sells manga, anime, videogames and figurines in Den Den town. 'Otaku' means something like geek or nerd in Japanese.

We've been attending a series of Grid Computing talks in the mornings for the past two weeks. It means waking up extra early and taking a bus ride to the other campus, but they're interesting enough. Last week, Wilfred Li, the director of the NBCR, gave a lecture. It was mostly a cheerleading session for his software and the concept of Grid Computing in general. To those of you who are unfamiliar with the term, grid computing deals with aggregating computing power from many different places. Instead of using a very expensive, centrally-located supercomputer, grid computing means using smaller sets of supercomputers communicating together over the internet to run business applications and solve scientific problems like the docking simulation I am working on now.

Last week Marshall and I took Dr. Li out to dinner after his talk, which was fun. We got to chat with him about biology, computing, and advancements in the field. It turns out that he did his post-doctoral work for my PRIME mentor (and boss) at UCSD, Phil Bourne. We had a great time, and after quite a bit of searching through downtown, we found great place for dinner. It seems that we're getting pretty good at navigating around the city.

Unfortunately, we didn't get to entertain this week's speaker. His name is Rajikmar Buyya, and he's from the University of Melbourne in Australia. He's creating a worldwide grid computing system loosely analogous to the Internet, where all programs are run on one (or a few) massively distributed supercomputers, and people pay for the distributed computing power they use instead of buying personal computers, as is the case now.
Its an interesting (crazy?) idea, and there are many challenges (political and economic ones, not just technical), so I can't say that I'm sold on the idea. Maybe the ARPANET detractors had the same misgivings? He's been all over the 'E-Science' and 'E-Business' news as quote "someone to watch in 2006", so somebody takes this stuff seriously. I'll have an opportunity to 'watch' and discuss some of these misgivings with him tomorrow, so maybe he can convince me. I had to chuckle a bit when he listed Worldcom, Enron, and Compaq on his list of corporate partners (circa 2002, of course).

I know I mentioned our 4th of July plans last time, so I'd better recap. Luckily, we were able to enjoy the occasion with a proper fireworks display. Here, it seems, you can just walk into storefronts along the subway station at any time of the year and buy baskets full of the stuff! Nothing too large or dangerous (don't worry Mom...) was acquired, but there were some notable ones that I hadn't seen before. My favorite were 線香花火, or Senko Hanabi, which are difficult to describe. I guess you could call them Japanese sparklers. They are thin and delicate, and you hold them upside down. When you light the wire at the bottom, a white hot ball forms, and travels up the fuse. As it burns, it goes through many different stages. First it flickers coyishly, then becomes like a tiny aerial firework on a string, then for the finale, it becomes an amazing, almost organic, fractal structure with forking and twisting tendrils, like something between nerve endings and ball lightning. You have to hold the stem very still in your hand, despite the excitement, or the ball will shake loose and drop before it gets to the top. I'm told that because they are affected by humidity, Senko Hanabi burn differently depending on the time of the year, and are at their most exquisite in summer. I didn't take this picture, but found it on Flickr. It's a good one, but you really have to see one in person to appreciate how absolutely beautiful it is.

The weekend was fun. Marshall went to visit a friend in Tokyo, so Cathy, Robert and I spent Saturday in Den Den Town again, visiting all the electronics, video game, and comic book shops. I was on the lookout for a video game that my friend back home wanted, but everywhere, even in never-ending Den Den Town, was sold out. Luckily, "soldo outo" is how you say that in Japanese.
Aside from that bit of bad news, it was a fun day. Cathy found us a great katsu restaurant down an alley in Dotomburi. Katsu is a way of breading meat. It's usually served over rice, and sometimes mixed with with egg. Finding new restaurants is definitely one of my favorite things to do here...

Sunday, Ichikawa-san took us to America-mura (mura means village), which was interesting. It's mostly a shopping district, and despite the name, it wasn't very American at all, except for a few souvenier shops. We had some excellent takoyaki though, for which Osaka is famous. Takoyaki are little fried balls of batter filled with tako (octopus), mayonaise, and green onion. Quite delish.

All the prices there were pretty outrageous at the shops there: 40 dollars for a T-shirt, 60 for a collared shirt, and 180 for pairs of jeans. We managed to find a thrift-store in the expanse of trendiness, eventually. There was some crazy vintage clothing along with the normal stuff (bright purple cordorouys, "1978 Bass Fishing Championship" wife-beaters...), and they were selling most everything, including used American license plates, for 300 yen (3 dollars). The 'Pay-by-Weight' section was what really floored me. They had large scales with baskets set up, and you just loaded clothes onto them for 5 yen a gram. This converts to about 20 dollars a pound, so it wasn't exactly a steal, but interesting all the same.

For lunch, we went to a ramen-ya in Dotomburi called Kiboken. This was probably the highlight of the day, but not because it was especially delicious or fancy. If you order the spiciest thing on the menu (bottom left) (there's a printed warning next to it), and finish it in under 15 minutes, broth and all, you get your picture put up on the wall. Needless to say, this was something I had to do. It was good - more scalding than spicy - and it really didn't get to me until I had to slurp down the dark red soup at the end. My 6 minutes was well within the 15 allotted, so I now there's a grinning picture of me and my empty bowl on the wall in the cramped little shop on the river. Marshall's been craving spiciness since we arrived (most Japanese can't really handle spicy things) so I'll probably go back there this weekend... and race him to the bottom of a bowl.

