Rock Dentistry

My first set of rocky intertidal field work is now behind me. It was a great experience overall and I come out of it with a much clearer idea of the practical challenges ahead of me with regard to the work I will be doing here. I will review for all of you, some of the fun we had without going into boring ecological detail.

The first day started early and the drive to get to Akkeshi field station was long (about 8 hours from Hokudai). We arrived with enough time to pound back some soba (thick white noodles) then get changed into field gear and head out in the dark for sampling. We were working on night tides and low tide on the first night was at about 9:00 pm so we were heading out basically as soon as it got dark. We donned the headlamps and rain gear (it was of course pouring with rain – but the rain gear isn't for the rain, it is for the waves I later learned) and scrambled out over slippery boulders to get the the rocks where the research plots were located.

First thing on the list to do is to measure wave splash height. I thought that the students were kidding when they handed me a ruler and pointed to the rock where the plot was drilled into the rock and told me to go and stand in the breaking waves and watch for 5 minutes to see what the highest point of wave splash was (this is of course before the tide went out fully). They weren't kidding, so I did, and of course like a rookie, didn't have my rain jacket hood on or the jacket zipped up, so I took a big wave down the back of my waders and had to spend the rest of the night in wet pants (thankfully years of Canadian winter and paddling in frigid Pacific water all winter has left me skilled in layering and wool clothing).

The night went fine otherwise and the students were very good to work with. We returned to the dormitory at the field station where we were staying while in Akkeshi, here is a picture of the dorm.
It was very old and run down, but I had a room to myself and a bed with lots of blankets. I was the only woman in the place so I even had my own bathroom that I didn't have to share – small victories have become very important to me. We washed up the gear, made some food, showered and got to bed around 2:00 am. This turned out to be the earliest night of the trip for us.

The next morning I was awakened early by the construction crew jackhammering holes in the concrete wall beside my bed (this is not an exaggeration – they were actually jackhammering the walls of the building all day, every day starting at 8:30). After such a long night scrambling around in the surf, I really wanted to sleep late, but with the racket at the dorms it was impossible. Good thing I brought a knitting project with me and a textbook to read.

The second night of work was a long one, we visited two sampling locations that night and got loads of work done. An interesting, and frustrating at times, cultural difference that I have noticed is that Japanese people seem to leave out crucial information until the very last minute. This happened numerous times while on this field trip, but I will illustrate with an example from the beginning of night 2. We were geared up and walking to the site through a grassy area. Again – it was a very dark night, so you can't really see anything beyond the circle of your headlamp. I was following Fukaya-san and he started down a hill and turned to me and said “now we go down cliff, very steep” and pointed to the 50 foot drop off 3 feet to my left. Right...... There were ropes to use for the steepest parts and we all managed to make it down (and back up) ok. I guess that it didn't make much difference in the end that I didn't know what to expect beforehand, but I tend to think that things like that are best when people are informed and can prepare themselves.

Here is a photo of the coastline in the area where we were working. I will post more photos of field work later – right now they are still on another computer and the student hasn't come in to work yet.


Day 3 began with more jackhammering of walls and very little sleep. There was a TV in the main dining hall where we ate lunch and the news was on. The students were discussing the news and pointing at the tv (in Japanese of course) so I took a look and they were tracking a typhoon moving north from Honshu up the coast of Japan, scheduled to reach us by that evening, just in time for us to head out to the rocky shore (I don't think that there is a worse place to be in a typhoon). Great. At least I managed to convince one of the students to take me to the store to get some cereal because I wasn't up for eating white rice for breakfast any longer.

The third and fourth night of work went well, and in the end the typhoon moved east and missed us, but we were slowed down by the extra large waves that were generated from the offshore storm. In general, the work was physically hard because of how slippery the rocks were but otherwise ok. The biggest time investment is in clearing the plots of barnacles (one plot at each site is used to measure the number of animals that come back to that location if it is completely bare of any other animals). To do this we use a torch and burn the plot first (wheeeeeeee, fire), then we use a wire brush that is like a large toothbrush to scrape off all of the dead shells and remnants. In the crevices we have to use a metal pick to get all of the little critters out. It seemed to me a little like being a rock dentist, brushing the rock and picking away at any cavities.

