Freelining, Imperial Palace, and awesome Pasta

My plans over the weekend to go explore Tokyo and really live it up didn't go too well because of the rain and my laziness, so I have been making an effort this week to change that. I was partially successful. I did the usual 5 hour experiment for clinic Monday-Thursday, but Tuesday wasn't rainy (did I mention I hate rain?) so I headed back into Tokyo after dropping my stuff off at the dorm. Since my biggest plan for this weekend is a huge salsa event being held in Ootemachi on Monday night, I thought it would be a good idea to go to Ootemachi beforehand and find the venue. Finding the gigantic skyscraper only took a minute, so I spent the rest of the afternoon walking around Ootemachi. And by walking, I mean freelining around the Imperial Palace. Trust me when I say it was LEGENDERRY

So some background info. The Imperial Palace is a huge attraction, even for the locals. Plus, there is a park and garden and lots of paths to walk. Oh, and a moat and really tall walls and big gates. Though they are mildly useless now, it is pretty obvious the Imperial Palace was an impenetrable stronghold back in the day before modern technology screwed everything up. Now it takes more than big walls and a ditch filled with water... And archer towers...

Anyways, the Imperial Palace is a great place to visit. Sadly, I got there after the gates closed so I only got to explore the outside, but the parks and paths are beautiful. I took lots of pictures. 

Fun fact #1: lots of people like to jog / ride bikes around the palace.

Fun fact #2: I like to freeline around the palace. Just to say it one more time because it was so awesome. I freelined around the Japanese Imperial Palace.

I eventually found my way back to the station and then went back to Shinjuku. By this point, I was really hungry so I texted my friend Arisa to see if she was still in Shinjuku and wanted to grab some food. She was, so I started thinking of somewhere to eat on my way to meet her. Just when I thought it would be another time where we would spend 10 minutes in this eternal circle of indecision, "どうしよう？分からない、どこに行きたい？わかない、どこ行きたい？" (What should we do? I don't know, where do you want to go? Dunno, you?), my hunger decided for us as I walked past a pasta place in Shinjuku station. 

More background information. Shinjuku station is, according to some, the busiest train/subway station in the world. The place is HUUGEEE. The station is probably bigger than my college campus.... and the other 4 campus combined. There are at least two different malls, uncountable shops and restaurants, and I don't know how many Lumines (Japanese store, not sure for what). And I usually dismiss them with logic similar to this, "a restaurant in a train station? suure......" I was so wrong. The pasta place was delicious. I only got an entree, but the entree was cheaper and tasted better than Olive Garden (though I did miss having soup beforehand). And since it is Japan, no tip. Mmm.

Since then most of my time has been spent gathering data for clinic. On top of that, I have started working on my Japanese vocabulary, I beat Yugi for Ben on his DS (yeah, I played Yugioh. And loved it. God I miss that game), and I have freelined the streets around the dorm. Oh, and tonight marks a momentous occasion. I finished the last episode of "How I met your Mother". Yep, I have had enough free time to re-watch 6 full seasons with 20+ episodes per season. In my defense, the episodes are only 21 mintues. So that is only roughly 42 hours in total, or 1.2 hours a day since I got here.

Not only that, I emulated Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages and Seasons (think waaaayyyy back to GameBoy Color) and completely beat both of them. And I finished organizing my iTunes library. I imported every song/audio file on my laptop and external and went through every song to delete the ones I don't want. I actually started that project while at home, but it took a long time. But, I prevailed. I went from 20gb and 4,000 songs to 5gb and 1,080 songs. And since Apple is releasing Lion soon (the next release for Mac OS X), I cleaned up my computer. Between deleting useless files and programs and moving stuff to my external, I freed up 100gb on my laptop and 80gb on my external. This is what I do when I don't have 17 hours of class and homework like at Mudd. I've also webcammed with my parents and also with Lauren.

The coming weekend should be extraordinary. Instead of clinic tomorrow, I am going back to Ootemachi to see the inside of the Imperial Palace (I hope it doesn't rain) in the afternoon and then maybe going to a club with the British guy I met on the train. And Marco (Mattie Tyce's friend from Germany) got me in contact with the freeline community in Japan and they have an event on Sunday I might head to. A few of them are heading out on Saturday night and crashing at a hotel to get an early start and I am invited to that too. I'm still thinking that over, but I'll probably go to the Sunday thing no matter what. And, naturally, Monday is already booked. Unless the universe really screws me over, I am not going to miss the salsa event. So those are my plans for the weekend. But, as always, I am open to ideas for other things to do. So if you come across anything on Google that sounds fun, send me a link.

