Coming to a Close...

As my time here in Japan wanes down, my amount of work increases. (I was about to write that "my busy-ness" level increases... but it seems it'd be spelled like business level... anyone else ever realize that your "busy-ness" is your business?)

I'm spending most my time doing various things in lab, and going home to work on those papers. But then again, what is life if there isn't room for fun?

It's been a week since we last left our heroes and I must say not a whole lot has happened. During the weekdays, I get back from home late so I don't go out a whole lot, but I'll summarize anyways.

In lab, I finally got everything together to run my histamine assay. Each time I run the protocol it costs over 1000 dollars. That's USD. Crazy eh? And I'm doing it twice. I suggested not worrying about it and spending all their money but man Japanese people are nice. The entire protocol went from Tuesday to Friday and during my free time I worked with other people doing Cord Blood cell extractions, continuing the mast cell from peripheral blood protocol (entire thing takes 6 weeks), and RNA extractions to name a few. It's FUN :).

On Saturday, Hashimoto-san and Orihara-san took me out again. We met up in Machida and went to Yokohama. And boy is Yokohama gorgeous. But first things first.

Machida is one of my favorite places in Japan. Very open and chic.

In Machida, they took me to an Okinawan style restaurant. Now, Okinawan people have the one of the longest life spans in the world with lots of people living to be over 100. And when a Japanese person tells you that someone else as a long lifespan, that's saying something.

We ordered a noodle bowl, a taco rice (it was really good and really did taste taco-ish. How did Mexican food influence Okinawa?

Our Menu. We ordered the two bottom lefts and the top right.

We shared our food (it seems pretty common, no one really worries too much about being germaphobes. I guess when you assume the country is clean, all the people must be clean too :). ) After lunch we hopped back on the JR line for Sakuragicho, a station after Yokohama.

We got off and I was pretty amazed. Everything was beautiful. The architecture in that area was just breathtaking. THIS was the Japan I had had in my head when I first arrived. Sugoi, ne?

First stop was the Landmark Tower, one of the biggest shopping-type areas in this place. The inside was HUGE. Kinda put the Mall of America to shame (sorry David). In terms of square footage, maybe the Mall of America was bigger but this mall is definitely nicer. There were at least five floors (maybe 6) and it stretched on for a while. Everything was completely gleaming and everything seemed.. well surreal. Everyone else seemed fairly nonplussed by this. Seems this is kinda normal for Japan.

When we first walked around I saw a queue (a word UK and Japanese people use a lot instead of saying 'line') that was just in the middle of nowhere. It wasn't 'til we went up a floor that I realized the line had extended all the way downstairs to get into the Pokemon store. Walking past those kids was nuts! It's like the day the Ipod is released outside an Apple store, 'cept the voice frequency is about 10 times higher.


My camera scope couldn't really catch a wide enough view of the mall, but here's an idea of what the mall was like at least in beauty.

I'm not sure why the ceiling came in like that, but hey, it's pretty. :)

In one section of the mall there was a Motomachi Street (not really a street but a collection of stores) that were selling Yokohaman things. Yokohama was the first port opened to the Western world and thus they have a lot of Western good and are known for it. The local jewelry was all gorgeous (and expensive).

A spiral escalator. We probably have some in the states, but I don't remember seeing one before. It's cool!

After going through the mall we walked out and I saw this. Not sure what it is but it sure looked cool. Evidence to the architectural greatness that is this area of Japan.


We happened to walk out just as a street show was starting. So we sat down to watch. To be honest, nothing he was doing was actually that impressive. Most all the tricks and skills he was exhibiting I could do just as easily (jugglings, diablo, coin magic)... granted I've never done it in front of an audience. The audience however was AMAZED. Perhaps we just learn more weird talents than Japanese people do? But not to discredit him at all, because he was VERY entertaining. I couldn't always understand what exactly he was saying and it was still really funny. He walked over to a girl who had been holding his jacket (he had thrown it over there before) and put it on... just to take it off dramatically two seconds later to prep for his trick. lol. This picture is of 6 volunteers holding him up on a rope. He didn't really do much on it, but he kept making the volunteers do really funny stuff (for example, at one point they all held hands and looked up into the stars dramatically).

