AydinA
Aydin Akyurtlu Joined: April 24th 2006
Logged in: July 10th 2006
Logged in: July 10th 2006
Travel Blog Posts
As you can tell from the title, this is a bit late coming, but better late than never. Fireworks excursion The Independence Day festivities began with Ryan and I leaving the lab early around 4:30 to buy our cache of explosives for the night's festivities. We originally intended to head to a neighborhood near Asakusa that's well-known for its especially good fireworks, but figuring that there was no way we could make it all the way across Tokyo in time before the shops closed (one learns quickly never to assume shops to be open past 6pm in Japan), so instead we settled for the closer option of the Tokyo Hands in Shinjuku near Shinjuku Times Square. After wasting time with silly costumes and old school video games, we settled down to the task at hand and ... read more
---Note: I started the blog entry almost three weeks ago and couldn't get through with it. I'm just going to finish up that first part of the entry, then start anew with a fresh entry about the past week or so. Sorry I'm being such a piece of trash about keeping this updated. Pictures coming soon.--- Ah, the long awaited beginning of the research segment of the program. With the orientation process out of the way it came time to say goodbye and move on to new horizons. Friday Night: Urban Planning and Karaoke After the last round of classes in the morning, we all came back to the hotel and got spiffied up for a presentation on historic preservation in major cities sponsored by the US Embassy. The roundtable discussion featured some really interesting commentary ... read more
Amazing Venue
The past two weeks have been so incredibly, absolutely, phenomenally, wonderfully, tiringly, amazingly, groin-grabbingly packed and full to the brim with activity. So much has happened that there is no way for me to recount everything through this blog. If you want to know about the goings on, you'll have to settle for asking me when I get back to the States. However, I will recount the most recent happenings here, and as I am moving into my gaijin house next week I will no longer be constrained by the necessity of coming downstairs whenever I want to use the internet, so you can expect updates to be more frequent. So anyway, on to the show.... Thursday Night: A Page Out of Order After moving all my stuff out into another room, I set out with ... read more
View of the Imperial Palace from Tokyo City View
--- Written Tuesday Evening, May 30th 2006 --- Classes Yesterday morning we started our three weeks of classes. We ended up on the 7:41 train to Ookayama after quite a bit of pressing from the Powers That Be, so we ended up at Tokodai (Tokyo Tech = Tokyo Koga Daigaku) well before the 8:30 start time for classes. We started with Japanese Language. The teacher (Matsuda-sensei) was incredibly cool and was quite a good teacher even though we were only doing review. She happens to be big into books and music and was marvelled that I had read Murakami Haruki and listened to Takemitsu Toru. Matsuda-sensei freaked out when she found out I'm Turkish because apparently she's studying Turkish (which is something I didn't know people actually did). Hearing a Japanese woman with a heavy Japanese ... read more
Some of the group on the bus to IAH
First off, let me apologize for how simple this post is going to be. I'm incredibly tired right now, so hopefully when I regain some energy I will be able to fill in any gaps. Afternoon Orientation Got into Rice after the awful 5:35 am flight (and connection). Thankfully other people from the program were there and I hitched a ride to campus. Around 1 pm we went to start the orientation. We didn't find out much that hadn't been posted on OwlSpace in the preceding two weeks. That night a few of us ended up chatting on the balcony for a while for lack of anything better to do. This was pleasant and gave me a good chance to meet most of the people. Lots of Flying The whole trek started at 4 am at ... read more
As we speak I'm sitting in the living room with the family watching (unfortunately) Prince perform on the season finale of "American Idol". Just finished up shopping and am waiting for the last load of laundrey to finish up so that I can get to packing. I'm still in sort of a state of suspended belief and cannot really comprehend the enormity of the trek I am about to take. But first I'm off to Houston first thing in the morning (and I mean first thing). I'm a little worried about the money situation, but if this trip is even half as good as it's shaping up to be then it'll be worth every penny. Make no mistake, I am ready for this. Japan hasn't seen an arrival this huge since Godzilla first rose from his ... read more