Speaking of links, I added more pictures on Facebook.

I almost forgot, I got the best ad today. You know how Google and other websites look at your IP address, location, cookies, and such to provide audience tailored ads? Well, I got this. Notice the "You won a free year of working in America!" and "Answer for a chance to win a Green Card to the USA". Oh internet, how I love you sometimes.

Happy Father's Day!

So it is 10pm here in Japan on Sunday the 19th, which means the weekend is ending. My original intent for this weekend was to go out and enjoy the Tokyo nightlife and see some of the more popular attractions in the Tokyo area such as shrines and parks. So I finished clinic early on Friday and met up with my friend Arisa to go explore. -- Quick side note, I can't find a good translation for "to explore" in Japanese. The only combination that might work is the word for "exploration" with the "to do" verb. Turns out that modern Japanese only has roughly 40,000 words in common usage whereas English has 100,000 or more, so there are bound to be some translation errors. -- Unfortunately, Arisa hasn't been to many places in Tokyo either, so the role of navigator falls on me. But I found a really nice app for my iPod touch the other day for tourists in Japan and it is really useful for finding tourist attractions. Yes, I fully acknowledge that I am a nerd.

So on Friday Arisa and I went out and I was planning on going to Shinjuku Gyoen National Garden. After a few navigational errors, we were finally on the right path and made in there in good time. Sadly, the park was closed for the night. So then we walked back and went to Tokyu Hands (a Japanese department store) and found it in the middle of closing. Everything in Japan closes early! Even the trains stop shortly after midnight.

Okay, that isn't completely true. Plenty of places are open at night in Tokyo: bars, clubs, and a few restaurants and hotels. But mostly bars and clubs. So... yeah. Friday night ended pretty early once we realized everything was closed and took a train back (we both are on the Keio line from Shinjuku).  We met up earlier on Saturday and decided to go to Shibuya, a district south of Shinjuku. It was a nice day, so we were going to walk it and stop at Harajuku on our way there. Terrible idea. It started raining shortly after we left the station and neither of us had walked that far south before. We didn't get lost, but we got drenched. And the path we took was not a scenic route. After a good half an hour of walking through the rain, we found Harajuku and just decided to take a train the rest of the way. I hate rain. There is a really good reason I am in Claremont, CA for college: Claremont is a desert.

Shibuya was nice. We walked around looking for some statue (which we never found. Personally, I blame the sea of umbrellas in my way) and eventually wound up in a really small noodle joint in a basement off of a side street. Delicious. I was trying to follow Brian's method for good Asian food joints. The lower the health rating, the better. I am not sure how Japan's health regulations and such work, but that place was delicious enough to belong as low as a B in the US (assuming Brian isn't simply crazy and there actually is an inverse relationship between health ratings and deliciousness of food).

As for today, I stayed in and did some laundry and food shopping. And I watched tons of "How I Met your Mother". I blame my current obsession on my lack of ability to make jokes in Japanese. My humor doesn't translate well... But I am aware of that. I did go freelining for a bit though. I'm getting rusty. I can't imagine how much worse I have gotten at dancing. Speaking of that, the huge salsa event I've been waiting for is next weekend. I am super excited. The cover charge is kind of pricey, but I get two lessons, a drink, and full access to the buffet (soft drinks are free). The venue is a very nice hotel in Roppongi. I'll probably be one of the youngest people there again, but I'm getting used to that. I kind of like that everyone overestimates my age. Best to enjoy it while I can. I desperately need a haircut, and I'll only start looking younger and younger as it grows out. Maybe I'll try to find a barber in Roppongi that speaks English.

Ah, almost forgot. I met a British guy on the train on Friday. I think he is an English teacher here in Japan and he has been here for 9 years, so he knows Tokyo fairly well. He added me on Facebook and I might wind up meeting him and his friends next weekend so he can show me some nice places to visit in Tokyo.

