sigh

This one's for Julie and Anna: This just in - there's a giant concert called Summersonic in Osaka in two weeks. Bands I don't care about like Metallica, Linkin Park, and Tool are coming. What makes me sad is that Arctic Monkeys, Fall Out Boy, and We Are Scientists will be there. Too bad the tickets cost more than $100.

I wanna be rich.

Triptastic Weekend, part 1

This weekend was epic. Well, maybe not epic, but pretty sweet at the very least. I'm going to take it one day at a time otherwise the post will really get out of control. That means today is Kobe day!

Saturday morning I got a ride to Kobe from Matsumoto-san and her mom (we'll just call her mmm - MatsuMoto Mom. She also made delicious food whenever I was around, and lots of it. Thank you, mmm!) Anyhoo, I got dropped off at Harbor Land. This, unsurprisingly, is next to the port, or harbor if you will. First stop was one of Kobe's famed dapaato (department) stores. Apparently what you do in Kobe is just shop. When I was told this, it gave me the impression that the city might be some sort of oversize premium outlets or something, but that really wasn't correct. It was more like premium outlets next to ten versions of Neiman Marcus next to Chinatown next to a semi-reclaimed harbor town next to a half mile long State Street next to Chicago downtown next to San Francisco townhouses.

Right. So I went to the first dapaato. I bought all the accoutrements for my yukata. I miraculously managed to communicate that I wanted to try the stuff on, then that I didn't need to buy a yukata since I already had one, then that I was happy it fit and that I would buy it. All in Japanese.


After this, it was lunch time. I decided that this Kobe beef stuff was worth trying at least once in my life. I found a cute restaurant which had a 150 g steak for only 4800 yen ($40.) Believe it or not, this is a good price. Holy crap. This was a whole other level of beef. It's not even beef anymore. It's velvety meaty goodness that's so impregnated with flavor (= fine marbling of fat) that you almost want to drink it down. I was able to cut it with my fork. Dearest tri-tip, I still love you best, but Kobe beef is just plain classier. America, you're lucky you raised me to like trashy food. I might defect otherwise.

Next was the actual harbor. There's a largeish tower, imaginatively called Kobe Port Tower, which Lonely Planet describes as being Japan's unimpressive response to the Eiffel Tower. All snarkiness aside, it does have an impressive view of the city. Kobe's a strip squished in between the mountains and the sea and it's real pretty.

Then came the serious shopping. There's a stretch of town about 1/2 - 3/4 mile long called Motomachi that's a covered street full of shops. These include western style bakeries, which I raided for a much needed croissant. Also Starbucks, for a much needed espresso. True to my semi-sketchy nature, I abandoned the nice street about halfway along and found a really really ghetto version of Motomachi one street over. There were used clothing shops, Nintendo 64's for as much as the cost of my lunch, a Native American jewlery store (you know, all the fake Navajo turquoise and such) which I went in just because they were playing country music, record stores, porn shops, refurbished laptops, and all sorts of sketchy knockoff purses, Levi's, shoes, DVDs, and such. I loved it.

I emerged from sketch city at Nankingmachi, i.e. Chinatown. It was ok. Not as great as Yokohama's, or San Francisco's, but there was sago (tapioca balls with fruit and jelly) and boba (tapioca milk tea) which made me very very happy. I also bought a box of Chinese doughnuts which later ended up soaking one of my shopping bags in oil and making me very sick to my stomach late that night.

Finishing off the day, I headed to Sannomiya. This part was sorta like if San Francisco was smashed up against some mountains with tons of karaoke bars. There was a McDonald's and I needed to use the bathroom, so I got myself some delicious, MSG filled fries. Delicious. I met Matsomoto-san again and mmm-san and we went to her family's karaoke bar. I met about ten thousand of her family (okay, maybe just a couple sets of aunts and uncles) who can all sing very well. They also insisted on my participation (Lebekka-chan! Lebekka-chan!) but I cannot sing very well. At all. I can never hear the key until halfway through the song and, well, ack. Thank God that I was warned about this, so before I left I had been practicing a song. After butchering some English songs, I decided to bust out my ace in the hole. With a little kanji prompting, I could read the lyrics and it's a very well known song so I became an instant pop star. Joanna, if you're reading this, they had Living on a Prayer. We need to go to karaoke just to sing this.

Other highlight of the night: Matsomoto-san's uncles. One told me I had a 'naisu body' and the other sang me 'I can't help falling in love' by Elvis. I just need to find unmarried boys my age who act this way and I'll be set.

Osaka tomorrow, folks. I gotta get up early to go to Himeji and meet Dr. Shimizu tomorrow. So, see ya later, alligator.
(when your legs are straighter)
In a while, crocodile.
(after a while!)




love you, Daddy!

It's a mini post!

Since Kyoto's post was so out of control, I thought I'd make this as short as possible****** and keep it below fifteen lines long. A minipost, if you will. Last weekend I

1.) went to a local observatory and got to see Venus during broad daylight (Aphrodite in English, apparently)*
2.) found a tiny little mountain shrine with a fantastic view of Sayo**
3.) went to a largish aquarium in Suma (near Kobe). I knew my friend was authentically Japanese when she described the fish not in terms of beauty or strangeness, but by how delicious each one was.***
4.) bought my Halloween**** costume***** in Himeji

Done.

