Tanabata in Sendai

I wanted to buy spoons today.

Last week, I held a dessert party in my room and now, mysteriously one of my spoons went missing. On Friday, I made a batch of Mango Pudding to give to the secretaries at the International Exchange Center (because they're so nice and I felt bad after telling them of all the dessert parties I've been doing and never had the chance to invite them out [yes, the international students invite the secretaries out to events!]). I gave them a container of mango pudding and included a spoon for them to dish it out to their colleagues in the office. I won't be back into the office for atleast a month... and I gave them my last spoon.

The Tanabata festival for Sendai (cf. wikipedia description here) started on Saturday and I would finally have time to see the festival on Sunday. I needed to buy spoons and hit the gym to check if my automatic bank payments worked for my monthly gym subscription. I headed out this morning at about 11:00 am to make my way out there.

I walked around the main arcade where the Tanabata festivities were being held. There were people everywhere walking around and looking at the decorations. To the left, you'll see the streamers hung for the Tanabata festival. From what I've read, they represent "woven threads," for what reason however, I am not sure. I tried asking some Japanese people and even they didn't know off hand.

Alot of people were out wearking Yukatas and Jimbeis (Summer Kimonos for women and men, respectively) so it was rather nice seeing everyone in such festive spirits. Along the street were lots of vendors selling food, beer, toys, shoes, etc. I saw a place that were selling really cheap sandals that I wanted to buy, since they're good for rainy days and my feet won't be soaking wet the whole day if I were to wear them. I didn't stop to buy them because I had other things on my mind, like finding some food to eat.


I walked and walked and eventually found a kaiten-sushi restaurant (one of those conveyor belt sushi restaurants) but they were remarkably busy, but I really wanted to eat in one. The line ups were really long and I didn't feel like waiting so I kept walking looking for other sushi restaurants. I walked another km to the train station to find a place to eat there; big mistake, I should have known that all the restaurants there would be extra busy. Sendai is famous, nationally for their Tanabata festival so everyone comming to see the festival came by train and stopped off to eat at the restaurants in the station.

A little disappointed, I at first decided to skip lunch and go for a walk instead. Close by the station was the tallest building in Sendai, otherwise known as the "Aeru" building. I headed to the roof of the building to the observation deck to take a look at the city from up above. The view from above is spectaular and I enjoy going there from time to time. I have yet to go there at night to see the city lights (it's summer and it gets dark after the building closes).

After hitting the observation deck, I checked out the restraunt right by the observation deck (one of those nice posh restraunts) and I was in luck, they had a lunch set for only $25, well I wasn't complaining for a 6 course lunch.

The picture to the left here is the waiting room while they prep up the table for customers. The only sad part was that I went alone. It was a spur of the moment kind of thing... though I'm not sure if I was friends that they would be willing to shell out $25 for a lunch, but it was worth it.


I ran into friends right after lunch hanging outside of the train station, what luck. I tagged along to catch some coffee with them.

This is what happens when you have 13 people crowding into a coffee shop. We were also evil and asked for separate bills and hung around for a long time and made other people wait for us before we had to leave.










The group had to split up and I had to meet up with a Phillipino friend since we arranged to check out the Tanabata festival when it started. The city had the roads blocked off and groups of performers took to the streets entertaining different sections of visitors along the way. We got to see marching bands (way too many of them), a dance squad, Japanese firefighters doing stunts on a really tall ladder and cheerleaders. Unfortunately I had to leave the event a little early to check the automatic transfer with the gym. Ended up leaving an hour before the parade was over. Oh well... but it gets better.

Unfortunately I didn't have pictures for the last part, but I headed home after checking things with the gym. The automatc payment did go through and I was in dire need of a shower and had a stack of laundry to do. I hit the local convenience store to get some change for the washing machines when I heard drumming in the courtyard of a University near by. I had to go and check it out.

It turns out they too were doing a little festival up there. They had a stage, an intimate sort of thing with only about 30 people. They had a few performers and musicians entertaining to Japanese music. They broke out the beer and snacks and we had a picnic in the courtyard. It was all free, these people are amazingly friendly. The floor opened up and I joined everyone dancing around the stage doing some kind of Japanese folk dance :) When I do come back to Canada, I have something new to try when I go clubbing!

The really cool part of this group of people was that there were tons of old people out there having fun and hell, old people know how to party better than the young ones! I had a great time listening to these guys crack out the microphone and started singing. They started rotating through people and there were a few international students out there whom I've never met from China and they sung just beautifully. I on the other hand had to fall back onto "If you're happy and you know it..."

I was a little embarrased when I was going up to the stage... not because I had to sing, but because Canada has so little history compared to the Japanese. These old guys were singing all sorts of folk songs and they sounded terrific. But hey, Canada is like a baby compared to asian nations, we're only in the ball park of 200 years old as opposed to Asia that is thousands of years old? Well atleast they enjoyed my singing, I was greeted by the "grannies" and "grampas" who poured me a few glasses of beer after. I even got 2 boxes of tissue paper as going away presents (they were giving them out for some reason).

So finally I got home and did my laundry... and still, I'm without a spoon. Maybe something interesting will happen the next time I try to buy a spoon.

Quote of the Evening

"Not wearing a shirt either?"
"It's too damn hot to be wearing anything!"

I can't believe it's not English!

I was at fireworks yesterday which was an hour train ride from Sendai to a place called Ishinomaki. I'll have an album up soon of what I've been up to. But I thought I'd show off this little gem of Japanese Engrish.

I was sleeping on the train on the way back from fireworks when I woke and looked up at the advertisments on the top of the train (like the advertisments you have at the top of the inside of a bus). I did a double take because I couldn't believe what I was seeing, I even had to ask a friend to double check the spelling on his electronic dictionary and yup, lo and behold, my eyes were not playing tricks on me.

I offer you this!

Click on the image for a bigger view-- the Drug lords in Japan are into weddings!

