Finally I am more or less settled in Ookayama, Tokyo. I'm at Tokyo Tech for the first month and then going to University of Tokyo for the next month. The student accommodation is pretty nice:
It's a small box, but it has everything I need for the summer.
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My apartment also has a small balcony which is handy for drying clothes and as a fire escape. If a fire occurs I simply kick down the thin wall between my apartment and the next. Similar procedures for Ninja attacks I assume, although they will most likely enter through the balcony.
Ookayama is in West Tokyo, not quite downtown, but still pretty urban.
Wherever you are, I want you to know that at this very moment, my butthole is cleaner than yours. Unless you are in Japan. Because in Japan, almost every toilet washes your butthole.
This toilet is actually Fleet Command.
Which button do you press? All of them.
Apparently, my entire life, I have been walking around with a dirty butthole. Discovering Japanese toilet technology for me is probably analogous to an Indian using toilet paper for the first time. As you can see you can spray, use a bidet, adjust the pressure, and warm the seat. Relieving myself has never been a more enjoyable experience.
The first week in Japan was spent at Soken-dai for a program orientation and for two nights with a host family. Overall there are 99 participants in the Japan program. 66 are from the US and the rest come from France, Germany, Canada, and the UK. We are spread out over Japan, encompassing most major cities from Okinawa to Hokkaido.
Orientation consisted primarily of Japanese Language classes and cultural events. It is hard to learn Japanese with just a few days of 4.5 hours of class each day, but we learned some helpful phrases. Cultural events consisted of lectures, which mostly contained slides of budgets, and a nice concert using traditional japanese instruments. We also gave a poster presentation of our summer research (sans results), because no gathering of graduate students would be complete without a poster session for everyone to hit on each other.
Cultural Experience.
For two nights I stayed with my host family in Kamakura, the ancient samurai capital of Japan for 150 years.
Here I am with my host family the Sakurais. I felt tall for once. For most of the stay we toured the sites in Kamakura and ate Japanese food. The best was takoyaki, which are balls of dough with octopus in the center.
This is takoyaki being made. Notice the training chopsticks next to Ryunoska.
Delicious.
Sushi conveyor belt.
Great Budda (Daibutsu) in Kamakura.
The host family stay was a very enjoyable experience and the Sakurai family was extremely kind and generous.
It is harder to get into a country if you actually have a legitimate reason. When the person at the passport check asked me to write down my location, I put Tokyo Institute of Technology. They then ushered me into one of those rooms with entirely white walls where they bring people while they check their credentials. I gave them a packet for the Summer Program and waited for 45 min to an hour while they made some calls presumably that I had a legitimate reason to enter the country.
The legitimate reason is the National Science Foundation East Asia and Pacific Summer Institute (EAPSI). It allows graduate students to study in Japan, China, Taiwan, South Korea, New Zealand, Singapore, and Australia. I'll be in Japan through the end of August doing astronomy research at the Tokyo Institute of Technology and the University of Tokyo.
We decided to stop in South Korea on the way from Beijing to Tokyo. It's pretty much in between, so it seemed like a good idea. The more fundamental reason being to getin a good picture of the entire region of East asia.
Erik's contact in Seoul recommended we stay in the Itakewon area, which was apparently pretty sour advice. Itakewon is the foreigner district and he wanted to take us out to those bars later that night. The only budget option my Lonely Planet guidebook recommended was on a place called Hooker Hill. And it wasn't even there, replaced by a different hotel with a different name. Apparently Seoul is unrecognizable after four years, so a guidebook from 2006 is unacceptable. Anyways, walking from the hotel to the main street resulted in blatantly being urged into various hotels by prostitutes.
As for sightseeing, we checked out Gwanghwamun plaza, which was pretty much exactly like the Forbidden City, a bunch of rooms with fancy furniture. The folk museum was actually pretty interesting. Although I was a bit surprised to find the world's first example of children's artwork in pottery form.
We also hiked up Dobongsan mountain, getting a good view of Seoul, of course once again covered in Smog, though not quite as bad as Beijing.
This is why my International Drivers License does not work in China.
Vibrated & Condom, FTW.
Yeah, we went here too.
We found I <3 Beijing T-shirts. In asia it is a fad for couples to wear matching shirts around, so obviously we took them for a spin on the town. Expect to see them again when we hit up Tokyo Disney.
