A flock of Canadian geese that inhabits the UBC fields every fall.

Tuesday, 01:31 am in Saskatoon

Reminds me of my safari in Africa. Somebody forgot the corkscrew and for several days we had to live on nothing but food and water. - W. C. Fields

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Written 3 October 2007, on the plane to Korea

My trip to Japan has had some pleasant surprises. It started with my trying to drive two luggage carts with my very large boxes through the Vancouver Airport at once. The interaction at the desk was interesting:

Clerk: What's in the boxes?
Me: I have a list of their contents written out. (Dad's idea for customs.)
Clerk: Is there anything fragile?
Me: Not really, and if it is, I put it in a box inside the box.
Clerk proceeds to slap fragile stickers on both of them.

She then directed me to the special baggage conveyer, where the boxes are sent through a big X-ray machine, and no one ever appears to even weight them. This I find interesting since I spent the last two days trying to make sure they were under the weight limits. Oh well.

Anyway, I say bye to Mom and go through security, where I am scrutinized far less than I ever am at the Saskatoon airport. I find my gate and then go buy a Subway sandwich and Nestea for my 12 hour long flight to Seoul. I was fortunate enough to be booked into the front row of economy when I checked in online, so I was looking forward to being able to stretch out. While I'm standing in line to board, I get called over the intercomm to come to Gate 54. "Um, I'm AT Gate 54, and I don't really feel like getting out of line to go over to see why I was called." I figure it will all come clear when I get up front... After handing over my beautifully home-printed boarding pass, the lady can't get the system to recognize it. So she goes over to the desk and returns with a proper boarding pass that has been prepared for me. So I happily skip down the ramp and show my ticket to the stewardess. I don't like doing that, because I can usually find my seat on my own, but I've gotten used to just giving in to the forced helpfulness.

Stewardess: Ticket please.
I hand it over.
Stewardess: Thank-you, to your left please.
I think, "Left? Economy is usually to the right. Oh, but maybe this gangway is attached to the rear of the plane."
I follow her into what is the nicest looking economy class I've ever seen. She finds a man is in my seat. I question whether it's not a mistake and I am, in fact, the one taking his seat:
Me: Um, I'm supposed to be in economy.
Stewardess: Well, this is a complimentary upgrade since the back was overbooked.
Me: ...
Guy who is moving: I wouldn't complain if I was you.
Me: ...Wow, I guess not. (or something of that nature)
The stewardess immediately went and came back with a tray of little glasses.
Stewardess: Would you like some wine or orange juice?
Me: Uhhh...orange juice please.
Stewardess: You were about to say "No, thank-you." weren't you?
Me: Yeah.
She laughs.

So now I am on a flight to Seoul in first class...with a completely unnecessary subway sandwich at my feet. I feel very blessed, although the lavishness of these quarters seems a little excessive to me. I can't even reach the seat in front of me with my feet. It would be nice to transfer some of that room to the back seats. And there are empty seats, I wonder why they don't move economy people up until first class is full.

Written on 6 October 2007, second day in Japan

I have learned from flying over South Korea that it is composed of thousands of identical apartment buildings. I got through the Incheon airport without much difficulty and my prediction of 95% Asian ratio on my Korea-to-Japan flight was a little low. I saw 4 other Caucasians, and there were probably 200 passengers. I ended up sitting next to a Japanese missionary from the Unification Church on my flight. We didn't talk much until the end of it, which was fine because his English was only a little better than my Japanese.

Customs in Japan was a breeze considering I had two huge boxes with me (they survived the flight slightly squashed). The border officials just made me fix my customs declaration form because the box of books I mailed apparently counts as an Unaccompanied Article. Yagi-sensei, Sugita-san my tutor, and Tokunaga-san the other doctoral student in the group all came to meet me at the airport. They took me to the student dorm and showed me how to use the mailbox and air conditioning. Yagi-sensei was even kind enough to bring bedding for me. I am living on the top floor of a five story building with no elevator. It was difficult to get the boxes to the top and every time I forget something I have to go plodding back up, trying to avoid sweating in the 28C weather. I'm sure I'll stop forgetting things soon. I discovered that my room had a shower in it, but I couldn't see a toilet anywhere on my floor, but figured I would find it later. We then went to the 7-11 across the street so I could buy my breakfast: OJ (with Houmumeidoteisutu!) and kurowassen (croissant). After that, they left and I went to bed. It was about 9pm, and I was very tired, having not slept for more than 20 hours.

Just before bed I found the toilet... We naive foreigners. When it said Unit Bathroom on the room contents, it actually meant a Unit Bathroom, a bathroom that is a single unit. Its about the size of a large shower, and the water can be sent out the faucet or showerhead. The sink slides on a hinge to uncover the tiny, tiny toilet. It has obviously been built for dwarves and I feel like I've gained muscle tone in my legs from using it for just one day. The combo toilet-shower is also difficult to use because after a shower, the floor is all wet, so you have to remove your socks and pants before entering if you wish to continue wearing them later. Maybe I'll figure out a better method in the future.

On Oct 5, I woke up at 6 am and looked out my window to find a beautiful city-scape with mountains in the background. I unpacked and had a shower. Sugita-san came to meet me at 10am and we took the Nishitetsu line to the Chikushi campus. My main revelation from the trip was that some people like to make giant bonsai trees. We met with Yagi-sensei, and he introduced me to lots of different people at the school, who's names I have probably all forgotten, and then gave me a desk with a Mac Mini. After a couple of hours setting up accounts, Sugita-san drove me to the Hakozaki campus, where they sat all the MEXT scholarship students down and had them sign their souls away. I think I had to put my pen to at least seven papers, all covered in Kanji. While I'm thinking about Hakozaki, I must mention that the species of crow here makes more of a barking sound than a cawing sound, quite similar to a dog.

Blogs always seem to mention how much Japanese people stare at foreigners. I have an addendum to make on that: It doesn't happen! I keep looking for people to be looking at me and no one seems to care. On the way back to Chikushi, the elementary schools were getting out and one little boy stared at me in the car the whole time he was walking past. I felt special. Then I realized he was doing it to every single car down the road (we were waiting at a rail crossing).

We returned to Chikushi at about 5 and soon left for my welcome party with the Yagi group at a nice restaurant. The food was very good and not at all weird like the non-shelled crustaceans Dad was made to eat. The thing even remotely questionable was chicken stomach, and it was just a bit chewy, but very tasty. I found out I like squid, unlike my ambivalence towards octopus. I had a glass of sake and almost everyone else had 2 or 3 mugs of beer or their equivalent. After three swallows, I got dizzy until I had something to eat. I thought it tasted a bit like medicine, but was much better than beer. Then I ordered a Canada Dry ginger ale because everyone thought it was funny. By the time dinner was over, I was very tired, so I went back to the dorm and fell into bed.

Written 8 October 2007, Taikku no Hi - Health and Sports Day

On Saturday, Sugita-san picked me up at 11 to go shopping for necessities I can't get at the 7-11. We went to the Diamond City Mall. It was very mall-like and I shopped for stuff. I bought a single set of dishes at a two-price store, 315 yen or 1050 yen. I also found a set of doors in the middle of one store, obviously left over from a renovation. Then we went for lunch at a pasta restaurant. I had the umeboshi spaghetti. Umeboshi are right up there with jalepenos and razor blades on the list of things you don't want to give to babies. Sugita-san said his grandparents can't even eat them. Mall restaurants are twice as expensive as elsewhere.

I spent the rest of the day at school writing my abstract for the CSS9 conference. Then Sugita-san, Tokunaga-san and I went to a family restaurant for dinner at 9. I was very tired, but I'm always up for more food. We went to Gusuto, where they serve burgers without the bun. It's like Denny's, but every meal has a round piece of meatloaf as its centrepiece.

Two random revelations are that Japanese toilets are very easy to use and Japanese keyboards are annoying to use. The former shouldn't be surprising, since an entire country has to use them. The latter is because, despite the order of the roman letters being identical to qwerty boards, the punctuation got spread hither and yonder. The consistent ones are the comma, period, question mark, semicolon, and hyphen. That's sounds like all of them you say? Not by a long shot. Try writing an email address, contraction, or home command with those. The left control button has also been switched with the caps lock for some inexplicable reason.

On Sunday, the SOLA volunteer group took all the new international students on a tour of the resources for foreigners in downtown Fukuoka. It was a long day. I met lots of new people from my dorm. In my group was a Polish guy who is quite fluent in Japanese, and can also speak English and some Chinese and Korean, a Tunisian guy who has no Japanese, but can speak English and French, and a Chinese guy who is fluent in Japanese, and fairly good at English. I feel quite uneducated. I met a Canadian couple who were on the flight from Vancouver to Seoul in the seats behind mine. They were from Victoria and he is entering the Kyudai International Law program and informed me that the upgrade to first class was intentional. Because the ticket was originally purchased as economy, the government fulfills the letter of the law, but the upgrade keeps all their guests happy.