Good times were had. Just imagine all the strange looks when an Asian, a German and a Russian walks over in front of the people sitting below the poster to take a close up shot of this picture.

Snip Snip

I also had my hair cut recently (again). This is my second time having my hair cut in Japan. The first hair cut didn't turn out as well as I hoped... so the second time around, I brought my laptop to the barber with a picture of me with a good haircut. Unfortunately it didn't turn out like I showed the barber either. I might have to find another barber and see if I fare better the next time around.

The hair cut isn't all that bad really, short hair is good for me since it is really hot over here. We're breaking 34 degrees here with high humidity, which makes for yucky stickyness.

T-3 weeks to entrance exams.

Disturbing buy/sell outs

I was reading the news today with regard to Canada and BC and I have been quite disturbed with what I read today. I was just reading that Terasen Gas was bought out by an American Company, namely, Kinder Morgan of Houston in the story posted here.

If you do not know much about Terasen, this company is the major natural gas distribution company for BC which deals with gas distribution to residents of BC in addition to owning assets in terms of gas and oil pipelines for distribution into Canada and the States. In addition, Terasen also controls pipelines for water distribution in BC. If you are interested in learning more about Terasen Gas, their webpage is located here.

I am uncomfortable with the buyout of Terasen by an American company as it gives the US stronger access into Canadian natural resources. Canada has the second largest oil reseves in the world with its reserves in Oil Sands (cf. PDF report here) and the largest fresh water reserves in the world. With current ongoing disputes such as softwood lumber, which BC has just won in the WTO courts, the US still refuses to remove tarrifs on imports of Canadian lumber into the US (the US has so far collected and is holding $5 billion in lumber tarrifs, which is Canadian money). Frankly, putting the management of distribution of Canadian natural resources at the hands of an American company is not a prudent decision under current circumstances-- why would you want give control of energy distribution to an American Company?

I will say this much, it is not entirely the fault of the government that this happened, though they did allow the possibility for this to happen after splitting up BC gas into a production and distribution company (if I am not mistaken) which are on the stock market. The problem with this is that a company can be bought out as it just happened now due to management decisions and shareholder agreements that bring the most value to them (the shareholders voted in favor of Terasen being sold). Share holders could careless about Canadian or US interests so long as the company they invested in makes them money. Now the question is, what is this decision going to cost BC and the average person.

I will say right off that I am no expert in the energy market and I have little understanding of how gas distribution companies work and the current state of energy trade regulations. I have already tried looking at the financial reports and investor information of Terasen Gas to determine their assets and customers (if you have both pieces of information you can determine how they make their money). Unfortunately I haven't been able to find much details on neither pieces of information. If anyone does know how the energy industry works please feel free to contact me as I do want to learn more about this industry.

The reason is the following: I would like to confirm or disprove the following concern I have with the US growing needs for natural resources such as gas and possibly water in the near future. What is to stop the American owned Terasen company from diverting Canadian resources into a lucerative American market, which could lead to rising prices in the Canadian market for gas? Looking at this from the point of supply and demand, if you have an American customer that might be more willing to pay more for gas than a Canadian company, they may have preference to sell resources to the Americans, unless if Canadian customers pay atleast the same price. I highly doubt that Canadian customers will face shortages of fuel, but it could lead to higher prices.

The above is a possible scenario I concocted based on guesses and assumptions (and hence could be far from the truth). I could come up with more possibilities but they would be little more than stabs in the dark which is not what I want to do (but I do want to raise why is it important to look at the implications of this event, which was the point of the last example). Without a better understanding of the business of Terasen gas (which seems to have little details posted in their webpage) I cannot understand the full implictions of the sale of this company to the US, which bothers me. What I exactly need to know is what service do they provide and what do they control in terms of natural resource flow to the US.

The other thing that needs to be understood is why did this company get sold and what value did the shareholders of this company saw interms of letting Terasen get bought out by Kinder Morgan.

It is now 1:47 am. Time for sleep.

Beauty, fun and motivation

Have you ever experienced a time when you were doing things that you really enjoyed, had a lot of things going on and had a great time and then the things you did ended for some reason (say summer vacation ended, or music camp was done) then tried looking for other things to do that but couldn't think or find anything that was exciting for you to do? I am sort of at that point at the moment and so thinking about this has made me wonder "what motivates people?"

Motivation to me is some thing really really important. You can tell the big difference between a really motivated person versus a person that is just doing things to get by. With motivation, there is a sense of purpose for what you are doing, it means something to you. When things mean something to you, it becomes important and you become obervant about it and then you learn a lot about it. Without motivation, it might feel like you're doing meaningless stuff.

Take for example. Learning math. Cliche has it that math is boring and most of us don't use it in the real world. I couldn't think that that statement is further from the truth. Why is it that we study strange things like the differential equations and matrix equations or learning how to solve simpler things like ax^2 + bx + c = 0 back in the old days of high school math? What was the meaning of it? You learn that it is useful later on when solving things like a differential equation when you look for the roots of higher order polynomials. At the time it was just academic acrobatics for me... (well that was just one application, but there are more... and simpler applications :)

It was probably a miracle that I learned math-- I did it because I thought it was fun (especially the physics related problems!). I only thought it was beautiful later on when I realized that I could use math to model things like a bank account and project it what it might look like when a person turns 65 (it's a first order differential equation), do thing like image processing and find targets in a picture or do probability calculations for poker which earned me a lot of money (note to poker gang in Canada... pretend you never read that last statement :). *Now that's beautiful!*

You know what? I also sucked in math in my first year in University. Hell I even got 64% in my first calculus course simply because I wasn't motivated. Little would I know that I would end up teaching it years later to a first year student that failed her first mid-term and walked out of the course getting 90%+ on her final exam. The reason I became good at the math was I suddenly discovered how beautiful it was. I remember solving on my own that the area of the circle was pi*r^2 and the volume of a sphere was 4/3*pi*r^3. I finally got this when I a playing with the basic integral equations I learned...