---------------------------------------------------
* To be fair, I really shouldn't be making fun of the astronomer's english. It wasn't bad and he was very nicely explaining things to me even though I was the only non-Japanese there.

**[due to technical difficulties, there will be no pictures in today's post. So it's time to use our imaginations, kids! You're looking down a steep green slope into a small valley which holds the village of Sayo. The trees are leafy, the skies a peacock blue, and the bugs ridiculously loud. You half suspect that a samurai could walk out of the brush any second, at least until you look back and see your friend's red Volvo. Then you remember how great it is that you're not in the era of the daimyos, even if it's not as picturesque, because you have plumbing and electricity and modern dentistry. ]

[later edit: this is what i was trying to describe. how'd i do?]


***This trip was arranged by said wonderful Japanese friend whom I met in Japanese class. The other members of the excursion included two Indian housewives and their approximately 4 year old children. The kids didn't speak much Japanese at all but they definitely speak dolphin show. I haven't heard such happy (or high pitched) squeals of pure joy in quite some time. The aquarium also included this tidbit of wisdom for the rest of us by-players.



****The official version. (A bit too much detail but accurate) Some pictures.(every single person dresses up. All 100,000 of them. Seriously, I didn't have time to dress up last year and I was one of three people I saw who didn't have a costume.) Dude, we're on Wikipedia! Here's my friends last year.


*****I'm going to be a geisha. This is basically an excuse for me to buy a yukata.

******This was more than twenty lines long, you say? Nonsense. The rest is just footnotes, which everyone knows don't count.

When bad Fridays go good

So the one thing about working here that really really sucks is that I can't go out on Friday nights. I love Friday night. It's the best part of the week. You're done working for at least the next 18 hours and can relax and take a real rest. Usually for me, this takes the form of going out with my friends. Especially in the summer in Madison...5pm hits and we're out of there.

[four hours later]

Ok, instead of whining about boring Friday nights, I actually did something about it. I went to go see Matsumoto-san (she's the head of all the secretaries here and she's very...um...very...well, I don't know how to describe her. Let's just say she has a very strong character. Read into that what you will, and it'll probably be at least partially correct.) I left here at about 5:45 to go see what she was doing for dinner, and just now returned at 10:00. I ended up spending two hours in her office watching how Japanese offices are run and correcting a little bit of English, but mostly talking and then she took me off to okonomiyaki which was delicious. And holy crap, she's hilarious. She's got all these wonderful stories, like how she learned English on a basketball team in America and only got taught bad words, which she unknowingly repeated to the head of the university, or how got fed up with her job one day during a meeting and threw all the papers and shouted 'I'm quitting!' but in less nice language, then stormed back in two minutes later to grab all the papers and refreshments that she'd prepared and leave again. Non-stop entertainment.

The upswing of this is that I really just meant to go to the cafeteria to eat with her for about thirty minutes and ended up spending four hours getting dinner. That's right, Friday night boredom, guess who kicked your ass? ME.

(ME is copywrited by Matsumoto Entertainment)

P.S.

If you don't know, you can click on any of the pictures to see the full size image. I highly recommend this for a couple of the pictures for today's post.

Aye, Cap'n, she's a biggun!

Ok, folks. Here it is - the long awaited, massively oversized Kyoto trip update! Thar be pictures in them thar posts.

Let's just power through this. It'll be a good reflection of how the trip was - great, but definitely exhausting. And I don't want to hear any comments about how you shouldn't get exhausted just by looking at stuff all day. It was either pouring rain or hot as all heck, and humid as a Turkish bath to boot. (Hmm...maybe Heck is like a Turkish bath, with annoying vendors pushing stuff in your face, instead of a burning pit of fire and devils poking you...in which case Kyoto is definitely Heck.)

Anyway, it felt like walking into a wall of tepid water that would just cling to your skin, but somehow didn't clean off any of the gallons of sweat that your body was miraculously producing despite only having drunk 2 small cups of tea the day before. You had to just give up on being comfortable and resign yourself to being a walking spring of sweat. On a very related note, there were people handing out free plastic and paper fans with advertising on them. I thought they were dumb until one got shoved in my hand and I began to suspiciously fan myself...and then it became a little disposable miracle. Seriously, that fan was the best free thing I've gotten in a really long time. Maybe ever. Although job-fair T-shirts might give the fan a run for it's money...

Anyway, enough kvetching. On to the picture show!

(this is just a pretty picture I took. Purty, ain't she?)

Saturday. Arrived in Kyoto, roughly on time despite losing the train schedule for that day and being misdirected by a train station attendant. Kyoto station is without compare. Maybe it doesn't have the atmosphere, nostalgia, or radiation of Grand Central, but it's freakin' big. 11 stories above ground, and at least three below. This is the view from the top level. I immediately ran into some of the Frenchies from JSPS. We said hi and went our separate ways...because we're retarded like that.

After checking into the hotel that Eric miraculously found for us (Gion Matsuri's kinda like New Year's Eve in New York and we didn't have reservations) we headed out to catch as many temples as we could before they closed. Seriously, this trip made me feel like Becca Croft, Temple Raider. Well, not so much boobage or raiding, unless boobage means being a foriegn boob who stares at everything, and raiding means taking lots and lots of pictures. In which case there was a lot.

