Do-youbi, Zoo-youbi, Suki-youbi

Well with a bit of free time I've actually managed to pack enough things in for an early blog post. Expect a bit more over the next week as Golden week is coming up. Essentially three holidays occur back to back in the middle of this week so no working. Awesome.

Onwards, or rather backwards, to Saturday. Konshu no doyoubi (this Saturday) Spring8 opened it's gates to the local public. It was awesome and no I'm not embarrassed to think that. Normally coming into work on a weekend would be rubbish, but with all the displays and the huge crowds of people it was in fact quite fun. It was definitely a new way to experience where I work anyway. I went along as a member of the general public rather than an employee so I got to wander freely, and grab some freebies to.

For the most part I didn't have a clue what was going on, given that all the signs were in Japanese, the things that I did understand where a little bit too basic. There were a lot of kodomo (children) at the event so I could read some of the signs meant for them. I also joined in with the hanko (stamp) trail. Basically you had to get a stamp from each of the major facilities. They were all designed around Spring8's mascot, Dr. Nyan. His name comes from the Japanese onomatopoeia for a cats meow. It was for the kids but I'm a big kid at heart. I also picked up a Dr. Nyan comic, which I'll hopefully be able to read in a few months.

Right more serious stuff now. What this open day did allow me to do was have a chat with some other people working on the ring and finding out about their research. There were some really cool exhibits to see including an ultrafast shutter camera taking pictures of a droplet hitting water and a chance to have a go on the hovercraft used in the construction of the XFEL. I also got chatting with one of the designers of the CCD detectors for the XFEL. It was interesting and hopefully I'll be seeing them in action at the end of September.

CCD (or charged coupled device) are a system of converting photons of light into discrete digital signals through the movement of an electrical current. They are composed of a thin photoactive, crystal, generally a few atoms thick, of some kind of inorganic compound. In most cases this is silicon that has been 'doped'. This term means that the silicon is bound to another atom, something like boron or Galium. These atoms slightly disrupt the electronic configuration of the silicon atoms, each crystal will now have one too many or too few electrons.

When light hits the crystal it excites the electrons and given enough energy they can 'jump' from those regions where there are too many electrons to those where there are too few. This occurs many times until eventually the electrons will reach an electron detector. The relationship between the number of electrons excited and the intensity of the light is discrete and so a photon’s brightness as well as its position can be recorded.

These things are a great bit of technology and are in fact part of technology behind digital cameras. I'm not going to lie though I don't fully understand how they detect colour. For me though I'm only concerned with the black and white as this is what is used to record a diffraction pattern in structural biology.

Nerdy bit over. I had a good wander round the facility before heading home to make my first homemade Japanese Kare risu (curry rice). The Japanese are mad on instant curry, it's everywhere and there are so many brands. This stuff is a bit more like school dinner curry than one from an indian restaurant. It comes in a block and you break a bit off into boiling water to make your sauce. I did all right this time and didn't burn anything.

I also took the opportunity to grab some more sweeties. Soba boro is a Japanese biscuit, akin to a biscotti, made with buckwheat flour sugar and eggs. They aren't too sweet and have a nice crunch o not a bad little snack, though a bit heavy on the egg. I actually found them to be a really good breakfast food and have them mixed in with my cereal. The other thing I picked up was anko ice-lollies. I think anko is used for pretty much any sweet thing you can think of over here, plus it has a nice creamy texture and I do so miss ice-cream.

Next morning I was up a little later than planned. Oh insomnia my old friend how I have missed thee. Not too sure why, possibly a dicky tummy, but my sleep has been rather disturbed the past couple of days. Anyway a quick cup of ocha and some breakie sorted that out.

I’d agreed to meet Yuko in Himeji to get my phone off her. Sadly no frizzers due to poor weather in Osaka, obviously these guys haven’t heard the phrse if it ain’t raining it ain’t training.  She didn’t want to meet up till about 1:30pm but I was restless so I left early for a wander around Himeji. I picked up some supplies for home as my cupboards where getting bare.

One interesting thing I got was instant Oden mix. Oden is a type of Japanese street food. It’s essentially a stew and similar to scouse back home you just put anything in. I’d been trying to get hold of it all over the place but hadn’t managed to fnd anywhere selling it. Turns out it’s actually more of  winter food so I’ll have to settle with homemade for now. I also grabbed a quick snack of some fish and yams from the food counter. Fresh cooked food has a big section in Japanese supermarkets and is well worth checking out for a cheap lunch. 

 Right so after partaking in some retail therapy, including buying more wagashi,  a small cake called an obanyaki which was filled with sweet white bean paste and more dango, I went back to the station to meet Yuko. Watashi wa itsumo okurete iru (I’m always late). Fortunately so was Yuko, so she didn’t notice. I got my phone, hurray, and it has more functions than I can even get my head around. The  salesperson had also thrown in a free bento box because it had taken so long to register the phone, what did I say before about kindness.

So now we had to figure out what to do with the rest of the day. With Himeji castle under reconstruction I wasn’t too sure if it was worth while going there however I had noticed a zoo nearby so I suggested that. I do so love animals and it turned out to only be 200 yen so why not ey. It only looked like a small zoo so I figured there wouldn’t be too much to see. Oh how wrong I was.

I’m not going to lie I was pretty horrified. It was a small zoo I was right about that, but to compensate it just had very small enclosures. Chisai, sugoku chisai (Small, too small), was all I could keep on thinking. I really was shocked by the cultural differences toward animal cruelty. They even had two polar bears, one of which was clearly going mental wandering around in circles. For someone brought up with Chester zoo this was a big shock and no one else seemed to bat an eyelid.

Still I did have some fun. It was nice at least to learn some animal names in different languages. Yuko told me the Japanese names and I tried to explain some of the Latin names to her, thank you A-level biology. A particularly interesting one was the lemur which in Japanese is Kitsune-saru, meaning fox monkey. Looking a little closer I could kind of see it actually

There were some Japanese animals on display such as a Kitsune (Japanese fox) which is a lot more slight than it’s European counterpart. I also saw some Japanese badgers and Tanuki. These things are commonly termed raccoon dogs though they aren’t that closely related to either. They have been involved in Japanese folklore for centuries and you see statues of them everywhere. Apparently they are shape shifters and very mischievous and there are many ancient tales of them playing tricks on humans.

We actually ended up spending a good two and a half hours wandering the zoo. Some other points of interest where, the very amusing penguin apartment, also a sign outside the chimpanzee enclosure warning of poo bombs. Eventually auld lang syne began to play so it was time to go.

Yuko couldn’t think of anything to do next, but I had a plan. I’d brought a Frisbee with me and the weather had improved, so perfect chance for a throw around in Himeji park. It’s such a shame that the Frisbee team here dissolved it’s such a nice space and we easily whiled away an hour and a half just throwing about. Yuko has a wicked backhand and is a great catch. Can’t wait to actually play some real ultimate with here in the future.

I was determined not to miss the last bus home this time so I left at 6  arriving in Aioi with plenty of time to spare. In fact I had enough time to grab some omiyagi (souvenir sweets) for the receptionists back at spring8 to thank them for helping me out with my money woes.  On the bus back I bumped into Sam who had been to Himeji as well. Sounded like he’d had a great time and hopefully we’ll be doing a bit of exploring together during golden week. He’s lived all over the world, France, Mauritius, England and America so I think I may have found a kindred spirit, bitten by the travel bug.

That's all for now.

Mata kondone