Wild western weekend

Gah bureaucracy, I’m getting pretty tired of it. The hustle and bustle of Japanese business and industry, and the insane work ethic coupled to it, is not due to high efficiency and a desire to progress. No. It’s because we spend 80% of our bloody time doing paper work.  Seriously I think the Japanese only work such ungodly hours because they spend half their daytime either in meetings or filling out forms.

It’s taken me over a week to sort out getting parts shipped back to the UK for my research, every time I think I’m done a new form gets thrust in my face. This people is the true reason Japanese business men spend all their time in work, even though there are like a billion and one secretaries, who in fairness do a great job, they’re just appears to be a disproportionate amount of admin behind every trivial action.

Alright rant over onto more interesting stuff. The coming week myself and my group will be performing more experiments at the synchrotron., so I decided to pack in some interesting things before I had to brutalize my body clock by working said ungodly hours.

First off I heard about an interesting meeting that was happening in Kobe. It was a joint workshop between Spring8, where I work, and the Centre for Developmental Biology (CDB), the Riken campus in Kobe. The premise of the meeting was to bring together the scientists who would be providing the hardware for biological imaging (Spring8), and those who could provide interesting targets (CDB). It also gave me an excuse to go off site, something I’m always willing to do.

So I was up early Tuesday morning and on the now all too familiar Shinki bus to Aioi. I am admittedly getting rather fed up of the tinny, electronic female voice constantly telling me about the next stop (“tsugi wa tekuno kuo, tekuno kuo desu”) followed by the even more annoying English announcer.  In fairness I can understand why its necessary as the Japanese seem to have a rather frequent tendency to fall asleep on public transport, something I’m sure would lead to getting robbed in some parts of the UK.

I won’t bore you with the details of the train ride to Kobe but the trip to CDB was a bit more interesting. The CDB is located in an area of Kobe called “ポートアイランド”or port island. This is the larger of two completely artificial Islands constructed off the coast of Kobe to maximize the limited land in the area.  On the Island itself are, amongst other things, some nice parks, many scientific facilities and, rather bizarrely, an Ikea.

To get there you have to take an over-ground monorail called the port liner. It was pretty fun actually the views were pretty good due to the nice weather and it was nice to see Kobe from another angle. The CDB institute was actually at the far end of port Island so I got to see a good portion of it as I rode the port liner. The parks look interesting and I believe there are a few museums here to. Deffo a good place to visit when I have more time I think.

The CDB institute itself was very impressive, about 7 stories high and from what I could tell full of many interesting labs and facilities. Sadly I couldn’t get a tour, I was here for work. The workshop itself was actually a bit of a disappointment. Attendance was very poor from the Kobe institute, frustrating since we’d made the effort to come all the way over here, and they seemed to have a very limited understanding of our work or why we were here.

Now considering the same company, Riken, owns both these institutes I was a bit shocked. Talking with my boss Dr. Song on the train on the way back though it seemed sadly this isn’t a new thing. Apparently collaboration is still a bit of a dirty word in Japan, they are trying but many of the older generation of scientists are loathe to share their work. This is something that needs o change though, especially with work on the scale that we are hoping to perform.

So the following day was another all day conference, remember what I said previously about meetings? This was a very informative and relevant one in fact. We were going to be discussing the design of a sample chamber to be used on the new XFEL, which will be called MAXIC (Multi Application X-ray Imaging Chamber). The Japanese love this name as it actually sounds very similar to Magic when said with their accent.

I can’t say much more than that unfortunately due to afore mentioned reluctance to share ideas. It was an interesting meeting though, but long. I actually took the opportunity try something only released in Japan, Pepsi dry, apparently less sweet for the more mature pallet or something. It was rubbish in all honesty, tastes like smart-price or Tesco value coke. I definitely won’t be trying it again. It is one of the many examples of western business catering to eastern tastes.

