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.

...arrows of outrageous fortune

As some of you might know, even before coming to Japan I've been practising kyudo for three years . Japan being home of kyudo, I was thrilled when I was given a chance to practise with local teacher. For some reason the kyudo-club of the medical campus didn't accept me, and since the univeristy club dojo is far away from my lab, I now practise kyudo in girls high school dojo. This is possible becase my kind teacher, Sato-sensei asked a permission for me to practise here with the students, as he frequents this dojo himself. The kids are quiet and uneasy around me, but I can't really blaim them for that. The usual athmosphere of practise is silent and serene though.


The said dojo is quit humble, and as all the archery dojos in Japan, an open air place. Nowdays the temperature at night is around 5-10 C so it's not actually that cold. When one practises, the body stays mostly warm... excluding index finger of left hand which is not doing anything.

The makiwara at the dojo is actual makiwara, see below

In the image you can also see my bow I bought when I got here (if anyone from Hikari is reading this, the bow is 11 kilo renshin). I spend most of time in front of these straw piles when I practise. This is partially because I don't want to disturb the students who are shooting at the mato, but also because my teacher told me to that makiwara practise would do good for me.

Practising with someone that experienced is very, very intresting. My shooting form has been almost completely re-shaped, and we have discussed everything from breathing to neck muscle usage. Nonetheless, whether I am in Japan or in Finland, when I'm shooting I feel relaxed and comfortable. Guess that's why I keep doing this rather challenging sport.

The Inconveniencing Inconvenience

Inconvenience.

I know some of my Japanese friends might be reading this blog too. Take no offense what I say, I’m just trying to describe the Japanese society as it seems to me, a person who has lived his whole life in Finland.

Japanese society works with the concept of 'least inconvenience to all'. In every action that people take, it seems that they try to carefully think about how it might hinder other people.

Some examples:

Bells on bikes.

Usually bell on bike is used to tell the pedestrian in front of you to get out of your way. Not in Japan. There are lots of bicycles in Sendai, but I have heard bell ring only once or twice. Pedestrians are supposed to be considerate and aware that they are inconveniencing the bicyclist if they don’t let them pass. So when you are walking, you need to pay attention not only to what happens in front of you, but also what happens behind you. If you are ignorant enough, and actually inconvenience the bicyclist with not seeing them, he could ring the bell to tell you that he wants to get past. But this won’t do as it might startle the pedestrian. So what the bicyclist does. He uses the hand break to make this almost inaudible screeching noise to tell the pedestrian to get hell out of his way. Sounds crazy, but that’s how it works

Umbrellas.

All Japanese shops large enough seem to have a stock of ‘free to take’ umbrellas near the exit. Reasoning being, that if it starts to rain, it’s nice to offer customers free umbrella when he/she leaves the door. Most people also leave these free umbrellas to the next shop they visit, if the rain happens to end when they are looking at the wares. This is certainly convenient system. The same umbrellas go around the city centre and people stay dry. No-one loses and customers win by staying dry. What is extraordinary is that IF you happen to walk outside when it rains, and clerk of any shop with umbrella stock-pile sees you, they will rush out to give you an umbrella. This seems unnecessarily nice at the first glance. I suppose the reasoning is that they know they can help you (and the shop you are going to visit) by keeping you dry, and as it’s not a cost to them, they’ll do it. This is actually quite nice, but would never work or happen in Europe.

Good habits

If you happen to step on the feet of some unlucky person on the train/bus, they will not look at you angrily, or harrumph, but instead they will say “I’m sorry”. This feels bit odd, as it’s certainly not their fault that I stepped on their feet. But instead, saying they're sorry they at least gives you the image that you haven’t done nothing wrong, and that you shouldn’t feel too embarrassed about it. I guess getting someone embarrassed is inconveniencing them. Of course they still assume that you will give an apology as it is proper. But the fact that they are trying to ease your inconvinience by telling you that it's ok feels still bit puzzling. In Finalnd, or I guess anywhere else in Europe, if you step on someones foot, you say first that you are sorry, and then the other person says that 'it's ok'.