Right. We went to Kinkakuji, the Golden Temple. This was previously described to me (by Yamazaki-san who speaks very little English) in approximately these terms: "Do you know Kinkakuji? It is...all...yellow? gold! It is all gold. Very famous. It's crazy." And you know what? He's exactly right. Check that out - it is completely gilt, and it's supposed to be a kinda thick layer too. This is supposed to be a favorite with tourists (no duh, it's freaking gold and everyone likes to look at the pretty shiny things) so we were very lucky in that there weren't too many people around.

Unfortunately we didn't finish Kinkakuji until about 4:40, which was too late to get to anything else before the usual closing time at 5:00. So we just gave up and headed over to Gion. That's where all the action's at...in both colloquial senses. It's the traditional downtown of Kyoto and home to fantastic shopping, restaurants, and the few remaining geisha houses. We only saw one geisha the whole time I was there. She was very pretty...I don't really know what else to say. I didn't want to be one of the hoard of white people that must stare at her any time she goes out, so I didn't get more than one quick glance.

Anyway, Gion. I got my first Starbucks fix, bought some sweet, sweet shoes (they're guys shoes, although it might be possible for my gigantic size 10's to be accomodated in a large department store), got a couple more mangas, and ate on the top floor of a large store which had a 2,000 yen buffet. I don't think they were expecting hungry, fat Americans to come because I definitely ate more than 2,000 yen's worth of raw fish alone. Well, as Eric said, that's the Chinese coming out in me. Gotta get your money's worth.

Later on we ran into my friends Janay, Nick, and Kari while wandering around Gion. We hung out with them for a while and went to Namco tower, which has video games and is open 24-7. My favorite was this one:
It's like my eyes suddenly turned monochrome. Janay turned out to be very very good at Tekken 5, and I turned out to really really suck. I did get to play Taiko, though, and that was a ton of fun...like maybe I'll have to get the game for my PS2 kind of fun. Eric and I had to head home at about 11:30 so we wouldn't miss the last subway train (turns out we were close enough to walk, but being the brilliant Berkeley graduates that we are, we didn't realize until we did it accidentally the next night.)

Sunday. Somehow, miraculously, we got up at 7:00 am and were out of our hotel by 8:00. Why, you ask? So that we could get to our first temple before it got completely mobbed. Thus, we arrived at Kiyumizuji (Clear Water Temple) at about 9:00 am and there weren't tons and tons of people. It was quite a hike to get up to the main temple, but at least there were things to look at along the way, like this traditional (= Caltrans orange) building/gate/thingy here. The building on the left is a small temple built for some emperor on the occasion of his birth. It's famous for being very brightly painted - as if everything else isn't? Maybe it's just that there's really nice designs that haven't been lost in the past 500-600 years. Pfui. The way I see it, if your work doesn't last half a millenium, then what good is it?

Seriously, everything in Kyoto that's not brand new, is at least 300-400 years old. It's nothing short of astonishing, since it's all in working order and well-maintained. Anyway, rant aside, this was my favorite temple. Here's why.
This is the patio/ledge thing next to the main temple. It's very famous, not for it's view or beautiful construction, but because of the legendary number of suicides that take place there. Apparently there's a saying that means "to take the plunge" or "go for it" which goes something like "I'll jump off Kiyumizu."
This is the view from Suicide Ledge. You can see all of Kyoto from here.
...and finally, the clear water that give the temple it's name. You go down there and take a cup on a stick, catch some water from one of the falling streams, and drink it. It's delicious...and very sanitary. The cup-on-sticks are flashed with UV light after each user. I love this country sometimes. Who else would have state of the art technology at a site which hasn't been structurally or cosmetically changed for hundreds of years?

After this, we headed on to Ginkakuji (Silver Temple). Apparently this one didn't have the same quality of PR relations, since there was never enough money to actually make it silver. Or really maintain it very well, come to that. It's still a very pretty building, though. Before it was a temple it was some noble's summer house, back in the 1200's.

Next was Sanjusangen-do (Hall of 33 rooms) although I honestly have no idea why it's called that, because I saw maybe three rooms total, and one of those might be in a different building. It was nothing short of amazing, if only because of the sheer perversity that made these people finish it. There are 1001 - count 'em - 1001 statues of Kannon in one giant room. 1000 of them are approximately person-sized, and theres an 11 footer in the middle. They all have 20 arms and 11 heads (although 10 are very small so they look normal.) I'm not sure if Kannon is a god or an incarnation of the Buddha because the Japanese are very bad about mixing Shinto and Buddhism and whatever else and also the English signs were impossible. Anyway, here they are. We weren't allowed to take pictures. The other statues are more minor gods and goddesses and are exquisitely made, even if they would make a grown person pee their pants if they came to life.

Historical Side Note: (blame my father for this - it's his fault I like history) There's an archery contest that's been held here since forever, and part of the contest is basically an archery marathon on crack. You have to shoot as many arrows as you can for 24 hours. There was some guy back in the 1300 or 1400's that shot 11,900, and 11,700 hit the target. Did I mention the target's 390 feet away?

