Shopping, BBQ - japanese style
First day, I think I woke up around 5am... and hated it... grrrr!!!!!!! It was way too damned hot, thanks to that no good light that I had no idea how to turn off. And then I remembered i was in Japan.. and before I had turned in at my new place I'd run by the store (to buy my bkfst for the next day) with Dr. Mori:: do you drink alcohol?..:: ... are you sure you don't need to buy beer?:: ergo the six-pack of beer taking up 1/5 of my fridge hehehe... I was informed later on by Akemi (coolest secretary ever, only comparable with Daisy of course) that "Dr. Mori likes his alcohol" - and by Japanese standards he keeps it down like a mofo (i take pride in my PIs :D )
I did have a horrible burp come out of me, to add to my slowly ebbing discomfort.. just to remind me of that weird fermented crab thing I had the night before. Even though I was so exhausted I could've prolly just rolled out of Dr. Mori's running car onto deliciously soft pavement to fall asleep - i accepted his invitation to go to a sushi bar nearby ::can you eat raw fish?:: he asks hehehe.... and boy did I put it away.. I ate everything and anything, sometimes I asked what it was.. but after a while. i just figured, it's some form of marine life, egg, or soy beans.. and if it tastes strong it's fermented.. oh well. like i said, the only thing I really didn't dig.. was that fermented crab innards deal. meh whatever... thanking the kamis that be for allowing me to pick safe breakfast foods for the day.
Dr. Mori said I could come in whenever I wanted.. so I took my damn sweet time.. tried my best to hide things where I could (in a small place, if anything looks slightly in disorder, the whole place is a mess). I set up zis vonderful blog.. and tried to see how the TV worked.. after prolly 30 mins of flipping through 3 channels I took a look at the "Guidance of Guesthouse Sentan".. tah dah.. TV info (thank goodness it had the japanese symbols with it or I'd have noooo friggin clue what buttons to push) and after a few minutes.. i upgraded to 8 channels, well 7 if you don't count the really fuzzy one, or well 6 if you don't count the weird sort of NAIST channel that gives you video of some odd classroom w/o audio. Of course, all of them in japanese. But to my luck and amazement there was a really kooky one with morning exercises, followed by a situation-by-situation learn english (situation was you had to tell someone "Don't worry" "I'll pick you up" and "I'll be there soon") w/ a very very very cute guy doing the talking.
After an hour or so of hopelessly flipping through those 6 channels.. I hit with one that covers the FIFA CUP!!!!!!!! sooo exciting.. of course.. it's in japanese... so since my flag identification skills are a little rusty since I haven't been around my brother for a while... I've been deciphering the katakana symbols (which all look the same) and then checking my accuracy with the fifa.com site hehee.. too bad the tv resolution isn't very good (uruguay was extremely hard to figure out)
I went to the lab accompanied by Akemi, who I finally had the chance to meet. She's a little shorter than me, with short hair, cool-looking glasses, slim (everyone is slim, except for beer guts here and there), and she's sooo damned cool and funny :) She's helped me with everything, really, very awesome, patient, and down to business lady.
But no matter how interesting Akemi was, there was just nothing to do in the lab on the first day. Natsuko (the grad student I am now working with ) was busy at the moment and had not been briefed by Dr. mori on what I was going to do. Dr. Mori was swimming in work, and of course Akemi had stuff to do.. so she said she'd take me shopping after lunch.
Lunch is an interesting affair.. but nothing more impressive than what happened later on, so if you're outrageously curious I might skype about it... or i may write about it later on if i ever have an unexciting day here. Ah, the highlight is that a non-english speaking japanese lady that ate lunch with us.. said that my chopstick skills were very good :D (the cramp in my hand is worth it!! yessss!)
LIFE (name of store)
Akemi took me shopping for necessities (soap, food, etc..) and thank goodness she went with me.. because bottles of clear looking liquid is not always water.. and flasks of white looking granules is not always salt - just to mention a few. The place is AWESOME though, I love seeing a variety of foods and drinks.. and Akemi's answers to my "what's this?" never disappointed me. I even bought this thing called Calpis... which sounds like piss.. but tastes like what a tropical fruits / tutti frutti drink might taste. Unfortunately for my cereal-loving friends.. ie. ula, there were maybe 8 different kinds of cereal.. only one of which looked chocolatey-enough to possibly taste like it. hehe (when i go back there and i have time, I'll take a picture of this sad state of carbohydrate affairs) Oh and I guess they dont really eat bread here, because the sliced bread I bought had only 6 half-inch slices in it (and that was the largest pack). And i kept on noticing that random things had english names on them... sometimes they weren't quite representative of what they were plastered on... but all very amusing nonetheless. like a Vanity-look-alike magazine that was called "Very"... oh and of course 80% of translated things have great quirky errors in it...
