Life and Times

What's pho lunch

2011-02-25T17:42:00.001-08:00

Yesterday I stumbled on a little hole in the wall pho place near work. Some might think, big whoop, but bowls of that tasty beef goodness have been few and far between since I came to Japan. Sure there have been plenty of other kinda of tasty beefy bowls to be had, but sometimes you have a craving. The place, as I said, was a hole in the wall. The kitchen is also located at the front of the store and doesn't have a door, so you could in theory stand and watch your food being made or slopped out or what have you.
Gotta say that the food was good, though a touch on the salty side but all in all goodness galore. And it gives me a good excuse to post a pic. What more could you ask for.

Karuizawa boarding

2011-02-21T00:24:00.001-08:00

Well, well, well. Looks like I find myself back here after over a year and change's absence. Well I wanted to document my first boarding outing since I came to japan, so here's I is.
Karuizawa is a small city on the way to Nagano from Tokyo. Now the great thing about the slope that I want to is that it's also on the way to Nagano. As in get off the bullet train and walk 5 minutes to the lodge. Can't top that. So what's it like? Well it's smaller that a mountain but larger than a molehill. About Blue Mountain size. The boarding itself was decent, but with the daytime high of 4C today it was a little soft in spots and a little icy in others. All in all though, a decent day.

Fall froliking

2008-11-30T04:46:00.000-08:00

Its kind of hard to think of it still being fall on this, the 30th day of November, but this year in Tokyo its still a true statement. The trees still have leaves, of many a hue and the weather is quite nice. Tomorrow's high is about 13C so I can't complain in the slightest. But what would fall be without taking a little time out to look at some of those beautifully coloured trees. While most people think of Tokyo as nothing but a sprawling megalopolis its pretty interesting to note that a lot of the surrounding countryside (which is still in the municipality of Tokyo) is really beautiful and about a million miles away from Harajuku, Shinjuku and the like, even though the actual distance is more like about 50 miles.

At the bottom of Mt. Takao

One of these beautiful escapes is Mt. Takao where I went last week. It's only one 45min - 1 hour train ride out of Shinjuku station, but its great. Unfortunately it gets pretty crowded on the weekend, but that's Japan. The leaves were pretty .. um.. pretty and I managed to get my hands on a massive pork bun near the top. Nothing says tasty like a hot meaty snack on a cold autumn day.

Mt. Fuji

Another cool thing was that I was able to get a chance to see the legendary Mt. Fuji from on top of Mt. Takao. Mt. Takao is only about 300m tall, while Fuji is about 3000, so its still a pretty impressive sight. There were a bunch of people standing at the top of the mountain waiting to get a sweet picture of the sun setting behind Mt. Fuji, so I stayed and tried my hand at it too..

Speaking of sunset, there are two ways down the mountain, the cable car and the usual "one-foot-in-front-of-the-other" method. We chose the latter, which maybe wasn't the best idea, since we had stayed at the top to see the sun setting over Mt. Fuji. To make matters worse we took the narrowest, steepest, slipperiest route down in the hopes of seeing a waterfall that was next to the trail. (There were several signs posted saying that you should *not* try to go down this way since it was steep).

Through the trees

Well with the light fading very quickly, and no flashlights, we made a bit of a mad dash down to the bottom before the rabid squirrels and zombie rabbits decided to take a stab at tearing into our flesh. Just as things were at their darkest (literally) we saw the light (literally) at the end of the tunnel. We made it down to the foot of the mountain where there were lampposts a plenty. All in all a good little afternoon.

The Suds Boat

2008-08-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Wouldn't you like to ride a boat with these people?

Now that the semester is done, and I've all but had it up to my eyeballs in Lyapunov functions, Linear Matrix Inequalities, congestion control algorithms and whole host of other things that no one cares about, the summer of fun can begin. Well the 2-3 weeks of fun, anyways. What better way than to kick it off with my first ever trip on a boat larger than the center island ferry.