One last thing, I want to give a huge shout out to my dad for Father's Day. I won't lie, I initially forgot. As far as I can tell, Father's Day doesn't exist in Japan (at least on the same day as ours) so I didn't have the usual warnings from shops and sales that it is coming up. My reminder came from Google earlier today. Wow, I have really lost touch on some things in the states. I'll be back in a month though.

Anyways, I wanted to say thank you to Dad (for those wondering, I am going to contact him directly too. I might temporarily be a blogger, but I'm not THAT bad). He always worked hard for me, my brothers, and my mom to provide for us. I remember there were times when I was a kid that he would work 16 to 18 hour shifts 4 or 5 times a week. Since my mom also worked a lot, he would wake us up in the middle of the night and drop us off at his mom's house on his way to work and we would go to school the next morning from her house. I don't remember all the details since I was only around 7 at that time (honestly, I could be completely wrong with that guess. I only know it was at an age I don't have much memory of). Either way, my dad always did his best to raise us. We didn't get pampered (okay, mom kind of spoiled us), we got hard lessons to make us better men. He taught us how to work hard and to always love our mom. We don't have to love him, but we have to love Mom because she devoted her entire life to us and she deserves respect. Growing up with a stern father was rough sometimes, but I know it made me and my brothers better men.

So for all the times you made me pay for my mistakes as a child, for all the times you reminded me I don't understand the first thing about life, for all the times you told me to shut up and work, for all the brutal hours of working at Keystone and Caterpillar breaking your body to bring home a paycheck, and for all the arguments and support and help, and for being a great dad and making Mom happy; thank you Dad. I love you. 

See you in a month,

David

School, work, and play.

It has been about a week now since I last updated you guys, so I'll do my best to remember all that has been going down since my last post. My clinic is officially off the ground. I constructed the apparatus and I had my first run though of my experimental procedure and data analysis yesterday. My project isn't complicated, but I am still quite proud of myself for designing and running an experiment of my own creation. Prof. Hikita (the sponsor of my clinic) said he wants results, and I am free to get those results however I decide. So far he seems pretty impressed by my pace and work attitude, and I hope that doesn't change. Ben is a senior, so he pretty much knows he is an engineering god and the program has never had issues with seniors from Mudd. But I am the first freshman/non-senior to do this, so no one is quite sure of how useful I will be and I want to prove that I am capable.

So, recap of last week. Ben and I went to a different section of English class (this one is actually an English culture class) and I met those teachers as well. They were happy to have us sitting in on the class and we got to give our input a few times. They were discussing the concept of a simulacra (wikipedia), and I am not surprised that most of the students had no idea of what was going on. The English vocabulary used was obviously over their heads. Still, it was a very interesting discussion for me and Ben. Random trivia, Disney is one of the best examples of simulacra. Other random trivia, Disney world in Tokyo is extremely popular to all ages (particularly teenagers and older).

I am essentially self sufficient for shopping and such. I can go to the grocery store and most restaurants without issue of ordering. The only areas I don't usually understand is when they ask "take out or dine in" and "would you like to order a drink" and "do you prefer booth or table". Mostly everything else is good. Side note, credit cards aren't that popular in Japan. I use my debit card when shopping for food and the cashier always asks something I don't understand, but I say yes and everything works out. That is what matters, right? Quick culture note, Japan has mastered the art of packaged food and lunches. Boxed tea and cup noodles is a great combo for lunch.

As for friends, I mostly talk to Yunyi and the others from the English class but I am started to kind of meet other people. I talk to the guys on my clinic team, and I talk to Arisa, and of course Ben. There is also a guy in my dorm that lives on the floor above and he is a really nice person to talk to.

I spent the last few days of last week hanging out with Arisa in Shinjuku and I really enjoyed it. But I figured I should quit bothering her all the time so I started looking for places to dance in Tokyo. Salsa and Blues weren't happening anytime soon, but I got lucky with West Coast. There was an event in Shinkuku that night and the directions seemed pretty easy. So I took a train to Shinjuku and followed the directions to where the venue was. Worked well until I realized the address was wrong. So I ducked into a dance studio I came across to see if they knew anything about the event. They didn't speak English, but I was able to explain enough for them to help me out and we eventually figured it out. The venue was actually in the basement of a place I walk by fairly often, and the crowd was really nice. I was the youngest person there (by 10 or 15 years), but they were excited to have me there. The crowd was pretty small, the max number of people there was around 15. The lead teacher is a black guy from LA and works as a translator for old Buddhist texts. We had some nice chats about living in Japan and dancing and such. After talking to a lot of people, we realized we had a lot of salsa dancers so the DJ played a salsa for us. I loved it. And the follow teacher is a coordinator for some local salsa events so she gave me some info about what is happening before I leave.

