I'm not Dead

I'm really not. I realise I've been quiet for a while and I do have a cool post lined up but I'm having some issues uploading the pretty pictures. Right now work is a bit crazy. I'm participating in a summer school for synchrotron users. It's been great, I've learned loads and met tons of new people as well, many in the same boat as myself. It's also served to refocus me, I'm really keen to get going with my work and I have loads of new ideas to develop once I'm finished.

Sadly however we also have a slot of beamtime during the Summer school. This has lead to essentially double shifts as I'm at the school all day then spending the evenings working on experiment prep. As you can imagine thats leaving little time for doing any blogging. Hopefully It'll settle down once the experiments are fully underway...maybe.

Mata ne

Kishiwada Danjiri Matsuri

Well another week of tiring work over and what better way to unwind than a nice relaxing weekend? Nah just kidding I went out and did some interesting stuff instead, I can rest when I’m dead ey. The agenda for this weekend was a visit to Kishiwada, a district of Osaka, which was hosting a Danjiri festival this past weekend.

What is a danjiri festival you may ask. Well it involves pulling large portable shrines, known as “だんじり” (danjiri) around the streets of your city or ward, with giant ropes, at high speeds. Kishiwada’s is particularly famous throughout Japan due to the sheer number of danjiri they have, around 80 I believe.

Now as you may of guessed this sounds a little bit dangerous, in fact when I told any of my Japanese acquaintances my plans I was told either “あぶない“　(dangerous), or ”気をつけて“　(take care). I was a little bit worried but it seemed a fantastic opportunity to witness something very deeply steeped in Japanese culture, and very far removed from my own. I couldn’t really resist.

My partners in crime for the weekend were Sam and Yuko. Sam and I departed our mountain home early Saturday morning to travel to Osaka and check into our hotel. I’d had a bit of difficulty finding us somewhere to stay earlier in the week and had actually by chance come across an advert for a capsule hotel. This had been on my “to do list” for a while and it was also very cheap. Win win really.

It had been raining a fair bit the previous night, leaving myself and Sam a bit worried that things may be called off. I checked Kishiwada’s website and it claimed that the festival would go ahead rain or shine so we decided to just go for it. I think the rivers have still not fully recovered from the typhoon two weeks ago though as many of them seemed close to bursting their banks.

We got to Osaka in good time and scouted out our hotel. It was in a very lively area packed with many Izakaya, restaurants, pachinko parlors, karaoke bars, and other more nefarious establishments. This reflected well the main purpose of capsule hotels, which is as a stop off point for middle-aged businessmen who have been out on the lash.

After checking in and dumping some of our stuff in a locker we headed back to the station to find out where to take the train to Kishiwada from. It was pretty straightforward but unfortunately Yuko had some problems at work causing here to be late, so we bought some Takoyaki for lunch and waited at the station.

A little later than planned, but at least finally all together, we arrived in Kishiwada. The weather had actually improved a fair bit and things were looking good. As we left the station we were presented with huge crowds of people. It looked like the festival was extremely popular.

A huge precession of men and women of all ages dressed in kappi, a kind of short jacket bearing the symbol of their guild, and white headbands marched towards us down the central high street with a giant length of rope in tow. In the distance we could hear the sounds of bells, flutes and drums indicating the location of the Danjiri. At the corner of the street the troupe came to an abrupt halt. They moved into some kind of order and, with a loud cry began to yank the rope as hard and fast as possible, pulling the Danjiri around the corner.

It was really quite an impressive sight though our location was not ideal so Yuko suggested we moved on a bit. We passed through the streets of Kishiwada that were lined with all kinds of merchant stands. These were mostly food stands as you can imagine in any festival. Of course not the things you’d find in a British carnival they were all very Japanese, typical fare like sembei with a fried egg on top, takoyaki, and anything you could imagine on a stick (including cucumbers and omelets).

As we approached the main intersection a festival official speaking, I’m assured, in a heavy Osaken accent ushered the crowds behind a rope as Danjiri came from all directions. We’d found the location where all the different paths intersected and we were in for a show. It was really quite astonishing to see those giant wooden carts being hauled around the corners of roads, with the guild masters jumping and dancing on top the whole time.

