Home

I'm safely arrived at home. It's a little over 90 degrees in my apartment, since I need to give the AC some time to warm up (or to cool down?) Ugh. I'm exhausted, of course, after travelling for so long. I'll probably delete this blog in a month or so.

From Narita

I'm in a free internet cafe in Narita airport, waiting for my flight. I'll take this chance to tell you about a few things that happened since I left work on Monday. I apologize if there are any weird typos; I cannot remap this keyboard into US-English. After work on Friday I met up with a few other NSF people in Akasaka. We went to this really fun restaurant called "Ninja." The staff all dress like Ninjas, and append Ninja to the front of everything (Ninja menu, Ninja cocktails, etc.) The presentation of the food was amazing. We ordered a sashimi dish, and it came displayed on an ice sculpture! As far as we could tell, they created a new ice sculpture every time that this dish was ordered. At the end of the meal, our waiter performed a magic show. It was very pricey with small portions, but definitely worth it for the experience. On Tuesday I made the long journey from sobudaimae to shinagawa with my two suitcases. The commuter trains are really not designed for large suitcases, and the stations are even worse with lots of staircases. It was among the most painful 2 hours of my life. If Carol hadn't brought my rolling suitcase with her, I wouldn't have been able to make it at all. There were a few presentations by different JSPS fellows, and then a catered party. My host family showed up, so I got to give them a final goodbye. After the official party ended most people went out for karaoke. I spent an hour in a smaller room, but then everybody converged into a large room that was loud drunken madness, so I cut out and walked around the shinagawa area. Shinagawa is pretty boring. Sony is headquartered there. I hope there are some awesome movies on my flight!

Coming to an end

My final talk is given, and my desk is packed up. In a few more minutes I'll no longer be working at IBM. Moments like these are always emotionally confusing. I am looking forward to getting home, but I'll miss this place. Tonight I'll spend some time packing. Tomorrow I go to Tokyo for an NSF/JSPS meeting, and then early on Wednesday morning I fly back. I'll arrive back in Austin on Wednesday (Austin time). I hope that people have enjoyed reading my blog. I'll post again from Austin to let you know that I've arrived safely.

A Final Bike Ride

My last bike ride in Japan was this morning, on the way to work. Today I'm leaving work around 11:00 to go on a hike with my co-workers, which means that my bike will stay in the IBM parking lot all weekend. I'll take the train in on Monday, which is my last day. I'm planning to give the bike to one of my co-workers. On Monday I'm supposed to give a 1 hour presentation on my work this summer. I'm still working on the slides (slowly.) Powerpoint has never been my favorite thing. The summer has gone by quickly, in some ways (especially the week that Carol was here.) I'm ready to go home though. Less than a week from now I'll be back in my own apartment.

7.2 Earthquake

There was a 7.2 earthquake a little before noon today, while I was in the office. It seemed to go on for a long time, maybe a full minute. You can read more about it. I'm fine, by the way. Earthquakes really aren't a big deal here, and all the buildings are designed with them in mind.

Carol!

In a few minutes I'm headed to Sagamiono station, where if everything goes according to plan Carol will be arriving by bus. By the time she gets there, she will have been traveling for 32 hours! This is because she is flying first to Taipei, and then changing plans to fly to Tokyo. A little impractical, since Tokyo is on the way to Taipei! Oh well, as long as she makes it here in one piece I'm happy.

Pocky Men's

Well, I'm certainly not going to eat regular pocky again. It's for girls.

Low-key weekend

This weekend was a decidedly more low-key affair than any of my other weekends in Tokyo. I think that I've tired myself out by sightseeing on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday every weekend. Also, I wanted to save my energy for when Carol gets here (she's arriving on Thursday.) I did manage to do a few things, however. On Saturday I met Yuka and 3 of her friends in Shinjuku, and we headed up to Ikebukuro to see the aquarium and the planetarium. The planetarium exhibition was, sadly, entirely in Japanese, so I missed out on its full educational impact. The aquarium seemed fairly good, except that some of the tanks were rather spartan and I felt sorry for the fish. We had some ramen for dinner in Ikebukuro, and then went to Roppongi for salsa dancing. The club we went to was called "Salsa Caribe" and is distinguished mostly by the fact that it is incredibly tiny. Even with only about 40 people inside, it was a battle for space when you wanted to dance. I thought that the club had a really good atmosphere, as people changed partners with every song and seemed willing to dance with everybody. Unfortunately, I don't know how to salsa dance, so I was very shy about asking strangers to dance. Most of the men in the club were very good! On Sunday I decided that my goal was to finally buy some jeans, since I've heard so many good things about Japanese denim. So far my jeans shopping experience has consisted of seeing $300 jeans in department stores and being scared away, so I decided that if I could find something for less than $100 that fit well I would go ahead and buy (after all, I do not often get the chance to buy Japanese jeans!) I went to a store called Marukawa in Machida, which sells jeans exclusively on 5 floors and has the inspiring and direct slogan of "Here is Jeans." It was cramped and congested, which boded well for my theory that the more space you have while shopping in Tokyo, the more you have to spend. They sold 4 brands, and unfortunately 3 of them were American brands: Levi's, Lee, and Wrangler. That left me with the one Japanese brand of Edwin. I tried on about 8 pairs before finding something that fit properly, and noted that it was a bargain at only $70 (somewhere in the back of my mind I remembered that $70 would have seemed expensive to me in Texas.) You know how American movie stars sometimes make advertisements for Japanese products to earn some quick cash? Well, Brad Pitt has advertised for Edwin. So you know that they have to be cool :-) After leaving Marukawa I stumbled upon "Book Off," which is a really great store. It sells used CDs and books at fantastic prices. I wanted to buy some Japanese pop, and I finally had a chance to purchase a CD for $1.50 instead of $30.00. Once I realized how great the prices were, however, I also realized that it's a lot simpler to leave a music store because everything is overpriced than it is to pick out songs in a foreign country once you've found a store with good prices. I purchased 3 CDs "at random" which I hope are good; I haven't had a chance to listen to them yet.