About an hour later the show and we headed for a SeaBus to take us to the actual city of Yokohama. (No pictures from the boat ride. Sorry). I did take some night shots before we got on the ferry though.



Pretty eh?

Afterwards, we walked through this mall-type place in Yokohama for a while and explored/shopped until dinner time.

Also very pretty.. :)

On a pit stop to the bathroom, I saw a "kids toilet" room in between the men and women. It was really short and had their own little sink and toilet room. Kawaii.

We went back to Machida and went to an Okonomiyaki restaurant after a quick stop at Tokyu Hands (a REALLY REALLY cool department store). Look up okonomiyaki if you have no idea what it is.

We started with a little salad with the most amazing dressing on it. Apparently the dressing is called Karamiso. We asked the waiter where to buy it, but apparently they make it themselves. Soooo good.

Next we had this beef and cabbage thing. Also very good. The beef tasted like the same cut of beef from Chinese beef noodle soup 'cept grilled. Nom nom.

And lastly, our okonomiyakis. There was actually a third... but it seems I didn't take a picture of it. We had one hiroshima style, one Osaka style, and one green onion on. You'll be surprised to hear that there was kimchi in all of them. Apparently that's common in okonomiyakis. The kimchi influence is spreading. AHH.

After our amazing meal (twas a great day for food), I hopped on the train and head home.

Oh by the way, there is this used bookstore called BOOKOFF near where I live. Actually there are two near me, but at one, they had English book that I think they were trying to get rid of, b/c they were in a small corner in the store. Well, I hit jackpot. I bought a couple Harry Potter UK version books for 400 yen and a Garfield book for 100 yen. Who cares if I already have all the HP books, it was four bucks!

On Sunday, I went back to Machida (I wanted to explore Tokyu Hands more) and bought some really cool rubik's cubes (a 2x2x2.. if you can imagine it) and some stuff for Panama (they have great travel stuff! Imagine the typical Japanese tourist and then you can imagine why they have such a good selection of travelling goods). At one point I wanted to buy a book. Well this moment was a HUGE breakthrough for me b/c using my dictionary I slowly put together a question I wanted to ask the clerk, walked around for about 30 minutes nervously trying to get up the courage to ask, and then did it. Man, it was a great relief when I could finally engage in a conversation... well pseudo-conversation. But still. It was a level I conquered.

I got home relatively early on Sunday and just crashed for a couple hours (I didn't end up going to go see Batman, which just came out in Japan). Woke up and finished 1 of 9 papers. (Don't worry, I've worked on all of them, just haven't finished them yet). I ended up not sleeping that night and went into work on Monday... I was newly reintroduced to caffeine. One latte kept me awake for a day, even though caffeine generally wears off in 4 hours.

Yesterday (Monday), I spent most of the day making the four hour trip to abd back from Nihon Medical University to pick up some antibodies I needed from Okayama sensei in preparation for the next Histamine assay... which I started this morning.

Oh before I did finally get to sleep I went with Nakamura-san to Shinjuku to check out some massage chairs. And let me tell you, Japanese massage chairs are SOOO much better. The sensors figure out where all your body parts are and adjust accordingly. It really feels like you're in a really big bear hug b/c the chair massages every part of you. Your hands, forearms, biceps, shins, calfs, thighs, back, neck, feet... everything. And they're cheaper here too. (Something Brookstone doesn't want you to know about).

Oh and we figured out that my chinese kanji name changed into Japanese becomes Sosean (So-say-an) as opposed to the chinese (soo-shi-an).. pretty close eh? I really wonder how much of Japanese is ONLY Japanese. As in could Japanese people today even talk to those Japanese people before the Chinese and Western influence?

Oh and my mom wanted to see my new haircut. :)

Oh a couple things I realized from the weekend. 1.) My haircut turned out to be a lot better than I thought once I figured out exactly what her directions were for styling my hair and 2.) Japan really is a heck of a lot more fun when you have a tour guide. :)