Next stop was just across the street, at the Kyoto National Museum. This was the luckiest thing that happened to us the whole trip. There was a special exhibit of culteral items which we decided to spring for at an extra 500 yen or so. Holy crap. These 'cultural items' ended up being some of the most treasured pieces of art in all Japan. Most of these are stored in shrines for all but a couple days of the year. You really have to go here and look at some of these. You can skip the rest of the post as long as you see some of this stuff.

Hmm...time to speed up the pace. This post is already super long. After the museum, we went to Ryoanji which houses the archetype of all Japanese rock gardens. Check it out. I promise if you're there in person and you stare at it for a while, it's kinda cool. Like Zen 3-D images, except you won't see a sailboat.


After that it was time for dinner, so we went back to Gion and there was a giant giant festival going on with Japanese junk food and fair games and thousands of girls wearing kimonos (literally - for once it's not just hyperbole) and extremely nice painted screens for public viewing and the carts that were part of the parade on Monday. We actually got to climb up into one of them for only 300 yen and it was awesome. They're not very stable and very overdecorated, but somehow you tell the rational part of your brain that it's ok because they've lasted hundreds of years, they're sure to last for more and you won't die in a horrible cart-crash and become the latest overseas death to appear in a small article on page A26.

The next day it was pouring rain so there weren't too many people at the actual parade. Except for at the corners, where they yank the cart around 90 degrees so that it can continue down the parade route. Which is where we went. That was the most crowded place I've ever been in my life. There were a couple times where I was standing up only because I was leaning on at least three other people. Crowd control aside, the parade was pretty cool. The music was disappointingly repetitive and there weren't any interesting parts except for the carts (no marching bands or dancers or even pretty girls in between each cart/float). But dude, watching the carts turn was pretty sweet. They pulled the cart onto some flattish bamboo, smooth outer side up, fixed the rear wheels, and came around the side of the cart and just yanked until it turned. This took three yanks and between 3 and 10 minutes, depending on how competant each team was.
After that I went to Kyoto station, shopped for two hours, and went home. The only thing I bought was a bento (box lunch) from a fancy shmancy department store which was absolutely delicious, even the pickled vegetables which are usually nasty.

And Rebecca lived happily ever after. At least until the next post.

Kyoto R0x0rz!!1!1!!

Dude, Kyoto was freaking awesome. There were places to hang out all night, girls just walking around in yukata (summer kimonos), temples pretty much every other block, a place where you can go read manga for 100 yen per fifteen minutes or something 24 hours a day (hello, hotel alternative for broke students!), hardcore guys who have redefined ricing out a car so that it's actually impressive, pounds of good food, and people everywhere. There were loads of 'em. This picture doesn't even begin to do it justice. I've never been anywhere so packed with people in my life. It was so good to actually be in a crowd...

It was also fantastic to get espresso based coffee again. I dragged Eric to Starbucks three separate times. Just FYI, the drinks are exactly the same (except no ventis) but the pasteries are not. At all. I bought a scone and was very excited at the prospect of having a real bread-type object, but for some reason the bakers had decided that salt was an uncessary ingredient. Very disappointing. On a related note, my new goal is to explain how I want my caramel macchiato to have the caramel sauce on the bottom so that it actually mixes into the drink, instead of on the top like it's usually made, which results in caramelly foam, but not caramelly drink. Don't get the wrong impression - the lattes and macchiatos were a very necessary and appreciated fix for an increasingly desperate addict - just it'd be even better the other way.

Don't think that all I did was get coffee. There's just so much more that I don't really even know where to start. I went to about 5 temples, a fantastic art exhibit, the Gion Matsuri festival on Sunday night (a preparty, if you will), and the actual parade on Monday. There's almost 200 pictures I'm in the middle of wading through and sorting and deleting all the blurry ones and the ones that aren't bright enough and blah blah blah...

Hmm. Tomorrow I'll write about the actual festival and temples, but to satiate your thirst for information, here's a few pictures of the other stuff.

Some Buddha matreshkas...

A rather interesting menu...
read the fine print at the bottom. They're either extremely efficient or extremely cheap...and I want to see a one-bean saw.

Some brilliant advertising...
(I got some funny looks from bystanders for taking this picture)

This fortune telling machine is pretty hardcore -












Check out the little yellow sign on the right of the machine.

And here's a low-quality preview of what the whole festival's about.
I chose this one because it's got the lanterns that were everywhere and the cart and the musicians, which is most of the really cool stuff. This is one of the carts/floats that make up the parade. It's two stories tall and those guys are sitting on the second story playing music. The float itself is somewhere in the streets of Gion, the night before the parade. People can come around and see all the floats before the parade starts as part of the pre-parade-party.

More on the actual trip tomorrow.

PS. Vivek, I found the store just for you.

I did stuff!

Greetings, my devoted readers. I'd like to thank you for your patience with my lack of posting...my only excuse is that I've been wonderfully, beautifully busy. This week I've been

1.) catching up on work from home

Check that out! Isn't it beautiful? You guess so? You have no idea what you're even looking at? Yeah, well, it took me a little while to figure out what I'd done too. Basically, everything I've done so far in grad school has been using x-ray diffraction to characterize the structure of materials. When you hit a crystal with x-rays, they only reflect (= diffract) back out if it comes in at exactly the right angle, which tells you what the spacing between atoms is. This raspberry/ugly Christmas tree/chicken pox pattern tells me what angles I should see reflections at.