The food was good – and loads of fun to see what kind of food they cook on a daily basis for themselves. My contribution on the last day was to make french toast with real Canadian maple syrup. The students seemed to like it, or at least were polite enough to have seconds. I will go into more discussion of the food some time later. It was great to get out and have some time to get to know the students better. They were a little scared of me at first (and still are to a degree), but we had some laughs and they taught me some Japanese - it will go a long way to making things easier for me during my time here.

Nesting

I have managed – through immensely useful internet tools and word of mouth – to find most of the furniture that Shawn and I will need for our apartment. Last week I bought a bed, fridge, kitchen table, shelves, desk, coffee maker, nabe cooker, and camping bed from a woman who is downsizing in preparation for her final year of her masters after which she will return to Hungary to work. I got a small TV for free from another PhD who had been given a bigger one so she didn't need the small one any longer. Last night I picked up a couch, washing machine, vacuum and some dishes from an Ethiopian man who just finished his PhD and will move to Germany this weekend to start a new research project (he charged me practically nothing for this stuff too).

The rest of the little things that we need will be easy to find and I now finally know where the “recycle shop” is (=second hand store). I haven't been there yet, but I am sure that I will find what I need and more there because in Japan, it isn't fashionable to buy second hand goods. So these stores end up full of really great stuff for cheap so I am looking forward to a trip there for other little things that have come to mind lately. Of course I also know where Ikea is and can fill the space with things from there is I can't source things anywhere else.

We can't move into our apartment until November 20th so I will have to store these things in our labo (that is the Japanese word for lab) until we can move in. Good thing Japanese furniture is compact. I am not totally sure that my supervisor is ok with this arrangement, but like most Japanese people, if he is upset about it, he sure isn't saying that to me.

Shawn will arrive on November 14th (only 19 days until he is here!!) and we will meet in Tokyo because I will be there at that time for a meeting. I am a bit worried about the Tokyo subway system, but I guess I have a couple of weeks to get my head around how to navigate it. For those of your interested, here is a schematic map of the subway in romanjii (=english characters) for ease of reading. We will spend a couple of days in Tokyo in a hotel there before coming back to Sapporo, so Shawn's first impression of Japan will be the rat race of Tokyo. It will be interesting to see how differently he feels about things than I did. Most of the people who I have met in Sapporo are not big fans of Tokyo and the fast paced life there.

I will leave this weekend for my first field sampling trip. We will go to the eastern part of Hokkaido to a place called Doto. There is a marine research station there that is associated with Hokudai so we will stay at the research station and do 5 days of sampling. Like BC, the low tides that we can use to access the research plots are at night in the winter so we are in for a few cold nights out on the rocky shore. I am looking forward to seeing the research station and the research plots. So far, the students have assigned me the easy jobs to do, not because they want go easy on me, but because you have to work and write notes very quickly to get the work done before the tide comes up again and none of them want to work with me in English. Here is a map of the area that we will go to - the number 44 on the map is roughly where the sampling sites are.

This will be my last blog until I am back from field work. I am told that there is no internet connection at the research station – well at least no internet connection that is worth using. I will post photos and stories from the field on my return next week!

Neural Rewiring

I feel lately like I am in the process of a complete re-establishment of my neural network. Everything that I have known and that I use instinct to easily do have been turned on their head. From being able to ask the grocer where to find the saran wrap, to recognizing which package is ketchup and which is pasta sauce, everything that I do requires an enormous amount of mental attention.

One of the biggest things that I am feeling “reprogrammed” on is the nature of human interaction. People here are very nice and have treated me very well, but they interact in a very different way than I am used to. For example, they tend to wait until the very last minute to inform you of what your upcoming schedule is or what to expect in given situations. On the weekend, I was taken by car along with another researcher to Jozankei for the symposium by my supervisor. We had a nice ride up, went for lunch and walked in the forest and chatted. The meeting was business as normal and at the end of it all I waited around with the other researcher for my supervisor to finish up things and then head out to the car. We were walking to his car (and of course most others had left on the shuttle by this time) and he turned to me and said, you will have to find another ride, my car is full. Right.... he had the entire weekend to touch base with me on this but waited until we were in the parking lot 2 minutes before leaving to tell me this. This is only one example, there have been many other events like this and I am finding them a little hard to get used to.