As the day wore on the weather took a turn for the worse. This didn’t seem to stop th cart pullers though, in fact they seemed to speed up. This could of course been due to the fact they were getting steadily drunk as well. We noted that in every procession there were people pushing trolleys stacked with of plastic cups and kegs of beer, clearly festival essentials.

Another rather surprising sight for Sam and myself was our first spotting of a Yakuza gang member. We hadn’t noticed him till the rain had started due to the long-sleeved white T-shirt he was wearing. However once soaked we could see through to the intricate tattoos underneath. Of course this doesn’t mean too much, though they are uncommon in Japan, but he also appeared to have part of his little finger missing.

 

According to Yuko Kishiwada is a hotbed for Yakuza activity, hardly surprising as the “山口組”Japan’s largest Yakuza group is based in Hyogo. After seeing this guy we actually started to note a few more. In fact it turns out that the Yakuza play a big part in the festival organization as they bring together a lot of the peddlars and stalls that line the streets.

By about 5pm the Danjiri and their bearers (interestingly also known as 組　“gumi” as the word simply means group) took a break before the night time precession. We explored a bit more of Kishiwada including one of its large malls. Inside to my joy was a Caldi, time to stock up on import goods.

At 7pm the things began to get lively once more. The Danjiri parade began anew, although a little bit more subdued now in terms of speed. As the sun had well and truly set the carts were decorated by huge arrays of paper lanterns. I guess this was the reason they were moving a bit more slowly as they were now a severe fire hazard. That being said the music and shouting was no less enthusiastic.

 

The whole even had a really great atmosphere and it’s very interesting to see a usually reserved people letting their hair down. What was nice is whilst there were many men staggering around drunk I didn’t see a single punch being thrown, a far cry from home I’m sad to say.

On the topic of drunks we were actually approached by two older men whilst looking at our map. The easiest way to start talking to people is to pull out your map apparently. Of course we didn’t understand a word they were saying but Yuko took the opportunity, with some relish, to teach us a bit of Osaka-ben. It is really interesting actually as I’ve said before. Japanese dialects, due to the limited number of sounds in the language, dramatically change the way in which words, and sentences are structures.

Osaka-ben is very much based upon increasing the speed at which words are spoken. Many words are shortened or slurred and there is also a greater emphasis on intonation. I get the impression it’s perceived as a bit ‘rough’ in Japan but I really like it, it reminds me of scouse or Geordie back home.

After a long day of wandering around we finally headed back to Osaka for the night, though not before sampling some ‘Jark Chicken’. It was rubbish and not Jerk chicken but I shouldn’t be too shocked, heavy seasoning is just alien to the Japanese way of cooking and this turned out to be chicken with a bit of mild chili sauce.

We headed back to the hotel, though not before stopping off at the neighboring Sega club were I thrashed Sam at mariokart, I think he’s still hurting a bit. Although I could have done with a wash the Sauna below us had a ban on tattoo’s. I’d heard it was a common thing though this was actually the first time I’d come across it, I guess the association between gangsters and tattoo’s is a very tight one.

Upstairs in the hotel we slipped into our rental yukatas and chilled out in the lounge for a little while. All the customers of the hotel were male, I think the vast majority of capsule hotels are male only. Quite a few were still pretty drunk and smoking away in front of the TV.

 

 We retired to bed at about 1am. They were surprisingly comfortable in fact and somehow there is even enough room for a T.V and a radio in there. On the whole capsule hotels weren’t such a horrendous experience. The only faults really were the fact they aren’t very friendly, unlike a hostel you don’t really interact with any other customers. Also the booming announcement that woke us up at 9am essentially telling us to get out wasn’t greatly appreciated.

Mata kite kudasai.

Noyori Summer School 2011

On the 9^th-10^th of September I went along to a conference called the Noyori summer school in Kobe. I was pretty excited to be attending. For one it is my first conference since starting my PhD, and in fact my first real conference. I spent a good deal of time working on my poster, I wanted to leave a good impression.