It doesn't match our results at all, but that's where the beauty of science comes in. Even though we're wrong, it's a good wrong and we can write about why it's wrong. Where else can you get rewarded for failure?? I've found myself a pretty sweet deal here.


2.) hanging out with Kirimura-san and Tahara-san

This is not as exciting as it sounds. One night we spent about an hour trying to set up a Go game online, and then Tahara-san beat me in about twenty minutes. It was ugly. I ended up explaining what 'kick one's ass' means, which took about another hour. The diagram looked kinda like this:
We've also done exciting things like go to dinner together (at the cafeteria), go to the post office, and wig out when the 'freak' storm hit today and the thunder was so loud I thought we were going to die. They said it's not so rare for this sort of thing to happen. Apparently, going from 34 C (93 F) and superhumid to cool (~21 C, 70F) but crazy rain that would beat you into the ground if you didn't get hit by lightening within an hour and a half is not freakish. And tonight, it was back to superhot and so humid that I think the dewpoint was about 80F, because there was fog and just during the time I was walking from my office to my room, there was actual condensation on my badge and on my own personal hair. Cracktastic.

Side Note: at some point Kirimura-san and Tahara-san are supposed to become Kiri-kun and Kazu-kun but I don't know when. Sometimes Kirimura-san calls me Rebecca-chan, but not always so I'm all confused.

Sam asked what all the things at the end of people's names mean, so here's the most literal meaning I've heard, and the impressions I've gotten from the actual usages of each suffix. It's in order of most respected to least.

-sama
super super super respectful. It means Lord. I've only heard this used in terms of the president or in historical tv shows. Or as a joke.
-sensei
pretty respectful. It means teacher. However, it's used for professors, doctors, as well as any sort of teacher. I use it for Dr. Ishikawa, and so does Kubo-san (the administrative assistant) but the more senior researchers in the group use -san instead.
-san
normal respect. Means Ms or Mr. This is the basic level and won't get you in too much trouble even if you've picked the wrong one. It's for people who are your peers, or at least close to your peers.
-chan
casual. It's sorta like a nickname...so Becca-chan would be like little Becca, or Becca-poo or Becky or Becks or something. The word for baby is aka-chan, or little red one. This is what you use for people significantly (2-3 years or more) younger than you, or kids, or your close friends. I have no idea when to use it if I'm not talking about a dog or small child.
-kun
It's just -chan for a guy.


3.) and as of today, doing what I'm supposed to be doing here.

So I figured out today that there's been a big error in communication. All these introductions and visits to the beamline were not just academic tourism. I was supposed to really really be paying attention, because this is what Ishikawa-sensei wants me to do this summer. I suppose that the only way I'll really learn how to do this is to watch someone else first, but I thought that at some point there would be a discussion about a project I would at least try to complete. Yeah, not so much. I only found this out after I asked to have a meeting to discuss my actual work today, and he told me to go watch Nishino-san and co. while they set up an experiment today.

I am perfectly happy to do this, but I wish I had known before. I would have made much more of an attempt to learn all the details and start participating the times that I went before. Before, I always just watched and went home at 5 or 6...but that's not how you really learn. Today I made myself super annoying by asking questions every five minutes and trying to help and not going home till 10pm, but now I understand a little bit.

What have I learned? I'm not going to be afraid to be obnoxiously direct anymore because I'm a stupid American who doesn't catch on to the subtext, and if I'm not blunt I won't get it.

Japan is a tricky punk who will try to trip you up when you're not expecting it. Nice move, Japan, but I'll get you back for this.

PS. I'm going to Kyoto for the long weekend to see Gion Matsuri (the big parade is Monday) so expect lots of pictures Monday night.

The obligatory ripoff from an over-quoted song is here!

The magical mystery tour is waiting to take you away,
Waiting to take you away.

This is what I did on Sunday. Kohmura-san offered to take me away Somewhere, and since Somewhere wasn't being stuck in my room all day, I agreed to go on the mystery tour...


-----------------------------------------------------
Welcome passengers, to the Hyogo Magical Mystery Tour! Since you're all here, we can safely assume that you've managed to decipher the invitation that was carefully hidden in the conversations you've been having with our tour guide, Kohmura-san. Congratulations on recognizing the instructions cleverly disguised as questions and comments. Of course, you're new here, so we felt a hint or two in the form of a suggestion wouldn't ruin the surprise. In any case, we're glad to see you here!

Our first stop will be at the Sake Warehouse.
Magical attributes: coffee, sweets, and very very nice older women will appear out of nowhere.
Mysteeeriousness: Is it a sake warehouse? A cultural concert hall? A teahouse? A trendy handmade glass art shop? Here's your hints, folks.

Instructions:

The materials you can use:



Correct Answer: Sit around in the cafe/shop and impress the wonderful old lady running the place with your broken Japanese. Also, have awkward conversation with several other tour goers whom you've never seen before.

Extra Credit (worth 2 cookies) : Tell the proprietress (in Japanese) that her coffee is the best you've had in Japan. It'll be true.

Partial Credit: Play peek-a-boo with Kohmura-san's daughter.