Another major reprogramming involves the language. It has been hard so far to be illiterate and unable to read even the grocery labels in the store. Many things are similar enough in packaging that I can fake my way around, but as a person who has lived a life very used to literacy I am starting to grow weary of peering through the package of dressing to try to see what colour it is and guess at the flavour. My work in that department is going ok I suppose and I am learning more and more characters every day.

The characters are complicated and there are two phonetic alphabets (the characters each represent a different sound that when used in sequence form words). The sounds are different than the way that our letters work but the system is more simple than english because one character has only one sound (not like english where one word spelled the same way can have two pronunciations and meanings – eg. read and read). So far I have only been working on learning the phonetic alphabets and there is roughly 100 characters involved in that system so I have enough to keep me very busy there. Kanji is an additional alphabet where the characters represent entire words or phrases. It is harder to learn and there are thousands of characters. I have learned a few of the more important ones so far (woman, exit, north) but won't get into learning those until I have the other alphabets down. The written language here uses all three alphabets at once so it makes reading pretty involved – at least for me for now.

Fall Spectacle

This weekend was spent at a symposium for population ecology. The event was held in a small onsen town called Jozankei. I guess a good BC comparison would be Radium – stunning scenery and natural hot springs that have been built into a tourist destination. The photo shows the hotel we stayed at. It was spectacular with traditional Japanese styling and lots of artwork and great food!

The timing of the symposium couldn't have been better and the colours of the mountains around the hotel were unbelievable. The leaves are starting to change colour throughout Hokkaido and it creates a very beautiful backdrop both on campus and out in the mountains. It was unfortunate that we didn't have very much time to walk around and see the sights because the meetings filled the entire two days that we were there. On the drive there we did get a chance to take a short walk in the forest and saw the dam at Jozankei that provides part of the drinking water supply for Sapporo. It was a nice chance to stretch the legs after a 1 hour drive from Sapporo to Jozankei and a good way to kill some time before we could check into the hotel. The weather is turning cold and the air was crisp. Of course, walking in the forest with a group of ecologists is always fun and we nattered on about theories of species coexistance and biodiversity.

The hotel is a resort place that Japanese people travel to and spend a few days lazing around in kimono, eating buffet food and taking onsen. The Japanese guests at the hotel arrive and put on the kimono provided by the hotel and pretty much wear that the whole time that they are there. Those of us there for the symposium were pretty much the only people at breakfast not wearing the outfit. We were busy most of the time with talks but I did manage to get to the onsen once while I was there, and it was a very nice one. I didn't get a chance to use the rooftop onsen because that one had a set schedule of hours when men are allowed to use it and when women are allowed and the only time that I could go was during the men only time – so no fancy rooftop onsen for me. The one I used was on the 16th floor though so the view from the windows was pretty amazing!

The meeting was good, but a little too broad in their approach. They had speakers on topics that were very far removed from one another which would be ok if they had tied their work into the unifying theme a little better, but for all but 2 speakers, English was a second language, so things were hard to follow regardless of topic.

The banquet dinner last night was fun. We were served by geisha, who always had a laugh at me who was managing to do everything wrong (poured my own drink twice and didn't even touch my rice – I am getting pretty full of white rice). At least I wasn't the only foreigner who didn't speak Japanese or know what most of the food was that we were eating.
We sat on the floor (typical in a lot of restauraunts and tea houses) and had a little individual table in front of us. We ate all kinds of food including jellyfish (it was really good). The sashimi was great, but I have learned that I don't like koebi sashimi (raw shrimp). We even had our own personal fuel burners with nabe and miso soup on our mini-table. The presentation of food here is exceptional and even going to a burger joint will get you a beautifully prepared meal served to look like a work of art. This photo shows one of the rows of tables with dinner laid out.

I am back in Sapporo now and missed a couple of language classes to go to the conference so I have to head back home now to do battle with the laundry machine and get my homework done for tomorrow morning. I have been trying to fit in time this week to learn the phonetic alphabet (hirigana) and am happy to say that I now know almost half of the characters and the proper order to write the strokes in – but that is a topic for the next blog.

Heated Toilet Seats

That's right – heated toilet seats. It is quite an amazing thing, and now that I have tried this technology out, it will be hard to go back to stone-age cold toilet seats. The toilets here actually range from traditional style Japanese toilets where you squat over a hole in the floor to these high tech beauties shown in the photo.

