Blake Rolls

French bread, butter, a slice of Brie, a slab of Japanese market-fresh salmon sashimi topped with just enough wasabi to make it exciting.

I call them Blake Rolls, and they are the epitome of French-Japanese fusion cuisine.

I ate all my salmon before I decided I should take pictures, sorry guys. Next time I'll have lots of food-porn.

I'm really full of exceedingly expensive food. Time for dessert!

These cookies are far better than my expression in this picture would indicate. They have the consistency of slightly undercooked Subway cookies... mmmm, ミルクチョコレートマカデミア. Better yet, they're entirely salt-free!

THE WORLDS FAVORITE SWEETHEARTS POPEYE THE SAILORMAN 1929-1999

A few weeks ago I went to Ishigakijima with some NTTers (& Thom), and I never bothered to post any of the pics I have, nor any kind of oh-so-entertaining commentary that I know you - my adoring readers likely above average in attractiveness and intelligence - are so very fond of.

I really haven't the endurance or typing fortitude to include much more the subtitles of the photos below, as going into any amount of detail would require multiple volumes and at least two or three appendices, mostly filled with translations of monkey-related portmonteaus.

I began the trip by heading out to a capsule hotel in Tokyo near the bay, so I could head over to Haneda airport early, early the next morning. The capsule was maybe 6 feet long or so, making stretching more-or-less impossible (the diagonal was almost enough), but it had a built in radio and TV, and the bathing room in the basement had a bath full of rubber duckies. I kinda thought that sleeping in a coffin would be a bit claustrophobic or something, but it was actually okay. I'm not going to even mention the porno channel. Shit.

Craig on the Rodeo Boy near the bathroom in the Capsule hotel. Its presence confuses me.

You know you're in Okinawa when there are significantly more orchids in the airport then people. They were everywhere, they were beautiful. Other than that the airport was like most I've been in. Except the Starbucks was much harder to find than I expected.

This is at the A&W at the Okinawa Airport. Thom is enjoying his root beer in a mug, trying not to laugh maniacally at the guy in the background. His mullet didn't come out very well in this photo (hes adjusting it now, it looked much better afterwards). But seriously dude, what were you THINKING?

I didn't even notice Thom in the changing room when I took this. Hes trying on bathing suits at Okinawa airport to find one he likes. Jess is looking less than impressed with my choice of headwear.

You know you're in Ishigaki airport when there are more lion fish than people. Well, not really. But there wasn't very many people, and there were more lion fishes present than I'd ever seen before. I can't look at one of these fish without thinking of Livingston. (Picard's fish in his ready room)

When we got into the city we had to find a grocery store to stock up on edible supplies. This kumon center was right across the road. (FYI, we ended up getting mostly bread, canned tuna, bananas, snickers, canned fruit, and a mystery meat that I lovingly and delusionally called "bacon" for barbecuing)

Waiting at the bus station in Ishigaki city (we were there A LOT). Oliver was a big hit with the locals. Nice hat Lars.

First beach at Kabira. Its the only beach that we went to where there was a significant amount of other people. But we were just there for a bus-layover anyway, and no swimming was allowed. The water was pretty, but the weather hadn't cleared up too much yet.

This was either the beach near where we camped, or the beach at Kabira again. Pretty.

On the bus trying to find a place to camp. Its jungle out there. (I can't believe I caught a picture of myself in a roadside mirror. Crazy)

Okay this was Yonehara beach, supposed to be the best snorkelling on the island (I'd tend to agree, based on a statistically invalid sample size). The sand was kinda ouchy though, because of all the little coral pieces. But the place was absolutely deserted, just us.

Oww. Note to future-Blake. Coral wounds sting, watch yourself when going through coral underpasses. Also, tiny coral splinters in wounds inhibit the healing process.

More stunningly beautiful beaches. I think this was sunset beach. All those footprints are ours, it was completely flat and formless before our arrival. This may have had to do with the 2-3 "BEACH CLOSED" signs that we passes. But we bought off all the curious townsfolk with Snickers bars.

After my troubling sunburns of the first day, I tended to remain in the shade when not submerged in the water. Lucky there was this fantastic outcropping of awesomeness to hide under.

Me after Sunset beach. Waiting in the bus-stop place while artsy Oliver takes a well framed shot. I was very salty and sunburned by this point.

View from the peninsula on the northeast side of the island, at the very tip near the lighthouse. It was a fantastic view of the whole island. Thom looks pretty picturesque and thoughtful there. Shortly after he pulled out his iPhone and stood in the same place with his arm outstreached for 5 minutes trying to take photos of himself looking picturesque and thoughtful. We love you Thom.