I never really started to understand calculus math until my second/third year of University, when I was taking a fluid dynamics course and we had to calculate the flow through a pipe (water flows slower at the edges of the pipe and faster in the center) or things like the total pressure of the water acting on an object in water (the interesting thing was pressure increases as you go deeper in water, that is why nitrogen gets compressed into the blood in divers and comming up too quickly causes nitrogen to bubble out of the blood inside your body and causes the 'bends' illness). I thought learning things like that was wonderful because the math I was learning suddenly became useful. Since then my math marks jumped up, math became interesting to me again and I really enjoyed teaching why math was interesting to other people.

There is a reason why I am writing this-- I am having a hell of a time right now buckling down and studying Japanese like mad. I know I have 1900 Japanese characters to learn, then there is vocabulary and then I need to find my own style of self expression. I borrowed a Japanese novel a few weeks ago... I spent 2 hours reading 9 pages. I got tired and fell asleep after that and couldn't bring myself to read those books afterwards.

There is another reason-- I've been reading research papers to learn more about the field. I have a hell of a time trying to read into these papers because I keep getting really tired when I read these papers and I don't feel that I've learned anything valuable after reading them. So I am having mental road blocks from looking into them at the moment.

Instead, what have I been doing? I've been playing computer games instead in my room, late at night when I have "nothing else to do." I play things called "turn based strategy games" and I love these games to bits. I love all sorts of strategy games and play them for hours on end. I've even done calculations for one strategy game to try and find the most optimal method of growing my empire and seeing what are the costs for making certain trade offs (do I buy that fancy tank now or do I wait and invest more in factories and get that tank later?). I like playing these games because I understand the mechanics of these games really well. The manual tells me exatly how the basic laws of the game work and what are the formulas. With this information, I can make the decisions on how to apply them to find ways of beating my opponents effectively (or understand how exactly I lost).

The trick behind this all is understanding what motivates you to do/learn things and foster the right conditions for you to become motivated. I'm probably just frustrated about the way I'm learning Japanese Kanji and my research topic because the stuff I'm reading is ugly, boring and unmotivating (is that a word?).

End of Japanese Classes (for now?)

Yesterday marked the end of Japanese classes for me. Yay, I was getting bored of them anyways. I got put into level 3 which out of a scale between of 1 (being introductory) and 6 (being expert). The speaking and listening classes were boring unfortunately. I had the most enjoyable time in my reading, writing and Kanji classes... grammar was so-so.

I might take more Japanese classes later on depending on if I need them, but I didn't think they were all that useful. The bastion standing between me and Japanese fluency are vocabulary, kanji and expression.

The biggest hurdle of the 3 is learning the kanji. According to sources, there are about 1900 kanji basic characters, the number goes up to about 3,000 for people doing technical work. During my Japanese classes, we learned about 20 new kanji per week. That put me at 80/month and I did this for 4 months. That puts me at about 240 new kanji learned. There has to be a faster way of learning them... I've found a few a few books out there on learning kanji and I'm going to give them a whirl. I will be very satisfied if I am able to read 80% of a Japanese newspaper. We shall see...

So classes ended. What did I do? Party! Naturally. There were atleast 3 parties happening in the dorms that day. There was a double b-day party, my party and a going away party for one of the students going back to Korea.

I invited Misha and Diego and whoever else that popped by to enjoy fried chicken appitizer and crepes as dessert. Making crepes was kind of interesting. I use a recipie that I found off the internet but I generally change the proportions a little to make the crepes a little thinner (the recipie by it self makes things more like pancakes). For some reason the mix got thinner but got a little sticky when I cooked it, which made flipping them a total pain.



Had a few issues with holes :)

Abby, Misha and Diego

Kai-Ling dropping by for Crepes

Mmmmm... Crepe stuff

I got challanged into a beer drinking contest against Abby (cf. Image above) and lost horribly. The beer was super fizzy and really burned on the way down (excuses, excuses) oh well. She's a beer drinking force to be reckoned with... she also stole all my mandarin orange bits that I wanted to use for the crepes. Girls, I tell ya (/me ducks :)

After my party we headed off to the roof to see off Min from Korea. Plenty of drinking ensues. Heh unfortunately we got kicked off the roof because the guard man came up and told us we were too loud. It's a game of cat and mouse with the guard man. When you have 20 people out having a party vs 1 guard man (who is kind of old) all he can really do is yell at us. We pretend to clean up and leave... it just means that we pick some other place in the building and continue. Heh heh heh. We be bad.

Seriously though, they have this stupid role that people aren't allowed to use the lobby for parties at 11:00 pm... the lobby is away from the rooms and indoors so the noice doesn't get out to bother other people. Why oh why do they shut down the lobby is silly to me.

Preliminary Data

I have started logging data on fuel consumption of my scooter. I missed out on the first few tank ups but this time I manage to remember the numbers.

During the last 4 days, I travelled 81.7 km and consumed 3.18L of fuel. Calculations work out to a 25.7 km/L of gas consumed. Comparing this data against a 2004 Honda Accord at the following webpage here, their data indicates a 24 mpg or approximately 10km/l fuel efficiency. What I am seeing from my last tank up is that a scooter has 2.5 times more fuel efficiency than a new regular car (that and my scooter was bought used). This means for a cheap vehicle you are paying 2.5 times less for fuel.

I will be collecting more data over my next tank ups to see if I get consistent results, but from the looks of this result and the way gas prices are going, it may be very attractive to switch over to an inexpensive scooter as a mode of transport (fine, even if scooters look kind of dopey in fast car traffic, but when you're in a jam, you've got the agility to scooter along the side and slide through it).

Waking up

Remember that time when you were a kid when there was always something fun and interesting lurking around? I remember those times when I was 4, I used to get up at 7:00~7:30 in the mornings without a problem. I'd bounce out of bed, get dressed and run downstairs to my latest discovery-- morning cartoons and watch. I used to be so fascinated by cartoons when I was younger and that was something I woke up enthusiastically for.