And what better way to celebrate a trip on a 4 deck gargantuan mammothocity than with a beer or twelve. Yes indeed, let me introduce the Tokyo Bay Yukata boat cruise. 2500 yen for 2hrs of all you can drink fun and frolic on a big ass boat. Special thanks to Dean for arranging the tickets for this, especially since when we got there the tix were sold out as evidenced by some poor sad sack running around looking for scalpers.

As I said, it was a big boat, a couple "below decks" where most people were sitting around eating and drinking, and the two upper decks, with more sitting and eating and drinking, but also a bit more dancing, and a few less families. I met a few interesting people, including a cool group of Korean tourists, several random groups of Japanese people and one particularly amorous girl who seemed to be having fun squeezing the butts of passers-by.

World famous yukata dancers

As an extra coolness factor, many of the people on the boat were wearing yukatas (think of a kimono, but lighter and thinner, so you can wear it in the summer without losing 10 pounds). There were also the signature "yukata dancers" shakin' their booty on the dance floor to liven the place up even more (not that it needed it with a bunch of drunkards running around taking pictures and trying to spot fireworks in the distance). All in all a good old time.

SushiーQ

2008-08-09T05:50:00.000-07:00

My BBQ team

Now it can't really compare to a fat rack of baby backs, topped with a jerk chicken drumstick or twelve, but a Japanese BBQ's not too shabby. So I was pleased to be able to go to the BBQ party held by my work last weekend. We all got on a bus at an ungodly 7:30am at Shinjuku station and headed off to parts unknown (at least to me.. actually I still don't know where we went). A few hours later we arrived somewhere in the outskirts of Tokyo, next to a little river surrounded by green. Funny thing about Japan is that, despite being super densely populated, there's still quite a lot of green space, rivers and whatnot. So we set up our BBQ's for some good ole fashioned Japanese BBQity. Steak, shrimp, veg, and fried noodles made up the menu.. A little different, but all goodness.

Ground zero for BBQ mayhem

Once it got too hot (or once we all got too drunk) it was into to river for a quick cool down. I think it was my first time swimming in a river, and I learned a valuable lesson. River beds have rocks. Lots of rocks. Big ones, small ones, and general all around feet hurting ones. I wondered why everyone else had flip-flops. Still it was all good.

Ready for a smashin'

The day was topped off by the a good ole watermelon smash. Its like a watermelon pinata. You gotta hit it with your handy-dandy wooden sword to break it open before everyone can eat. All good fun.

Long and the short, it was a good day. The kind of thing that I hope to have more of in the near future.

Off my skull

2008-06-28T14:28:00.000-07:00

I finally managed to get around to seeing my third movie in a movie theatre in Japan, and other than a nasty leg cramp due to a wee shortage of leg room, it was some pretty good fun. The movie was the new "Indiana Jones" and I have to say that it wasn't too bad. The cool thing about movies in Japan though is that when you buy your ticket, you can pick your seat from a display at the ticket counter. You get a numbered ticket and worrying about finding 2 or 3 seats together when you get into the theater is a thing of the past. Not every theatre does this, but the majority (especially busy ones do). And you can do it online too, which is a neat little feature.

Other than that, its been working and studying and more of the same. I meant to write a post about the stabbing spree that went down in Akihabara a few weeks ago, but I never really got around to that. Suffice it to say, it was pretty freaky that I dude decided to run his big ass truck into a crowd of people and go on a stabbing spree in the middle of downtown Tokyo. They caught him, but I don't know what they're gonna do with him now.

Graduation Day (but not for me)

2008-03-29T08:39:00.000-07:00

So the spring has come once again to the shores of this isle. And of course, like the thoughts of all young men in springtime, my thoughts turn to only one thing; cherries. (you can stop giggling now). Yes, the cherry trees are in full blossom and its a sight to behold. And this year the timing was especially nice since the blossoms coincided nicely with graduation day at my school. All the little undergrad boys and girls in their suits and kimono under the cherry trees in full bloom was a sight to behold. Took a picture of it. Wanna see it? Here it goes:

All in all a pretty good day to graduate and I hope that mine will be as nice. Not that there'll be any cherry trees in bloom, since I'll be graduating in September, not March, but maybe they're be some nice fall colours or something.

