Tokyo

 

 As I said before, I was in Tokyo last week for Fulbright orientation. It was like breakfast club, only the principal in our movie is really awesome (his name is Dr. Satterwhite and he is freaking awesome). Of course, there was the cool guy, the tough guy, the hot girl, etc, but it was only at lunch that I realized I was the dirty/dumb guy (my clothes smelled and I was pretty messed up looking). I can’t tell. Anyway, it was pretty fun and the other Fulbrighters were pretty cool (besides being huge nerds). I got to learn about all their projects, some of which I am really jealous like the guy that is going to go camping and mountain climbing all year. I also toured Tokyo and saw most of the famous sites. It was alright, but I want to see more rural stuff, like where Dave is (http://traditionaljapanesedancemoves.wordpress.com/). 

 

One very cool thing I got to do, that Dave didn’t, was attend a party hosted by the Deputy Chief of Mission to the Ambassador of Japan. It was really nice and we met a lot of people (some of the nerdier Fulbrighters met a lot more people than everyone else!). They had really good food and everyone there seemed very very important or just arrogant. I will probably never again go to a classier party than that one in my life. 

By the way, WordPress is a pain in my お尻, and it won’t easily let me process pictures, so I’m just going to post a few of my favorites and do the rest later. 

Here are some old people doing tai-chi in Shinjuku National Park:

Here is the famous shrine in Asakusa, Senso-ji, can you spot the three nerds? 

Here is a great big pagoda at Senso-ji. It reminds me of the Ninja village in Final Fantasy VII. In fact, a lot of things in Japan reminds of something I’ve seen in a video game (think silent hill), I have been planning a post about just that topic.

I see these everywhere, they don’t actually smell like pot, what good would that be?

Meiji Jingu:

Shopping arcade at Harujuku. Apparently it’s famous, or so said one of the nerdy Fulbrighters that brought me there.

And that’s all for now. I think I’ll be heading back to Tokyo this weekend to hang out with some homeys and newly acquired homeys, either that or stay in Tsukuba and make myself known at the local foreigner scene. 

 

Alright, this one is for Nick

I was in Tokyo last weekend. We stopped into a GasPanic (which is a shady club for foreigners, but we were there to try the pizza) and saw a poster about an upcoming event at which a couple rap groups would be playing. The thing was that each band had the F-word eloquently infused into their band names. Here is the poster: 

The name of the event is “Face Bash,” and “Attack of F*n Basta” will be there!

“Runch Biking”

Sunday, Yuliy and I rode around for a while before hitting up a pizza place called Shakey’s. It was good deal considering 1) I was craving pizza since the day before I left the States and 2) for only 780¥ you could get the Runch Biking (lunch viking). When I paid, I found out that the 780¥ discount only applies for the weekdays, so I would have to settle for Weekend Warrior status and pay about 300¥ more. The cheese was very tasty and sharp and they actually had some pepperoni. Each slice was about as thin as a magazine, but since my stomach has shrank since coming here, I was only able to eat about 9 slices (which is about half an American pizza) and that’s after not eating all day. They also didn’t give free refills, but they had fresh cut pineapple, which was VERY good.

Folk Festival

Last Friday, on my way to the lab, I saw a little gathering of Japanese students. Apparently, they were planning a show for later that afternoon, but in the meantime, every guy in sight was shredding on his electric guitar with at least one girl watching him. The music was pretty good, all the bands picked another (more famous) band to cover. I only saw a couple acts, but I really liked the band that covered Judy and Mary (I later found that I liked them better than the actual Judy and Mary). Their name was PowderSnow and their singer was really cute.

It seems that the age limit between childhood and adulthood here is very definite. It is twenty. Everyone below this age is a flirt and a show off, everyone above that age is a workaholic like the guys in my laboratory.

Bikes

The bikes that are popular in Japan are like American beach-cruisers. They are called ママチャリ (mama “cherry”). I guess chari is a slang word for bike. All the bikes have baskets and are pretty slow. Also, no one locks their bikes up to anything, they just put a lock around the back tire. Here are some pictures:

I have a bike made by Chevrolet. It’s really small, maybe 12 or 14 inch tires, and it’s collapse-able.

