It's hard to think that I'll be back in the US in two more weeks. In some ways it seems more like I'm travelling than returning home. The last trip was definitely a lot more clear cut. After two and a half weeks bouncing around, the longest stay for 6 weeks in Kanazawa, it was obvious that I'd been traveling, and that I was returning home. This time is definitely different. It'll be tough saying goodbye to everyone here, but at the same time I'm honestly excited to get back to Chicago. For those that haven't heard, I'll be back the 29th. Two more weeks!
Nick's visit was awesome. It was definitely touch and go for a while, but it somehow managed to meet up at the airport fine. I was an hour late, I think I took the slowest train from Tokyo. Luckily it isn't too hard to spot another white person, even in the Tokyo international terminal. Just look for the brown hair. We spent three days in Tokyo; visited the Meiji Shrine, the Edo Museum, the prefecture government offices, and of course karaoke. McNees needed new shoes (he's size 13.5) so we spent a good part of one day shopping too. Japan does not have many large shoes, so what should have been a pretty simple errand turned into a real trial.
Being back was definitely nostalgic. Sleeping in the same place I'd spent the night straight off the plane, revisiting some of the same sites, riding the train to and from the airport... It was odd go through the same motions with Nobu, and least in part because when I left last time I wasn't sure I'd ever be back to visit him again. Being in Tokyo also reminded me just how big it is. Living in Aizu must have really dulled the memory, because the first night there I was overwhelmed, maybe even more than last summer, but the number of people. Shoe-shopping in Harajuku was probably the craziest of it all. Friday night in one of Tokyos biggest nightlife districts is not something to underestimate. It was literally a sea of people, and even having been in Japan for 5 months, the experience was totally alien.
Aizu was much more sedate than Tokyo. The weather was less that perfect, rainy season's definitely started, but we managed to get out anyways. We visited the Byakkotai graves, and then worked our way through a whole bunch of smaller temples and shrines along Aizu's east side on the way to the castle. The whole experience was fairly bewildering. Off the beaten path the signs were either all Japanese (usually handwritten) or barely comprehensible English. The tourist maps we grabbed before leaving didn't really help either. After Tokyo Aizu was just as shocking. I think we went an entire day up in the hills without seeing anyone else. It really felt like two different Japans.
Since Nick was here we did midnight meat, 1AM growler, 2AM fruit. For meat Nick bought some horse sashimi, and for exotic fruit we had a yellow melon. It turned out not to be so exotic. It was a regular melon, but yellow. The Aizu kids we were hanging out with seemed a little confused by the tradition, but I think I explained it okay. After Nick left people showed up the next night with beef and declared it was "Kleeman time".
Nobu also came to visit Aizu, but his visit was a little more sedate. It rained 4/5 days he was here, and my wallet was still hurting from Tokyo, so we ended up hanging around a lot. Luckily it cleared up for my birthday, so Nobu got to party here. We had some people over and had dinner and fireworks. It was a really weird group of people, half english speakers, half Japanese. Students, non-students, even one of our teachers stopped in. All in all really fun, even if it did make me a little homesick.
So, with just 2 weeks left here nothing has started to wind down. Theres still a goodbye party, a last visit to superstar, and a mountain of paperwork waiting. Probably one more blog entry too. If I don't get distracted.
Hope to see everyone soon!
Friday, July 17, 2009
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
With class over I figured last week would have been easy. Unfortunately, that turned out to not quite be true. The little bit of remaining homework I had turned out not to be quite so little. Between an incorrect instruction sheet, an algorithm I realized at the last minute was wrong, and a whole lot of printing errors I managed about 4 hours of sleep a night. All that finished up by Thursday though, just in time for me to give a presentation on Rose and get a flat on my bike. To round it off I managed to put a dent in my camera. It doesn't turn on, so it looks like I'm borrowing Nick's until I get back to the US. Great week!
After sleeping Friday, Nick and I headed out with Hoshi-san on Saturday. Since the barbecue he'd been planing had to be moved (to this weekend) he offered to take us sightseeing instead. First we went cherry-picking at one of the orchards in Aizu. Japanese cherries are actually not nearly as red or as sweet as American, but they were still delicious. We felt a little like giraffes at the orchard. The lower branches were picked clean, so we mostly roamed around grabbing the stuff higher up that no one had been able to reach. From the orchard we grabbed lunch and then headed out to a shrine up in north Aizu. The shrine wasn't anything spectacular, but we got to see a lot of Aizu dialect. I think I've mentioned it before, but the regional dialect here can be pretty wacky sometimes. There was a family shop near the shrine, and the old lady working there spoke with a really, really strong accent. It was half awesome to hear it, but not quite so awesome to not understand anything she was saying. Really interesting either way. The amount of region-specific vocabulary for somewhere as small as Aizu is baffling.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for Tokyo with Nick, where we're going to meet up with Nick (Kleeman) and Nobu. The whole plan seemed a little touch and go yesterday when Nick bought his plane ticket, but I think everything is nailed down now. I still have to run laundry and pack, but it's only 9pm. I can probably postpone it a little longer. The bus tomorrow leaves at 6:45, so it should get us to Tokyo with a little bit of time to bum around before meeting Nick at the airport. From there we'll probably stop at the Meiji shrine and then head to Nobu's. I'm really looking forward to the confusion there. With two Nicks and two Kleemans things are bound to be interesting. Nique is pronounced the same as Nick in Japanese, so the standby plan is no good. Oh well... I should have another short update tomorrow from Tokyo. Looking forward to it!
