Back amoung the living!

Finally! No more night shift. After the last two weeks I have decided that I do not want to be a Vampire ever. Even though I spend most of my time sitting in front of my computer I still require sunlight.

I forced myself back to a diurnal schedule yesterday by staying awake for like 30-some odd hours. In the last 10 hour stretch I kept myself awake my playing World of Warcraft. My hunter is now level 46. w00t! Either way I am sitting in the control room enjoying this:

And three of our Japanese collaborators walk in. Talk about first impressions! They definitely know me for who I am now :)

Well the following episode of sleep was high in the competition for best sleep ever, this morning I awoke at 5am. Since I could not go back to sleep I went for a run around the accelerator. Fed the two stray cats that seem to have chosen K2K as home and then had a delicious breakfast at work, right after fixing the DAQ (which had broken down over night). This has one advantage: I need to take about 6hrs of continuous data ... which makes exactly for the lazy kind of Saturday morning I have been craving!

I'll try to be a little more frequent with my blog entries now that I am on an acceptable schedule again.

Some Pictures from around KEK

While walking to work today I decided to take some pictures around KEK. I put them into a photo album here. Check it out and see where I hang out when I am not at Akihabara.

To wash or not to wash

A week after arriving in Japan I ran out of clean undies. This forced me to find some laundry machines. Well here is what I found:

Check out the high res version.
Ok, lots of shiny buttons pressed in the right combination will give me clean laundry ... after some playing I found out that this machine not only washes but also dries the laundry! We need these at SJC. Not three but only two trips to the laundry room ... except that the driers are horribly underpowered, so it's usually necessary to take the laundry for an extra spin. This is quite easy, once you figure out how to isolate the drying cycle.
Anyway after some pushing buttons at random I now have clean clothes. Booya!

Akihabara? I'll take another one of those.

I went to Akihabara a second time yesterday. This time I accomplished the following on my trip:

• A nap on the bus trip to Tokyo,
  
• Purchased a Digital Camera,
  
• Acquired a set of headphones too advanced for my mp3 player,
  
• Came by the following pieces of Manga (to practice my Japanese reading skills, thanks for the recommendations Amber):
  
  
  
  • Rurouni Kenshin (book 1)
    
  • Bleach (also book 1)
    
  
  

I failed at finding the Cosplay Cafe (names Cos Cha) and purchasing dinner from a pretty girl in an anime costume, had plenty of opportunity to practice the little Japanese I speak asking for directions though. Eventually I got two girls at a convenience store to show me where I was, and where I was heading on a map. After following the instructions on how to get to Cos Cha, as according to that map, I found something that looked like a suspiciously new office building. I hate to think that pretty girls in anime costumes have been replaced by a bunch of depressed Japanese fellows chasing after red Swingline staplers. However I am afraid this may have happened.
My camera came with it's own rechargeable battery. Great I think until the following thought zips though my mind: rechargeable good, uncharged bad! Sorry ladies and gentlemen, I had an entirety of three pictures taken by the time the camera ran out of juice. Anyway, I purchased the camera from this dude:

A fellow gamer, highly addicted to Counterstrike. I think that is why I got along so well with him. He also gave me an awesome deal on a 256MB chip for storing pictures (the tag on it said the same thing as the 128 MB cards, so his boss told him to sell for that. Score!) Word up dude! Pwn some n0085 for me. Here is a picture of me while chatting with my fellow gamer:

Sw33t! You totally pwn! Anyway, here is a picture of the ally just outside AKKY III (the shop where I ended up buying the camera:

