Walk to Family Mart

During the afternoon we took a walk down to the Family Mart to get a snack. It's beautiful up here. Here are some pictures from the walk:










































Here is a picture of what looked like mini-palm trees that I thought looked cute and I thought my West Coast peeps would appreciate.














Inside the Family Mart, I was impressed by their wide array of Starbucks products.














Including double-shot espressos! Aren't the cans prettier than in the States?














And finally, on our way back to the orientation center, I took a picture of the building so you can see where I've been spending the past week. My room was the first glass window on the top floor of the first part of the building.

Miscellaneous meals and poster

Here are pictures from the most recent meals. Looking at them in the pictures, they don't look as good as they did in real life. :(

This is lunch from yesterday. There were these tofu... what are they called? It wasn't really fake meat, but like these tofu something... ooooh soy protein things. They were SO GOOD.














And then this is dinner. It looks a little weird. I wish I had opened up the foil a little bit more to show what's inside. There is a tofu steak in there. Can you see the weird broccoli-cauliflower things? It looked so weird, a green spiky looking maybe broccoli because of the color but looks more like cauliflower thing.














I didn't take a picture of breakfast this morning because it looked a lot like yesterday's breakfast but less pretty.

And here is lunch from today. I realize with this one, I think it looks a little gross, ha. But it's a risotto. Not bad. A little bland and the mushrooms were a little chewy, but I really appreciate that the vegetarian food is actual food.














And then here is me in front of my poster during the poster session! I think my face looks too big. Probably been eating too much rice, bleugh.

Special Guest Lecture: Music Performances

The second lecture was a performance showcasing three traditional Japanese instruments: the koto, shakuhachi, and shamisen. This older man first explained how to play the koto and its history, as well as the different scales that they play on it. There are these bridges on the strings of the koto, and depending on what piece the player plays, the bridges are put in different places to create different intervals between the different strings. And sometimes (oftentimes), they adjust it during the actual performance. It was amazing to watch. Here are pictures of the professor explaining the koto and the woman who did a performance for us:




























After that they explained the shakuhachi, which is a flute. Here is the performer displaying it. There is this one technique where they blow into it and make a sudden burst of sound which is supposed to create tension and be reminiscent of a samurai sword. The guy then imitated being a samurai with the shakuhachi as a sword. It was cute and funny.














Then they explained the shamisen, which is a three-string guitar-like instrument. There are no flecs on the neck though and apparently players aren't allowed to look at their fingers when they play. Sounded impressive. My picture of it is blurry, but here is a picture of a piece in which they played all three instruments together:














It was really awesome. I'm going to try and see if I can upload a sound file that I secretly took of the performance. They also played a piece that was variations on Sakura. It was amazing and I loved it so much. That piece was played on two kotos and this 18-string instrument that is like a koto but called something else.

Special Guest Lecture: Space Guy

Hi friends,

It's been a busy past couple of days. We started language classes and then we've had lectures "lectures". They were actually pretty interesting! One of them was a talk by an space guy, and wow Japanese presentations are amazing! They have all these stories, anecdotes, and examples that really put you in their shoes. I also think the emphasis on seeing relationships and how things connect together really shows up in their presentations. They also have the cutest animations to illustrate their ideas. Here's an example:














This wasn't the cutest one, but I was too embarrassed to take out my camera during the one I wanted to take a picture of. :( Basically he talked about these space crafts they made to investigate the start of the solar system, but they lost contact with the craft and they were sad. Lol, he made this video of the space craft floating in space with this overlay of sad music and this sad Japanese female voice saying in Japanese, "We miss you. We are waiting for you." And then apparently they heard a faint signal from the craft a year later, and they had to teach it to recognize their system again, and he likened it to baby talk and had the cutest pictures of a mother and her baby. Awesome. Best space lecture ever.

Oh last story about this guy. So when they lost the spacecraft or some other thing that went wrong that he told us about, he put up a big box in the middle of the slide saying, "Don't think it's unlucky. It's our blame! This is due to our immaturity. We must analyze the issues and conjugate for next time." And he explained each line. It was awesome. I wish I had gotten a picture of that.