The tour was informative. We got taken to Rainbow Plaza and the Japan International Exchange Center. At one point, we were in the ACROS building and a girl behind me said, "Takai!" My immediate reaction was to look up, because we were in a huge room, and I found that the glass roof was quite beautiful and indeed high. The girl and her friend started giggling. She then addressed me and asked, "How tall are you?" I managed to haltingly give my height in Japanese, and felt dumb for misunderstanding, so that was the end of that conversation.

Afterwards, some of us went to see the Best Denki and Bigu Kamera electronics department stores. They are huge, at least three times the size of Future Shop each. The Best store had sales people EVERYWHERE. There was one at the top and bottom of each escalator just to say, "Irasshaimase!" There was a big speaker in front of the Bigu Kamera store belting out sales pitches. As I was walking around, I suddenly noticed a woman that was reading a pad into a microphone, and realized it wasn't a recording. You wouldn't believe the pointless things they employ people for here! At the park in front of the ACROS building, there were many tiny dogs running around barking and a group of high schoolers dancing. I also saw a woman wearing a toque in the 28C, humid weather. After getting home, I was so tired I went to bed at 8pm and slept right through to 8am.

Breakfast today was chigiripan. I didn't know what that was when I bought it, but it looked good. I have learned my lesson to read the WHOLE label before buying stuff. When I opened it, I saw the brown filling and thought, "Oh no! I hope this isn't natto." I tried it and it was a horrible chocolate-coffee like filling. Very inappropriate for breakfast. I read the label again and noticed "banirachoko." I suck at figuring out what the katakana means, so I consulted a dictionary to find banira is vanilla. Well regardless, I would have steered clear if I had read the choko part.

Today is Taikku no Hi. It commemorates the anniversary of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. My sport today was walking through the ridiculously humid air to find the JR Sasabaru station. I wanted to try JR instead of Nishitetsu because it has stations closer to both my dorm and the campus. I, of course, forgot to look at a map, and my memory was hazy as to how to get there. So I just walked along the road until I hit the JR tracks, and then followed them to the station, which involved a great deal of backtracking on my part.

Once at the station, I realized that JR had kindly provided Kanji fare charts. I knew the first kanji of my destination, but it still didn't help me understand how the charts worked. I was forced to ask the attendant, which went very well. I then bought my ticket and headed to the nearest platform, which would have been the correct one for the Nishitetsu line, but the attendent immediately directed me to the opposite side. Thinking about it now, the Nishitetsu line is backwards; their trains run on the right side track. I just missed the train, but an elementary school baseball team was walking down the platform. I was reading the train schedule, but all I heard behind me was, "Hello, hello, hello..." I didn't reply, but I will be prepared the next time it happens.

I went to get some food at a supermarket for lunch, because I was too intimidated to go to a restaurant by myself. When buying groceries, no verbal interaction is required. I got canned mandarins and some makizushi and danish. I couldn't find the chopsticks, but didn't really feel like asking for them. So I went to the checkout, and was surprised when the lady asked me if I wanted chopsticks. It turns out they have individual ones available under the counter. My reply was the first legitimate use I've had of the word "Hai." She then, of course, asked me if I could use chopsticks. Sigh. I'm beginning to realize why people get tired of being asked that. It happens every time you eat and this is my fourth day here.

I saw some interesting insects today, big spiders with thin bodies, and a 2 cm long brightly coloured beetle. The grasshoppers and crickets are quite large. The crickets are wicked fast and I would fear for my shins if they didn't have such good direction control. No mukade yet.

Written 9 October 2007

The JR rail system is much more complicated than the Nishitetsu. The express trains aren't as clearly marked. Last night I overshot Sasabaru and ended up at Hakata station. I basically ended up going to each platform that the next train was leaving from to figure out which direction it was going. They don't appear to mark headings, just final destinations, which isn't very helpful for non-locals. This morning I ended up on a train that turned around at Minamifukuoka. I wasn't paying attention to the fact that all the other passengers were gone, but fortunately, the conductor told me when he walked past. He even added, "Stoppu!" to the end of his sentence.

The 7-11 across from the student dorm is quite interesting. I have been trying all the different kinds of packaged bread there. So far I've had a croissant, a sesame-mayo bun, a bacon-mayo roppe, raisin bread, pizza bread, strawberry jam and margarine bread, and the aforementioned vanilla-chocolate bread. The mayo ones are kind of gross, really oily on top. I also bought a prepared stirfry one evening. They even microwave it when you buy it if you plan to eat it right away, which is useful for people like me without microwaves. The signs on the door say PULL on both sides, which is not a translation error, just great engineering, I guess.

Written 11 October 2007

Apparently, it is cheaper to buy traveller's cheques than cash. However, I am very happy that I did because I ended up with lots of clean, crisp 1000, 2000, and 5000 yen bills. When I paid my first month's rent at the ryokaikan, the office lady (who speaks no English for some reason) said, "2000 yen! That's so nostalgic." I just assumed she meant that the bill had changed and this was the old one. Sugita-san commented on it in the mall when I paid with another one. Apparently, there is no 2000 yen bill anymore. They stopped printing them five years ago. So now I'm saving the 17 I have left, at least until I'm desperate for money, because they are in really good condition. My rent is really cheap though, only $60 per month, so I should manage fine. Too bad I only get to stay here six months.

Written 18 October 2007

9 October 2007
Paperwork

Oh, it's been so busy busy. On Tuesday, Sugita-san took me to the city hall to get registered as an alien and sign up for national health insurance, and then bank and post office to open accounts, each of which took an hour or more. I still can't remember the word for alien registration card, but I now know pension is kokuminenkin. Definitely useful knowledge as I'm never going to have one here. I filled out my name and address so many times I can now do it in Kanji from memory. One problem at the bank and post office was my lack of an inkan, a small personal stamp. Instead, they let me sign in the inkan space, a circle with a 1 cm diameter. This would be small, but legible if they let me do it first name above last name, but noooo, it had to look the same as when I actually signed my name in the signature space on another form. So I had to make each letter about 1 mm wide. I have a funny feeling every gaijin has the same "inkan," a single wide dash.

10 October 2007
Entrance Ceremony

Wednesday morning was my entrance ceremony at the Chikushi campus. I was supposed to meet Yagi-sensei at school at 9 and go to the room. I wasn't about to sweat in my heavy suit all the way to school, so I brought it in my bag. I got to school at 9:05, but Yagi-sensei said I didn't have to hurry. I think I took another 10 minutes at least, especially considering it was my first time tying a tie without potential assistance. Even so, we were the first ones to the room (see pictures). It was very kind of Yagi-sensei to show me the way, because other people that didn't get that help ended up completely late, missing all the speeches. Only 4 of the 9 students showed up on time, and 3 never showed at all. The speeches were fine, and the whole thing only lasted an hour, even with us giving self-introductions.

11 October 2007
Hakozaki Walkabout

Thursday afternoon was the orientation for Kyushu University international students at the Hakozaki campus. I took the train to the JR Hakozaki station, but found it is quite far from the campus. Even worse is that fact that there is a wall all the way around, with only a few gates, so I had to backtrack a bit once I found one. I was only 5 minutes late, because there was a long line up of people trying to find their names on lists, to indicate attendance I guess. Anyway, the orientation was very long and the speeches were either Japanese or English and quite pointless. The police their own spiele that was REALLY long because one of the police officers spoke Chinese and they had someone else doing the English. Most of it involved the fact that you should not steal bicycles, and that you should lock your bicycle up, and that if you borrow a bicycle you have to get the correct paperwork filled out beforehand, or they might have to arrest you as a bicycle thief. And, oh yeah, be careful of rape and traffic accidents, because they are on the rise in Fukuoka, but most of all respect the bicycles. Did I mention that the toilets have electronic bidet controls and the cell phones have TV, but the bicycles are all rusty and look like they belong in a 3rd-world country? I still need to post a picture of the bicycle parking lots next to the train stations.

So after the long-winded orientation, everyone else was boring and went back to the dorm, but I went in search of the ocean. Seeing as I'm in a major port city on an island, it should be fairly easy to find, and it was. However, on the way, I passed over a train yard, through a park, and under an expressway. There were homeless people in the former and latter. One enterprising cat lady had created a large enclosure under the stairs of a pedestrian overpass. Her neighbour on the other side had a roaring fire going. I don't really know why, it was still really hot out. In the park, there was a baseball game going, with lots of people playing catch nearby. I also saw some people with the first big dogs I had seen in Japan, golden retrievers, or something similar. I had to scramble over a fence to leaving the park because I was on the wrong path and then went under a pair of bridges to get to the sea. It was very nice, although Fukuoka has an interesting peninsula, so I couldn't really see open ocean. I was surrounded by shipyards and fuel tanks. As I walked over a bridge, I saw a red gate that I found on the map as a park. I headed towards it, and back in town I found some employees playing baseball in the Nikkei company parking lot. Reaching the gate park, I found it locked, but the opposite direction had a large concrete gate marking the entrance to the Hakozaki-Miyamae park. Inside, there was a group of elementary schoolers playing baseball with their parents watching. This country really likes baseball. Walking along this "desolate" dimly-lit park, I found a subway station. It made more sense when I saw an ad that showed an omatsuri underneath the concrete gate during the summertime. So I used the subway for the first time to get home. It has English announcements.

