(It makes sense in katakana.) Time's ticking away fast now. Things are going well, especially in these last days of relaxation. There's been a lot of gatherings and an accumulation of farewells from people I've met at every point during this trip. And now, as I'm actually feeling quite at home here, it's already about time to leave. I'll post a bit more later probably. But at the moment it's early Sunday morning. I'll be doing the laundry and packing my big bags to be shipped to the hotel at Narita Airport. Natsui-san is taking me to send them off Monday [View Full Entry]

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I'd like to take a second to stop and send a shout out to my brother Andrew in LA and the always-awesome Sarah Porretta in Chi-town. Woop woop. Uhm. And "hollah." [View Full Entry]

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Ha! Mito-san. So a big group of us hopped the Joban line down to Mito to check out the summer hanabi (fireworks) festival. It was pretty great. We chilled, ate some kaki-gori (shaved ice), yaki-tori (grilled chicken), yaki-soba (like... BBQ noodles?), um... some squid meat balls (?) and sipped on drinks as we watched the neverending fireworks show. People were chatting, ladies were going by in their yukata. It was pretty fantastic. The vareity and clarity of the fireworks was stunning. Yamamoto-san's camera battery died, so he was happy to take my camera and take some shots. Work [View Full Entry]

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Yeah, so I still haven't posted all the REALLY cool pictures from our trip a couple weeks ago. The experiment's been kind of dragging on and getting tough. BUT... I HAD to stop and post about plans for tomorrow. The guys just told me that down in Mito tomorrow is their fireworks show. I've been missing all the other shows because of work and how long it takes to travel. But Mito is a quick jaunt by train from here. "Yawn, fireworks," you may say. But get this: 4300 fireworks over the course of 90 minutes. For those doing the math, [View Full Entry]

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After feeling the sixth earthquake last night I had the thought to post an entry that I'm going to stop posting entries because I'm losing track. And I don't even count the really small tremors that flick by. But just now my friend Steve emailed asking if I was okay after hearing about a quake here. I looked it up to discover that the real good shake we had last night was a 6.8 in northern Japan. I had no idea. Where we are it wasn't very bad, though it was the strongest I've felt yet. Still. Wow. It was from [View Full Entry]

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Second earthquake today. This one was just an hour ago while I had a late, light breakfast at the dorm. Not so shakey as the first one. Then again, I was on the third floor the first time. This one was just a long, broad shaking. Didn't seem bad. I sat there nibbling on some bread while the room swayed slowly and calmly back and forth for about a minute. Kind of relaxing, actually. Some alarm went off in the machine room sending the dorm attendant running up and down the hallway. Wonder what that was about. [View Full Entry]

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#1: There's pizza in Tokai-mura. Two italian restaurants, in fact. That's actually two more than DeKalb if you don't count pizza-only joints. #2: I need to learn more Katakana so I can tell the difference between "soap" and "shampoo." #3: Is it wrong that I'm the only one who showers in the morning, and not at night? #4: While sarcasm doesn't translate well, most other humor does. #5: An email correspondence: So there was supposed to be a group meeting last week. It was eventually cancelled, but something quirky happened involving some other students and myself. The followin [View Full Entry]

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Now, to prove that I'm actually doing some work, too. Back in Tokai things were kind of tough with the research. It really got rolling after returning from the party. We were waiting for beam time and liquid helium. For those who are interested, I'm here to study an instrument that was built by this group. It's called the polychromator ("measures many colors"). Basically it takes a sample of some special (harmless) middle-infrared radiation from a charged particle beam. It then separates that light into different colors, like a prism would, so that you can look at the different wave [View Full Entry]

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We checked out some of the different exhibits inside Tokyo Tower, too. One of which was the Trick Art exhibit. It was way fun. And I dunno if it'll come out with the weak travelblog video compression, but focus on one of the buildings in the video and watch what happens as you move. [View Full Entry]

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Of course the dinner party wasn't until Monday night, so there was still some time for more site seeing. We had tried to check out Tokyo Tower on Sunday, but the line was a bit crazy. This was when we decided to see the Palace and come back for the Tower on Monday. It was a good plan (see first couple pictures). From the top of Tokyo Tower I realized just how ginormous Tokyo really is. Seriously... it's like Chicago, LA, New York and Seattle all put together and then some. Skyscrapers and city in every direction. Of course a little [View Full Entry]

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