So it’s been another week, and from today I’ve got one week left in Japan. It’s really weird to start thinking about coming home, I’ve been on the road traveling or in Kanazawa for so long that it’s really become a lifestyle all of its own. Readjusting back to home and school is going to be tough, although with the amount of stuff I have to take care of between getting home and leaving for school things will probably be just as hectic.

Since last time we have visited Hiroshima and Kyoto (we’re still in Kyoto right now). Hiroshima was really interesting. It’s hard to describe exactly. The two big monuments to the atomic bomb in Hiroshima are the atomic bomb dome, a building preserved after the destruction of the city, and the museum. Both were really strange to see. They were in some way really amazing, and in another utterly horrifying. The museum especially had a large number of preserved artifacts chosen to convey the human toll associated with atomic bomb detonation. More than anything else though both the monument and the museum were designed to make a strong case for an end to nuclear proliferation. They really encouraged a brighter future much more than they highlighted the past.

In Hiroshima we were also able to visit the nearby Miyajima shrine. The shrine dates back to the 12th century, and is build on the shore. The main attraction of the shrine is a gate (torii) built in the water a little off shore. We spent the day looking around on the island, which had a lot besides the shrine. We got to eat a regional Hiroshima specialty there, Okonomiyaki. Okonomiyaki made from noodles and cabbage cooked between a thing flour pancake and an egg. The result is kind of like a pancake, only it has egg on one side and vegetables inside. It’s really nothing like a pancake but there’s not really an easy way to describe it. The island also had the world’s largest rice paddle. It was really big. Many of the temples also had large paddles inside, since they are considered lucky. An interesting note, many of the paddles in the temples were donated by companies, and bore their names. We also so lanterns at numerous temples in Kyoto with company names on them. It actually is really common here to see pieces at shrines which companies have branded and donated. At the end of the day we walked back to the shrine, and got a chance to see the torii at low tide. At that point the water had receded and it was possible to walk out across the mud to the gate. The sun was setting and the whole thing was really beautiful.

After Hiroshima we headed to Kyoto. Kyoto was the ancient capitol of Japan and was not a major US target during the war, so it is full of old shrines and temples. Our first stop after getting to Kyoto was actually way out of the city. After stopping at the hotel to drop our bags off we headed up north to Hikone, near lake Biwa, for the national Tori-Ningen (bird-man) competition. The contest had colleges from all over Japan that had built human powered gliders to compete in both distance and time trials. They launched from a platform over the lake, and ended by crashing into the water. A lot of them were really good, we saw one that managed to cross the entire lake. There were also a couple that just took nose-dives off the platform. KIT was scheduled to compete, but they were going on a different day and hadn’t arrived yet. It was still awesome to see the gliders though, and Hikone was a pretty relaxing change from the large cities. It reminded me a lot of Kanazwa.

The same day we hopped a train back to Kyoto to visit one of the most popular shrines there, the Fushimi Inari-taisha. The shrine is really amazing because it has a series of several thousand gates (torii) that wind their way up the mountain. A series of smaller shrines appear on the way. The whole thing was really beautiful, weaving its way through the forest. The gates themselves were so dense that it was noticeably darker under them. In most places they formed an almost continuous tunnel. We arrived at about 4:30, so we managed to finish just as the sun was setting. We actually got to watch the sunset from a clearing part-way up. From where we were there was a really nice view of the city, it was an absolutely amazing sunset. Another thing that was again interesting to note was the greater involvement of commercial entities, a large portion of the torii lining the path were donated by Japanese companies to the shrine, and thus bore the company’s name on the reverse of the gate.


Nobu’s dad has a friend who is an administrator at a girls college in Kyoto, so he arranged for a group from the college’s international club to show us around Kyoto Monday. It was really fun to hang out with some different people, and it was awesome to have another chance to practice Japanese. It was another reminder of just how comfortable I’ve become with screwing up. On the bus I accidentally sad that that Colin was my love (rubu) partner instead of my lab (rabo) partner. Nobu had to help sort that one out. Thanks Nobu. We visited a few more places in Kyoto with them, including Kiyomizu-dera, Kinkaku-ji, and Ryoanji. All of them were really beautiful. Out of the three, Kiyomizu was probably the most interesting. The others were really busy and touristy (Kinkaku-ji especially), but Kiyomizu was a little less crowded. The temple was built into the hillside with a complex wood scaffold holding it up. It also had a spring from which drinking was said to grant wisdom, longevity or health. We ate dinner with the girls after. It was really confusing, but again a good opportunity to practice a little more. The next day we hung out with the girls a little more and did karaoke for a little. Unfortunately their school ( a Buddhist school) had a 10PM curfew both nights. We were told to make sure they made it back, since Nobu’s dad’s friend was the one who was going to get the call if they were late.
GJ and Ted left for the US Tuesday. It was tough to see them go, we had a lot of fun with them around. I’m looking forward to seeing them back at school.

Since then we’ve bummed around a little more, mostly visiting temples and gardens. Most notably we visited Nara today. Nara is home to a huge Buddhist temple, Todaiji. Todaji has a huge Buddha statue, a little less than 50 feet tall. It was absolutely astounding to see something that big. At that scale it really was almost impossible, even up close to wrap your mind around the size of it. You want to think it’s smaller until you find a decent object to compare its size to and realize just how huge it is.

Tomorrow morning we’re leaving Kyoto for Osaka. We’re going to stay a few days there before heading back to Tokyo. It’s really strange to think that I have only 5 days left here. I’ve been away from home so long that at this point that it almost seems normal. I can’t say I’m not looking forward to seeing everyone again though.

