Things that go "bump" in the night

3 am, I hear a loud thump from the kitchen of my room. Kuni are both awoken startled and proceed to investigate. Fortunately it wasn't a burgler, but a bag of apples that managed to fall from the top of the microwave (which was on top of the fridge) that hit the floor. Odd, I don't remember apples having feet or any sort of moving appendages that would give them any sort of mobility.

With that resolved, we return to our rooms... which are right beside each other and are only separated by a set of sliding doors through the middle. Neither of us could sleep so we spent the next hour chatting. By 4 am, I attempted to try and get some sleep... unfortunately it wasn't so "fruitful".

By 5 am, I had given up on the sleep, got out of bed (rather easily, I am surprised), cooked gyoza (probably woke up Kuni in the process) proceeded to eat breakfast and packed lunch for school. I departed and arrived at the lab by 6:00 am. Right as I arrived, I just realized that I forgot my student ID card that would let me get access to the building, just for kickes, I decided to check the side door into the lab and through the window, I found one of my colleagues at his desk half awake-- he spent the entire night at the lab running a process. Suffice to say, that he let me in.

After that, I grabed, my samples and was off to the electron beam microscope to take a look at a few samples I had made a week back. Took some pictures, returned to the lab... and goofed off for a little before heading into one of the laboratory rooms to get an experiment setup using an atomic force microscope.

I returned back into lab by 9:00 am because I am supposed to meet with a new guy that will be spending a month here from the US that will be working sort of under me for the next month. Unfortunately, the person hasn't showed yet so I am here waiting at my desk for him... and right now I am starting to get super sleepy. I think I'll be going home early tonight.

Time for a diet?

There comes a time, when youthful skinny person's metabolizm wears out. That time often occurs somewhere right after getting your undergraduate degree. There were some articles I read back in my unversity days that guys start gaining weight yearly at some point in their lives at approximately 1~2 pounds/year.

Since getting in to lab, my body mass has been increasing. I arrived into lab at 63 kg (139 lb) and weighed in at 69 kg (151 lb). To be honest, 151 lb is my average body weight during school so this shouldn't be much of a surprise, but one day, my usual "in school" and "out of school" mass won't be so cyclic; but instead, take a climb like a plane at lift off.

I should take a note that when I am talking about mass, I'm talking about fat. Take heed that fat and muscles are different things entirely, you can be heavy with muscles or fat. The point is that one looks better. I have to explain this point most oftenly when I invite girls (no offence if you know this already) to go work out with me when they think they're getting flabby (and no, I don't use it as a pick up line :P But *you* could if you like :P).

Well, in the face of tons of things to do... I'll make a post about that later on, it's time for me to hit the gym for a little.

Did you write on your blog?

Hehehe, Kuni just asked me seconds ago: "Did you write on your blog?" Heh turns out that he's reading my most recent entry. Hahaha, I'm writing on it again... wonder if he'll notice :P As big as the internet is, sometimes it's a small place :)

Roomies

I came home at about 10:00 tonight, kind of glad to see my roomies. The night before was a disaster. I destroyed atleast $300 worth of equipment and a week's worth of work, possibly more if things get screwed up. This is a life story but today I ain't going to get into it.

I had some left over Korean seaweed. Let me get of saying that the stuff is great. I had it before from another friend that left Japan and another friend heard that I loved the stuff gave it to me as a birtheday present to me... and I still love it. I gave a slice to Kuni and he told me right off... "this would be great with some alcohol"... nuff said, I bought a bottle of alcohol and we took it down tonight and as of this moment I am tipsy as a result of it.

Many things were said tonight and I realize today, that roomies are just like family. Essentially, we are family. It's great to have friends that I can call a family. Sometimes not everything can be said, but sometimes there are times when tough things things the can be said.

It's funny to think that I got a random phone call one day from Kuni asking me if I would be interested in sharing an appartment together with another roomie. The ball was set in motion and I haven't regreted it since. Today Kuni's even offered to correct the little mistakes I make in my normal Japanese speech... the kind of things that normal Japanese people won't do for me because even if I do make mistakes, I am understood; the biggest barrier to becoming fluent in any language.

Kuni has to move out in less than a year, Olympia is still going to be around.. but to be honest, nothing is going to match this house's dynamics. I am going to miss the guy when he is gone, but for the mean time, we are going to have such a kick ass time. I've wanted to see what was life like with roomies since almost graduating out of university, that wish has been granted to me.

A Picture Update

Here's a picture update of life in Japan:

October (sometime) -- Got my brain scanned (fRMI) and got paid $100 for it!


Results: 100% Sane, 99% genius + 1% uber-genius (red parts indicate brain parts in use)

Actually, it was for an experiment comparing there difference between a native speaker of English vs a non-native (ie Japanese) person interpreting English. I signed up for the experiment solely to get a picture of my brain, the money was a bonus. Unfortunately, I didn't take a picture of the machine. But it was very cool none the less.

A big machine, powerful magnetic fields and all. I laid down read stuff in English and responded to a test by pushing buttons. 2 hours for $100 and a picture of my brain. Priceless!

May 20th Boat Races:

The lab put together 4 teams for long boat races, I was on one of them. We were looking pretty good with our timing and had plenty of speed at our practice (right before the race). The only problem is that my row seat fell off during the race causing us to lose. Ugh... next time gadget... next time!

The topless dude is me!
Yep, that's me!

May 26th -- Safety Training

What else do I do in my spare time? Well I'm a super hero of course! I jump out of buildings, save babies and put out fires.


Left :Me getting ready to jump out of a building (after noticing something wrong)
Right: Landing to safety

What I learned: Don't jump off the 3rd floor of a building with slack in the rope. Duh! Especially with 3 floor's worth of slack. I was hanging off the building because I just noticed a crap load of slack in the rope... stupid saftey people! I should also mention that bungie jumping with a rope that doesn't stretch is also a bad idea. :)

I'm a fireman! Does it mean that I'm hot now?

June 4th -- My Birthday Party:

Why is it that everyone has an infatuation with spelling out my name with random things?
The gang at the party!
What could this be?
Hey it's a French dessert cook book!

That's all for now :)

Oh the pain! Japan vs Austrailia: World Cup

I left lab at about 8:30 yesterday to hit the bar with friends to catch the world cup game with Japan vs Austrailia. There were TV crews at the bar to film everyone's reactions while the game raged on... and so it raged. Lots of cheering, chanting and singing. It especially wild when Japan smacked a goal in the net during the first half of the game. The crowd went wild, my cell was ringing with instant messeges from friends watching the game at other places. I hugged atleast 3~4 random people. Crazy stuff.

In the second half during the last 10 minutes, Austrailia scores a goal when the goalie comes a little too far out to try to knock out a ball during a corner kick. What happens next is unbelieveable-- Austrailia comes back with 2 goals in the last 8 minutes to take Japan down 3-1. Suffice to say that everyone in the bar was heart broken to see the game end like this. It would have been a sure victory. Anyways, a good time was had. Next game, Saturday Japan vs Croatia.

I headed out for coffee with friends after the game at midnight... of an interesting note something of a "do you know Joe in Canada" event happened. Recently, I've been having lots of chance meetings where people know people. Last night, turns out one of the gals in the group heard that I was a student... promptly asks me:

"Are you in Tohoku University?"
"Yes"
"Are you in Engineering?"
"Yeah"
"Are you in Esashi Lab?"
"Um... yeah?"
"Do you know... (such and such)"
"Holy cow! Yeah"
We then shake hands.

Small world... small world indeed. I've also met a friend's date randomly and also met a long lost friend of 7 years in Sendai by chance too. Life never ceases to be interesting.

Ask a ninja...

Wanna know what a ninja thinks about tiered internet? Look no further than here. Watch it, it's funny. Serious :)

A Quarter Century

My second birthday away from home, but with friends dropping wishing me well from back home, it feels like part of that home also moved with me to Japan.

I did my b-day party at my place in Japan on Sunday. Invited out the international students and friends over... and the nice thing about having roomies is that they're already at the party. Well that's not entirely true, we still have to coordinate our schedules; for we are busy people.

All in all, there were about 14~15 people that day. I whipped up some honey lemon chicken, soy-sauce style chicken (there was a deal on chicken at the grocery store that day), humus, seafood pasta and a Banana-Pineapple cake for dessert.

If there was one problem for the party, it's that I didn't make enough food. All of the main dishes were gone in the first 30~45 minutes. The international students crowded around the food table and the rest of the other people not too keen on "fighting" with the crowd hung back and didn't end up with much food to eat.