The conference itself was set up to allow all the other IPA’s (the exchange program I’m part of) from all over Japan to meet each other and share their research. In fact I’d say 90% of the other IPA’s are based in Wako campus Tokyo. Talking to them it seems that Wako is set up a lot better to handle overseas students than Spring8, our international relations office is none existent.

Also as part of the program we would be hearing from some of the RIKEN exec about their experiences working for RIKEN and science in general. As well as this we would be getting some site tours of the facilities in the surrounding Kobe area. Also there would be a Q&A session with the President of RIKEN, Noyori-Sensei.

 

Noyori-sensei was actually very interesting and the Q&A session was very enlightening. Admittedly he had his own agenda and rather than answering the questions he was asked he twisted them to suit what he wanted to say. I think it may just be a bitter though as I didn’t really get satisfactory answers to the questions I asked.

Anyway what he had to say was interesting and somewhat surprising. In  a country that prides itself on it’s ability to function without external input he was advocating the need for heterogeneity. His belief was that science in Japan is beginning to stagnate due to the lack of mixing with other societies, cultures and ways of thinking. “No country can survive on its own” to quote the man directly.

Riken now has representatives from over 50 different nationalities although it still has a long way to go to catch up with the rest of the world. Looking around I would say half of the 70 students in attendance were Japanese nationals and the vast majority of IPA’s were from Asian countries. In fact only myself and two others were European and there was nobody in attendance from the America’s .

Noyori-sensei’s next big surprise was his strong promotion of individuality in research. To be truly creative in your scientific ideas and research you must be prepared to take your own path. To paraphrase he said that a truly good idea is not one that everyone likes but in fact the one that everyone criticizes.

Why was this an odd statement? Well I’ll share with you an ancient Japanese proverb.　“出る釘は撃たれる”meaning ‘the stake which sticks out is hammered down’. Not so promising for those with individualistic ideas ey.

I think this is something many Japanese youths going into science struggle with. They are taught from an early age to be subservient to their superiors, follow the rules unbendingly and so on. This does not promote good science and if you are conditioned in such a way I think it would be very difficult to ‘think outside the box.’ I am actually quite glad after hearing this to have grown up in a place where the ability to express oneself as an individual is not only encouraged but lauded. This kind of thinking comes naturally to me and I am thankful for that.

As I said It was interesting to hear this from the mouth of the President of the whole of RIKEN, at least for me anyway. Japan can be a tough place to do science due to the very imposing nature of it’s legislation and a very tight adherence to the rules, I’m glad the big boss man at least agrees with this.

The rest of his talk was very much about the role of science in society. In fact he mentioned that the social sciences and public opinion should be playing a greater role in scientific policy. What is the point in performing society that doesn’t benefit the people?

I guess I can kind of agree with this, although my work is pretty abstract. It is important not to lose sight of the great goals of your research, you can so easily get bogged down in the minor detail that you forget why you even began carrying things out in the first place. A constant dialogue between science and the public is not only important, but necessary. I can totally agree on this point and it is why I really want to become involved more heavily in scientific communication.

Ok his final points were obviously concerned with science and it’s role in natural disasters and the current energy and environmental crises the world is faced with. This is clearly a hot topic in Japan right now after Sendai, it has really permeated all aspects of life out here. Particularly as Japan is a country with very few natural resources, they import over 95% of their fossil fuels, the damage to their nuclear power has hit very hard.

Anyway enough of that for the now I think it’s time to talk a bit more about the event itself. As I said earlier it was really interesting. It was great to hear from other IPA’s about their backgrounds and experiences in Japan. I think the main goal of the conference was just to allow us to get to know one another as the subject areas were so broad that it was difficult to find overlap in our projects.

That being said I did meet some very lovely people and it being a science conference we had a lot in common. We spent most of the day on site tours of the various facilities around Kobe including the center for developmental biology (CDB) and the new K super computer.

I’d visited the CDB once before and was hoping to get a better look inside. Sadly it was not to be. Whilst the person heading the tour, an America researcher whom had actually started out his career in Japan translating scripts for Sega,  was very interesting we were very limited on where we could go.