One day on TV I learned that people had trouble waking up early, they'd get groggy and get out of bed really slowly. I thought that was the strangest thing because it was so easy for me to get out of bed. I wondered what would it feel like to be groggy in the mornings (I was really curious when I was younger...I used to wonder why people mumbled to themselves or felt certain ways, I even tried to imitate it to learn more about it... though sometimes I'd forget to stop imitating :P). I tried that once when I was in grade 7 to sleep in when I wasn't tired... I got out of bed groggy and haven't really been able to pop out of bed like I used to since (unless of course, I get up in a panic). I then started reading a book a few days ago and been really enjoying it. I got up this morning; the first thing I decided to go was to read a chapter out of this book. After I finished reading, I just realized that I got out of bed because I found something interesting I wanted to do (I'll talk more about the book in a bit).

This reminds me of a quote by Einstein I read somewhere; I've been looking for it on and off but haven't been able to find it. Perhaps it might not even be Einstein that said but I can't find it. It goes something to the effect of:

"Enthusiasm is simply having something worth waking up for" -Me

Well, I guess it's my quote now since I've the net for it couldn’t find the person to accredit it to :P

It's something I haven't done in a long time and I had forgotten what it was like, but when I woke up today to read something that I thought was really interesting, I thought "wow this is great! I'm getting out of bed for other reasons instead of 'I'm hungry', or 'I can't sleep anymore' or 'I've got classes' or something or other like that." I got out of bed really excited to do something I wanted to... it's been a while.

Sometimes after a while of getting caught up in lots of classes, extra curricular activities... etc. life sort of turns into a schedule when that happens-- be here at 'x' time or complete things by 'y' date. Such is life of a student and I think the pattern continues when you get a job and start working. There was a reason why I thought waking up to do something that I wanted to do was so profound, because it made me realize that for a long time that I was working on other people's schedules for so long and not my own.

My natural inclination right now as someone that likes to talk (albeit too much sometimes) is to start giving examples to illustrate my point in more detail, dive into some implications and interpret the results (I'm a theoretical kind of guy that likes to build theory upon theory, sometimes I go a little to far and end up with a pretty huge picture that I don't know that'll work yet... so sometimes though, I don't think I'm always practical... but I'm going on tangent...anyways...). So today class (I feel like a lecturer some how right now...) I'm not going to go further and explain everything I'm thinking and let you see if my last paragraph applies to you or if there are any ideas that you can take away from it. Ugh, I feel really tempted right now because my brain naturally wants to spew out what I'm thinking so for the sake of doing something unusual (which is rather "normal" for me) I'm just going to fight it :P

Comment away if you like... or just keep the thought in the back of your head. I just really felt like posing the thought here (does that make me an intellectual exhibitionist??).

As for the book

The book is called "Surely you're Joking Mr. Feynman," about a physicist named Richard Feynman that I really like. The book is a really easy read and it's a collcetion of all sorts of stories of Mr... or rather Dr. Feynman (the really interesting thing is that of all things I've read about him, hardly any sources called him Dr. Feynman... I thought that was neat... but anyways... :) .

Feynman was brilliant, but his thoughts were simple and he was observant. His stories of himself sound like something of a kid with a lot of creativity. When I came to read this book of a brilliant man, I have come to realize that this person was a very clever man in a really simple kind of way and the many things he did were rather cute.

He would do thing like play with ants and discover that they left some kind of scent trail that they follow to lead others to food (ants also did that in my room... but I've since sealed the hole they came from) by playing tricks on them, like making them walk on glass slides to some sugar and then switching slides them to see what would happen (they'd lose the trail when they start walking on the new slide). He drew many of his ideas from simple origins, the difference was that he was pretty observant and a bigger base of ideas to draw his ideas from (well and it could also be that he was really smart too :).

Personally, I think of intelligence in the similar way that Feynman thinks (only fitting that we have the same personality temperament as me... ENTP)-- building upon simple ideas and observations. Even I don't think that I'm that smart and I feel kind of weird when other people think I'm some sort of monster brain, but I see things from a different point of view; that being 'smart' is something simple-- a way of thinking that can be taught. After reading parts of that book, I think it is true even more so by reading into the mind of someone that's really smart (and that is probably one of the reasons why I really like teaching --> it's really fun to make smart people).

If you have the time, give the book a read. I am really enjoying it.

Seriously, they're on a picnic!

"Would you like a breast or a leg?"
"I doesn't matter to me, your choice."

1954, Alfred Hitchcock's movie to "Catch a Thief." Classy, seriously; James bond would be humbled at that pass. Watch the movie, it was a breath of freash air to see some thing interesting from a time 51 years ago. Speaking of passes, I have to find a way to get a crazy girl off my back (it's scary what I'm 'up against'... [um maybe that's a bad choice of words]). Do I really need to tell a story? I'm just getting attacked :P

Interesting times. I dropped by my Olen's room to make banana bread and watch that movie with friends. Banana bread is great and terribly simple to make and a great snack. We then proceeded back to the video store to return the rental and to make and embarrasing attempt to rent another movie. It was the result of 5 guys, 3 of which weren't carrying their wallets and the other 2 having less than a dollar on them.

Also, I thought the store was kind of small at first... not until I realized there was a second half and that half was all porn. A few of us just stood there going "whoa, this is unreal." They also sold condoms from a vending machine nearby entitled "Safety for You." I think the Japanese people were looking at us funny when we were laughing at the machine. Seriously, you can't take a vending machine like that for serious in the middle of nowhere on the street in the middle of the neighbourhood. That's a part of Japan for you atleast :)

What have I been up to for the last while? I'll post pictures of those later on. Right now I'm in dire need of learning how to cook food that'll keep for more than 3 days and taste good. Foods with vinegar and olive oil are a strong candidate for me. I've made my own dressing of vinegar and honey for salad. I've made a failed attempt to make preserved chopped ginger in olive oil because there were small pockets of air in the oil that allowed the ginger ferment. It's not a good thing when the bottle of ginger fizzes when you open the bottle, you get horridly sour chopped ginger.

