Eye, eye, eye. Oi oi oi

Once again crazy week of experimenting. I had 6 hours sleep last night for the first time in about a month and suddenly the world seems a much better place. Amongst the wonders I discovered during the recent beamtime the most prevalent in my mind are:

1. 1.   4am is definitely the worst time during a long stint awake.
2. 2   Failing that the 21^st hour sucks hard, though you get your second wind after that.
3. 3.     Checking out the cheekbones of people of Asian descent is a good way to work out their nationality.

So now onto more important matters, a quick eye update. My lens are finally ready woo, I just need to pick them up tomorrow. The fitting went pretty well last weekend except for leaving with a bit of a black eye. Not being Japanese the morphology of my eye is somewhat different. The main difference, apparently, is that my eyelids are stretchier.

This led to a ridiculous scenario. The ophthalmologist spent a good hour jabbing my eyes trying to get the contacts out muttering something about being “柔らかい”（loose) and how different my eyes were to a Japanese persons. So one black eye later he figured it’d be best to try something different, which worked straight away.

 

Complaining aside the difference in my sight is unbelievable. It was like switching from normal TV to HD. In fact it was a big shock when I looked at my face with the lens in. I could see all the stress and malnutrition based blemishes induced by beamtime. It wasn’t pleasant, if I didn’t want to read without squinting so bad I think I’d just opt to have crap vision and not see my face again. Naaaaaah.

At any　rate the main event of the weekend occurred on Sunday. Kobe was hosting this years Punkspring, an annual punk rock festival with one day in Tokyo and the other somewhere else in Japan. With the Offspring as the headline and SUM41 as one of the supports I couldn’t not go and relive my teenage years. I’ve been craving live music for a while now also so it was an awesome opportunity.

The gig brought me back to Port Island, it still awes me to think the whole thing is man-made. The gig was to be at the international conference centre. It’s a huge hall and serves to have many uses. As well as hosting gigs it hosts sporting events, a giant pool in the summer and an ice rink in the winter.

Well I could bore you with details of the bands but I won’t. Some of them were decent, total fat a Japanese punk band were a pleasant surprise. Others were a bit rubbish. The headline acts of course were great though they are looking a bit old.

What felt a bit awkward though was the American bands interaction with the crowd. Given that a lot of the audience can’t speak English I can imagine it’s tough but the approach of the bands was very different. One opted to, pretty immaturely, just take the mick and say stupid offensive stuff that most people wouldn’t catch. I’ll admit I’ve done this in the past at international Frisbee tournaments but I don’t condone it.

One band made a real concerted effort to interact and I think it came across a bit. The other method taken was just to ignore the crown and get on with the music. For me that’s just a bit lame. It got me thinking. With all the pressure of being in a band and having to learn songs and whatever, should you learn a bit of the local language before an international gig?

Personally I think yes. Even just a couple of basis (thank-you, lets go, how’s it going) is going to go down well. It almost feels a bit dismissive to me but then I’m not a big-shot punk star.

Enough musing and on to some surprises. The crowd was mental. I mean absolutely heaving, pogoing like crazy, crowd-surfing and massive circle pits. I’d been growing some expectations about Japanese society in general and was happy to have them smashed by the youth. It was like any punk gig I’ve been to and it’s good to see a flame of rebellion still burning in some, crowd surfing was strictly against the venues rules but it stopped no one. Interestingly People were told at the door not to take pics, and almost no one did, something I doubt would happen back home.

There was one point that sticks in my mind and that was SUM41 playing fat lip. The song has the lyrics: 

I don't want to waste my time

become another casualty of society.

I'll never fall in line

Become another victim of your conformity.

I couldn’t help but be struck by a ten-ton brick of irony. It was odd to be in a crowd of hundreds singing lyrics that possibly 3% actually got. I’d love to think that they’d carry that forward but sadly Japanese society is one built on conformity. You enter high school and your life ends as you study to get into a good university. You work your balls off through Uni to enter into a Job that sees you working 60+ hours a week and no one complains. Why? Cos it’s normal. I’m glad I’ve met some wonderful people in this country who feel different I just wish they weren’t such an exception to the rule. The thing that scares me most is I’ve seen it happening in the UK before I left.