I did get a nice T-shirt, a huge round thing of chocolate, a French dessert cookbook with extra recipes from Nadege (my very cool French friend) and a bottle of 10-year-old port wine (that tasted ever so good). I started preparing for the party at 1 pm that day; it was worth the effort.

On Tuesday, the eve of my birthday, I dropped home right after teaching English in the evening to catch some sleep. At 11:30 pm, Kuni and I headed off to the local convenience store to pick up some booze at the dollar store (crazy no? And they're open 24/7!!!). When I returned, I was surprised to find Sachie over as well with a bottle of Champagne. We popped the Champagne at midnight and celebrated my birthday at midnight. I got a dessert cookbook :) I couldn't have asked for more...

But wait! There's more!

On the Wednesday, we had a lab meeting scheduled and I asked the assistant professor if I could sit this one out and report in the day before. At first he told me that the main professor might not be happy about it... the problem was that the meeting was scheduled with 2 days notice... but I managed to book it off anyways. These guys ought to learn to take it easy sometimes; then again, I might be taking it too easy but that's a different story.

So I did take the evening off, came home and went out with Kuni, Olympia and Sachie for dinner at an Italian restaurant for a b-day dinner. 3 birthday parties!?? Wow, I've aged 3 years in the span of a week! Sachie made me a cake and I got a really nice white-green sports jacket. Awesome.

So now, I'm 25-- quarter of a century old and half way through my twenties. Another 5 more years and I'll be 30. Back home, I used to worry a little about what I might be when I got to 30. I'm now in Japan and people could be 29,30 or 31 and more and you couldn't tell. Age is a relative thing and all that matters is how you feel. And today, I feel great!

What I did last week -- Farmer Justin

So finally I've come around to what I've been wanting to write about since last week but never had the time to do. So here I go....

So last week, I was invited out by a volunteer friend of mine to hit the rice fields and go plant rice. What a trip! My friend, as it turns out knows another friend that is the owner of a rice paddy and is currently going through the planting process (as it is rice planting season now in Japan). The interesting thing about this place is that they do all their work by hand!

From what I am told, nearly 99% of all rice fields in Japan are mechanically planted. The rice field that I went to is sort of different, in that it isn't a commercial production place. The owner of this rice field, Shigeo, plants the rice here purely for self consumption. He does it with friends and I believe they get a cut too.

Shigeo is a very interesting person, somewhat shorter than I and weighing at only 100 pounds, if you were to look at him, you could never guess that he was underweight. He looks incredibly fit. Trained as an economist at university, he worked in Germany for several years getting developers permits to build golf courses-- the kind of things that would get enviromnentalists screaming in a rage. Yet, I have a guy that worked in a development firm running in his own rice field.

Actually, Shigeo also runs a bit of a club called (translated from Japanese) "Let's plant rice" and his motto is to "think in 100 year terms." Quite a contrast between a guy that worked at a company developing golf courses and the same one running a rice field, no?


So this is me with my hands and feet dirty in the rice field with the rest of them.

Let me explain a little about the rice planting process.

After the winter season, the rice paddies are drained and from October till about the end of April the fields are often left alone with vegetation growing in it. Before planing, the excess vegetation is removed to allow for the rice plants to get the most nutrients out of the ground.

In the old days, removal of plants was done by hand and that's the way Shigeo does it. In the present, it's done by tilling and chemicals. The reason being it's more efficient (a word that "work" has a love affair with). In the modern rice fields, the paddy is pumped full of fertilzer and growth chemicals to get the rice to grow big and into a snice grain shape. The telling price we pay is that because of the chemical contents of the paddy, the farmers them selves don't enter their own paddies in bare foot like the way we are in the picture above. The long term effects of these chemicals to the rice aren't well understood and could take many years before anyone notices. What I do know however, is that there is a multitude of life in rice fields that I was planting in... like snails and small bugs... in the other rice fields, there aren't any.

So I ask Shigeio what are the advantages of farming in this manner since it takes longer to plant the rice, he tells me that the taste is a little better (but that could be a subjective thing) but the most important thing is that he tells me that, safety of the food is the most important property. Unfortunatly, the economics of producing safer foods don't play to a farmer's hand. The farmers want efficiency, whatever health problems that might develop long after you've been eating the rice for a long time is the price that the consumers might end up paying for later on.

I did learn something interesting from Shigeo that day, something that I've never considered before... he told me that "that trying to find ways of doing things in the most efficient way possible isn't necessarly the best." The thought more correctly summed up in my opinion is that "other important properties/qualities should not be sacrificed for efficiency."

So that concludes the rice planting talk, so on to other things.

The other interesting things that Shigeo does is that he also grows Shitake mushrooms. Ever wonder how they're grown? First you take some fallen trees, drill holes in them and put in bits of Shitake mushroom spores in. Close up the hole with some styrofoam and in about 8 months you've got Shitake to eat!

Shitake, this one's ahead of the pack.

What a farm of Shitake mushrooms looks like.

Shigeo's living room:

His house designed by his wife


Lunch at Shigeo's: Farmed rice and veggies picked from the forest. Delish!


The farming gang. The guy to the most left is Shigeo.

Aftre getting home, the birthday party where a few people got plastered occured, but in general we all had a good time.


Left: People hanging out in Kuni's Room
Right: Crap, I forgot her name! Note, it's very bad to forget a girl's name!


Toshi falling asleep on my bed after too many drinks.

Well that sums up a little of what went on last week... here comes another weekend! :)

The News is Largely Useless

8 years ago in high school, I was posed with this essay topic for my philosophy class:

(Paraphrased) "The usefulness of knowledge is its ability to be used"

I never did end up writing an essay on this because I thought that the statement was inherently obvious. I looked at it, it was obvious and there was nothing more for me to say. But it seems today, years later that I've come back to visit this statement.

In my spare time (when ever I have 15~30 minutes to kill) I find myself popping on to places like the BBC, slashdot or Canada.com to read up on news in general. The sad thing is that most of the time I spent reading was largely wasted.

If you were to pick up a cookbook, found a recipe for cheese cake and by the end of the day made a nice batch of cheese cake to share would you call that useful? I would-- you picked up a book, read it and acquired a new skill (what you do with it, of course is a different story, but let us not go off in that direction because it is beyond the scope of this essay). You could do the same for many different things from home maintenance to solid state physics. Sure you might not use everything that you learn, but the character of the information learned is the type of information that is ment to be used.

The nature of news on the other hand is different, in that the knowledge presented is descriptive (and ideally, unbiased). I could tell you right now, that I have a bottle of orange juice on my desk along side several trays of processed silicon wafers. The information I provided you with just right now, would be an example of that kind of descriptive information. I could tell you that yesterday I went home early (about 8:00 pm) because I was tired and needed to catch up on sleep, that would be no less descriptive either. The news is more or less the same, just the events and topics are different. Instead of you guys reading about my life in Japan, you might be reading about the world events such as British politics or more local things like "Radio chips [keeping] track of citizens [in Canada]".

For the most of you readers out there today, let me ask you a question: given the news that you read, what are *you* going to do or can *you* do about the things you read? My guess at the answer is that +95% of the time we can't do anything or don't do anything about it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a defeatist, quite the opposite actually, but the for the most part, what we read in the news is quite and completely useless.

Take for example of the radio chip article I posted from Canada.com webpage. Go read it and come back if you like. It's quite typical for as the news you might read. Interestingly the news always talk about problems of some sort, whether if it's murder, crime, politics, taxes or whatever. The news seems to be all about complaining.

The radio chip article? Well the long and short of the story is that some "large Canadian" companies have started using these chips to track people in their stores. The article doesn't go directly to say which companies are doing it, nor do they talk about any direct sources from Industry that mention about it. They just say that the Canadian privacy commissioner is looking into it and an interview of some random marketing professors are going off on how useful information could be for these large companies and some "privacy expert" is talking about the problems of these tags being used to track customers.

After reading this article, I'd like to ask you-- was this information useful? Sure, most of us probably don't like the idea of being tracked by a large corporation without knowing how exactly RFID tracking information can be used and sure it may instill an uneasy feeling for you readers and you might end up complaining/talking about it to friends... but is there something that you can do about it? are you going to do something about it? If the answer is "no" to both questions then you've just been a victim to useless information. I'm so sorry, but the time you've wasted reading that article (and many articles like that) has been irrevocably lost. If you want to read useful information, do something with it.