It was considerably emptier then when I went there before. May have had something to do with the fact that it was Monday afternoon, and most self-respecting Japanese were at work. Mind you there was a bunch of tourists there (including me I guess ... man I hate tourists). A bit later the place was stormed by a crap-load of junior high-level students that were presumably heading for the arcade and or the Mange/Anime shops.
Anyway next I cruised back into that store called Gamerz ... 7 stories dedicated to Manga, Anime and Video games (all pr0n free, but more on that later) . There I purchased said Manga books. I also wanted to take a couple of pictures to make Amber jealous (Mainly floors 5) Manga, 4) Anime, and 3) PS2 games but my camera died right there).
Now all I have left to do is replace my small headphones (for music while I am running) since my old ones are busted. I pick up some cool looking Sony earplug-type headphones. Very nice, headphones for ca. 1500 yen = US$15.00. Turns out the plug does not fit with the jack in my mp3 player o.O wtf? Of course I do not figure this out till I get back to KEK however.
Anyway off to find Cos Cha and some food served by pretty Japanese girls in anime costumes. Or so I thought. I follow the instructions in the travel guide for a while. Head down this road (Chou-dori) until you get to this shop ("Kirara") ... ok fine I am heading down Chuo dori, the wrong way of course as I find out as I ask a guy handing out flyers for a book shop (well he looked at the address, and then pointed me the way opposite to where I was going). Ok I head that way, for a good long while and don't find said store (which I actually did not find all day, even though I know how to spell the name in Hiragana and Katakana at least). After asking a few people along the side of the road about where I needed to go I just got a number of shrugs, and "I don't know"'s ... To which I resounded with a "Daiyobu desu, Arigato gozaimasu" (-> That's ok, thank you). Or something of that persuasion.
*intermission*
So I make cruising about I run by this store called "Game on". Looks rather appealing, the ground floor is just overflowing with games. On the second floor we had a large collection of Maga. So let's explore this place some more ... to the next floor I go. It seems a bit empty but once I walk inside I see a few guys about browsing though comics. The I look at the posters at the wall and see that I am standing in the middle of a massive selection of Hentai. Hmm there seem to be more floors of this me thinks, and I continue up the stairs thinking I might find some more gaming supplies up here. But what do I find on the next floor, more Hentai. I head to the 5th floor, and would you have guess more Hentai. And a dude that had just made a purchase was leaving with a brown bag apparently full of ... you guessed it, Hentai. This made me think of this particular piece from the MMO Radio Smackfest (battle of the DJs at that radio station Shawn and I listen to a lot). With that I took my leave. I must say, I'm not a big fan of the flying tentacle dick (I don't get what fascination the Japanese have with that ... seriously). Wait did my mom and dad just read this ... Hi Mom, hi Dad no I didn't buy anything, really :-P
*end intermission*
Eventually I talked to a couple of girls behind the counter at a convenience store. One pulled out a map, found the address I gave her on the map, and then pointed me where to go. After saying the instructions in Japanese (and English) I replied with something like "Wakarimasu, Domo aregato gozaimasu" (I understand, thank you very much). So having the map memorized, and knowing my way I purposefully walk to where I think the store should be. Walk right to where I think Cos Cha, should be, and find a pretty fresh looking office building. "Shit" says I, but I would not give up that easily. So off to searching the area in an *organized* manner, up this road, down the next so on so forth. Scanning for a big sign of a winged waitress (according to my travel guide the identifying mark of Cos Cha) Anyway I run by a couple of girls handing out flyers for a Japanese ISP I could not help but ask for directions. They just gave me a shrug, and sorry and after a little bit of chatting let me go back to searching. (Anyway I ran into them about 5 more times while searching the place, each time stopping to talk about what I had and had not found on my way, they seemed to enjoy it anyway. I wish I had some pictures)
Eventually I had to break off my less and less organized search and head back to get my bus, so I stop by those Girls on last time, tell them that unfortunately I had to give up to catch the last bus home, and then made for the closest train station (which turned out to be Kanda). From there, to Tokyo and off to purchase bus tickets. I even had time to wolf down a quick bite to eat at the Train station before running to catch my bus. Again, leaving Tokyo I found that it's a pretty cool city. I think I could get used to the place, as opposed to other pig cities I have been to.
When I got back to KEK I found the manipulator not working (but fixed it). Then while taking some more runs I scanned thought the manual for my camera and found that a bunch of downloads had finished on my computer. I now have a favourite Marilyn Manson song.