Sadly I’ve seen the average biology lab many times and I would have like to see some of the support facilities, like their electron microscope and mass spectrometry facilities. There is some very interesting research in evolutionary development being carried out in the center, exploring how the jaw developed, the turtle shell evolved, and other such quirks of nature came about. It’d be nice to fnd out a bit more of that research I think. All in all by the end of the trip I was very jealous of the facilities, it’d be nice to work on something a bit more biological but this is the path I’ve chosen for myself. Maybe after four years.

The K computer, whilst impressive, was still just a giant computer. Essentially a massive server room with a highly advance cooling system. The name it’s self comes from the Japanese symbol meaning 10 quadrillion. This refers to the fact that it has the capacity to process at a speed of 10 petaFLOPS (or floating point operations per second). I’m not going to lie I understood very little so my interest wavered at that point.

It was a very good experience at the end of the day. I got some excellent practice presenting my poster and gabbing about science, one of my favorite pastimes. Also presenting to Noyori-sensei was a fantastic opportunity and he really has piqued my interest, I’d like to here some more talks from him. Sadly my poster didn’t win any prizes, something I need to work on, but it did at least garner some interest.

Of course the best part was meeting other young researchers. It can be difficult at times when people ask you what you do to explain it in a way that is both un-patronizing but also easily understood. Here there was none of that and instead was a good chance to unwind with some fellow researchers, share our experiences of Japan so far and of course teach each other bad words in our respective languages.

Sore ja minna-san.

Free time and Three places.

So not that long after my parents returned to the UK I actually got a surprise present of three days off work. It was nice surprise, and one that I’ve been assured by Masamoto-san will not happen again.  I decided to use the time to visit some places that were a little more unusual and therefore would require some more time to get to.

Due to the repetitive “I went here and I did this and then this” of the last few posts I’m switching up the style a bit. Hope you still enjoy it,よろしくおねがいします。

Kyoto station

 

A weird place to visit but it was more because I was there than anything else. Actually it is a really impressive place and incorporates quite a lot. Japan seems to pride itself on efficient use of space, and Kyoto station is no less of an exception.

It is a wonderfully pretty structure, very futuristic all irregular cubes an swooping edges, with a sleek black gloss finish. With an expansive central hall as well as two adjoining towers the whole structure is nearly half a kilometer long there is a lot to do and see.

First stop for me was the garden and viewing area at the top of the western tower, well I do love climbing. I decided on the stairs to climb the eleven floors although there are escalators available. At the top I was greeted by a small and very jolly terrace, one could even say it was Happy, and some big glass windows looking out over Kyoto. The city itself is pretty low to the ground for Japan, so even though I wasn’t so high the views were great.

On the 7^th floor there is an art museum called, “EKI Kyoto”. The exhibit running at the time was a wonderful one displaying the works of a famous kirigami (or Mon-Kiri) artist whose name has slipped my mind. He was heavily influenced by nature and most of the works were of birds and insects.

Unfortunately none of the explanations were in English so I couldn’t fully appreciate what I was looking at, though they were pretty and very impressive nonetheless. Also not many pictures, it was an art museum after all, though I did get a cheeky one of some penguins.

Iga Ueno Ninja Museum

 

This had been my main goal for the short holiday and let me tell you now it was a bugger to find. Admittedly it is a ninja museum so why I expected otherwise I don’t know, I mean it is a ‘Ninja’ museum, they aren’t supposed to be easy to find right?

First task get to Iga Ueno. Not so easy as it is a little town famous for its ninja museum, and not a whole lot else. It is accessible by the Kansai line, which I believe is one of the oldest train lines in the region. Trains consist of one carriage and it even has the old school ticket machines like Japanese buses.

From Iga Ueno station the museum it is actually only a short trip by the local area train, which is covered in pictures of ninja. Of course no one told me this and instead suggested I walk the 3 miles between the station and the museum, thanks guys. It was hot and sweaty but I did manage it eventually.

It was worth the treck. The centrepiece of the museum is an old converted farm house that had been set up as a traditional ninja house. The multitude of traps, secret doors and tricks had been faithfully restored and were demonstrated with gusto by the attendants.