I hope you found this essay useful :)

Endnote: There is also the class of information that you might read about now and use later on that I didn't talk about (ie. knowledge becoming useful later). For the most part, the news doesn't even fall into that category either so I've left out that part of this discussion.

Sidenote: Curious about how I get my ideas? I try applying what I think to different topics and look at the implications. My next potential essay could be on "what makes a useful person" (this is an interesting topic and probably has plenty of interesting implications). If you've got the time, try writing about it and post it somewhere. I may write my own when I'm in the mood.

The most interesting e-mail I've gotten yet

I just got this e-mail on my cell phone just minutes ago (translated from Japanese):

"Hey are you that sexy girl in black from last night? Sorry if I sent this msg to the wrong person"

I raised my eyebrow at this one for a good minute before responding to tell the guy that I met him at a friend's b-day party about 4 months ago :P

Seriuously, can't Japanese people tell that "Justin" is a guy's name??

Sunday == Zoom

Still busy this Sunday. Blew the morning teaching and trying to get my solid state physics homework done. I got some comprehensive notes off the web on how to solve my problem... took me the entire day to finally figure it out. Fell asleep a few times during the afternoon reading and writing out equations...

I keep meaning to do some updating with pictures and stuff (and even write essays from time to time) but things just keep poping up. By evening, an inpromptu dinner with friends occured with me as head chef for the evening. We didn't finish untill about 11:30 and finished cleaning by about midnight. Spent another 2 and a half hours to finally finish off my problem set and now it's almost 3. I have class at 8:50 am tomorrow. Where does my time go? I need to work hard this week to get some results for next week to present at my lab meeting.

When you're busy, it is sometimes hard to make time for certain things, but when there's a will, there's always a way. Gotta work on that "will" part a little more... (it's the small things that suck up my time... like reading news, pockets of goofing off... etc etc etc).

What a day...

When you meet the right group of people in Japan, they can become incredibly close friends. Kuni, my roomie, has many of them. For the past few days, he's been working on a gift album for 2 of his friends, putting together a page of comments and pictures and coordinating with other friends to have them make a page of personal comments to the lucky b-day people. The book was printed a few days ago. The party occured tonight at some restaurant. I'm not really apart of that group, but I do know the people. That and I had other things to do that day that I'll post about later when I've downloaded pictures off the camera.

They dropped by the appartment to have an after party (ie. more drinking). I played poker with a few of them and caught up with a few others. By midnight, 2 of Kuni's friends fell asleep in his room. By 2:00 am, one of them puked on the floor. It's the first time I've ever seen someone puke from drinking too much. I am happy to say that I've never had that experience and intend on keeping it that way.

Kuni, had passed out on my bed so I was left to clean up the mess-- a kitchen towel, a bucket of water and dish soap seemed to get the stuff out pretty well. The guy (the b-day guy, actually) after 15 minutes went off to the washroom where he holed up for about 20 minutes, pumping more fluids out of his mouth. They've already left but I have to take a leak right now but I'm not terribly fond of the smell in the washroom at this moment.

One of Kuni's remaining friends that managed to sober up, helped me relocate Kuni off my bed into his futon. Some resistance was met but Kuni at the end was ultimately pacified.

I laugh to think sometimes that Kuni on his Japanese blog (yes, it is funny that we both write about each other) calls me his younger brother (technically, Kuni is about 3 months older than I). Supposedly he's always wanted to have a younger sibiling, for he's the youngest out of 3. Ironically, I've occasionally end up taking care of him and his friends in cases such as these. I thought the elder brother are supposed to be the more responsible one? Ah well... I wouldn't say that I'm pissed at having to deal with this, it's sort of an interesting experience.

Tomorrow, I wake at 9:00 to teach English for an hour. It is now 3 am... good night.

Hokkaido pictures Day 1&2

Comments: 28 liters of fuel expended @ 25km/l (mostly highway scootering) I travelled a total of 700 km during my golden week trip.

I've uploaded days 1&2 of my Hokkaido trip to imagestation and they can be accessed here. My thoughts on Hokkaido? Big and spaceous. My friends from Hokkaido tell me it's a lot like Canada... and they were right. Click through to take a peek at my aventures.

4:47 am... took atnap at 10:00 pm and woke at 3 am. Sometimes it sucks going to bed too early :P

I am a bad bad man, but to hell with it

I had some fortunate luck today. Today was the engineering sports day, meaning that the homework I had due to day is due next week and though I was a volunteer for the sports day event, I didn't do a thing.

That is because I misread the task list and didn't meet up with the students this morning. The afternoon came and I tried to meet up with them but to no avail. I did find out where one of the guys were but he was none to friendly. I couldn't give a damn so I left and never returned.

From the start, this whole volunteering with the sports day event was pretty much a bust. I signed up for this because I thought it would be a nice way to meet people and make friends. I attended one of the meetings and they turned out to be the most glum people there, leadership sucked and the atmosphere resembled a funeral. I was going to volunteer in a group like this? In a situation like this there are 3 choices: 1. Step up, 2. Walk. or 3. Bite it. Personally I never pick 3 because it's a waste of time.

There was a second meeting held that I missed by accident because I was working on experients. One of the people from the meeting came out and got one of my other lab mates to attend and he had the exact samething... the people were the most serious looking people out there. From there on in I'd recieve a few e-mails, the job for me to run the after party got userped to someone else and that was that. I was still on the mailing list but never showed. Heh, I'm a bad bad man.

A few goals

The meeting finished at about 10:30 yesterday. I was pretty thrashed and hungry at the sametime after the meeting. After going on about 4~5 hours of sleep for about 3~4 days, that began to take it's toll on me. I had a bad headache, fast heart rate, went a bit feverish and felt fairly dizzy for most of the evening.

I headed home and hit the grocery store on the way back. Steak slices were on sale, I bought those, vegetables, bananas and some sports drink to bring home. Whipped up some food in about 15~20 minutes wolfed them down. Had the sports drink (which did wonders making me feel better) and then had a glass or 2 of Shochu (wine made from potatoe :P) with my roomie, Kuni.

Shortly after that I collapsed into bed, to wake up at 9:00 am after I heard my other roomie, Olympia wake up so I could go and bug her to say "wow, this is like the first time I've ever seen you awake in the moring" before heading back to bed.. to wake at 10:15. Left the house at 10:20 and made it into class by 10:32 going full bore on my scooter.

Classes ended at noon and the cafeteria is busy and I'd rather not wait in line so I'm here instead.

Last night on my way home in my stupor I thought of a few long term goals I have as of current:

1. Start a Japanese blog (already done, but there's a story behind that)
2. Attend and present results at atleast 1 research conference
3. Attempt to publish 2 research papers
4. Read a book in Japanese (novels and text books count)

Bonus 5: Exercise

My head wants to explode

Lab meeting started today at about 6:30 pm. Spent the day going through old data to prepare for the bi-monthly status meeting. The problem is that there are about 15 people in the group and each person is taking about 15 mins per presentation... making for about a 4 hour meeting. I currently suffer from a lack of sleep... meaning that I am sleepy and my head feels like it wants to explode.

I'm still in the meeting now... just a little more till it ends, perhaps another 5~10 minutes I hope? I just get home and drop on to my bed like a brick... perhaps after getting a small snack. I haven't felt this horrid in a while. Uuunnnnnngggghhhh.

Must survive past Thursday.....!

Busy Busy

Last week was fairly busy, this week looks like still more of the same. Current objective is to survive till Wedensday:

Today-- Group meeting from 6:30 pm till about 9:00 pm, need to prepare data for presentation

Tuesday -- Complete "Control Systems" homework (Due the next day)

Wedensday -- Vounteer most of day at Engineering Sports day

Thursday -- Hand in a short article for publication on Nanotechnology (In Japanese) for publication in a Magazine.

In other random news here are a few interesting things that happened to me last week:

Last Thursday -- Dinner out with a "Slow food" group (group that specializes in food and drink. I ate a cow's heart and had 4~5 different wines that evening)

Friday -- Long Boat competition practice. My entire team sleeps in, we arrive at the practice place and can't practice because of lack of time (grr!)

Saturday -- Long boat competition. One of my team members gets sick, we replace him with big strong American guy named Mike. We do a practice right before the race and rip excellent speed. The race begins and 1/4 of the way through (after we were kicking ass) my rowing seat comes apart! My attempts to repair the seat were futile. Grrr!

In the Evening, we head out to a place for drinks for Mona's farewell party. Mona was in early on Saturday from Kyoto (came by bus) and at the lab. One of the professors came in and the first thing he says is "oh, are you doing more experiments?" Riiight, the correct comment should have been "it was nice having you at the lab" or something.