The past few days have been uneventful, other than the lectures, and have mostly involved lots and lots of work, punctuated by (good) food and (insufficient) sleep. We went to dinner with some guys from the lab tonight; Takeda-san (who helped us set up our parallel processing) is leaving on his own international research trip to Singapore for the rest of the year, so the dinner was to see him off. We had Okonamiyaki - those pancake things I described earlier - except this time, we had to make it ourselves! They gave us a bowl of ingredients (batter, spices, veggies, ginger, various uncooked sea-creatures...) to mix together and pour onto the grill in the middle of the table. We were kindly assisted by our hosts, who knew what they were doing, but it was a struggle nonetheless. Still delicious, though.

Work is going well, and I have to send another progress report back to UCSD at the end of this week, so maybe I'll have some more cool science-y pictures for my next post, which hopefully will be soon. We've got a lot of great things planned - Peter Arzberger, the PRIME organizer and all around superhero, is paying us a visit, so we'll probably party in his honor. Then Cathy's 21st birthday is on Saturday, and we're planning something (maybe karaoke) for that. We'll see. It should be fun!

Wonderful weekend.

2006-07-04T11:45:00.000+09:00

If I've learned anything from this past weekend, it's the following: In Japan, at least, getting lost usually turns out to be a good thing. Hitting the road with some vague idea of a destination, and walking in its general direction, while usually not advisable if one is in a hurry, is a sure fire way to come across some amazing stuff.

On Saturday, Marshall and I decided to visit a Buddhist temple we read about near Dotomburi arcade. We got off the subway at the nearest stop and started walking. It's fair to say that we got fairly lost, but we found some great stuff along the arcade - a mexican restaurant (that was quite a find), some crazy shops, and a life-sized statue of Colonel Sanders.

The temple itself eluded us for quite some time though, and we spent much of the midday trudging through the busy Dotomburi arcade in the rain. There's quite a bit of interesting stuff around there just waiting to be stumbled upon, like the kabuki theater, the Dotomburi-gawa riverfront and these ... things. Thank goodness we only had a tiny unlabelled map and our own horrible senses of direction to go on, or we wouldn't have found all this cool stuff.

Eventually, we did find the Hozen-ji temple. Apparently, you splash water on this moss-covered statue for good luck. It has some other smaller temple buildings around it, but basically its
embedded in a tiny alley by the arcade. Pretty cool, if you ask me.
We spent the rest of the afternoon continuing to wander. We had some lunch at a ramen shop, but it wasn't nearly as good as last weekend's outing to Ippudo.

We then met up with Junko, a girl that Marshall and Robert met on the plane to Osaka. She took us around to several 居酒屋　(izakaya, japanese-style bars), and gave us an impromptu tour of
the Dotomburi area at night. It reminds me a little of the Las Vegas strip, except everything is squished together, and in Japanese. We got a good amount of Japanese practice in throughout the night, discussing politics, religion, and all manner of other things.

Sunday we got a later start, but our decided destination was Den Den town, a district famous for its many electronic stores (Denshi means electronic). But once again, we got lost. Very lost. We ended up going east instead of south. But once again, we saw some amazing things (<- a link to my tagged photos of the outing). There were tons and tons of Shinto shrines and Buddhist temples hidden throughout the area, and it was a very surreal experience walking down a narrow alley and ending up at a huge gated shrine complex, with ornate buildings, koi ponds, statues, and waterfalls. Our whimsy for exploration ended up getting us even more lost, and after a while we ended up at some sort of festival, with game and food booths, music, and everything. Talk about luck.

After asking for directions and consulting some subway maps, we did eventually end up in Den Den town - see the picture of the street above. It was fantastic, especially the vintage video game shops. It was a very nostalgic experience, and the sheer amount of games, consoles, and memoribilia was jaw-dropping.We didn't stay as long as we could have, so I'm definitely going back there soon, to oogle some more, and maybe buy some things.

Robert didn't join us for either of our adventures this weekend - instead he met up with a friend he met at UCSD and spent Saturday and Sunday with her. Cathy had gotten sick after the Welcome Party on Friday, so she stayed home the next day, but was able to get some fresh air with us on Sunday. She's still feeling a little bit under the weather, but I think she'll be OK. Marshall and I all have tons of pictures of our weekend adventures, so be sure to check them out.

Oh, and I almost forgot, today is the Fourth of July! While I must say that the nationalist rhetoric that usually accompanies most 4th of July celebrations makes me uncomfortable, I'd never miss the opportunity to light things on fire! To that end, I've convinced Tak (Tomomi's husband) to help us buy some fireworks and set them off at a park near his apartment. We'll see how it goes. And of course, there will be pictures, as usual.

Welcome Party tonight, and more photos.

2006-06-30T10:42:00.000+09:00

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....

Pictures are up.

2006-06-29T16:45:00.000+09:00

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.

Work begins...

2006-06-28T14:41:00.000+09:00

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.

Cathy and Marshall have pictures

2006-06-25T21:35:00.000+09:00

While the fruits of my photographic endeavors are still wasting space on my hard drive, Cathy and Marshall have had more luck. Go check our their blogs and see their pictures! I'm in them! I also have links to their blogs on the bar to the right.

First Few Days

2006-06-25T20:08:00.000+09:00

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.

Arrival!

2006-06-22T22:27:00.000+09:00

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.

Preparations and Apprehensions.

2006-06-19T18:42:00.000+09:00

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.