So after the graduating people were all done with the "listening to boring speeches" part of the day, all the people in my lab went out for our quarterly "drink yourself into a near-comatose stupor" event. Well maybe not "near-comatose", but "drink yourself giggly" doesn't exactly have the same ring to it. Like I said, a good day.

Next week, I'm going back to Osaka (yeah!!) to attend a friends wedding. It'll have been over a year since I've been back to Osaka and I'm looking forward to some good, cheap eats and some of my old haunts, and I may even try to determine the ultimate fate of the bicycle I left behind.

First in the second

2008-02-10T05:35:00.000-08:00

So my first post of 2008. Happy umm.. Valentine's Day.. How've y'all been doing? I know that most people reading this will probably crucify me for my next statement, but I just have to bitch a little about the cold in Tokyo. It's cold.. it's damn cold. Not so much because the temperature outside has been hovering around an absolutely frigid 2 or 3C, but because the temperature inside has been hovering around an absolutely frigid 2 or 3C. Someone once told me that houses in Japan are built to allow a draft to pass through so that they can stay cool in the summer. Man they weren't kidding. It's all about brass monkeys and witch's bosoms in my apartment.

On a slightly sunnier note I started this year in grand style.. by losing my wallet. I went out for a New Year's eve dancing jamboree and came home without any cash, credit cards, or maid cafe point cards. Luckily for me though, when I called the club a few days later, someone had turned in (or found) my wallet with everything intact except for the cash I was carrying. All things considered, it could have been much worse.

Between New Year's and now its been mostly business as usual, though I did manage to take in an amateur symphony last weekend, and I went to listen to a buddy DJ at a very tiny club/concert venue. Weird thing was that it was in the middle of the afternoon. Weirder thing was the other guy who picked up a mic in another part of the club and went on for 10-minutes about his bathroom habits, which somehow had the crowd in histerics. Tim Allen, eat your heart out.

Nihon Lights

2007-12-28T08:33:00.000-08:00

So Christmas has pretty much come and gone in Japan for another year. Its kind of a wonder that its really celebrated at all, since there really aren't many Christians here, but then again, its not really celebrated much. There's no holiday on Christmas Day, so I spent the day both at school and at work, but what can I say... "When in Rome", right?

Still, even though there's no holiday they do decorate the place pretty nicely.. I managed to snap up a few nice pics around Shinjuku station, and Shinagawa station where they have some pretty nice displays. I was surprised to find though, that the Shinagawa decorations were gone 2 days after Christmas. Don't joke around these folks..

Despite the lack of a Christmas holiday though, the New Year's period is absolutely massive, so the traditional Christmas holiday is really just shifted a week or so to become the New Year holiday. Which basically means that as of tomorrow afternoon I'm on vacation for a week!!! (The don't make exclamation marks large enough to express how happy I am about this)

All this excitement might explain why I'm not sleeping yet. I'm like a kid at, um.., New Year's.

Larger than the average fair

2007-10-31T06:42:00.000-07:00

Last weekend was the annual Tokyo Tech open campus and school festival. There have been posters here and there around the campus and such advertising the event, so I expected it would be somewhat of a big deal; something like the old SAC carnival at UofT. What I didn't expect was for there to be thousands of people there, from the community as well as the school. There were student run stalls selling all kinds of foods( chocolate dipped bananas, okonomiyaki, etc) and whatnot. The stalls took up most of the space in the main part of the campus, which is pretty big, so they was an absolute ton of stuff to choose from.

The event was for both days of the weekend, but a typhoon blew through on the Saturday, so I don't think that much really happened that day. I dropped by late Sunday to see that there was a stage set up at the bottom of a hill which was packed with people sitting and watching some apparantly famous Japanese comedians, who came in for the event. I couldn't stay as long as I liked, cause I had some bid-nass (i.e. homework) to take care of. Maybe next year.