Sunday -- Slept and woke up at 9, tutored at 10. Went out for a BBQ party at 11 until 2. Thuoughly exhausted.

It's been quite a full week... this week is going to be quite busy too.

I got paced by an old man

I got a phone call today at about 2:00 pm from the YMCA that I teach at; they told me that a student joining my class for the day for a trial class. I was intrigued and refreshed that a new student would be joining. I ran experiments through out the afternoon, breaked at 5:30 pm to grab a bite, returned to the lab and started working on a homework assignment for class tomorrow. At 6:50, I was off to my evening job, teaching English.

I stepped into the office that day to grab my folder. One of the receptionists came to me and told me that the student was in his 50's. I came into the class about 3 minutes late today, the other students were in the hall chatting on a sofa and inside the room, I would find a greyed old man sitting in a corner with his head down... isolated in an empty room.

I called him out and asked him to join us. He was hesitant and shy at first but he finally made his way to the table to where all the students sat. I decided that we would introduce ourselves to him. I asked my other students to start with their introductions... they went on to tell him about their hobbies and work. The time came to the old man, whose family name is Onodera to introduce himself. At first I thought he was a total beginner because of his shyness... how wrong I was.

Words came gushing out from this old man, like water from a gyser. He went on to tell us that the things that he did in his spare time were not hobbies but were his "pass-time" activities. He went on to discuss how "hobbies" are sort of an amateur activity where one does things just for fun. This man does things and gets really good at them. I was rather amazed that he understood the nauances of English to that degree. He also told me to explain the difference of a "pass-time" and a "hobby" while telling me, "no offence"-- I was amused.

I asked him what did he do for a living? He told me that he worked as a construction worker, more specifically as a "hard-hat". How does a construction worker get good at English? Would a construction worker have any sort of interest in English as all usually? I didn't think so. I was rather confused.

After a short period of conversation, he would reveal to us that he had only studied English for half a year, starting in December and that he was 73 and that he was born in the 1930's and that he'd never been out of the country before. My students whom have been studing Japanese for more than 5~6 years are not even half as good as this man's English. Enthrallemnt ensued.

We would touch on topics on such as politics and history. He would make rather thought provoking comments, for example that he was glad that the Americans occupied Japan instead of the Russians (who were part of the Allied forces)... because Japan would probably not be anywhere as near as economically well off had the Russians occupied Japan.

He would go on and tell me how he's dropped out of school after Junior High because times were hard and he needed to work to earn a living. His regret is that he was never able to return to school and continue learning. Apparently, he studied German for 26 years and that German and English are similar (they have the same roots as he would tell me). He would tell me that when he was 14 and he met the G.I.'s ("government issues" ie. US government forces... an acronym that I even didn't know) and was fascinated with their English.

For 74 years old, the man is remarkably intelligent. In 6 months, his English out paces the Japanese I've learned over 4 years. I would not say that I've been put to any shame... more importantly, I've been inspired.

Giving up 1/4 of my Fridays

I just got contacted by a volunteer friend of mine saying that they've got a job for me. Grade 12 student that needs an English tutor for a Friday once a month. 6:30 pm till 9:00 pm. Teaching starts at 7:00 pm, dinner included. The pay is $50 for the session. Subway travel time is about 10 mins one way (20 mins total). Would you take this job?

I was borderline on taking this job-- the lab is usually quite busy and I generally don't allow myself to work Friday evenings. The timing of the job isn't horrible, in Japan, parties and events go well past 9:00 pm in the evenings so I wouldn't be missing too much.

I will likely be taking the subway there (unless if scootering isn't there isn't so bad), round trip is $4. They will be throwing in a dinner along for the lesson to me, which is worth $6 to me. Assuming that the total time spent on this lesson is 3 hours, I'm making a $17/hour for this gig. All things considered, this is on the low side for me... I charge $25/hour for my time and most of my work takes about 10 minutes round trip... either that or my work is on the way out from school.

This student lives out in a place I've never been to, a bit north of central Sendai, it might be an interesting adventure to take a look out there. That and I've never taught a Gr. 12 student in Japan. It might be interesting to see what kind of students these people are. The family could be interesting too... There are more things to judging work than just the salary. It could be interesting... but then I'm giving up some free time (for research or play) for this. But you know what? Nothing ventured, nothing gained. We'll see how it goes.

A small world called Sendai

Saturday, was one of my roomie's friend's going away party. I told my roomie that I was game and so off I went. The party was for an English teacher going back to Australia and the person going away is Andrea. Most of her friends going to the party were her workmates -- English teachers mainly.

Me looking asian, I decided to pretend that I was Japanese friend comming out to the party to play around with these English teachers. It would be hella fun! You guys out there know how much I love impersonating different accents, so I decided to put it to the test (and no, I was not drunk). We met in front of the store on the Saturday night, I told them my name was "Yuji" (wasn't lying there) and started off with my thick Japanese accent.

There was one slight problem however, one of the Japanese friends one of the English teachers brought out thought that I wasn't Japanese. Oh CRAP, could my cover be blown? Well I faked good enough Japanese for atleast 1.5 hours to pass as Japanese and kept the skeptable Japanese girl at bay.

We got into the restaruant and started drinking and eating. I started chatting with the other English teacher and tried my best to act stupid in the kind of nieve and linguistic way. It worked out for a while, the problem was that some of the English teachers caught on that I could understand English... I was understanding much more that the average Japanese English student does-- seriously, it's kind of tough acting dumb!

Eventually, my cover was blown when some people throught it was too suspicous that I understood too much English and then gave up the game and returned to my "normal self"... whatever that might be.

Of an interesting note, I did meet a nice waitress at the restraunt that spoke really good English and I was really intreagued that she could speak so well so I had to ask how did she manage to learn such good English (the part that caught me was that she was taking orders in English from the English teachers). Turns out that she lived in Canada for 4 years in a place called St. Catherine's. The interesting part was that my other room mate Kuni (Japanese guy) spent a year in Canada for about a year... I just had to ask the girl if she knew a guy named Kuni... turns out that she did... that she would be seeing him tomorrow. Kuni, my roomie had been going on and on all week about going on a date with some girl this weekend... lo and behold that I'd meet this girl.

I told her that my roomie "likes a good spanking from time to time so feel free to give him a whack or few," that and he really likes spicy "Chili" (my other roomie, Olympia made this really spicy Chili... after putting 100 ml of chili powder into the vat.. nearly killed Kuni while at it... hehehe... the things I do for personal entertainment, mwah ha ha ha ha ha).

Kuni is kind of a shy guy when it comes to his dates and his outings with his girls.. so I made for good effect to leave my number with the waitress gal and asked her to send me her number and e-mail sometimes so I could interrogate her with the details of the date (she had forgotten her cell at the time). Unfortunately she never did contact me later on. Damn, I was so looking forward to hearing what happened. As for Kuni... all he told me was that he and her "went out to a few secret places." Riiight.

Been kind of busy and will be looking busy through the week.

Wedensday: Club night themed at a place where the theme is "Cool and Sexy" (really curious what Japanese people consider "Cool and Sexy")

Thursday: Yakiniku --> fried meat party with friends

Saturday: Long boat competition and possibility of a BBQ.

In between the fun, I'm working at the lab :P

Pictures from Hokkaido later!

Getting Physical (1 Year Later)

As per usual, I took the physical examination for students at Tohoku University yesterday. The results are the following:

BPM= 69/min
BMI: 21.5
Blood pressure=118/69

Last year's results are the following (link)

BPM=60/min
BMI:21.5
Blood Pressure=107/63

Comments: This year's physical condition is worse than last year's, my resting heart rate increased and so did my blood pressure, though my blood pressure is still in the healthy range. I can probably explain the origins of these physical changes.

Last year, since comming to Japan, I was without scooter for atleast a month and cooked all of my own meals (all of which were light in oils and fat). In my first month in Japan, I determined that I walked approximately 4km/day and averaged it out to about 100km in a month. Back then, my physical condition was reasonably good, in the sense that I could easily run 2 km straight from the dorms I lived straight into class. However, since last year, my physical fittness has deteriorated.

Since last year, I have acquired a scooter and use it almost everyday. At current, I only ride my bycicle on average 1 every 1~2 months and go to the gym with that kind of frequency. I went to Hokkaido last week and decided to do some light hiking and realized that after running 500 meters that I broke out gasping for air rather quickly and a power walk up a mountain was very straining on the legs and body. My former physical condition (the healthier one after a month comming into Japan) was likely achieved after 1 month's worth of consistent of exercise... I hypothesize that my current physical state is the usual state I am when in University.