Ok now for the exciting news. The XFEL has finally lased, hurray. Ok that may not men much just yet but I’ll explain. The L part of XFEL stands for you guessed it, laser. Now in order to produce an XFEL you need a really powerful electron beam, which we have, and a really powerful X-ray beam, which we also have. The tricky part is these two need to be perfectly aligned, their angles can only diverge by micro-radians (μrad). One μrad is about 0.03 degrees, so we are talking about some hefty fine-tuning here.

When this is done however the beam will become coherent, all the waves will oscillated in tandem, causing a massive expansion in both brightness and intensity. The scientists at Spring8 achieved this for the first time on Tuesday the 7^th and this was definitely time for celebration. The whole facility came together for a few speeches and drinks to toast the major success “Kanpai”. This is of course Japan so this milestone was celebrated for maybe 30 minutes before everyone headed back to work, there was paper work to do dammit.

The rest of the week was spent preparing for our experiments commencing on Tuesday so I’ll skip ahead to the weekend. It started off with a nice surprise actually, I received a new T-shirt from my climbing buddies in Liverpool (cheers Jane and Sian), and some desperately needed HP sauce, ta mum. Sometimes home comforts are just what you need and my frustration with the Japanese system was a bit high just then.

Earlier in the week Arnaud had asked if I’d like to join him and a colleague named Stratos (I think I’m so bad with names) to go and see pirates of the Caribbean in Himeji. Hell yes I was in. Admittedly I wasn’t overly excited about the film, the last 2 were so bad, but then I hadn’t been the cinema in ages and I was missing the experience. Also this incarnation of POTC was missing two key annoyances, namely Orlando “was a good wood elf cos he’s a tree” Bloom and Keira “Sure she can act but she can’t give a speech” Knightly. That could only be an improvement.

Before the film we decided to go get lunch. After much faffifing that for once I was not the cause of, we settled on matsu-ya, which is a kind of Japanese fast food joint that does “kare raisu”. Looking at the menu I realized I might have a tough time figuring out what I could eat, and given we only had 20 minute to the film I decided there wasn’t time and copped out.

Instead I went to subway. Score one for the western world at least we know how to make a sandwich. It was actually still an interesting experience, there were subtle differences to the subway I knew and love. For one the bread selection is fairly limited, they only had traditional, wheat, honey oat and sesame. Also the salad is a little different, no olives or jalepenos, but instead spring onion and broccoli. I think, though I didn’t check, some of the Italian meats also weren’t present but you could get avocado, egg and prawns instead.

I went for a simple egg butty and picked one of the sauces, there were a lot more to choose from, I think it was spicy tomato. Back to the cinema I went then and with just enough time to grab some mikan juice and Peanut flavored candied “Imo” (sweet potato) from a hundred yen shop. The cinema was rammed as always with a mass of crazy merchandising at the entrance. They do love to merchandise over here.

The film wasn’t half bad actually. We watched it in 3D though it wasn’t particularly necessary. One thing 3D does amazingly well though is subtitles, they are in a different plane to the action, which is great when you want to ignore them, as was the case for me. It was interesting to watch a film when you are the only member of the audience for whom English is your first language. I found myself laughing a fair bit more than everyone else and had an interesting time trying to explain the “Churn the butter” euphemism to Strados.

On the way back to the train we swung by another 100yen shop as I needed a sieve so I could wash rice properly. Whilst inside we browsed through the snack section, Arnaud pointed out some of his favorites and I showed him some of mine. He was impressed by the amount of stuff I’d tried considering I’m allergic to half the things on the shelves. I try not to be picky about what I eat since I’m constrained in so many ways, what’s the point in restricting myself further. If I can eat it I will try it.

 

All in all it was a very normal day and to be honest just what I’ve been needing. On the trip back the three of us had a massive geek out and started talking about video games. Turned out the Stratos was a big fan of some of the classic Ps2 games and was a fan of action platformers like me. We had a great little chat about perspectives in game play and what was more realistic, first person or the over the shoulder third person. I think it’s a moot point but it was fun all the same.