A taste of home

2007-10-19T05:59:00.000-07:00

This week, I had the rare privilege of having not one, but two opportunities to munch some goodness from the motherland (ish)..

One of the professors in my department went to Montreal last week for a conference, meeting or some other such professorial encounter, and he brought back a box of the tried and true, all Canandian souvenir, maple cream cookies. Been a while since I had some of these, so it was a very welcome snack.

Not being satisfied with a simple dessert offering, I found myself at a T.G.I.Friday's restaurant close to my work a few days later. I was happy to find out that they actually have free refills, but not so happy at the price, which was close to $5. Still, it was muchly worth it. Of course I needed to wash something down with my new found limitless spring of everflowing Pepsi, so I settled on the bacon and cheeseburger. Let me rephrase that; I settled on the ten-dollar bacon and cheese-burger. Still, although it might not be something that I repeat anytime soon, it was a dang beautiful thing..

And in other news, I got my internet connection today.. 100Mbps of blazing-fast bit traffic. Now I can finally start that stay-at-home email spam business I've been thinking about.

Nothing special

2007-09-26T04:21:00.000-07:00

Well the summer is beginning to wind down here in Tokyo.. Not so many 35C+ days any more, which gets no complaints from me... Classes at school start next Monday, which doesn't mean that I've been on vacation, since I been doing research and preparing presentations and the like for the last little while.
For those who know them, Ed and Maggie stopped though Tokyo a little while back (although anyone who knows Ed and Maggie and most likely knows that already). I'll try to get some of those pictures up and in here in the next little while.

The sucky part of studying...

2007-08-21T02:08:00.000-07:00

is tests. I've never been a fan of tests, exams, quizzes, and the like, and today was no exception. Today I wrote my entrance exam for the masters program at TITech. (Until now I've been a research student).. Holy friggen' crap. Let's just say that I had my hind quarters handed to me in a brown paper bag and was told where I stand. No pretty bows, no bubble wrap, just, "Here, get out, and have a nice day".

I'm exaggerating a little, but the gist is that it was tough.. Lots of detailed knowledge, lots of tedious calculations, and not a lot of time. On top of that there's no outline of what kind of material will be on the exam.. section names like, "Math" and "Physics" are supposed to somehow help narrow it all down. ("Please study math ; there will be questions on math"). I can see now why this is one of the toughest schools to get into in Japan.

Of course, I've been preparing for this test for the last few months, so none of this was a surprise to me. Still, doesn't make it any easier. But I'm finished now, so I'm all smiles and sunshine. Tomorrow I have an interview, but hopefully that will be a less trying ordeal.

Now that I've had my little rant and rave, I'm off to misbehave with a beer and a bucket-of-bird (KFC for laypeople).

My B-Day

2007-07-30T00:07:00.000-07:00

Last Saturday was my birthday. I can no longer deny that I'm in my 30's as I've now reached the ripe old age of 31. So you may ask yourself, how did I mark this momentous occasion? Why I went out on the Tokyo town in style of course. Well, maybe not a ridiculous amount of style, but enough to get me through the evening. First I went to a funky yakiniku restaurant for dinner (like Korean BBQ, but Japanese style) where I tried duck for the first time. Good and tasty. The grill at this restaurant is actually a flat stone (or what looked like one), and the guy puts the meat on for you and cleans it periodically and whatnot. Special thanks to Emi for arranging this place and the cake and ice-cream that made a perfect desert.

Since I'm always still up for a good booty-shakin, even at my advanced stage in life, the after-dinner festivities included hitting a Tokyo club, called a-life. Gotta say that its my first time being in a club that offers free hair styling to the ladies. They have a full hair and aesthetic salon inside the club. Music was pretty good, and I was surprised to see that so many people seemed to be really into the music, although sometimes large groups seemed to bust out the para para moves, which was a little bit scary.

We managed to stick it out until about 4am when exhaustion got the better of us and we retired to the benches in front of Roppongi Hills to wait for the first train home, followed by a day of rest, recovery and ramen.