View from the same spot, south towards the main hulk of the island.

There was something about that island out there that didn't look right. I had to get a better shot.

Every time I looked at this island it looked Photoshopped.

The shadows were ALL WRONG. You can always tell a Photoshop job by the water, its just impossible to get water right, ya know. But seriously folks, this thing was so perfect that my mind couldn't let it enter my reality.

We went to Taketomi island on the very last day before we had to catch our flight. It was only a 10 minute ferry ride away, and there was a festival going on (Miss Yaeyama beauty contest). The island was tiny and most was an old fashioned Ryukyu village flanked by scenic beaches.

This space was intentionally left blank.

Concert going on after the Miss Yaeyama thing. A man came up to me and tried to explain the purpose of the singing and the festival. I didn't get much from him, crazy islanders speak a language that is to Japanese as Beowulf is to modern English.

Yah he's tied up by his nose ring. Sad story.

End.

PDENG 55 Course Evaluation

Oh god, I can't believe its all over. It feels pretty good. I enjoyed writing my course evaluation, as this is the first time I've really put into words my thoughts on the program. I suppose that I should have done something for the formal investigation thing way back, but I was more in "suck it up and bear it" mode, as I knew no changes would really influence me. I've included my thoughts that I submitted with the course critique.

Course Content:
PDEng55 may be the most relevant and topical PDEng course of them all, and has most faithfully adhered to the PDEng tenant of not teaching, but evaluating preexisting skills. Despite this the assignments are tedious, rote and largely meaningless to a group of students (engineers in training) that are used to accomplishing, solving, or at least elucidating something during the completion of an assignment or course. PDEng offers nothing to take away for a student, only a check mark and knowledge of another tedious life experience finished. A way of improving this type of content escapes me, but I leave that in your very capable hands.

Course Experience:
My mentor (Ada Zacaj) marked very fairly, communicated well, answered emails promptly, and obviously was working to improve the PDEng experience. It is interesting and notable that in previous PDEng courses (15-45) I had passed (50%+) an assignment on the first submission only once or twice total (in failed cases of course I proceeded to do only the corrections suggested by the marker, resubmit, and pass), but during this course I received a Strong (100%) on each submission the first time. No significant changes have occurred in my writing skills or experience that would explain this radical change. It is also worth noting that other students under Zacaj also mentioned to me "easy marking", but students under other mentors still experienced the "hard marking" that we've seen before. This seemed to work out quite well for me, but perhaps was not fair to others?

Strengths:
The topics covered (distinctions between Canadian and international Engineering accreditation and professional organizations, globalization) are far more relevant than any covered in a previous PDEng course. The marking was so much easier than previous offerings of PDEng that it was almost laughable (and therefore much more enjoyable and less tedious for a student).

Improvements:
If any significant improvement on the course experience for students is to be had, a radical change in course content and philosophy must occur. I am not sure that even the PDEng Task Force is quite up to this challenge, as even a significant improvement towards "bearable" for students (and please make note of this: the course is currently completely unbearable for students, I think surveys must show this), would not do much to sway student opinion, which is very firmly entrenched (as evidenced by T-Shirts everywhere) in believing "PDEng Sucks".

I'm not one to say that there is never any hope, but PDEng has done much to alienate the student body and token "Task Forces" and "Course Evaluations" are too little too late for many of us. Thankfully the student population is highly transient, and after a few "generations", all memory of the painful experience of PDEng may be gone. If my experience with PDEng55 is evidence of a PDEng program improvement (and not just an improvement from 15 to 55), then significant steps have already been made. Please continue these steps and good luck.

Final Comments:
One of the few redeeming facts about PDEng is that it gets students writing... something. Technical writing, and more broadly being able to write intelligently about most anything is a very valuable skill, one that PDEng cultures to no end by requiring lengthy reports on topics as vague and soft as "globalization" (PDENG55) or "What animal best represents you and your coworkers?" (PDENG15). At least there has been some improvement based on those two examples. But officially PDEng does not exist to culture extemporaneous and flexible writing skills (read: BS), but rather to develop a series of vague and ill defined "professional skills". I think PDEng may work better if everyone acknowledged exactly what purposes it serves. A: to introduce students to rote, meaningless work that will become a (however small or large) part of any career, B: to look good on paper (for students and the university), and C: to allow students in their future careers to look at any tedious task, smile and say "At least its not PDEng!".
(N.B. This is not a joke, this purpose is justified and laudable, just better not cloaked in some "Professional Development" costume. Even a small amount of jest about this introduced into the course would make students feel a lot better about it.)

read pls?

can someone translate this please? I know it has something to do with an inspection of some kind on April 13th related to fire and/or disaster, but my kanji is still bad.