Women-only car

One of the famous "women-only" cars on the rail line, to keep women safe from gropers during rush hour!

Only 3 weekends left

The very first time I heard about "all-you-can-drink karaoke" my initial thought was "wow, that sounds dangerous." On Friday night, Aditi and I set out to prove that it is, indeed, dangerous. Even more so when the only drink you can figure out how to communicate to the Japanese staff is "whiskey." After two hours and a few more drinks than was probably a good idea, we stepped out into the streets of Shibuya and struck up a conversation with a group of Americans. Two of them happened to speak Chinese, and one of them went to the very same study abroad program in Beijing that I attended, but two years later. It was a pretty crazy coincidence. Saturday morning I woke up on Aditi's floor (having stayed out past the last train) and felt surprisingly healthy, although I think that Aditi was in worse shape since she had matched me in drinks but weighs 50 lbs less. I had some time to kill before going to see fireworks at 5:30, so I went to Ebisu to see the photography museum. There was a visiting exhibition on the most influential photographs of the year with lots of lengthy English descriptions. After the photography museum I went to see the parasite museum, which is devoted to everything that can possibly live inside of the human body. It was free, but had essentially no English, so I don't think that I learned very much. At 5:30 I met my co-worker at Tachikawa station which is located west of Tokyo on the Chuo line. We walked about a half an hour to a park where there was going to be a fireworks display. It was insanely crowded; the sort of crowded that in America you might expect only at a outdoor music festival. Cell phones didn't work, and it was difficult to move around. It took us 2 hours to find his friends that we were looking for, and we only managed to sit down about 5 minutes before the show started. After the show ended it seemed like the entire park got up to leave at the same time, and I panicked about making it onto a train so I also left immediately. I did, fortunately, make it home after battling with crowds the entire way. I would say that the whole experience was not worth it (they were just fireworks!) except that most of the spectators were wearing Kimono and Yukata, which was fun to see. It seems that every woman in Japan owns a Kimono and wears it only to see fireworks. They're pretty, but there is also something to say for woman's clothing that allows one to take steps longer than one foot. Sunday I was planning to visit Hakone with Charles and Aditi, but Aditi ended up having to go to lab so she cancelled. Instead I went to Odaiba, which is this enormous man-made island in the middle of Tokyo bay. One of the major attractions is the "Toyota Megaweb" which is showcase of Toyota cars. You can climb in to just about every Toyota car currently available and see what it feels like, and there are also rides and activities. That was pretty fun in and of itself, but there was also a cheerleading competition going on all day outside. I only had a little time to spend on the rest of the island, where I saw a replica of the statue of liberty and some enormous shopping malls. At 7:00 I met Yuka for dinner in Shinjuku with some of her coworkers. We ate at a restaurant that I never could have found by myself, and even if I had I couldn't have eaten at because there were no pictures on the menu. It specialized in food from Kyushu, the major southern island in Japan. I got to eat raw horse meat! Yuka's coworker asked me how we refer to horse meat in English, and I said "horse meat." I guess that there is no need to have a word for something that we don't eat in the English-speaking world.

Etymology of "Karaoke"

We all know that "karaoke" (カラオケ) is a Japanese word, but do you know what it means? "kara" is the kanji 空, meaning "empty." "oke" is a shortened form of "ookesutora" (オーケストラ) which means "orchestra" and has its origins in the English word. So there you have it. Karaoke means "empty orchestra." Even though the "kara" part is a kanji, you typically see the entire word written in Hiragana.

Typhoon

There's apparently a typhoon approaching Tokyo. Everyone is talking about leaving work early. I already have an earthquake under my belt; it looks like I'll get to experience all of the extreme natural phenomena that the area has to offer!

One of Japan's Mysteries

Anytime, anywhere, (such as way out in the suburbs at 9:00 am on a Tuesday, in the middle of a downpour) if you board any train, you are almost guaranteed to see at least one young Japanese woman in 4 inch heels, full makeup, and a semi-revealing outfit that looks appropriate for a nightclub. Where are these people going?! You can't go to work dressed like that! Surely they're not going to a bar before noon, right?

Earthquake at the Beach

On Saturday I organized an outing to Enoshima beach. During the week I'd done some research about beaches in the area, and basically confirmed my suspicion that none of the beaches in greater Tokyo are that great, due to over-industrialization. I still wanted to see a Japanese beach though, so I wasn't about to let mediocrity stand in my way. The sand at Enoshima is volcanic, and looks very dark. Since I'm accustomed to lighter shades of beach I found this somewhat unsettling, as though the beach were somehow dirty. The entire beach is lined with bars and restaurants that are hastily recreated at the beginning of each summer and torn down at the end. The day we went was overcast, which I think kept away most of the crowds (I've heard that normally you can't find a place to put your towel if you arrive late.) There were still a fair number of people around playing Frisbee and soccer or swimming and sunbathing. Pretty much the normal activities that one expects to find at a beach. The really exciting thing is that there was an earthquake while we were there! I was sitting on my towel, so I was able to very clearly feel the earth shake back and forth. I wasn't really sure what was happening at first, but once I figured it out it was very exciting! I felt pretty safe since there weren't any buildings or large structures around, although I did briefly wonder whether there would be a tsunami. Our plan for after the beach was to go to Yokohama for dinner, but the earthquake delayed the JR lines so we ended up eating in Fujisawa. We had an excellent Japanese meal with tofu, sushi, and yakitori (among other things) that cost less than $20, which was a bargain by Tokyo standards. Afterwards we wandered around Fujisawa for a little while before heading into a karaoke place for 2 hours of singing.