All in all it was a great gig. Best bit? Not getting caked in beer due to the fact no one brought drinks into the standing area. That or the announcer speaking （ 敬語）totally felt out of context. Anyway I leave you with this vid I found which I hope inspires some change in the worlds education system.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o6UP65M8pYY

Mata neeee

I can see clearly now (almost)

A little slow with this update but things are busy as always. The I’m a scientist get me out of here event is sucking up a fair amount of my free time at the moment. So many wild and varied questions from the quiz I’m loving it. I’m also learning a fair bit about physics in the process since I’m the only none physicist in the zone. Happily I’ve not been evicted first so fingers crossed I last the week (I didn't I got evicted today).

Right back to me then. Last weekend was pretty wild. It started with a trip to the hospital. As I’ve mentioned before I have a condition called kerataconus  (円錐角膜 in Japanese) that alters the shape of my cornea making it difficult for me to focus on objects. Well with a lot of help from a colleague I went to the hospital to get fitted for contacts to correct the problem. It was an interesting experience to say the least. My Japanese is getting better but I’m not at a level where I could explain my problems specifically enough or fully understand a Dr’s response so the help was pretty welcome. 

The little differences between countries are the ones that shock the most I think. In Japan eye charts are made up of circles with an opening at the top, bottom, left or right, rather than the alphabet we are used to. It took me a sec to click on to what was going on. Amazingly I could see down to the second bottom like once the lenses were fitted and focused, turns out my eyes aren’t so bad apart from being pointy. It was a real revelation. I had no idea just how much this was affecting my vision until I could see normally. I quite literally could not see the first line of  circles with my left eye. The nurse had to, rather adorably, hold up picture cards and move backwards slightly to test the limit of my left eye. I can’t wait to get my lenses in a week or so and see the world clearly.

So what else was I up to. Well after visiting the clinic I dashed onto a train bound for Osaka. I was due to go to a friends birthday party that night. Another first for me as there would not only be no guys, something I could handle, but no native English speakers either. 頑張ります。Actually my biggest concern was what to buy my friend for her birthday. I have no idea what Japanese girls are into. With a bit of help from some friends though I settled on a small chocolate cake.

We met up for a fun night at a 鶏肉　(chicken skewer) restaurant for a night of drinking and eating. It was good fun. Hadn’t seen my friend in some time and she was shocked how much my Japanese had come along. It turned out one of our party had spent a long time overseas so her English was amazing. In fact probably better than mine and we had fun chatting about the quirks of British English compared to the Americanized version most Japanese people are used to. Following that we went to, of all places, an Irish pub called the blarney stone. Well I guess it was St. Paddy’s day after all. The bar was chock full of rowdy English teachers and there was a wicked Ska band playing covers of current hits. Saturday was a great day all in all.

I ended up kipping at a hostel in Kyoto that night and met some wonderful people. Whilst staying at a friend’s would have been cheaper there is something to be said to staying in a hostel, you always meet interesting people. I got chatting with a lady who was visiting Japan from Spain. She was a massive Japanophile and her enthusiasm was infectious. It made me realize I really need to relinquish some of the jaded views I’ve been holding.

In the morning I had initially planned to head over to Arashiyama, the northern area of Kyoto, for the first time. Sadly I over slept and the weather was a bit rubbish so instead I went and explored the station.

I’ve written about Kyoto station before now but I can’t help but come back to it. I always come across something new in there. This time I took a meander along the suspended walkway that runs the length of the station. It’s even more impressive when you are up high. It also seems that this year marks 100 years until Doraemon, possibly one Japan’s most famous manga icons, will be born.

