Spring 'n stuff

Cherries, they blossomed and withered. Luckily I managed to take few pictures before that happened.
HereAnd here

I have also been lazy lazy blogger. Mostly this is because nothing has happened, and everything is going as usual. So nothing to write about, honestly. Ok, we had a farewell party for a cuban guy visitin our lab, see pictures below.
Left, Jorge, our associate Prof, right Aubert, our friendly visitor. Doing their duet on spanish tango.
From left to right, Sakura, Yuka, Akira and Takeshi. I assume that the one hiding behind Akira is Takakuni. I also had a hair cut.

On the season and people

Well, it's winter, that much is pretty obvious. At least for the people on northern hemisphere. When, before coming to Japan, I read about Sendai from wikipedia, I had the image that this would be a warm place. And this is true to a some extent. For example, the temperature has been under 0 only few times. Yet the winter feels more harsher here than in the Finland. Why?
Because the houses here don't have central heating. It's not like Japanese don't know about central heating, because apparently in Hokkaido every house has one. But not in Sendai. Again, this is not problem for people living in Tokyo and below it, because they never get weather this cold. But for people living up this north, it's incovinient.

Near the dorms on one snowy day

Flower, overtaken by snow. I have asked the name of the flower from my labmates at least three times, yet I have always forgotten it.

Anyway, the winter ought to be over soo. It'd better be, because I'm freezing here. And as much I'm looking forward to the warmer spring and summer, I'm still slightly afraid of the real damp, hot summer Japan.

On the people

The IDAC organized a gathering for all the foreigners working/studying in its laboratories. This was done to promote understanding between each other and our cultures, or something like that. The actual reason, we were told, was more money related. I didn't quite catch all the Japanese, but apparently they can't apply for "internationalizing-money" unless they actually do something with it.

The actual gathering was actually nice, we (that's me, 4 chinese, 2 korean, 1 malaysian, 1 cuban and one dane) met at Rinnoji. The temple is/was the family temple of the Date-clan, who founded the temple arounf 15th century. The temple is famous for it's garden, which is said to be one of the most beatifull of it's kind in the prefecture. We visited the temple and it's gardens in february, so I can't really tell.


Pictures from and around the temple gardens.

We also had an opportunity to enjoy shoujinryouri (精進料理) at the temple. The food might seem bit suspicious, but it was really really good. The yellow slimy thing down right is tofu. And for slimy piece of tofu, it was really tasty.

So what about the cultural exchange? Well, one of the Japanese IDAC officials who were with us told us about the shoujinryouri and then well... we all introduced ourselves. And ate and went to see the said gardens. And that was pretty much it. It seems that 'deepening cultural relations' is still a cargo cult for the Japanese people. On the other hand, when comparing to the other 'culture exchange days' I have bumped to here, this was a complete blast. So prehaps there is hope for the Japanese culture exchange.

Land of Fire

As much as Japan is an epitome of peace nowadays, if you look deep beyond the crust of earth, the Japan is all but peaceful. The earth around and beneath Japan is at constant move, causing earthquakes practically all the time. Not all of them are felt by humans though. Japan has been hit by several devastating earthquakes several times during its long history (e.g Kanto and Hanshin quakes). And as surely as the sun rises from the east, one day one of these great quakes will hit Japan again.

I'm not overtly aware of how the country is prepared to the quakes of that scale, but the signs in the parks that tell that said park is used as emergency gathering place in a case earthquake and posters around in the lobby of international dorm which tell you how to prepare to an earthquake tell a tale of a country that is constantly under a threat of catastrophe.

Japanese measure the magnitude of the quakes in Shindo-scale. The news and websites report the magnitude of each quake, in almost real time, using this system. When I was rudely woken by a quake in early November, I got to internet and checked the magnitude of said quake.


Image from the website of the japanese meterological agency (JMA). The numbers in the balls show how strongly the quake was felt at that point in the map. This particular quake was felt as Shindo 4 at places, where as it was felt as Shindo 3 in Sendai. Quake of similar power also occurred in January. I've been told that Sendai was hit by scale 5 quake last summer.
Service using data from JMA and Google maps show us the epicenter of each quake. This shows the epicenter of the small quake in November.