A quick culture note so you appreciate my next comment. Japanese people do not show affection through hugs and physical contact like other countries. Girls sometime do to other girls, but hugs are very rare between anyone except family and significant others. Mudd is a very touchy community, and the dance community is probably more so. Turns out, same in Japan. I would be introduced to a dancer and there would be a handshake and usually a hug too. I was pretty surprised because it was the first time I've hugged anyone here other than Cari (my friend from IMSA), but dancers are dancers. And I even got a huge goodbye from everyone when I left. Small dance scenes are the greatest. It reminded me quite a bit of blues back in Claremont.

Yesterday (Monday) was my most productive day here to date. Prof. Hikita got the glass plates I needed for my apparatus so I got straight to work getting the box put together and everything in place to start testing. I survived my first experience with cutting glass with only an extremely small scrape (not cut) on my knuckle. And yes, most of the box is held together by duct tape. I'll get some pictures uploaded soon. I'm quite proud.

Yesterday was also my craziest day here to date. My clinic team had a welcome party for me and we all (plus some friends) went out to eat some Shyabu Shyabu so they could welcome me the Japanese way. So we ate lots (lots = way too much) of food and the Prof had me trying Japanese alcohol of various sorts. Naturally, there was also lots of flattering pictures taken and jokes were plentiful. For those unaware of how sake works, you never pour your own. Someone else pours yours and you pour theirs. If someone pours you sake, you don't say no. At first that was fine, until we started pouring for people when they weren't paying attention. Long story short, all of us drank more than we expected. I was expecting two or three, I had seven or eight. It wasn't bad though, I had enough food in my stomach that I hardly felt it. We ate and drank for three hours, then we went to a cafe for dessert and spent another hour there. Finally, after almost 5 hours of stuffing our faces, I had been officially welcomed.

I uploaded more pictures on facebook, you can check them out here. I'm off to do more clinic. I will be home in barely more than a month, so see you all soon!

EDIT

Btw, I wanted to thank all of you for reading this blog and all my posts. It is strangely comforting to know that my friends and family are keeping track of my happenings of my crazy life here in Tokyo. I already have over 700 page views and this is roughly a month old. And lots of you (Mars and Jamie in particular) are commenting about my pictures and such. So.. yeah, thank you. I'm glad I still have a life in the states.

End of weekend numero 2

This weekend was definitely the best weekend so far. I had an amazing Friday night (see last post), and I spent Sunday in Roppongi with Miho. O-chan (the other girl from the English class) was supposed to be there too but then she got busy job hunting and writing and such. A quick observation, trains can be really confusing. Getting to Roppongi was harder than we expected (by the way, Roppongi is the district where most foreigners live). Miho had a plan of different places to visit, but we couldn't find most of them. But we did look around at some shops and found a park/garden to wander around in. After I took some creepy pictures of people walking around the garden we went to a TV channel's building and took pictures in one of those Japanese photo booths. The great part was when we were editing them. The first picture was fine, but we only had like 5 seconds left for the second photo so Miho tried to write "funny" since the background was funny. Except she spelled funny with an "h" instead of an "f".

Other than that, we just walked around, found a TGI Fridays and ate there since I figured it would be fairly cheap. Heh, wrong. I am better off eating at cheap noodle joints on the side streets. Oh, we went to an ice cream shop that is apparently pretty famous here in Japan. I'm not sure what I ordered, but it was delicious. More pictures here on Facebook.