12 October 2007
See Japan! ...on the airport shuttle bus.

Friday was quite debaculous for me. I got to school at 10, but Yagi-sensei was in Kyoto, and no one else came in. I decided I was going to go get a re-entry permit at the immigration office. I needed it so that I could go to a student conference in Korea in November, and the sooner I went in the better, since bureaucratic things always take forever. I checked on the internet to find it was at the airport at the international terminal, and that there was a free shuttle bus between terminals. I left school at 2pm in the hopes of reaching the immigration office before closing time at 4. The subway stopped at Domestic terminal 2, and I followed the shuttle bus signs. The bus I found was a little bit removed from the shuttle bus sign, but it was about to leave when I got there, so I went to the driver and said "Shuttle bus?" He nodded and I got on. We stopped at Domestic Terminal 3 and picked up more passengers. "Everyone must be going to Korea," I thought. Then the bus left the airport. I was very concerned until a few minutes later when it re-entered and stopped at the Arrivals terminal. But much to my consternation, no one got off, and a bunch of new people got on. I didn't really want to crowd surf to get out and was confused as to why no one got off the shuttle bus, so I decided to wait and see if maybe like the three domestic terminals, there was a separate departures terminal. In the course of taking the train and subway there, I had forgotten exactly where the immigration office was anyway. The bus again left the airport, only this time, it went up on the expressway and the fare meter started showing actual no-zero values. "Great," I thought, "this is some dumb shuttlebus. Well, it's probably going to Tenjin. I will just wait until it gets to a place that I recognize the name of, or is near a train station."

At periodic intervals, the bus would stop at these tiny bus stops next to the expressway and I would try to find the Kanji written on the sign in my map. After a couple of stops I realized that (1) I was not going to Tenjin, and indeed was no longer in Fukuoka, and (2) I had been trying to find the word "bus stop" in my map book. Eventually, I identified a place called Hirokawa-shi right at the edge of the map area, we had passed it three stops ago. At this point, due to the expensive fares being displayed at the front, I had formulated an amazing plan to wait until the bus got back to the airport and just act American and complain that I hadn't really gone anywhere, so I shouldn't have to pay. As I realized the folly of this, my attention instead turned to where I should point out my stupidity to the entire bus. We kept stopping at these tiny little stops with no visible way of crossing the expressway to the other side. Finally, we reached the Kikusui Interchange, which looked like some kind of minor bus terminal and where people actually got off. I went to the front and said:

Me: Sumimasen, mayoimasu. Fukuoka kyukou ni ikitai desu.
Translation: I'm an idiot. I want to go to the Fukuoka areport.
Driver: Fukuoka kuukou desu ka?
Translation: The Fukuoka airport?
Me: Uhh, hai, kuukou.
Translation: Uhh, yeah, airport.
Driver: Fukuoka airport?
Me: Yes.

He directed me to wait at the bus stop for the next bus coming in half an hour. This nice lady saw me looking at the bus schedule and knew a bit of English, so she reinforced what the bus driver said that the next bus would be there at 5 and gave me a bus schedule. If I had actually been trying to catch a flight, I definitely would have been more agressive about getting off sooner (and doubtless would have planned better ahead of time), but they all probably thought I was royally screwed. The bus did come, but was 10 minutes late. There was a moment when I almost got on the wrong bus, because the one to Kitakyushu (North Kyushu) came at exactly 5, but I kind of remembered that there was an actual town named Kitakyushu. Still, I was being eaten inside between the time the Kitakyushu bus and the Fukuoka bus came.

On the way back, there were clear recorded stop announcements in English. I think the speakers were broken on the first bus, because I could barely make out the driver on that one. Anyway, I tried to enjoy my trip back and took some pictures. The landscape was not very built up at all, and the mountains were covered in bamboo forests. I got back to the airport shortly after 6, and upon exiting the bus saw the actual shuttle bus, with a big yellow bar and the words shuttle bus and int'l terminal. Nothing like rubbing it in. I managed to get back to the Ijiri Ryugakuseikaikan at 7:10, just after the dormitory orientation had started. The entire trip costed me 5 hours and 3000 yen. I learned afterwards that I almost made it to Kumamoto, which explains all the buses bound for Kumamoto at the interchange. The drive across Kyushu turns out to be about as long as from Saskatoon to Regina.

The orientation covered much of the same material as was found in the leaflet that they had handed out upon checking in. Fortunately, it ended with a party with free food. I met a lot of the students, 3 from the US, 2 from France, 80% from China, and James from Zambia. James is really effusive, he loves giving numerous fives to people he has just met. I had bumped into him at the City Hall and saw him at the Hakozaki orientation but never got to find out his name. He is studying structural biology and will be here for 6 months before returning to his family in Zambia.

14 October 2007
FIC and Ijiri

Saturday was pretty uneventful. I spent the time setting up an English version of my research group's website. Sunday was good, I went in to Tenjin to try the Fukuoka International Church, near the KFC. I wasn't sure how long it would take, so I ended up getting there very early and walked around Tenjin for a while. As I entered the church, they welcomed me, had me fill out an information card, and gave me some slippers. The sanctuary turned out to be quite small (think half the size of Dunbar Heights), but was completely packed during the service. It was a baptism service for this 67 year old obaasan. Everything was done in English and Japanese, both the singing and sermon, and a translation was provided for the baptism testimony. After church, I talked to a middle-aged Minnesotan woman who had been living in Fukuoka for 21 years. I left church to check out the Iwayaka? department store. I had an interesting, but super-expensive food section. I'm starting to think 7-11 has great deals.

When I got home, I started my laundry, which costs about $1 to do two loads with 40 minutes of drying for each load. The drying is really weak, so that doesn't get things very dry at all. I don't think I'm gonna bother next time, and instead opt for a damp-smelling room, which is what I had anyway. The washer is about half the size of a Canadian one, and has no agitator. The bottom is just ruffled, and rotates quickly one way and then the other, so it just spins the clothes through shear forces. It doesn't seem to do much at all, but at least the laundry gets wet and soapy.

James called me, and came to hang out for a bit in my room. They lock the lounge in the lobby when the office is closed, so there really is not much to do here on weekends. We went to explore Ijiri, and found a park surrounding a lovely brown lake with a depth of 1.7 metres. Some people were fishing, but most were running around the 650 metre trail. There were these amazing huge nectar sucking moths, which I thought were tiny hummingbirds, flying from flower to flower. I tried unsuccesfully to take a picture of one, but they were so fast. I also saw my first preying mantis, which was really cool. We then headed towards a stream, which turned out to be another canal with a small trickle of water at the bottom. Fukuoka is supposed to get 50% more rain, but the weather has been great, so it probably comes in deluges. The water marks are really high up the canal walls, and as another Canadian put it, "the city seems built to channel water." I can't wait until tsuyu.

People seem to pretty much ignore me, but if you want attention, walk around with a 197 cm tall black Zambian. All the kids say hello. We headed towards the nearby business district and found a rotating sushi restaurant. It was getting dark, so we headed back by a very indirect route. (Read: I know east is that way, but I have no idea how to navigate these insane streets.) What we would classify a single lane road is a double lanes with sufficient room for bicycles and pedestrians on both sides. The drivers are amazing, if you stuck your elbow out you would hit them. There are no street names, nor are they laid out in simple grids. You couldn't make more windy streets if you quite literally tried. Everything is just slightly different, there are mirrors at the corners of tight intersections, electrical poles are concrete, and speed bumps are metal.

Teaser for next time: raw horse.

Written 2 Nov 2007

Good thing I kept some notes, since a lot happened in the middle of October that I had forgotten. Please note that even if I don't write anything, I am also adding pictures to my gallery.

15 October 2007
Keitai Kau

On Monday morning I tried my hand at getting my reentry pass again. I headed off to the airport and found the REAL airport shuttlebus without incident. Once at the international terminal I walked around the whole place looking for the Immigration Office. Unsuccesful, I went to the information desk, where the friendly secretary gave me a map to the domestic terminal. Great. In retrospect, it's logical to place a government office so the employees are not required to use the airport shuttlebus to get there.