I’d really recommend this place as whilst not many people speak English the signs written in English are fantastic. I think someone who had studied the language for quite a while created them, or was a native speaker, as they contained none of the usual grammar pitfalls. In fact they were very informative and I learned some interesting little factoids, begin list.

1. 1.     Ninja’s did not wear black. In fact it is actually quite conspicuous at night. Instead they wore a dark blue coloured outfit that also doubled up as a disguise as it was a similar shade to the clothes of many farmers.
2. 2.     Ninja’s actually developed there own language based on letters created by ropes, some believe this maybe one of the earliest examples of an alphabet, rather than kanji, in the Japanese language.
3. 3.     Place names ending in ga or ka, such as Iga and Koga, tended to be strong holds of ninja and in fact were part of something known as the “がのまち“ which provided a safe passage through Japan ninja.
4. 4.     Ninja’s were damn good farmers.

Factoids over I was very glad I managed to get there. There was also a “Ninja Show” but it seemed more for kids so I gave it a miss and instead checked out Iga Ueno’s castle. It’s not bad though not as Impressive as Osaka-jo. As you can see from the pictures Iga-Ueno is in th back end of beyond.

The Osamu Tezuka Manga museum

This was another place high on my to visit list. Following the fun time I had at the museum in Kyoto it seemed only right that I take a trip to a museum dedicated to the “kami-sama” (God) of manga, Tezuka Osamu. Putting out works such as Astro boy, Kimba the white lion and (my personal favourite) Blackjack, this guy is a legend and the museum is a must see for any manga fan.

It is situated in, what I thought, was the rather picturesque town of Takarazuka, just beyond Amagasaki prefecture. This is where Tezuka spent his childhood, although he was born in Osaka, and was clearly a place dear to his heart. Just outside the museum is a large statue of “火の鳥“ (Phoenix) which was a comic that Tezuka cites as his life work and one he constantly came back to.

The museum itself is very colorful and so well reflects the style of the artist. There is a strong theme of nature running throughout the whole building as Tezuka often said this is where he drew his inspiration, in fact his pen name and animation studio take their names from insects (むし)and they are recurring characters in much of his art work.

The ground floor is dedicated entirely to the man himself with many artifacts from his childhood, his early works, the development of his style and so on. There are some interesting pieces about his relationship with Disney, whom was a major influence upon him, and also the boom period of manga following world war 2. There is also a wall displaying a time line of Tezuka’s, which is absolutely staggering .

The focal point of thi floor is a small cinema which runs a 30 minute animated film dedicated to Tezuka’s early years in Takarazuka. It’s a lovely piece about him and some insect, a bee maybe, anyway no words but a wonderful score.

The bottom floor contains a large space where you can have a go at making your own animation. I drew a winking crow, only two panels but it’s a start ey, it was a lot of fun. The top floor has a small library of Tezuka’s work, all in Japanese so a no go for now but soon, as well as a display area for temporary exhibits and a video area to watch some of Tezuka’s anime. I probably would have stayed longer had I the time and I may have to go again.

So that was my three day holiday, obviously there was  lot of travelling in between and I did other stuff but these were some really cool spots. If you are in the Kansai area definitely check them out if you haven’t already.

Mata atode minna

Tokyo final Day

Yet again we had an early start to the morning, so much for the holiday ey. We got all our gear together and got ready to check out of the hotel. Our pla for the morning was to head into Higashi Ginza to a theatre there and watch some “かぶき”which is classic Japanese theatre. These shows are quite epic lasting around 6 hours over several acts. We figured that 1 act would be enough.

Whilst on the way I missed a call from Jane due to being on the underground. I was a bit gutted as it would probably mean I wouldn’t get to say goodbye before she headed to Oz. When we got to the Kabuki theatre it was absolutely chocker with old ladies, somewhat akin to the floral pavilion on a Saturday. We had been reassured that Kabuki wasn’t that popular anymore but that seemed far from the truth.

Apprehensively we checked the ticket office but only the premium seats were left. At 12000yen a ticket we decided to give it a miss. Whilst kabuki was something I’d really wanted to see, I didn’t want to watch it that much. So with our plans ruined for half the day my parents decided to just head back to Osaka whilst I waited till 8pm for my bus.