Might I add another thing about cooking... I call it Dormitory Goulash. It's simple, throw as many ingredients into a frying pan or a pot as possible, fry together, add seasoning, serve and pray that it tastes decent. Sure I could fry a plate of scrambled eggs, another plate of chicken and make a salad but I would atleast have to use 2~3 dishes and use an additional one to eat the food. Throw in the pot/pan that I would have to wash afterwards; it becomes a pain in the rear. I am a fanatic for keeping my sink clean and I hate having dishes leftover in the sink because things dry and become more of a pain to clean later. Why clean so many things when you can throw everything into a pot/pan and serve in a single dish (or even serve straight out of the pot/pan)?

Well, there you have it, my twisted little life in Japan.

Quote of the day

"Come on this is nothing-- you should play 'Frogger' on an interstate highway"
--Steve after Jay walking

Crusing Japan

After a week of waiting, the shop had finished tuning up my new (used) scooter. 11:00 am as of yesterday I finally picked it up.


Side View


Front View, it comes with a basket in the front!


Inside the seat compartment with my helmet

It was a magnificiently beautiful day yesterday. Albeit rather hot, talk about 27 degrees but after factoring in humidity it was more like 37 degrees (celcius). I took the scooter out for a spin to the University and up the big hill to my lab. Going upwards with no effort was wonderful as opposed to breaking an exhaustive sweat everytime. I also had the chance to visit places where I never could go to on foot. I headed out to the back of the mountain crossed a bridge to another hill side and kept on going.

The bike is a 49 cc bike. Not the world's most powerful think but plenty of power to get you where you want to be. City driving speed for scooters is 30km/h but the bike is rated up to 60km/h. The bike's got a tank for 5L of fuel. The tank was partially full when I got the bike but it was really great to tell the guy to "fill 'er up" and only pay $3 for gas. Unbelievable.

The bike costed me $400 by itself, insurance about $120, licence registration $60 and a helmet for $70. In total I spent about $650 for the bike. Not bad, the funny thing is that it's 1/2 the price of my laptop!

The Grapevines

Yesterday evening, I was out late with friends from Taiwan. They had a party earlier that day for friends leaving Sendai back to Taiwan. We also dropped by a labmate's appartment that day also to cheer him up because just recently he had lost his sister...

We bought drinks and food, the 5 of us crowded into our friend's appartment and started talking. We just talked about whatever came to mind. Everyone else could speak Mandarin, I thought it was kind of funny, that I was a foreigner among foreingers. Actually that isn't entirely true, foreigners are like family-- we help each other out through thick and thin.

I learned a lot that evening about lab culture, particularly in my lab and perhaps some interesting generalizations that I'll be keeping my eye out for. There are general rules that exist in my lab, something that exists to keep our professors happy (more importantly, it keeps them from getting annoyed). The rules are never talked about in public, because once you know the rules of the game, they always inevitably change; and why change a game when you know the rules.... right? (fyi: I think the rules do need changing)

From experience, my labmates that were with me that evening told me about their experiences and stories. For example, the director of the lab used to get a little annoyed with students if they spent too much time in front of their computers. Why? It's because his philosophy is that all students should be experimenting instead of reading all the time. The result? Some students now take their computer and disappear into the library to read papers and work on presentations instead (when you're not in the lab in front of your computer it's assumed that you're working in the experiments building).

In the lab, you're allowed to ask questions. "Stupid" questions are occasionally allowed and they're sometimes answered with a "why don't you think about it a little more." Other questions are answered usually only once. Ask again and they have a bit of a "don't you remember" sort of attitude. Atleast one professor will stand over your shoulder to watch what you're doing for your process but won't say anything, unless you make a mistake.

There seems to be a theme going on here: things aren't often said directly but rather, indirectly. Relations with professors aren't only like that, it also exists between Japanese labmates. After being told this, I thought this was profound (how would I have known??).

People here have a horrible habit of making assumptions and something that I would call "spoky analysis from a distance" (an adaptation from one of Einstien's famous quotes 'Spooky action at a distance' -- it's about electron pairs interacting with each other from a long distance... but I digress). They make their own observations about you, discuss it amongst themselves and then come to a conclusion with you none the wiser. If you have lunch with a close friend of the opposite gender, they'll think you're on a date. If it sounds like you go to a lot of parties, they might think you're a heavy drinker; so on.

I don't mind people making guesses, that's a particularly normal thing about people, scientists especially-- it's called a hypothesis. But why, oh why do they not go and verify this by asking the person directly is beyond me. Suffice to say, I have just learned that the lab and a part of Japanese culture is a rumor mill.

"Tread lightly and speak softly, for the walls have eyes and ears."

Why is it that the Japanese are so indirect? I will make a post about that another time...

By the end of the evening, I've become an honorary member of the Taiwanese society; sort of fitting of me, don't ya think?

Ikea, eat your heart out

A few I've learned after living on my own:

1. Bring your own toilet paper to the washroom -- 1 ply just doesn't cut it
2. Parties happen spontaneously
3. If poster tape is too expensive for posters, there's always post-it notes
4. Don't use communal brooms to clean your room -- that broom is probably the dirtiest thing around

Now on to the fun stuff. I dropped by a hardware last week and was in heaven when I realized that I could probably make a medium sized table for about 1/2 to 1/3 of the cost of normal tables most stores sold them for. Sure, I spent atleast an hour drooling over powertools just imagining how quickly I could get things done with them. I decided to forgo the investment at this time and see if I could get away with building the table with the bare basics.

Items Purchased:

1. Wooden rack/step ~ $12
2. 6 foot long 2x4 planks of wood (2 planks) ~ $5
3. Hand drill ~ $5
4. Wood screws (2 sets) ~ $1.50
Total ~ $23.50

I had the store chop the 6 foot long 2x4 shopped in half thinking that 3 feet (~1 meter) should be tall enough for an ordinary desk. Chopping fees ran me about 20 cents, so that was negligable (and really, really cheap!) and biked home with the goods.