Ebina

Last night after work I took the Odakyu line to Ebina, two stops in the direction away from Tokyo. Immediately adjacent to the station is a San Diego-style outdoor mall, with nice benches and park space. I think that this firmly cements my belief that my station is the most boring station in the greater Tokyo area. Malls are not my favorite spaces or anything, but the food court at this mall had more restaurants than my entire station area, and the area outside of the mall was also bursting with restaurants, shops, arcades, etc. I also found two movie theaters, and confirmed that it really does cost $17 to see a movie in Japan. Crazy! I think that my frustration with my living situation has more to do with the fact that I don't know anyone nearby than to do with the fact that I'm not in Tokyo. If I could choose to be comfortably settled anywhere I wanted with a nearby social network in place, I might actually choose Kanagawa over Tokyo. You can do basically the same things in both places; eat, shop, drink, etc. In Kanagawa, however, you can generally do those same things for less money and in a more spacious environment. The only real advantage of Tokyo is that it has trendier clubs and restaurants, but those aren't places I'd be frequenting anyway.

Phases of Cultural Adjustment

http://www.cie.uci.edu/world/shock.html "Irritability"

Sea Day Weekend

The 18th of July was a national holiday in Japan, called "Sea Day." I asked a few people about the origins of the holiday, but the only answer I got was that "Japanese people work too hard and need a day off." Seeing as how Japanese people really do work too hard, that seems like a good reason to have a holiday to me :-) I didn't have many specific plans coming into the weekend, but somehow everything fell together and I still managed to pack it with activities. Friday I met Aditi and Dan in Tokyo for dinner and a few rushed drinks at a cheap standing-only bar before we had to rush off to catch the last train. I had an interesting experience on the train, too. I was sitting one seat away from a Japanese man who was clearly very drunk, and a few minutes before the train left he threw up! The amazing thing was that people were not angry with him at all; they just used newspapers to clean up the mess. When new people boarded the train, they assessed the situation and chose a spot to stand where it was still clean. The drunk guy threw up 2 or 3 more times though, and eventually people started yelling at him. I felt a little queasy every time I looked in that direction, but I didn't want to give up my (rare) seat for a 40-minute ride. On Saturday I met Charles and some of his air force friends at Mount Takao, which is located in Tokyo Prefecture but is decidedly not urbanized. We spent the day hiking around, enjoying the views, and eating in the food stands. Getting out into nature heightened my awareness of how grey Tokyo is. The little elements that make American cities pleasant, like trees between the sidewalk and the street, are missing here. When the sun comes out, it's an enormous, sweltering, concrete jungle. After Takao, we (almost) got a tour of the Air Force base, but Charles accidentally left his passport at home. So once again I was unable to see an American military base here. Maybe it will eventually happen. On Sunday the first thing I did was go into Shinjuku around 11:00 and buy some socks from Oshman's. During the Takao climb I had worn my fancy sweat-wicking cycling socks, and there was noticeable improvement in my foot comfort. I briefly stopped by a bookstore (where I changed into my new socks) before leaving for Shibuya. In Shibuya, I finally managed to find some clothes that were A) to my liking B) my size, and C) not too expensive. Shopping here has mostly been a frustrating experience for me. Most of the department stores have 8 floors of women's clothing, and one floor that sells men's clothing and luggage. Furthermore, most of the men's clothing is business apparel. However, in Shibuya I went to a store called "0101" which had an astounding three floors of men's clothing including some younger, more casual styles. Aditi called while I was in Shibuya, so I jumped over one stop on the Yamanote line to Ebisu where we had some dinner at a cafe. It was relieving to sit down, because at that point I'd been on my feet for about 7 hours. It seems that in central Tokyo, you can only sit down if you've paid for the privilege (for instance, by buying food). Around 11:30 I left to go home, but when I got to the Odakyu line in Shinjuku I discovered that the schedule was different on Sundays. As a result, I had to take a local train back to the suburbs, and it stopped 2 stops away from where I live with no continuation possible. I ended up walking about 4 km home, which took me another hour so that I didn't arrive until 2:30 (note that this is 3 hours after I left). If I'd taken a cab, it would have been around 30 dollars... On Monday, I met one of my co-workers and his friend to see Yokohama. First we went to the Ramen museum near Shin-Yokohama station. It's supposed to be a museum devoted to the history of Ramen, but actually the museum part takes up about 5 square feet. The rest of the building houses about 8 different ramen shops where you can try ramen from different regions of Japan. Unfortunately, there was a 30 minute wait to get into each of the shops, so we only went to one. Next we went to the Yokohama waterfront, and then to Chinatown. I'm not convinced that there are any actual Chinese people in the Yokohama Chinatown; it seems more like a place where Japanese people go to eat Chinese food and buy Chinese stuff. The food was pretty good though.

Current "Email My Cell Phone" Standings

Chendi: 2 Carol: 1 Jason: 1 Kevin: 1 Chendi is in the lead, but it's still early in the competition so it could really be anyone's game. [first initial][middle initial]brick@t.vodafone.ne.jp

Group Outing

Yesterday after work I finally got to go on one of the corporate group outings that the Japanese are so famous for. We all walked to a nearby restaurant together, ate some food and had a few drinks. I'm not sure who paid, but I do know for certain that I didn't :-) It was pretty fun, and people were considerate about clueing me into the conversation with English once in a while. So, today is Friday which means the start of the weekend. However, I am worried that my feet are in too poor of condition to do much sightseeing. I'm really not sure why this is happening to me right now, but there are blisters and sores all over my feet and walking even short distances is painful.

Final Sumo Match

Asashoryu picks up his 400-lb opponant and places him outside of the ring. This picture was taken by Charles using his very nice Canon Digital SLR. He has other sumo photos online.

Expo Crowds

An example of a line at the Aichi (Nagoya) Expo. This particular line is for the Hitachi pavilion. I wish that I'd taken a picture of the line for the gift shop. That place was insane! Every square foot of the store was occupied by a human body.

