Kurobe Dam - Day 1

Okay...it's taken me a while to post *this* one! I was just browsing through my DRAFTS....and it's been here for yonks...so just a quick summary of the photos that we took when we went on the Lab Field trip to Kurobe Dam 黒部ダム which I think was some time back in September...but i'm a bit hazy about it all now...Greg was definitely on his One Month 'Holiday' in Japan at the time....and it was still damned hot an humid in Japan...

We'd left from outside our Department quite early in the morning, and sat on the bus for the majority of the day...making the odd stop at service stations...we eventually got to our Ryokan 旅館 in the early afternoon, we off loaded and got our rooms sorted...

In the only girls room we found a lovely grasshopper thing...which everyone stared at for a good few minutes, before I deftly swept it out of the window (mainly because nobody else, including the boys who wondered into the room wondering what the squealing was about, would touch it...)

It was quite large...honest...

After pissing about in our rooms for a bit, we all decided to have a little walk around the Ryokan, to see what the area was like....it was very peaceful...majestic mountains and quite a large river flowing by...


What looked like a nice little 'beach' on the side of the river....the mass of metal is some sculpture type thing which makes up a view point along the river...we crossed a nice bridge to get to it...

A close up of the view point...

View down stream....from said view point.

On our wanders around town we came across a free foot spa...

...Greg soon realised that he was hanging out with a lot of engineering geeks, we'd stop and take photos of very weird things... usually walls holding back soil...and every bridge that we came across...on the other hand we just found it strange that he was taking pictures of 'scenery'.....

yay! more bridge....

mmmm......concreeeeteeeeee, aren't abutments exciting?

Anyway, we did eventually drag ourselves away from the dam (much to some peoples dissappointment - they'd wanted to go have a better look at the dam...) and head back to the ryokan for a big dinner with all the students and professors... some people proceeded to get very, very drunk on sake....several ppl were later found rather inebriated lying beside the foot spa in town...

Hurray for my frog!!!!

I am very very happy for my かえる!!!!

Mosquito tally II

... make that 3.

one just died after some serious contact with a pile of sand and my murderous, gloved, hands...
mwhahaha!

Mosquito tally...

2 down.

A small victory.
But considering many of their friends have been sipping my blood merrily...I think they are winning...

FINALLY ! Strain Gauges Arrive

I ordered these strain gauges over TWO months ago, well in advance of my stint on the shaking table, 40 of the little cretins arrived a month ago [3m cords]...I was a bit confused because I'd ordered 120 of the buggers, and to receive a small box of only 40 left me a bit bemused. Apparently, the rest would arrive 'later'...errr...how much later? 'a few weeks, I suppose'.

A few weeks MY ARSE!

I specifically ordered 'OFF-THE-SHELF' models, on the account that they would be quicker. A month MAX... and that was meant to be for the bespoke gauges, with the fancy coatings, full water-proofing, invisible force fields and all that jazz. 'OFF-THE-SHELF', 'Off-The-SHELF', 'Off the SHELF'. How hard can it possibly be to find something off a shelf, solder on lead wires (of standard length) and then post the bastards to me?!?! 2 months of pure and unadulterated Japanese inefficiency...fucking A! Well done.

The last 80 (with the more sensible and practical, 5m lead wires) arrived this very afternoon, into my grubby little paws. After, might I add, I'd just finished setting all my existing instrumentation into place in my last...yes last experiment of the current run. The next run starts after I return from Malaysia. In which time, I need to have pasted all 80 gauges on to their respective pipes, calibrated them, setup the logging files, analysed my data from the tests which I have just performed, written a short conference paper for the JGS... and all before HRH gets here.

On the bright-side, I'm busy. Which, I'm loving. I'm getting physical exercise from moving all the sand into and out of my box. I'm getting data. This is all fantabulous.

Right. I need to go to bed. stuff to do.

Procrastination

...must...tear self...away...from...interrrrrnet...

must...commence...preparations...for the ALMIGHTY one....(aka: mum)

mmmmm....bath scrubbing. Fun.

Plant Update

You'll be glad to hear that some of my plants are still alive, despite the killer summer heat. My pepper plants are in fact soldiering on and making me lots of tiny peppers.


I've even added to the colony, Mr. Tomato Plant and Miss. Cherry Tomato (no relation) have also been doing well. Maybe one day they will have their own babies for me to devour. Mwhahahaha!