I should probably explain that. Doraemon is a robot cat sent back from the future to prevent a young talentless boy called Nobi Nobita from becoming a waster by his descendants. It is the most popular children’s manga ever penned and is essentially the Japanese Mickey mouse. To mark the clearly auspicious occasion a giant image adorned the steps of the west side of Kyoto station.

Since it would be mothers day the next day I decided to grab something for my mum and mail it back home. This was another first for me it’s not something I’d had to do before. Fortunately I was doing this in Kyoto so the clerks, used to tourists, were very patient and probably knew what I wanted without me asking. I hope you enjoy the tea mum. Now having lost time mailing the tea, and also searching for a museum that apparently no longer exists, I didn’t have much time left to go to Arashiyama. Instead I just decided to wander the streets of Kyoto a bit.

It’s easy in such an historical town to head towards the major tourist spots and not realize all the exciting things going on about you. Just a short wander from the station are many winding side streets with some surprisingly old buildings. Unless it’s a temple or a shrine you don’t see so much old architecture in Japan and especially not derelicts. In a country where space is at a premium, things are constantly being renovated and, on the whole, going upwards.

The general architecture of Kyoto is different to most of the cities I’ve experienced though. Nothing like the concrete jungle that makes Osaka, the streets are lined with quirky little houses. I love the slap dash nature of Japanese residential areas. Unlike Britain, where streets tend to be lined with more or less the same houses over and over again, Japanese vary wildly in shape, size and style.

It was nice to take a bit of time to look at my surroundings. I think now that I’ve been here a year I’m really starting to appreciate the smaller differences more. Even back home I’ve always been a massive people watcher and it was cool to take the time to watch people living their lives, wondering why they picked a house like that to live in and so on. After a wander and ponder I headed back to Osaka to play some Frisbee. It had been ages and to my happy surprise the team had grown thanks to some university students coming back home. Some of these guys could really play, leading to 3 hours of knackering fun that I’m still feeling now.

Mata neeeee

Enl(eye)tening

Well It's been like a week so I'm going to put up a new post. This one isn't japan related but I love a pun, possibly more than most, and this post is a tribute to my gammy eyes. For years I've had a weak left eye but I've just kind of got on with it. My vision wasn't great but it was managible so I just ignored it, silly  I know but I think thats how I work most of the time, I'm very much just  shut up and get on with it, something I'm almost certain I get from you dad :P.

Anyway a bit of background and some tasty tasty eye gore, you have been warned. So whats wrong with me. I have a condition known as Keratoconus (no not Kerry Catonus although i thought that was what the optician told me first time around). What this basically means is that the corneas of my eyes are cone shaped rather than rounded and so incident light is not refracted onto my retina properly, everything seems to be about the diffraction, refraction or reflection of photons of light with me at the mo.




Right so now a bit of a sciency bit. The treatment for this is to remove the top layer of cells from the cornea, they're dead anyway so it;s actually fairly straightforward. My eye was anesthetized and then washed with alcohol. I did have to watch it being scraped off though, that wasn't much fun :(. After that I had to lie still for 1 hour as drops of riboflavin were added to my eye every 5 minutes. The idead is that the riboflavin (or vitamin B2) will be used to cross link the keratin in the cornea, making it more rigid and so flattening and thickening it. Then hopefully normalish vision yay.

Of course you scrape off a load of cells from your eye it's like having a graze on your eyeball. Suffice to say I'm currently suffering alot of Itami no meh. It is a bit frustrating. I had the operation done on monday, can;t see anything out of my left eye of course and it;s a bit of a fight to keep my right eye open.

I can't really read, watch T.V. r do much of anything really. I'm able to right this post simply on the virtue that I don't really need to look at the keys. It's worth it in the long run though. It's funny in a way because I;d never have found out about this if it wasn't for frisbee. A couple of my mates noticed I always seemed to drop discs when they were on my left side and maybe I needed an eye test. I brushed it off the first couple of times but eventually went and pow. I could have gone blind if not for frisbee, what an awesome sport ey. Anyway time to go take it easy (whatever that means).