Nagoya/Expo/Sumo

I'm back in the office after another non-stop weekend. Saturday morning I woke up around 5:30 so that I could catch the train bound for Tokyo station. The plan was to meet Dan, Nam, and Aditi in the station and take the Shinkansen (新幹線, bullet train) out to Nagoya (名古屋). I arrived about 30 minutes early, and managed to find Nam and Aditi after a few phone calls. Dan was running late, even though he was the one who had our $800 in combined tickets on his credit card; fortunately he showed up about 5 minutes before the train took off and we found our seats. The Shinkansen goes some incredible speed around 300 km/h, so we arrived in Nagoya exactly two hours after we left Tokyo. Once there, we met up with 5 other NSF/EAPSI fellows who had arranged different transportation and proceeded to the World Expo. There were two transportation choices— we could either take a shuttle bus or a train followed by Japan's first mag-lev train. Of course we chose the mag-lev train, which turned out to be a mistake. It was totally packed, and the experience was not substantially different from riding a more conventional train. It also took about 30 minutes longer in total than the bus would have. Once at the Expo grounds we stood in line to get in, at which point we had the choice of several lines to get some food. There are basically two types of attractions at the expo; countrypavilionss and corporatepavilionss. In the countrypavilionss you learn about what life is like in that country, while in the corporatepavilionss you learn about the cool new technologies that will change our lives in the future. We found food in the Sri Lankanpavilionn. I'd never eaten Sri Lankan food before, but I don't think it's substantially different from South Indian food. The corporatepavilionss have insane lines, around 3-4 hours, because about 120,000 people attend the expo each day. Fortunately for the 4 of ustravelingg from Tokyo, our travel agent included a reservation to the JapanRailpavilionn, so we were able to get in at a certain time without waiting. I was pretty excited about thepavilionn since I'm interested in mass transit technology, but the display wasdisappointingg. Instead of really describing the engineering behind mag-lev, they just showed a 20-minute video with trains rushing by to a soundtrack of classical music. It was in 3-D though :-) So the Expo was crowded and rainy, and I didn't see anything that really blew my mind, but I'm still glad I went. We pretty much got the ticket for free by using the travel agency instead of booking the train ticket directly, so my expectations weren't too high, and it was exciting to be a part of such a big event. I get the feeling that the expositions were a bigger deal during the early 1900s when it was more difficult to disseminate information about new technological advances. Sunday morning I woke up in my hotel in Gifu, which is about 30 minutes from Nagoya. Instead of heading directly to Nagoya we first went to Inuyama (犬山) which is famous for having a monkey park and a castle. We finally made it to our seats at Sumo around 3:00. The Sumo tournament ran from 10:00 to 6:00, but the quality of the wrestlers increases as the day goes on so there was still plenty of good Sumo to watch. I think that the thing that surprised me most was how strong the wrestlers were. Even though they all weigh 300-400 pounds, you can still see muscle in their thighs when they squat. They're also quick and explosively powerful. It's true that if you removed all the ceremony the matches would only last about 10 seconds each, but they are a very exciting 10 seconds. Oftentimes the audience would start cheering for reasons that were completely unclear to me, but I just joined in and cheered with them. By the end of the day, we had learned quite a bit about how the sport worked just from observations, and were starting to really understand what was going on. I think that I expected to find it boring, but something that I should do while in Japan; instead, I found it to be a genuinely exciting sport. I may go back, but I think that if I see two spectator sports here the other one should be baseball. I'll post some pictures soon. They're not on my computer right now, and my camera is at home.

Hanzi/Kanji/漢字 Observations

The common Japanese last name Kobayashi (小林) is only one stroke away from Shaolin, (少林) everybody's favorite school of martial arts. When I see 非常 in Chinese, I think of an adverb meaning "very", or "extremely." Here, 非常 means "emergency" so an emergency exit, for instance, is 非常口. When I see that, the phrase that comes to mind is "very mouth."

Machida

Even though Tokyo is out of reach on the weekdays, I realized that I could still get out and go somewhere, so last night I took the train 3 stops north to Machida. My initial impression was "Wow, I wish I lived here instead." My station is so boring! There is almost nobody on the streets, and only two shopping streets with a very limited selection of stores. In Machida, there are streets filled with people, and about 4 major department stores, and a huge variety of restaurants... Also, if I lived there I could have taken express trains both to work and to Tokyo, so it would have been faster to get both places. Of course, it's probably really expensive to live there. Also, when you need a 2-month fully-furnished rental, your options are quite limited— doubly so when you're trying to rent in a foreign country you've never been before that has strange (and costly) customs for the renting of apartments. So I'm not bitter that I live at the most boring station in greater Tokyo, but I'll have a better idea of what I'm doing if I ever live here again.

At a Cafe

Some of you will find this picture funny. I know I do. :-)

Dissapointing :-(

My plan for the 4th of July was to head to Camp Zama, the US Military Base about 20 minutes walk from my place. A spanish teacher who works on base that I met two weeks ago told me that they allowed civilians on to the base, and that there was a huge festival with fireworks and food and music. Unfortunately, it turned out not to be true :-( When I got to the gates, I was turned away (but at least I wasn't shot!) and told that after 9/11, they've been more concerned about security and had fewer open days. I'm confused though, because the web page shows the celebration happening last year. Oh well. All I ended up doing for the 4th was buying some sushi at the grocery store and going to bed early.

