Seasons Greetings

Merry Christmas!


I celebrated this Christmas day in a less than normal way; by going on a field trip to the Kawasaki [川崎市]area of Tokyo (it's not too far from Haneda Airport [羽田空港]) - to try and get a feel for the area which I shall apparently be helping with some dynamic modelling for Tokyo Gas....anyway, I was looking for evidence of subsidence or liquefaction...which reminds me: I should really write up about what I saw before I forget...

It looked very flat. Everywhere: FLAT. very little in the way of exciting cracked buildings or uneven land or suspicious puddles. I was a little bit dissappointed. HOWEVER, when I was tottering about on my own, I was accosted by a young mother on a bike, a bike which contained one small child on the basket on the handlebars and another small child on the seat behind her...she asked if I knew where some park was....and as it happened I had a whole district map in my hand (so that I would have an idea of what I was meant to be looking at). I immediately thrust it out at her (with a very proud grin on my face) pointed, to roughly where we were and what I assumed the park that she was looking for. Which, seemed to make her quite happy.

The end.

Happy Christmas...

hello! we're your new neighbours!

So, apparently, in Japan, when you move into a new apartment/house/place you go and introduce yourself to your new neighbours with a present...SO...a good month of living in our new place I finally got around to baking a chocolate cake (in our swanky but not-quite-so-new-anymore oven/grill/microwave). Greg cut the cake, and then we wrapped it and tied a little bow around it, ready to offer to our new neighbours, some of whom we've already run into in the entrance or lift...
(yes, it's very exciting...we have a lift - very useful for moving in...)

We first went up to the 6th floor and nervously pressed the door bell. A little old man tottered to the door and gave me and Greg a look of 'and?......' Possibly because I was standing there with a plate full of weird pink triangles on a plate in my outstretched arms and a huge nervous grin on my face.

We tried to explain that we were the new neighbours living on the 5th floor, and would he like some cake. Unfortunately, he kind of misunderstood my cake gesture and tried to take the whole plate. An awkward moment ensued...where I knee-jerked and retracted the proffered plate and said errr.....NO...ONE* cake.... anyway, after we'd exhausted all our Japanese, by describing that we were from England and France, and didn't speak much Japanese....we were left in a little awkward position where we tried to escape from their doorway as gracefully as possible.

We then moved on to the 2nd floor. No one. 3rd floor: a lady answers the intercom, but a man comes to the door (hmmmmmm...) anyway, we offer cake. The lady who I guess answered the phone is hiding behind the guy I guess is her husband and staring at us, but not trying to attract attention... He asks where we are from....and then asks Greg: 'Can you speak English?' to which Greg replies: 'Yes!'. Hurray! So, yeah, his English isn't too bad. With that over we try their neighbour: nothing. 4th floor: nothing. Which doesn't bother Greg in the slightest; because he has more cake now.


*[one or none!]

Christmas Dinner - PART II

At home. not as sexy as the one in Roppongi [六本木] but food all the same.

Actually, not only did I manage to cook a pseudo Christmas dinner, but also managed to meet up with my cousin who I have not seen since I was probably about 11years old. Who happened to be holidaying in Tokyo....apparently, something she does quite often.... which was cool. We kinda caught up, and tried to find an entrance to a park, which was like a fortress!!!! even tried some rock-salt candy. No, it's not very nice. and Yes, it is very salty.

So, dinner. Managed to locate a whole chicken. No sprouts (sad....I actually like sprouts), we had cauliflower and carrots instead. Some roast peppers and aubergines, roast potatoes, and gravy. Even made the effort to make some mulled wine. Which was not as good as I'd hoped....but it tasted much better today after it had some time to soak up some more of the spice.

Christmas Dinner - PART I

On the eve of Christmas eve we toddled down to the shiny lights of Roppongi [六本木] we headed towards the Mori Towers and then into L'atelier (L'Atelier de Joel Robuchon), a two Michelin star restaurant. It had a great atmosphere, the Japanese waiters all spoke French (and some English) and were not intimidating at all, being very friendly and attentive. The decor was a cool black and red, with various bottles and jars full with food for colour.

Greg's starter: cous cous, with a mango chukney

My starter: Avocado and tomato

I then went onto have a non-dairy option they threw together for me of foie grois ravioli, in a consume (otherwise known as soup) . I really can't remember what Greg had at this point (I was too preoccupied..) maybe he'll tell me when he gets back from his business trip...