Amazing night in Tokyo

Yesterday was by far the best day I've had yet in Tokyo, and also my hardest. I didn't have clinic so I didn't head to Shinjuku for class. Instead, I slept in and did responsible things like laundry and cleaning my room. I must say, my mom would be quite proud of my room at the moment. Since I was still making plans for the evening, I decided to head out and freeline around the side streets. Then Arisa called and we made plans to meet at Shinjuku then head out. I'm not entirely sure how, but I somehow got to Shinsen-Shinjuku instead of Shinjuku. So I called Arisa to tell her I was going to be late then attempted to find a train that would take me to somewhere familiar. After about 15 minutes of fruitless searching, I headed farther into the station to find a map. At that point, I realized Shinsen-Shinjuku is connected to Shinjuku, it just has newer (and developing) lines. So that was a good 20 minutes of my life I wasted thinking I was lost but actually wasn't. *facepalm*

From there, we headed out to find the movie theatre. Not a big deal, right? Heh.. Shinjuku is one of the hardest districts in Tokyo to navigate. Arisa was using her phone for a map and we still weren't making progress, but we did get some nice exploring done. After an hour or so we passed a Softbank store (pretty much Japan's equivalent to ATT) so I went in and used their display iPads to find the theatre. Success. The movie theatre had a nice design that was ultra slick and modern, but the seats were strange. Pictures on Facebook here. Our choice of movie was narrowed down to the new Pirates of the Caribbean or Black Swan. I've already seen Black Swan so we got tickets for Pirates in 3D. They were more expensive than I liked, but it was my first time seeing a 3D movie. Not only was the 3D amazing, the movie was in English with Japanese subtitles so I was able to understand it (which I was not expecting). And the movie itself was pretty decent, an extra bonus.

Finding the train station from the movie theatre was pretty easy, then we headed to catch a train heading out. The train waiting in the tracks was super packed. So my logic was, "This train is crowded, we'll just take the next one." Great idea, except it was the last train of the night. Apparently the trains in Tokyo stop running around 12:30am (I'm not quite sure why). After that, I just figured we would have to take a taxi, not a big deal. When I asked Arisa if she was going to take the same taxi to Sengawa then continue on to where she lives, she said she was just gonna wait for the first train in the morning since the taxi is too expensive and she lives fairly far away. Tokyo is one of the safest cities in the world, and we were in a pretty relaxed district, but I didn't particularly feel like leaving some girl in Tokyo to wait all night by herself until the trains start running again. So instead of a taxi, we walked over to a 7-eleven and bought food - and by food, I mean cup noodles. Delicious, delicious cup noodles (the 7-elevens in Japan have hot water dispensers so you can make the noodles in the store). Other than food, my iPod also occupied us until 4:30ish when the first train left.

One of the best parts of the aforementioned adventure was that it was nearly entirely in Japanese. Arisa kind of practiced the simple phrases she knows but I was pretty adamant about practicing my Japanese. Twelve hours of communicating in Japanese. I didn't mess up too often, but I had to look up a lot of words in the Japanese dictionary I have downloaded on my iPod. All in all, the night was amazing. I got to freeline, I spent the night in Tokyo, watched a movie in 3D for the first time, got stranded in Tokyo, ate cup noodles from 7-eleven, and stayed up all night speaking Japanese. And then I slept until 2pm. =D

Getting started

Now that I am figuring out my schedule and what I have to do and such, I am starting to get a routine set in. I usually don't have obligations at the college in the morning so I avoid the morning rush hour and I get to the college in time to eat lunch with Ben and the Yunyi and other. There seems to be three popular options for lunch. Eating at the cafeteria, going to a local restaurant, or getting food at the convenience store. We ate at the cafeteria yesterday and today we ate food from the convenience store. Surprisingly delicious. They even cook anything you buy, whether it is cup noodles or pasta or a calzone. So much more convenient than convenience stores in the US. I am going to miss the Japanese 7-elevens.

There are two train stations we can use to get to Shinjuku. The first is the one I usually use, which is Sengawa. It is a bit longer of a walk, but it is one stop closer to Shinjuku. The second, Tsutsujigoka, is a few minutes closer but we have to walk through a bunch of side streets to get there. It is also a larger station that has faster trains, so either one works the same. I'm mentioning this because I realized walking back one day that I could freeline on the side streets and not worry about traffic. Since it was dry, I took my freelines out and cruised around the side streets for a bit. I am a bit out of practice, but I still managed to freak out all the locals. It was great to freeline again though. You know, when it ISN'T raining. I. Hate. Rain.