Monster Apples

Following from the Green Market thing I wrote about a while (OK! so it was ages ago...) I would like to bring you: MONSTER apples.

No ordinary apples could be *this* big...they must be from Mars...possibly Pluto (but that isn't even considered a planet anymore is it?)

I feel it only fitting to sacrifice these monstrosities to some kind of God of Desserts, by slowly removing their skin with a strange, but specially designed instrument of vegetable and fruit torture. Then when I've removed all their skin, they shall be hacked into pieces mixed with spices and sugar. Their raw and spicy flesh shall then be buried under some kind of flour, solidified vegetable oil, sugar mix. THEN, only then, shall they be heated indirectly in some metal box of an inferno. After a couple hours of that, I'll eat them. HA! 'Ha' I say....

FujiQ Highland [富士急ハイランド]

...Oh bugger.

Was the main thought going through my little grey cell (there was only one left as the other 3 had inexplicably left on some kind of vacation) as I plummeted at high speed backwards towards the ground...which would have been fine, I guess, if the large contraption which was now in full control of my life hadn't-midfall- decided that the best thing to do was to swivel my seat to get a better view of what felt like impending doom.

Just a few moments ago, the ride had trundled suspiciously peacefully along the track facing us backwards up the big slope to the top of the ride, facing us towards the majestic mountain scenery that surrounded the amusement park. I had been thinking calm happy thoughts, trying to quell the queezy sensation which had been lurking in the depths of my stomach while I had been queuing, and taking nice deep breaths (so that I could potentially scream louder, without initiating some kind of heart attack), and forcing myself to enjoy the view.

the very tall ramp to the start of the ride. it really is VERY tall...

The ride was amazing, but the people who designed the thing had some really sadistic moments, where; as you were entering at the top of a swooping loop, head first with your body facing to the outside of the loop so that you could only see a blurr of sky, the seats would then swivel you to face downwards as you came into the turn. THAT really made my stomach and grey cell go something along the lines of: 'ohnonononononoNO!'.

one of the many swoopy bits... (these were nice..)

You can tell it's a good roller coaster when your legs are all wobbly when you try and walk cooly to the exit. It definitely did something weird to my blood circulation. Not only was I impressed by the ride experience (minus the queuing the irratating song that played for the entire hour we waited for the ride ...eejanaika eejanaika eejnaikaaaaaa [ええじゃないか]! ARGH!).

Anyway, it was totally the best roller coaster I have ever been on... Oblivion scared the crap out of me, but only at the point where they make you look into the abyss for what feels like a disturbingly long time...but Air, was very relaxing, gentle ride with no: ohnonononononoNO moments...just the general ahhhhhhhhhhhh... feeling.

Greg and I also spent a lot of the time after contemplating how they made the seats swivel around...we figured that it was the cunning second rail controlling it....very cunning indeed.

We also did the speedy ride called DodonPA [ドドンパ]! Which had a horrible looking hump of doom, and high speed...although it was over all too quickly because it was such a fast ride...the start was very nice though, like being catapulted out of a tunnel...on the bright side the theme song was less irritating.

The hump of doom on DodonPA

A second view of part of DodonPA [ドドンパ] with the ferris wheel and Mt. Fuji in the background.

We also did Tsunami, which had a VERY big wave (funnily enough). They really meant it when they said you WILL get wet. Greg and I were the only people in our ride to NOT buy a plastic rain coat...much to the concern of the mother and son behind us who very shyly asked if we knew that we'd get drenched...we just beamed back and said YES! - it was what we wanted...it was Soooo damned hot!

And yes we were completely soaked...mind you, so did a few people not even on the ride.

We had lunch on the ferris wheel, cycled some little bicycle contraption on an overhead track, a stupid shooting aliens ride - which was utterly pants, not only was the ride crap, but the guns you were meant to use to 'shoot' aliens were useless...hence my score of 1, failed to escape from a haunted house, tried the highest roller coaster; Fujiyama - which would have been a very good ride, HAD it had some neck restraint going on. I felt rather Ragdoll like, and so my neck hurt after...Big swings on chains, a ride in small clouds with hamsters, a vicious Mad Mouse ride which looked very small and tame but really threw you about AND a carousel.

The carousel and eejanaika [ええじゃないか] we did twice each, because they were just soooo good.

Don't be scared Greg! It will be over soon...

...more Candy Floss

Candy Floss Contest 2:
It would seem that I don't need to write about it, because Greg has:
candy floss contest part 2