Ok, I haven’t updated this thing in a while. First of all, there is too much to talk about, so I’ll start with Golden Week (aka spring break for all of japan). Golden week was wonderful. It started with a roof party in our dorm on Friday night. Pretty much everyone from the dorm showed up, including some special appearances from one of the student center employees and a couple of @home people. The next day was spent hanging out with Fred and my Japanese friends, Taiga and Kohei. Taiga is going to study abroad in Canada from this august, and Kohei is going to go to……De Anza College! So I guess I’ll see more of Kohei over the next couple of years. It’s a small world. Anyways, the four of us played a lot of tennis, and ate at a denny’s/burger joint hybrid called “Bikkuri Donkey” (translated to Surprised Gorilla….get it? Donkey Kong is a gorilla.) The night was spent going to Shiogama with a bunch of Swedish people (Mikiko, Chris, Jens, Sophia). Shiogama is a small town about 20 mins away from Sendai by train. It is on the coast, and doesn’t have much but classy sushi restaurants (the reason we went there). Apparently, the sushi here is famous in all of Japan for its taste and cheap price. I got an 8-10 piece (of sushi) set for about 20 dollars. It was delicious, but I don’t know if it was 20 dollars delicious.
The next day was spent planning for my weeklong trip to Nagoya. A Canadian friend (Justin) and I planned to take a ferry from Sendai to Nagoya. The reason for this is that taking a train would cost $130 roundtrip, shinkansen (bullet train) is $300 roundtrip, flights are $350 roundtrip, and buses are $120 roundtrip. The ferry was less than 40 bucks one way. Of course, the down side is that it takes 21 hours to get there. So from Monday until Friday I was finally out of Sendai.Just getting to the ferry port took 45 minutes by bus. When the bus was pulling into port, there was this really grungy, rusted tanker. Justin and I both thought that this was what we paid for. Luckily, we were wrong…very wrong. Our boat turned out to be a cruise ship, complete with a movie theater, restaurants, and lots and lots of plug points (key). Justin and I played a lot of Super Nintendo emulator games to kill the time. I also read a little bit.
When we finally reached Nagoya, we met up with Kuni (from @home), and Lee (Korea). Lee is this insane Korean guy from our dorm. He biked to Nagoya. Well, half biking, half normal train. Basically he biked from Sendai to Tokyo for about 200 kilometers, and took the train the rest of the 150km. After resting a day in Tokyo, he went 150km more to Nagoya, and then took the train the rest of the way. Crazy. So the four of us met up with some guys from Nagoya University, and just hung around the area around the station. After a bit, Kuni’s friends from Kobe University came to the station, and the 13 of us went to Nagoya Castle for some touristy stuff. After dying in the heat for 3 hours, we returned to the station, bid farewell to the Nagoya Uni. people, and 10 of us headed by train to Kuni’s house. It’s in the countryside about 45 minutes away from downtown Nagoya.
Night One!
Had a huge BBQ with all sorts of meat. I tried Sendai Gyuu-tan for the first time. Gyuu-tan means cow tongue. It sounds crazy, but I only found out what it was after I ate it and told them it was delicious. Justin also made guacamole, which was a first time for pretty much all of the Japanese people. After the BBQ, we all went up to a large bedroom, and played Super Famicom (SuperNES), and cards until we collapsed at around 5am.
Day Two!
Made okonomiyaki. (Japanese-style pancake, which is nothing like a pancake) The highlight of the day is when we went to a bamboo forest right next to Kuni’s house, and dug for bamboo shoots to eat. I felt like I was in a ninja movie. After we gathered enough shoots, we went back to the house and cooked everything. Lee also made this indescribable Korean dish. After, Justin and I made dessert crepes. Then everyone, including Kuni’s sister and sister’s Canadian boyfriend, went outside to light fireworks. Japanese people rock. After that we played more cards/Mario kart.
Day Three!
Made yakisoba. (grilled noodles) Of course, when I say “made”, I mean I sat and watched as everyone else made food. After that, we all headed with our stuff to Nagoya station. At the station, everyone said their goodbyes, and left. The only people remaining were the three of us from the dorm. (Lee, Justin, and I) We decided to start walking around the city, since we had several hours to kill before the ferry left. Nagoya has the coolest mall I have ever seen in my life, with the possible exception of the spectrum or the metreon. It is basically underground, open air, with a giant three-story-tall oval structure rising above ground. You can walk up to the top, and there is a pool of water with clear glass, so you can see everyone below. It is very hard to explain, so just look at this movie I took for simplicity’s sake.
After that adventure, we rushed to make our ferry, and arrived there with 1 minute left. The way back was much like the trip to Nagoya, except I saw some classical music being performed, and got totally addicted to Knights of the Old Republic 2, a star wars computer game. After returning to Sendai, I made dinner, and played more computer games.
The next day I had another meeting with @home, and then just relaxed until the evening. The other club I joined, Kawauchi Tennis Circle, had a welcome party that night, which was kind of crazy. Apparently this particular club has a reputation of having some crazy drunks in the mix. This turned out to be entirely true, as these two guys started stumbling around doing magic tricks with decks of cards. The scary part was that these guys were extremely good at performing tricks. It’s like the kind of things I only see on TV. One Sunday, the busyness from Golden Week finally hit me. After a failed attempt to play tennis, I just went in my room and playing computer games all day. I’m too addicted.
Nothing of consequence happened this week, except for the stupid fire alarm going off at 11pm. It went on for about 2 hours. The funny part is that no one left the building or anything, and about 20 minutes after it started, the guard came to check everyone’s rooms to find the problem. It turns out that the fire alarm is just broken. In a real fire, people probably won’t pay any attention. Also, the fire alarms on the 4th and the 5th floors don’t go off. Scary. Luckily I live on the 2nd floor, and can easily jump out of my window to the ground below.
A couple of people have asked me about what classes are like, and how much homework I get. In Japan, people study all the time, and kill themselves with work in high school. The system in Japan works in a way such that if you get into a good junior high, you can get into a good high school, so you can get into a good college, so you can get into a good company. So once you get into a good college, you’re set. You pretty much are guaranteed to graduate once you get in, so college is spent more on having fun, joining clubs, etc. As a consequence, the teachers don’t really assign very much homework, if any at all. The biggest focus is placed on the final exam. Most of my classes don’t even have midterms. This is why I say class is bs in Japan. Also, we seem to learn a LOT more things earlier in the US. At least for engineering, I’ve taken more engineering things than a Japanese student the same year as me. Also, the concept of double majoring (or minoring for that matter) is lost on most people. But it’s not just me complaining. A couple of my professors spend some time talking about how Japan’s education system (and economy in general) is going to tank horribly in a few years. Of course this is independent of grad school. The researchers here are top-notch, even though fewer liberties are given to grad students than the US.
Finally, another picture to answer my cousin’s question about if there was yogurt-rice in Japan or not.
I’ll try to update the picture site ASAP.
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