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.