:) soo cute
Apparently, the japanese educational system has a lot of the written/reading part engrained in the system.. but actual use and speech of english is not very enforced at all (this explains a lot)
By the time it was 3pm i was soooo exhausted I had to go back to the dorm and take a nap... I checked the Texas time - 1am... no wonder.. it was sleepy time for me. But i was told to go to the lab around 5:30pm - a BBQ to welcome me to japan, welcome 3 new students to the lab, say bye bye to 2 post-docs and one pregnant lady was to be held.
There were these four adorkable little kids running around 5-6 I think... they were sooo cute.. especially this one girl with cowboy boots and a shirt saying rebel hehehe. The BBQ consisted of each person holing a bowl with some odd soy-based sauce (did not taste like bbq sauce)
and using their chopsticks to flip around pieces of meat, chicken, squid, and vegetables on a grill. Although I do not recommend this to anyone that is scared of contracting something from raw food... then again I would not recommend going to Japan to that same person either... It was delicious. And as a finale they cooked chinese noodles with pieces of pork and some veggies on a long pan that covered the bbq grill.. very yummy. Halfway through the BBQ Dr. Mori asked each of us newbies and the ppl that were leaving to introduce themselves and say a little something in japanese and english. Only 2 ppl were able to do the english part easily (me being one of them) but the rest did an admirable job, and only one of the new grad students was too shy to try anything past mumbling a 'mm name is'; I of course, stated my name in japanese and shrugged and laughed that I had no idea how to say anything else.. everyone just kind of nodded in agreement (i think this is default for 'i have no idea what you just said' because the other 4 or 6 ppl that could keep up with my english speed didn't nod) Oh and Dr. Mori said he was trying to get everyone together to go to a very traditional japanese pub... i was of course, excited...
this is getting long so I'm going to write the pub part in another post..
of course, before the bbq was over, one of the other ppl in the group (everyone was amicable, and even if we couldn't communicate it was a great friendly atmosphere) asked :: is it ok for you to eat raw fish?:: (obviously concerned about me going to the pub)
I did have a horrible burp come out of me, to add to my slowly ebbing discomfort.. just to remind me of that weird fermented crab thing I had the night before. Even though I was so exhausted I could've prolly just rolled out of Dr. Mori's running car onto deliciously soft pavement to fall asleep - i accepted his invitation to go to a sushi bar nearby ::can you eat raw fish?:: he asks hehehe.... and boy did I put it away.. I ate everything and anything, sometimes I asked what it was.. but after a while. i just figured, it's some form of marine life, egg, or soy beans.. and if it tastes strong it's fermented.. oh well. like i said, the only thing I really didn't dig.. was that fermented crab innards deal. meh whatever... thanking the kamis that be for allowing me to pick safe breakfast foods for the day.
Dr. Mori said I could come in whenever I wanted.. so I took my damn sweet time.. tried my best to hide things where I could (in a small place, if anything looks slightly in disorder, the whole place is a mess). I set up zis vonderful blog.. and tried to see how the TV worked.. after prolly 30 mins of flipping through 3 channels I took a look at the "Guidance of Guesthouse Sentan".. tah dah.. TV info (thank goodness it had the japanese symbols with it or I'd have noooo friggin clue what buttons to push) and after a few minutes.. i upgraded to 8 channels, well 7 if you don't count the really fuzzy one, or well 6 if you don't count the weird sort of NAIST channel that gives you video of some odd classroom w/o audio. Of course, all of them in japanese. But to my luck and amazement there was a really kooky one with morning exercises, followed by a situation-by-situation learn english (situation was you had to tell someone "Don't worry" "I'll pick you up" and "I'll be there soon") w/ a very very very cute guy doing the talking.