After sleeping Friday, Nick and I headed out with Hoshi-san on Saturday. Since the barbecue he'd been planing had to be moved (to this weekend) he offered to take us sightseeing instead. First we went cherry-picking at one of the orchards in Aizu. Japanese cherries are actually not nearly as red or as sweet as American, but they were still delicious. We felt a little like giraffes at the orchard. The lower branches were picked clean, so we mostly roamed around grabbing the stuff higher up that no one had been able to reach. From the orchard we grabbed lunch and then headed out to a shrine up in north Aizu. The shrine wasn't anything spectacular, but we got to see a lot of Aizu dialect. I think I've mentioned it before, but the regional dialect here can be pretty wacky sometimes. There was a family shop near the shrine, and the old lady working there spoke with a really, really strong accent. It was half awesome to hear it, but not quite so awesome to not understand anything she was saying. Really interesting either way. The amount of region-specific vocabulary for somewhere as small as Aizu is baffling.
Tomorrow I'm leaving for Tokyo with Nick, where we're going to meet up with Nick (Kleeman) and Nobu. The whole plan seemed a little touch and go yesterday when Nick bought his plane ticket, but I think everything is nailed down now. I still have to run laundry and pack, but it's only 9pm. I can probably postpone it a little longer. The bus tomorrow leaves at 6:45, so it should get us to Tokyo with a little bit of time to bum around before meeting Nick at the airport. From there we'll probably stop at the Meiji shrine and then head to Nobu's. I'm really looking forward to the confusion there. With two Nicks and two Kleemans things are bound to be interesting. Nique is pronounced the same as Nick in Japanese, so the standby plan is no good. Oh well... I should have another short update tomorrow from Tokyo. Looking forward to it!
Friday, June 12, 2009
Sometimes I forget I have a blog.
So important things happen and I don’t post about them. From here out I’m really going to try and pick it up. My schedule is clearing out so posting twice a week shouldn’t be unreasonable.
Classes are over now, I have my last test and paper due next week, and those are both unofficial. Of course they still count towards my grade, but things were all supposed to be finished yesterday. I guess this is just another one of those things that slides at Aizu. At least the paper’s pretty interesting. I’m reading some journals on selection algorithm for internet feeds like Google News. It goes over the models the engine uses to pick out what’s a good article and what’s a bad article unsupervised. Pretty fascinating, since actual text comprehension is one of those things that computers are really terrible at, so most of it centers around matching articles to similar ones and then looking at word frequencies to try and judge quality. The geek out ends here.
Working backwards, Andrew left yesterday morning. Everyone got together for breakfast at the Misdo next to the station to see him off. I’m going to see him in just a little over two months back at Rose (we’re living together) but it was still tough to see him off. Things are definitely going to be weird without him here. Even just having one more empty chair in the office was a bit bizarre.
So photo and fun wise I climbed Mt. Bandai twice since the last post. The first time was with the outdoor club and the second time was with some of the girls we met way back during Hanami. The one with the outdoor club was a special piece of hell. Due to some stellar last minute planning we ended up with a party at our house the night before. I had figured I could sleep through it. I’d done it at Rose before, napping through parties Tuesday night so I could get up for lab Wednesday. What I did not plan on was Japanese construction. It dawned on me as I shut my door that night that my door is in fact paper. Maybe a little better than that, I think it might be paper-mache? In the end I got about 20 minutes of sleep.
So, I meet up with the outdoor club at the train station at 5AM. I’m struggling through dreary-eyed Japanese as we ride the train to Inawashiro. From there things are looking up. The weather was really awesome, and after grabbing a snooze on the train I didn’t feel half bad. And then we passed the snow line. What I didn’t know before going was that we were going on the first day the mountain was open for the season, meaning that the snow was just far enough melted to climb up. And so from about the half way point, the climb became a muddy slog. Or snowy. About half mud, half snow. Snow followed by mud, snow hiding mud, snow covered in mud. All of this was spread over tiny, rocky trails, with branches that seemed perfectly positioned to hit Americans in the head.
After leaving at 5, we made it to the top around 12. The view was definitely worth the climb. The pictures don’t quite capture it, the sheer size of everything. The way it all looked, spread out as far as you could we could see, everywhere we looked. Maybe it was just the exhaustion, or the sleep deprivation, or the hunger, but things looked pretty great from up
there.
The way down was a little easier. Rather than struggling up rocks it mostly consisted of falling down them. Being the heaviest out of everyone there, I turned out to be particularly good at falling through the layer of snow that was over everything. I would watch everyone else go first, only to step the same place and have my shoe sink through into a pool of muddy water. Oh well. We finally made it back to the bottom around 6. I was home by 8, and asleep by 9 for a solid 13 hour night.
Getting ready to climb the second time I was more than a little apprehensive. Did I really want to climb all of that again? Nick was flip-flopping on the whole thing. The only shoes he had to wear were a pair of year old slip-on Vans. Not to turn down the challenge though, we decided to attempt it again.
In the end it turned out to be much easier than the first time. Apparently the outdoor club had (surprise surprise) chosen the longest, most difficult route up the mountain. The second time we instead opted for a more normal route, starting about half way up and avoiding most of the rough spots. I think having a decent night’s sleep also helped…
The other route also passed by some hot springs that we hadn’t gotten close to last time. Bandai is an inactive volcano, but it still has its share of weird spots. On the way up we passed by a line of buildings that were apparently abandoned. I didn’t want to poke around too much, but presumably they’d been left behind thanks to the lovely hill next to them visibly spouting sulfur gas. The pool next to them was also bubbling vigorously, and since and while Nick and I concluded sulfur gas was 'almost definately' safe, we decided not to hang out too long. (Note to Mom, it’s not toxic.)
The real adventure up the second time ended up being Nick’s pants. About 10 minutes in he stretched big to climb up a rock, and ripped out the fraying crotch on his pants. Luckily I’d decided to bring a roll of duct tape for his shoes, although I don’t think we were quite able to explain in Japanese why I had brought superglue and duct tape on a mountain climbing trip. The patch wasn’t exactly great, but it held up well enough to make it back.