On the Road Again

So… It’s been a really wild two weeks finishing up the IJST program: Three finals, three speeches (all in Japanese, and one in front of the University president), two projects, and a lot of parties.

The finals and the conclusion of the regular class work were all fairly uneventful. I studied, they went alright. It was really strange to see how much I’d learned. On paper it definitely seemed like a lot, but I think that the really learning was more than that. Above anything else, I think I’ve learned how to bullshit in Japanese. How to nod my head the right way, grab the couple words I know out of every sentence, and generally look like I know what’s going on even though I’m totally out of it. When I first got here I couldn’t manage this at all. I would get hung up on what I didn’t know miss the rest of the sentence trying out in full detail the hard part of the sentence. So I suppose what I’ve really learned it how to roll with the conversation when it gets difficult. Of course there are still times when I have to stop the speaker, if I’ve missed every word in the sentence, or if I have no idea what’s going on in context. The amount of culture I’ve absorbed is pretty amazing too. Since I got here I think (hope) I’ve gotten better at picking up on things. The Japanese expression is “reading the air” and I think I can do it with more accuracy, although it’s still just as difficult as the name implies.

The weekend before the last week of classes we had a party with all of the SGE students and all of our host families. It was really cool to get a chance to see my host family again, and to thank them one more time. They’d put together a souvenir for me, a little book with some pictures, and a few pieces of origami that the kids made. It was really cool to see some of their picture from that weekend, it was a really great time, and I’m glad that it looks like they enjoyed it as much as I did. I really hope that I’ll be able to keep in touch with them.

After the formal party we hung out with the SGE students and partied a little longer. It was definitely tough to say goodbye to them. Even with as poor as my Japanese is I thought that I was really able to make connections with some of the students. Either way I know that we all had a great time with each other, and that I’m certainly going to miss them.

The last week of class was devoted almost exclusively to the final project. I know I haven’t really talked much about it up until now, but our final project was to build a Rube Goldberg machine. They’re pretty popular because of a public television show, Pythagorean Switch. If you look it up on Youtube you can see a lot of really cool stuff, they’re really good at them on the show. The kicker on the project was that everyone was paired up with a Japanese student, and we were expected to communicate only in Japanese. This resulted (even among the higher level students) in a lot of pointing, hand-waving, and picture drawing. Even that wasn’t unambiguous, I had a lot trouble working in the shop one day with my partner. In Japanese come to me is done by waving palm down and moving your fingers towards you. Go away is done by waving palm down moving your fingers away from you. Of course in America come is palm up, and go is palm down. So I saw the palm down thought he wanted me to go, when he actually wanted me to come. It was really confusing at the time, I could not figure out why he would want me to stay while he went to get parts. I ended up standing around looking dumb for about a minute before he finally walked close enough to hear him talking. At that point he asked whether or not I understood the hand signals, and we both realized what was going on.

A little more about my partner, his name was Kondo Hiroaki. He was a Junior mechanical engineer from a smaller town just north of Kanazawa. Like a lot of the SGE students he was really interested in coming to America to study. It’s a lot harder to do study abroad in Japan though. There are fewer programs set up for it, and it tends to be much more expensive.

Our part of the project was pretty unimpressive. The main part consisted of two pulleys. One had a magnet that was heavier than the counterweight; the other had a magnet lighter than the counterweight. When a block hit the switch at the beginning of our piece (we were working in groups of three pairs), it would release the heavier magnet so it could fall to the lower magnet. They would then stick together, turning both pulleys. The pulley with the lighter magnet had an arm that would hit a small car with a pin tied to it. This pushed the car down a ramp, where it would pop a balloon at the bottom, pushing over another block and raising the flag for the end of the project. I know it’s a lot of text on the page, but it was actually a really simple machine. Some of the other groups had some really complex setups using water. One built a shaft setup that would pop out marbles at regular intervals. Another popped balloons filled with sand so that the sand would fall onto pieces of paper with double-sided tape. The tape spelled out “Kanazawa”, and once all the balloons were popped it would life the pieces of paper into the air. Everyone presented their projects in front of the president on Wednesday. It was really tough to do in Japanese, but I think I’ve gotten much better at Japanese speeches since the beginning of the program.

On Thursday we had room-checkout and final conferences with our teachers before the closing ceremony at 4. Our plan was to leave directly after the closing ceremony, so we had our stuff all packed up and ready to go when we left for the ceremony. It ran a little long, so we had to hurry out as soon as it finished. We had to take a taxi from the station, and still missed the first train we had planned on. Colin barely made the second one, but GJ and I ended up taking a later on since he still had to do some paperwork to redeem his rail pass. We made it into Tokyo at 11:30, which ended up working out fine for us. Unfortunately it meant that Nobu had to go back and forth from the station 3 times that day, so he ended up spending something like 5 hours on trains. Sorry Nobu.

We stayed at Nobu’s for another two days after getting in, while we waited for some of the other Rose students to meet up with us. It was kind of strange to be back at Nobu’s and to see how differently I understood or thought about things compared to the beginning of the program. I guess it was another thing that made me realize how much I’ve really gained from the program. We hung out and went shopping a little bit, and Saturday night we went to dinner with his family. I also got to see Se-chan again, who we’d stayed with at the beginning of the program.