Greg's second course: Duck in a cheesy potatoey bake (it wasn't described as badly as this on the menu)

My second course: Fishy on some (very tastily cooked) potatoes

Palate cleaning lime sherbet with fruit

My dessert [also not exactly on the menu - but non-dairy...thus wayway friendly]: Pear Sorbet (in a cylinder of ice) with berry fruits

Greg's prepped and ready for his dessert...

some dairy thing, I'm not allowed to eat...

...then it's gone!

After our little culinary experience, we then headed to Shibuya to watch 'Once' ...a beautiful movie....with awesome music.

Custard and Meringue

A first for several things this week: home made custard and home made meringues... MMmmmMMmmMmmmMmmmmmmm *sugar*!

Made some apple crumble and felt the need for custard, so looked up a recipe online....and tried to make it with soya milk....it wasn't too bad, but I did manage to put too much sugar in it (TOO MUCH SUGAR?!?!?!? surely that isn't possible wayway?! - ohhhh but it is.)

Anyway, with the left over egg whites I felt the need to make some meringue: for the first time. So, with the help of Benny and Greg we had a go. Luckily, a friend had donated a electric whisk when we had moved in...which took the strain off our hands a bit. It was all going okay until we baked them, and they refused to crispen up :( boooooooooo! but it didn't really matter, because we ate it all anyway.

Tasty.

プチプチ[bubble packing/wrap]

Just in case you'd forgotten about pointless pocket toys from Bandai (the people who brought you Tamagochi - たまごち) they recently brought out something exploring the true bounds of the ultimately pointless. A game called プチプチ or puchi-puchi.


You know that great packing medium; bubble wrap? well...this little thing simulates the tactile sensation and recreates the audio experience of popping the stuff over and over again. And, just in case that wasn't good enough for you; for every hundredth 'pop' you get a random sound, as a kind of prize.

As it says on the packaging: 'you just can't stop...' [プチプチはやめられない]

You can watch their inspirational promo video here.

(ps. we now have two プチプチ's at home....it's not my fault: they were a housewarming gift....)

A change of address

Okay, so I've been a bit quiet lately...had a bit of a manic month with some crazy experimentation, combined with flat hunting in a foreign language, infused with Japanese Landlords general distrust of foreigners*.

*I'll tell you all about it later...when I've recovered from all this craziness

The gist of it is; we've finally moved house/flat/apartment/shoebox. It's a very nice area, quiet residential, with a 24hr supermarket about 2mins down the road, a bus route running outside our door, 7mins from the Metro, and most importantly (for me) cycling distance from Uni ..... *ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.....* saves me about 1 and a half hours a day....bliss.

We^ hired a van for the 23rd of Nov (a national holiday) and had spent the past week packing all the stuff in my room into boxes that we had gotten from the local supermarket. After filling two boxes it started to dawn on me (and Greg) how much crap I had managed to collect in a year.

^I say 'we', what I mean is that a very VERY nice friend of ours - AMY - asked an even nicer friend of hers - K1 - to use his superior Japanese skills to hire a van and then use his fantastic driving skills (he has his Korean Driving license converted to be used in Japan) to drive us and my junk through Tokyo.

It was a hectic day, we had to drive from Odaiba お台場　to Shinagawa　品川, to pick up a load of stuff from a friend who was moving out of Japan and thus donating us a fridge, washing machine, furniture, spare futon and most of the contents of her flat. THEN we were on to Shirakonadai 白金台　to pick up a sofa and some more furniture from Annalisa's apartment. This completely filled the van, so we headed to the new flat to wait for Greg who had to go off to the estate agents to sign the contract before we got to Annalisas...K1 and I carried on to drive to the new appartment, and had some lunch waiting for Greg to finish the formalities at the estate agents: he was apparently quite stuck, as it was all in japanese, until Rei turned up and saved the day...

We got the call from Greg, and then went to pick him up at the station, we also got hold of some lunch for Greg while we waited for him at the station.

Now armed with the keys to the flat (only one - because they hadn't changed the locks yet) we started to unload...we'd unloaded a couple of things and then the van started moving by it's own accord and slowly started to roll towards another parked van! I squealed from the back of the van and Greg jumped in to the front to pull on the hand brake...which was all rather exciting. Basically, we tried to get all the stuff from the van to the lift, then just dumped it in the flat. We then got back in the van to head back to Odaiba to pick up all my stuff still in my room (some of which still needed to be packed)

....it was getting late, and we were trying to wedge my bike into the van....we ended up killing most of my poor plants in the process...then we were back on the road (although I did manage to get us lost - I have NO idea how). We were a bit late in unpacking the second van load, but we did manage to get it all done, leaving me and Greg to move all the boxes up to our apartment...