So that’s the going on. I promise I’ll get out another update sometime early next week. Feel free to complain to me if I forget again.
Classes are over now, I have my last test and paper due next week, and those are both unofficial. Of course they still count towards my grade, but things were all supposed to be finished yesterday. I guess this is just another one of those things that slides at Aizu. At least the paper’s pretty interesting. I’m reading some journals on selection algorithm for internet feeds like Google News. It goes over the models the engine uses to pick out what’s a good article and what’s a bad article unsupervised. Pretty fascinating, since actual text comprehension is one of those things that computers are really terrible at, so most of it centers around matching articles to similar ones and then looking at word frequencies to try and judge quality. The geek out ends here.
Working backwards, Andrew left yesterday morning. Everyone got together for breakfast at the Misdo next to the station to see him off. I’m going to see him in just a little over two months back at Rose (we’re living together) but it was still tough to see him off. Things are definitely going to be weird without him here. Even just having one more empty chair in the office was a bit bizarre.
So photo and fun wise I climbed Mt. Bandai twice since the last post. The first time was with the outdoor club and the second time was with some of the girls we met way back during Hanami. The one with the outdoor club was a special piece of hell. Due to some stellar last minute planning we ended up with a party at our house the night before. I had figured I could sleep through it. I’d done it at Rose before, napping through parties Tuesday night so I could get up for lab Wednesday. What I did not plan on was Japanese construction. It dawned on me as I shut my door that night that my door is in fact paper. Maybe a little better than that, I think it might be paper-mache? In the end I got about 20 minutes of sleep.
So, I meet up with the outdoor club at the train station at 5AM. I’m struggling through dreary-eyed Japanese as we ride the train to Inawashiro. From there things are looking up. The weather was really awesome, and after grabbing a snooze on the train I didn’t feel half bad. And then we passed the snow line. What I didn’t know before going was that we were going on the first day the mountain was open for the season, meaning that the snow was just far enough melted to climb up. And so from about the half way point, the climb became a muddy slog. Or snowy. About half mud, half snow. Snow followed by mud, snow hiding mud, snow covered in mud. All of this was spread over tiny, rocky trails, with branches that seemed perfectly positioned to hit Americans in the head.After leaving at 5, we made it to the top around 12. The view was definitely worth the climb. The pictures don’t quite capture it, the sheer size of everything. The way it all looked, spread out as far as you could we could see, everywhere we looked. Maybe it was just the exhaustion, or the sleep deprivation, or the hunger, but things looked pretty great from up
there.The way down was a little easier. Rather than struggling up rocks it mostly consisted of falling down them. Being the heaviest out of everyone there, I turned out to be particularly good at falling through the layer of snow that was over everything. I would watch everyone else go first, only to step the same place and have my shoe sink through into a pool of muddy water. Oh well. We finally made it back to the bottom around 6. I was home by 8, and asleep by 9 for a solid 13 hour night.
Getting ready to climb the second time I was more than a little apprehensive. Did I really want to climb all of that again? Nick was flip-flopping on the whole thing. The only shoes he had to wear were a pair of year old slip-on Vans. Not to turn down the challenge though, we decided to attempt it again.
In the end it turned out to be much easier than the first time. Apparently the outdoor club had (surprise surprise) chosen the longest, most difficult route up the mountain. The second time we instead opted for a more normal route, starting about half way up and avoiding most of the rough spots. I think having a decent night’s sleep also helped…
The other route also passed by some hot springs that we hadn’t gotten close to last time. Bandai is an inactive volcano, but it still has its share of weird spots. On the way up we passed by a line of buildings that were apparently abandoned. I didn’t want to poke around too much, but presumably they’d been left behind thanks to the lovely hill next to them visibly spouting sulfur gas. The pool next to them was also bubbling vigorously, and since and while Nick and I concluded sulfur gas was 'almost definately' safe, we decided not to hang out too long. (Note to Mom, it’s not toxic.)
The real adventure up the second time ended up being Nick’s pants. About 10 minutes in he stretched big to climb up a rock, and ripped out the fraying crotch on his pants. Luckily I’d decided to bring a roll of duct tape for his shoes, although I don’t think we were quite able to explain in Japanese why I had brought superglue and duct tape on a mountain climbing trip. The patch wasn’t exactly great, but it held up well enough to make it back.
So that’s the going on. I promise I’ll get out another update sometime early next week. Feel free to complain to me if I forget again.
Wednesday, May 20, 2009
Finally
There’s been a lot to write about in the last month (a month, wow) so I’ll probably break it up into two updates. The two major things we’ve been up to were golden week, and climbing Mt. Bandai. Golden week happened first, so it seems like a good choice to update about it first. That way I can pretend like my updates aren’t’ so late…
Before I get into the story I should probably introduce Hiroshi. Hiroshi is a few years
older than us, speaks really great English, seems to know every foreigner in Aizu, and for some reason washes dishes at the cafeteria. We see him every day at lunch, and he finished work at 2 every day, so we’ve spent a lot of time hanging out with him. He drives us around town, we see the sights, speak English, and everybody has a great time.
Anyway about 3 weeks back he asks us if we’re interested in going to a festival in Iwaki during golden week. He’ll drive us there, we can stay at his grandmother’s house, and the whole thing is free. So we figured we get to participate in the festival by carrying portable shrines around the city, wearing Japanese festival clothes, and drinking free beer. Sounded like a sweet deal. Enjoy Japanese culture and party (for free) all at the same time.
The festival was on Monday, so we drove out to Iwaki on Sunday. Hiroshi’s grandmother’s house turned out to be really amazing. It was pretty large and really traditionally Japanese. We spent the night in sleeping bags next to his family shrine. My only real complaint would be the smell. His grandmother was drying fish something so parts of the house were pretty fishy.