After meeting up with the other Rose students (we’re now GJ, Ted, Colin, Jamie, Loren, Nobu) we headed to Yokohama. Yokohama is a little south of Tokyo; it’s like a really large suburb. There was a festival the night we arrived, so the train ride was a mess. There were definitely a lot of people unhappy when we got on with our bags. We went to the festival that night to see the fireworks. It was really pretty insane. The streets were absolutely packed. Especially in the areas you could see the fireworks from, people were bunched in about as many as could fit. The fireworks were really beautiful though, it was a really amazing display, running for about an hour. There were some uniquely Japanese fireworks, like one of Doraemon, a Japanese cartoon character. It was surprisingly organized afterwards though. It really points out how much easier it is when no one is driving cars. Everyone just walked out in the streets without a problem.

Yesterday we more or less wandered around Yokohama. We made a stop at a small amusement park in the middle of the city and wandered around a shopping district for a while before taking the train down to the beach at Kamakura. The beaches here are really different, and it reminded me a lot of Wajima and Kanazawa. Rather than stretching off into the distance most of the beaches here are enclosed by cliffs or hills. We swam between 5 and 6 before getting out to head back. Before riding to the youth hostel in Yokohama we stopped at a Sento, a Japanese public bath. In Japan public baths are relatively common, and having been to one other back in Kanazawa, I have to say I like them a lot. Every bath has a set of showers, as well as a large common pool. Everyone showers before getting into the pool, which is usually kept hot (about 40 Celsius). The sento in Karakura was a smaller local one, with just the shower and bath, but some others have baths. The one in Kanazawa for example also had a cold bath, a sake bath, a sauna, and an electric bath (hot bath with low AC current through it). The sentos are usually fairly cheap, somewhere around 5 dollars, and are a really nice way to relax. They also use very little water, since the bath is just filtered and reused since it doesn’t really get dirty.

Today we’re on our way to Hiroshima. We’re going to be staying in another hostel there, and hope to see some of the famous temples, as well as the war memorial. Right now I’m on a Shinkansen (bullet train) between Osaka and Hiroshima. Having done a little more traveling I have to say I really love the trains here. They’re much quieter and more spacious than an airplane, plus they end up being faster since there’s no security or baggage check. The number of trains is also amazing because they’re used so much; when we missed our train leaving Kanazawa the next on left just 15 minutes later.

Overall, things are going really well here. Hopefully my internet will be more reliable, so I’ll be able to update a little more regularly. I’ve got two weeks left here, and I’m really looking forward to it.

Sorry there are no pictures. The internet in the Hiroshima hostel is sketchy in our room.

Winding Down

This week is the last week that I'll be here at KIT. We've finished up our finals, and all the class time is now devoted to the final project. For the project we're working on a Rube Goldberg machine, which are popular here in Japan because of a popular public television show, Pythagorean Switch. We're working on the project 6 person groups made up of pairs of two, one US student with one KIT student. My partner is really cool, and it has definately been an experience trying to get it built using only Japanese.
This weekend we had a couple field trips as a group. We visited another Shinto temple, a workshop, and a history museum. Out of the three, the workshop was probably the most interesting. The workshop was run by a friend of Solomon-sensei's who had taken over the shop from his fiance's father. The shop specializes in Polonia (sp?) wood and originally made large wooden pots to hold ashes and coals that were used to heat wood in the winter. However, as the demand has decreased they've gone to making vases, housewares, etc. A lot of the equipment in the shop is originial to the shop's construction in 1913, and many of the plates, etc. are still produced by hand. It seems to me that many more things in Japan are still produced by hand, and fairly cheaply at that. Many of the plates and vases at the shop were really reasonably priced considering it was all done by hand. We also got a chance to talk to Solomon-sensei's friend, which was really cool. As I mentioned he took over the job from his fiance's father. The really interesting part was that he'd quit a fairly good suit and tie job in Tokyo, and moved all the way out to Kanazawa to run the shop. His major innovation at the shop has been the "simple tray". It's a simple tray that can be produced very easily, they've sold a lot since they're practicial and inexpensive. The was really interesting to talk to, it was cool to get a firsthand perspective on the work at the shop.
After the shop we headed over to the museum. The museum was built in 1913 inside of a retired armory, and is dedicated to local history. The coolest thing at the museum was the old footage of Kanazawa that they had. The number of landmarks that were still recognizable was amazing. A lot of the temples, and natural landmarks especially have changed very little. Most of the footage was from the 20s, so it was also strange to see how different Japan was as a developing contry compared to today. Most of the markets and public areas seemed much dirtier, while the temples and gardens were still in the same pristine state they are today.
This weekend is the goodbye party for us, so I'm going to have a chance to see my host family again. I'm really looking forward to it, they were really great to stay with over the long weekend, and I'm really glad that I'll have another opportunity to hang out with them. All of the SGE students are going to be there too, so it's going to be a pretty big gathering.

Mailing Address

UDPATE: I posted a better address. Also (MOM) if you want it to reach me before the end of the program it needs to get sent soon. We finish July 18.

A couple people asked about my mailing address. It is:

Mr. Thomas Kleeman
Office of International Programs

Kanazawa Institute of Technology

7-1 Ohgigaoka, Nonoichi, Ishikawa 921-8501
Japan

Mail is really slow though, so if anyone wanted to send anything it has to be sent soon or it won't reach me before the end of the program.

Birthday Party, Homestay

It's really hard to believe that I've been in Japan over a month now. A lot of it is almost starting to seem normal, which is even stranger than it was when it seemed so foreign.

