Caught up with the Past Two Weeks...

So those last couple posts were about the July 4th weekend. It's been a while since then. I'll try to catch you up.

After that entirely too filled weekend and sending David home that morning, I rolled into work later that day and didn't do a whole lot of work. The week wasn't too eventful aside from Wednesday where I finally went to get my LAD-2 cells to work with. We left at 3 for Nihon Medical University. The school was small and looked like it had been around for a while. But then again, it was just the med school so there weren't that many buildings.

Ikebukuro

Waiting for the bus...

The trip over to Nihon University was quite long though. Yamanote to Ikebukuro and then an hour bus ride. Anyways, I finally met Okayama-sensei and he was not anything like I imagined (for some reason the name Okayama made me think he was old or old-looking). He's a sharply dressed into his forties guy (very metro in my opinion) who knows his way around mast cells. He was one of the first to truly look in-depth into my project questioning even the utmost details. We chatted for a while, and then Orihara-san (Kanami) had something to discuss with him. Afterwards, I got my cells (there were also some very awkward silences) and we went out to dinner.

The "thinking" section of their lab (the office part).

Okayama-sensei treated us (he refused our money) to a Japanese style Korean barbeque, if that makes any sense. It was like Korean barbeque, except the amount of meat was smaller and the seasonings were much more neutral (as all Japanese food seems to be).


In addition to regular beef slices, I had cow tongue (looks remarkably like chicken), cow stomach? (some other odd part of a cow), among other slices of meat. It seems Japanese people enjoy their odd cuts. I also had this rice bowl thing that was VERY good. It was pretty much a bowl of rice with tons of toppings on the top and a semi raw egg on top. You mixed it up as it came and the still extremely hot bowl cooked the egg and made parts of the rice crunchy (nom nom). The bottom layer was all burnt, but VERY good (sorry for eating all the bad carbon, Mom!)

The rice bowl mentioned above. Nom-nom.

Kanami Orihara, Okayama-sensei and myself

Work has become fairly regular and keeping me busy, but that's not nearly interesting enough to blog about. All week I had been dead tired from the crazy weekend before, so Saturday was spent sleeping until entirely too late (4 PM?). So Maciej and I made up for it and really got to explore Shibuya on Sunday (instead of the 1 hour visit we had over the weekend).

Taking the bus to Shibuya, we got off and I immediately saw a bunch of music stores. Having not played an instrument in a month, I dragged Maciej to see what Japanese music stores were like.


They were very well packed in (I suppose it cost quite a bit to have property in Shibuya) but still cool nonetheless. We went into a guitar store first and I played on a couple (they tune them exactly for you then then let you play on them). There was one where the hole was on the top of the acoustic guitar rather than underneath the strings. It didn't resonate well.

Overall, however, I'd say guitars are much cheaper in Japan. If only shipping it to the states wasn't so expensive. One of the next buildings we went to had different things on every floor. I tried to find my microphone that I wanted.. with no success. I shall make a return trip to a couple other stores. It was awesome though, I got to play on an electric drum set (w/ odd programmable sounds), some keyboards (with built in computers) and an electric classical guitar believe it or not.

Oh while we were walking around we came across these guys. They're sooooo good.

And if you actually agreed with that statement, please get your ears checked.

Thus began our day trip to Shibuya. One of our first stops? Baby Doll.... I couldn't resist.

Interesting name, no?

Yep, a store JUST for puppies and kittens. The puppies were cute too, but everyone was crowded around them so it was hard to get a good shot.

I couldn't help but wonder though... what happens to the kittens when they become cats and can't be sold...? Buy a kitty! Now!

We stopped at too many places to be listed here. I did however, lose my bookbag and have to go back for it in the music shop. It's always good to run right? Oh and we almost got run over. My bad. Let's see. Maciej bought some shirts, we checked out some CD's at Tower Records, avoided department stores. The usual. Oh and we got distracted playing Time Crisis 4 at an arcade. Oops.

The first floor was a regular arcade. The top two floors were again with the crazy electronic card strategy games that we had seen in Akihabara. Seems to be popular.

WARNING: You are not allowed to smoke cigarettes larger than your face.

WARNING: Please do not carry smoking canes upright.

WARNING: Men with ribboned batons are not allowed in Shibuya

WARNING: Men whose heads are not attached to body cannot be found with whiskered telescopes.

WAR... okay this could go on all day.

These are everywhere in Japan. And yes, their logo is a dancing condom.

So Maciej and I are somewhat obsessed with Ramen. We've had it about 5 times in the past two weeks. After dying of heat, we thought we'd go eat some hot ramen (we're not too bright, but we were hungry). And I saw SPICY RAMEN. I thought "Thank god, spicy food. Oh how I've missed you." And when I ate it, it smelled spicy, had the flavors of spicy, you could even see the spicy in it... it just wasn't spicy. At all. Sad.

So Maciej decides that we should walk back home. "How long's the walk?" I ask. "I dunno, 25 minutes?." Well I knew that was a lie b/c the bus ride took about that long. The above picture were some pretty lights he wanted to stop at. I mean, the entrance to a shrine that he wanted to bask in the holiness of. And yes, he will be hitting me with a bottle going "Tim Tim Tim Tim Tim..." once he reads this. *sigh*. Lol.

This is a picture outside my window... if you were wondering.

Sunday night was spent on the roof talking with all the people from the building. Some of them are hilarious. Most have such unique backgrounds and stories. And so many of them have masters so many languages... and came to Japan for a real linguistic challenge.

Work this week is fairly busy. Less time to learn Japanese and I only have time to blog by staying at work late into the night. Or like now, as I'm waiting for an rtPCR cycle to finish (yeah apparently I can do that now). It's hard though b/c you have to have steady hands for some of this stuff. And I... well, don't. With time I suppose. Oh and Maciej and I found a Ramen shop we like psuedo-near our Japanese home. And we've gone thrice already.

I'm caught up. Yay.

-Tim Soo