Weekend Update

[I've decided to drop the paranoia level down a notch and refer to non-work people by their complete first names] I'm finally back at work (and on the internet) after another intense weekend. Friday night I headed to Tokyo after work to meet Aditi for dinner. Our plan was to eat dinner, and then meet Gabe and some other MIT undergrad interns to go to a club in Shibuya. Because the trains don't run from 12:30 until 5:00, I brought a toothbrush and a change of clothes so that I could crash on Aditi's comfortable concrete floor rather than worry about catching the last train. Things got a little more complicated when the MIT crew didn't materialize in Shibuya until 11:00, at which time Aditi (along with Charles, Lisa, and Carl, who met us there) decided that it was too late to spend 2000 yen on an entrance fee. Since it's such an effort for me to get to Tokyo, I decided to stay. Fortunately Gabe said I could stay at his place (and he has a couch!) but unfortunately, my bag with overnight stuff was already at Aditi's. We made plans for me to retrieve my stuff in the morning. The ironic thing is that we didn't leave the club until 4 in the morning, so if I didn't have the bag at Aditi's I could have just waited for a 5am train and gone home. Instead, I walked to Gabe's house, slept from 5 to 9, and then walked to Aditi's to pick up my stuff. At this point it was 10:00, and Aditi left to go work on some slides. I was planning to meet Yuka, who is Ben's (Rice alum, in Austin) girlfriend at 2:00. There was no point in going home and coming back during a 4 hour window, so I took a short nap in Aditi's room and then got some lunch and wandered around Tokyo a bit. At 2:00 I met Yuka, along with her co-workers Satoko and Yoko at Shinjuku. Then we took the subway over to Asakusa, where we met Yuka's friend from college, Kenichiro. Since Yuka, Satoko, and Yoko work for the government in international affairs, they all speak excellent English. Kenichiro's English was not as good, but he was such a friendly and high-energy guy that I really enjoyed his company anyway. Besides, I'm the one who doesn't speak the indigenous language :P From Asakusa, we boarded a boat that took a scenic water route to a Japanese garden, and from there we went to Ginza to eat. I'm not sure what the name of the restaurant was or if I could ever get there again, but the food was amazing. Very small portions, but all elegantly presented. It was only about 3000 yen, too, which I think was an excellent deal for such a nice meal in this city. Since I'd only had 4 hours of sleep the night before I started getting a little tired, but I agreed to an hour of Karaoke before we called it a night. Normally when I do Karaoke with Americans everyone sings all the songs together, but we actually stuck to a one person per song arrangement. It was a little nerve-wracking, but I think that I pulled off "To Be With You" by Mr. Big pretty well. By the time I got home it had been 28 hours since I was last in my apartment. I had also walked several miles in a pair of shoes that I had selected more for their appearance than their comfort, and my feet were a mess. From now on, I'm only going to Tokyo in my running shoes, even if I intend to go someplace nice. I went to sleep at 12 and woke up at 6 so that I could make my way over to Disney Sea. This was perhaps a strange choice of activity, but I thought it would be interesting to see what the Disney theme parks in Tokyo were like. I met up with Gabe and two other MIT students, Lisa and Qi. A few observations: 1) There are more adults in the park than in America, where you would expect almost everyone to be there with young children. 2) Grown women in Japan wear Mickey mouse ears when visiting a Disney park. It was a fun day, but very expensive. Oh well, I think that you can justify any cost when you're this far away from home by claiming that it is a "unique opportunity." Also, I don't spend much at all on the weekdays so I have plenty of money here. Props to Carol and Chendi for sending email to my phone :-)

Cell phone email

You can send my phone *short* (I think about 300 character) emails by emailing [my normal login name]{at}t.vodafone.ne.jp It's free for me to recieve, so don't be shy :-)

Biking

I am able to keep pace with the auto traffic on my dinky one-speed shopping bike. Imagine if I had a real road bike, or even just a decent mountain bike? Actually, I'd probably run into something and hurt myself. Bicycle safety in the states consists of behaving like a predictable vehicle and going quickly in a straight line. Here, bicycle safety consists of riding slowly so that you can avoid things entering your path from all directions.

Aiko and Amy

Here is a picture of me, Aiko, Amy, and the head of Aiko's younger sister. I think this is a nicer picture than the one in which Amy is visibly upset that I'm holding her.

Shinjuku and Harajuku

On Saturday, I went to Shinjuku (新宿) with Ad—, one of the other JSPS fellows. Shinjuku is supposedly the world's busiest train station, with about 1.2 million people passing through it each day. It's also the location of the Park Hyatt featured in "Lost in Translation." There was enough to do to fill an entire day; we stayed from 11 in the morning until almost midnight. We saw a park and a museum, and we poked our heads into several department stores and smaller shops. I bought a compass that will hopefully prevent me from getting completely lost again. The Tokyo city government has a building in the area with a free 45th floor observation lounge, so we went up and took some pictures. The pictures turned out well since it was daytime, but supposedly the best time to visit the deck is at dusk, when all the bright neon lights start to turn on and the entire area makes its transformation from a business/retail district to a nightlife district. Ad— had been suggesting all day that we walk through the red-light district at night, and furthermore suggested that she didn't think she'd feel comfortable going alone. I was curious too, so we went to take a look. There was a street filled entirely with the famous "love hotels" that offer a choice of a two-hour "rest" for 5,300 yen or an overnight "stay" for 9,400 yen. There were also several establishments that had posters filled with pictures of women (and a few with men!) The pricing scheme (also posted outside) seemed very complicated, and I never really did figure out exactly what services were being offered. My general impression of the district is that it is clean, safe, and not remotely seedy. Near the love hotel street there was a store that sold pretty much everything. I normally object to American culture as being overly prudish, but even I was shocked in this store to see that children's toys (with children in the aisles! at 10:00 at night!) were being sold about 4 feet away from sex toys and pornography. I was so intrigued by this cultural difference that I took a movie with my camera of the short walk between the two merchandise sections. On Sunday I went to Harajuku (原宿) with Ad— and C—. Harajuku is directly south of Shinjuku, but has a completely different character. It's frequented by the teenage punk crowd, and has an assortment of small shops that sell goth clothing and other garments that are difficult to pull off after the age of 16. There is also a bridge in the area where on Sundays teenagers in outrageous costumes pose for pictures taken by a mass of tourists. Not wanting to miss out on the action, I took some pictures of my own :-) Some of the stores actually had some nice looking clothing, and there was one shirt that I really wanted to buy. Unfortunately, I was unable to find it in my size! When I tried on the large, it was obvious that it was cut for somebody with shoulders about two inches less broad. I think it was just this one particular label, since other shirts in the store were much larger, but it was disconcerting to be unable to buy clothing I wanted on account of being too large. I've had the opposite happen many times though, due to the paucity of size 30 pants in America.

Lost!