These cadillacs do everything short of stopping off at the bank and paying your credit card off. I haven't explored all of the functions yet... but from what I can tell on the buttons, there are “personal shower” functions all the way to a temperature and timer setting to adjust the heated seat thermostat. There is also a button that you can press to have the toilet play music or play the sound of flowing water. The idea with having noise isn't the one obvious to us westerners, but rather to cover the noise from tinkling because they are shy about those things here. There are a lot more buttons that aren't labelled with a cartoon, so I am really at a loss to even imagine what else one would want a toilet to do, but I am sure that by the end of my stay here I might have it figured out. The photo below shows the control panel that is on the side of the throne.


It is precisely these kinds of technological wonders that lead me to believe that I would have a nice office to myself, with a clean floor and even maybe a phone and/or computer to use. It has hard to adjust to, but here at the university at least, the “office” conditions are less than ideal. I have spoken with researchers in other faculties and they have all said that they have encountered the same situation. I am not sure if this simply the way that things are here at this university (one of the top in Japan however) or if all universities are so scarce of the comforts that we take for granted in a typical Canadian work environment. At least I have a great toilet to use during the day!

Language Lessons Begin

The weekend went well for me. I got some quiet work time in on Friday night (I know – LAME – but I was phoning Shawn at midnight my time, and am now using skype so had to be in the office where my laptop and internet connection are so I made the most of it).


On Saturday I ventured to the Japanese equiavalent of Ikea. Got myself some more blankets because it has gotten awfully cold here, awfully quickly. It will likely snow soon if the temperature stays this low. My Ikea trip was a long jaunt but a success as you can see in the picture. Yes, I carried all of that stuff home on my bike. I was weaving all over the road and innocent pedestrians were having a good laugh as the dove out of the way. I have to say that it was a personal victory for me to take on that kind of a bike ride loaded down with the packages – any of you who has seen me on a bike knows what I am talking about.

That night I went for dinner with Paul. My current neighbour and a PhD student in anthropology from Alberta. We ate nabe which is a soup that is cooked at the table in front of you. Paul, who has spent more than his share of time in rural Japan, tells me that nabe is typically a dish that is made at home and the family or guests gather around and make a social evening of the meal. Our nabe had piles of seafood in it; crab, clams, squid, tuna, snapper, salmon – it was really great! The photo here shows the nabe (we are getting to the bottom of it here). It is cooked in a heavy clay pot with handles on the side and they bring a small single burner gas stove to your table.


On Sunday I went shopping with another neighbour, Sara, a PhD student from Maine who is working on protein chemistry. I showed her some of the fun shops and markets that I have found and she did likewise. We managed to stumble on a few other gems in the meantime like a yarn shop (she crochets so we were both pretty stoked about that one!), a cheap clothing store, and a killer food market kinda like Granville Island market. We even found an authentic bagel shop that definitely tastes like it uses real flour (bread just doesn't taste right when it is made with rice flour).

Monday morning began my first Japanese language lesson. Whew! I am in for it! It is only a beginner lesson but I am already behind (it didn't help that I missed the first lesson on Friday because I thought that it started today). The course outline shows that we have quizzes every two days on vocabulary and writing and I spent 3 hours today doing my homework (WHAT!). So from what I understand I can expect a couple hours of homework a night, midterms and final exams – and they have an attendance component to the grading system. Crap, when did I revert back into undergrad??? The photo below shows the homework that I had today. It is all hirigana (one of the three writing systems in Japan) characters and I just had to write them over and over again to try to learn them. Some of them sunk in, but not many. I have conversation lessons on Monday/Wednesday/Friday and kanji (that is another more complicated writing system) on Tuesday/Thursday.

Emerald Anniversary

This weekend marks my grandparents' 55th wedding anniversary. Sorry Izzy and Eddie - I haven't figured out the postal system quite yet so I didn't send a card. I hope that this blog will suffice as a vector for my good wishes. They have been living out in Vibank Sask. for some time now, but will be making their return to BC soon - welcome back!

Together they have enjoyed life in many places and raised 5 great kids (not to mention all of the cool grandkids and now great-grandkids). Your commitment to each other is an inspiration. Thank you for always being there for all of us, and especially for each other. Love always - Daphne.