So I went back to the domestic terminal and after a long walk to one end of it, found the office full of American-looking middle-aged men who were getting help filling out visa extension forms. I eventually figured out the ticket system and got 119, only 3 ahead. I already had my form filled out, but it suggested paying with revenue stamps, which I did not have. There was also no indication I could buy them in the office. Then the lady helping all the men fill out their forms said that they would now go buy revenue stamps, but they should get tickets first. I was indecisive about whether I should follow or just try my hand at paying with cash, so I didn't see where they went. Eventually when I realized how slowly the numbers passed by I went and, after heading to the accounting department incorrectly, was directed to a convenient store in the airport. By the time I got back with my revenue stamp the numbers had jumped to 123. I grabbed another and it said 138 since now I was behind the huge group, so I just lost it. I had wasted five hours on a cross-country bus ride and two more hours running around the airport trying to find the office. At the first opportunity, I walked straight up to one of the booths when one of the ladies appeared finished with her current client and gave her my 119 number. For some reason, the people working at the immigration office don't appear to speak English, but she didn't visibly object and processed my form right there. It only took 10 minutes or so.

I went back to school and asked Sugita-san to help me get a cell phone. First, though, I thought my rail pass was long overdue. There is a convenient 'Proof of Enrollment' certificate dispensing machine near the cafteria on campus. A great idea, except that such a certificate was not what the JR office wanted. They gave me a different form to have my school fill out. So now Sugita-san and I went to the student office, had them fill out a form, and took it back to Onojo station with far less fuss than I had expected. It allowed me to get a discount 3-month pass to use the train from my dorm to campus for 10000 yen.

Then we headed off to the Softbank store. We spent an hour looking at the models and comparing the features. There are some amazing ones with TV and GPS and fast internet. I would have liked one with fast internet, but they were expensive, so I went for the Sharp 910 with a 5 Megapixel camera built-in. Technically, it is better than my regular camera, but after using it for a while, I find the quality somewhat lacking. It also doesn't have all the settings of a real camera, but the battery power is amazing. I forget to charge it for days, and it still has all 3 bars lit.

By the time all the forms and things were filled out, it was evening, so we decided to go for sushi: my first authentic Japanese sushi. Apparently, there were two 100 yen sushiyas in the neighbourhood, but the first one we tried had increased their prices to 125 yen per plate! Sacrilege! So Sugita-san started off to the other place. You got to sit at a bar with a conveyor belt moving the sushi around in front of you. There were containers of green tea leaves and ginger sitting in front of each spot. There were also high pressure hot water faucets for refilling your cup. So we picked up plates as they passed by: some of the notable things I tried were the uni (sea urchin) and basashi (horse). Apparently, Kyushu is famous for being the only place in Japan that does this. I didn't think it was terribly good, just a bit chewy but without much flavour.

16 October 2007
Japanese Classes

Japanese classes at the Chikushi campus started on Tuesday: Beginner's 1 in the morning, Beginners 2 at noon, and Intermediate in the afternoon. I headed off to talk to the teacher in the morning about which course would be most appropriate. Her answer caused me pause. The Beginners 1 starts in October, and is designed for people who know no Japanese. Since I can read Hiragana and Katakana and have a small vocabulary already, I didn't think this was appropriate. However, the Beginners 2 course starts in April, so I would have to enter halfway through the book. So I looked at the book and it was quite difficult, but not incomprehensible, so I have been trying to hack the Beginners 2 class.

The book is Japanese for Everyone and there are many things I don't like about it. The biggest problem is the lack of an Kanji index. If the writers have decided you've seen a particular Kanji enough, they stop writing the furigana for it. And even if it is new, they only write the furigana in the first usage on the page or chapter, so you are not sure where you should be looking for the pronunciation. In addition, the new vocabulary is spread all through the chapter footnotes, and is not collected on one single new vocabulary page. I like the Genki text a lot more. The class is also much different than what I'm used to. There are no quizzes or anything, and not much opportunity to construct our own sentences. Either we repeat after the teacher, or take turns doing exercises so everyone can hear how bad we are. It would be okay if I could devote all my time to catching up, but I have resigned myself to just listening carefully, and doing a little bit of prep before class so that I don't look like a total doofus.

Cell Phone Fiasco

On numerous occasions during conversations with Japanese, they have suggested that I acquire a cell phone. I have never had a cell phone before, but I do know that sometimes the contracts have a lot of strings attached, so I was a bit wary. On Oct. 16, Sugita-san took me to the Softbank store near the Chikushi campus, because Softbank is the cheapest of the big three providers besides NTT and KDDI. I decided to get a 910SH, even though it was a bit more expensive than the basic models, because it had a 5MP camera built-in, which is better than my actual camera. It took a long time to fill out the paperwork, because Sugita-san made sure I understood everything, rather than just answer for me. There was a section about internet usage, and I had to choose whether or not to get the "Unlimited Packet Discount." As I understood it, there was a rising cost as the internet usage went up, until a cap was reached at 4300 yen per month. In my world, paying about $40 for slow internet over a cell phone is pretty steep, but they seemed to indicate it was a good deal in Japan.

Shortly after the phone was activated, I started receiving Japanese messages from "157." Sugita-san had recently been complaining about the spam he received on his phone, so I assumed that's what it was. After having someone read it the next week, I found out that it WAS spam, just spam from Softbank telling me about their wonderful deals. Of course, I immediately started taking pictures with my new phone, and wanted to copy them to the computer. Windows did not automatically install the phone, so I fished the install CD out of the box. There were two things to install, so I installed them both. The first was supposed to get the phone recognized as a device, but it didn't work, so the pictures were stuck on the phone until I eventually bought a miniSD card. The second utility set up my network settings to dial onto the internet with the phone. I gave it a shot, and it worked without a hitch, giving me a connection speed of 384 kbps.

Over the weekend, I happily used this connection to download a test program, check my email, and talk to Larissa. Unfortunately, Windows was also happily automatically downloading updates for itself. I was pleased to finally have internet in my dorm, but due to the slow speed, got bored of it quickly. In all, I transferred about 44 MB over the course of an hour. I also continued to receive messages from "157." I found out later that these were warning me about my heavy usage of costly services. Eventually, a voice message was left by 157, and I heard the woman on the other end mention Softbank, so I realized that the messages were not spam.

On Monday, I had Sugita-san listen to the voice message, and he said that she wanted me to call in. Sugita-san called for me, and had me transferred to the English department. The first thing the woman on the other end said was, "What can I do for you?" I, of course, had no clue, since I was just responding to a voice message I couldn't understand. After some contortions, she pulled up my bill, which said I owed 37000 yen! She said a paper bill would be sent to me. I was flabbergasted, and could only say, "Okay...Thank-you." Over $300 in less than a week of owning a phone, I didn't know such a thing was possible without calling 1-900 numbers. What happened to the unlimited internet discount? I went home and found the English catalogue they had provided. There, in among the small text, I found a description of all the things that the discount did NOT apply to, internet through a PC being one of them.

I set about trying to resolve the situation. Surely there would be a way to at least get me some sort of reprieve on part of the fee. I talked to my supervisor, Yagi-sensei, who said, "Muri kamo," but sent an email to the professor on campus in charge of international students. The next day Kajimoto-sensei called me to his office, and I told him this whole story. He and Sugita-san and I all went down to the Softbank office to try to get some mercy from one of the employees who actually sold me the phone. After a long talk in Japanese between Kajimoto-sensei and a woman there, she went into the back room for 10 minutes, but came back with bad news. As we left the store, Kajimoto-sensei said, "Muri ne." I'm really starting to dislike that phrase.

So I patiently waited for the bill, fearing the worst, and when it came it was indeed the worst. I had IMMEDIATELY discontinued usage of PC internet when I heard the 37000 yen charge, for obvious reasons, but the bill was for 60000 yen. I called back in to find out why, an discovered that the original number was only for the FIRST DAY that I used it. In total, the bill would come to 70000 yen, as PC internet is 0.2 yen per packet, or in usable terms, 800 yen per megabyte. Sadly, I asked again whether any discounts were possible, and he replied in the negative, as expected. I resigned myself to paying for my own mistake, and reassured myself by noting that I was paying negligible rent for six months, so this could count as one months rent.

However, in the spirit of tallying up the number of other things you can buy for the price of one Iraq War, I will now figure out the number of things I can buy for the price I spent on my cell phone during the first week I used it. I could buy 20 bicycles. I could feed a myself well for two months. I could rent a 2-bedroom apartment for a month. I could buy a year's worth of train tickets. Or most tempting, I could buy a Nintendo Wii with 4 controllers and nunchuks and half a dozen games. Too bad you can't buy dignity back.

Addendum to myself: Fools are not those who make mistakes, but those who don't learn from them.