There were a lot of boxes...

Sgt. Podge

what a great name for a cat...

...found this story about a cat who's been disappearing daily for some feline adventures... click HERE

my first conference...

Was last Thursday, the 1st of November, at a place called Maebashi [前橋]. It was a JGS conference for all the geotechnical engineers in the Kanto province [関東], where the idea was to show everyone else what kind of research is going on in each field.

The conference started on the 31st of Oct, and ended on the 1st of November. There were 3 different presentation rooms, with each presentation + questions lasting 10mins... so, it was quick. I put myself down for a 5min presentation, just so that I could get out of there quicker...

Anyhoo, I'd written the paper whilst in Malaysia, which was fun. And I still hadn't gotten around to writing the presentation... nor was I entirely sure that what I wrote made any sense now. Obviously, it made *some* sense at the time, just that now it made less sense. Which was bad.

SO. There I was dressed up in IRONED trousers and a SHIRT [god forbid] looking like a pillock, and I headed with my laptop to somewhere outside of Tokyo...starting from Shinbashi station [新橋] I then went to Tokyo station [東京] and got on the Shinkansen [新幹線] to Takasaki [高崎] THEN on to a local train to Shinmaebashi [新前橋]. I got to the station and took the first sensible exit out of the station (with a vague recollection of the map - which looked very easy to get to the hall - you know, walk straight for two blocks and it's on your left....that kind of thing]. Anyway, I walked long enough to find out that it didn't look anything like the map. So I wondered in to what looked like a reception for a small University...and asked the people at the reception if they knew where the place was; showing them a very badly written name of the place I was trying to get to, which I copied off the internet. Worryingly, they had never heard of the place, and as this looked like a very small town, it was NOT a good sign. I was relieved to hear that I was at least a vaguely the right address. Just on the wrong side of the station. SO. I tottered back over from whence I came, made my way over the bridge over the train tracks... and now I was on the right side of the railway, the place was much easier to find.

So, I've managed to get to the right building, and following the signs in kanji, I go upstairs to register, which is a bit of a linguistic trauma, as they don't speak English... This resulted in a lot of giggling, which then descended (much to my concern that I had done something wrong) into laughter from the ladies that were trying to 'help' me. So, I do with pointing at my name on the list. I then get a goody bag containing the papers of the conference and a name tag holder thing... and only after seeing a couple of people, do I realise that I'm meant to write my name and University on it...

I loiter until the session before my session finishes, and then sneak into the hall. I see my Lab mates, who blank me... probably busy...

I manage to load up my presentation to the laptop, and then we head for lunch. Which was traumatic....well, traumatic for Ivan, who was displeased with the service at the canteen on the ground floor...and then even more agitated when they finally did serve him and told him there was no more of what he wanted.

When lunch was over, I went back to the presentation room to dissolve slowly in a chair... waiting for my turn. I tried to listen to the other presentations, but it was a bit hard, as they were in Japanese. So, I just looked at the pictures and guessed.. occasionally, opening my electronic dictionary to translate the odd word. Then, 'OOoooOooooh' my turn... So, I attempt to saunter up to the podium...well, laptop. Click on the right document (it's the only one in English) and then START....errrrr....well I would have done IF I could find the start presentation button, which definitely wasn't in the usual place... and everything else was in Japanese!!! I then, stood there like a lemon, waving the mouse about hoping that something would happen...nothing. Then one of the ladies sitting near the front popped up to save me.

I waffled on for 5mins. Everyone looked very confused...probably the same look that I had on my face during the Japanese presentations. Then, questions. From one person (better than none - which usually happens for English presentations)...which I answered with NO skill... again reiterating my 'lemon' status.

After attempting to listen to the rest of the presentations, I then promptly left to try and escape back to Tokyo. Not before bumping into my Professor; who didn't seem too dissapointed at my performance... in fact he seemed very happy. But pointed out 2 things:
1. I had apparently said that I was a 'Assistant Researcher' on my title page; on account of copy and pasting some kanji...OOooops
2. Gals stands for Galileo and hence demands a capital G. I never knew that.

Anyway, I'm still alive. Which is good for me and bad for you.

Note to self

Trying to find an apartment in Tokyo, is not the most fun, on the account of the demand of having a decent grasp of the language.... if this is missing, attempting to find an apartment will lead to a headache...

More on this later... have to move some sand today...