Love does not consist of gazing at each other, but in looking together in the same direction.
~Antoine de Saint-Exupery

OH - and my grandfathers birthday is that same day (cute hey - they got married on his birthday!). So Happy Birthday Steady!!

Bike Identification

This week I have managed a lot more time dedicated to actual work. Last week my boss was more than helpful and managed to get me on track with most of the administrative things that I needed to do, like getting a bank account set up, getting an apartment lined up, finishing off most of the initial paperwork involved in moving here etc. That has freed me up to focus more on the work that I am here to do (oh right, I am expected to do more than sightsee...).

The average work hours here in the lab (and I think in general in Japan) are pretty different than I am used to. Most people don't even make it in here until around 10:00 in the morning, but they stay until 7 or 8 at night. I haven't yet started this pattern myself, instead preferring to come in during the quiet morning hours and get some time alone in my regularly overcrowded “office”. That brings me to the main story that I will share in this blog installment.

I will use this as a general lesson for gaijin (that is the word in Japanese for foreigner – and it isn't considered a “nice” word). When you arrive at the library nice and early before most of the rest of the students are out and about, and park your new wheels in front of the building there are a couple of caveats to consider. First, don't assume that yours will be the only silver 1-speed, with hand brakes and a black basket on the front, rear and front fenders and a clear bike lock on the back wheel (I took note of a lot of features before leaving my bike) that will be parked there when you emerge a couple of hours later. Second, don't assume that your bike will remain in that same easy to find place that you left it when you locked it up.


The photo on the right shows you the number of bikes that accumulate in front of a building during a normal day here (click on the photo to enlarge). And as you might or might not be able to tell, most of them are exactly the same as mine. And another fun fact that I learned, is that because there are so many bikes that get parked in front of these buildings, there is a guy whose job it is to organize and shuffle bikes around to make them fit better and to create walking paths between bikes.

So the moral of the story – I need a load of stickers that I can put on my bike so that I can identify it from now on, and maybe even some kind of noise-making device that I can activate remotely.

Winning and Losing

The past few days were full of winning and loosing with moments of pride and desperation thrown in for flavour. On the winning side, I have managed to cook myself a couple of meals at home now and am less afraid of trying out things in the grocery store. There is certainly a lot of fish that I have never seen before there and I was overjoyed to find brown rice! Last night I also met a couple more people who live in my building one of whom may leave her bike for Shawn once she heads home in December. Here is a photo of my room (left to right is kitchen, bathroom and bedroom) before I launch into the play by play of my past couple of days.



I tried to catch the bus this morning (the woman I met last night told me that a campus bus picks up in front of our building every morning). After waiting for 30 minutes I gave up waiting and decided just to hoof it again today (Murphey 1 – Daphne 0).

I got into the office and decided to tackle the annoying issue of language fonts that continue to try to load onto my computer but can't without my operating software discs, and so continually barrades me with promts to insert the discs. While doing that, I managed to disable microsoft office entirely (Murphey 2 – Daphne 0).

I called home and my amazing friends had my problem solved from Canada within a couple of hours (thanks to all of you who helped, it seems that I am useless without IT personelle here to take care of me). So I now have a free version of all of the microsoft office systems that can allow me to continue working until Shawn shows up here with my operating systems discs with which I can re-load all of my programs (Murphey 2 – Daphne 1). I am very happy to be up and running again, but can now add learning new software to my list of things to learn (customs, street addresses, my phone number, a new language, names, advanced statistics....)

I bought a hot little pink camera yesterday so I can now share photos with all of you. I also picked up a speaker system for my ipod so that now I can listen to music in my room instead of listening to the condenser in my mini-fridge drip. After all of that purchasing, I ended up with a credit at the electronics place that I used to go back today and pick up a few more items like an adorable robins egg blue mouse for my computer to save me from carpel tunnel (Murphey 2 – Daphne 2).

