Archive for November, 2005

Returned… but busy

November 30, 2005 at 9:07 am · Filed under japan

I returned from the conference and Thanksgiving in the U.S. a few days ago. But unfortunately I am still busy. I only have two and a half weeks left in the short-term fellowship from JSPS. I’m contributing to work on one paper, not related to my research project that I came here to do, that should be submitted soon while still trying to get something out of my original research project. I have found that six months is way too little to spend at a postdoc if you want to get a lot acomplished!

アメリカに会議や感謝祭から帰って来たんだがまだ忙しくて残念。外国人特別研究員（欧米・短期）事業というフェロシップが後二週間半しか残っていないから。自分の実験と関係ないすぐ登校する論文に参加しながら、自分の実験もいい結果を出そうとしている。結局ポスドクとしては六ヶ月がすくないということが判って来た。

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busy…

November 18, 2005 at 5:03 pm · Filed under Uncategorized

忙しいんだけど。。。来週はアメリカで会議があるので色んな準備をしないと駄目だね。

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It’s cold in Japanese apartments

November 17, 2005 at 2:31 pm · Filed under japan

急に寒くなってきた。夜中１０度以下になってきた。一、二週間前のみは十分温かった気がする。

アメリカの家より日本なの方が寒いよ。中にはセントラルヒティングがなくて冷たい空気が入りやすいかもしれない。アメリカと日本の特定の地方とは外気温が同じでも内気温はずいぶん違う可能がかなりある。日本の方がサミィイ！

ホットカーペットを使いながら壁に付けてある冷暖房をつく。だが、暖房をついても風が吹くと逆にちょっと寒く続けるのだ。風を弱量に設定したら暖めた空気が僕達に届けない（物理学の楽しさで暖かい空気は上がりつつあって天井に集めちゃう）。

ですが、全室のセントラルヒティングは不経済で、もっと上着を積んだらだいたい暖かくなれる（手むき）。まぁいいや。

(english to come….)

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Sea urchin: uni

November 16, 2005 at 10:45 am · Filed under food, japan

We had some uni last night with dinner. It was from a jar and in the form of an orangish-colored paste. We spread it on sheets of seaweed (nori) and wrapped it up before eating.

Uni on seaweed 

Uni has a kind of “melting-in-your-mouth” feeling to it combined with a subtle flavor of an organ (i.e. liver). I think the consumed “uni” is actually the roe of the sea urchin. Of course, Uni is also an aquired taste (just like natto), and even many Japanese don’t like it. I don’t mind it so much, but I can’t really eat that much at a single go and I wouldn’t go out of my way to eat it.

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Earthquake this morning (shindo 2)

November 15, 2005 at 10:04 am · Filed under earthquakes, japan

There was a noticeable earthquake (jishin) this morning at 6:39. It woke us up just before we were about to get up this morning. The bed shook sideways slightly for about 20 seconds or so.

The earthquake was apparently magnitude 7.2 but was more than 500 kilometers northeast of Tokyo, out over the ocean. It caused some small (30 cm or less) tsunamis to hit the coast. Here in Tokyo it registered as a level 2 (shindo 2) on the scale that the Japanese use. The shindo scale measures the intensity of an earthquake at any given location, rather than at the epicenter. The measurement is based upon the local acceleration of the ground, according to the wikipedia entry. I actually didn’t know the specific criteria before, as it seemed that the criteria was based upon more subjective criteria of how the earthquake “feels” to humans.

I usually check yahoo Japan’s website for earthquake information, as they have a nice map of the earthquake and affected regions: http://typhoon.yahoo.co.jp/weather/jp/earthquake/

また日本語は準備中。。。我慢してね。

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Natto in my goatee

November 14, 2005 at 11:12 pm · Filed under food, japan

I had some natto for dinner tonight. Natto is fermented soy beans. Of course, westerners are already acustomed to some fermented foods such as cheese, yoghurt, beer, wine, etc. However natto is different. It is an aquired taste. It smells vaguely of some sort of stinky cheese. It has an extremely stringy and sticky slime in between and on the surface of the individual beans. Before eating one whips this interstitial slime up so that the beans and slime become one big frothy mass. It is common to add a raw egg to the mixture before pouring it over a bowl of rice. Also included are a bit of Japanese mustard (not wasabi) and a little bit of soy sauce with fish stock. It is actually quite good, both healthy and tasty (to me anyways), despite sounding possibly quite dangerous.