On Wednesday of this week the SGE stn June and July. So, after class we went out to the picnic area behind the cafeteria and had beef, udents threw a party for the people who have Birthdays vegetables and rice. Beef is really good here, it's expensive, and it does taste different from most of the beef in the US, but it's delicious. So, we hung out and ate, talked with the Japanese students, and sung happy birthday 8 times. One of the students made a really tasty cake. It was really think pastry, almost like crepe layered with whipped cream and mandrin oranges. Definately different from an american cake, it was light and fluffy, but not very sweet at all. Actually, most sweets in Japan have much less sugar than in the US. Also, most of the really sweet stuff I've had is bean paste, rather than chocolate or sugar. It has a really interesting flavor/texture, I can't really describe it.

This weekend all of the US students in the program went for a homestay with a Japanese family. One other student and I stayed with the Hara family. They lived about 10 minutes away, near the other side of Kanazawa. Mr. Hara was a Chemist at Kanazawa University, and Ms. Hara was a pharmacist, although right now she's staying at home with the children. They had three kids, (from oldest to youngest) Kotaro, Yutaro, and Shitaro. While having similar names might seem wierd in the US, its not all that uncommon in Japanese families. They were 7, 5, and (I think) 1.5. The kids were really nice. They loved Pokemon, so I watched a couple episodes while I was there. A lot of the Pokemon names are different in Japanese, but Pikachu is still the same. A lot of Pokemon are actually named after gitaigo or giongo. These two are similar to onomonopia in English, but they also include sounds for many non-auditory senses. For example, toothed (like saws) is "gizagiza" and soft is "fuwafuwa". Pikachu is actually made us of "pika" the sound of electricity, and "chu" the sound of a mouse. The other American student staying with me (Xander) brought his DS, and the kids loved it. They hadn't seen the Pokemon game before, so they sat there watching him and shouting Pokemon names. We hung out with them most of Saturday afternoon, they were really easy to talk to since they use mostly simple words and grammar.
Today we went to the samurai district in Kanazawa, and to a traditional craft "village". The samurai district is half original houses, and half modern replicas of the old samurai housing in Kanazawa. The city actually has a lot of older buildings compared to Tokyo and many of the other cities, because Kanazawa had no major military target during WW2, so only about 5% of the city was ever damaged. The entire district has mud walls along the street, with tiled tops to stop the water from getting on them when it rains. We visited the Nomura house, which had a really amazing garden. They also had katanas, armor, and a bunch of other relics from the household.
The craft "village"/tourist attaction was also really amazing. Kanazawa is fairly famous in Japan for gold leaf. The village had a lot of arts and crafts stuff, and you were able to watch most of the gold leaf being produced. Because we were with young kids we made soba (Japanese noodles). I got to eat the soba I made once we were done, it was really tasty. After that we headed back to their house and made giyoza (the Japanese equivalent of potstickers). Those were also really good. After dinner we had to pack up and say goodbye.
Overall it was really amazing to spend the weekend with a Japanese family. I'd spent time with Nobu's family, but this was completely different. We spent much more time speaking in Japanese, and it was also very different to stay in their house, rather than in a different apartment. I think the most amazing thing to me was the way the children were treated. Japanese children are given a much longer leash. While we were out they were allowed to run around more or less unsupervised. They stayed within earshot, but they were often out of sight. At school Japanese children also have a lot more responsibility. From grade one they have to clean the room themselves, and during lunch they take turns serving the school lunch to their classmates.
So, three weeks into the program, three weeks left. We're gearing up on the final project (I don't think I've mentioned it much yet), and the work is piling on a little more. I can't wait to learn more.

Sorry it's been so long between posts again. I really need to get back into a routine on updating. School is going really well, the classes are all pretty interesting and I'm learning a lot of Japanese. The program focuses a lot on fluency, so while I may not have learned many new grammar since the start of the program, I've certainly picked up a lot of new vocabulary, and I'm able to use it much faster. The most difficult thing so far has been the kanji. We're learning about 5-10 per day. I don't think I'd have any chance of remembering that many if I wasn't seeing them so often. Being able to learn a figure in class and then see it on the menu at lunch really makes it much easier to pick them up.
We had a long weekend this weekend, so most of the IJST students took trips to Kyoto or Osaka. I'd planned on trying do some biking/camping with a couple of people, but unfortunately it looks like the rainy season has started. We had rain every day this weekend, and the humidity is way up. The rainy season usually lasts from early June into July, but it started a few weeks late this year so no one's 100% sure when it's going to continue until. In the mean time I just need to keep my umbrella close by. As the local saying goes: "Forget your lunch, but don't forget your umbrella."
So instead of heading out this weekend I ended up hanging around KIT over the weekend. Saturday night we went to karaoke with the Japanese students. Karaoke in Japan is really different from in America. In Japan you rent out a private room with couches, a tv/stereo, and a karaoke setup. You can select songs using a wireless touchpad, and it queues them up and plays with, with music videos, on the TV. The system can also score you on how well you did, adding some competition to it. Suprisingly karaoke in Japan has a lot of American songs. I also tried to sing some Japanese songs, but it was tough to read the lyrics fast enough. The other thing that was really different from America was the pricing, karaoke was 3000 yen (about 30 dollars) for as long as you wanted to stay, and as much as you wanted to drink. Overall, really reasonably priced, we ended up staying for about 4 hours.

We also headed downtown over the weekend to explore a little bit. After walking around for a little while we found a temple and decided to check it out. It ended up having a really beautiful garden. We asked around later, but none of the Japanese students knew what it was called or had ever been there.A cool thing to notice in this, the vines are held up over the water by poles. A lot of the Japanese gardens have wood structures supporting the plants.

After that we shopped around for a little bit. A lot of the clothing in Japan is pretty hilarious. They really like English, they think it's cool the same way a lot of people back in the US think Japanese lettering looks really neat. Unfortunately, most of the clothing has really terrible grammar. Some of the highlights were:

"LOvE HErOiN Like live in moment not for today NOT LET YOU CONTROL ME"
"PEACE ON MARS HARDCORE"
"LUST OF SURF TRIP"
and "DAMMIT! this is how we do!"

