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!
Wednesday, June 24, 2009
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.
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