The next day we got up early and headed to his aunt’s to get our festival gear on. It consisted of tabi, happi, and short, tight pants. We also met up with about 20 other gaijin, mostly JET teachers. At about 9 we headed to the shrine where the mikoshi was. The mikoshi ended up being a lot bigger than we’d expected. The actual shrine was about 3 feet cubed, and then had poles extending back about another 6-7 feet, and out to the side about 2 feet. After the mikoshi was blessed at the shrine we shouldered it for the first time. The mikoshi also turned out to be a lot heavier than I’d expected when Hiroshi des
At this point we’re heading out from the shrine. Hiroshi’s uncle is leading the way, using a whistle to keep everyone on step. The Japanese men who had done it before chanted as we went, and rocked the shrine back and forth. Periodically we would stop and jump up and down, ringing the bells and chains on the shrine while bystanders threw coins wrapped in tissue. By the time we took our first break 30 minutes later it had become apparent why there was free beer. Everyone stiff and hurting and we had just barely started. Even so people were really excited, and between the chanting and dancing carrying an X00 pound shrine turned out to be a blast.
Pushing through we carried it towards the sea, arriving there around noon. The beach was covered with onlookers, and we lined up with two over mikoshi. Everyone stripped down to just their pants, and we carried the mikoshi into the ocean. The absolute absurdity of the situation struck me somewhere in the middle of marching into the surf. I was in Japan, publicly parading into the water in only my boxers, carrying a Shinto shrine on my back. At about waist height we stopped moving forward and started to turn. We spun, shaking the shrines and chanting, splashing as the waves crashing into us and the people on the shore cheered along. It was absolutely surreal. To be part of something so completely alien was absolutely indescribable. After a time we plodded back out of the water, breathless and dripping, set the mikoshi down, and settled in for lunch. I shoveled soup down, chilly and completely and totally exhausted.
From the beach we of course had to march back to the shrine. After an hour or so we again shouldered the load and headed back. By this point my shoulders were really starting to hurt. Maybe it was the waning novelty, maybe I was sobering up more, maybe I was just tired, but the shrine seemed a bit heavier and my shoulders seemed a lot sorer. Throughout the afternoon we toured the city with the shrine. We took a different route back, loading the shrine onto a pickup and climbing into a bus so that we could visit the areas farther out of town. Part way through the afternoon we took another break at a shrine. Everyone relaxed for a few minutes, speaking mixed English and Japanese.
At this point we loaded it up for the last leg. Back into town, we carried it through tiny winding streets. Between people coming and going on the poles I gradually bubbled up to the front. At this point we ran head on, face to face with one of the other mikoshi. In the spirit of a festival, there was no way someone was simply going to move into the side street and let the other one pass. It turns out the preferred method for resolving mikoshi precedence is to lift it as high as possible, and then run towards the other mikoshi. I honestly don’t remember how long we went on for. Taking turns, screaming and rushing forward, only to be pushed back by the people at the front of the other shrine. It was an absolutely exhausting 15 minutes, but eventually we won. The opposite mikoshi backed into a side street, and we marched triumphantly past. I switched as quickly as possible, and took a well deserved rest.
It was 6:00 by the time we finally reached the shrine where we’d started. We set the mikoshi down, and after a brief closing ceremony took the traditional three laps around the building before heading to the onsen. After a rushed shower we all met back up for dinner to relax happy and exhausted with the rest of the mikoshi team.
It was certainly not what I expected, but it was better than I’d hoped for.
Wednesday, April 15, 2009
I really have to get better at updating this regularly. I always hit one busy week, and then just start procrastinating after that...
So everything went from zero to sixty in no time. Of course since everything got busy I've just been wishing for more free time. So last week was the first week of school. We started it off by going to two different onsen, one on Saturday and on on Sunday. Both times we tagged along with Orr-sensei. His wife and daughter were out seeing a chick-flick, so he was nice enough to shove us all in his car and take us up to Ura-bandai. That's the backside of Mt. Bandai. When it erupted (late 1800s) all of it blew backwards, away from Aizu. As a result there are a whole series of little lakes back there, and the remaining volcanic activity means a whole slew of hotsprings. Before that though we visited the rebuilt samurai school. Aizu has a really strong historical samurai tradition. If you've seen
The Last Samurai you can get the basic idea. During the late 1800s growing discontent with the handling of western powers in Japan, a civil war broke out between the Emperor and the samurai. Aizu was the last real battlefield in the civil war, and is very famous for a group of samurai who commited harikiri upon seeing the castle in flames. Aizu's castle finally fell after a month long seige, but the lasting affects left a huge mark in the local heritigate. A lot of people in Aizu are very proud of the city's samurai tradition. The school we visited is a replica built by a wealthy businessman in the 70s. The original school was completey demolished during the siege. We couldn't quite figure out some of the exhibits, but it was still really cool to see the shool. I'm also really glad we learned more about Aizu's history. Its come up pretty often, especially when comparing Aizu and Kanazawa. They were on opposite sides in the war, as Yamauchi sensei constatntly reminds us. After the school we went out of a bath. Thanks to the altitude it was still snowy, so we headed to a rotemburo. Rotemburo are public baths built outdoors. It was really amazing to sit in a hotspring outside in the snow. The view was great too, we could see the frozen lake down below. The entire thing seemed a little surreal too: hot tub, snow, naked in public. They have monkeys up there too, but we didn't see any. The biggest disappointment of the weekend.