Food

Basic sustenance has been a very interesting ordeal here. My dorm kitchen consists of a mini-fridge and a single element stove, so if I eat at home, its usually bread or cereal, or food bought from the 7-11. The 7-11 has lots of good prepared meals for very reasonable prices, and I usually get some kind of stir fry or pasta. They even microwave it behind the counter if you plan to eat it immediately after leaving. One time I had to try a pizaman (pizza bun), and it was very good, but tasted more like lasagna than pizza. I have yet to find a real pizza. One time my research group even ordered in some pizza, but it was very strange pizza. The toppings were mostly fish, and reminded me of UBC's Pi R^2 pizzaria, but the crust was light and flaky, like the picture on the cover of Crisco. Okonimiyaki is good, but its not pizza. I've seen some frozen pizza in the grocery stores, but its frozen, so it does me no good. I also hear there is pizza at Costco, but its on the far north end of town. Once I get a Costco card, I plan to make a trip out there for pizza and a bicycle.

The vending machines are much fun. I tried to save money by avoiding them, but the novelty of hot drinks from vending machines overcame my resolve. (It's also quite novel to see Coffee Boss machines advertising via a Men In Black motif, but that's another matter.) There is a Coke machine in the hallway next to my room at work, and let me tell you, the lack of root beer is hardly noticable when you see the stuff Coke sells in Japan. First we start with the infamous Fanta, available everywhere else but North America. It's not really a serious problem, because its market niche is filled by Crush. I always enjoyed grape Crush, and grape Fanta is slightly more subtle than grape Crush, so I love it. Also for sale are bitter iced tea, bitter hot tea, coffee (in a dozen flavours, including Extra Bitter!), royal milk tea (my favourite hot drink so far), and the piece de resistance, Coca-Cola brand Cream of Corn Soup. It's okay, tastes like cream of corn soup, but not really my thing. Probably something about corn kernels floating in a pop can. Maybe when I have a cold, it will be a good substitute for home-cooked soup, but I think I'm sticking with the royal milk tea.

The cafeteria on campus is the best place to eat ever. You choose and pay for your meal from a machine outside the doors. The daily teishoku always has at least 5 items, always really good. And they only serve whole fish occasionally, but I still don't eat the heads. The cost is incredibly reasonable, so I and the other students usually go together for dinner every day. It's definitely my favourite time of every day, but I still can't pick up much of what is being said because it goes by so fast. I do a couple of things that they find strange. I like eating everything one at a time, which makes the rice seem boring at the end, so I put either salad dressing or the leftover sauce from the meat on it to spice it up. One time I decided to get yakiniku instead of the regular meal, and I tucked into the meat, which had no sauce and was really boring. Finally, when I finished it, Sugita-san noticed that I hadn't used any of the sauce in the accompanying bowl. I hadn't realized it was sauce, as it looked kind of like yamaimo, which I had learned earlier is a species of glutenous yams prepared to resemble snot. Oh well, live and learn.

Due to my small kitchen and the awesome cafeteria on campus, I have little reason to go grocery shopping except for breakfast staples. I got tired of eating the weird breads at the 7-11 after the vanilla-chocolate incident, so I bought a *tiny* jar of blueberry jam filled with *tiny* blueberries and a ...loaf... of bread. Where the heck are the loaves of bread? Oh no, loaves are too big for the typical Japanese family of one and besides, rice is fine for breakfast, or it would be if I had bothered to buy a rice cooker yet. So bread is sold pre-packaged in groups of 3, 4, 5, or 6 slices. You can choose down to the individual slice how much bread you want, as long as you don't want more than one days worth. This is taking the manna ideal a little to far in my view, but I will live with it. After numerous trips to the Gourmet grocery store, I finally decided to make a big trip to the Makyuu (the Makyuu is basically the same size as the Gourmet, the bigness of the trip had nothing to do with the change of venue). I found larger jam jars and after a LONG search, butter and milk. They were conveniently placed near different doors where I wasn't looking, plus butter comes wrapped in boxes. I also bought cereal. There are about 5 types of cereal available, filling up about 1 metre of a single side of a single aisle. There are Corn Flakes, Special K, and about 3 Japanese brands. All the boxes are 150 grams, enough for 2 bowls. I finally picked up the Ciscorn, made by Cisco in Japan since 1967 or someting like that, because they had a Jumbo box, 270 grams! It's like Frosted Flakes but not so strongly sugared, probably my perfect cereal. Now if only I can find a proper 1kg box.

During this shopping trip, I was winding my way through thousands of little old Japanese ladies. Minding my own business, suddenly one of them looked up at me and said, "Sumimasen, nihongo wo wakarimasu ka?/Excuse me, do you understand Japanese?" I smiled down at her and said "Amari/not really." She handed me a page of coupons and said, "Register...show...price down." I was very touched and probably did a 90 degree bow while thanking her to compensate for head levels. At grocery stores, they scan all your stuff in the basket, and then hand it back to you along with some plastic bags. You go pack your stuff yourself on these tables. As I was doing this, another old lady came up and pointed to the spot next to me, so I moved my basket over to give her some room. She starts talking in mumbly, old person Japanese, which of course I don't understand at all. Eventually, she turned to me and asked if I understood Japanese. I said that I didn't and she kept talking away! I did catch that she asked if I came by car, and I said I didn't have a car, but couldn't remember the word for walk. But then she asked if I walked, so I latched onto that and repeated it. She said something like "That's tough," and continued her conversation by herself. I finished up and left, with a newfound appreciation for tiny, old Japanese ladies.

When I go out with non-Japanese friends, we usually try out a different restaurant. This fills me with a little bit of trepidation, because you never know how many pictures or how much kanji will be on the menu. Curry restaurants are especially safe, because every item is in katakana and usually derived from English: chikencaare, biifucaare, ebifuraicaare (deep fried shrimp curry). There are a number of chain restaurants here whose entire menus revolve around a single item. Usually it is curry, but there are others. Gusto serves only burger patties with different side dishes of your choice. Omurasu serves only rice pilaf covered in an omelette with different side dishes of your choice. If I had to choose a favourite restaurant, I am pretty pleased with the Sweet Basil/Bugle (mistranslation issues) across from campus, which has great pasta dishes and really weird but delicious side salads. However, I think I will reserve that decision until I find pizza.

I am heading off to Korea for a student conference this week and we have a day of sightseeing planned so I will probably have some more interesting stories soon. Korea is so close to Fukuoka that it is only a 45 minute plane ride or three hour trip by hydrofoil.

Cross Straights Symposium 9 in Pohang, Korea
Day 1

On Tuesday morning, November 20, I packed up all my clothes and set out for Hakata port. I had written down the train and bus times, so I had everything planned to get there well before the deadline of 9 am. And everything went as planned, each leg of the journey took a bit longer than expected, but I had programmed enough extra time in to compensate. Most of the delay was due to the large morning crowds, I barely fit into the train. In the end, I arrived only 5 minutes ahead of time, and found the rest of my research group. After talking for a couple of minutes, I left my bag with them and joined the line at the cash exchange counter to get some Korean won. Tokunaga-san came up to me and asked if I had my passport in my bag. They were collecting all of them to get the boat tickets.
"No."
"Do you have it with you?"
"No, I forgot it."
Tokunaga went to tell the team leader while I finished up getting my money. I don't really know why I continued to exchange all my Japanese cash to won when it was clear that I would need some to solve this or I would not be going to Korea, but that logic actually only hit me while writing this.

It turned out that the departure was actually at 10:30 and I still had until 10 to get it and return. That was 50 minutes away, and it took me one hour to get to the port in the first place. So I borrowed some money from Sugita-san and both of us ran over to the taxis and he gave a hurried set of instructions to the driver of one before we sped off to my dorm. Sped off is a poor choice of words here, because we had to pass through Tenjin, which is apparently never fast when driving. It took half an hour to get to the dorm, and I spent the time worrying and telling myself not worry. I ran up the stairs to my room faster than ever before, grabbed my passport, and got back into the taxi in record time. Once on the road, we only had 15 minutes left before I had to back, and the driver told me it was unlikely to be possible. He was correct, and after another pass through Tenjin at a crawl, we got back to the port at 10:10. The fare was an astronomical 5000 yen. At some point I'd like to start making mistakes that have cheaper consequences.

I ran back into the port building and there was Sugita-san waiting. He ran over to the desk to ask if it was still possible to catch the beetle. They said we would have to wait until the 1:30 sailing and it would cost an additional 1300 yen each. I paid my share and as I turned around from the desk, there was Tokunaga-san with the bags! They had both stayed behind, and I felt really bad. I apologized as Japanese-like as I could, and then we discussed our plans. We would be three hours behind the others, and now no longer had the benefit of the chartered Postech bus on the other side. I didn't know there was going to be a chartered bus, and being the curious person I am, had printed out instructions on how to get to Pohang on Friday. We would either have to take subway to the north end of Busan and then a bus to Pohang, or take a inter-city train direct. The bus option would cost 8300 won, but the Korean rail website was broken, so I didn't know the price of a train. The others seemed a little more at ease with this information, and so we went to the post office so I could pay back Sugita-san, and then had lunch. They wouldn't let me pay for the food because they were convinced the school would pay our travel expenses, even though they had now increased due to my forgetfulness.