After rough measurements of the desk I currently use, I found out that the desk I work is about 2 feet tall. Meaning I had to chop the planks down further after borrowing a saw from the dorm office (who would have known, they keep a hand-saw on them). After that I was pretty much ready to go.


The rack was the perfect size for a table.


The 2x4's after being chopped down a little more. See the sawdust?


Using the hand drill to make holes and installation of screws


Tada! Assembly complete


The table in my room already messy with equipment

The entire ordeal took me about 2 hours in total including cleaning. The table is pretty firm on the floor but it wobbles from side to side, meaning that it could use some bracing to strengthen the legs, but not bad for my first attempt with home made furniture.

In a Different Language

About a month and a half a go I started teaching English classes at the YMCA to adults and children in my spare time. I also found myself teaching English to a few friends and after a few months of observation, I am coming to realize that language is not just a different syntax for communication but also as a way of thinking.

We are intrinsically bound to the language we use when communicate when we speak or write. The language we use actually controls how we present information and thus also the way we speak. Long story short, the language we use provides the framework for how we think!

Take for example the way I am communicating to you right now. You might not realize it, but there is a flow of information that exists between the text and you as a reader. As you read, your mind subconsciously expects a certain pattern of how information is presented. If that flow is broken then the information you read becomes fragmented or disjointed. This is something that many native speakers take for granted.

Suppose that the flow of information is broken. Suppose that a foreign tourist was speaking to you and they said something like "park walk go tomorrow." This sentence is disjointed, is it not? The key elements of the sentence are there and after quick thought you would be able to understand that this person is saying something to the effect of "go for a walk at the park tomorrow." In understanding flow we understand how information should be organized to make it easily understandable to the person that you are communicating with. With out that organization that information has to be reordered for it to make sense. Modifiers must be applied to the correct nouns, actions, states or events to make sense just like in the corrected sentence I provided above.

What do I mean by applying modifiers? Try looking at math, probably the most universal language out there. If I were to write the following

2 + 3 = 5

you would understand what is going on. The equation above is telling you something. The equation is saying that the sum of 2 and 3 is 5. The numbers being the objects and the '+' and the '=' signs being the operators that act on the pieces of information we provide. Let's take a closer look at this example. When I said "2 and 3 is 5" this is happening in your mind: the term "2 and 3," the operator and telling your mind to group the numbers 2, 3 (I'm trying not to use the word "and" there) together as a single term; the 'is' term is telling your mind that an equality is happening, that "2 and 3" = 5. If I were to tell you that "Billy and Joe are boys" your mind does this: "Billy + Joe" = Boys. Which is quite similar.

When we communicate information, we are doing the exactly the same thing in math-- that is we operate on information using verbs or actions to develop relationships. Now, let's move on to our next point.

When communicating it is best to understand the fundamentals of communication from the receiver’s point of view. What is happening when we listen or read, we are acquiring information serially (in sequence) and this is important to understand because this is the way we interpret information. If that sequence is out of order we are thrown for a loop. There is a reason for this, because it is the way that a language governs the way we think.

Why is it that I stress the term "the way we think"?

Let's start with this, this essay that you are now reading.

"To understand what a real essay is, we have to reach back into history again, though this time not so far. To Michel de Montaigne, who in 1580 published a book of what he called "essais." He was doing something quite different from what lawyers do, and the difference is embodied in the name. Essayer is the French verb meaning "to try" and an essai is an attempt. An essay is something you write to try to figure something out."

--The Age of the Essay, Paul Graham (bold emphasis, mine)

Let's put this into perspective. Think of this essay from the writer's point of view-- as in me as I am sitting in front of my computer typing this essay. You might take the material you are reading for granted at the moment, but for me, this essay is appearing right in front of my eyes; I am watching the cursor move across the screen as I am typing this essay; nothing that I am writing is scripted, every word I am typing isn't planned. What I am doing is thinking while I am writing and by writing, I am using language as a framework to think.

Let's take a closer look at this. Every sentence I write, follows a certain syntax (grammatical rule); the word that precedes next is dictated by what I write before it. Suppose that I said, "I'm going to..." and paused there. What are you thinking? You're waiting for the next word that is going to make sense for the previous statement. "You're going to.... what???" This is what you should be thinking and also that should exactly be what I should be thinking too. The next word that comes out of me can only be something that makes sense in that context. The only terms that would make sense could be "take a walk,""go for dinner" or say "pass my test," but what I said before controls what I think to say next and this is what I mean by language governs the way we think.

When we speak or write we don't usually have an exact picture of what exactly we are going to say. Suppose that my computer crashed right now, I'd lose this essay but if I were to rewrite it, the words I use would be different but the contents of the ideas would remain the same. The way I think and how I write is dictated by the language I use. As I write, information is being drawn out of me, in a way that makes sense governed by rules of the language.

The implications of this result is interesting, because right now I am learning a new language and with a new language, comes a different way of thought. How do you express something for which you do not have the words? Without the words, some thoughts cannot exist in different languages; the ideas are lost in translation (but this is a bit of a tangent). What is realized is that in different languages, the thought processes occur differently and in order to properly communicate in a certain language we too must also learn to think in that language.

I have realized this much through my studies of the Japanese language. I started off with trying to learn Japanese by memorizing grammar, but that was painful and didn't help me much. What I realize now is to understand how these people present information and learn to think in their language in to improve my proficiency. By understanding how they perceive information, then without thinking I will know what to say next. This is flow and it is no surprise that the word "fluent" is a derivative of "flow."

Licenced and etc...

Today was a most interesting day.