One downside to owning a bicycle is that I can get myself into a lot more trouble. On foot, even if I was very lost my wanderings could only take me a short distance before I eventually reoriented myself. On my bicycle, when I'm lost I can wind up very far away from anything familiar. Friday after work I attempted to bike home for the first time, and I was prepared to get at least slightly lost just due to the difficulties of navigating in Tokyo. Not only do I not have a detailed map of the area, (since my atlas only covers central Tokyo) there are also no street names. Since the cityscape is still very foreign to me, there are no significant landmarks that stand out in my mind. As a result, I have only two navigational tools available to me: 1) A vague sense of what direction I'm going. 2) An overview map that allows me to see at what "angles" the "major" streets intersect. So on Friday I was biking west on highway 50, and knew that at some point I needed to turn left. Apparently I chose the wrong point, because I quickly found myself in unfamiliar territory (even more unfamiliar than the territory I've already seen!) I decided that if I continued along my route, I would eventually run into some train tracks and be able to to reorient myself, so I wasn't too worried. However, after about 30 minutes I had passed a crop field, a horse stable, and a driving range but no tracks. At that point I decided to retrace my steps back to highway 50, but I had made enough turns along the way that I wasn't able. Now somewhat worried, I pulled into a 7-11, took out my map, and made full use of my extremely limited Japanese vocabulary to produce a respectable "sumimasen, watashi wa doko desu ka?" (excuse me, where am I?) I don't think that I was on the map. After some additional communication, which mostly consisted of me waving my arms around and saying the name of my train station, I established that I wanted to go to Sobudaimae. Then the 7-11 employee decided that, given our communication gap, the best course of action would be to give me a ride! We threw my bike in the back of his minivan, and drove to the station. It took about 30 minutes to go there (as I said, I was very lost), and there really wasn't much for us to stay to one another that would be comprehensible by the other party. After we arrived, I thanked him profusely and gave him a business card.

Small World?

There is another American here (not in research, I think he does translation stuff) who graduated from Rice in 1976, and then got a computer science degree at UT-Austin. Not only that, but he was at the same residential college (Baker) that I was. How crazy is that?

Bicycles

I have a bicycle now! A— found an ad on the internet for some 5000 yen used bikes, and gave me a map to find the place. I had no idea what the scale of the map was, but I think that I wound up walking about 3 kilometers before I reached the place... only it wasn't the right place. I found a bike shop, but the owner told me that it wasn't the one on my map. I really didn't care though; he had some nice new bikes for about 10,000 yen, and since I figured it would cost me 18,000 yen to use the train every day buying the bike at that price seemed like a good deal. Also, I really didn't want to walk all the way back home. This was the third time in my life that I had walked so far to a bike shop that I was unwilling to leave without a bike (it's also happened in Albuquerque and Seattle!). The bicycle is one of the sort of practical city bikes that you can't find in the states. It has a basket for carrying stuff, fenders to keep the rain off your pants, and a headlamp that is powered by pedaling. It's only one speed though, and I don't think I can adjust the seat to be high enough for complete leg extension, so going up hills is a bit of a struggle. Fortunately the route to work isn't so hilly. My 40-50 minute train commute is now a 20 minute bike commute, and that was on my first try while I was lost and confused most of the way! One thing I didn't count on though was how much I would sweat. I figured it wouldn't be much worse than from the walk, but when I arrived my back was completely soaked (I'm sure that wearing the backpack was not helping things.) Did I mention that I'm giving a presentation today? In the future I'll wear a tshirt in and change into my work clothes after I arrive, but for today I just went into a bathroom stall and tried to towel off my back and shirt using toilet paper :P If anyone is interested in how I deal with trash, check out these instructions. It's very complicated! I think that if I mess up the Yakuza will kill me in my sleep or something, so I'd better figure this out quickly. A few hours of work today, and then the weekend starts. I wonder if I'll be able to muster the energy to venture in to town. I've been pretty tired in the evenings, but that's probably because I've had to do tiring errands (such as lugging duffel bags around or walking several miles to buy a bicycle.)

Settled in at work

Since this journal is publicly accessible, I will be referring to people by pseudonyms. If you'd like to know the real name of anyone that I mention, you can email me and ask :P I'm also going to avoid mentioning my employer by name. I spent all of Tuesday lugging around my (heavy) duffel bag. That bag has now been from Sokendai to Tokyo Station (where I met M—, my host scientist) to the JSPS office (where I got my money at met A—, who is a sort of secretary and helps interns) to a real estate office (where A— and I exchanged my money for a key) to my apartment at Sobudaimae (where I was finally able to set the bag down). My back hurts a little bit from the lifting, still. A— came in to my apartment to help explain how to use some of the appliances, which was really helpful. Sometimes my Chinese knowledge helps me figure things out; sometimes it doesn't. After she left, I felt pretty lonely. I was in a foreign country with no English-speaking friends in the area, nobody to call (my JSPS friends do not yet have phone numbers), and no internet access. Because I am on a tourist visa, I will be unable to hook up a landline or get internet in my apartment. That's really a shame, because the skype prices to call a Japanese landline are very cheap. I am very glad that I have the cell phone though, because it will be my only link in the world when I am not in the office. (You can skype to a Japanese cell phone for about 20 cents a minute, by the way). I'm getting along well with M—, my host scientist. She's an American born and raised nissei who attended undergrad and grad in the states. She's definitely an American; she can't read Japanese fluently, for instance. This makes things easy for me, because there is no language or cultural barrier when talking to you. The rest of the staff is very Japanese though, and I have to be careful about annunciation and speed when I speak English with them. My project is open-ended— very open-ended. Right now I'm trying to find a data set and to think of something interesting to do with it :-) I'm a little worried that it will be hard to have a tangible result in 2 months with such an abstract project, but I'll work hard and hopefully something will come of it. There are two other Americans (well, one is actually Canadian) in the lab right now, both of whom are from MIT. C— seems to be a real nippophile; she lived here for a whole 4 years ago and has very strong Japanese language skills. She said that she should get the chance to show me around town soon, but that her boyfriend is in town this week so it won't happen until next week. Right now my commute is taking about 40 minutes, when you include the 10-minute walks on both ends, waiting for the train, and the train transfer. 40 minutes for 3 kilometers seems like a bad deal to me, so I am planning to buy a bicycle. A— found a bike shop for me that has used bikes starting at 5000 yen. In order to help me find it, she printed out a map for me and then translated several landmarks into English! She's very helpful :-) I think that having a bike will make me feel a lot more mobile. Trains are great and everything, but it's nice to be able to go somewhere without spending 4 bucks and waiting for several minutes. Bicycles are very convenient in Japan because you do not need to lock them up; apparently there is no bicycle theft. I have an address now. If you'd like to mail me anything, just send me an email asking for it.