After an hour or so of hopelessly flipping through those 6 channels.. I hit with one that covers the FIFA CUP!!!!!!!! sooo exciting.. of course.. it's in japanese... so since my flag identification skills are a little rusty since I haven't been around my brother for a while... I've been deciphering the katakana symbols (which all look the same) and then checking my accuracy with the fifa.com site hehee.. too bad the tv resolution isn't very good (uruguay was extremely hard to figure out)
I went to the lab accompanied by Akemi, who I finally had the chance to meet. She's a little shorter than me, with short hair, cool-looking glasses, slim (everyone is slim, except for beer guts here and there), and she's sooo damned cool and funny :) She's helped me with everything, really, very awesome, patient, and down to business lady.
But no matter how interesting Akemi was, there was just nothing to do in the lab on the first day. Natsuko (the grad student I am now working with ) was busy at the moment and had not been briefed by Dr. mori on what I was going to do. Dr. Mori was swimming in work, and of course Akemi had stuff to do.. so she said she'd take me shopping after lunch.
Lunch is an interesting affair.. but nothing more impressive than what happened later on, so if you're outrageously curious I might skype about it... or i may write about it later on if i ever have an unexciting day here. Ah, the highlight is that a non-english speaking japanese lady that ate lunch with us.. said that my chopstick skills were very good :D (the cramp in my hand is worth it!! yessss!)
LIFE (name of store)
Akemi took me shopping for necessities (soap, food, etc..) and thank goodness she went with me.. because bottles of clear looking liquid is not always water.. and flasks of white looking granules is not always salt - just to mention a few. The place is AWESOME though, I love seeing a variety of foods and drinks.. and Akemi's answers to my "what's this?" never disappointed me. I even bought this thing called Calpis... which sounds like piss.. but tastes like what a tropical fruits / tutti frutti drink might taste. Unfortunately for my cereal-loving friends.. ie. ula, there were maybe 8 different kinds of cereal.. only one of which looked chocolatey-enough to possibly taste like it. hehe (when i go back there and i have time, I'll take a picture of this sad state of carbohydrate affairs) Oh and I guess they dont really eat bread here, because the sliced bread I bought had only 6 half-inch slices in it (and that was the largest pack). And i kept on noticing that random things had english names on them... sometimes they weren't quite representative of what they were plastered on... but all very amusing nonetheless. like a Vanity-look-alike magazine that was called "Very"... oh and of course 80% of translated things have great quirky errors in it...
:) soo cute
Apparently, the japanese educational system has a lot of the written/reading part engrained in the system.. but actual use and speech of english is not very enforced at all (this explains a lot)
By the time it was 3pm i was soooo exhausted I had to go back to the dorm and take a nap... I checked the Texas time - 1am... no wonder.. it was sleepy time for me. But i was told to go to the lab around 5:30pm - a BBQ to welcome me to japan, welcome 3 new students to the lab, say bye bye to 2 post-docs and one pregnant lady was to be held.
There were these four adorkable little kids running around 5-6 I think... they were sooo cute.. especially this one girl with cowboy boots and a shirt saying rebel hehehe. The BBQ consisted of each person holing a bowl with some odd soy-based sauce (did not taste like bbq sauce)
and using their chopsticks to flip around pieces of meat, chicken, squid, and vegetables on a grill. Although I do not recommend this to anyone that is scared of contracting something from raw food... then again I would not recommend going to Japan to that same person either... It was delicious. And as a finale they cooked chinese noodles with pieces of pork and some veggies on a long pan that covered the bbq grill.. very yummy. Halfway through the BBQ Dr. Mori asked each of us newbies and the ppl that were leaving to introduce themselves and say a little something in japanese and english. Only 2 ppl were able to do the english part easily (me being one of them) but the rest did an admirable job, and only one of the new grad students was too shy to try anything past mumbling a 'mm name is'; I of course, stated my name in japanese and shrugged and laughed that I had no idea how to say anything else.. everyone just kind of nodded in agreement (i think this is default for 'i have no idea what you just said' because the other 4 or 6 ppl that could keep up with my english speed didn't nod) Oh and Dr. Mori said he was trying to get everyone together to go to a very traditional japanese pub... i was of course, excited...
this is getting long so I'm going to write the pub part in another post..
of course, before the bbq was over, one of the other ppl in the group (everyone was amicable, and even if we couldn't communicate it was a great friendly atmosphere) asked :: is it ok for you to eat raw fish?:: (obviously concerned about me going to the pub)
posted by acidbytez at 8:34 AM
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