Buoyed after all of this consumer therapy, I felt confident enough to make my way to the library and take on the task of seeing if I could borrow a couple of books that I need. It took me 15 minutes of wandering halls just to find my way to a help desk. One of the books I was after was located in the stacks – good. Wait, where are the stacks... It seems that they are down the rabbit hole behind the help desk where the whispery librarian who doesn't speak a lick of English is sitting and guarding the entrance. After 10 minutes of charades and hand holding, I was instructed to place my purse in a locker then sign the sign in book to go down the rabbit hole (it seems that I should add writing my name in Katakana to my list of things to learn because they are never very happy when I write in romanji). So I head down the winding stairway that is too short for even me to stand up fully. I end up on the next floor down where I pull the book with the number that I am after, and it is in Japanese... This was supposed to be an English book. So I head to another floor and another, seeminly deeper into the earth. Eventually I found that is another book, on another floor with the exact same call number and it is the book that I am after. Whew – even library call numbers have multiple meanings here.

I emerge from the stacks and sign out the book and ask about the location of the other, more important book that I am after. Another 15 minutes of going back and forth with the librarian and she finally had enough and got someone on the phone. The person on the other end tells me that the 2 libraries that contain this other book are in buildings that are under construction and therefore neither book can be accessed right now (Murphey 3 – Daphne 2).

I remembered that the co-op on campus was having their bike sale at lunch. So I stroll over to buy a bike. Again, we have no English at the sales desk, but I have cash so we manage to work things out. I was a bit confused about the reciept which I was told that I needed in case the police find me... What! I was told later that the paper contained the id number of the bike and that if it is to be stolen I should show it to the police to help them locate the bike. I am not too worried about my grey single speed bike being stolen. And at least now I have a sweet ride to make my morning commute a little faster (Murphey 3 – Daphne 3).

The score was all tied up and we were deep into overtime.... Next on my list was to go to the bank all by myself and withdraw our damage deposit, first couple months rent etc so that I can pay the real estate agent tomorrow. I also had to pay for my national health insurance at the bank. I was worried, especially based on how things had been going, that this was not going to work out in my favour. I did manage to pull it off in the end (thanks in large part to the extensive notes I had taken on what to write where on the withdrawl slips). I left, with a pocket full of cash and health coverage (Murphey 3 – Daphne 4).

With any luck, I will keep the lead for another couple of days. I think that it is best that I quit writing now while I am ahead, not to mention that I am feeling pretty beat as the noise of the city is starting to keep me up at night (my room is ground floor on a busy street).

Mushrooms and Bathing

I am now at the tail end of a weekend full of Japanese culture. Friday night after work my lab had a party for me and another woman who is leaving the lab soon. On Saturday I was taken to the forest to go mushroom hunting and we stopped off at the onsen (=Japanese public bath) after that. After bathing we returned to the lab to cook the mushrooms for dinner. It was all a lot of fun and everyone seemed to enjoy showing me these things.

Parties here are held in restraunts; most homes are far too small to hold a group of people. There was probably 25 people or so at two different tables. We ate all kinds of food - yakitori (chicken squewers), tripe soup, fried chicken skin (it was actually really good). At the party the new and departing people are introduced and have to stand up on their seat and tell everyone a few things about themselves. I was a bit on the spot and had a good time of trying to describe dragon boating to them (when in doubt, revert to charades).

At most restraunts here they have a thing called nomihodai (all you can drink). The way it works is you have 2 hours from the time that you arrive at dinner and you pay a flat rate for unlimited drinks during that time. So we had a pile of beer and of course they were excited to have me try some sake too. They asked if we have nomihodai in Canada, and I explained that if we did, most restraunts would go out of business. That said, it surprised me how much they all had to drink during the time, they all definately got their money's worth at nomihodai (nomihodai costs between $12- $20 depending on the restraunt and duration).

After that Okudy (a PhD student who I will be working with on my research) took me and a few others to his favorite pub, that incidentally isn't far from the apartment where Shawn and I will live. It was a "New Orleans style" pub and had a bunch of import beers (Yeah!). I had mentioned at dinner that I like dark beers so everyone that came for beers all tried a Guiness and other nice dark beers. The pub owner worked in Banff for a few years and speaks great English and serves North American style food so that will be a nice spot to go when we are homesick.

The next morning the gang from the lab went mushroom picking in the forest. We drove about 1 hour out of the city and off along a dirt road to get to the picking area. The mountains are steep and short. Much of the foliage is similar to a Canadian forest but with a bamboo understory added in. On our way back out of the "bush" one of the trucks that was in our group got stuck (ironically the jeep with the highest clearance was the one that got high centered on a muddy bit of road). We eventually managed to pull the truck back onto the road using some pretty slick little tow cables that are stored under the seat of all vehicles here (everything is cute little packages). Now the problem was that the cable attachments were aluminum and didn't handle the stress very well so they bent and we couldn't unscrew the bolts. So... more waiting around (now covered in mud from pushing the vehicle) while a local farmer drove back to his house to get a generator and a metal saw to cut the bolts off.