As for increased blood pressure, I think I can pin that down to my change in diet since entering University. Since my current diet currently consists of 2 meal/day at the university cafeteria consisting of tofu, salad, rice and a fried dish of some sort has led to my increased blood pressure with my increased in take of greasy foods.

Updates on Hokkaido pending. Some company people are comming on Friday and I need to get some material prepared for a meeting with them --> some joint research might ensue.

Where'd I go?

The blog's been unusually quiet for the last week. There's a reason for that-- I've been out of town and without internet connection. Today, right now would be the first time I connected to the net since last Wedensday night. To be honest, it's not so bad living without an internet connection for a week, especially when you have fun things to do.

So gone for a week, how did I manage that for the first week of May? Did I skip classes and lab? Nope I didn't. There's something called "golden week" in Japan which is a string of 3 holidays during the week. The other 2 weekdays are unfortunately normal days but students have a tendency to take them off anyways (well, I didn't).

Last year, my adventures during golden week took me to Nagoya to visit my current roomie's home town in Nagoya. This year, I took the ferry in the opposite direction to Hokkaido, Japan's Northen most island. My roomie's friend was heading back there for the next few weeks and kindly passed me the invite to stay over at his place should I head there. I took him up on that offer.

Hap-hazardly, I booked my ferry ride to and from Sendai 2 days before I left. This being the busy travelling season, would be an impossibility, but this year, as with last year, luck was on my side. Hokkaido is a very big and Japan's least developed island out of the 4 main islands. I read on the internet that public transport was somewhat sparse and travelling long distances would be quite expensive. I made a snap decision that I'd bring my scooter to the island to aid me in my travels. It'd cost me about 60 bucks extra on the round trip but I thought it was worth it.... it was *so* worth it. I got a booking on the ferry and was off to Hokkaido on Wedensday evening. See the map below for my ferry route.


By Thursday morning I arrived at Tomakomai ferry terminal, my vacation began. 4 days and 200 pictures later I returned to Sendai on a Monday morning and went straight to lab. Stories on my adventures in Hokkaido later on.

Small Talk

Depdending on the situation, I think that I am fairly decent at small talk, especially if it's crazy talk.. the kind where I start spouting crazy ideas and watch as my listeners react with strange faces to my strange ideas.... but that's another story.

Recently, I've realized that I'm starting to face a problem with talking in a non-native language. Which is that I can't really be that funny and I have problems sometime making idle chatter. I have already been labeled as interesting by my friends since I can have discussions atlength, but most of my discussions in Japanese are kind of serious unfortunately... (well there was this supposed conversation where I was gathering information about "love hotels" in Japan which I was reminded of but I cannot recollect anything about... and I don't think I was that drunk at the time.. since I remember everything else about the party... and waking up alone in *my* bed.. but that's another story :P).

The problem is that I gotten tired of talking about serious topics... things like the differences in cultures of Canada and Japan, my opinions of the Japanese education system, my thoughts about working life in Japan, etc etc. I really enjoyed it at first because I was collecting all sorts of information and making lots of contrasts.. but, seriously (excuse the pun), after a while I am kind of bored of it and I'm sure if I meet random people for the first time, I doubt that they'd be interested in talking about serious topics such as these. So the question is, what else do you talk about?

I started thinking about Seinfield... you know, a show just about silly funny things. But wait, I know what the silly and funny things are in English (most of them involves me!). The problem is that the Japanese have a slightly different "funny bone" compared to us Westerners. As some of you know, I do enjoy my sarcasm. The problem is that I have learned recently, if I translate my sarcasm in to Japanese, that I'd have a high probability of pissing guys off and making girls cry (sometimes it can be the other way around too!). The trick is understanding the "spot" for Japanese people (translation note: in Japanese the "spot" is like the humor "spot" or something like that). Meaning I need to know what is interesting for these people to talk about.

So far, I do know what I mainly talk about while I'm in Japan.--it's 1. What I like doing in my spare time (hanging out, cooking with friends, attending events,etc.), 2. Lab life, 3. Japanese life in contrast to Western life and 4. How it's not hard to learn a second language (everyone in Japan has to study English from middle school till high school (6 years) and most of them can't speak at all meaning they are quite envious that I can speak Engish... ) Usually I tend to stay away from topics 3 and 4 since I've talked about them to death. I don't talk much about 2 since I think it's not that interesting and it leaves me with 1. But the problem is that I don't have all that much spare time and while I can say that I attend many "parties," talking about "parties" in the general sense while not being in one is not so interesting.

This leaves me with my hobbies and interests... which include sports, food and events. Now I have a bit of a problem about talking about sports and events. For sports (which are like events) I don't talk about sports in the sense of watching them, I try to *play* them instead (I do make the unfortunate analogy sometimes when talking about porn: "What's so interesting about watching it? It's like watching or playing baseball. I'd rather play baseball-- you get exercise, it's healthy and you might make a few friends out of it!"... right... bad analogy [in more ways than one :)] ). So back to the problem, you know, about talking about sports and events. The thing is that I have a dislike of just talking about the things I do because it creates a disconnect, in other words, a barrier. I much prefer to invite people out and do things instead. Why talk about playing tennis? Let's go for a game and have frozen yogurt after instead!

Well great, the problem is that it doesn't work for certain situations-- for example: professors, superiors, and if you're working in a real busy lab to make much more time to go out and do things with people. So great, what does that leave with me left to talk about? Not a whole lot... which is the problem. So let's cross that topic out. Which leaves me with nothing to talk about.

So how does one talk about nothing? But it brings me back to the Seinfeld episode-- wave your hands, say something silly and people start laughing or something. Perhaps I've missed a topic or something... but there should always be something to talk about.

So what do *you* talk about? Have you ever wondered (and wondered why)? It's says a lot (again, in more ways than one... haha!)

1 Year's worth of Expenses

As of the end of March, I logged one full year's worth of living expenses information. At first I wasn't entirely sure that I'd be able to keep up collecting all this data, but it seemed interesting enough to me that I kept updating my spreadsheet every so often with new purchases. The results are posted below:

Figure 1. Spreadsheet of total categorized costs

Total money spent: 1,626,189 Yen = 16,142.66 CAD (April 25, 2006. Source)

Annual costs in yen (divide by 100 for approximate costs in CAD)
Food = 369,667
Goods = 446,661
Transport = 113,246
Service = 226,081
Room = 324,560
Entertainment = 145,974

If there is one important number to look at it's the number in bold, that's how much in a year I spent-- that's $16k in a year. Actually this number should be closer to $20k because I was living somewhere really cheap, but this is approximately what it costs to live on your own. If you live at home and pay for 1/2 of your food then your yearly costs would be in the ball park of $11.5k/year. Yes, I am willing to bet that although you might not notice it, that you are spending around $10,000 a year in personal living expenses. A lot of money right? This includes dining out with friends, going on adventures, trips and buying stuff, add it all up and this is what it costs.

Personally, knowing the amount of money needed to survive at home isn't all that interesting. It's easy to survive when living at home, the real trick is determining how much money you need to make and how much is costs to live on your own. This essay would have been a little more provocative sounding had I said things in reverse... that you spend $10k living at home and mused at the question of the costs of living on your own. Too late, I've already said it backwards and I'm not too interested in reversing the order (I've already spent a considerable amount of time typing this log as it is already... and no, I didn't write this linearly [actually this was the last paragraph I wrote] :P).

So I served the main dish first. Prepare yourselves for appitizer and dessert next!

Up next, a pie chart of expenses:

Figure 2. Percentage break down of expenses

If the numbers on the pie chart are too small for you, the numbers are provided below:

Food 23%
Goods 27%
Transport 7%
Service 14%
Room 20%
Entertainment 9%

What is interesting to note is that my significant living expenses of living are food, goods and rooming fees which are all in the 20% range. Of an interesting note is that the amount of money I pay for services, like cell phone, gym subscription and etc. is low compared to the rest of my expenses. Now for those of you people that think I'm a total party animal, look at my entertainment expenses which sit at 9% of my total expenses. Considering that 2 days out of 7 are weekends, you'd expect a little more right? Perhaps I'm easily amused. But anyways, just as a note to everyone, it doesn't necessairly have to cost a lot of money to have fun. Just about $1,460 CAD over the course of a year (that equates to about ~$100/month in entertainment).