While being struck by quakes on regular basis sounds unappealing, the geological activity has also its boons. Japan is riddled with hot springs, and people use these natural bathing pools as.... well, baths. Nothing screams 'Japan' as much as outdoor natural hot spring (露天風呂 rotenburo) and in November, a volunteer group helping foreigners here in Sendai offered to give us a ride in Onsen near-by (40 minutes trip by car). About 20 of us decided to seize the opportunity and go to experience the more or less authentic Japanese bath.
Male members of our group, with exception of me, and a German guy, they were all French. Picture also shows of one our car drivers and a guide to onsen-life, Mr. Satou.

Picture at the outdoor bath. I can't remember the French guys name. The hot spring is pretty much comparable to sauna, you feel hot at first and then you begin to relax.


Later the volunteer group offered us free lunch at restaurant in the onsen. I was seated with German guy, a Korean girl and our guide, Mr.Satou. As you can see from the pictures, the onsen provided us with yukata to walk around while not in the bath. The price for lounging whole day in bath was 1600 yen, or around 12 euros back then. Thanks to the economic meltdown, that would mean 15-16 euros now.

Kyoto and Tokyo

Last time I said I'd talk about our trips in and around Oosaka, namely in Nara and Kyoto. Nara I managed to cover, but I somewhat forgot Kyoto. We only visited Kyoto for one (rainy) day. It also happened that this day was 3rd of January, so pretty much everything was closed. We tried to vist manga museum and Kyoto Castle, but both were closed, unfortunately. We managed to visit Kinkakuji, seen below though. And even though if it was a rainy day, the temple (shrine?) grounds were filled with tourists.

Kinkakuji also had some rather nice views to offer for the drenched visitors.


The closed Kyoto castle can be seen below.


I also forgot to mention about the new year last time. We (this time, me Saana and our friend Jussi.J (not to be mixed with Jussi.K shown on previous post). We thought to see how the japanese people celebrate the New Year, and thus we promptly headed to Sumiyoshitaisha, one the largest shrines in Oosaka. We assumed that there would be some firework, we also assumed that there'd be a festive. On the first we we wrong, on the last we were right. The shrine grounds were filled with myriad small stalls, selling fried squids, sausages, Nintendo Wii games and other apparently appropriate items.


The stalls can be seen behind the hand-washing stand. I guess it has an official name in japanese, but I can't be arsed to look for it. We sampled the festive foods and waited inside the main shirne area for something to happen. And around 23.30 something happened, namley people. Suddenly people started to huddle inside the main shirne country yard and we found ourself surrounded by thousands of japanese. (not kidding, see yourself)


View towards the main shrine/altar/thing.

And here you can se view of the area about 20 minutes before the New Year. Our rough estimate was that the temple had 10.000 to 20.000 visitors that night.Why there was so many people at the shrine at that time? They were queing to give their New Years first prayers. Apparently customary in japan, and in many shrines, the queing continued in the noon of the next day.

TOKYO

After Oosaka, we took a train to Tokyo for a night (two for me, one for Saana), where we stay at Aga's place. (Thanks a lot!) The time in Tokyo was mainly spent buying bow for Saana and wandering around, wondering the humangous capital of Japan.


Store we saw at Shinjuku (I guess)


Street view of Akihabara, a convinient custom car appeared to the picture to remind us of the fact that Akihabara is not from this world. I'm not sure if I should laugh at, or be scared of
that place.

The next day, Saana headed back to Oosaka and her flight while I stay in Tokyo with Aga. During that night, we went to an Okinawan izakaya, drank more than little of the local beverages and talked with some Okiniwana guy for about.. 4 hours I guess. Eventually the guy was so drunk that he was unable to speak, and after listening to Shimauta one more time, he bade us farewells. For an alcohol-fumed night, that was an absolute blast. The place was homely, the company was good and the food was great.

Finally some odd stuff I should have posted last time.
Stone we found in Nara. It has the kanji for 'phone' carved to it. No, I have no idea why it was there in irst place, but once I saw it, I just had to take picture of it with my phone on top.

Christmas cake of my laboratory. Yet another odd Japanese custom, as they seem to like eat cakes druing christmas.Vending machine in Kyoto. This one had neck-ties and batteries in it. I can't imagine why someone would urgently need to buy a neck-tie, but guess japanese people can.

Inside the huge temple of Nara, the picture from outside the temple can be seen in previous blog-entry.

The largest fish tank in Kaiyuukan (Oosaka aquarium), also mentioned in previous post.