More Hatto Hiyari!

This month's hatto hiyari. Enjoy!

Care should ALWAYS be had when moving in wheeled chairs!

This is going to confuse a Japanese man somewhere. Its harmless enough that I consider it a test of whether these are being read.

I'm leaving, on a jet plane...

Hey so I haven't posted here in a little while.

Last weekend I climbed Takao-san (they use post-nominal honorifics here for mountains). It was pretty exciting and harrowing at times. I forgot my camera though (lame) but a friend of mine who is a much better photographer put a bunch up on flickr, which I will put up here when I get back.

Get back from where, you ask? I'm heading to Ishigaki-jima, an island in the Ryukyu archipelago south of Japan (way, way south, about as far south as you can go and still be in Japan). The latitude is about the same as the Bahamas, and so we're going there mostly for snorkeling, rainforesting, beaching, diving, etc. Should be a good time. Unfortunately we're camping, and the Ishigaki camping season doesn't start until April 1st (so we can't get a permit).

This doesn't seem to faze my intrepid fellow-adventurers, who are more than happy to skirt the law in order to full experience this tropical getaway.

Two quick things.

One, this place has coconut crabs. To quote Wikipedia: "The coconut crab, Birgus latro, is the largest land-living arthropod in the world, and is probably at the upper limit of how big terrestrial animals with exoskeletons can become in today's atmosphere."
...
"Reports about the size of Birgus latro vary, but most references give a body length of up to 40 cm (16 in)^[13], a weight of up to 4.1 kg (9.0 lb), and a leg span of more than 0.91 m (3.0 ft)^[14], with males generally being larger than females. There have been reports in the literature of specimens measuring 6 feet (1.8 m) across the thorax and weighing 30 pounds (14 kg).^[15][16] They can live more than 30 years ^[14]."


They also look like the guard the beaches of hell itself.

Here is a pretty picture of the beach near the place we'll be unlawfully camping:


pretty.

See you all on the flip side. I'm catching a flight out of Tokyo early, early tomorrow morning, so I'm staying in a capsule hotel tonight. I'm going full-on Japanese style accommodations for this trip.

Nihonglish

Nihonglish highlights that I certainly hope all my Japana-friends will adopt:

This evening, when it was waffling between freezing rain and melting snow, to my boss:

"Tenki fucking hidoi desu yo" (The weather is less than ideal, would you agree?)

Talking with one of my collaborators:

Oota-san: "Mitsubishi Kagaku wa iten o yoginaku saremasu. (Mitsubishi is forcing me to move [jobs]).

Me: No shit desu ne? (Is that so?)

My Japanese is doing pretty well, such that I can often understand quite a bit (if not most, if I know what to listen for) of what is said by my coworkers. But my speaking is still lagging behind, so I end up just responding in English. Its a good thing my coworkers are in just about the same position as me (except reversed), so our conversations work out better than expected. I intersperse some Nihongo into my speak just to make me not sound like a complete gaijin to passers-by.

Some Random Stuff

So I haven't posted here in a few days and I know that means that everyone's Buzz feed has been eerily empty. No one wants an empty Buzz feed, especially not Google. I feel as though I have to do my part to destroy Twitter and Facebook.

I pulled all these photos off of my iPhone. So I apologize for the ridiculously bad quality. Its a first generation one, and it has a case on it which has a very, very dirty little glass lens-protector that I have been meaning to remove for about 3 years, so theres a bit of a halo around everything. The photos are anywhere from a few weeks to a few hours old.

This is my favourite kitty from the Akihabara La La Neko Cafe that I went to wayyy back. He was by far the smallest, and almost troublingly thin, but he had a great regal look to him, so I had to take a picture.

Don't worry, thats the last cat cafe picture I'll post. I took about 300 while I was there, and I'm saving everyone's time by not posting them all with very predictable "Awww, KITTY!" captions.

This one is from the Canadian Embassy in Tokyo. Theres not much to say about this, except that I was quite disappointed not to find any REAL mounties at the embassy. There was one guy guarding the door that ushered me in like royalty after I showed him my passport, but no mounted police to be seen, other than this cutout. I'm pretty sure thats a Wayne Gretzky doll or something on the left.

Ahh, the famous Saita-san, caught on film at last. This is us after the reception at the Embassy. I look like a monster! And hes wearing crazy heals on his dress shoes in this pic too.

