First of all: A ginourmous "Arigatoo gozaimasu!" to Hidemi, Kaori, Tomo, Tarra, and Jeff who prepared me for this trip with their Japanese Classes at SJC. Thanks to you I am not completely lost here.
Yesterday (well maybe two days ago I am not sure thanks to the date line across the Pacific) I left St John's after a nice last breakfast. After that I had just enough time to put up some auctions on World Of Warcraft while waiting for my Cab to the airport.
The first person I met at the Airport was not one of my colleagues travelling to Japan, but rather the principle of SJC, Dr Tim Brook, who was under way to a conference in Ireland. After having a short chat with him I found myself by the Air Canada check-in, where I also found two of my partners in crime: David Morris, a technician and electronics designer at TRIUMF, and Keith Hoyle, and beam line techie helping us with our Robot arm. The project supervisor Rich Helmer made it down a bit later. The last member of our troop: Mark Lenckowski, the mechanical designer who had already flown in from Victoria. We hardly had any time to admire the large construction vehicles ripping up the runway in front of us before the plane started boarding. Best of it all, David and I had the center row of seats to ourselves, so plenty of room.
After a comfortable 10 hour ride on the plane we made it to Narita Airport. Amazingly we made it through customs without getting probed, prodded or otherwise abused. With the quick trip though customs we could hop on the early bus to Tsukuba. Here is could use my first chance to use Japanese, which just came out as "Tsukuba Centa" in the hurry and confusion. The express bus to Tsukuba took a comfortable 2.5 hrs driving us the last 40 km of our 8-someodd thousand km journey. At the end of which I had the second chance to use instructing the Mark, Keith and my cab driver: "Ko Enerigi Kenkuyo", also known as KEK. This actually got us to the lab! Check out the star on this nice mapquest map to see exactly where the hell I am right now:
Once we arrived at KEK we had a quick bit to eat. After said intake of food, I barely made it to my room but still hand the energy to out find that all my cloth auctions in World of Warcraft had sold. Then I promptly collapsed and slept soundly until 4am. Man jet lag is a bitch.
sounds awesome man, cloth can be a bitch to auction off sometimes. There is so much of it on the market. Sounds like your trip went well . what is the time difference from here to there. ie. when can we expect you to be on GAIM.
ReplyDeleteGreat start to the blog Frank! I can't wait to read more.
ReplyDeleteI'll pimp you out on my blog soon.
The trip was fun. So far I am loving this place, although there is a lot of work to get done. I seem to be online rediculously late at night/early in the morning (Vancouver time), I was talking to Amber at what was 4am to her I guess.
ReplyDeleteThanks Erwin, I am looking forward to any promotion I may get form your site :P