That's all folks. Next time, probably something about Sendai.

New Year, Oosaka and Stuff (Nara and Kyoto)

So cometh the holidays around 26.12 and I took a bus south, to Oosaka, city of commerence and flashing lights. There is also a nice castle in the city, which we (me and Saana) of course visited.




Oosaka has also an aquarium, which we visited too.


Picture is from the largest tank from the aquarium, inhabited by several mantas, two whale sharks (yes, whale sharks) and random schools of fish.

We also enjoyed the fish in other form, i.e. food. Few visits with Jussi, Pauli and Laura to fish-specialized izakaya proved that Oosaka deserves the reputation it has as 'Kitchen of All Earth' it has in Japan.

Image of Jussi, very much enjoying his beer. He also mistook a huge ball of wasabi as some sort of fishy food and threw it in his mouth as one piece. The reaction was worth seeing.

Me with a crab we ate at izakaya, turned out to be expensive piece of meat. Though, I must admit that the crab was also really delicious.


As noted, we drank some beer with the fishes, and when we ordered our third beer, the waiter commented that 'the booze is strong in you' or in understandable english 'whoa, you can sure drink a lot'. At the time of our 6th serving of beers, he just wrote down our order shaking his head in disbelief.


We (that being me, Saana and Jussi (but not the Jussi above) visited Nara, the ancient capital of Japan and home of one huge temple and swarms of cookie-hungry deers.




Said deers (being fed by Saana, or actually forcing Saana to feed them).
Said temple.

As I spent some 9 nights in Oosaka, we had time to see a lot. I'll tell you later about all that. For now, time to do something else.

Christmas is present in Japan too. The shops have Christmas decorations, and people hang all kind of flashy things to their windows. The city of Sendai decorates one park ‘theme of season’. To Japanese people the new year is the most prominent holiday of the year, and while Christmas is celebrated, it’s usually holiday for lovers, who go to restaurant for romantic dinner and end the night in a hotel. This custom is bit different from the Euro-American family Christmas. Here’s some video of the main festive park in the downtown Sendai.

Glittering lights were plentiful, and small vendors sold foods and drinks all over the world (well, from Turkey and Japan at least). Below image me attacking a skewer of beef.

The Pegeant of Starlight, annual Sendai custom to bring light into dark winter.

We had the bounenkai-party of my lab last week. We went to a fine restaurant and had a 10 course French dinner. Our laboratory head, Prof. Kawashima apparently paid this all from his own pockets. Below can be seen image of your humble correspondent and his benefactor.
The dinner itself was gorgeous, we had lobsters, giant crab claws, huge clams, good two kilo roast, and lots of salmon prepared different ways, baked goodies and fried beef-tongue. This was accompanied by cheese-tray and fruits tray with lovely slices of Italian ham, French style fish soup and carefully prepared stew. The image is slightly bad, but shows two of the food trays.

For body and mind

Japanese food and eating in Japan. As you might know/guess, they eat quite a lot of fish, rice and noodles here. But I won't talk about that kind of Japanese food now, instead I stuff I have encountered. In both good and bad.

1.) School food

Japanese school cafeterias are really, really good. The one in medical campus has three separate kitchens, one for noodles, one for curry and one for various other foods. The ‘various’ kitchen is the most interesting one. You can freely pick your meal among the dozens of small plates. One plate might have fish fillet, second might be a cup of rise, third might be salad, etc.

In the image you can see lunch I ate while ago. The larger battered thing is chicken fillet, while the smaller one is fish. Other stuff you can probably recognize. You can also see the receipt. If you look closely to the receipt, you can see that it tells you more then just the price of the products. Indeed, the said paper slip tells me how many units of proteins (2.0), how many units of salad-stuff (1.2) and how many units of glutamates (6.7) I got. The larger number is the amount of energy I got got from this meal (793 kJ).

While this is bit odd, it helps you eat in a healthy way.

2.) Nattou

See the link for the description. The image probably tells how it tastes... (forced smile much)


3.) Sometimes you just want honest normal Finnish food. I felt like that while ago, and spent good 2 hours making meat soup. The end result can be seen below.

Some bonus images near my living place.
The road leading down from the dorm to the heart of the city (and medical campus)

Temple that I pass every morning. I can't remember what this temple was called, but it probably explains why there are 3-4 graveyards around our dorm.