...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!