-----------------------------------------------------
Well, fellow Mystery Tourists, I hope you enjoyed our first stop! I'm sure you've all met each other now and can remember the difference between Shimada-san and Shimeru-san. We sure hope so, because you'll be talking about each other using only these names for reference!

Our next stop is going to be the Sayo Sunflowers! That's right, folks, tons of 'em!

Magical Attributes: they're Yellow! Useful for blinding your foes in battle.
Mysteeeeriousness: What do you do here? Take pictures? Stroll down a country lane with your beau? Fish your young daughter out of the dirt?

Here's your materials:

Correct Answer: Marvel at the incredible beauty. The contrast between the bright yellow flowers and towering mountains topped with blue-grey clouds is fantastic.

Incorrect (but very popular) Answer: Stand around and talk awkwardly with people you don't know. Maybe Shimizu-san?

Bonus Points: Take a large group picture to commemorate the 20 minutes you spent together talking in front of the flowers. Here's an example to get you started:
In this example, you're the one holding the giant orange flyer that's in Japanese, so you can't read it. You of course know the tour guide, Kohmura-san. You also know his wife and daughter on the right, and you know that the guy on your left is Shimada-san.

Double Extra Double Dollar Bonus Points: be daring enough to try sunflower seed flavored ice cream. You'll spend Double Extra Double Dollars (quadruple, perhaps?) but it'll be worth it.

-----------------------------------------------------
So folks, we're at our final stop! After your long day, it's time to have a nice, relaxing, familiar, Italian meal at Barukaino.

Magical Attributes: It's an Italian restaurant. In rural Japan.
Mysteeeriouness: Is it really Italian? Will you know what you're actually ordering, since the menu has no pictures? And will they bring out the parmesan cheese you've been craving? And what on earth does barukaino mean?

Your materials are:
1) your gut instinct
2) your infallible ability to read words borrowed from other languages
3) your friends who speak Japanese

Pick one.

Correct Answer: 2) If you chose this, you were able to read enough 'supaggetei' and 'kurimusaasu' to choose mushrooms in cream sauce on spaghetti. Congratulations! It's approximately the same quality Italian food as Gypsy's in the asian ghetto, (that crappy place in Berkeley).

Incorrect Answer: 1) It's luck of the draw. But guess what? It probably has seafood of some sort in it! Hopefully the tomato sauce isn't made from ketchup.

Incorrect Answer: 3) You choose the pizza whose name had a lot of kanji in front of it, but your friend said it was delicious. The toppings include shrimp, squid tentacles, and fish liver. The sauce is jet black and is made from squid ink.

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Thanks again for choosing the Hyogo Magical Mystery tour! Our next scheduled event will be casually hinted at in the near future, so don't miss it!



PS. This cheese thing is not going away. The cream sauce had zero cheese in it and I had to specificaly ask them to bring out some parmesan to put on top. I gotta find me some black market Italian cheeses. Not your run of the mill stuff, either. I need something harder... Romano or asiago...and some designer brie to keep me going through the day. Wisconsin, you lied to me! You said I could stop whenever I wanted. But no, I've got the sweet, sweet cheese in my system now and I gotta get another creamy, dairy-filled hit...

weather update

P.S. The taifun (taifoon? taiphoon? what's the English spelling for this?) is still over the Phillipines, so I've been told that we're safe. Apparently two years ago, a taifun blew off the roof of the storage ring in a couple places. But tomorrow should be fine...

...and that's the news from Lake Sayo-begon

Oops. I'd meant to write again before now, but all my spare time's been sucked up by a really addictive game called NetHack. Does it have flashy graphics? Fascinating storyline? Dynamic gameplay? Not so much. It looks like this:
And I can't stop. Luckily, it's really hard and I die so often that I get fed up, so I'm hoping that I'll get tired of being frustrated and stop playing so much.

So, yesterday was my favorite work-day at SPring-8 so far. I spent the day at the beamline, watching Kirimura-san and Tanaka-san do their experiment. They've gotten hold of this organic crystal that changes color when you shine UV light on it, and won't change back until you hit it with a red laser. (well, the red laser light. As satisfying as hitting the stupid crystal with the laser (it's shaped a little like a policeman's baton) and smashing it to bits, that wouldn't be good for the experiment.) Anyway, they're watching the diffraction pattern of the crystal as it changes to figure out how long the color transition takes. The actual experiment is a little like what I did at Argonne in February, so I actually understood what was going on.

The other thing that happened yesterday is that I got a mad craving for American food. I had spaghetti, olive oil, and Kraft parmesan cheese so I decided to whip that together. As I was eating, I realized that my real craving was for cheese. I added more. And more. I think the resulting pasta to oil to cheese concentrations ended up something like this:


Of course, I've been watching TV and it's been just as good as ever. My favorite by far was the English lesson program. But not just any English - oh no - this was all about romance and dating. The basic setup of the show was a Japanese bartender with an extremely lost/bored looking white girl as a waitress and a too-nicely dressed Japanese couple learning romantic English. Part had to do with interpreting quotes from movies, but then there was a practical demonstration. So imagine these two:
saying this:

Man: You make me want to be a better man.

Woman: I feel neglected. You haven't been paying attention to me lately. I need a compliment, now.

Man: I'm sorry I'm so late. I've been waiting for this moment for the entire day.