Anyways, I when eating natto, one must always be careful of where all the stringy bits are going. They can end up stuck to various articles of clothing. Today I got some stuck in my goattee. I think that means I should shave…

I should have taken a picture… (of the natto)!

ごめんなさい、また日本語は準備中（翻訳中）

こちらへ納豆についての情報をどうぞ：http://www.natto.ne.jp/
もしくはこれ：http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natto

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Studio Ghibli Museum (スタジオジブリ博物館)

November 14, 2005 at 12:02 am · Filed under anime, japan, musuems

My new friend from Tenku no Shiro

Last weekend my wife and I went to the Studio Ghibli Musuem in Tokyo (website, sorry mostly in Japanese). The museum is dedicated to the animation studio of Miyazaki Hayao, Studio Ghibli. The museum is located in Mitaka no mori, a more “rural” area of Tokyo that has some nice greenery and parks and a more relaxed atmosphere than in central Tokyo.

The museum only opened a few years ago and is quite popular such that tickets are sold for entrance at specified time blocks (i.e. 10am, 12pm, 2pm, etc). Tickets become available for one month advance booking on the 10th of each month. I bought tickets from an electronic kiosk in Lawson (a convenience store chain in Japan).

The museum was quite impressive. There were so many things to look at and capture one’s attention. In particular, there is tremendous attention paid to detail in recreating Miyazaki’s “workshop”. The main exhibit outlined the process of creating the anime, from imagination, to storyboard, to animation. Side exhibits featured the animated series from the 70’s Heidi, and featured some really nice demonstrations of how still images or figures can come to life by various stroboscopic effects. Since the museum is popular among kids, I was able to understand most of the written explaination in Japanese (there was no English explaination). It wasn’t necessary to understand Japanese to appreciate the exhibit, however, as the visual displays and atmosphere are worth the admission fee.

Incidentally, I made a new friend (picture above) with one of the characters from Tenku no Shiro (Castle in the Sky).

… Japanese to come … (日本語は準備中！)

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My “old” blog(s)

November 13, 2005 at 11:57 pm · Filed under blogging, metablog

I sort of had a blog on myspace.com here. However, myspace isn’t so blog friendly and has troubles processing Japanese (i.e. it either garbles the text or will decide to eat half the post, likely because it is confused into thinking that the Japanese text is some html code), nor is the layout very easy to read (though I understand that it is possible to change the default layout).

(for more on myspace layouts try this nice post here.)

I eventually gave up on myspace, so I decided to start a proper blog on blogspot here. However, I noticed some shortcomings of blogspot, namely the lack of categories. SO, I started up my new blog on wordpress.com!

一応前ブログをmyspace.comでやっていた（ここ）。ですが、myspaceはブログをするのにしては不便だし日本語を入力する時には文字化けになったり、ポストが消えてしまったりすることもあるからmyspaceのブログをやめてちゃんとのブログをblogspot.comですることにしました。

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Hello World! こんにちは、ブログへどうぞ！

November 13, 2005 at 1:59 pm · Filed under metablog

Hello, and welcome to my blog.

こんにちは、僕のブログへようこそ。

I am a U.S. citizen currently living in Tokyo, Japan. I had been meaning to start a blog ever since arriving in Japan last June. Now I’m finally starting one.

僕は現在に東京に住んでいるアメリカ人です。６月に来日してからずっとブログを始めようと思っていました。やっと始めます。

I’ll attempt to make it bilingual (or multilingual) as much as possible so that I can also use this opportunity to practice my written Japanese as well. Of course, making the blog multilingual has the extra added benefit of increased accessibility for the reader. ;-)

日本語を書くことを特訓するためにこのブログをできるだけバイリンガルにしようとすることにしました。もちろんバイリンガルならこのブログが日本人に対して楽になるでしょうかね。　＊笑顔＊

I’ll use this as a web log (or “blog”, if you will, haha) to chronicle my experiences living “abroad”, various musings, etc, and as a general diary for posterity.

このブログ（またはブログだ：「ウェブ・ログ」の書略だ）を記録にして色んな海外で住む体験や思い出などを保つように、または意見を表すように、使います。

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