Whether or not anyone who wears these really understands the English is questionable. Most people just wear the shirts because they look nice and English is cool. We didn't end up buying anything though, it was all designer so it was like $50 a shirt.
I did end up buying some manga. It's all in Japanese, but it has furigana, a phonetic spelling over each word, so I can get through most of it (slowly) with a dictionary. Another one of the weird pricing things between Japan and the US. Manga is about half the price here, but anime is twice as expensive.
Also I know a lot of people asked about food. I'm eating out for most meals since I can't really shop very well (the supermarkets have a lot of wierd stuff) and because our kitchens aren't spectacular. Food in Japan is actually not much more expensive that the US. Beef, dairy, and fruits are all really pricy because they have to be imported, but most restaurants just avoid cooking with them. For breakfast most days I have a piece of fruit (about $1-$1.50 each depending on what I buy) and then get something at the bakery on the way to school. The bakeries in Japan have a really different selection from most places in the US. There are a lot more things with meat or vegetables baked into them, and a lot less sweets. I really like the rolls with bacon and corn. Those run about $1 each. Lunch and dinner are usually about the same. I also eat onigiri for breakfast a lot. Onigiri are rice balls with chicken, fish, etc. inside wrapped in seawead. They're 1-1.25 depending on the filling, and I eat about two of them. Cereal is very very expensive here, which is too bad. Ramen and curry are the two most popular cheap choices for cheap, non-breakfast food in Japan. Ramen (see the picture) is kind of like the free-dried ramen available in the US, but much, much better. It is served with a variety of toppings, but pork, eggs, seeweed, bean sprouts, and leek are the most common. Ramen is between 2 and 4 dollars a bowl. You can also buy a set, which is ramen with rice and some other side, usually a vegetable, for 6-8 dollars. One bowl of ramen is usually enough though, unless you're feeling really hungry. Curry is also really popular. The curry place near our apartment serves rice and curry with a piece of pork for 5.50. This is usually way too much food for me, I've only ever managed to get through about 3/4 of it. Even food at sit-down restaurants is really cheap. Tonight I ate tempura chicken, squash, some meat, some other meat, rice, miso soup, a cabbage salad, and a meatball for 6.50. It was a ton of food, I came nowhere close to finishing. The most expensive meal I've eaten was beef at a sit-down place inside a tourist attraction for 10. There are also a fair number of American fast food places around, although they're more of a treat. Within walking distance we have a McDonalds, a KFC, and a Pizza Hut. The McDonalds and the KFC actually taste exactly like their American counterparts, but they're more expensive, 6-7 for a meal. The Pizza Hut is nothing like Pizza Hut. They serve a lot of really wierd toppings and crusts, nothing you'd recognize in the US. Also, because of the cost of cheese the pizzas are small and pricey. Overall, it's actually really cheap to eat here compared to the US. Most meals cost me less than five dollars, and I'm certainly not going hungry.
I've got to get back to homework now. Mom - I promise I'll update sooner next time.

Keeping Busy

Sorry it's been so long between updates. They've been keeping us really busy at school, and on top of it somone was being stupid and managed to knock out the internet for our building. So, the only place I can get internet is at school on the laptop they've issued, which is slow and all in Japanese. They keys are in slightly different places, and most of the menus are completely unreadable, but it's manageable.

The first week of classes have been a lot of fun. They're certainly keeping us busy, but the work isn't too bad, and it's amazing how much I've learned. Even in one week I think I've become much more comfortable with speaking Japanese in casual settings and improvising beyond the phrases they've had us memorize (please, thankyou, could you please...). The really interesting part of the program has been interacting with the Japanese students on such a regular basis. It's amazing to see how much you can communicate with a few words and a hand gesture, and it's really interesting sometimes to see the cultural difference. I really don't have room or time to type out everything I've noticed, but if anyone's interested I can post some of the essay I've had to write for the Japanese culture class.

This last weekend they canceled class Friday, and bused us all up to Anamizu to stay at a gym/dorm facility owned by KIT. Think of it as kind of a summer home facility owned by the college. On the way up we stopped at a museum dedicated to early Japanese "robots" and other cool ancient mechanics. These ranged from a purely recreational robot capable of serving tea to an ancient cart geared to maintain a set bearing by using differential gears in the wheels. The museum also had a lot of really cool demonstrations of optical illusions and perspective tricks.

From the museum we continued on the the facility at Anamizu. It was really nice to get out away from the city again, off the beaten path a little. Rural Japan is really strange, and not something I had really given much thought to before arriving. The US view of Japan really focuses so much on the neon lights and the urban sprawl of Tokyo that its easy to overlook a lot of the smaller villages. Anamizu, like a lot of the smaller villages I've seen so far, was really just a small down-town built up around a main street. The rest of the city was small homes and rice patties owned by fishers and farmers. More traditional houses were much more popular than the high-rises in Tokyo and Kanazawa, making for a lot of really scenic views. The whole look of the town was very traditionally Japanese, but a very different Japan from the one I've seen most of the trip. The black dots in the water are buoys you can see in the picture are used by local fishermen to cultivate clams and mussels.