A leisurely meal took us almost to our departure time, so we went through "security" (there was none) and boarded the boat. We were on the top floor of the ship, and it was quite boring, because you couldn't see the water close-up, nor was there anything else to watch outside. Inside, the only activity was watching Charlotte's Web and The Devil Wears Prada without sound and only Korean subtitles. My shipmates took naps, but the chairs didn't recline, so I was too uncomfortable to do so. Sugita-san suffers from seasickness, so it is fortunate he slept most of the time. We arrived in Busan around sunset. Based on my large repertoire of two instances, I can now declare that I always arrive in Korea around sunset. Due to the poor signage at immigration, we got the lineup for Koreans, and then had to go to the back of the line for foreigners. You can't really blame us, there are these fully lit 10 foot signs that say IMMIGRATION and then these one foot signs on every desk that say Koreans and one that says Foreigners. You can't really tell from the lineups either, because most of the foreigners are Japanese. When passing through security, which actually did exist on this side, Sugita-san got interrogated about the poster tube he was carrying. The border officials had poor English, so it took some time. I don't really know why they were confused, about 100 other students had come through earlier with their own poster tubes. We went to the information desk so I could get a proper map of Busan and Sugita-san asked when the train left. It's a good thing he did, because it turned out the train would only arrive in Pohang shortly before 10 pm, so that eliminated one of our possibilities.

Once outside the port, we were met with a large number of skyscapers and no English signage. I had looked at a satellite map the previous week, so I knew the general direction, but Tokunaga-san was the eagle eye who spotted the subway entrance from a huge distance away. To buy tickets from the vending machine, Sugita-san and Tokunaga-san had to buy some iced tea to split their 10000 won bills. Apparently, it was really awful tasting, but I never tried to buy any for myself because I already have trouble with Japanese iced tea. The subway ride took a long time, since there was no express train and we had to cross Busan from the south end to the north end. I was quite tired, so I stood there with my eyes closed, and this Korean lady tried to get me to take her seat at one point.

The end of the line was the inter-city bus terminal, and Sugita-san, who is fond of asking directions, tried to converse with the ticket cashiers, "English or Japanese?" He was met with a negative in Korean, so I leaned over and said, "Pohang," which resulted in a point down to another ticket window. I don't know why it is, but my only significant skill appears to be getting information with as little talk as possible, and it is serving me well. Some of my fellow international students are very fond of running up to the nearest Japanese person and asking verbose questions in English, expecting that the more the say, the more likely they are to be understood. I first try to find the English signs, then look at what other people are doing, then try to read the Japanese signs, and finally if these other methods fail, formulate a grammatically correct Japanese sentence in my head and choose the most effective target. It usually doesn't come out perfect and the recipient will blink a couple of times before they can decode it, but if you can start a conversation off with the correct information, usually only yes's and no's must follow. Now that we were in Korea, my Japanese friends had turned into foreigners too, and it actually threw me off a bit. I often forgot that they didn't understand the Koreans either.

We got our bus tickets and I grabbed some snacks for the ride, since it was past dinner time and we didn't have time to stop. I got some Chilsung cider, since I had seen an ad earlier. (Probably the only time advertising works on me is when I have absolutely no idea what anything is.) I also bought pate bread, a strawberry strudel, and corn bread, although closer inspection afterwards revealed it was actually corn CREAM bread. It was tough to eat and I only finished half.

The bus driver was insane. He must have been going well over speed limit because he was always passing cars and our entire trip took less time than the rest of the group, despite the time we spent transferring from ship to subway, from subway to bus, and from bus to taxi. It was hard to sleep, because every time he went around a cloverleaf or changed lanes, we were thrown from our seats. There was also a huge television up front and all the speakers were blaring Korean at us the whole time. Since it was dark, all I learned was that Korea has a lot of tunnels, because the satellite TV would halt every time we went through one. Once at Pohang, we headed into the building that the bus stopped at in the hopes of finding a city bus. We had to ask at another ticket wicket, but the person there didn't know Postech because apparently the name was changed recently. Fortunately, a man showed up who could speak some English and directed us to a taxi, telling the driver where we wanted to go. Tokunaga-san walked over and tried to get into the driver side door, to the great amusement of all the Korean taxi drivers standing around. The ride only costed 3000 won and he took us directly to where we wanted to go, even though he wasn't following the CSS9 signs that we could see planted all around the campus.

Tokunaga-san and I registered and got our room keys, dropped off our bags, and revelled at our giant LCD television sets. Then we found the group leader, who told us where Sugita-san's building was and where we could get dinner. The campus was very large, quite similar to North American campuses. The Community Center was close to the Postech Hotel, but Sugita-san's building was very far away on the map. We only had 15 minutes left until the cafeteria closed, and when we walked by the kitchen staff was eating, but Sugita-san wanted to find his room first, so we walked for another 15 minutes to get there. It was a complex of 9 buildings, so it took some time to find the main office. At long last, we found his room, he dropped off his bags and met all his roommates, and then we were on our way back to the cafeteria. It was, of course, closed. Fortunately, the school store was still open, so I bought some bananas and oranges, and we shared them as a substitute for dinner, since it was already 10 pm anyway. Finally, we went to our rooms, where I found the Starcraft channel and the electronic toilet.

Day 2

The next day was filled mostly with conference talks. My friends were all impressed that they could converse with Koreans in English, and said it gave the proceedings an international feeling. I do admit I am constantly impressed with the number of Asians who can speak English and the number of Europeans who are indistinguishable from native speakers. Lunch was very good, but just about everything was either kimchi or had the same red pepper spice on it. I didn't like the hot stuff because under the spice the food was kind of tasteless, unlike Mexican, which is hot and delicious. Every meal was similar, and they always had these tiny fish as one item. They were only about 1 cm long, so that you couldn't even tell they were fish while standing. So I got up the courage and ate them whole. The only thing I didn't like is that their head parts were kind of loose, and by the end of the meal, your plate had a light frosting of eyes. Next I have to work up to the little 3 cm long fish that they serve at the cafeteria back home.

Very few of the people I knew had presentations the first day, so our only job was to stay awake. It was a long day, 9 am to 7 pm and then a banquet. I was very happy afterwards to just spend some time watching Starcraft. It just takes a couple matches of professional Starcraft to realize you will never beat these people even 3 versus 1. I saw a 2 second clip of the players with their keyboards visible, and they looked like they were typing. At first I was envious, but then I realized how tense I was getting just watching the matches, and their eyes were completely red after only half an hour. In high-stress matches, I can forget to blink for a long time, and normal-people matches take one to two hours, so it's not exactly a healthy aspiration.

The tactics used were amazing. This paragraph is obviously for Starcraft players. The first match I saw had the Protoss flying a fleet of corsairs around and taking out overlords that were moving around the map individually. At the same time, he was shuttling Reavers around the map and dropping them in outlying bases for a couple of seconds to take out vital components. This was a tactic I saw repeated quite often. One time the other Terrans countered it by dropshipping a seige tank at the same time. The seige tank has a quicker shot speed than the reaver of course, so it could be lifted again before the scarab would explode. It was like a game of chess, but the amazing thing is that the players were building up new armies while they were artfully countering each other's drop ship antics. I filmed the TV one time when there was a match with about 50 of the zerg non-suicidal air-only units (name please) and a diversified Protoss attack force. The Protoss player was so skilled he managed to immobilize the entire Zerg fleet with his dark archons and ion storm them with his high templars so that he could finish them off with corsairs and carriers in a couple of seconds.

After the banquet, there was more alcohol for the students at the Log Cabin. I skipped out early to go find a grocery store. It was far away, but was a nice quite walk. The Pohang campus is very pretty and similar to North American ones, large and spread out, with lots of facilities. The store was quite a bit like a Walmart, it had many different sections. The prices were awesome, if you want a cheap holiday, go to Korea, not Japan. I got a universal electrical plug adapter and a 15 pack of AA batteries, so I could use my computer and camera. On the way back to the hotel, I saw an interesting type of tree. It looked like an evergreen, but all the needles had turned orange and were dying for the winter. I will have to look it up next time I remember.

Day 3

The third day I did my presentation in the main lecture hall for the materials section, and then ran off to the energy section in a tiny meeting room to see all my friends presentations. At the poster session, only one person came to see my poster, so I went to check out everyone else's, and they reported the same thing. It seems the students from the Korean schools were not interested in plasma physics. At lunch we had the closing ceremony for the conference, and then headed off for tours of Pohang.

Posco is the fourth largest steel producer in the world, after two in Japan, and I didn't hear where number 1 was. They employ 7000 people and the existence of Pohang as a city is basically due to their presence. The tour involved us watching a PR video that involved children playing in the grass, with the closing motto POSCO: Moving the world in silence. Then we were herded onto a bus to drive around for half an hour looking at the outside of buildings connected by lots of big pipes. I caught a glimpse of a massive cauldron about to pour liquid metal inside one of the buildings, but that was about it. Then we were taken inside the wire making factory, with the instructions not to take any pictures. Unfortunately, it was noisy and the tour guide was speaking English, so I'm sure I was the only one who heard. Everyone started taking pictures the instant we got inside, and no one made a fuss, so I took a couple myself. Hot metal bars were moved through squeezing machines and made progressively thinner. Water was constantly being poured over all the machines and it was incredibly noisy.