Orientation schedule

Hi,

Here is the schedule for the next several days:

Thursday, June 16, 2011
7 am - 8 am: Breakfast
9 am - 9:25 am: Orientation for Japanese language classes
9:30 am - 12:30 pm: Japanese classes
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm: Lunch
1:50 pm - 6:00 pm: Special lectures
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm: Dinner
7:00 pm - 8:00 pm: Japanese culture experience

Friday, June 17, 2011
7 am - 8 am: Breakfast
7 am - 9 am: Check out
9 am - 12:30 pm: Japanese classes
12:30 pm - 1:30 pm: Lunch
1:30 pm - 5:00 pm: Poster presentations (SERIOUSLY? For 3 hours and a half?? whaa...)
6 pm - 7 pm: Meet up with home stay families

Saturday, June 18, 2011 and Sunday, June 19, 2011
Home stay family time

Sunday, June 19, 2011
6 pm - 7 pm: Dinner

Monday, June 20, 2011
7 am - 8 am: Breakfast
9 am - 12:00 pm: Japanese classes
12:00 pm - 1:00 pm: Lunch
1:00 pm - 2:30 pm: Japanese classes
2:50 pm - 5:50 pm: Special lectures
5:50 pm - 6:00 pm: Orientation farewell address
6:00 pm - 7:00 pm: Dinner

Tuesday, June 21, 2011
7 am - 8 am: Breakfast
9 am - : Depart orientation center for host institute

And that's what my next several days will look like! Hopefully I'll be able to chat and say hi during off-times. It's been great being here. I'm looking forward to talking more in Japanese...

Hugs, love, byes

First day of orientation

Hi friends,

We made it through the first day of orientation. Jet lag was still hitting pretty strong. We sat through some talks and introductions of the various partners in the program, then we took a group photo. Here is us walking down to take our pictures:














This is the amazing view from the center and photo-taking area. Apparently Mount Fuji is in the background somewhere, but it was so cloudy that we couldn't see it.




























So our rooms are located above the orientation center rooms. The building curves around, and my room is all the way at the end of the curve. The last room. But it's spacious. We have roommates. So far it seems to be going okay. But yeah, here is the view from my room! And I liked the greenery under the window, so there's a picture of that too.




























I also took a picture of breakfast this morning. It's not too fancy. I think the main reason why I took a picture is because I wanted to show how small the glasses are here. They are super super tiny. Like kid cups. I'm not sure you can tell here because there isn't really anything around to judge the scale. But I love that portion sizes are so small here. The bread is wonderful and light. The rice is perfect and sticky. The eggs are so so good. I love the food here.














Today we are going to be doing language classes and then some "lectures" though I think some of those are performances by people. I really hope so. That part is planned to be 6 hours long with only a twenty minute break in between ouch.

I'm going to post my schedule for the next couple days so you can imagine what I'm doing if you want to know. Also times when I might be free to chat if you're around!

Hugs and love,
Alyssa

Arrived!

Hi friends,

I made it to Japan! The flight was pretty easy. I didn't watch any in-flight films, which is unusual. There were some interesting ones playing too (Green Hornet, Going the Distance) that I would have wanted to see, but oh well. I mostly slept.

Oh, check out the in-flight veggie meal:














Ha this actually an after picture, I realize because the salad is gone. I was really hoping it would be noodles, but oh wells. It wasn't very tasty. I saved the fruit for later though, that was nice. I tried to keep well-hydrated, but that meant I had to use the bathroom several times. I think the lady next to me was really annoyed. :( She was such a sour-face.

Once we arrived at the airport, it was fairly easy figuring out where to go. Luckily there were several people on the plane who are also doing the program, so we went around the airport together trying to figure out things like where to go, how to get to the hotel, where to get rental phones, etc. I was just excited to get free internet in Narita, ha. Oh! And I talked a little in Japanese! We were trying to buy adapters for our plugs, and someone in our party asked the people behind the counter if they understood English in Japanese, and they said oh very little. So then I asked them in Japanese if they had adapters and that we were from America. Then I just went with the old tourist route and showed them the plug we wanted adapted. I think actually that they probably did understand enough English to help us, but were doing the Japanese modesty thing. Either way it was fun talking a little bit in Japanese.

When we got to the hotel, we checked in and sent baggage away to the host institutes. Then we had dinner at the hotel, a buffet-style place. OMG. Guess what they had? CURRY. They had the Japanese-style curry that I love love love. My Xavier friends know this. My first handle on AIM was ilovecurrytoo and that handle was born out of a random comment I made during a conversation we had had one lunch during high school. Meghan made some kind of comment about how much she liked potato bread, and in my head it made me think of potatoes and the only time I ate potatoes at that time was with Japanese-style curry which I love love love. And so I shouted out, I LOVE CURRY TOO. It was random and cute and funny and it was the first meal that greeted me when I landed here, so thanks friends. It was yummy and warmed my tummy and my heart.

