Last Monday we had an event at hour lab to welcome all the newcomers, and it defenitively finished late night. That was the time I discovered that Hongo campus closes all doors except for one. Which one? the farthest one from my house of course. Of course, I ended up jumping the fence in the picture, which seems a common choice between many other students.
Last weekend I went to Takao (??) to play PS3′s Winning 11 at Anderson’s house since Yuko (his wife) is returning next weekend and things will return to normal. I went to stay 1 night and come back on Sunday, but Sunday morning we went to a wholesale department called CostCo, where I saw how easy is to trick people by selling stuff in big packages to make it look cheaper.
People waiting to get some…
I found something I liked though, and that made me take the wrong way. We eat an “extremely” huge pizza, with excellent taste too! When we were about to return Anderson decided to buy one more to take home, and started pushing me to stay one more day. The result? We bought beers and jumped to the next Winning Eleven “freak level” playing games of 30 minutes each (needless to say that we actually intended to play real time games of 90 minutes, but surprisingly, 30 minutes is the maximum duration supported).
Well not just this “jihanki” but all the “jihankis” around the world. Let me start by telling you that “jihanki” or ??? is the short form for “jidohanbaiki” or ????? and it means “vending machine” in Japanese.
A few months ago I set up a simple web app at jihanki.wairudo.com for people to upload the location and pictures of the “vending machines” and also share stuff about them. You will probably be thinking “ha? this guy’s a freak!!”, and I can tell you that indeed you’re right! Hooray! The social side is powered by twitter so if you have an account (or not, it’s easy to create one) you can go right now and get logged in with your twitter ID. I even developed a method for people to upload pictures of machines on the website, or while there were on the go by sending an email (which happens to be pretty easy in Japan).
The thing is, for several reasons I had to reduce the time a dedicate to procrastinate, and quit including new machines, plus it was supposed to work by itself by grabbing new users by now (which is not). Now, I’m gonna give it another try, and you should too ^^ ?????
As I said the other day, I belong to a lab which is located in Hongo Campus but actually my department is the Department of Creative Informatics which is located in the center of Akihabara. Today I went to the weekly seminar for the second time and I took some pictures from the outside, cause we’re no allowed to take pics inside.
The building is huge, although it has at least two other building bigger than this one.
The building where the departmen is. Akihabara Dai Building (Akihabara main building or something like that).
Entrance to the lab.
In the picture you can see what I saw when I got out of home this morning, “the end of the Sakura“. I guess there will be no more ‘hanami‘, and probably, and just probably, the weather is gonna get warmer now. That’s another difference of between Tokyo and Kagoshima, it’s colder here (pretty obvious though).
As I said, lots of things have happened lately and one of the biggest is the fact that I’m now PhD student at the University of Tokyo, and that my lab is in Hongo Campus right in the heart of Tokyo. Also, and since my department happens to be Creative Informatics, I have also access to the Akihabara Campus. This may sound pretty fun, but there’s nothing related with maid cafe, etc, at the lab, I’d rather say it looks more like a company, which is goooooood…
Anyhow, yesterday I took a few pics and I posted them on Facebook, and here now… have a nice Wednesday!
One of the most emblematic buildings of the campus, seen in many mangas/dramas/…
The small “park” in front of my building.
Random directions signal.
Entrance to the building where my lab is.
The main entrance to The University of Tokyo also known as ?? (“Akamon” or “Red Door”).
Another entrance to the campus (and the one I use) known as ?? (“Seimon”, translations accepted).
Now that I’ve finally removed the roots tying me to Kagoshima (been more than a week without going to a hot springs), I feel relieved enough to start posting again. Indeed, I haven’t stopped annoying people on Facebook with status updates and stuff, tweeting non-sense things about what I was doing in that moment (never awkward moments), and even had some fun (not much though) trying to stream my life live with ustream.
Things changed, yes, and time will say if it’s been for good or for “less good” but I have some new challenges like making sense of myself being a PhD student, and living in Tokyo, which I haven’t assimilated quite yet.
Tonite, I wanted to eat some good stuff and Hyang Sun recommeded to go to motsu LABO a place in Kishaba. I was in the restaurant the have in the first floor there with my professor, but motsu LABO in the second floor is delicious. Their specialty is “motsu nabe“, and we choose the one with spicy soup ~~
Well, it’s a fact. The weather forecasts were announcing the snow in Kagoshima (and other parts of Kyushu) from yesterday night and it’s here. In fact it appears to have no intention of stopping. Forecasts assure, Kagoshima prefecture could reach 10-15 cm of snow and I cna see that coming too.
It’s strange because although Japan has lots of snow, all of it snows mostly on the side of Japan facing Asia (the continent). Reports say that the wave of low temperature have been so cold this time the it has reached these areas too.
PS/ I’d have loved to take a picture of Sakurajima this morning, but visibility is 0 right now…
Some pics from my way for home to the lab here
This is the second year (in a row) I couldn’t go back home to celebrate these days with my family and friends. That’s the happy part of it, the sad part is that I spend christmas day’s afternoon correcting documents and stuff for my phD (within months) senpai Anderson. The picture shows one of the things a had to prepare without him even knowing about it. I also did one more “pleasant” (“unpleasant” too at some points) thing that day but I’m waiting for the pictures from my other senpai Yoshizaki.