After all of this excitement, it was time for some relaxation at the onsen. The onsen is the traditional Japanese baths. It is considered a very cultural experience and they were all excited that I was game to give it a try. There are numerous natural hot springs in Japan and these onsen are based on the springs. You go in and scrub up at a washing station (making sure to wash your hair and get yourself very clean) then head into the bath. The bath is relatively unfiltered spring water (a little cloudy looking and with a sulfur smell). The one I was at had an inside tub and an outside tub. Yes, it is a naked thing, and the men and women are separate (at least at this one). The outside pool was great, fresh autumn air, a beautiful garden in front and a mountain backdrop with autumn colours sprayed through the forest. I am looking forward to onsen in the winter with the gardens covered in snow.

It was really nice to have a tub, and after we sat in the tatami mat cafeteria and had tea and lounged around before returning to the city. Once back, they showed me how to cook the mushrooms we had picked that day. I am looking forward to learing about Japanese cooking and over the weekend learned that Okudy enjoys cooking so I made him commit to teaching me some of the skills of Japanese cooking. I will save the review of lesson 1 for another blog. For now, I am off to the electronics shop to find a camera (I was kicking myself that I didn't have a camera on the mushroom picking trip).

Shawn is now back in Victoria and was under the weather at first. He is starting to recover a bit and has wasted no time in emptying the house out. He has had a few small projects to wrap up around the house before the renters move in. It seems that it is all going ok, particularly now that he is feeling a bit better. For any of you who see him in the next while - give him a hug from me. He has had a lot on his plate with the house all in boxes and moving out to do and no time to recover after his time in Australia!

Furnishing Not Included

I signed the contract for an apartment today. That makes me feel a bit better since it means that I won't be in the dingy little place that I am in now for much longer. The place that I signed the paperwork (yes, more forms) on is big (that has now become a relative term in my vocabulary) and bright. It has two rooms and a 1DK. 1DK means a medium sized dining-kitchen. One of the other rooms has a tatami mat floor which gives it a genuine Japanese feeling. The flooring is woven straw bordered with fabric. It is soft to walk on and looks very clean.

The area of rooms in Japanese accomodations are measured by how many tatami mats will cover the floor (regardless of whether there is actually tatami mats in there). So, the 1DK room is 10 jo (1 jo = 1 mat), the tatami room is 6 jo and the other room is 4.5 jo. My new phone came in handy with its conversion function that is in my phone's "lifekit". My boss was doing the conversion from jo to square meters while I was converting from metric to square feet. The apartment also has balcony and a large south facing window so it should make it a bit less depressing in the winter. There are two bathrooms - one with only a toilet and the other with the bath and shower - this is also typical of Japanese apartments and actually makes a lot of sense and takes up less room than western bathrooms.

Another interesting thing that I learned about Japanese apartments is that they rent them unfurnished. Yeah, yeah not surprising right...? Wrong! Unfurnished here means that there is no fridge, washer/dryer, tv, futon etc. etc. So, the next thing on the list is to try to find a good "recycle shop" where I can track down some reasonably priced used items. The alternative is to go pilfering on the large trash night (one night each month they put out all of their big trash for collection and this often includes furniture items that work fine but there just isn't room in their homes to keep it once a replacment is purchased).

I guess I shouldn't be surprised that the apartments come without any of the necessary appliances. My "office" has also come without any of the things that we come to expect to be supplied for us in Canada. I am off to a 100 yen shop (=dollar store) to buy things like a stapler, paper, pens, folders and other necessary office supplies. They don't even supply a computer here, it is expected that each person buys their own. My "office" itself isn't really what I had expected either. I am at a tiny old desk with a broken bookshelf beside me, right beside the door and the lunch station in a room where 10 other grad students have their "offices". Now if only the 100 yen shop sold quiet and private work stations, I would be totally set!