I was so sleepy by 8:30. I just wanted to hold out until 9. I managed to stay awake until about 10. I slept until about 5 and got up at 6:30. I thought, hey that's cool. Maybe I won't be too jetlagged because I managed to get a decent amount of sleep. But then around 10:30 or so I got suuuper sleepy. Luckily we were on a bus at that point on our way to the orientation destination, so I was able to catnap.

I wanted to take a picture of the lunch we had here. I got a vegetarian meal which consisted of yummy pasta with fake meat. But I was so hungry I just ate it. Japanese presentation of meals is amazing, so I'll try to post pictures as they come.

I do have a picture of the place of the orientation and where we ate.














The restaurant is in that glass area. I'm sitting across from it right now. Doesn't it look so peaceful and serene?

Okay, I suppose that's all for now. Hugs and love for all!
Alyssa

Almost about to go

Hi friends,

Well I'm packed up (except for last minute things) and (almost) ready to go. The packing and getting ready experience was relatively painless and stress-free. I managed to do all my errands yesterday without too much trouble, though I didn't make it to a graduation party like I would have wanted to. I finished packing around 3. There were only some moments where the packing felt heavy and I wasn't sure I'd be able to fit everything into my suitcases, but somehow I managed to get it all in there. The cats were no help at all, but they're cute so they get away with it.

I had one small bout of sadness last night after packing and thinking about how I'm actually going to be flying across the ocean to a place where I know no one, even if it feels like a second home. Please contact me often! I'm going to miss you all so much. You all are the best and I'm so thankful that at least we have the internet, which makes 13000km feel like no distance at all.

Hugs and love,
Alyssa

Time difference

So Japan is for the most part a day ahead of the States. During Daylight Saving time, Japan is 16 hours ahead of California and Arizona, 13 hours ahead of New York for my East Coast pals, and I think 7 hours ahead for my Amsterdam friend.

I've found that the best talking times are later in the day for you people State-side starting around 5/6pm, which is morning/early day for me in Japan. So if you're wanting to talk with me, look out for me around those times! I'll try to sit on gchat so we can chatchat.

Here's a little website that will help you figure out how time in the US relates to time in Japan in case you are curious.
http://www.worldtimeserver.com/convert_time_in_JP.aspx

Schedule in Japan

For the first week that I'm in Japan, I'll be participating in orientation activities. After that I'll be moving to my host institution in Yokohama for the duration of the trip. Sometime in there, I plan to go to Kyoto for the ISRE conference and meet up with Louise and Alice! I'm also hoping to have a visitor later in the trip. ^^

Here are more details about the schedule in case you're bored one day and you think, hmm I wonder what Alyssa is up to?

Jun 14 - Tuesday - Narita, Tokyo (map)
Arrive at Narita
Go to International Garden Hotel Narita for registration

Jun 15 - Wednesday - Sokendai, Hayama (map)
(There area several possibilities for which location this is. I think it's the first one, closest to Tokyo.)
Move from Narita to Hayama (Sokendai) at Shonan Village Center
Opening ceremony
Reception

Jun 16 - Thursday - Sokendai, Hayama
Special lecture, Japanese language and culture classes

Jun 17 - Friday - Sokendai, Hayama
Japanese language classes
Poster presentations
Home-stay orientation

Jun 18 - Saturday and Jun 19 - Sunday - Sokendai, Hayama
Home-stay

Jun 20 - Monday - Sokendai, Hayama
Special lecture
Japanese language classes

Jun 21 - Tuesday - Move to host institutions
I'm going to be at Yokohama National University (map)

And from that time I'll be in Yokohama. On August 23 - Tuesday, we'll be moving to Tokyo and do report presentations and a farewell party. I leave on August 24 to return to the States. I'll post more info about that closer to the time.

Flight info to Tokyo

Here is my flight info going from San Francisco to Tokyo, in case anyone is interested in tracking my progress over the ocean.

13 Jun 11 - Monday
Delta 209 Boeing 767
LV: San Francisco 1:20 pm
AR: Tokyo/Narita 4:40 pm ARVL DATE: 14 Jun (San Francisco time: 14 Jun 12:40 am)

And I'm in seat 39A in case you want to picture me on the plane. I ordered the vegetarian Asian meal (please be noodles). Yumyum.