With not much to do I made up my mind to head back to Ikebukero, there seemed to be a fair amount going on there and I might even get a chance to catch one of the comedy shows. Whilst in transit I spotted a sign for a Studio Ghibli exhibit that was somewhere on the underground. I’d seen it a few times but this time I plucked up the courage to ask where it was.

As it happened it wasn’t far away at all, about 1 change of line and four stops so I figured, what the hell. Upon my arrival I was a little disappointed. It didn’t make up for my inability to go to the Ghibli museum, something I’m definitely doing another time,

Anyway the exhibit was as tiny as the metro station it was located in. It was actually just a few displays showcasing the various cover artworks of the Ghibli films and also some of the posters from their cinema releases. Not exactly what I’d been expecting but well it was free so I coundn’t really complan. Onwards to Ikebukero.

En route Jane phoned me again. She had just got back to her hotel from a Shibuya shopping trip and wanted to say bye. I was the other side of Tokyo a this point but I really wanted to see her off so after a short bit of route planning I was off. It was also at this point that I realized I could have gotten in touch with her if I’d used her mobile number with an international dialing code, fail.

After another 30 minutes of riding the rails I got to Shinagawa and met her outside a maccies. I handed over the ‘yokan’ (a Japanese sweet) I'd been meaning to give her all week. We had a good chat about things back home, although it appears that biosciences is rubbish for gossip but it was nice to have a chat with someone and not speak slowly.

We finished nattering at about 3:30pm, Jane went back into the hotel to get herself ready for her flight and I set off for Ikebukero. On the way I stopped at a department store in Shibuya to grab a “べんとう”box, lunch basically. One thing I really love about Japan is that even the off the shelf supermarket food (デパチカ as its called here), is great quality and very tasty.

By the time I was finally in Ikebukero it was 4:45p, I'd spent most of the day on trains it seemed, good job I quite like trains really. I found the entertainment hall much quicker this time, it wasn’t so bad now I knew where it was.  Walked up to the desk and found out I was just in time for the show and that it would last 3 and a half hours. At first I was apprehensive, it would be a close call getting my bus, however my Mum’s earlier words “Just go for it and let the Japanese culture wash over you.” inspired me. This opportunity wouldn’t come up to regularilly.

 

The show consisted of 12 acts and the majority was taken up by men performing ‘Rakugo’. This is Japanese (sit-down) stand-up comedy. I’ll elaborate, it’s is basically a man sat down on a cushion telling a long comical story. At no point in the story will he  stand an he uses gestures and facial expressions to add emphasis.

Whilst I could only understand about 5% of what was being said I could still appreciate the skill involved. The artists would rapidly change between characters within the story, manipulating both their voice and their expression with little pause for breath. A highlight for me was one artists who reproduced not only spoken word but instrument noises and also performed an eerily accurate impression of  a puppet.

Aside from this there were a number of other comedy forms on display including “まんざい”a kind of stand-up comedy where a duo consisting of a straight man and a funny man and the act is built around verbal misunderstandings and puns. Alongside this was a lady playing the Shamisen, a three stringed Japanese lute, and singing comical kouta.

My favorite however was the final act. An old man came on stage and sat down with a pile of paper and a pair of scissors. He then proceeded to take requests from the crowd and then cut these shapes out of the paper. It sounds mundane but the images he produced where unbelievably intricate considering the speed he performed it. This is known as “きりがみ”from ‘Kiru (cut)’ and “gami (paper)’ and is related to the more famous origami.

Unfortunately I don’t have many pctures of the whole event. This is partly because I thought it was a bit rude but also because I forgot as I was so captivated by the whole thing. It really inpired me to improve my understanding of the language, I’d love to go again and be more involved in the acts and understand the jokes.

Well thus concludes my hols, apart from a much more comfortable and mundane bus journey back to Japan. It was awesome to have some time off work and I’ve really enjoyed typing it up and reflecting on the fun things I’ve done. This country has a lot to offer and I look forward to the next time I get chance to explore.

Mata kondo mina-san.