Just another Manic Thursday

2007-06-20T22:30:00.000-07:00

Well I figure that its been long enough since my last post that I should pop a little something something up on the old weeb here. I don't really have much to say, but as everyone knows that never stopped any blogger worth his or her salt from inundating the world with their pedantic ramblings. Who am I to break with tradition.

Tokyo's hot. Very hot. Hotter than a steamy night of lurid fornication with the entire Japanese women's gymnastics team. Only difference is that Tokyo's heat exists outside of my imagination. Apparently rainy season is supposed to have started, but I've heard on the news that no one's seen hide nor hair of this alleged rain, and even fewer people know when it will arrive.

Speaking of news, this weeks highlights include: an exploding onsen, and on an slightly lighter note, it seems that Hokkaido meat packing company, Meat Hope is in trouble for selling pork croquettes labeled as beef croquettes. Looks like Nippon Ham might be in a position to pick up some market share.

Like I said, not much to say. I'll try to snag some Akihabara pics for next time.

Pivo

2007-05-31T23:19:00.000-07:00

So I've finally got around to using the old Google Video to get out this post that I started writing in March... So, after 2 months in the making, I would to introduce you to.. PIVO.

I ran across this display of Nissan cars the other day (on the 4th floor of a mall), and they were showing off some of their more environmentally friendly cars. They also had on display their latest concept car, the Pivo (Pee-vo). Gotta say, its a funky little beast. The doors slide open automatically, there's no back seat, but it still seats 3 people, and the main feature, well, a video's worth a thousand words..

The model driving it was pretty nice too. Friendly I mean. :)

Extra Life

2007-05-11T02:27:00.000-07:00

With visions of little green and white mushrooms floating around in my head, I applied for a teaching position at OneUp English school a few weeks ago. My first day was this week. So far, its been pretty good. It's one-to-one teaching, and no kids, so its not as crazy and trying to control a room full of 8 year olds.
From what I've been able to gather so far, my co-workers are a colourful cast of characters, which keeps the work interesting. The students are pretty varied as well, so that seems like it will keep things pretty fresh too.
Taking the train home at 10:00 at night 3 days a week isn't exactly my idea of fun, especially when that train in in Tokyo, where dreams of a seat are seldom realized, but all in all, so far, so good.

I just need to keep my eyes open for Bowser.

Groovin'

2007-04-23T04:05:00.000-07:00

One of the things that might not be immediately obvious when you first arrive in Japan is the fact that many streets and outdoor shopping arcades have "Muzak" playing most of the time. I don't know if they've newly installed speakers, or if they just weren't turned on previously, but I noticed that they were playing music on my way in to school today. I got to bop along to the musical stylings of Little Richard and Fats Domino on my way in.

Red beans and ... fries?!?

2007-04-01T22:49:00.000-07:00

I stopped off at my semi-local Wendy`s today, in the mood for a treat from the motherland (Actually I went there cause you can get a variety of burgers for about $1 CAN) and I noticed a rather inconspicous sign on the table, advertising an seemingly innocent looking "hamburger". The text on the sign read something as follows: "Instead of meat, we`ve added delicious sweet red bean paste". Once I was done with all of the dry heaving and fainting spells, I came to realize that Japan truly is the land where East meets West.

Day at the office

2007-03-28T06:28:00.000-07:00

I seem to be quickly settling in to this whole Research Student thing; I've got my own desk, and my own computer and everything. Since this is an engineering environment, my professor asked me to install Linux on my PC. A simple enough task given a few simple prerequisites; one of which is an installation CD. Everyone that I asked for a CD from responded with, "Which Linux are you looking for?". Apparently there are now 7 million distributions, and our lab used about 3.8 million of those. I still haven't installed any but that's due to other issues.
I instead spent most of the afternoon trying to review some of the umpteen thousand things that I've forgotten since I left school. Today was linear algebra, a subject I did pretty well in back in the day, but between eigenfunctions and linear mappings, characteristic equations and rank-nullity theory, I was a little overwhelmed. Let's see what fun tomorrow brings. :)

What a week?!