The next day we headed back to Orr-sensei's house for intelligensia. The basic idea is to have a philosophical type discussion in english to help out the Aizu students with exceptional abilities in English. In practice it's a little tough, the Japanese students are really hesitant to contribute. On top of that there are a number of them that had trouble with the vocabulary that kept coming up in the literary discussion. I thought it was a lot of fun though. It really reminded me how much I m
iss being able to have a discussion that isn't related to science or engineering. There are definately some things Rose-Hulman is lacking. After intelligensia, Orr-sensei invited everyone to come out with him and his family up to the lake to take a hike and visit a sento. Not much else to do, so naturally we tagged along. This time we visited the Inawashiro lake. The shore was nice, and you could see Bandai across the water. I'm still always impressed by the mountains here. I guess that's what comes from growing up in Illinois and going to school in Indiana. When you've got nothing to compare them to even the tiny ones are great. So hike around the lake, then a bath. We finished up by watching the sun set from the balcony of the building, then going out to dinner.
Super relaxing, but the week kicked off from there. Monday disappeared in a mountain of paperwork. Turns out there were a lot of things that we needed to do to get registered. Most of them involved writing our names and our birthdate; Japan loves paperwork. Tuesday we worked all day on writing our presentation for Wednesday. We had agreed to do the presentation when we first arrived, after which the deal got worse. Long and short, by Monday we were scheduled to do a Japanese presentation in suits at a power breakfast, 7:00 Wednesday morning, two hours before our first classes. We started out decently on Tuesday, all of us had our speeches written by noon. What we didn't count on was how long it would take us to rewrite them into more formal Japanese. I finished revising mine with Kawaguchi-sensei (THANKYOU!) at 1AM Wednesday morning. It felt like being back at Rose: up late coasti
ng on coffee to finish everything up for a crunched deadline. The picture is the little blurb on us from the newspaper.
Wednesday morning went pretty well though. We all managed to get in some decent rehearsal time Tuesday, and the speech was solid. We all spent most of it staring at our scripts, but our Japanese came off really well, and we managed to answer the questions asked fluently. That was really a stroke of luck, they could have stumped us with any number of questions, but the only thing anyone asked about was how we had studied Japanese.
The rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday I spent in class. They were overall pretty good, but certainly different from Rose. The most apparent thing was the difference in class participation. Japanese students are really really hesitant to answer or ask questions. In my class today I answered 3/4 of the questions the teacher asked. Asking around I guess this it a big difference between classrrom dynamics here and in the States. Most of the teachers have encouraged us to keep doing it though, they're hoping maybe the whole class will catch on. I doubt it.
Last Friday was Taco night, we invited some people and made it an event. With a lot of searching, and some help from America (thanks Mom!) we managed to scrape together most of the ingredients for tacos. The one missing things was Mexican cheese. The only thing we could find shredded in a large enough package was just 'cheese'. No mention of what type, but it tasted alright. The best part of the whole food gathering process was buying the meat. We bought 1 kilo (about 2.2 lbs) at the supermarket. The butcher repeated the amount three times and double checked with the Japanese student who was with us to make sure we knew what we were ordering. The total for the meat came to $18, not as bad as I originally expected. Everything cooked up really well, and we had a great time hanging out at the apartment. Out of everything from America, I think I probably miss Mexican food the most. Those tacos made my week.
Saturday was pretty much devoted to laundry, sleep, and (a little) homework. Sunday we had intelligentsia again. I liked this week's a lot better than the week before. The topic the previous week was 'the best advice you've ever been given'. It was alright, but there was very little discussion. It was more or less show and tell. Plus, Orr-sensei laid on religion pretty heavy. There were definately times when it felt more like he was preaching than discussing. Just didn't really feel particularly right for a discussion group. Religion isn't something you can really debate with someone. This week's discussion was on love, and centered around Corinthinans 1:13. I guess he usually picks bible passages for these since it's readily available multi-language source material. Anyways, I though the discussion was much better. The reading lent it self as easily to philosophy as to religion, which I think made it possible to actually debate it. Maybe I should dig though on the internet and see if I can find something to distribute.
Anyways after intelligensia we took a hike up to the resivour for Aizu, and then went to the castle to eat dinner. The resivour was cool, but I think the castle took the cake. Hanami, the cherry blossom festival starts tomorrow at the castle, but even last weekend it was unbelievable. The castle is full of cherry trees. Easily 70% of the courtyard, the outer walls, the banks along the moat, were covered in white foliage. We have a few flowering trees back home, but seeing that many all together was really beyond anything I would have imaginged. Really, indescribably beautiful. On top of it the smell is wonderful. Plus, since the weekend the trees all over town have been blooming. Everywhere I've gone there have been cherry trees. It's really disorienting to be surrounded by flowers after how miserably cold it was last month. The actual celebration is this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. Most Japanese will go out with friends or family or their company to picnic and drink under the trees in the park. From what I've heard it's a pretty amazing departure from usual Japanese life. Everyone just relaxes under the trees for the weekend. I headed back to the castle Monday with Nick to get some pictures. I got some good ones, but they still don't even come close.
In the meantime, classes are going well. They're definately different from Rose which turned me off at first, but I'm starting to like them better. I suppose it's probably just the pace of graduate school, but it seems like the teachers do a lot less work. There are fewer handouts, fewer homework assignments, less actual instruction. However, what there definately are are large incentives to look for additional information on your own. All of the professors have encouraged everyone to read additional articles, to look at papers online, etc. In the end I think it's just strange to suddenly have a term paper and a test, coming from Rose's constant blizzard of homework and quizzes. The system is a whole different animal, but I'm not sure I mind it.
I guess that brings me back up to today. I really have to get into a more regular routine with these. Writing this much at a time is a chore.