Sunday saw the return of the rain but luckily a rather large portion of it was spent indoors. I was again spending the day with Sam and Arnaud. I know right who would ever think a Brit would willingly spend time with the French? Seriously though forget stereotypes these guys are both straight up nice and I’ve really enjoyed getting to know them.

We got to Aioi with plenty of time before the train to Kakogawa, our destination for the day as it was the location of another climbing gym. This meant we had plenty of time to grab some scran so we went to a ramen-ya recommended by Arnaud. It looked really nice but for fear that Ramen would sit too heavy on our stomachs we opted for some “cha su-donburi” and some gyoza and “kara-age” or Japanese fried chicken. Sadly the cha su was more like ham and was topped with rather lackluster kimichee, but then it was cheap so I shouldn’t expect too much. The gyoza and chicken were lovely though so I’d like to try this place again and buy some ramen next time.

Suitably fuelled up we boarded the train for Kakagowa. The plan was to meet up ith my friend Yuko and Arnaud’s friend, funnily enough called Yuko, and head over to the Gym. We arrived just on time and found Yuko by the ticket gates. She had been having a bit of a crazy week learning how to teach some new classes in her gym but was still as animated as ever.

Just as we left the station the good old unpredictable weather struck. It had been lovely in the morning which I’m guessing was the reason why Sam had left the house in just some shorts and a t-shirt. It started tipping it down, for the nth time since I’ve been here. It doesn't rain that often but when it does it’s intense and last generally the rest of the day. Myself, Arnaud and Yuko all had brollies and raincoats at the ready. I guess being from the UK has it’s perks, I’m ready or rain.

The gym itself was actually part of a shop rather than being a dedicated climbing gym. It was small but like rock garden made very efficient use of the space. In fact I’d say the problems were a little better lade out, though the crowding could sometimes make moves a bit tricky. I think this place was fairly popular as it filled up quickly. It was never too much of a problem though there were a few close calls as an errant boulderer fell from the holds and nearly squashed poor Yuko.

Sam was fairly new to the whole thing though he seemed to have a good go at it, gotta love enthusiasm. Arnaud on the other hand was pretty proficient. I get the impression he’s good at any sport he tries. I had fun trying to match him on some problems but in the end he was just stronger and fitter than me. I’d also knacked my finger again playing basketball earlier in the week, much to my frustration, and admittedly I didn’t shut up about it.

After about an hour or so we were all pooped and so sat down to res for a bit Arnaud friend Yuko spoke very little English and I think really struggled ith my accent, I’m not the easiest person to understand. I can’t wait till I’m more fluent and can converse as freely as I’d like. I guess the key is just to keep practicing really. Working with mostly Koreans this is of course quite difficult but I resolve to take any chance I can get.

About three hours after we’d arrived we decided to head back. Yuko, the Yuko I’d invited, said she had to get back to her Gym in Umeda for 8pm and so needed to get a train soon. The weather had not improved, in fact it had gotten worse, so tired and now wet we traipsed back to the station. Sam suggested we go get a drink, and Arnaud suggested a nearby Mr. Donut.

 

Everyone looked at me as chances were low I could eat anything. I’m not bothered though, I’m getting pretty used to it now, and rather than be awkward I told them to go, I could find something I could eat surely. Sadly no but I settled on a melon soda. Not the best but a wonderful shade of luminous green that I’m sure is doing wonders to my insides.

Donuts and drinks finished up we said goodbye to Yuko and then mooched around in the station for another 20 minutes before our train arrived. Arnaud and Sam had found a bakery and gleefully went to check it out. I guess you just can’t keep the French from their baked goods. I went to a nearby conbini to grab a snack and got this innocuous looking mochi, which I sadly didn’t noticed contained “クリム”, stomach fail again.

I also snapped a picture on one of the many quirky flavors of Kit-kat on offer here. This one is “zunda” flavor a type of green soybean from Fukushima and I’m led to believe a portion of the profits from their sale will go to aid victims of the earthquake.

