Three Months

Wow, 3 months have passed like 3 weeks. Saturday I'm Vienna. I might not have many chances to check my emails until Monday in a week.

Last weekend I had a chance to enjoy karaoke with some of the capoeiristas. It was very different to what I expected. First of all, they are awesome singers. Second, they are extremely polite when it comes to making you feel good about making a fool of yourself (they just clap their hands louder to the rhythm, or try to sing along even if they don't know English and have never heard the song before). It was great fun. At the end they even decided to sing a Christmas song just because they wanted to sing something where everyone (including me) could sing along... :-)

Last weekend Doug, his wife, another American, and me walked up the Tsukuba hill (<900m). It's a nice walk through beautiful forests. It's the main tourist attraction in Tsukuba area.

Here are some pictures. The first is the karaoke machine (the phone book is a book full of Japanese songs). The second shows the car which that plant was trying to cover up. (Unfortunately the gardeners recently decided to stop it.) The rest of the pictures is from the walk.















Finally, here is a picture within AIST. The panel shows how much power is consumed and how much of it is generated by the solar plants. The picture was taken on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Usually the value is around 0-2% (at that time it was an amazing 13.24%). Maybe the servers crashed ;-)

Blue Traffic Lights

Foreigners (like me) have been telling me how hard it is to pass the driving license test. There seems to be some consensus that you must fail (at least) twice before you can pass, no matter how perfect you drive. I've been told that the Japanese examiners seem to believe that a foreigner can impossible be a good driver (even if he or she has been driving in his home country for 20 years)...

Anyway, what I wanted to say is that the Japanese traffic lights are red, yellow (or orange), and blue. This "blue" is very similar to the color of grass or leaves, but it's not green... it's blue. I'd say it's green, just like everywhere else in the world... but every Japanese I've asked so far told me it's blue.

Here are some pictures... the first one is the smallest capoeirista in uniform I've ever seen :-) He's the son of our trainer. BTW, how do you get small kids to look into the camera when you take a picture?? (Picture was taken on Saturday.)



Today (Sunday) we had a Capoeira workshop in Tokyo. It was great. Lot's of people... lot's of capoeiristas to play with. Here are two pictures of us in the train to Tokyo.





A picture of us warming up before the workshop...



And here is a picture after we succeeded with our Japanese culture experiment. What we did is leave a backpack (the one in the picture) with a video camera, car keys, etc. in the Yamanote line (the one that circles Tokyo). An hour later (we asked the train officers when the train would come around again) we checked to see if the bag was still there... and it was! Try that in any other city of a similar size anywhere in Europe, South or North America! ;-)
In London I'm sure they destroy it without checking it's contents (I think they call that procedure "terrorism"). In Barcelona the bag would probably disappear before we'd get a chance to start the experiment...



And one last word about cleanliness... because I just cant believe it. Smokers sometimes carry their own ashtray with them. Even in Tokyo!!!! (So they don't ash on the roads!!!!)

Buckets of Rain

Today, finally, we are enjoying the long anticipated official start of the rainy season. I’m a bit too lazy to write much so I’m adding mostly pictures.

These two pictures show the car of an AIST researcher who has been working very hard lately. In fact, he has been working so hard and for so long, that weed has started to grow over his car. (Goto’s interpretation is that the researcher is probably at some conference.) In any case, those pink flowers are everywhere. It’s amazing! First we had the cherry blossoms, then lots of roses, and now those (if I remember correctly then they are called “zuzushi”). I wonder what’s next.





Here are some pictures I took when I was cycling home late at night one day (both within AIST).





And here is a picture of my dinner yesterday (at AIST). Although we eat something different everyday it usually has the same structure: a bowl of rice, soup, a main dish, a cup of tea (or glass of water or both), and some side dish… oishi!



This picture was taken at Cork Head’s maybe about two weeks ago (we went out for some beers after capoeira). Tomorrow there is a capoeira workshop in Tokyo. I’m sure that will be lots of fun.

Japanese Culture

Today I received an email from a friend I met at Ninomyia house who returned back to France. She made me realize how we take some things for granted and might only realize it when things are "back to normal".

One of these things is that there is no crime here in Tsukuba area. Yes, of course I’ve been told (by my Japanese colleagues) that it’s very dangerous and I shouldn’t travel alone late at night with my bike… and on the news you’ll see horrifying stories that somewhere some school kids were smoking cigarettes with a number of camera scenes showing the evidence (2 cigarette buts on the ground next to a school) from different angles. (I really saw this on TV! Unfortunately, I don’t know what the speaker was saying, but as far as I could tell they were very serious about it).

I've been considering to take pictures of the standard bike "locks" they use here. Using such "locks" in Vienna would practically be begging for someone to steal your bike. Actually, I think the only purpose of the "locks" is to prevent someone to accidentally use the wrong bike (as I already mentioned, many bikes look very similar here). And you can leave things in the car without worrying that someone might smash the window just to find out if it is worth anything.