So everything went from zero to sixty in no time. Of course since everything got busy I've just been wishing for more free time. So last week was the first week of school. We started it off by going to two different onsen, one on Saturday and on on Sunday. Both times we tagged along with Orr-sensei. His wife and daughter were out seeing a chick-flick, so he was nice enough to shove us all in his car and take us up to Ura-bandai. That's the backside of Mt. Bandai. When it erupted (late 1800s) all of it blew backwards, away from Aizu. As a result there are a whole series of little lakes back there, and the remaining volcanic activity means a whole slew of hotsprings. Before that though we visited the rebuilt samurai school. Aizu has a really strong historical samurai tradition. If you've seen
The Last Samurai you can get the basic idea. During the late 1800s growing discontent with the handling of western powers in Japan, a civil war broke out between the Emperor and the samurai. Aizu was the last real battlefield in the civil war, and is very famous for a group of samurai who commited harikiri upon seeing the castle in flames. Aizu's castle finally fell after a month long seige, but the lasting affects left a huge mark in the local heritigate. A lot of people in Aizu are very proud of the city's samurai tradition. The school we visited is a replica built by a wealthy businessman in the 70s. The original school was completey demolished during the siege. We couldn't quite figure out some of the exhibits, but it was still really cool to see the shool. I'm also really glad we learned more about Aizu's history. Its come up pretty often, especially when comparing Aizu and Kanazawa. They were on opposite sides in the war, as Yamauchi sensei constatntly reminds us. After the school we went out of a bath. Thanks to the altitude it was still snowy, so we headed to a rotemburo. Rotemburo are public baths built outdoors. It was really amazing to sit in a hotspring outside in the snow. The view was great too, we could see the frozen lake down below. The entire thing seemed a little surreal too: hot tub, snow, naked in public. They have monkeys up there too, but we didn't see any. The biggest disappointment of the weekend.The next day we headed back to Orr-sensei's house for intelligensia. The basic idea is to have a philosophical type discussion in english to help out the Aizu students with exceptional abilities in English. In practice it's a little tough, the Japanese students are really hesitant to contribute. On top of that there are a number of them that had trouble with the vocabulary that kept coming up in the literary discussion. I thought it was a lot of fun though. It really reminded me how much I m
iss being able to have a discussion that isn't related to science or engineering. There are definately some things Rose-Hulman is lacking. After intelligensia, Orr-sensei invited everyone to come out with him and his family up to the lake to take a hike and visit a sento. Not much else to do, so naturally we tagged along. This time we visited the Inawashiro lake. The shore was nice, and you could see Bandai across the water. I'm still always impressed by the mountains here. I guess that's what comes from growing up in Illinois and going to school in Indiana. When you've got nothing to compare them to even the tiny ones are great. So hike around the lake, then a bath. We finished up by watching the sun set from the balcony of the building, then going out to dinner.Super relaxing, but the week kicked off from there. Monday disappeared in a mountain of paperwork. Turns out there were a lot of things that we needed to do to get registered. Most of them involved writing our names and our birthdate; Japan loves paperwork. Tuesday we worked all day on writing our presentation for Wednesday. We had agreed to do the presentation when we first arrived, after which the deal got worse. Long and short, by Monday we were scheduled to do a Japanese presentation in suits at a power breakfast, 7:00 Wednesday morning, two hours before our first classes. We started out decently on Tuesday, all of us had our speeches written by noon. What we didn't count on was how long it would take us to rewrite them into more formal Japanese. I finished revising mine with Kawaguchi-sensei (THANKYOU!) at 1AM Wednesday morning. It felt like being back at Rose: up late coasti
ng on coffee to finish everything up for a crunched deadline. The picture is the little blurb on us from the newspaper.Wednesday morning went pretty well though. We all managed to get in some decent rehearsal time Tuesday, and the speech was solid. We all spent most of it staring at our scripts, but our Japanese came off really well, and we managed to answer the questions asked fluently. That was really a stroke of luck, they could have stumped us with any number of questions, but the only thing anyone asked about was how we had studied Japanese.
The rest of Wednesday and all of Thursday I spent in class. They were overall pretty good, but certainly different from Rose. The most apparent thing was the difference in class participation. Japanese students are really really hesitant to answer or ask questions. In my class today I answered 3/4 of the questions the teacher asked. Asking around I guess this it a big difference between classrrom dynamics here and in the States. Most of the teachers have encouraged us to keep doing it though, they're hoping maybe the whole class will catch on. I doubt it.
Last Friday was Taco night, we invited some people and made it an event. With a lot of searching, and some help from America (thanks Mom!) we managed to scrape together most of the ingredients for tacos. The one missing things was Mexican cheese. The only thing we could find shredded in a large enough package was just 'cheese'. No mention of what type, but it tasted alright. The best part of the whole food gathering process was buying the meat. We bought 1 kilo (about 2.2 lbs) at the supermarket. The butcher repeated the amount three times and double checked with the Japanese student who was with us to make sure we knew what we were ordering. The total for the meat came to $18, not as bad as I originally expected. Everything cooked up really well, and we had a great time hanging out at the apartment. Out of everything from America, I think I probably miss Mexican food the most. Those tacos made my week.
Saturday was pretty much devoted to laundry, sleep, and (a little) homework. Sunday we had intelligentsia again. I liked this week's a lot better than the week before. The topic the previous week was 'the best advice you've ever been given'. It was alright, but there was very little discussion. It was more or less show and tell. Plus, Orr-sensei laid on religion pretty heavy. There were definately times when it felt more like he was preaching than discussing. Just didn't really feel particularly right for a discussion group. Religion isn't something you can really debate with someone. This week's discussion was on love, and centered around Corinthinans 1:13. I guess he usually picks bible passages for these since it's readily available multi-language source material. Anyways, I though the discussion was much better. The reading lent it self as easily to philosophy as to religion, which I think made it possible to actually debate it. Maybe I should dig though on the internet and see if I can find something to distribute.