Arnaud and Sam were rather pleased with their purchase of some pretty nice looking French bread. Equally interesting was the paper in which the bread was packaged. It had some fake articles written on it in French, or at least a Japanese impression of French. They had a good giggle over it, I guess it’s the same for me with the various examples of “Engrish” I see about the place.

All in all it can be tough being a stranger in a strange land. Some things have finally been getting to me, mostly the whole excuse of “that's just not how its done in Japan.”  I’m all for integration but sometimes it’s been really frustrating me. It’s nice to have made some friends who can sympathize and have, or are going through similar experience, it’s making t all the more bearable.

Mata Jikan mina-san.

Kindness and Cockups. Kobe and candy.

Phew what a week. Shigoto, shigoto, shigoto (work, work, work). Sadly our beam time has not thrown up any concrete information so it seems I spent almost 60 hours awake for nothing. Ah well it was our first time so I wasn’t particularly hopeful. I have to say I’m so glad I was into Lego and Mechano as a child as I seem to have spent a good portion of the last week with an Alan key in hand. As Liam pointed out to me experimental hutches are like giant Mechano sets.

Anyway other than that this week hasn't been massively interesting. Besides work I got my alien residency card, which has opened the door to some cool things, namely I could now get a keitei (mobile phone). I have also got my hand on a nice road bike for…FREE. Unbelievable right.

So that brings me on to the title of the blog. Kindness. The level of generosity and patience I’ve experienced from people here has been unbelievable. After mentioning I needed a bike Ignace, the French guy I mentioned earlier, sent me a template message to send out to inquire about a second hand bike. I got a response nearly straight away, and all though I insisted on paying, the kind person offering the bike to me would have none of it. Sugoi (amazing).

This also brings me back onto my first cock-up, so it turns out that mailing list I used to send out the message shouldn’t be used in this way. I got a short sharp telling off. Still we don’t learn unless we make mistakes and I always resolve to only make them once.

So the next kindness, you can see a theme emerging here ey. The money I had brought with me finally ran out on Tuesday and due to an error processing my bank account I had no bankcard with which to process my wages. Bit of an issue since I’d hoped to go away on Friday with the free day holiday. Fortunately for me the secretarial staff where amazing and managed to get me my flight reimbursement money in cash. I do believe I owe them some cake.

Speaking of cake I thought I’d take a brief moment to talk about sweets. Someone the other day asked me what the sweets were like in Japan and I sadly couldn’t tell them. As I may have mentioned before I’m a bit funny with food and I have a horrible feeling I’ve lost some weight since I’ve been here. So I decided to investigate Japanese sweets further. Traditional Japanese sweets are called Wagashi and here are a few I’ve come across so far.

Mochi: Essentially a ball of glutinous rice flour covered in sugar and usually stuffed with something sweet. Most of the time this is Anko, or sweet red bean paste. Whilst not overly sweet these things have an amazing gooey texture and I can’t get enough of em.

Dango: Similar to mochi but stickier and on, well, a stick. Kind of like a sweet kebab.

Yokan: These are blocks of agar mixed with Anko and sugar. It’s similar to jelly but not quite so rubbery. Very tasty.

Taiyaki: This is again filled with anko. It’s essentially fried pancake like batter pressed around anko in the shape of a fish. I think they do other filling as well. You seem to be able to get them in many street markets.

There are also many cookies, including these nice black sesame seed ones I picked up yesterday. Fruit jellies and hard sweets to, I’m a big fan of the raw cane sugar things. And of course many odd flavors of chupa chup, including matcha (green tea) flavor.

Ok so yesterday. Now this was a fun day. I’d been emailing back and forth with a member of Osaka’s Frisbee team called Yuko for a while and had found out she was also into climbing. Yuko is a lot of fun. She’s very lively, I think that may be down to her job as a personal trainer, and is also very curious about England. She had told me she new of a nice place to climb in Kobe so we agreed to meet up on Friday as it was a national holiday.