Okay this is a really zoomed out shot, and the quality just isn't there to zoom in much, unfortunately. On the right is the Yokohama wharf, the longest in the world I believe. It looks like something that the USS Enterprise (the starship or the carrier) would dock at. This ship on the left is the newest of an experimental line of mega-catamarans, a couple of which are in service in the US Navy (

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSV-1_Joint_Venture

). A Japanese ferry line just purchased a couple of them, and this is one of them. In true Japanese fashion, the port and starboard sides are covered in favourite A.A. Milne characters (Read: Winnie the Pooh). The ship is massive and looks like that stealth ship from a few James Bond's ago, except flamboyant, pink and covered with Piglet instead of mysterious, black and covered in stealth materials.

I'm really not a big fan of ships, but this one uses magnetohydrodynamic propulsion (known as a Caterpillar drive) that has no moving parts, but induces a current in sea water, and then uses a changing magnetic field to "push" the conductor (the sea water) away. So no moving parts, and this mother can go up to 60 knots (110+km/h).

So yesterday we (the normal crowd of NTTers and myself) went to the Kirin Beer Garden, according to a travel website the 8th most visited attraction in Yokohama (of 9, about 5 of which are hardly a 5 minute walk apart).

When we got in were were greeted by this cuneiform tablet. My brilliant understanding of Japanese was able to extract "Sumer", "Mesopotamia", "Beer" and "Welcome". From the information sign nearby, not the tablet, Katakana was not exactly the lingua franca in 3000 BCE Sumer. It seems as though Kirin (the oldest brewery in Japan) fancies that it can trace the roots of its recipes back to Mesopotamia (where beer was first invented).

And to Egypt (where beer was used to trick thousands of slaves into building pyramids - according to the brochure). The lobby with the ancient beer recipes also had a table for doing origami. If you could follow the instructions there and make a certain shape, you could trade it for an awesome "Blue Samurai" (kind of beer) bandanna. See Exhibit A.

Exhibit A.

The free tour came with some free beers at the end of it. This picture is noteworthy as Jessica is a staunch supporter of alcohol abstinence until marriage (did I get that right Jess? If not you're going to have to come out of lurk-mode and correct me). Don't worry, she didn't actually drink anything. Other than some revolting 0.00% quasi-Sprite-beer stuff. As you can tell from the picture, Arianna picked up the slack.

It was an empty threat all along.

Buzz increases my readership, so I'll stick with it. The hell with the rest of you, the "boos" have it, retracted votes and all.

So at work, once a month, we have safety meetings. During these meetings we first have a seminar outlining... something about safety. Then we have smaller groups which talk about... something about safety. Then we each have to say something about safety. Forgive my vagueness, as last month my Japanese wasn't quite up to snuff to following along. Maybe tomorrow it'll be different.

One thing I do understand is the Hiyari Hatto, It means "close call" or "risk incident". But its not Japanese. Its spelled out in katakana, which means it must be a western term, but I've never heard of it. Anyway, we need to outline things that happened (or we need to exercise our imaginations) that might have been dangerous. And draw pictures. Without further ado, this month's Hiyari Hattos, by Blake Farrow:

I especially like my lines of constant magnetic flux.

NB: My hands are to scale.

mmmmmm. wet nanoparticles.

These are going to get more and more outrageous, as I have to do at least 2 per month. And I don't think anyone is reading them, and definitely no one is understanding them. HAND CANCER!!

Tam WAS there, and it WAS a party.

Yesterday I went to Tokyo Big Sight (see photo attached to a previous entry) on Odaiba island to check out the Nanotech Expo 2010.

My boss wanted to go to some cancer diagnostics seminar at 9am entirely in Japanese, so I slept in (a lot) and aimed to be there around noon.The previous night I was at an event put on by NanoQuebec at the Canadian embassy (this night was a whole other story, full of intrigue, suspense, and me failing miserably at French), and I was invited to come to a Canadian Embassy luncheon at Big Sight.So around noon I went to the “Canadian Pavilion” at the exhibition hall.This pavilion was pretty much the smallest booth in the place (Saxony had a bigger booth right beside Canada… where the hell is Saxony?), with about enough room for a WIN poster, a NINT poster, and a big Canadian flag.There was some Japanese woman there that spoke passable French (but no English, how useless is that), and she didn’t know anything about any luncheon, and didn’t seem to appreciate my lighthearted joking about her being excluded from the party.

I ended up wandering around the exhibition hall for a couple hours, had a bunch of people try to sell me everything from a nano-imprint lithography system to 99% purified metallic SWCNTs (I took a free sample of these, never know when they’ll come in handy).I checked up on the Canadian booth every once in a while, but no familiar faces showed up, just the lone Japanese woman who wasn’t exactly up to snuff on nanotech.The Canadian booth was almost as quiet as the massive Nano Iran pavilion, but not nearly as awkward.I went out to grab some curry (Japan has great curry, they love it here and its always the cheapest thing around), came back, and there were my buds from NanoQuebec.They gave me directions to the (nearly finished) luncheon, so I headed over.