Oh, and unlike Vienna, dog owners always clean up after their dogs (although there is so much green space for dogs that even if everyone had a dog you still wouldn’t need to watch your steps all the time). And recently I saw what a bicyclist did who lost some small plastic wrapping trash the wind blew out of the basket. In Vienna the typical reaction would be not to react. However, this cyclist actually stopped, turned around and ran after the trash that the wind had taken. That somehow explains why everything is so clean here.

Just in case my Japanese collegues read this and disagree about the non existent crime, I found some statistics here. Although I admit they are a bit old (1998):

Murders per 100,000.
1. Russia Federation 18.07
2. United States 6.32
3. Malaysia 2.73
Taiwan 1.17
Spain 1.08
Japan 0.58

Rape per 100,000.
1. United States 34.20
2. England and Wales 14.69
3. France 13.38
Taiwan 8.82
South Korea 4.38
Spain 3.23
Japan 1.48

Serious Assault per 100,000.
1. Australia 713.68
2. England & Wales 405.20
3. United States 357.94
Taiwan 37.30
Spain 23.94
Japan 15.40

Robbery/Violent Theft per 100,000.
1. Spain 169.85
2. United States 169.02
3. France 144.10
Taiwan 14.35
South Korea 11.74
Japan 2.71

Cooking Class

At Ninomiya house they organize various events for us. One of them is a cooking class. Tonight they showed us how to cook some South Korean dishes. I can't tell the differences between Korean and Japanese food but I was told that there are lots of them. Anyway, some (or almost all?) of the ingredients they used can easily be found in supermarkets here... and some of them I had previously already considered to buy but decided not to because I had no idea which parts of them are digestible. Now I know :-)

And another interesting part of the evening was ending up sitting on the table with only women who are here because their husbands are researchers. Some of them are English teachers... all of them are very busy with various classes (Japanese language, culture, ...) some of them are pregnant (or already have some kids) and all of them really like it here and all of them are very friendly. But I couldn't help feeling really odd sitting at that table :-)

(Unfortunately I don't have any pictures, but I think they might put some on the Ninomiya house web page...)

International Exchange Fair

Last weekend the annual international festival took place in Tsukuba. Foreigners living in Tsukuba presented their cultures mainly through art performances and local dishes. The capoeira club I've joined gave a 30 minute performance on Sunday. It was the first capoeira performance I ever participated in and it was lots of fun :-)
BTW, I got my first capoeira belt on Saturday! I guess now I'm a real capoerista? ;-)

Here is a picture of the stage:



Most of the capoeiristas on the pictures are from ABADA Ibaraki. Some are from ABADA in Tokyo. Unfortunately, the red carpet was a bit wet and slippery from the rain on Saturday... which made it a extra challenging :-)
Actually we were very lucky with the weather. It was raining a lot last week and only stopped Saturday night. Too bad I don't have any pictures from Neguinho (our trainer) flying around. It was amazing!!

Here is a picture of the audience (taken after the performance):



And a picture of the group after the performance:



And a picture after the all-you-can-eat dinner. I don't think they made a good deal with us. Some of us hadn't had breakfast nor lunch that day! :-)

Rosanzerusu

Yesterday we started learning Katakana in the Japanese class. Katakana is used to write foreign (imported) words in Japanese. Rondon is how the Japanese write London (I think the R-L issue is well known...). Rosanzerusu (ro-sa-n-ze-ru-su are the syllables, the last "u" is silent) is Los Angeles. And can you guess what Makudonarudo is? :-)
(Although, normally a short version of that is used.)

Here is a picture I took in class yesterday.



The teacher is the one with the tie. The people on the picture are from Japan (teacher), Brazil, Armenia, Poland, Sweden, Thailand, China, and Bangladesh.

Here is a picture taken inside the elevator at Ninomiya house.



It speaks English and Japanese, but only during day times (so it doesn't bother anyone at night). And it has an undo function! Assume you pressed 8 (where I live) and in addition 7 by mistake. Then you can press 7 again, the button will start blinking, and then if you press it again the 7 will be deselected. And I was told that the elevators have a special earthquake program. In case of a stronger earthquake they will automatically move to the next closest floor (up or down) open their doors, and refuse any further operation (because of the danger that they might crash).

I wonder if tourist guides in Vienna should put the Pater Noster (at the NIG building of the University of Vienna) on their list of things you must see for Japanese tourists. They will probably find it hard to believe that there is an elevator which has no doors, and which you need to jump in and out of (because it never stops...) And can you imagine a group of 20 Japanese tourists trying to jump into the Pater Noster and taking pictures doing so? :-)

Here is a picture of my most recent food experiment.



Once I find things I like (through random sampling) in a supermarket I usually explore similar items. As I have no clue what is really similar I use the physical distance (in centimeters) as similarity function. The crackers on the left were fine (some kind of see food), they were located close to the nuts I like. The drink on the right is something I probably wont try again. It was located right next to the orange juice which I like very much... can you guess what it is? :-)

And here are some pictures from last weeks capoeira training. There are more pictures on the ABADA Ibaraki website.