2007-03-27T07:03:00.000-07:00

It's been a pretty busy week this week for me, and I don't expect them to be too much easier from here on in.. So far I've: moved from Fukuoka to Tokyo, discovered that all "Tokyo" airports are actually nowhere near Tokyo and require at least an hour train ride, got lost about a half dozen times, dealt with super-shady real estate agents trying to pawn apartments that nobody wants off onto me, lost my bank card, started school, and discovered that my favourite beef-on-rice fast food chain has changed their menu and removed my favourite dish. In short, it's been busy. But it's been fun. Mostly. Well different at least. Here's to the next phase of life in Japan.

Temping ain't easy ..

2007-02-20T08:06:00.000-08:00

Anyone who has ever been to Japan should be familiar with those annoying people who stand outside of the train stations and departments stores shoving flyers and tissues into the hands of unsuspecting passersby, and generally making a nuisance of themselves. Well.. I got me a new part-time job as one of those annoying people. I hand out flyers for an English school. Its not that bad.. I get to pretend that I'm
"Flyerman", without the leather jacket, and without the Uptown Theatre, and without the eye contact; Japanese people are exceptionally good at ignoring things. Especially when those things are shoving flyers in their faces.. I have to say though, I'm a big hit wiht the over-40 ladies set. I think its cause lots of peoples' mothers want them to study english... I hope...

Nagasaki

2007-02-20T07:50:00.000-08:00

Nagasaki photos

I managed to get in a little side trip to Nagasaki this week, which was a nice little break from routine. Of course I made a stop at the Nagasaki Atomic bomb museum, and the Peace Park, but I was also able to check out the sites of some of the few remaining Dutch inspired buildings in the city. (Historical note, during Japan's isolationist period, the country's borders were closed to all foreign influence, with the exception of occasional contact with the Dutch through the port in Nagasaki).
I also managed to get a taste of some Nagasaki champon, which is basically noodles in soup, with bits of pork, mussels, octopus and/or squid, and vegetables. Not a bad little meal, though I would have liked it better if it was just the pork.

Acceptance

2007-02-07T22:04:00.000-08:00

Whew, looks like another long while between updates, despite my promises to update more often.. Well I have the excuse that I don't have internet at home, I suppose. Well today's topic is "acceptance". Acceptance of life, liberty and the pursuit of "happyness" (which I saw the other day, and is an awesome movie, but for some reason is called "The Power of Happiness" in Japanese)..

Actually, I lie, its all about my acceptance to the Tokyo Institute of Technology's research student program starting in April. I'll basically be doing research in the fields of robotics and control systems, possibly emphasizing human/machine interface systems. I'm really looking forward to it, and I've been looking back at some of the material that I studied back in the day at school, and realizing, that this crap can be pretty tough stuff. Oh well, wish me luck.

Hot Eats and Cool Streets

2007-01-16T00:52:00.000-08:00

Since I've arrived in Fukoka, I've been oot and aboot here and there looking for housing and a job and all of those other boringly insignificant things that keep us all from dying in the street, or wearing tinfoil hats. Well today, I came across what I'm assuming is Fukuoka's big signature mall, Canal City. It's huge. And its really funky looking. For starters its got about 6 floors of shopping, dining, a movie theatre, a musical theatre, and a Grand Hyatt Hotel. Also, its not so much one building as a series of buildings built together, with connecting bridges, and forming a huge courtyard, featuring.... dancing fountains.. Its like the Bellagio show in Vegas with less Celine Dion.

Well all that looking at stuff is pretty hungry work, so I went off to find myself something to eat. I managed to find some of the best unagi (eel) that I've put my lips on since I got to Japan. The eel was good, the rice was good, the miso soup was good. It was all good... with one minor drawback. Cleverly disguised in amongst all that deliciousness was a head... an eel head. But even that couldn't spoil this meal.

(sigh) now back to finding work...