Woman: That's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to me!

with horrible, horrible accents and some of the worst acting I've seen since those home videos that we all had to do for out high school language class. Think X-Files in spanish. And I think the spanish videos were more believeable.

The other thing that I did this week was go to Japanese class. The rotary club chapter that sponsered the Ikebana last week gives lessons (of a sort) for free at the local college. I think the lessons can consist of serious study if you want them to but what I did was meet other people who speak horrible Japanese too and butcher the language together. It was awesome.

There was a Korean housewife whose husband is at SPring-8 for the summer, so she came along too. She's freaking hilarious. She speaks as much English as she does Japanese, which is to say not very much but she's very very good at gestures. I also met another Japanese secretary-type from SPring-8, and a guy who studies surfaces at the University of Hyogo campus up here. Here we are, in all our glory:


Tomorrow I'm going out to see an old sake warehouse with Kohmura-san. I have absolutely no idea why this would ever be interesting, but Kohmura-san says it is, and it means I get to leave SPring-8, so... Also, he said today that 'Maybe several people are coming' which in Japanese-speak means there will definitely be at least four or five people. I have no idea who they are.

Should be interesting!

What's going on?

Welcome, readers, to this week's episode of

Every week, we answer questions from several readers who are perplexed by things that they've seen, experienced, or heard about. So, without further ado, let's figure out What's Going On?!

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Situation #1

Lebekka-san of SPring-8 writes:

"Today I rode my bike to Kouto Plaza (strip mall with the convenience store) to buy some milk tea. I didn't get milk tea because the store was closed, but the vending machines were open, so I thought I'd go buy smaller bottles from them instead. When I got there, I saw a machine with pictures of suspiciously good-looking HOT food, like yakisoba (fried noodles), takoyaki (fried dumplings with octopus inside), or furaidopatatosu (french fries). But it's a vending machine...

What's Going On?"

Dear Lebekka-san,

This is exactly what it looks like. It is a vending machine which serves hot food. You might ask yourself how this could be possible, even with the amazing things that modern science has made available to us. Well, it's not. Not even electricity can do this, and electricity can do some pretty cool stuff. Here's What's Going On: Santa's elves' children need to eat in the summer, Lebekka. And they're not good with unions.

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Situation #2

Saitcheru-san from Sayo-cho writes,

"Today at work, somthing very strange happened. A friend and I were getting the director of RIKEN (at SPring-8) 's secretary to come have dinner with us, when the director came out. This guy is big stuff. I'd been introduced to him before, so he asked me how I was doing. Then he asked if I liked shochu (Japanese liquor) and invited me to come back to his office after dinner for a drink.

"When we got back, my boss and another executive were there drinking in his office and I was showed in to join them. The secretaries I'd been eating dinner with did not. I got about two fingers of shochu and lots of questions about how I liked it here, how the food is, how there's a local soy sauce factory that's very good, how there's money from JSPS and the NSF to come back to Japan, and how a foreigner is a permanent manager/scientist at SPring-8. I was also told to drop by again after five if I wanted, anytime.

"WGO, I have no idea what to think of this. I could be craptastic for all they know, so it's a little early for recruiting. And why would they want foreign researchers on a permanent basis, anyway? Our Japanese is crappy so there's all sorts of language barriers, there'd be tons of bureaucratic mess to go through because we'll never be citizens, and if we stay here we won't be useful collaborators with additional resources to draw on. What's Going On?"

Dear Saitcheru-san,

Who knows. At least you got some very good shochu.

WGO
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Situation #3

Reba Jean from Harima Science Garden City writes, "Dear WGO,

I really hate exercizing. Especially if it's hard. But today, instead of returning to my room after work, I accidentally rode my bicycle three or four miles. At first, I just intended to ride out to the 1 km long beamline where there's an amazing view. Turns out it's not so great when it's dark and the moon's not out. Then I thought that since I didn't have any drinks in my room, I'd ride to the convenience store (it's 2-3 km away!) to get some juice or tea. It was a total of 6 or 7 kilometers! WGO, this is completely unprecedented behavior. Should I be worried? What's Going On?"

Dear Reba Jean,

Get rid of your bicycle immediately! It's extremely dangerous for you to ride it ever again. You've gotten one of the infamous Vampicycles! They appear to be normal bicycles, but they suck energy from their riders for as long as they can. The danger lies in the fact that Vampicycles cast a soothing spell on the rider's mind, making them think that the exhaustion they feel is simply due to exercize. Many victims begin to feel that they are obtaining some sort of benefit from this 'exercize' and so continue to ride for longer and longer distances. You must fight this impulse! One day, you will find yourself going for 'just a short ride' and never get off. Ever. The Vampicycle eventually sucks all the energy out of their rider, discards them, and lies by the road to be discovered by their next victim.

Either that or you're bored out of your mind.

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Thank you, readers! We hope you enjoyed this week's edition of What's Going On as much as we enjoyed making it for you. Remember, whenever you're confused, whenever something unexpected or frightening happens, or even if the sky's falling, just write to us and we'll explain it all away. Good night!

Culturefest!

Violinist wearing a gas mask.

That's what I woke up to this morning. I sleepily turned on the TV and there was a music video with a violinist wearing a gas mask. There were a few of them, actually. J-pop can be pretty good, but it's still Japanese and therefore strange.