Host Family Experience

I'm back from my host family, where I had a fantastic time. My host mother's name was Hiroe Kaneko, and I spent most of the time visiting sites with her because her children, Dai and Yui, and her husband Eiichi were all very busy for much of the time I was there. I was initially afraid that the gifts I brought would appear cheap or inadequate, but I actually lucked out. The gift they gave me was an illustrated map of Japan, which I see as analogous to my photo guide to Texas. Also, at the last second I decided to give some state quarters as gifts, and it turned out that Dai collects them. He had the big display to keep all 50 and everything and was happy when I had two that he didn't already have. We went to several temples, which was interesting, but probably not the best part of the homestay. After a while Asian temples all start to look the same, and it's hard to understand the real significance of the particular temple you're standing in. I'm not even sure that most Japanese know much about the history of the temples; they seem to see temple visiting as a pleasant weekend activity to get out of the house. Within the temples there are several opportunities to spend a few dollars and participate in some sort of ritual, which usually promises good luck or some other blessing. I don't think that you could convince Americans to stand in a line in order to throw some money into a big box and bow once. For dinner on Saturday, we took the train about 90 minutes with about 5 transfers to Asakusa station (get out your Tokyo subway maps now) where Hiroe's cousin lives with her husband. It seems that the husband (whose name I have of course forgotten) makes a living by teaching wine and sake tasting. They took me out to dinner at a Korean barbecue place, and I can say without a doubt that Korean barbecue in Japan is vastly superior to what is available in the United States. When asked what I wanted to drink, I made the only reasonable decision by pointing at the only other male at the table and saying that I'll have what he's having. He seemed to like that answer, and then proceeded to list all the drinks that we'd be having. I think that DARE should have emphasized that the real pressure will come not from your peers, but from middle aged men in Asia :-) On Sunday (aside from temple visiting) we went to a tourist attraction where we stood in line an entire hour to see some flowers! In subsequent conversations I've gathered that several other JSPS fellows were taken to the same attraction, but that I am the only one who actually stood in the line. I think I just wanted to tell people that I waited in line an hour to see flowers. They were quite pretty... Here is some more exciting news. I have a cell phone now! I'm not going to post the number here, but if anyone would like the number please email me and I'll let you know it. I have unlimited incoming calls, so it should be a good way to reach me. Getting the cell phone was quite an adventure. For some reason, it is incredibly difficult for foreigners to obtain phones in Japan, and the only reason I was able to do it was through significant effort on the part of my host mom (who for this reason is the best host mom ever). I tried to get a contract phone, and nearly signed a contract for 4000 yen/month for a fair amount of night/weekend minutes and an excellent free phone. At the end of the negotiations, the salesclerk had the startling realization that I'm not a Japanese citizen and therefore lacked critical paperwork. If I'd had proof of employment it might have been possible, but I think that legally I'm not actually employed this summer so that might have been difficult. After that failure, I tried to get a pre-paid phone. Supposedly there had been a problem in Japan of the Mafia buying pre-paid phones and using them for crimes, so now purchase of a pre-paid phone requires an astounding amount of paperwork. I found a phone for 4000 yen that takes cards worth 3000 yen. Each card provides an astounding 50 minutes of domestic talk time, but the important thing is the free incoming calls. International calls are cheaper than domestic calls, (just like your phone in Taiwan, Steph) but are still pretty pricey. In order to activate the phone, my host mom had to make two faxes (of my passport, among other things) and talk to people on the phone about 5 times explaining the situation. I was initially hesitant about using homestay time on what is effectively an errand, but now I'm glad that I did it because there is no way that I could have gotten a phone without the help of a Japanese speaker dedicated to the task. It looks like I'll be about one hour and 500 yen away from my host family while I'm living in Yamato, so I hope to be able to visit one or two times again. Everybody should check out hyperdia, which allows you to type in two station names and gives you the best route between them. That way you can have an idea of how I'll be getting between the places I mention! For instance, my apartment will be at Sobudaimae, and my work will be at Chuorinkan.

Zushi

Last night there were no scheduled activities, so after Japanese classes ended I went with a huge group of people to Zushi, which is the town (city?) near Sokendai. Fortunately after arriving at the bus stop we split up into a more manageable group of 8, and then wandered around taking in the sights. We didn't have any plan in particular, but wound up going to a bar for a single round of drinks. I ordered an Asahi, partially because I couldn't recognize anything else on the menu, and partially because I'd never tried one before. It was pretty good. After the bar we went into a Pachinko parlor, which can best be described as mystifying. For those who are unfamiliar with Pachinko, it is some sort of a cross between a slot machine and a pinball machine (only without flippers.) It is gambling, but there is no skill involved whatsoever— the appeal is in seeing the pretty lights flash as the metal balls fall down, and occasionally earning new balls if you're lucky enough to "win." Gambling without skill (or at least the perception of skill!) holds no appeal to me, but there were people there who had clearly invested about $500 in balls and intended to gamble them away through the night. Mystifying. The total cost to take a bus into town, buy a beer, and take the bus back was about $15. From this point forward, I'm going to justify money as follows: I'm earning twice as much as I normally do here, my housing costs twice as much, and therefore it's ok if everything else I buy costs twice as much. I'll shortly be leaving for my homestay. I'm relieved that the wife in my host family speaks excellent English, because from talking to other students I've gathered that this is very much so not the case for some of the other host families. Were I forced to communicate in Japanese, I'd exhaust my vocabulary in about 30 seconds.