On my way to the bus stop I noticed there was a festival going on just own the road from my flat. Had to go have a look around really. I’m not sure exactly what the occasion was, possibly just because it was Showa day, but it was pretty fun. There were loads of food stores, people selling locally grown goods and also some displays from the local school kids. The music and dancing was a lot of fun to watch.

I stayed for a bit but I was getting on for time and didn’t want to keep Yuko waiting. I set off on the now familiar trip to the station and took the train to Kobe. Unlike Osaka, Kobe station was a lot smaller and I easily found Yuko. We wandered for about ten minutes to the rock gym, introducing ourselves a bit more along the way.

The gym, called Kobe rock garden, was pretty small but lots of fun. It was all bouldering but that's not a problem, it was a god way to get back into climbing. I was a little confused at first. The grading system and how the routes were planned where very different to hat I’m used to. Also the starting footholds weren’t so great, but I eventually got the hang of the place (no pun intended).

Ah it was fun to be climbing again and it was nice to do it with many other enthusiasts. Although they didn’t speak much English the staff were very helpful and I think explaining climbing moves transcends language. Yuko got chatting to a couple there that were about our level and we all tried problems together. It was fun and there was much cheering whenever one of us reached the top hold.

After a good two and a half ours of bouldering I was getting pretty hungry. We got changed and Yuko led me down to the main shopping area of Kobe on the port. It seems really nice don there, much less busy than Osaka and actually reminded me of home a bit. I think I’ll have to look around Kobe again when I’m not so rushed, there seems to be quite a bit to do.
So onto the food. Yuko picked out a hamburger restaurant with a great view of the river. Hamburgers aren’t normally my thing, I’m not so good with beef, but it seemed impolite to disagree with my host so I just went with it. Now in Japan hamburgers are done a bit differently. As you can see from the picture they’re generally served like a stew with a thick onion gravy. It was good but a bit heavy and I think it sat on my stomach a little ☹.

Right so well fed we had a good chat about loads of things, mainly travelling and Frisbee though. Lots of talk about Frisbee in fact. Yuko told me all about a tournament coming up in July which should be cool. Apparently in Japan, and contrary to what I’d been told, things are the same as Britain. There is a real struggle to get women playing the sport. Yuko it seems really wants to expand the team in Osaka so they can enter more tournaments around Japan. I’ll have to help with that I think .

We left the restaurant and had a quick wander around the nearby shopping mall. I had asked her earlier about getting hold of a phone and noticed some signs up in one of the shops we passed. In we went and after a few initial exchanges we realized the salesperson spoke perfect English. I managed to get myself a good deal on a 2-year contract, half price with the 2-year contract, so I’m sorted phone-wise. Or rather I would be but my train was actually due to leave before the phone would be registered eep.

I had planned o meet up with Yuko again on Sunday anyway so she offered to pick up my phone whilst I legged it to the train station. Now I realize that this was a bit of a silly thing to do given I’d only met this person once, but my experiences so far have only been positive, plus as I’ve sad before Frisbee players are generally all right. So off I dashed.

Alas it was for nothing I missed the last bus home and had to get a taxi, which was outrageously expensive. Cock-up. It probably would have just been cheaper to stay in Kobe. Ah well never mind. Anyway I’ll finish there. Currently there is an open day going on at work but that's for another post. I’ll leave you all with a few pictures of my home cooking, including something I have dubbed okonomibreakfast, okonomiyaki batter mixed with fruit.

Dewa matta mina-san.

Why I'm a munky and things I'll miss.

Well thats why haha. Rock climbing, although I don't profess to be any good at it, I'm absolutely in love with it. The climbing scene in liverpool is a sub culture I didn't even know about and I'm sad I've only scratched the surface. I took it up in early October and have mainly been doing it at indoor rock gyms, though I've been out to some proper crag a couple of times and it now dominates my mind. In fact you could say I'm obsessed.