Anyways after intelligensia we took a hike up to the resivour for Aizu, and then went to the castle to eat dinner. The resivour was cool, but I think the castle took the cake. Hanami, the cherry blossom festival starts tomorrow at the castle, but even last weekend it was unbelievable. The castle is full of cherry trees. Easily 70% of the courtyard, the outer walls, the banks along the moat, were covered in white foliage. We have a few flowering trees back home, but seeing that many all together was really beyond anything I would have imaginged. Really, indescribably beautiful. On top of it the smell is wonderful. Plus, since the weekend the trees all over town have been blooming. Everywhere I've gone there have been cherry trees. It's really disorienting to be surrounded by flowers after how miserably cold it was last month. The actual celebration is this weekend, and I'm really looking forward to it. Most Japanese will go out with friends or family or their company to picnic and drink under the trees in the park. From what I've heard it's a pretty amazing departure from usual Japanese life. Everyone just relaxes under the trees for the weekend. I headed back to the castle Monday with Nick to get some pictures. I got some good ones, but they still don't even come close.
In the meantime, classes are going well. They're definately different from Rose which turned me off at first, but I'm starting to like them better. I suppose it's probably just the pace of graduate school, but it seems like the teachers do a lot less work. There are fewer handouts, fewer homework assignments, less actual instruction. However, what there definately are are large incentives to look for additional information on your own. All of the professors have encouraged everyone to read additional articles, to look at papers online, etc. In the end I think it's just strange to suddenly have a term paper and a test, coming from Rose's constant blizzard of homework and quizzes. The system is a whole different animal, but I'm not sure I mind it.
I guess that brings me back up to today. I really have to get into a more regular routine with these. Writing this much at a time is a chore.
Thursday, April 2, 2009
It’s been a while since I last updated, mostly because there hasn’t been much excitement around here. I finally got a lab assignment last week, which is really awesome. I’m going to be working in Dr. Ryzii on research involving the semiconductor properties of graphene. After talking to him last Tuesday he gave me a big stack of books to look at. I understand the quantum basis for most of it alright, but I haven’t studied semiconductors much before, so that’s new for me. After having so much time off it’s almost kind of a relief to have something to do again. In Sweden we were told that one of the big differences between Swedish and American business discipline was that Swedes work to live, while Americans live to work. I guess it’s true in a way.
Last night we met some of our neighbors in the apartment complex. We have Chinese exchange students living across from us, and next to us. We went over to one of their apartments for a birthday party for Kunitaka (one of the Japanese students who has been hanging around with us). The food was awesome. Chinese food here is really different from what we have in America, but it’s pretty awesome. It has a lot more vegetables and less meat in it. Also there’s much less fried rice. Most of the students are from Schezwan province, which is supposed to have really spicy food. They cooked a dish similar to a nabe, along with a beef and potato dish, and some stir-fried chicken. It was all super spicy. Spicy food is definitely one of the things I’ve been missing here. Most Japanese food is not very spicy at all. The closest it comes is wasabi, but it’s a completely different flavor from back home.
The other thing I’m really missing is Mexican food. I missed it last time, and this time is no exception. There aren’t really any Mexican restaurants in Japan. A few in Tokyo, but there was nothing in Kanazawa, and there definitely isn’t anything in Aizu. This weekend we went to Koriyama (one town over). There’s an import food store there and I managed to find some taco seasoning. I think we’re going to do Mexican night soon. Hopefully everything will turn out alright.
The first day of class is next Wednesday, and it’s already looking pretty busy. We all have to give a speech at a local business meeting that morning, so it’s going to be a full day. The speech is going to be a special pain. We have to do a 15-20 minute presentation all in Japanese about our ‘experience’ in Aizu. We’ve been pretty stumped on what to talk about. Also, writing something that long in Japanese is a real pain. While we get along day to day just fine, speaking fluently for that long about a complicated topic still takes some major prep work. This is pretty important for promoting the exchange program for Rose, so we’re planning to get the speech written over the weekend so we can get started practicing it.
Even with all the work it’s going to be, I’m really excited for the start of school. The freshmen class arrived for orientation yesterday, so the school is finally feeling alive. It’s been like a ghost town for the past couple months. The only people here were us and the administrative staff. Hanami starts soon too. This month is shaping up to be really busy and that's just fine with me.
Places in this post:
Koriyama
Last night we met some of our neighbors in the apartment complex. We have Chinese exchange students living across from us, and next to us. We went over to one of their apartments for a birthday party for Kunitaka (one of the Japanese students who has been hanging around with us). The food was awesome. Chinese food here is really different from what we have in America, but it’s pretty awesome. It has a lot more vegetables and less meat in it. Also there’s much less fried rice. Most of the students are from Schezwan province, which is supposed to have really spicy food. They cooked a dish similar to a nabe, along with a beef and potato dish, and some stir-fried chicken. It was all super spicy. Spicy food is definitely one of the things I’ve been missing here. Most Japanese food is not very spicy at all. The closest it comes is wasabi, but it’s a completely different flavor from back home.
The other thing I’m really missing is Mexican food. I missed it last time, and this time is no exception. There aren’t really any Mexican restaurants in Japan. A few in Tokyo, but there was nothing in Kanazawa, and there definitely isn’t anything in Aizu. This weekend we went to Koriyama (one town over). There’s an import food store there and I managed to find some taco seasoning. I think we’re going to do Mexican night soon. Hopefully everything will turn out alright.
The first day of class is next Wednesday, and it’s already looking pretty busy. We all have to give a speech at a local business meeting that morning, so it’s going to be a full day. The speech is going to be a special pain. We have to do a 15-20 minute presentation all in Japanese about our ‘experience’ in Aizu. We’ve been pretty stumped on what to talk about. Also, writing something that long in Japanese is a real pain. While we get along day to day just fine, speaking fluently for that long about a complicated topic still takes some major prep work. This is pretty important for promoting the exchange program for Rose, so we’re planning to get the speech written over the weekend so we can get started practicing it.
