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.