Now, none of these points make the country bad. Actually it makes the country quite nice to live in. The thing that I keep wondering is, how the hell can all these people, short-tempered and patient adjust to this? Guess it helps to be born here. In a way, I think that someone who has not born in Japan can never fully understand the social relations here. But for an outsider, it’s hell lot of a fun to watch and try to see how things work.

Halloween

So the (in)famous halloween party. Or more like halloween hang out. We formed smallish groups and went around the town, doing all kinds of stupid/embarassing tasks and taking photographs to prove our stupidity. Later judge for the hang-out calculated all the points recieved from said tasks and declared a winner. No we didn't win, or even come close by. But we had ton of fun though.

The image has me carrying some japanese guy piggyback. One of the tasks.


Most of our group can be seen below. From left Greg as pimp, then the odd japanese guy whose name escapes me at the moment, Tamiye as maid, Shota (I think) as pirate, me as casanova, Jeff as pimp and finally Saotome as phantom of the opera.

Picture of me and Jeff re-enacting Star Wars, with our red umberella banner on the background.
While we were doing this, one oldish lady came to ask from us if we are western stars.

I was dressed as sort of 'casanova' character.

Jeff, Greg and Adam as pimps. Adam actually failed in participate to the party because he drank too much beforehand and passed out before the whole thing really began. Last but not least, image of Jeff proposing stranger

All in all it was surprisingly funny night, and while we had some problems of convincing japanese people to help us, it was still ton of fun.

Tohoku Univeristy International Festival

Today, the local student organization held an international festival on the baseball field near my dorm. Basicly the area was covered by small tents selling all kinds of foods from all around the world. They had also put up a stage for performancers, and we had the joy to watch everything from Vietnamese bamboo dance to russian folk dances and japanese noo theatre.

The noo theatre

Thai girl playing some large string instrument

The food was varying, in both taste and amount. Turkish kebeb-thing was good, while iranian fried chicken was still raw. German sausages tasted like german sausages.

The iranian 'surprise'


Hungarian folk dance

I guess the most amusing thing was to see people from all around the world to enjoy the festival together. The iranian booth was proclaiming on large poster that 'IRAN land of love and peace'.
There was also stand from Myanmar. All in all... intresting thign to witness. Next week-end is halloween and we have something intresting planned for the costume competition. We'll see how our group will do... or won't do. We might be bit too introverts to win the dress competition but... For sure, it'll be intresting.

Lab welcome party and Imoni

Welcome party

If you wonder the lack of updates lately, the reason is adamant local common cold. I've been sick and still going to work and looking for my kyuudou teacher. So, now update about past. The first day at work, we had welcome party at some semi-italian restaurant. This also included the infamous nomihoudai, or free drinking. The lab got out of the place with light casualties, they had only to carry one secretary back home because she drank too much.


From left to right, Yuka, our secretary, Sakura, post-doc researcher and Kai, our chinese mathematician.Special dessert plate for new people of the lab.


The shampagne bottles in the image, each of us, new members to the lab got our own bottles from the party, with our names on the side of the bottle.


The date on the bottle is the date of the party.

All in all, it was a good night, and a night I will surely remember for a while.

Imoni

The student group @home, whose task it is to make echange students to feel like Sendai was their home, organized an imoni party for us. Today tons of people, as it seems customaru, had gathered on the riverside to eat good food, chat with friends and enjoy the fresh air.


I also took a short video clip from the riverside area.

As you can see, it was really croweded, but the weather was nice and the food was good and plentiful, so it was ok. I also met Kashiwa-kun, a guy who knew my friend Santeri and who had been in Finalnd year ago in the party organized by the Nippoli. All in all good day, though my cold made the trip bit painful, and probably denied me the rest I could have got back at the dorm. Well, 'No pain, no gain' as they say.