Robotics

Yesterday I had my first major language mishap in front of a large group. I was listening to a seminar in which they were nice enough to put one of the students on stage in English for my benefit - and his horror. All of the attendees had to introduce themselves, again, in english so that I could understand what was being discussed. One young man who is entering the lab this semester after doing an undergrad degree in Tokyo was introducing himself and the research interests he had as an undergrad. I nodded and smiled because I clearly heard him say "robotics". I said something stupid like "robotics are a interesting and Japan is strong in this field". It turns out he was doing social research related to addiction withdrawl. I still have no idea how that all unfolded, but I am quite sure that they all think that I am an idiot - and of course it doesn't help that any time I sit down at a computer I have to ask a student to help me find the google.ca website (can't read a thing!).

Here is a map of the university campus. The orange sun is where my tiny one room apartment is and the lightbulb is where my "office" is. It is about a 40 minute walk each way which allows me the time I need in the morning to talk myself into actually going to work again; the walk home allows me a nice bit of time in the fresh air to recoup. Oh, and with any of the photos I post, you can click directly on the photo to enlarge it.



Today was a good day in a small victories type of way. I looked at a few potential apartments that I will move into around the time when Shawn arrives. There is no way that the two of us will fit into the shoebox that I am in now, and there aren't any larger rooms available in the "visiting researcher housing". Even though it will be an order of magnitude more expensive, I think that it will be for the best. I have reserved an apartment that is closer to the main gates of campus and closer to downtown and the train station. I also found an english version of the manual for my phone so that I didn't have to ask the students how to use it, they would be certain that I am an idiot if I had to do that!

I am heading back to my room now for the night. Tonight, a nice glass of red wine and a bath are in order. The wine is crazy cheap here and the bath tubs are to die for. Did I mention that I can program my hot water heater in my room to automatically fill my tub at a pre-set time and to a pre-set temperature and volume? Now that is the kind of technology that I could get used to!

More Forms???

It is now my second day of “work” here in Japan. So far things have been different than I expected to say the least. For the most part, everything is progressing as well as can be expected, that is, if I will ever be done with filling out forms.

My boss, Dr. Noda, has been nice enough to join me in the form-filling dance over the past two days. He is a busy person with a lot of important engagements coming up later this month, so I greatly appreciate his generosity with his time. We had to make numerous trips, including one to my accommodation, to go over all of the paperwork there (Dr. Noda was required to sign the forms there on my behalf). My “apartment” is small but definitely sufficient. I won’t be baking muffins or hosting a dinner party any time soon, but I can’t complain for roughly $100 (that is 10,000 yen) per month. We also had to go to the municipal office where I had to do alien registration – yes, I am now an alien. Forms had to be filled out and sent to the funding agency, JSPS (Japanese Society for Promotion of Science), and more forms at the university for identification and library cards.

By the end of day one of form completion I was feeling a bit wiped out and our last stop was at the small ecology library to get the forms I need to fill out if I want to request books or sign out journals. This was when things got a bit more comical (or my brain was getting so tired of it all that anything would have been funny). I could hardly keep it together while I was listening to (but not understand a word from) the librarian who had a funny twitch and was wearing those hideous oversized glasses that all of the older men here wear. He yammered on and on waving his library loan request form around while he did. The best part of it all was that I was trying to look very interested and trying not to bust up because he was missing the glass out of one half of his glasses and his bad eye (the one on the side where glass still remained) was twitching away. By Dr. Noda’s body language, it was clear that this guy didn’t really have any purpose at the university but his silly forms made him feel important.

Today we went to the bank and got an account set up, then went to the store to get a cell phone. When we bought our house and had to fill out all of the legal forms for our mortgage and insurance, there was far less paperwork involved than there was associated with buying a cell phone here in Japan. It was a 2 hour ordeal and in the end, the clerk was still unable to tell me what the cost would be to receive international calls. And to insult to injury, out of the 4 manuals that came with the phone, there isn’t one word in there in English! For the first time I really felt like I was loosing my mind and I think that my frustration was evident, although it did nothing to speed the process along.

For a place that is such a technologically slick society, they sure know how to slow processes down with bureaucracy. I am growing very tired of the paper pushing and the next task for me to do is to re-apply (using 5 different forms) for housing that will have room for both Shawn and I (the room that I am in now hardly has room for me and my two pieces of luggage). I think that I will put that off until tomorrow. Time now to finally get a look at the data that I will have to work with, yeah!