There is one jewel of information in this report that I should mention-- my transportation costs. Now compared to most people living in Vancouver my mode of transportation is totally differeny from what you guys are doing -- ie. I scooter! Now I did a short analysis of what is costs to have a car in Japan (link). My calculations showed that it costs an average of $200/month (including maintenance and not including costs to own!).

In Japan scootering costs me approximately $30~40/month including fuel, insurance and tire change (no maintenance for scooter yet). If you're wondering, I spend $20 on gas/month for transportation. I travel about 25 km/day, which is about a one way trip to UBC from Richmond. Of an interesting note, for a car, I spent $80/month going to and from UBC per month and other misc travels. To be fair, doubling my gas costs for my scooter will put it at $40/month for the same distance. --> scooters are considerably cheaper than a car just gas wise... but I made that point already after I gathered a month's data on my scooter and it's fuel efficiency :) With maintenance included that costs goes up to approximately $50/month. In comparison to a car, it's 1/4 the cost of maintaining a car for a similar level of mobility. Just as a note I have rented a car on several occasions for road trips and I have found that renting a car for when I needed is cheaper than owning one just from a maintenance perspective.

So let me make some more comments about my finances and the interesting things that I've learned... let's take a look at the next figure:

Figure 3 . Categorized costs by month

Figure 3. is where some deep information is; "pay" close attention. If you look at my data, you'll see that my food costs and rooming fees remained relatively constant over the entire year. The room fees took a huge spike in the last month due to me moving. The costs incured were paying down the first month's rent, 2 months worth of deposit and one more month's worth of money as the real estate's agent's cut for "finding" us the place and doing some of the paper work for us.

My food costs remained at about $300/month and rental costs remained at $150/month (utils included). These are fixed living expenses and the important thing is that fixed expenses are uninteresting parts of finance. But in finance *boring* is good, because it means stability! Now for the interesting stuff-- variable costs.

Now if you looked at my data, you will notice some blips in my chart. Those blips come from large purchases, in particular my trip to Taiwan ($500), my new camera ($1000), scooter ($600) and moving into a new appartment ($1200). These are my most notable expenses from my speadsheets. Adding these together the total becomes $3300. Now if you compare this expense with my total fiscal expenses of $16,000 you'd see that these 4 significant expenses made up 20% of my total expenses!

Compare this data to my expenses and you'll be able to notice that that's equivalent to an entire year's supply of food! That's how significant how a few big price tag items can inflate yearly expenses. I most humbly believe that if there was something overlooked, it's the variable costs when it comes to financial managment because you're never going to know how much these things are going to cost. Now, over a long enough time span, you'd should be able to determine on average how much extra cash you should expect to spend in variable costs (ie random large purchases or expenses).

I should also comment that making large purchases does not happen randomly! Actually, the size of a random large purchase is proportional to the amount of money you have saved and the amount of money to expect to earn (hence, it determines how willing you are to spending it!). I fully expect that my expenses to change with time if/when I start making more money (or when I have more money available). This means that your finances will change over time as your income changes... but that should be obvious. The intereting question is, "how does it change?" (Assuming your living conditions stays fairly consistent). The question boils down to.. if you had more (or less) money, what would you do? And that's a question that many economists ask themselves and a question that (maybe) Apple's iPod is answering (as a random example).

So there you have it. $16k in a year of living expenses (not including savings), aim higher everyone because you need savings and more. That's it for me. Comments welcome.

Note to self: 1,400 words written in 3 hours.

Spring is here!

Spring has finally arrived in Sendai! The flowers are out and the scenery is looking alive again. I don't know how I survived the winter but I did (and it was quite brutal at times :P). I spent part of the weekend out and about taking photos of the trees and blossoming flowers. What a sight, not a single cloud in the sky.

Spring in Sendai is immensely important, it's the best season I think that Sendai has to offer. The only problem is that it's too short lived. After the second week of May, most of Japan goes into the rainy season for 1~2 months then we head into the dead of summer which is smouldering hot (with high humidity). I've only got 2~3 weeks to enjoy this... live it up!


The sun on white flowers in full bloom


Sendai's Boulevard. In 3 weeks, it'll be all green!


Trees sprouting green. People at play in the fields


In front of the library in town

More pictures to come! Got class in 10 minutes, gotta scoot!

Who do you think we are?

I am having a few small parts built for one of the vacuum machines. The problem, I think are the ceramic insulating spacers are coated with carbon depostis (conductive) causing sparking and messing up the plasma. Also one of the insulating spacers got cracked, meaning that some sparking is happening through the cracks which is also screwing with my plasma. If you want to know what a plasma looks like, here's what it looks like:

I am currently using a vacuum chamber, pumped out to about .01 Pascals and then hydrogen gas is flown in to the chamber till about 1 kiloPascal. A votlage of about 600V is applied between the red hot stage below and the electrodes on top, resulting in the purple plasma. Currently, systems like these are used to grow Carbon Nanotubes, which are up there in tensile strength in comparison to diamond (actually, even stronger).

Anyways, the long and short of the story is that I finished the mechanical drawings of the new spacers today (after much pain... CAD is not a friendly tool for a beginner). I picked up the phone and made a call to Tokyo, "Hi I'm from Tohoku University, I'd like to place an order." I hear a noisy background and the person on the other side of the phone tells me "one moment please." I get switched over and start talking again, "Hi, I'd like to place an order for some insulating ceramics."

"Huh?"
"Insulating ceramics? You know, against electricity and heat?"
The guy on the other side of the phone tells me "what kind of store do you think we are? This is a *RAMEN* (noodle) shop!" and the phone gets hung up with a clank.

Whoops, looks like I dialed the wrong number. I dialed again and got the right number and faxed off my drawings to the company. That little event made my day!

First Week!

First weeks for all Universities are always the most lively. All students come out to attend classes, the clubs are out soliciting for members and showing off, events and more. I guess it is a universal truth for Univesities around the world.

University life in Japan is quite different where students spend more of their focus on joining clubs intead of doing their work in class. Actually, joining a club is really like a class-- you're expected to put a lot of effort in to the club, attend events and more. In a club, everyone's a core member. For people that aren't into the hardcore-ness of a club, there exists "circles" where things are much more loose and people can come and go as they please.

Though most students that join clubs are undergrads (because they have more free time), most grad students don't have the time to come out and join these clubs (these clubs are also mainly located at the undergrad campus of the University). Dispite this, I decided to head down from the Engineering campus (which is only a little ways off from the undergrad campus) to check out the lively undergrad campus.





I caught a jazz band performing on campus which were pretty good. Actually there are plenty of musical groups on campus. From Jazz, rock & punk, classical and more.



Actually what struck me most was a mandolin-banjo club who were quite talented playing the sort of music you'd hear in comical old cowboy-flicks. I hung out and had a pretty good laugh as I'd never expect to see something like this in Japan-- always be prepared to see something unexpected!

Well, I was quite right about seeing the unexpected. Now, during my time at UBC, I've never seen a guy in an old looking suit with a top hat riding through campus. I saw exactly that at the undergrad campus. The people from the horse riding club at Tohoku University brought out a horse and took a little walk around campus drawing much attention. Once thing's for certain, they have very intersting clubs at Tohoku University, probably more interesting than the clubs I've seen back home. I've even seen a gliding club where members actually fly in large gliders. I have no clue how these guys get the money to do things like this.



When I went out to check out the campus on Wedensday and it was particularly warm. What I always used to do when I was studying Japanese at the undergrad campus, was have lunch outside with my friends in front of the International Exchange Building. The secretaries would always go in and out during lunch time. So we'd invite them over to have lunch with us it it used to be a sort of a tradition since the summer. I had since stopped taking the Japanese course so I have rarely seen the secretaries since then and only sporatically over the course of the year. I decided to drop by the office to say hi and invited Hiroko (one of the secretaries) out for lunch.


Left: Me, Right: Hiroko

Hiroko's taken the international students out from time to time to the mountains and more. I had the chance to hop into a trip to a big acquarium a whiles out of Sendai and she'd drop by a few events at the old dorm. To put it short, she's pretty damn awesome and I think that the international students are quite lucky to have her as the Exchange Division secretary because she does a ton load of things to help out the students.

After lunch, I headed out to check out the Sakura blossoming around campus. Unfortunately it was still a little early at the time and most trees on campus were not in full bloom yet. But they will be in a matter of days. At 1:30 pm, I headed back into lab to continue my unfruitful work in trying to do a simple CAD drawing. (I've got no CAD experience!)