Today, it also rained very, very, hard. This is the view from my balcony. Can you see the sheet of water falling off the side of the roof?

Anyway, there's a whole lot that's happened since I posted last. I've been in sort of a blogging slump for the past couple days...but I figure if I don't write something then I'll forget all the juicy details. (Calm down, Dad, I haven't met a guy or anything.)

Hmm...on Friday my group threw a "Welcome to Japan, gaijin" party for me. Well, it was techinically a "Welcome to the Ishikawa group" party, but it kinda turned into a lesson in Japanese food, language, and culture. Here's what the spread looked like:

From left to right, Yabashi Makina, Yoshihito Tanaka, Akiko Kubo (r0x0rz), Tomoyuki Kirimura, Noriko Hashino, Akinori Kishida, Kazuhiko Tahara, Yoshinori Nishino, Tetsuya Ishikawa, Yukio Takahashi, Lebekka Saitcheru.

We had some catered food (very Japanese), pizza to make sure there was something American that I would like (too bad this was also very Japanese...apparently common toppings are bacon and eggplant, or tomatos and tuna fish...I had to explain what pepperoni was...I also explained about Ian's, a pizza place in Madison that puts anything on a pizza, like macaroni and cheese, so I think I'm completely confused them now), some mixed rice that included gobou (explaining what this was took about half an hour and a lot of confusion, so to make it short for you, it's burdock root), and the beer and wine that I brought from Madison (Spotted Cow, for those of you in the know.)

I gotta calm down (with the parenthetical comments.)

So, we ate. We also talked about what everything is, how Tahara-san is going to be able to teach me Japanese seishin if he can't even make a paper crane (even with supersized paper),
how Dr. Ishikawa can make an incredibly tiny paper crane (the tiny bottle of soy sauce is for scale), and how squid intestines and sake are a favorite combination among middle-aged men. It turns out Dr. Ishikawa has a very very good command of the English language even if he speaks slowly. He made a very good translator. After translating 'stubborn' for us, he pointed out that it's not quite the same in English, so we needed a demonstration. Tanaka-san turns out to be an excellent actor. I guess the Japanese version of being strong-willed means that you drink a lot of sake, yell, and then throw the table across the room. Apparently this attitude was very popular until recently....

I also played a game of Go with Tahara-san. He's very good and I only barely remember playing with Dad, so I got my butt kicked. The score was very close, but that was really just an accident. Kirimura-san told me that if I'm going to learn seishin, "Please beat Tahara-san before you go."

On Saturday, I met Yoko Terashita (one of the bazillion women that Koumura-san has introduced me to...he seems awfully popular... =p ) at Himeji station. This was a small adventure in and of itself. I'd never taken JR trains before, so I didn't know how to buy a ticket or what the kanji for Himeji was or even which train to take. Turned out ok, though...there was a table of fares next to the ticket machine that was in English, so I put in enough money and it spat out a ticket. The rest was self explanatory.

Since it was raining, Yoko-san and I decided not to go to Himeji castle. Instead, she took me to a traditional Japanese restaurant about an hour away that specialized in soba, omochi (not the ice cream, the wierd rice paste that has a bubble-gun type consistency), and rice crackers. With lunch, came the most amazing plum wine I've ever had. The restaurant looks like this. We sat at the central table and the paper door/windows were open so it was cool and you could see the rain and hear the nearby stream.

This was my first real Japanese experience. Not like being confused by the wierdness or watching the tea ceremony or something. Just sitting there in the restaurant on a rainy day, listening to the rainwater, and watching a windchime flutter in the breeze. I'd seen this exact scene in many animes, and thought they were just trying to be artsy and pretentious, but that's definitely not the case. It's a very peaceful, quiet feeling...very Japanese.

Also, the cold soba noodles were the best I've ever had in my entire life. Kinda like the difference between fresh pasta and dried.

After that, we went to a museum in Himeji that had an exhibit of (mostly) traditional Japanese paintings. My favorite by far was a painting of an owl that had just been woken up. I think it was about to kill the artist as soon as it could be bothered to move. It looks exactly like my dad's cat Piggus.

My current dilemma is whether to make the effort and whip out an apple pie for July 4th for my labmates or not. I'm not sure there's an oven, apples are expensive, and I don't have a pie pan. But it's July 4th, and they just threw a nice party for me. What's going to happen is that I'll procrastinate the decision until July 3rd and can't go out shopping. Ooh...that's tomorrow.

The other thing that's tomorrow is my presentation. I have to talk about my work in Madison. This'll be the first time I've given a talk to people outside my group, but the only thing I'm really worried about is if I'll finish the slides. This is completely retarded, becuase Dr. Ishikawa is very smart and these are all x-ray people and I don't know what I'm talking about. Hurrah for false confidence!!


PS. Sarah sent me the awesomest email.

I just wanted to say hello and to say that Iove your blog like I love dog races on a warm summers day in Montana with a pich of la la la. Or in english, you blog = (being at the beach)^3 + a month of vacation.

I just though you could use some American weirdness to go with all the Japanese!

PS.
Once again, Sarah is being featured in my blog. The rest of you people need to catch up... I want your submissions on my desk by 5:00 pm Friday afternoon.