The door was locked, so I had to be sneaky and wait for some bald guy to leave, then I jumped in, grabbed a plate of Sushi from the buffet, and walked up behind Professor Tam, while Shirley Tang gave me a strange look.

“Hey”, said I.Tam turned around and I very much enjoyed the look on his face when he realized who I was. “How did you possibly get here?” he asked. “Just snuck in,” I responded, “into the room, not the country”.

So there was a whole retinue there from UW.Tang, Tam, Yeow (Systems dude), Frank Gu (Nanobio mastermind), and the NanoRobotics Group’s faculty advisor (I teased him mercifully little about the NRG).Alain Francq (who at one time had Donkers’ job, now an executive at WIN) and Arthur Carty were there too.We ate sushi and chilled around the Canadian booth for a while, discussing lofty nanotechnology related subjects.

Tam to his credit spent much of the time trying to convince Alain and Carty to invite me out to dinner with them.Eventually I had advocates in the form of all the Professors, and WIN caved into the pressure.

Before we could go to dinner, it was decided that everyone would go to Tokyo station to buy Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets for the next morning, to avoid the rush.I served as the native guide, leading the group through the maze-like Tokyo train/subway system.Of course its rush hour, and we’re trying to get into and through the biggest station in Japan.It didn’t help that apparently Shinkansen tickets for a later date can’t be purchased in the Station, and you have to go to some ticket office outside to get them for the nest day (my Japanese saved the day at this point, good thing I’ve learned all the vocabulary for directions!).We lost Frank Gu for a while in the middle of Tokyo station, but he was eventually recovered with minor injuries.

We eventually made it to the restaurant, just over an hour late.And of course it was a Nomihodai/Tabehodai (that is, all you can drink and all you can eat) place with a 2.5 hour time limit.All the tables were full, and my inclusion had tipped the number of people over the number of pillows (no chairs here, this was a real Japanese restaurant).So I squashed into a table with my NanoQuebec friends from the previous night.They were already fairly intoxicated, and speaking in nothing but French.There was a Scottish guy at the table to for some reason, but as luck would have it he spoke near-fluent French too.I tried to keep up, and eventually the table’s conversation switch to half-French half-English, a combination I’m pretty confortable with.

So I spent the night drinking and eating to excess watching a bunch of scurrilous French nanoscientists discuss the finer points of ramen bukkake.

Nice Wired, I can dig it.

Wired finally decided to put the How-to they absolutely HAD to have me write in the middle of final exams in December into their magazine and website.

They put together this sweet graphic to go with the article though. I approve.

They really truncated what I sent them, and didn't include any of the follow up questions they asked me after I wrote the how-to. One fun one:

Wired: How many doughnuts would you need to make a cell that produces enough energy to, say, heat your bath?

Blake: Interesting question, these are all pretty rough numbers, so bear with me. It takes about 23MJ of energy to heat up a bath tub, and to do this in a reasonable amount of time you'll need around 68 meters squared of doughnut solar cells - translating into about 100 000 doughnuts worth. You can heat up 10 bath tubs at once with only one tractor trailer load of doughnuts.

A more reasonable task is lighting up a light bulb. Lets assume its pretty efficient, fluorescent or LED. It takes about 0.45 square meters to light one up, which translates into about a trash bag full of doughnuts. Lets just say this isnt the best source for purifying TiO2, and tea isn't the best sensitizing agent.

Veni, Vidi, Victus.

I came, I saw, I was conquered by Ja La La Neko Cafe.

Photo Evidence

More from my adventures in Akihabara (the Electronics Mecca of Japan) coming soon. I'm too exhausted to post more than this gem.

Not my ideal coffee.

Silky Black: Stylish, intelligent, luxurious. Keeps you relaxed. Wait.. what?


Not exactly what I want in the morning.

As luck would have it...

the biggest nanotechnology conference/expo in the world (at least according to the organizers) is happening in Tokyo Big-Sight next week. This Big-Sight place is a mother of a exhibition center, precariously perched on 4 inverted pyramids. Check it out:

I wonder what the inside looks like?

The venue is located on Odaiba, which is an artificial island off the coast of Tokyo, but now is pretty much a metropolis in its own right.