Enter, the Forbidden City. This tourist mecca was primarily composed of a series of rooms. Masses of primarily chinese tourists would gather by a room, holding their head to the glass to view fancy interior. This happened about 5 times before it began to get old. That's when we see the sign "Treasure Rooms ->". Obviously, we want to see the treasures. We pay an extra fee to look in the treasure rooms. Comrade Erik and I walk through, looking at a few small relics. Comrade Dong sits down, obviously unhappy. "Are you bored Dong?" Comrade Erik asks. "Yes," Comrade Dong replies. Se we only viewed two of the 10 treasure rooms.
This is no mythical cloud from an Yimou Zhang movie. It's just smog. I suppose you should be able to see the rest of Beijing in this photo.
Comrade Dong doesn't like American food. But he considers McDonalds american food. This might sound odd, but viewing McDonalds in China as american food is almost the same as viewing the chinese food we get in america as actual chinese food. Chinese food in China is just plain awesome.
This is them sticking brain into the Hot Pot. Comarade Erik was brave enough to eat it. It took some restraint to not immediately remove his head and destroy the brain.
One night in Beijing, Comrade Erik, Comrade Maggie and I went to the Top Club Spa. It was a total of 600 yet each including free buffet food, 1 foot massage, and 1 all body massage. China is cheap.
For the entire trip Comrade Erik and I have been in the company of either Comrade Dong or Comrade Maggie, who both speak fluent Chinese. Stepping into the spa, we were separated into the male and female rooms, and had no idea what to do. The attendant motioned us to strip off our clothes. Then we put on the kimono pajamas they handed us, but quickly switched for towels after realizing we can go straight to the pool.
In addition to your normal warm and cold pools, the spa had a fish pool. The fish pool had a bunch of small fish that would nibble at your dead skin.
After arriving in Xi’an we saw the terracotta soldiers and the Chinese national museum. Unfortunately (fortunately?) most of China’s treasures were taken to Taiwan, so they don’t have many national artifacts on display. We did get the chance to hike up Mount Huashan.
Not exactly the type of trails you find in Boulder.
The hike to the top was about three hours. It wasn't exactly the world's most dangerous hiking trail as some websites would have you believe. But we also didn't get to go on the most dangerous part because it was too crowded at the top.
It's a Colorado tradition.
I think we would have had a much better view from the top if it wasn’t for the smog.
After visiting Olympic park and Dong’s parents, we headed to the Beijing West station to catch the train. Being Friday, rush hour started early, further clogging congested Beijing while we tried to rush to the station. Running through the train station Dong called Maggie, a friend of Erik’s who would accompany us to Xi’an. Apparently, she was at the wrong train station, Dong mistakenly told her Beijing main station instead of Beijing West. We rushed to the terminal anyway to try to catch our train, but they stop boarding 5 minutes prior to departure and we arrived 4 minutes prior to departure. While Dong and his wife Shaoli (Qaoli?) could have bribed the official, since they were with foreigners they were not able to bribe the comrade gate keeper (actually many hotels also refused us later on because they did not allow foreigners to stay).
Missing the train was especially unfortunate because we made the mistake of traveling during the Dragon Boat Festival (travel date was limited by Dong's Visa appointment). Being one of the few periods of vacation many Chinese get during the year mean that the station was packed with people trying to get trains anywhere out of Beijing. Buying train tickets in China is especially complicated because you have to buy them 10 days in advance at the train station from where you were departing. This meant Dong reserved hard seats for us a week ago, and had a friend of a friend of a scalper hold return tickets for us in Xi’an.
This is the line we were confronted with to try to change our tickets. The boards slowly flashed less and less seats until they were all gone, to everywhere. That includes hard and soft sleepers, hard and soft seats, and standing room only. Luckily since there are absolutely no rules in China the person at the counter did a manual override for no apparent reason and we got standing room on a train out of Beijing later that night. This also allowed Maggie to come to the West station from the main station, so she could accompany us on the journey after all.
This is standing room only.
Eventually we sat and slept on the floor of the aisle for the 14 hour overnight train ride. Multiple carts passing through selling food complicated things, as did garbage collection which leaked some foul fluid all over Comrade Erik.
The view from our window in Beijing. This is actually about an hour from Beijing proper. Just a bunch of skyscrapers built to house China’s massive population.
See what I mean? The one thing you do notice in China is the lack of young people.
We came to China most of all to visit our friend Dong. Here he is with his mother and his niece. Dong is 28 (or 30 if you start at 1 and count the chinese new year), so was some of the last of the generation that actually has siblings. His sister and brother-in-law were with Dong at the airport to pick us up and drive us to Dong’s apartment complex where we would stay.
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