Week 1 in Japan

Hello and welcome to my new weblog! I’ll try to keep the site updated with my experiences, thoughts and research. Here is what has happened within the last week:

Day 1 – Landed in Narita on Thursday and made my way to Tokyo. Japan looks a lot like America. Talking to people was difficult, but I was able to use the takkyubin service (which ships your bags from the airport to wherever you want) and finally get to my hotel room. 

Day 2 – I woke up at 4 in the morning from the jet-lag. Japanese television is really fun to watch even though I don’t understand what’s going on. There was a pretty funny little black-and-white sketch on with these two girls dancing to this song while an old guy and a young guy were watching them. 

Anyway, after eating some good tanuki-soba, I made my way to the Japan-US-Educational-Commission (JUSEC) building. I also got some coffee on the way (which was really bad. The cappuccino I got last night was really bad too; I think Japanese coffee may just be bad in general). The staff at JUSEC was really nice, and I finally got to meet Brinkman-san, with whom I had been e-mailing for the last three months or so. They gave me and Yuliy (the other Fulbright student who came early) some fat checks; we went the bank and then straight to the University hotel at Tsukuba. My bags were already there (thanks to the takkyubin). Yuliy immediately put on his yukata and said, “These are awesome.” We ate tuna and mushroom spaghetti at the “Journal Cafe.” I really like Japanese restaurants so far; they are novel. 

Day 3 and 4 - Iwata-san lent me and Yuliy some bicycles and took me around apartment shopping. I didn’t really find a place I liked, but I found that Leopalace21 is kind of a rip-off. We had dinner at Iwata-san’s house, she really went over the top and made about 8 dishes. Her husband was really cool and spoke really good English.

Sunday, I just went around looking at various little shops and did a little house-hunting on my own. All the places I found were kind of cheap but really dirty. 

Day 5 - Monday, first day of classes. I met the lab-members, they are pretty cool. Ryota-san really helped me out with applying for the Japanese language classes and getting my student ID. He also has a really nice place-10 tatami and new-but is paying 4万5千円 (~$450) for it, which is more than I want to pay. Daya (Dayanand Singh) is a really cool dude. He did his undergraduate in Japan and has just started his masters program here; he speaks fluently, so if I hang out with him too much I won’t learn anything. He’s also been helping me out with house-hunting. 

Yuliy moved into his dorm-room today. It was really nice looking and cheap (8千７百円-$87 a month!). I thought about living in the dorms, but I don’t think I want to deal with the rules. 

I started really craving American food, so I bought some Pringles and Ritz crackers. 

Day 6 - I met Dr. Kaiser today; I had to jump through some hoops to get into the Japanese classes, but everything is fine now. I take my placement test on Thursday and classes start next Monday (?). I also found a house I like, it’s 3万円 (~$300), is clean inside, and is in a nice area. I also don’t have to pay 礼金、敷金 is only 1 months rent and the first month is free. (礼金-reikin-gift money given to the landlord for letting you stay at their apartment; 敷金-shikikin-deposit). I have to wait until tomorrow for the rental agency’s insurance company to approve me. So if everything goes well, I’ll probably move in Friday.

After house-hunting, Daya and I met Dr. Tanaka (Akbar, it’s true); he’s going to be my advisor since he is doing brain-machine-interfacing (BMI). He’s pretty cool; he just got back from a research position at USC for 3 or 4 years. He’s teamed up with some medical professors and they just did an MRI and EEG scan of someone; they are trying to reproduce the BMI-cursor experiment. I think being part of his research team is going to be pretty cool. 

Day 7 - I am finally woke up at a decent time today. I think I’ll try to find an abandoned bike today. There are a crap-load of bikes here; everyone rides a bike. I used to think everything would be better at OU if everyone rode bikes, but I was wrong. If everyone rode a bike, there would be no room to walk or do anything. I’ll take some pictures of what I’m talking about later today.