For most people that word is thrown about flippantly but to me it has a multitude of connotations, most of them negative. I feel I've come along way in my head space to get to the point where I can comfortably say I'm obsessed with something. As I alluded to earlier I'm still recovering from depression and an eating disorder and obsession and compulsion play such a large part in that. My biggest and most dangerous vice was compulsive over exercising. I was 'obsessed' as it were. It was something I 'needed' to do. Looking back I have no idea why.

But still I will say I'm obsessed with rock climbing, amongst a few other things.

Without obsession, life is nothing.
John Waters

And I agree, to have a deep-seated passion for something is genuinely important, so long as it is something you still derive pleasure to. I climb because I want to, not because I need to. I think another reason I've taken to it so much is the powerful metaphor of climbing a mountain, reaching the top. It's a particularly definitive end goal. Life is viewed by some as one long climb or journey. The struggles, the problems you encounter and solve on the way to the summit are all part of what makes it all so worthwhile. I've climbed part of the way out of the abyss of my depression. There were many hiccups, pitfalls and other cliches and I'm sure there will be more, but just like in climbing, reaching each new handhold, position, mental state or whatever just helps to make you stronger.

The other great thing about climbing. The people. You can't do it on your own, you have to rely on others. Someone needs to hold that rope. Again this true in life and the people I've met to hold my 'ropes' are awesome and will be sorely missed whilst I'm away. I thought it would be important to recognise this here so it;s not such a big shock once I hit Japan. Shock, stress, new places, isolation. These are all big triggers for me. but I'm never truly alone when there are so many great people thinking about me so I'm gonna recognise them now.

My great family
This is just a snapshot. I've been blessed with a big family, and whilst they wind me up from time to time (well nearlly all the time) it's only because they care. they've put up with so much of my crap these past 22 years, been with me for the triumphs and the failures and taken them all the same.

I obviously would have never got this far without them and I hope they bare with me as I carry on my journey. I'll be in touch all the time of course (wonders of the modern age) but it won't be the same, sometimes you just want a mothers hug or your dads home cooking. You are in my heart and mind guys.

My incredible friends
These guys are unbelievable. I know its a tad over done to say your friends would die for you but I honestly know that some of them would. Whether I've known them 2 or 22 years my current circle of friends are super tight. A lot of people often comment on it. We've been through so much, and will probably go through even more and enjoy every minute of it.

I feed off their positive energy. Take it when they slap me down and keep me grounded. I don't think I'd be alive if it wasn't for you guys. I know being separated from them played a big part in my despair and they will be sorely missed. Even when we dont see each other for long periods, even when we fight, I know it won't last. We always come back together and our bond of friendship is all the stronger for it. I can talk to you guys about anything so please keep in touch :)

Ultimate Frisbee
Not just the lovely people on the right (Liverpool Uni's Ultimate frisbee team) but all the awesome people I've met or played with/against over the years.

Ultimate is my other 'obsession' and I've been playing it a while now. I've seen it come along way and in particular in my local area. It's sad to walk away from a scene thats getting so good, and my chances to play in Japan may be a bit restricted.

The best thing about ultimate though, is I've never met anyone who plays it that is a complete bellend, so hopefully no matter where I am there will be nice people to chase some disk with.

The city of liverpool
 Well its were I was born, it contains all my favourite people and place ( Mattas-the best shop ever, Awesome walls and the hanger, Sefton park, Great museums and galleries to name but a few). Defoo gonna miss this place.

Other things I'll miss? Well there are a few trivial things, Roman letters maybe? Peanut butter for sure. I bet there are a thousand other things to. Sorry this one was so long and rambling but it is 4 days till I leave now. This has been really playing on my mind. Best to get it out now so it doesn't over shadow all the awesome new things I'll see/feel/experience whilst I'm out there. Plus nine months is nothing right.

“I see my path, but I don't know where it leads. Not knowing where I'm going is what inspires me to travel it.”

Rosalia de Castro