Even with all the work it’s going to be, I’m really excited for the start of school. The freshmen class arrived for orientation yesterday, so the school is finally feeling alive. It’s been like a ghost town for the past couple months. The only people here were us and the administrative staff. Hanami starts soon too. This month is shaping up to be really busy and that's just fine with me.
Places in this post:
Koriyama
Monday, March 16, 2009
Things around here have been pretty quiet. With moving in all done last week was pretty much devoted to studying Japanese and wasting time on the internet. Typical that as soon as I actually have nothing to do I start looking forward to classes. Aizu is divided into labs based on the sub-school of CS that they specialize in. Kawaguchi-sensei has been asking round to try and get us placed into one. Hopefully once that is done I’ll be able to find a little more to stay busy with. We’ve been talking about travelling somewhere, but with 4 people it’s going to be a little expensive. The idea keeps getting kicked around, but we’ve all seen a fair bit of Japan during the last trip, and no one is ready to commit the money to it. In the mean time it may not be too exciting, but I guess I am learning a lot of Japanese. It would really help if there were more students around here to talk too, but the school is still mostly empty.
Over the weekend we went to dinner at Orr-sensei’s house. He’s still out of town visiting US schools but his wife and daughter were there, as well as his daughter’s boyfriend, and a handful of staff from the school. Kawaguchi-sensei came, which was really interesting. He’s only a few years older than us (just finished with his PHD in the US) and seeing him in a more casual setting outside of school really just reinforced it. Dinner was really good, and it was a great chance to practice Japanese. Orr-sensei’s daughter is starting school in the US at next year, so a lot of what we discussed was the US college environment. In Japan, students work harder in junior high and high school, but once accepted to college, it’s more or less expected to be a free ride. Even at Aizu, the staff admitted that very few students are truly motivated on their work. Coming from the US this is almost the exact opposite; students in college are expected to work harder than in high school, definitely not a free ride. Again, this is part of the reason that Aizu is so willing to accept American students. All of them are ready to work hard, even though the environment here does not explicitly require it.
Sunday we stopped in at Superstar. Since it’s their least busy day of the week we were offered a special rate. When we showed up it was completely empty, which was really nice. Instead of doing karaoke like usual, we hung out with Hoshi-san and the hostess there. It was really cool to relax with them, and again to be able to really practice Japanese in an immersive environment. One of the things that we’ve been learning here is Aizu-ben (会津弁), the local way of speaking. In Japan, regional speech patterns consist accents (like in English) as well as large numbers of completely different words. These words are completely unique to the region, and not understandable as part of the regular language. It’s really pretty amazing the amount of variance in the language. In America we certainly have accents, but there are very few words that are entirely exclusive to a specific region. Another interesting discussion we had was over social interactions. Nick mentioned that he really liked the fact that in Japan people were always much more polite. The hostess at superstar disagreed. After living in New York for two years she said that she thought Americans were actually much friendlier. She said that while Japanese were kinder and more polite during initial meetings that Americans became friends with people much more quickly. I thought it was an interesting insight. That Americans were initially unfriendly, but opened up much more quickly.
This coming weekend looks to be pretty busy. Friday we are having a nabe (鍋) party at our apartment. A group of the Aizu students are coming over, and we are going to cook dinner in a large pot on the table. It’s nice that more students are starting to get back to school, I’ve really been looking forward to meeting more people here. In the mean time its back to trying to figure out the rest of the weeks before school. Where do we want to visit in Japan?
Over the weekend we went to dinner at Orr-sensei’s house. He’s still out of town visiting US schools but his wife and daughter were there, as well as his daughter’s boyfriend, and a handful of staff from the school. Kawaguchi-sensei came, which was really interesting. He’s only a few years older than us (just finished with his PHD in the US) and seeing him in a more casual setting outside of school really just reinforced it. Dinner was really good, and it was a great chance to practice Japanese. Orr-sensei’s daughter is starting school in the US at next year, so a lot of what we discussed was the US college environment. In Japan, students work harder in junior high and high school, but once accepted to college, it’s more or less expected to be a free ride. Even at Aizu, the staff admitted that very few students are truly motivated on their work. Coming from the US this is almost the exact opposite; students in college are expected to work harder than in high school, definitely not a free ride. Again, this is part of the reason that Aizu is so willing to accept American students. All of them are ready to work hard, even though the environment here does not explicitly require it.
Sunday we stopped in at Superstar. Since it’s their least busy day of the week we were offered a special rate. When we showed up it was completely empty, which was really nice. Instead of doing karaoke like usual, we hung out with Hoshi-san and the hostess there. It was really cool to relax with them, and again to be able to really practice Japanese in an immersive environment. One of the things that we’ve been learning here is Aizu-ben (会津弁), the local way of speaking. In Japan, regional speech patterns consist accents (like in English) as well as large numbers of completely different words. These words are completely unique to the region, and not understandable as part of the regular language. It’s really pretty amazing the amount of variance in the language. In America we certainly have accents, but there are very few words that are entirely exclusive to a specific region. Another interesting discussion we had was over social interactions. Nick mentioned that he really liked the fact that in Japan people were always much more polite. The hostess at superstar disagreed. After living in New York for two years she said that she thought Americans were actually much friendlier. She said that while Japanese were kinder and more polite during initial meetings that Americans became friends with people much more quickly. I thought it was an interesting insight. That Americans were initially unfriendly, but opened up much more quickly.
This coming weekend looks to be pretty busy. Friday we are having a nabe (鍋) party at our apartment. A group of the Aizu students are coming over, and we are going to cook dinner in a large pot on the table. It’s nice that more students are starting to get back to school, I’ve really been looking forward to meeting more people here. In the mean time its back to trying to figure out the rest of the weeks before school. Where do we want to visit in Japan?
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