My driving records from Canada came in Wedensday. Usually I wouldn't need them for getting my licence transfered into the Japanese format but since I just had my licence renewed in Canada, the issued date was right before I left Canada. The problem being is that the Japnese requires that a licence to be valid in your home country for atleast 3 months (ie they don't want any newbie drivers on their roads). So after contacting the appropriate offices in CanadaI got my driving records, which have all traffic violaitions in the last 5 years and the original issue date of my licence. In the last 5 years, I only had one speeding ticket and that was getting caught in the hornet's nest comming off the UBC connector where the cops love taking in drivers.

After dealing with Japanese beauracracy in Japan, I have a profound appreciation of the Canadian licencing offices. Applications for licence transfers are only accepted between 1:00 and 1:30 pm. Why oh WHY do they only accept applications during a 30 minute window of opportunity, I have no clue. I've also been warned that they are sticklers for the time limit. Come in 5 minutes too late and you're out of luck-- come back tomorrow. In Canada whenever I needed something done, I just go there directly and it is dealt with on the spot. End of story.

Getting a licence in Japan the usual Japanese way is painful. The whole ordeal takes minimum 1 day (that's if you're lucky!). Sign up only occurs in the morning. A written test is taken, paper work is filled, you attend seminars and in the afternoon the driving tests occur and not before. They even have a cafeteria in the office for people going through the process. When testing happens and if you pass great (most people don't pass on the first try here); if not, come back tomorrow. What a waste of time.

In Canada, you just phone in and setup at time for the road test and that's it. Waiting and paper work is minimal. The written test is only required for the learner's permit. It's a huge difference in terms of wasted time. Absolutely mind boggling.

Aside from being amazed at beauracratic inefficiencies, I did have the nice opportunity of meeting up with some English teachers from NY and California while waiting in the office. We exchanged numbers and we'll be in touch. They've been teaching in Japan for about a year now and have a nice network for foreigners setup. Keen on events and fun, definately a great way to meet people.

On my way home, I picked up a new pair of shoes for oh about $70 bucks since my current set is falling apart. Also got something like a Japanese summer kimono for $15, I'll post pictures of it soon after I have a chance to wear it.

On the way home I stopped by the used scooter shop to check on prices and ran into a really friendly mechanic. We ended talking about a lot of things. Things like philosophy, culture exchange, history and etc. He's really keen on learning some English from me and is really enthusiastic about teaching me some Japanese history and culture. Totally awesome, exchanged phone numbers and going to meet up with him on Sunday to show me some scooters. Right now they just got a new batch of scooters that they're fixing so I'm pretty happy about that.

Came back to the dorm, ran into Diego and Kim (from Korea). Headed out to grab some Japanese noodles at a really great restaurant. The place was on TV a while back and I can attest to that the Ramen was really, really good. $8 bucks for a big bowl but I was more than happy with the quality.

Came home and crashed. Dropped by Olen's room to see what he was up to (supposedly there was a movie night planned but that's on hold due to lots of work on his end). I asked if he'd be willing to teach me to ride a scooter (he's an avid biker back in the US :) which he was more than happy to oblige.

A large group of people at the dorms here on a 1 year exchange program are preparing to move out in the next 2 months. Exams are comming up and people are doing their best to balance work and fun during their last leg in Japan. I'll be sad to see them go. I've only been here for 3 months now and will now have to deal with departing friends. Time is short, always make the best what you have...

Geepers Peepers... where'd you get those eyes~

Hi Everyone, I'm still alive over here dispite not posting for the last few days. I've been incredibly busy running around. By the time I get home sometimes, I just don't have that urge to think and write things down anymore. Today was a much more relaxed day. After running errands, I got home at 5:00 pm terribly hungry, prepared food, cooked for 1 hour and my body decided to tell me that it wasn't that hungry in the first place. Bah. I ate a little anyways and took a nap.

Now on to today's topic: eyes. In Vancouver, nearly everyone I know wears glasses. Take a sample of 10 friends, perhaps 8 or 9 of them will be wearing glasses or contacts (or the general term I like using is "occular enhancers"). That was pretty much the norm. I on the other hand am a weird exception that I don't wear glasses I am also sometimes refered to as "eagle eyes" in some occasions. Before comming to Japan I had my eyes tested for some proceedure they needed. The result came out that I had about 20/19 vision.

Just as a note here. According to this webpage, 20/20 vision is supposed to be the "average" distance a person can read an 8 mm tall letter at a range of approx 10 meters. Either people's vision have changed with time or people in Vancouver have bad eyesight, could be either/or or possibly a combination of the two, who knows.

Anyways, for my Japanese listening class, we watched a documentary on glasses. It turns out that 49% of Japanese people wear either contacts or glasses from a sample of high school students (I thought that was low) where as the US high school students were at 25%.

As it turns out, some foreigners moving into Japan from places like the US that didn't wear glasses found that they had to start wearing glasses after a few years of Japanese study because Japanese characters (Kanji in particular) due to eye strain complicated characters. After a quick survey of people in my class, it was the feeling of people in France, Russia and Sweeden that the majority of their population did not wear glasses. Asian students from China indicated that a high percentage wore glasses. A possible factor of bad eye sight could be from complicated Asian character sets versus English letters.

The resarch followed up on eye usage when reading and found that people reading Kanji tend to focus their eyes on the characters closely during reading which is a possibility for eye strain. People reading English do not tend to focus on specific letters closely. Actually, it has been said that (recall if you've seen that funny e-mail that went around with nothing but spelling mistakes) people reading English can distinguish words by the general forms and glancing at the first and last letters of the word; people use this method sometimes to skim text. I tend to look at word shapes and pay less attention to individual characters. As a result, I am quite famous for my poor spelling.

After watching the documentary, I hypothesize that people that wear occular enhancers, in general, are more detail oriented people compared to people that do not. Of course, metrics are required to measure how "detailed" a person is (quantifying a quality is a little tricky and I hope you have an appreciation of my use of italics and boldface in the previous emphasis). But if I were to wave my hand at this argument, 'detailed-ness' could be measures in terms of how well a person can make plans with minimal deviations or how in depth they notice change in environments. It would be interesting to see if there is a correlation.