Resolved Apartment Situation

I have a place to live! It is the place I mentioned earlier at http://www.skyt.jp/bukken/soubudai/ It was a very tough decision with a lot of stress, because I wound up in a situation where I had 3 hours to commit to this place or else lose it entirely. However, I'm pretty sure that it was the right decision. I realized that in all honesty the only thing that excited me about the guest house was the fact that it had internet access. In all other ways, the Soubudai apartment is superior. It costs only $500 extra for the whole summer, but it is an impressive 16.47 square meters instead of 6.48 square meters. I couldn't even figure out how I was going to unpack my bags into 6.48 square meters. Also, sharing a bathroom with 7 people might have been very difficult, and the 30 minute commute would mean that I'd lose an hour each day to the train. So, back to the downside. I'm not going to have internet access in my apartment this summer. I find this completely terrifying :-) I have no idea what I'll do when I come home from work if I don't have internet access! However, I wonder if this is actually a blessing in disguise. Without the internet to provide unlimited amusement, I might actually leave the apartment or study Japanese at night, and in doing so wind up with a more immersive experience. If I use my time wisely, I can probably get all my necessary personal internet use completed by staying an extra hour at the office. The homestay is tomorrow. I was relieved to discover yesterday that my host speaks perfect English, since at this point I really have no capacity to hold a conversation in Japanese. I hope that the gift I brought for my host family is adequate— other people brought far more fancy gifts than postcards and a guidebook. Buying gifts for strangers really is difficult :-( I'm doing my best to impress the other JSPS fellows with my award-winning personality, so that they will want to hang out with me once we've all gone our separate ways. So far I'm signed up for an outing in July with a few others to see a Sumo wrestling competition in.... some city. My Japanese geography is still very poor :-) In other news, I've found somebody to loan me a charger so I will have a fresh camera battery for the homestay. However, my connection cable is in the other bag, so there will still be no photos until after my bag and I are reunited.

Stroke Order

I just found out today that the stroke order for Japanese kanji is not necessarily the same as for Chinese hanzi. For instance, consider the character 美, meaning beautiful. In Chinese, you make two horizontal strokes before the vertical stroke, but in Japanese the vertical stroke comes after the first horizontal stroke. This came up today because we went to a "Japanese Cultural Experience" in which we learned about tea, origami, and calligraphy. My host family came to the campus today to participate with me. I'm so used to Chinese stroke order that I actually had a hard time wrapping my mind around the different order when painting the character. I've stayed up until 11:00 tonight in an attempt to battle jet lag. Hopefully I'll be able to wake up later than 4:00 am tomorrow...

Your Help Requested

Where should I live? http://www.sakura-house.com/english/premise/todoroki.php (about 30 minutes with transfer by train, 260 yen each way) or here http://www.skyt.jp/bukken/soubudai/ (about 10 minutes direct by train, 180 yen each way) I'm actually thinking the first place sounds really good. Ben, thanks for suggesting Sakura House.

At Sokendai

I've been in Japan for about a day now, but this is the first time that I've had access to the internet. The flight over here was very long. For some reason there was a 4 hour layover in Chicago, which seemed excessive. On the other hand, it was one of those poorly designed airports where you have to leave security in order to change terminals. At the international terminal, I was told that I needed to exchange my American Airlines boarding pass for an Japan Airlines boarding pass, which meant standing in another line. Once I made it back through security, I realized that there was no food on the inside of the fence and had to leave again just to get lunch. Maybe this explains why they scheduled such a long layover :-) I managed to fit in 4 movies during the flight. For the record, they were "Million Dollar Baby", "Hitch", "Coach Carter", and "In Good Company." I'd have to say that "Hitch" was the best. I was sitting next to a Japanese woman who teaches Japanese in Tulsa, and she offered to help me. Since I watched so many movies I didn't get too much studying done, but I did read a page or two of my textbook and got her help with the pronunciations. Kevin successfully met me at the airport, and after a brief stop at the hotel to check in we went to visit Aiko and Amy. I was completely shocked at how much it costs to get around here. We took a $9 taxi ride to the rail station, bought rail tickets ($6 each), and then took another taxi on the other end for $6. I'm going to need to get over my normal reservations about spending money if I'm going to live here. I would post a picture, but I realized today that I foolishly put my camera battery charger in my suitcase that I shipped to work, so I won't have it this week. I'm going to save the precious little battery power I have for taking pictures instead of uploading. After visiting Aiko and Amy, I went to get dinner with Kevin. We went to a cool little place where you put your money in a vending machine, and push a button with a picture of the food you want. It spits out a ticket, and you take that ticket to the cook, who makes your food and gives it to you. It's very efficient! Sokendai is a graduate-only university located.... somewhere south of Tokyo (I don't have my atlas with me). I'm staying in a dorm room with 3 other students. One of them is actually somebody who was on my San Diego Spring League ultimate frisbee team in 2003. Small world, isn't it? In addition to the American students, there are also students here from France, Germany, England, and Canada. Hopefully I'll get to meet some of them during this week, since it will be hard to have casual social contact with everyone (including the other Americans) once we all go off to our individual living arrangements.

I'm off

I'm headed to the airport in 5 minutes. Austin to Chicago, and then Chicago to Tokyo/Narita. I'll post again when I've established internet access on the other side. Right now my main worry is that the housing my hosts have found for me will cost 277,050 yen, and my stipend is only about 600,000 yen. (100 yen is approximately 1 dollar) Since it's supposed to be quite expensive to eat and live in Tokyo, I'm not sure that the remainder will be enough to live comfortably. Maybe it's significant that ramen noodles originated in Japan...

Japan Blog

I've promised several people that I'd keep a blog while I'm in Japan, so this website is the answer to those promises. Right now I'm still in Austin, but I'm leaving in about 30 hours. I'm going to be in orientation from when I arrive on the 14th until I move to Yamato to start work at IBM on the 21st. Among other things, orientation consists of Japanese language instruction (how much can we learn in 2 days?), a homestay, and a poster presentation. We are supposed to bring a poster describing the work that we'll be doing in Japan, but IBM won't tell me anything specific until I arrive. I wound up just creating poster that describes clustering in simple terms that non-computer scientists should find easy to digest. If everything goes according to plan, Kevin (my former roommate at Rice) will meet me at the airport on the 14th and we'll take the train out to Chiba to see Aiko (his wife) and Amy (their daughter, born last year). Expect pictures :-)