Anyway, so my boss told me about this and asked if I wanted to go, so of course I said yes. I enjoy a good nanotechnology conference as much as the next bloke, and this whole getting-paid-to-go-on-business-related-fun-travel-experiences is new to me, and its a development I really quite enjoy. WIN (Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology) is going to be there (I heard this from the horse's mouth, more on that in a bit), so I'll get to see some friendly Waterloo faces as an added bonus. Tons of graduate schools, big powers in industry, and national nanotechnology institutes will be in attendance, so I intend to use the many hours on the schedule devoted to "networking" to their full advantage.

So one day off work next week, awesome. Then my boss tells me that he got an email about a day of nanotechnology seminars being put on by the Canadian embassy in Tokyo, the day before we had planned on going to this Nanotech 2010 expo. I really don't know where Saita-san gets all his information, but they're remarkably informed, or hes just on a number of very broad mailing lists. I check out the seminar roster, hoping that there will be someone from Waterloo, but unfortunately they're most all from NanoQuebec, and a couple from Concordia U. Saita-san says "We already got one day to go to the expo next week, so I'll ask Sugoi-san (aka. Dr. Amazing) if we can go to this, but he might have a problem".

Well Dr. Amazing lived up to his name, and now we had two days off work next week. In an amusing anecdote, Saita-san called up the Embassy asking them if it was okay for me to come to the seminar day. He gets off the phone and walks up to me:

"Excuse me?" (hes always ruthlessly polite), "They are very happy!" He says.

"Whos very happy?" I reply.

"The.... あの.... The Canadian government, the Canadian government is very happy to have you come!" he stammers, "No, thats not right..."

I proceeded to laugh nearly uncontrollably.

Also, I emailed a certain director of a certain Waterloo Nanotechnology Institute asking if he was coming to Tokyo to hang out. I was expecting a professor-like one word response, but instead he was a champ and emailed me his itinerary, and invited me to come to an event with NIMS (Japanese National Institute for Materials Science) and chill with him and the Canadian Ambassador to Japan. How awesome is that? Turns out Francq is coming too, along with 8 Waterloo nano researchers.

I'm betting on Tam being there. Its goina be a party.

I'm going here next weekend, and thats final.

Neko Ja La La Cat Cafe omg kitty. I miss Slevin.

Walking in a winter wonderland.

Thats right, we had our first snowfall of the year last night. Looking outside the window this morning was great, there was maybe 3 inches of snow on the ground, the sky was clear, and I had already had an extremely pleasant cup of coffee.

Then I walked outside. I'm not really sure how the snow managed to accumulate so much -- we must have quite the difference in temperature from night to day. At 9am, when I was walking to work, it was 10 degrees outside and really sunny. The pretty looking snow was actually 95% water, with a pretty layer of clean virgin slush on top. After a couple steps, my pantlegs already soaked through, I scowled at the Japanese weather gods, marvelled at the apparent structural integrity of this liquid-y ground cover, and headed to work.

Oh the Japanese, they never disappoint in surprising me. I'd have thought they might pull a Vancouver/Seattle and freak out over the meager snowfall. No wai. A thousand little Japanese worker-bees were on the street, SHOVELLING. No snowplows (not that they were really needed), but all the same the minor roads near my dorm were already mostly cleared by the beginning of my commute. It makes me wonder whether Japan has a volunteer snow-removal service. Or maybe something mandatory - it really seems like a Japanese thing to do - to require that every family clear the road infront of their house in the morning.

Another surprise on my way to work - the bus companies pulled out all the stops in order to prevent any loss of traction on any of their buses. It appeared that the entire bus fleet had put chains on the drive tires. For a couple inches of watery slush. Overkill? You decide.

By halfway through the day, you'd never suspect that it was anything less than a normal midwinter day in Tokyo. 12 degrees and sunny. No snow to be seen. If a slushy day at the beginning of February is all this place has to offer in terms of Winter, I'm a happy man.

In other news, I've rediscovered the use of torrents. After a few years of hardcore Rapidshare use, I've come crawling back to Demonoid (me being far too cheap to pay for my own Rapidshare account for 8 months). Its still quite great. Nowhere near as fast as saturating cable downloads at megabytes per second, but more than enough for downloading books. For movies, I'm back to leaving my computer downloading overnight, since after 1am or so, the fiber line going to my building becomes a lot less full, and speeds skyrocket.

My needs are quite simple, you know.

I am quite happy with very spartan conditions. But I must say that the last 4 weeks here in Japan have truly tested my limits. But I've taken some very good steps in the right direction, towards a life that I think can sustain my health and sanity for the next 7 months.