More life in Briefs

Last Friday-- Impromptu drinking party at home

Sachie, a friend of mine had some spare time Friday night and dropped by the home to hang out. We ended up making a big batch of bean dip to go with some nachos. Oh how I missed good bean dip. We got a call later on that some of her friends were planning on going drinking. So we said that's we'd be in if anything transpired. What transpired was that a horde of people appeared at my doorstep with booze and we all hung out till about 4:00 am drinking and talking (well, it wasn't solid drinking).

Olympia, my roomie was sort of complaining before that she didn't have enough Japanese friends. Looks like she has a fan club now since she can also teach English. Some people ended up staying over because they had a few too many drinks.

One guy ended up telling us that he recently got a girlfriend so everyone ended up asking how did he ask her out. His response was "Well when you meet someone as nice as that, it's as natural as the sun rising and the moon revolving around the earth." I'm really glad to finally meet a Japanese guy with some nice wit :)

Saturday-- International student party, Master Student drinking party and Clubbing

International Party:

Allright so I sound like a party animal right about now. But... let's say that I'm living the busy life. Recently a new batch of international students on a scholarship like mine have arrived in Japan and the foreign student organization hosted a welcome party for these people at the dorm. Meaning food and dancing. I only stayed for the food however since I had to attend a drinking outing with the masters student that time (we tried to go out and do something 3 times and all were failures because we were all to busy!).

I hung out at the international party for about an hour to meet the new international students. No other Canadians arrived however. I did meet a person at the party that caught my attention. I was sitting down at the reception desk with a few friends when a girl goes by me and tells me " I remember you" and goes off to tell me "you're the guy that learned Japanese from video games right? I met you last year here" I was thinking, "oh crap" because I didn't know anything about her and she was pretty cute (d'oh!) and how did she remember about me for so long!?!? We end chatting for a bit and I had to run off to meet up with the Masters students for our drinking outing.

Drinks:

I meet up with the people near the Disney Store in Sendai, which is one of the major meeting spots for all people preparing to head out to a group outing. 7:00, I was late for about 10 mins. That's what happens when you have too many people to catch up with.

The 7 of us met up and then headed out to this old fashioned bar with sort of a 50's feel to it. The food and everything was pretty damn great and we spent atleast 3 hours on 20 bucks. Not bad at all. We had a great time and everything talking about whatever. According to my friends, they're wondring why I wasn't labeled as a "dangerous chemical" and included in a "how to handle dangerous chemical" presentation at lab! Who meeee? Who'd get the crazy idea that I'd be dangerous? Muah ha ha ha ha ha ha.

Where ever I go, some parts of my life always stays the same. Especially when it comes to the girls and rumors. In high school there were 4 rumors about me going out with different girls (for those that know me, you know that I ain't a player). I denied everything... a 5th rumor emerged-- that I was gay. There's just no winning in life sometimes eh?

Anyways, I'm pretty friendly with one of the master’s students at lab and stuff like that. Anyways she's from China, real nice person too. She really likes spicy food and when ordering some friends asked the waiter "what the spiciest food you got for her." I blurt out "just get her some raw chili peppers and she'll be happy." Some of my friends give me an odd glare for a second and I tell them "what? You should see the walls in her room, they're covered in dried chili peppers!" *D'oh!* My friends look back at me "Oh the walls in her room eh???" Great, so another rumor is born. The difference with these people is that they're a lot more forward which kind of put me on the spot. After some jabbing, we pretty much got to the point where they said, "well why don't the two of you go out?" Whoa. Dangerous stuff!

Well we're good friends so there'd be none of that. That and since we're in the same lab and knowing how news and rumors fly around I'm kind of against that. Hahaha, I got the response from my friend who told me "you'd be fun to go out with but there'd be no way I'd marry you because you play too much!" We had a good laugh over that, I never heard a person be so direct but it was true in a sense. I do my best to have fun! The real magic is to do good work and have fun...the ideal world would be the marriage of the two. Perhaps they'll learn the secret someday... either that or I have my formula wrong, but I'm willing to see if my objectives work out for me. Drinking ended at about 11:00 pm.

Clubbing:

The international party ended by about now and the people from the party (I knew) would be relocating from the dorms to the city. I was already in the city (takes only a little bit to get out to the city from the dorms fortunately) so it would only be a matter of waiting. A sub group was already down there at Karaoke but I didn't know where. I tried calling a few people but the singing must have been a little loud for people to pick up the phones. After about 30 mins of trying, I decided to give up and head into a club and hang out. Not to self. The club was dead at 11:30 pm! It didn't start picking up until 12:00 pm! In Canada it's pretty filled by atleast 10:00 pm! Well after milling about at the club for about 15 mins, I thought I'd jet from the place (and take the club entry as a loss). I picked up a drink from my drink ticket and decided to have a short drink... right after finishing my drink, hordes of people started coming in and the place got pretty damn lively.

A bunch of friends also came in that evening so I ended up spending the evening having a few drinks, chatting and dancing with them. I didn't get home till about 3:30 am. Long day indeed.

Sunday-- Work!

Slept in, but that should've been obvious. I woke up and scratched out 2~3 essay topic over a few essays in a notebook over a few hours. I'll write about them later on when I can put them all together. Taught English in the morning, went to lab in the afternoon till the evening to run some experiments before out bi-weekly meeting happening on Monday. Dropped a friend a line to see if I could catch dinner with her in the evening after I finished experimentation (turned out she was busy). Dinner got postponed till Monday at 9:30 pm.

I came home that evening famished. I dropped by the grocery store and bought tons of food. Cooked fried pork with bean sprouts, chicken and fried scallops in butter and soy sauce. I made a ton of food that evening thinking that my roomie would be back and we could have some dinner together. She never showed, turned out that she was out with friends at a going away party for one of her colleagues. I had a great dinner however (and more scallops for me).

Monday-- Labs and Drinks

Lab life as usual, classes in the morning, experiments in the afternoon and lab meeting in the evening starting from 6:30 till 9:30 pm. I left the lab to catch up with my friend to catch up over some dinner at this really interesting Japanese bar/restaurant. Things are kind of miniature, made of wood and stuff. As an interesting note, the places in Sendai do have really nice interior design!

My friend works as a make up artist for hostess (no, they don't usually sleep with their clients... some do however) so I got to learn a little about that world. It seems that these hostess for expensive bars are really for higher up people to show off (to which I think is kind of stupid, but that’s the culture). So anyways, what happens, a pretty and dressed up lady joins a group of well of businessmen recommending expensive drinks to them. The idea is that the expensive things that you buy shows off the amount of money you have. At the same time, the hostess also requests drinks for herself (of the expensive variety) and so since the guys also want to keep her pleased, will end up buying the drinks for her. In the end the restaurant makes a bundle of cash for selling expensive drinks and the hostess gets a cut. Something like could never exist in Canada; it's a cultural thing (well for some people atleast over here).

Future Outlook:

Friday -- Probably will be going out with friends again
Saturday -- Lab party under the Sakura
Sunday -- Olympia's B-day party, need to reschedule another party to the week after
Week after Friday -- Lab New Student party

Huh... so fine, I might be a party animal! :P

Through another pair of eyes!

Still no internet at home so, posting has been a little sporatic. Hopefuly I'll have internet this Wedensday perhaps? Here's hoping.

Of an interesiting note, Ida has finished and posted her travel logs of Japan on the net (yes and including the little bit of visiting Sendai and me) right here. And no, I didn't think my room was *that* messy :P Also, another travel log that I've been flipping through from time to time is another one going by the name "Justin in Japan" right here. He doesn't update any more since his adventures are over I believe but read it if you've got the time-- it's a pretty good read (and looks like he spent his time in Japan very well :P)

Pictures? Um...er... ah.. well... later :P

How Embarrassing (Whoops!)

There are some people out there that think I'm really smart. I studied Engineering Physics, finished it in the standard 5 years (dispite losing a year when I transfered departments) and then I came to Japan to study Nanotechnology. Some of my friends "oooh-ahhh" at me when I tell them my background. Today, I intend to dispel all notions that I am an intelligent being.

Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I'm not sure about the universe. --Einstien

What did I do today? I screwed up one of the electron-microscopes at lab by putting in the sample holder in upside down, sliding it past the stage holder and then unscrewing it with it fall ing off somewhere unretrievable with the samples I made today still stuck to it. The machine a $500k+ machine; and yes, after a series of unfortunate events requiring a degree of stupidity to pull off in direct sequence, I have managed to screw the machine up. The best part, it is one of the most used machines at lab. I am feeling particulary clever right now.