After arriving, we dropped our stuff of an headed out to the docks by the dorm. KIT owns a dozen or so boats at Anamizu, and the program took all 38 IJST students out on a large one to get a better look at the bay. The cruise was really relaxing after being on the bus all day, and a really cool opportunity to see even more of Anamizu. We left at about 6PM, passing a lot of fishermen, pulling nets in small tugs, or checking mussels on the buoys. It's hard to really describe how strange it was to see such a different side of Japan. So much (basically all) of what I've seen in person so far has been cities. The entire atmosphere out that far seemed entirely different. I'm sure it's really not so different from the difference between the city and the country back in the US, but seeing it in Japan was very cool.

After the boat ride we had a barbecue with the SGE (students for global exchange) students from KIT. As I mentioned we've been seeing a lot of them, and it's amazing to really to see and interact with students living in such a different place on such a regular basis. After the barbecue we hung out for a while and played some card games. I also got the opportunity to use a Japanese style public bath back at the dorm. It was sort of strange, but would actually have been really nice, had they had the water at the right temperature. Instead it was up way higher than it should have been, and after two minutes in my hands started going numb and I decided to get out.

The next day we got up early, and were back on the road. This time we stopped at Wajima, a fishing town and port at the tip of the peninsula. Wajima was absolutely beautiful. The city is nestled right between the mountains and the ocean, surrounded on both sides by steep mountains dropping off straight into the ocean. We walked through an open air market there, selling a lot of locally made crafts, and lots and lots of fish. They had piles of crabs that were still live, and all sorts of squid and octopus, as well as a huge varitey of fish. At the advice of one of the SGE students I tried a free sample of what turned out to be "fish guts pickled in salt" according to his cell-phone translation. I'd already chewed and swallowed it by the time he gave me the translation. It was pretty good. I might have bought some, but I didn't want to carry it back on the bus. After the market we wandered around the city for a little longer. They had a small hotspring supplying a free public footbath, so we all took the opportunity to wait there for a while.

After that we got to see another unique feature of Wajima first hand. A lot of ports and fishing cities have a lot of fishing cities have a lot of gulls, etc. that are attracted by the bits and pieces left by boats unloading. Wajima had a large population (at least 20) of トンビ（literally kites), large hawks with a wingspan of about 5ft. The birds hang out over the town, stealing fish from the market and docks. We'd been warned about them at the market, but a lot of people hadn't taken the warning all that seriously. We could only see a few of them (1-2) because of the tall buildings, and they didn't really look very large up that high. It also hadn't really occured to anyone how aggressive they were, until we were warned by a local after buying icecream and walking out onto one of the larger streets. Not 30 seconds later one of the kites swooped down and knocked the icecream out of the hands of one of the students just ahead of me. They ended up being much bigger than they'd seemed, and much more aggressive than I'd assumed. We saw the warning signs on the way back to the bus.

We stopped at the Shiji temple on the way back. It was pretty cool, I saw a sweet monk. On the way back we passed a lot of really spectacular seashore, arriving back to Kanazawa in time to catch a great sunset. Below are a bunch of pictures I couldn't fit in above.

The maintains around Wajima. The seashore was just off to the right of this.

Most of the exchange/Japanese students at Shiji temple.

The seashore on the way back. Most of it looked like this, really amazing.

The sunset from the top of our building, Nishikawa Heights.

Settling In

Things are starting to get into a regular routine in Kanazawa. We've completed our placement tests, and been issued our laptops (reliable internet!). Classes start tomorrow at 9:50, and go until about 3:30 every day. I will be studying Japanese language and culture.

It's really a change to get settled into a regular daily routine after moving around so much. It's a little more normal, and a little less fun. Even so there's still a lot of cool stuff going on here. We were walking to dinner tonight, and stopped at a corner to check the map when the shopkeeper hustled out of one of the stores and asked if we were Rose-Hulman students. Apparently he knew Professor Lautzenheiser, a math professor at Rose, really well. We weren't quite able to figure out where he'd met him, but it was interesting talking too him all the same. He showed us a Christmas card from Professor Lautzenhesier, and was really eager to talk to us in English. He spoke really well, and apparently had learned all of it from US radio and TV. He was really excited to ask us about Japanese food in the US, and he wanted to know our opinions on the Iraq war. We ended up eating dinner at his restaurant. It was really good, and fairly cheap. The entire experience was a really strange small world experience.

We did a lot of stuff over the weekend too. The Hyakumangoku Matsuri festival was held in Kanazawa. The festival celebrates the historical unification of the region by Maeda Toshii. We visited Kanazawa castle, and Kenroku-en garden. The castle was fairly neat, but the garden was phenomenal. Kenroku-en is Japan's third most beautiful garden (who knows what criteria?) and has a bunch of trees and a river. One of the really interesting things to see were the way the trees were supported. Almost all of the large trees had wooden posts tied to the branches in order to support them in the winter. As a result, a lot of the branches were grown into strange, almost impossible shapes. I'll post a bunch of pictures once my internet is a little better.

After seeing Kenroku-en we walked back into town to watch a parade. A lot of the parade was fairly normal by western standards. Marching bands, cheer squads, boy scouts (they have berets in Japan). It also had some decidedly eastern conponents, such as a performance by the firefighters, where they did acrobatics on top of laddders raised in the middle of the street. The entire parade culminated with a samurai procession re-enacting the entrace of the victorious Maeda Toshii into Kanazawa. After the parade there was a huge folk-dance competition in the streets, with competitors from different companies dressed in different color kimonos. The entire city was alive and lit up, entirely different from the way I'd seen it before.

Overall I'm looking forward to a more normal routine. It'll be nice to settle down (a little bit).

Still Alive

So, after a bit, I've made it to Kanazawa. For those of you that might not know, I'm going to be here in Kanazawa for 6 weeks as part of an immersion program through Rose.