New Avatar and Sig

Shawn posted something about this on his blog as well. I just replaced my old signature:

with a new sig:

made by the 1337 m45+3r of digital art, ScopeD. Getting this sig motivated me to make a new avatar for myself:

All done using screenshots from the Transformers movie. What do ya think?

How to Spice up your Presentation

It's the little things that get you. See if you can spot the goodies in this slide. I presented it in a video conference this morning :)

A tremor in the force?

So I felt the gound shake a little last friday. I was not sure if i was dillusional or not, but maybe i noticed this going on off the coast on the other side of Japan. Either that or I ave become force sensitive and whitnessed a small planet being whiped out by a death star somewhere.

Feed My Frankenstein!

So tonight I was at a Sushi bar with had a conveyor belt dispensing portions of sushi to your table. The most amazing thing the sushi tasted quite good. You find the downside when you don't have the ability to restrain yourself from the infinite supply of tasty sushi in front of you. Definitely the sushi equivalent of the Elvis Platter ("Memphis Blues Elvis Platter: slabs of smoky ribs, pulled pork, brisket, sausage, and chicken, all spice-rubbed and slow-cooked till it falls apart"-taken from here). Oddly enough I am not experiancing any side effects to compare to the meat sweats. Sushi pwns! Now I crave for a trip to the Memphis blues ...

Company for the BSOD!

I guess the blue screen of death was feeling lonely so microsoft got it some red hot company. Either that or we are getting too used to windows crashing on us.

Strange City Names

Still working on the Akihabara post, in the meanwhile check this out.

Akihabara (aka. Every geeks wet dream)

I'll leave fun with the Tokyo transportation system to my next entry ... so I just appear in the exit of Akihabara train station *puff*

Nothing much right at the train station just a few buildings a lot of people. I spotted a lot more people just down the road. I head for the crowd and run right into Electric Town. Calum gave a good description; let me recite something like it:

Imagine say Granville market, with all the fruits and food and cooking supplies replaced with cell phones, mp3 players, digital cameras, digital multi-meters, computers, and computer parts ... whatever your hearts desire. They should have sent a poet!

So I start browsing electronics shops, at first purposefully looking for a camera. But in about the first shop I also decided that these phones they had looked pretty cool, and they had some awesome flat panel screens. Anyway, camera phones seem to be all the rage, since I saw them on display at about every shop. Distracted from my original goal I just browse though the market aimlessly, until I find myself in a shop packed to bursting with Anime, I mean I could hardly manoeuvre though the place with all the DVDs stacked up in there. At that point I felt distinctly bad about not knowing anything about Anime ... bummer. Anyway back to browsing electronics.
So I am looking at some digital video cameras, then some cameras, cabling, and I find myself standing at a shelf filled with porn, complete with creepy old guy comfortably browsing the selection ... in the middle of the crowed milling through Akihabara. At this point I noticed the crowd again, and could not help but think: "All these people must be geeks! I can't believe there is this many geeks in one place, or in the world. Sw33t!" Then I felt really bad about not being able to speak Japanese well. I would have loved to chat up some of these geeks, especially the cosplaying girls, or at least congratulate them on their costumes.

To take a break from shopping I walked into something that looked like a food court to me. Well there was a few places to get good and a lot of machined that looked like prize-retrieval-stations. I spot a stairwell going up, so with some junk food in hand I wonder up the stairs ... and walk right into a huge arcade, well the second floor of the arcade actually (I found a couple of fun old side-scrollers on the fifth floor, and some gundam-wing simulators on the 2nd floor, 100 yen per game) About an hour later I forced myself back out of the arcade ... that was tough. Anyway I head across the street into something that looks like a manga shop, and it was ... 7 floors dedicated to Mange, Anime, and Videogames (again mostly PS2 games). Just to spoil the surprise ... I picked up some random cool looking stuff for Amber and Shawn ;)

The rest of the afternoon I browsed through more electronics shops, found video games stores that somewhat reminded be of EB on just about every corner. Some of them had separate floors for women's games! I had to check those out just to see if there actually are many girl gamers in Akihabara. What do you know: I felt what the average girl must feel like in an EB in Vancouver. This place was packed with chicks that were clearly gamers ... generally they cared more about hygiene then their male counterparts though, well at least the air seemed much more perfumed and clean then the average comic-shop smell I would have been used to from the men's games floor.