After the short interlude of actual steel factory touring, we were taken to the Posco museum. We were shown two more noisy PR films that showed more happy people and very little steel. Then we went out to read about Posco. Most of the museum was Posco history, and I think every plaque had some form of the phrase "blood, sweat, and tears." I wouldn't have minded learning Posco history, but I think the material was padded out 400% with patriotic material. It annoyed the socks off me, but Daniel, a German in the group, had an interesting perspective. He had taken a steel factory tour in Germany, and they showed absolutely everything. He pointed out that the presence of PR material instead of basic function and history explained the Korean culture more than anything else.

Then we went to the Pohang Accelerator Laboratory, back on the Postech campus. It was very new looking, and was quite similar to the Canadian Light Source in Saskatoon. The only difference is that the PAL has an actual annular-shaped building, whereas the synchrotron at the CLS has empty room space above it. They are even close in energy, with the electrons in the PAL stored at 2.5 GeV and the ones in the CLS at 2.9 GeV.

After dinner, I went with the other students from our laboratory to find a place to go drinking. It was a long walk, and quite cold, but we found a good place. The premium Korean beer, whose name I can't remember, is actually quite innocuous, but the regular Hite is very sour. After trying them, I stuck with Coke that they were selling in the old style swirly glass bottles. When Sonada-san fell asleep, we had fun making origami cranes and putting them on his head. Afterwards, we went to the corner store and found canned grubs, yum yum.

Day 4

The fourth day was not very eventful. We left Postech at 9:50 am and bussed through Korea, which was yellow and dead because it was winter. The mountains are a little more rocky than Japan's mountains, like the BC interior. The skyscrapers that I had seen covering Korea from the plane were actually not eyesores. From above, their uniformity made them look like tenament housing, but from the ground they are tall and impressive. They look very new, but their placement is very strange. There will be nothing for a long way around and then, all of a sudden, five 30-story apartment buidings.

We had lunch at the port in Pohang and then had to pass through security again to board the hydrofoil. We got to sit on the bottom floor this time, so I got to see the difference between regular and hydrofoil sailing modes. On the way back, they showed this Japanese comedy show called SalarymanNEO, which mostly involved office situations. The only thing I really understood was a demonstration of ways to use the boss's chair, which involved amusing choreography performed by three Japanese with unusual hair styles. The hairstyles were unusual for Japanese, not for anyone else: one was bald, one had a ponytail, and one had a full beard. They demonstrated things like the waterskiing position and the skydiving position accompanied by a classical pianist and a narrator.

Upon return to Japan, we were subject to the new anti-terrorism laws, which require that all foreigners be photographed and supply their fingerprints. And since the system was only 4 days old, there was computer trouble that made us have to wait a really long time. Finally, we got through and I went home with Tokunaga-kun. (I have recently learned that when a person is in your group, you refer to him in a more humble manner to outsiders.) The next day I realized I left my outer jacket in Korea.

Fukuoka Castle Walls

During November, James and Ri and I went to explore Maizuru Park, where Fukuoka Castle stood at one point. As we were leaving this guy who was trying to sell something started waving us over and calling, "Oy! Kilimanjaro-san!" to James. It was highly amusing, and completely apt, but James was very offended that the only thing Japanese know about Africa is its tallest mountain. Frankly, I think I would be super-impressed if they knew that North America's was Mt. McKinley. I reminded myself then that I should always call James Kilimanjaro-san, but sadly I have perpetually forgotten that promise.

Mt. Sefuri

There is an Asian tradition of watching the first sunrise of the new year from some memorable location, like a peninsula jutting out into the Pacific. I decided to go up the tallest mountain in the vicinity of Fukuoka and watch the sunrise from there, something I had been wanting to do since I came to this city surrounded by peaks. I keep convincing myself that Kyushu is subtropical, which means that the winters are mild, which was true for an unusual couple of days surrounding Christmas. However, by New Year's, the weather had changed for the worse. The days were windy and dropped to 5 Celsius. We even saw the first snow of the year on the way to church on Sunday. I knew it was not wise to plan a trip to the mountains, where it would be even colder, but I had not seen a snowline yet. I was obstinate though, because I had already invested a half a day making a trip to the hardware store near campus, only to find three-man tents and sleeping bags only equipped for 7 C and above. So after church I walked across town to Canal City on the good advice of a longtime resident. There I found sleeping bags good down to -10 C, as well as single person tents. However, the Mennonite in me gravitated towards an inexpensive 20000 yen package that included the tent, mat, and bag, in very compact form. The bag was only good for +5 C, but I was concerned about how I would lug anything more bulky up the entire mountain. I had surely covered a good 5 km on foot collectively already in search of decent camping equipment: I didn't want to overdo it!

I scoured the internet for the highest peak nearby, as well as hiking trails, and bus schedules to get there. I set my sights on Sefuri-san, at 1055 metres, on the border between Fukuoka and Saga prefectures. The satellite pictures indicated what appeared to be an observatory on the peak, and the accompanying roadway simplified the trek, despite making it less adventuresome. Since there were many unknowns, I decided this was worth it in case there was an emergency; after a rabid tanuki attack, I wanted there to be a good chance of my body being found. The bus schedules proved to be more difficult, since it was holiday season. The website gave routes and times for weekdays, sundays and holidays, and New Year's, but no explanation of when those things were. I knew December 31st was a holiday, but decided that only January 1st was New Year's. I was wrong, of course.

At noon on Monday, I headed out, having no problem getting to the bus depot at the south end of Fukuoka. However, I was over an hour early for the next bus out of town. I burned time looking for a proper restaurant, because it was nasty outside, but eventually had to resort to the Hokka Hokka Tei next to the bus stop. It was my first time to an HHT, and I found they are basically take-out fast food only, so after getting my lunch, I was back to the original problem of where to wait. I found a concrete ramp with a small roof over it, and chowed-down while wrangling my garbage in an wind vortex with my foot. As I was finishing up, an old couple with a flat pulled up next to me. I asked if they needed any help, and offered my phone, but they said they had everything under control, and my Japanese is definitely not good enough to argue politely with anyone. My bus was coming soon, so I toodled off to wait at the stop, keeping an eye on the couple, who were soon helped by some young Japanese men.

I waited, and waited, ... and waited. Then I started reading the schedules, only to notice that the special New Year's schedule was in effect for six days starting from the 29th. This meant that the next bus taking this sparsely populated route was actually in ANOTHER 1.5 hours. Not long enough to watch a movie, so I started walking. I managed to traverse about 4 km, shaved 5 stops off the trip, and saved over 200 yen! Now I can go buy that can of Coke I always wanted. The end of the line for the bus I was on was the border of Saga Prefecture, but the schedule said that the bus to the base of the mountain left at the same time as this one arrived, so I suspected they were the same bus. After a confusing discussion with the driver, I managed to ascertain as much. I also learned that despite it being the same bus, the fares had to be paid separately. Weird.

I stepped off the bus into...Saskatchewan. Seriously, we had passed the snowline long before, and the landscape was now covered in two inches of the powder. Despite evidence to the contrary, I continued to have the undying belief that this trip would be fun and okay! ...well, survivable. After all, there was an observatory at the top. If things got really bad, I could always appeal to the friendly scientists' sense of humanity, or even comradery. I started up the 4.5 km path, which was kindly marked with distance indicators, in a light snow. Many cars passed me in both directions, and even a small bus, so my sense of the exotic disappeared quickly. Near the top, there was a turnoff, but I couldn't read the sign, so I don't know where everyone was going. I reached the end of the road at a well lit, warm-looking building...surrounded by barbed wire fences. This was not an friendly astronomical observatory, but a Japanese Self-Defence Force base with dual radar emplacements!

After standing dumbfounded for a moment, I noticed a tiny snow-covered trail skirting the fence of the base. Had it not had a giant sign saying the peak was 0.3 km away, I would probably not have seen it. Despite claiming the entire mountain-top for military purposes, the Japanese had kindly left a single fenced off path to the top for the public, with descriptive signs for the Buddhist statues that now stood inside the complex. At the top stood a small shrine, which was quite creepy alone in the dark, so I made sure to say a short prayer for protection. And just beyond the peak, a looming radar dome, which had usurped the title of highest point.