The train ride here was really amazing. It was a 4 hour ride by train. The first hour (and about half the distance) was by bullet train. The ride on the bullet train was really relaxing. Despite getting up to almost 200mph, there was almost no noticeable acceleration or deceleration, and the train itself was dead quiet (thanks to its electric engine). The second half was on a regular high speed train, it was noisier, but still alright. The train had vending machines and bathrooms, plus it was nearly empty so Colin and I had plenty of room to spread out.

But, it was the scenery that really made the trip outstanding. We passed through a lot of rural Japan on the way. The entire way was dotted with little villages, terraced with rice patties and tucked between mountains. We alternated between tunnels the whole way, riding for a dozen or so minutes before breaking back through to the twilight. Unfortunately, the sun set all too soon, leaving it too dark to see anything outside. Only a few sparse lights would mark the distance we traveled outside the tunnels.

Kanazawa itself is going to be a big change from Tokyo. My apartment is alright; I share a three bedroom apartment with one other person. It has a fridge, stove, toaster oven, all the normal stuff. The building is a little run down though. The closest internet is two floors down, and on the other side of the building (too far away for wireless). The tap water is also undrinkable, due to corroded pipes (they're in the process of replacing them this summer). It's really different from Nobu's complex in Tokyo, but even in a building this old the same hallmark Japanese cleanliness is still omnipresent. The appliances may be a little rusted, but the cabinets and floors are spotless.

The city itself is also much smaller. I'm a few miles from the train station instead of a few blocks, the restaurants aren't all open 24 hours, and it's harder to find ATMS. It's also nice to have some scenery though, to get away from the Tokyo landscape. Still, it's going to be different, and it's probably going to mean even more walking.

Either way, I'm really looking forward to the program. We go through orientation activities tomorrow, and classes start next Tuesday.

Not Much

Nobu didn't really have anything planned to do, so we decided to ride into Shinjyuku and look at the precinct government building, which we'd seen the other night on the way to dinner. The station at Shinjyuku was huge. It was a junction for 15 JR lines and a dozen or so subway lines. I took a couple pictures, but they don't really show much. The Shinjyuku station underground was absolutely enormous. On the way to the precinct building we stopped at a graveyard/shrine. Japanese graveyards are very different from most of the ones in the US. To begin with, everyone is cremated, the graveyard had no bodies. Also, the graves were much smaller and packed much closer together. Some graves also had more than one person from the same family. The shrine also had a well for visitors to get water to wash the graves of their family. Each grave had some sort of vase or holder for flowers, as well as a place to burn incense. The other really noticeable difference are the wooden posts. These are bought by the family and placed at the grave annually at the day of the person's death. The other thing that struck me about the graveyard was how strange it seemed to walk through a graveyard right in the middle of the city. It was a really interesting thing to see.

From the graveyard, we finished the walk to the precinct capital building. The capital building has an expres elevator up to the 45th floor, which is apparently a pretty popular attraction. You can normally see Mt. Fuji well from up there, but unfortunately it was too cloudy today. Either
way, we still got a good look at the city. It was really amazing up at the top, the view really gives you an idea of just how big Tokyo is. Looking out it stretches all the way to the horizon, just building after building. We also had a good look at the Meiji shrine from up there. It was absolutely spectacular, a solid green spot in the middle of the city.

The weather was starting to look a little nasty, so we finished up there and headed back to the train, stopping to see another nearby shrine along the way. We barely made it back before the rain started. Tomorrow we're going to pick up Colin, which means my time in Tokyo is almost up. Just three more days before I start school in Kanazawa.

Long Update

Sorry I missed updating, I've been a little busy. On Friday Nobu and I went to see the park and the national science museum in Ueno. The park was hosting a flowering bonsai competition, which was really beautiful. They had somewhere between 75 and 100 bonsais, lined up along the main street in the park.

The national science museum had a really wide range of stuff, ranging from natural history to more modern science exhibits. Nobu was really bored by the natural history, it was stuff that he'd already seen a lot of, but I thought some of it was interesting. The early Japanese history, on the cavemen, and the evolution of early civilization in Japan was cool. I'd never seen much on that. It was really similar to early American history, or history anywhere for that matter, but it was still interesting to see the minor differences.

The modern science parts of the museum we really good. The first part we visited was targeted more towards children, but it was really good anyway. They had a bunch of cool physics demos; a really powerful electromagnet, Thompson's ring, that demo with the bicycle wheel and the stool, some neat static electricity demos, a pulley setup.

The next room was on mechanical innovation, and had a bunch of really cool mechanical setups. Nobu liked this part a lot better. They had a rotary engine, and a bunch of early clocks. I thought the coolest part were the mechanical equation solvers. The one pictured could solve a set of equations with 9 linear variables, so nine equations of the form ax1+bx2+cx3+....+hx8=ix9. Pretty amazing stuff.

The last part of the museum we visited was on modern physics. It was probably one of the best displays I've ever seen at a museum. It started out on a section explaining basic measures in physics, and demonstrating the units of measurement: meter, second, kilogram, amp, ohm, volt, mol, etc. all with hands on activities. The rest of it featured a whole bunch of really cool, important physics experiments. The included the Cavendish experiment, a demonstration of enthalpy, some demonstrations of spectral lines, a Michelson interferometer, and an experiment measuring the speed of light using a flywheel and a fiber cable (similar to the rotating mirror experiment).

The coolest part of everything was probably the cloud chamber the museum had. It used super-cooled alcohol vapor to detect ionizing particles. So, you could watch through the window, and you would see paths form in the mist whenever an electron, a proton, or a cosmic ray passed through it. I took a video, I'll upload it once I get time.