Matsushima ah!

Because today is 体育の日, or Health and Sports Day, a national holiday, we thought yesterday that we could make a day trip to a famous Matsushima and then sleep long without having to worry about making it work/classes in time.

As the name implies, Matsushima is an archipelago of some 260 small islands covered in pines. Because we had been out on saturday and had a combined nomihoudai/karaoke, we got under way around 12 a clock. Uhum.. for the people who don't know, nomihoudai means that for paying certain fixed sum of money, usually around 2000-2500 yen, you can drink as much as you like in two hours or so. The price includes also some snacks as per alcohol regulations in japan.

Anyway, as we were on our way to the train station in the center of Sendai, we stumbled upon some kind of Matsuri, or festival celebrating the Health and Sports day.

Basicly the festaval was composed of many and various groups of japanese students dancing/walking down the road, according to pre-planned coreography fitted to older or newer japanese music. You can see some of the dance here.

Most of the dance groups had also flag bearer or two, carrying the flag of the group, or flag related to the organization where the group hailed from.

We watched this spectacle for a moment or two (or three) and the continued our way to the railwaystation to catch the train to Matsushima. With local train it takes about 40 minutes and 400 yens to reach Matsushima from Sendai. In Matsushima we were greeted by the smell of the sea, multitude of small shops trying to sell stuff to tourists and groups of said japanese tourists.

According to travel information and wikitravel, the best way to see the actual are is to take a ferry trip, and so we did. About 2000 yens poorer, we headed for for 50 minute trip around the bay. The ferry was jam packed with tourists, so instead of even trying to find a sitting place near the windows, we just sat on the upper aft deck and enjoyed the fresh sea air and spectacular wievs from the less comfortable location.




The famous pine covered isles above, below Jeff and Tomiya enjoying the sunshine on the aft deck.

After the boat trip we wandered around in Matsushima, visited one small museum and had a dinner. After rather uneventfull train journey back home, we were shocked to find that our bikes were not there where we had left them. We lookd for them for a while, and then, luckily found them. I didn't pay anything for my back as it's the legacy of some formef finnish exchange student, but still I would rather not lose it and then pass it to the next exchange student, as per tradition.

My home is my castle

So I've moved to Japan, Sendai, which lies pretty much here. I'm on exchange project organized by the University of Tohoku. What I'm actually doing here, or what I should actually be doing is a masters thesis.

I'm doing my thesis in Institute of Development, Aging and Cancer in Neuronal Mass Dynamics group. I don't want to go in detail about my job yet, also I haven't yet seen much of the city either, so I won't talk about it neither... at least for now.

So, as they say, 'My home is my castle' and my, quite humble, casle looks pretty much like this.

The room is simple with few cupboards, bed, table, sink and gas stove. All the closets have been nailed to the wall, so that they would not fall on the inhabitant in case of earthquake, which are said to be rather frequent here. I live in the Sendai University International House, or Tohoku Daigaku Kokusai Koryu Kaikan, which is more commonly called just 'kaikan'. The view from the roof can be seen below.


The roof has some utilities for drying laundry... and barbed wire fence. Guess it's to keep panty-thieves away, hell I know. The kaikan is about 1.5 - 4 km away from the several campses that make the Tohoku University, mine is the closest one, called Seiryou-campus, which is dedicated for medical and dental studies. I'll try to post some pictures of the campus next time or so.

The first week here went basicly to findingout how to country works, or doesn't work, what I can get from where, where my laboratory is, etc etc...

I'll try to keep up blogging more or less regularly, so more stories and more images shouls appear on 'Mori no Miyako' in the future. ... What the Hell is Mori no Miyako you might ask. In short, it's nick name for Sendai, and it means 'Capital of Forests'. The name seems quite apt, as even from the roof of our dorm, we can see the rolling forests that surround this smallish town.

So my friends back in Finland and elsewhere, take care.