Having reached my destination, I was faced with the difficulty of setting up shelter until morning. It felt like about -10 C, with a strong wind chill on top of that. I was warm, but only from walking, and would cool down rapidly. Some clear-thinking soul had constructed a concrete hut/bunker just to the side of the shrine area, and I found protection from the wind inside, even though it was still cold. There was a table and wood bunk, but also enough room to set up my tent, which I quickly set about doing. It was difficult going, because it was now dark outside, and I had only a single LED light with me. I found myself wishing I had brought my other one too. Once the tent was up, I could hang the light at the top, which caused it to shine on the canopy and diffuse, providing dim light to the entire bunker. I next unwrapped the mat, only to find that it could not inflate. I was stuck with only a thin layer between me and a concrete floor. This was my greatest downfall.

I put the sleeping bag and my food inside the tent and hopped in. I had brought with me the leftover candles from the candlelight Christmas Eve service at church, and lit one for heat. Since I had to hold it, I could not do anything else concurrently, so just sat enjoying inhaling the hot fumes. After a small dinner, because I was not very hungry, I tried to sleep. It was impossible, because of the cold floor. After a couple of hours, I took my jacket off and put it under the sleeping bag, while putting my bag under my feet. This improved things greatly, but the region from my hips to my knees still induced enough discomfort that I never did sleep. By my estimate, the hut was -10 C, the tent 5 C, and the sleeping bag, 15 C. They performed their duties admirably, but were still insufficient, and I remained awake all night shivering. Dealing with condensation from my breath and moist clothes was a significant hardship. Everything outside my bag was soaked, and is now hanging around my room drying, with the tent set up outside in the hall.

Ringing in the the New Year

Morning was long in coming, with the night only interrupted by voices and a flashlight beam twice, presumably from the base. I set my phone to ring at midnight, but was definitely out of earshot of any Shinto temples ringing their bells. I knew morning had come when I heard voices outside at 7 am. Apparently, I was not the only one with the bright ideal to greet the first morning of the new year from the top of Sefuri-san. I emerged from my bunker to find half a dozen Japanese milling around, with one apparently selling mochi rice cakes. The wind was deathly cold, due to my low morning metabolism, and taking pictures without gloves was only possible for one minute at most. Sunrise was disappointing, as it was obscured by a thick cloud on the horizon. After a quick set of panorama shots, I was happy to head back inside to pack up my stuff. As I was finishing, the sun finally emerged from its shelter. A second set of shots was much more pleasant. As I left, I passed another half dozen Japanese making their pilgrimage to the top, and said "Ohayogozaimasu" to each group, since I didn't know the proper line for Oshogatsu. I stepped to the side to let a man past, and greeted him just like all the others, but he just stopped and stared at me. I said "Douzo" and gestured with my hands to let him pass. Finally he blurted out, "Happy New Year!" I grinned and replied, "Thank-you, Happy New Year!" I think his extended pause was not from the surprise of seeing a gaijin on top of Sefuri-san, but from his furious attempt to remember the correct English phrase.

I travelled down the mountain to the sight of beautiful snow-covered trees of the Japanese mixed forests: cedars and deciduous, bamboo and palms. I took as many pictures as possible, to the point that I got a bit of frostbite at my fingertips. I was again passed by the military bus, which I could now see was full of soldiers bound for the Jietai base. At the bottom, I found the city bus stop, and double-checked that it was indeed coming at 11 am. I had an hour to kill, so I went to visit the temple down by the lakefront. I have learned that if a spot has ANY picturesque beauty whatsoever, there will be a shrine or temple there. (Depressingly, that's how you know it will be good.) The nearby washing fountain was covered in ice formed from the splashing water. The ducks and heron in the lake evacuated upon my coming, but otherwise, it was very peaceful.

Good and early, I stood at the bus stop, waiting for the first of two scheduled runs for that day. Due to my severe good planning and luck, it did not come. A man came shortly to tell me it would never come. The snow was too thick. So I started walking and he wished me luck. In the course of an hour, I was only passed by two cars going in my direction. Eventually, I decided my only recourse was to hitchhike, because it would take 4 or 5 hours to get home at this rate, and I was already the walking dead. The very first van I tried was nice enough to pick me up. There was a middle-aged Japanese man and his daughter inside, heading in to Fukuoka I think. I never did figure out exactly where THEY were going. We engaged in as much of a conversation as I could manage. He was very kind, bought me a can of hot coffee on the way, and dropped me right at the closest bus terminal that I knew. He did not want any money, so I gave his daughter the Canadian flag pin on my bag. I got home, made sure to eat a gourmet carbo-heavy meal from 7-11, and went straight for my long-sought after sleep in my heated room. I'll be sure to visit Sefuri-san again, some July.

February Update

For the past couple of months, I have been getting into my research and when I have free time with brain cells left, I have been studying kanji at home. Usually though, I get home tired and just watch TV or play a computer game, so there has not been much progress in updating this page. However, I think I have enough experience now to note some interesting features of Japan.

I am really starting to enjoy the language. Before learning it, I had read it was verb dominant, unlike English, which is noun dominant. I read many years ago about a study in which English-speaking people were shown a series of pictures and asked to describe each with one word. The example given was a mother and daughter playing catch. Native English speakers would usually say, "ball." However, native Japanese speakers would typically say, "throw." They drew the connection with the fact that English sentences end with a predicate noun, whereas Japanese sentences end with a verb. However, I am beginning to doubt that is the main reason, as I have found that simply changing the order of your words is not terribly difficult. We do it all the time when imitating a German accent, e.g. "Ich must to pay mein parking ticket go!" Although, amusingly, in Japanese, this is further scrambled because the subject is usually neglectable and there is no direct construction for must, e.g. "My parking ticket pay to go not if bad."

But I am beginning to discover how pleasantly pliable Japanese verb constructions are. They have far fewer verbs than English, but you can make combinations to change the meaning as needed. There is no single word for "keep", but "take-and-put" has the same connotation. There is no word for "bring," but "have-and-go" and "have-and-come" are more detailed, providing even the bringing destination. You can understand that there are far more possibilities by allowing combinations, although often the effect is just to do both things in consecutive order or concurrently, and don't really have a change of meaning by our classification. For example, "go-and-come", "buy-and-come", "play-and-do it for me", and "come with me-and-eat" all mean exactly what you would expect.

Another interesting feature of the language, and a huge impediment to learning it, is the large number of homonyms. Many kanji have more than one possible sound, and therefore, they overlap quite a bit. Therefore, when I hear a word that I know used in a strange way and ask about it, the answer is usually that "The Kanji is different." How I dislike that answer, but the positive side is that if you learn the Kanji before the word, it does make a lot more sense in your brain. A recent example I have found is the word "kankou," which can mean exchange, publish, diplomat, fraternization, good regard, public, official, and steel pipe. I only barely know the first meaning, but not its kanji, and all are written a different way.

The Japanese go to great lengths to keep everyone happy. There are always elaborate ceremonies for official guests with ribbon-cutting and the like at even the most minor events. All trash collection and road construction is done at night, and the construction sites are completely cleaned up during the day. There are always traffic directors around each construction site and at the entrance to each parking lot. They hold what I like to call "seizure sticks," which are like the kind used to direct airplanes, but flash at about the right frequency to trigger photosensitive epileptics. One time at the cafeteria, I only had a large denomination bill, so I couldn't use the machine and had to pay for my dinner at the counter. They didn't have a cash register there and all the money was in a Tupperware box. The girl was so apologetic that she couldn't find another 100 yen piece and had to give me three 50 yen pieces. Overall, Japan is very interesting, but that was one of the few things that borderline shocked me. "This society is almost completely cash driven and yet you feel bad about giving me an extra coin?"

Speaking of which, Japan is completely cash driven. You can use your credit cards in a few large stores, but generally people don't. Cheques are relatively unheard of, used only by large corporations or celebrities. The ATMs close after 6pm and they talk to you the whole time you are trying to do something, which is really annoying when using the English feature. The one cool thing is that when you deposit cash, the machine counts it instead of you. I don't know why we have to type in our entries in Canada, I experimented with that one time by rounding to the nearest dollar for one of my cheques, and the bank never corrected it. The post office is the largest bank network in Japan with the most assets, but for some reason, it doesn't qualify as one when being refunded expenses by the school or medical costs by the government. You also can't pay bills electronically at the post office. I don't know why they can't add those small additional capabilities.

Before disposing of your garbage, it must be divided into burnable, non-burnable, and recycle. You can only throw stuff out in official marked city trash bags that you purchase at convenience stores. The burnable material is picked up twice a week, although it usually takes me a month to fill a bag. Basically everything goes in there, plastic included. The non-burnable stuff gets picked up once a month, although I still don't know when that is, so I have all my cereal box liners from the past 4 months. Recycling is only for pop cans and bottles. I have yet to see a paper recycling receptacle, apparently they exist at government offices, so most paper is included with the burnable garbage. They take the burnable trash to incinerators where it is use to generate electricity. I would personally like to see them make paper and milk carton and plastic recycling a little more prevalent. Plastic bags especially, since every store gives you a bag for the most insignificant purchase. I've even been given one for two sticks of gum, so I'm starting to specifically ask for no bag.

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Last modified October 12, 2007.