I walked into another 5-story arcade (or at least I only made it to the fifth floor by the time I realized I had to run off to catch my bus). On the way to the subway I found a Donut shop. Intrigued by this Japanese Donut idea I walked in had a coconut cream donut that tasted pretty much like what you would expect from a coconut cream donut. I also purchased a 5-fish sandwich looking thing. It was quite tasty. Conclusion: If you are a geek you will find anything you my need at Akihabara, except for RPGing supplies, I guess D&D has not corrupted the Japanese youth jet. Either way Akihabara rox!

By the time I was back in the bus I recalled that I was supposed to buy a camera there ... dammit, I guess I will just have to go back :)

To Tokyo and Beyond!

Thanks to the generosity of my boss here (Rich) I got a day off yesterday, which I planned to spend in Tokyo. I decided against turning on my alarm clock since after all this was my day off and promptly missed my first bus. Well I actually made it to the bus station on time, but I forgot my ID. I ran to the dorm, and made it back just on time to see the bus to Tokyo buzz right by the bus stop: Bummer. In the two hours of laziness that ensued. I had a chat with Jeff (those of you from SJC know him) and he advised me to look for a camera in a shop called ... damn I don't have the shee tiwht the name writtenon in here ... yodobashi?

This time I made sure I had everything and showed up to the bus stop an entire 15 minutes early. At the bus stop I met two other grad students who had been working at KEK. A guy from Taiwan (I don't think he ever gave me his name) who was heading into Tokyo to explore the place (he had been to Akihabara before so he did not want to join me), and a girl (I remember her name to be Nishiki, but I may be totally of target there) heading home to Nara. Her English was definitely better than my Japanese, but I was able to introduce myself and stutter off a few sentences in Japanese. I blame the stuttering on not being able to speak the language, but the reason may have been that I was dumbsruck by the shyness factor. She seemed to feel quite bad about not being able to communicate all to well, to which I could only replay with a: Daiyobu-desu, wakarimashita (That's ok, I understand). I wanted to go on about how I sucked at speaking Japanese, but ironically could not figure out to how to get that part of my tongue.

Then we entered Tokyo, meaning only another hour or so on the bus to get to Tokyo Station (close to the city center). Tokyo is very impressive. I was not unsure whether I should be scared or excited, and decided that feeling unsure about the whole thing was good enough. I think Tokyo is smaller then Toronto in terms of geographical magnitude, but somehow the entire population of Canada fits into this city (according to my Travel guide there currently are about 34 million people living in Tokyo, I don't know if I should believe it, but there it is).
The girl from gave me a little bus schedule that I could use to find my way back to KEK and they both pointed me in the right direction to make it to the Yamamote line and henceforth Akihabara. After a heartfelt goodbye and thank you the three of us parted ways.

If either of my travel companions read this (I doubt it, but it would be nice) please put up a reply, tell me off for my inability to remember names, and well don't be mad ... Akihabara was such a shock it wiped my memory clear.

So in my next post I shall talk about Akihabara, and what should be every geek's wet dream. I will also have to talk about the mass transit system in Tokyo, it rox.

Udon Noodles

I made some Udon noodles for the first time in my life today. They made a tasty dinner considering I could not read the instructions on how to cook them properly. On a hunch I cooked them like I would cook spaghetti, and the turned out all right.
It looks like I will have my first day off since I got here this Tuesday, Rich was good enough to take my shift then so I could maybe run into Tokyo and get myself totally lost. If I make it out of the city alive I will likely have a digital camera, and some cool pictures to put up on the blog. If you don't hear from me too soon I probably found an arcade and won't leave until I can own at all those games I never played, nor have any idea how to play ... like DDR