The best part is that I've just finish sending an e-mail to oh.. about 100 people that use the machine that "A sample holder is stuck in the machine." Sigh.

In honesty I don't mind screwing up. I revel in my mistakes... and I have a most interesting history of them. The only mistakes that I care about are the ones that screw other people up... if it screws me up, well~ that doesn't change things that much now does it? (ha~ha!)

Ces't la vive.

Hell of an Awesome weekend

Friday:

Got invited to a friend's performance at country pub and hung out listening to him and a guitarist perform a bunch of old songs from the Eagles, Beatles etc etc. I called out a few friends to come out and join for the evening. Had a few beers, nachos and good coversation. What else could I want?

After the performance was done we headed outside to visit a baloon artist my friend, Kayo, knew. I got an Elmo made and we hung out with the other street artists for the evening. I ended up buying a book of poems from a nice guy that's got some disease (unforutnately I couldn't make out what), so he spends most of the week at home in bed and only comes out for the weekends. During the weekdays, he spends his time thinking and writing from bed. He writes 3 kinds of poems, encouragement (green), caution (yellow) and warnings (red). I'll be looking forward to reading them soon.

I headed out to grab a few more drinks with Kayo to warm up from after hanging out outside for so long. It is still *cold* in Sendai, even though it's about 500 km south of Vancouver. Doesn't make sense but we had snow on April 1st (and no, that isn't a joke!). My Japanese friends laughed that Vancouver is having the cherry blossoms bloom several weeks in advance compared to Sendai (nothing's started budding yet!). Crazy eh?

Well the good thing was that we found an all you can drink bar for only 6 bucks. We did have to order some food however (well just one order and it wasn't expensive anyways) and ended the evening at 2:00 am before parting ways. A good evening was had.

Saturday -- House warming

We held the house warming party about 3 weeks after moving in. We finished settling in after about 2 weeks and we spent the rest of the time trying to figure out when we'd be able to do house warming. It is tough trying to coordinate the schedules of 3 busy people!

So, we finally pulled it off about last weekend. We decided that we'd call up 5 friends each and invtie them over and have a potluck party (I ended up calling up 7.. but that's a different story :P). A good time was had and we did have the chance to meet each other's respective friends.

We started at about 8:00 pm, Kuni was off at his friend's place with his bunch of friends cooking food. I was at the home cooking with my friends... and Olympia? Well... she had work that evening and couldn't do any cooking. There was the "Chili incident" but that (again) is another story :P.

The other plus about having the party was that it gave me the right excuse to do some more cleaning in my room to have it fit for people to crash... and crash they did!

The food!

I decided on making mashed potatoes, fried spaghetti, spinach salmon salad and mango pudding for dessert. Kuni brought in tempura and stuffed peppers. The rest of the friends brought drinks, beer and etc.

A few pictures below :)

Me, Tetsuya and Youn ji

People crashing on my bed!

Friends making friends (cell number exchange!)

The party lasted until about 2:00 am. I really hope we didn't piss off our neighbours. It'd be kind of ironic to get complaints to get kicked out from the house warming party... but it seemed that things were pretty allright. I should have taken a picture of all the shoes at the entrance since they were all over the place, but I was too busy having a good time :).

The next day was Kuni's b-day... and we went motorcycle touring with friends the next day in the morning. Bikeless people would go by car as we headed out to the ocean to the fish market to get ingredients for his B-day BBQ (try and say that fast 3 times over).

I'll save the rest of that story for my next post. As much as I would like to spend more time writing up these posts, I'm still at lab and got work to do unforutnately, so that'll have to wait until next time. Going to get hooked up into an optical fiber network (ie. Internet on crack!) on the 16th. I'll be pretty happy when that happens.

Cheerio!

The world is small

2 weeks ago, at a festival I met a guy from Victoria BC and a long lost friend of about 8 years that lives in a town outside of Sendai. Last weekend, I meet a lab mate who is on travel in Tokyo by chance with his family (1 person out of 10 million) and today I get an e-mail from a Japanese English teacher that did an exchange in Vancouver and had friends from Steveston High and Richmond High (though I probably wouldn't know them). Um... wow.

On a side note. As of April 5, I had 129 posts on this blog. On average, I make a post once every 3 days.

Moving (Happy Anniversary Me!)

As of today, I have spent 365 days in Japan. Where did the time go? Nobody knows. Since October, I have been keeping track of most events things I've been doing on my computer calendar. It's it's quite interesting to see what I've been up to for the last year. I guess it's true-- time does fly when you're having fun.

It's been about 3 weeks since I've moved into my new place. Now that things have finally settled down, in terms of lab work. I've got a little free time to post about the moving process.

We were officially tenants of our new place on the 18th of March. We rented an open back truck (one day for about $70 bucks) to load our goods and have it shipped over to the new appartment.

Oh I should mention a little about my roomies. One of them is Kuni, Japanese master's student the same age as I that went to Canada for a year. He speaks pretty good English just your all-round awesome good guy. My other roomie is Olympia from (dum dum dum) Calgary, who came to Japan to teach English and plans on staying over in Japan for a few more years before moving on to see other countries such as France. Now that I've introduced the cast a little (pictures another day), I'll post a bit about my moving experience.

Boxing match!

I started boxing my belongings the night before the move. Started at about 10:00 pm and kept going till about 3:00 am. The only real things I needed to box were my cutlary, spices and goods. Clothes went into suit cases, most large belongings had boxed they came in and I threw all of my smaller things into plastic bags.

Moving in; boxes all over the floor

Most of those were things scrambled all over the kitchen floor. For the most part, our kitchen looked something like this for about a week while we slowly started migrating our belongings into our respective rooms. It took about a few good evenings of work to get the boxes unpacked and put away. To be honest, not a whole lot of my stuff went into my room-- most of my stuff were cooking utensils so those were unpacked and stayed in the kitchen.

My room before

Actually this is a bit of a lie. This picture is quite similar to my room but it's actually a room from another unit within the building I took while looking for a new appartment. I didn't have an exact before picture of my room so I posted this one instead (note that the window is in a different position!)

The "after" picture!

The room was still quite bare after moving most of my basic belongings into the room. At this point I hadn't moved put my books away nor had the curtains in my room been installed. Of an interesting note, the rooms we had didn't come with light fixtures included. I spent a week using my heat dish and Chrismas lights to keep keep my room illuminated.

I have since moved all of my belongings into the room however and things are looking a little more cozy. The bed I have there, I bought from a other people that were moving out for $40, the desk and book case I got free from other people leaving Sendai.

The last day of my life in the dorms ended on March 31st. I had officially moved out by 1:00 pm after having my room inspected. Apparently the inspection people that came by were surprised at how clean my kitchen was that they asked me if I didn't cook. Well, that was sort of a back-handed compliment.



For comparison, this is what my desk looked like before and after moving out. Striking difference no? I spent an entire day on Saturday cleaning from about 10:00 pm till 5:00 am. I hucked lots of misc. things like quarter full bottles of soy sauce, misc dirty tupperware, left over sheets of paper, unused tissue paper and such. Felt kind of wasteful but it wasn't worth the effort to carry the stuff to the new place. Many kilos of garbage was thrown away.

I ended giving away atleast 5 kg of flour, several kgs of sugar, powered cream and much more to one of my friends in the dorm as a going away gift. Atleast 10 kg of cooking material (yeah, I had crap loads of stuff!)


Looks like I was never there!

After all the cleaning this what what my room looked like. It's kind of amazing, the difference. I have since returned to the dorms on a few occasion and noticed that a Chinese student had moved into the room. Perhaps I'll meet the guy one day.

This is Kuni, one of my roomies working in bed.

That's it for now!

Dilemma

House warming party Saturday. I've already told about 8~10 people that I'd invite them over. The problem is that my roomies have decided to limit the number of guests that we each can bring down to 5. Crap! Now how the hell am I going to choose?

In other news. I bombed my presentation, but that's OK. One of the professors had a great time chewing me out but I could care less (and there is a bit of a story behind that too). I now have a reputation for good and horrible presentations. I couldn't care less.

I learned far more by bombing then I did by doing a "good job." Presentations here are rather formal in the sense that people seem to expect that they are to know the answer; anything less is embarrasing. Not knowing isn't embarrasing, not learning is embarrasing. I think that is the subtle difference.

Pictures of the home later on. Will post some pictures of the new place later on. Will start working on my moving in experience post later on (and will post plenty of pictures :)