Friday was my first pay day, and as such I did a bit of shopping this weekend. I've been pretty tight with money over the last month, as I brought a certain amount with me, and getting more from my bank account in Canada proved to be a little tricky. You see, whatever Visa may tell you in their commercials, its most certainly not all you need in Japan. In fact, in my (admittedly limited) travels thus far, I haven't ever had a chance to use my credit card. Every time I walk to the nearby subway station, I pass by a glasses store that has a visa sticker in the window, and the taxi I was on in Kanazawa city had a similar Visa sticker, but I don't really need to buy any glasses at the moment, and Mitsubishi Chemical grabbed the tab on the taxi ride.

So I've been living on the 40 000円 that I brought with me. My expenses are pretty low (lunches at the cafeteria at work are around 340円, and you can only buy so many coffees at Tully's (I tend to stick to the awesome cappuccinos there, which are also about 340円). But today I got a couple hundred thousand yen shoved into my Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi account, so I figured I'd put it to some use. Went to the train station, got out twenty thousand or so, and went to the mall.

I grabbed a map of the place (its a mother of a mall, spread over 5 or 6 buildings near the subway station), and sat down to a cappuccino at Starbucks. I can read quite a bit of Japanese, you know, especially as most words you encounter in store names, and maps of malls are in Katakana (syllabic alphabet used for western terms). But it takes me a long time. So I sip my cap thoughtfully, and with a pen, translate the map of the mall as best as I can.

First stop - back to the Starbucks counter, to buy some ground coffee. They're quite impressed when I respond to their first two questions when I walk up with a bag of beans correctly. Truthfully, I didn't understand more than a couple basic words, but obviously, what are you going to be asked when you buy beans at Starbucks? 1: "Would you like these ground?" and then "How would you like these ground?". I deftly dealt with that with easy responses of "Hai" and "Co-so o onegaishimasu", hoping that saying "coarse" with a Japanese accent would be sufficient. It was, and I walked away with some Coarsely ground extra-Bold.

Next stop, something with which to make this coffee. I had spotted a kitchen-ware store on the map, so I headed there to grab a coffee press, a mug, and a single spoon, fork and knife. I ran into a couple kids in the store, who naturally began to stalk me, giggling and running away when I made eye contact, only to sneak around to catch a glimpse of the towering gaijin. A strict reprimand was forthcoming from their parents, who apologized profusely to me in formal Japanese before running away. I grabbed my utensils, mug and coffee press, and got out of there. (These items were almost troublingly expensive, but I had no idea where to go to get them cheaper, or if the price was competitive. So I bought them anyway.)

Another item which I really, really needed was a pillow. The one provided with my "bedding" is about 6 inches square, and full of large HDPE beads. They're supposed to simulate the feeling of a bag full of small stones - a traditional Japanese pillow - and a must say it is a great simulacrum. I don't really dig sleeping on small stones, so I had wrapped up the pillow in one of my blankets to make an almost-normal sized pillow. But after a month, it was getting to me. I hadn't noticed anything on the map that really popped out at me as a store that would most definitely sell pillows, and I didn't know how to say pillow in Japanese (NB. Its ピロー, or pi ro). I found this store called "24-times" that had a massive pillow section. And a massive futon section. Futons in japan are slightly cushy mats that you put on the floor and sleep on. So I splurged and bought a great feather pillow, along with a new futon to put on top of my crappy thin one. Next on the list was an SD card reader to get pics off of my camera, which I completely forgot the need for when I was packing in Canada. This wasn't a problem at all -- electronics stores are about as ubiquitous as you'd expect in Japan, though not as cheap as I had hoped.

I had searched on Google maps earlier to find a bakery nearby, as French-style bakeries seem to be quite common in this country. I ended up finding a fantastic one only about a 10 minute walk from my doom. Armed with a loaf of french bread and some tasty pastries, I headed to the grocery store. There I stocked up on necessities. Peanut butter (Skippy's Smooth, of course), Nutella, butter, bananas, and orange juice. Along with some microwavable meals. Peanut butter/honey/nutella (any combination thereof) + banana sandwiches are as filling as you can get without including something that must be cooked, and I don't have the facilities to cook anything. Notably, cream is only to be found in bags full of little creamers, and sugar only comes in bags of sugar packs. Even with my lackadaisical view on trash, this seemed excessive packaging. So I figured I'd stick with black coffee.

I was really weighed down by this point (mostly by the futon), and had to waddle back to the dormitory. There I sat myself infront of my computer (with my newfound, now wirelessly routed, and still awesome) internet, started up streaming a Toronto radio station, made myself a sandwich and a great cup of coffee (theres an insta-hot boiler on my floor), and sat on my new pillow.