Yesterday we went to Akihabra and the Sensoji temple. Akihabra is also known as Akihabara Electric Town and is a large shopping district that sells a lot of video games, computer equipment, electronics, anime, etc. Essentially its one gigantic shopping area for nerds (otaku in Japanese). Nobu was looking for merchendise related to a fairly obscure video game he plays, so we went around to a bunch of stores looking for things. In Akihabra most of the stores have tiny storefronts, and then go up like 5 or 6 stories. Unfortunately the merchendise was usually in the upper stories, above the games and manga (comics) so we did a lot of walking. We also saw a lot of weird stuff. Like giant pillows with anime school-girls on them, mouse pads with anime school-girls on them and breast-shaped gel wrist-wrests. A lot of things with anime school-girls on them. It was a little strange at times, but a lot of fun overall. Some really awesomely geeky stuff.

After Akihabara we went to the Sensoji temple. It was raining, so we went through a little fast. It was really really crowded, and seemed like a real tourist pull. The building was really amazing, but I can't say it was particularly Japanese or even really like a temple. Like I said it was really crowded and definately a tourist trap. I'd like to try going back during the week, when it might not be so crowded.

Today Nobu and I moved again, back from Sa-chan's (Nobus's Mom's friend) house to Nobu's family's apartment. I had a lot of fun staying with Sa-chan and her husband, and I'm really glad I got the opportunity to meet them. I have 3 more days before the program starts. Hopefully we'll find some more cool stuff.

Delicious Food

We didn't do much yesterday because it was raining. We stayed inside and hung out, I studied a little bit. We went out for dinner though, and I remembered to take pictures of the food this time (I know a couple people asked). Nobu, his Mom and I went out to a place that specialized in shiyoiyaki. Shiyoiyaki is chicken where the main seasoning is a salt. They served the chicken a few pieces at a time on skewers. It ranged from fairly "normal" parts, wings and thighs (picture right), to more exotic stuff, like knee joints. The knee joints were really weird. They were like the crun chewy part that you don't normally eat because its weird. It waschyn't bad, it was just a really odd texture. We also had a salad, and shredded radish with some mushroom thing and leeks. It was also tasty.

After dinner we changed houses. We left the guest room in Nobu's parents building, and took a train, 40 minutes farther into Tokyo to stay with Nobu's Mom's friend, "Sa-chan". She met us at the train station and got us back to her house. The house has a guest room, with futons (the Japanese kind) and internet (yay!). We hung out and talked for a bit, I got to use a lot of Japanese. She thought it was really strange that Americans call beds that fold out of couches futons. Today we're going to look around, since we're farther into the center of Tokyo.

Here are some more pictures of dinner. From top to bottom: "sand gut" chicken (Nobu wasn't sure exactly what this was (edit: apparently it's stomach?)), chicken hearts, chicken thighs, and finally the knee joint pieces. Yum.




The house we're staying at now.

Showa Memorial Park

This update may be a little shorter. I'm tired, and I'd really like to go to sleep.

Today we went to the Showa Memorial Park in Tachikawa. Getting in to the park was a little strange. Everything just transition, fairly abruptly, from a fairly busy city area straight into a park. We rented bikes to see the whole thing. The track we took covered about 14km in total.

The beginning of the track looped around a bunch of stuff for kids. Playgrounds, picnic areas, etc. We did stop at a couple of these and look around. One of them was a supposed to be like clouds. It was a giant white rubber think that you could bounce on. It was too cool to pass up.

We spent a lot of the time at the Japanese gardens. These covered a large portion of the park and included a lake, some traditional style buildings, and a bonsai collection. The weather was good, and it was awesome to get outside for a while.




The park.

First!

So this is the first post in my new blog. Cool. Over the summer I hope to use this in order to document my trip to Japan for everyone that wants to read about it. I'm sure there are a lot of you.

Anyway, right now I've been in Japan for a little over a day. I arrived on the plane yesterday at Narita, before taking a bus to Nobu's home in Musashi-Sakai. The flight was long and boring (12 hours) and customs was a pain. It was wonderful to finally make it out of the airport. It's been mid to high 70s here, and sunny. A lot better than Chicago.

After we got to Nobu's house yesterday we moved into the guest room. It's essentially a hotel room: two beds and a bathroom. We ate dinner and then went shopping, I found out I'd forgotten my deodorant (whoops). I passed out on the bed in the guest room after I sat down to see whether or not we had internet.

Today I woke up around 10. I set up Skype (IM or email me for my contact info) so that I could talk to my parents. We ate lunch at a ramen place near nobu's apartment. We had ramen with leeks and egg. It was really good. After that we went out shopping again. I needed a charger for my camera (I forgot a couple things) and body soap. The electronics store was pretty cool. Everything was really expensive though, that was not so cool. I guess this is one of the places that I really notice the difference in cost of living. Software is $80 instead of $50. Everything was generally about 60% more. Although interestingly LAN cables we cheaper. US they tend to average about $1 per cable, they were ~150 yen/meter here. This works out to roughly $.44 per foot. They also sold only flat cat 5/6, which was pretty cool. It was only a couple millimeters thick, with the cables put into a ribbon rather than would into a circle. There's a picture of the shopping street to the left. It was really wierd, like a mall smack dab in the middle of the city. Also interesting, most shops had tiny storefronts, but then went up like 3 or 4 stories.

Overall, everything was really nice. I'm going to bed now, I already dozed off in the middle of this. I need to stop going to sleep by accident.

More Pictures, Nobu and I at the train station.

Nobu's house.