Since my clinic meeting wasn't until 3, Ben and I sat in the back of the English class Yunyi and Bunny are in. It reminded me that English is way too complicated. And it is really fun to listen to the class since they are being taught British-English. I can't help but think of all the girls I know that would love Sebastian's accent. My clinic meeting was fairly short, I have a bit of research I want to do then I am buying materials next week so I can hopefully get my testing started end of next week or the beginning of the next. Since the theory behind what I have to do isn't complicated, I am planning to do extensive testing so my results will be plenty definitive. And I'll still have too much free time.

I am currently trying to make plans for this weekend. I found some places on google for salsa dancing, but I am going to try to convince people to join me before I go. I do have at least one planned adventure though. It is a monthly salsa event, and it looks like a great event. The cover charge is high, but I don't want to miss the opportunity. Interestingly, all the salsa venues I found advertised having one of two different styles - New York or Cali. Time to find out which style I have. And I still have the blues community that Pejing sent me a link for, I'll do more research on that soon too.

Other than that, I am just asking all the people I talk to if they have weekend plans. I might be able to plan something with Arisa for tomorrow and I'm excited for that because her English isn't as practiced as Yunyi and company, so I get to work on my Japanese.

My brother Michael turned 21 yesterday (June 1st), and now he is in Vegas with my parents and his girlfriend. I skyped with them before they left and it was nice to see them. It was my first time skyping with family too. My dad said my eyes look more slanted... I'll have to start threatening them with "Be nice or I won't come back home." On are more serious note, I hope they all have fun in Vegas. My parents don't often take breaks from work, and my dad recently made the transition from the factory floor to management, so he has been pulling 12+ shifts 6 times a week. 

And I have realized I am terrible about taking pictures, so you all should yell at me to remind me.

Clinic and becoming a sardine

I've been in my dorm in Japan now for over a week, and I'm pretty well settled in. I've gotten over the differences in dorm life between here and Mudd, but I really hate that there isn't a dorm community here. Even though I lived in Atwood (which isn't widely known on campus for having a tight overall community), I loved the suite I was living in and there was a sense of community between us. Here in Tokyo, not so much. Luckily, I am living with Brian next year in East (because his room draw number wasn't good enough to get us in Atwood again). Another annoying aspect of my dorm here: laundry. The washer is free, but drying is 100 yen (~1.30 USD) for 30 minutes.

Tuesday was a fairly busy day. We got our student ID cards for Kogakuin (I'll post a pic soon) and then got our internet/school emails set up. Just a quick shout out for macs, my instructions for logging on to wireless fit on a single page whereas the windows instructions Ben had to use were 6 double sided pages. I met with my clinic team and had introductions and such. I am working with two seniors on prototyping a more efficient solar updraft tower. And by working, I mean the clinic team meets on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I honestly have no idea what to do with my life. I can only walk around Tokyo for so long, especially with my budget. I am kind of surprised by how... not challenging this seems. Oh well, I brought my Japanese text book with me so I can always just study.

Ben and I have been having lunch with the students from the English class. Since I keep mentioning them, I'll go ahead and give you more info to keep track of them. Yunyi is an engineering major originally from China (which is nice for Ben because they can talk in Chinese if she can't say something in English). She has a pet turtle and swears it is adorable, but cute is not a word I would ever use for a reptile. Then there is a Japanese guy we call "Bunny" because he has a pet bunny (which is much more adorable than Yunyi's turtle). The last person in the class is a girl named Miho. She isn't actually an engineering major, she is studying architecture. They also introduced me and Ben to their friend Arisa. We all sat around after my clinic meeting and chatted, but Arisa isn't in the English class and is much less comfortable speaking than the others. I kind of picked up on that and switched to Japanese but then everyone else was speaking in English and I couldn't keep up with trying to communicate in Japanese. Hopefully, though, I will be able to talk with Arisa more so I can practice my Japanese instead of Miho and Yunyi practicing their English.

Now for the best part. Ben and I usually take a train back before rush hour starts, but we lost track of time talking and then got stuck in the middle of riding the trains in Tokyo during rush hour. Wow. So. Many. People. My recommendation for if you are ever crammed into a train with the entirety of Tokyo's population: make sure you get stuck in a comfortable position. Don't try moving for a gap if you see one, you will get squished mid-step and have to hold the pose until the next stop. Other than that, just try to stand still or it will seem like you are trying to start a group grind-fest.