So no more sleeping pretty much on a bamboo matt with a stone-filled pillow for head support, no more drinking canned coffee out of a vending machine in the morning, no more using the same disposable wooden chopsticks for about 30 meals in a row, no more going to sit outside of a coffee shop in the morning (which doesn't open til 10) just to steal some internet to call home, no more shitty Japanese bread made with rice flour thats only sold in packs of 4 slices.

I think I can handle it here no problem. Though I can't imagine some people I know in my position even now that I'm leaving in the lap of luxury compared to a month ago. They really should have included all this in the brochure.

Its a small Japan after all...

Ohaiyou, kats and kittens.

I'm tending to my readership with my salutations, as its actually nighttime here, but morning in the civilized (western) world.

If you want to hear about the awesome part of my business trip, and not the lame coincidences that are pretty much only significant to me, please skip to the "OMG JAPAN YOU SO CRAZY".

I got back from my business trip yesterday, and I have to say, it was a great time. We flew out (my first time in first class. not too special in Japan apparently, at least not on commuter flights like this one) Wednesday morning, bound for Kanazawa City on the north west coast of Honshu island (The main island in Japan, where Osaka and Tokyo are). I got a sweet view of Mount Fuji on the way, and before I knew it we were landing... 40 minute flight. It took significantly longer to get to the airport.

So boring shit happened, had lunch, checked out JAIST University, met up with a couple profs, wowed them with my nearly uncanny understanding of everything (except for Japanese), the usual. This JAIST place is crazy, less than 1000 students (all masters or phd, best of the best of the best, sir), but no less than 5 HRTEMs (and they're getting a brand new 6th one soon), 5 SQUIDs (superconducting quantum interference device), 4 NMRs, a fleet of femtosecond lasers and a fucking MBE. This place is the best of the best for material science graduate research apparently, outside of University of Tokyo.

So anyway, I went with my boss to meet this guy named Maenosono-sensei (the quantum heterostructure sensei, not the karate kind), who I'm to be collaborating with. Hes all kinda into quantum dot, metal nanoparticle, magnetic shit for medical diagnostics and such. So I picked his brain for a while for FYDP related reasons. By this point he knew I'd worked at Notre Dame for a while, and asked whether I knew this guy Taku Hasobe. I said yah, I did, because he left ND right before I got there, and I spent a good chunk of my term hearing about how awesome he was, while I attempted to reproduce his work. Maenosono called up Taku and brought him over and we had a good chat about living and working in South Bend Indiana. The strangeness in all this is that my boss at ND told me that I had to try to find Taku while I was in Japan, I said that was highly unlikely, being that there are 160-some million people there. Well I ran into him in less than a month. Life is very strange sometimes.

OMG JAPAN YOU'RE SO CRAZY. MCRC put me up at this fancy traditional Japanese hotel while I was there. The hotel room was massive, with a bunch of rooms, all with the nice Japanese bamboo tatami mats, slidable paper walls, the whole shebang.








Looks pretty great right? Notice anything missing?

Theres no bed. I was somewhat miffed at this, and my boss said to sleep on the tatami (bamboo) mats. When we went out for dinner, I wasn't a very happy camper. I became much happier when I realized that the restaurant we went to wasn't a restaurant at all, but a Japanese hunting lodge up on a mountain. There was only a single room, with cushions around a firepit with a grill on it. They handed the 5 of us a big plate covered with meat. Some japanese is said, and Saita-dawg translated:

"She says that this is bear, this is deer, and this is... I don't know the word: big hairy pig... wild pig". We barbecued an unholy amount of bear meat, venison and wild boar over an open flame. And then a big pot of bear soup came out that we cooked over the same fire. It was legendary.

I got home and they had moved a bed into my room. Then I went and chilled in the volcanic mineral hotspring baths at the hotel's onsen.

And all was well.

My office smells extremely strongly of Fruit Loops. But I'm the only one who recognizes the smell and its blowing my mind.

That is all.

One more thing.

So I'm collaborating with a lab at JAIST (The Japan Advanced Institute for Science and Technology) for my research at Mitsubishi Chemical. Turns out I'm going to be going there every once in a while to compare notes and use some of their equipment (Mitsubishi Chemical's MALDI-TOF machine hasn't been assembled yet. Epic fail).

I thought this place was going to be down in Tokyo, but it turns out its on the other side of the country (literally, I'm on the Pacific, and its on the Sea of Japan). So on Wednesday I'm flying out to Kanazawa City for the first of (hopefully) many business trips. They're putting me up at a hotel for a couple days and I get to check out the labs at JAIST (one of the best post-grad research universities in Japan).

Kick ass. And I'm going to Okinawa in March for a tropical jungle + beach holiday. I've gotta use those 10 vacation days, you know.