Comming from a person that doesn't wear glasses, I can tell you that this much-- I am really, really bad at details (do I really need to give examples? Naaaahhh). Keep your eyes peeled on this hypothesis and see for your self :)

Quotes of the day

"The last time few times I tried to cook, I set the fire alarm off 3 times. The guard told me to give up cooking" --Friend's name that I forgot atm :P

"My sister is totally freaked out by Japanese fashion for guys. I'm going to go out and buy a shirt that says something like 'Run with the Wind like Dream Who' in big bold letters in pink. I'll also need something like yellow shoes." --Olen from Colorado

Japanese fashion isn't that bad... well... I'll take some pictures and post them and let you be the judge... just need to find a way to take pictures of people around the city without looking like some weirdo.

Working on some wheels and something funny

Working on getting some wheels here in Sendai. I fully intend on being a menace to the roads here. I just need a licence. I wasn't aware about getting an international driver's licence before leaving Canada. What it means is that many countries abroad have agreements with some sort of international convention where you can apply for an international driver's licence so you can drive in another country without going through the hassle of getting tested and etc. Well that plan was foiled because right before I left home, I had to get my driver's licence renewed because it would have expired while I was in Japan. I have since recieved my new driver's licence but I have a new snafoo to deal with.

According to Japanese bureaucracy (I prefer for call it a bureaucrazy instead) that I must have a driver's licence that was valid in the country I resided in for atleast 3 months while I lived there. The silly thing is that since I had my licence renewed right before I left, the "issued" date was somewhere in late April. They have no other way of confirming that I have been driving for.. well a long time.

I gave ICBC a call today in the morning to get a copy of my driver's record mailed to where I am in Japan. So I logged into the internet and made an internet-to-telephone call using something called skype. I pay about 2.5 cents per minute as opposed to the astronomical long distance rates they have in Japan. Once I got on the line with a ICBC rep I had to give him my address. I live in the Tohoku region of Japan so I was trying to spell out Tohoku to the poor guy on the other side of the phone. Things didn't start out so well when I said "I live in the Tohoku region... (this is me trying to spell it out over the phone)'T' as in 'Tea'..." yeah, it wasn't one of my brightest moments. Oh well, whoops :)

In a week, I hope to have my driving record and I'll be on my way to getting some real wheels in Japan. I'm going to need to travel on during the summer breaks here if I can get my studying done fast enough.

Challange Darth Vader to 20 questions?

http://www.sithsense.com

Doo it! Muah ha ha ha ha

A page out of the history books

I like history. I used to hate it in high school, not to mention when I was taking IB history. Years after graduating from high school I came back to visit the old stomping grounds (which, unfortunately is gone and been since rebuilt). I dropped by my history teacher's room to say "hi." This was somewhere in 2002 after international relations were going nuts. After 9/11, North Korea declaring that it was pulling out of the NPT and international relations were in a total stir. I told him that after studying all that (painful) history at the time that I've come to appreciate the intricacies and the level-headedness needed to look at history. He told me "if I had a dime for every student that came back and told me that, I'd have enough to retire several times over."History is very fascinating because we see it happening over and over again. Just with different people and whatever new toys that engineers and scientists come up with over the time.

And so, here I was at about 10:00 am, reading the news at the BBC when I came across this article: France accepts Trafalgar Legacy if you don't know this event, don't feel so bad, neither did I until I read the article. The long and sort of it is, 200 years ago when Britian and France were at war (and hell they were at war a number of times for really long periods too if you remember your history) the British crushed the French navy at the battle of Trafalgar with the French losing 10,000 men out of 15,000. Fast forward 200 years later, the British are celebrating their historical victory and the French? Well they're sending their biggest air craft cruiser to the party to observe. And so, history is history. Yeah still the Brits and the French are still thorns in each other's sides politically, but according to the article as silly as their governments can get sometimes, they're still friends.

Considering how much history humanity has, it could be hard to imagine how everyone is getting along. Everyone's probably been to war with everyone else at one point in time. The Romans steamrolled over all of Europe, so did the Mongolians. The Greeks used to be a powerhouse and the French with Napoleon had their little run at European continent too. In the 1900s there was WW1 with the Russians, Germans, French and comapany. There was WW2 with Japan and Germany getting clobbered by the rest of the world after the US finally stepped in. But for the most part after 50 years most countries are getting along fine.

I mean look at Germany, they're part of the EU now, no hard feelings right? 60 Years later, the Japanese, Chinese and the Koreans are still having issues. I think this is ironic... (and yes I love irony... because it is the simplest way of showing others how stupid things are) the Japanese and Chinese are having issues about history books and yet they failed to consider how the rest of the world dealt with things.

Some might think that I am just making a "hand waving argument here" that I am glossing over the trickier parts of international relations and that I'm over simplifying. But consider this: international relations in other parts of the world aren't any simpler. Humanity has had a long history, probably whatever we've done was done by someone else in one point of time. History does and will always "repeat."

Fitness score = 79 (whatever that means)

I went to the gym yesterday and they have this machine called the "In body" machine. The technique uses something called "bio-impedance" measurements or electrical pulses to measure muscle mass, muscle distribution... etc etc. So I stepped on to the machine and decided to get analyzed.

Results were interesting. I weigh 64.8 kg; 11kg is fat, 37.3 kg is fluid, 13.6 is protein and the rest (2.92kg) is estimated to be minerals. The percent body fat caculation is provided on the sheet and it indicates that I'm 17% fat. Nice to know. Ideal male fat distribution ranges between 15%~19% so I'm told from a quick search on the net.

My arm muscles currently weigh approximately 2kg each, my leg muscles are approximately 6.5 kg a piece. Abs, back and etc weigh approximately 16.7 kg. According to the machine, my ideal weight is 67.6 kg. Where I need to gain 3.6kg of muscle and lose 0.8kg of fat.

And there you have it!