I didn't think they really existed. I thought that they were just a figment of 'Ally McBeal'. But apparently not.
Greg thought that he saw some randomly placed mexican wrestling masks in the middle of the skin care section of a supermarket...but it was just face bras...
If you look carefully you will see that there are ones designed for men too. nice.
Okay, so I re-started trying to take Chinese herbal medicine, mainly in the vain hope that it will help with my ever ailing eczema, and also to help appease my mother who is threatening to come over to Japan and force-feed it to me if I don't do it voluntarily. Anyway, this stuff was posted over from Malaysia (using some serious international coordination: mum [London, UK] phoning aunt [KuanTan, Malaysia] who went to pick up my prescription from the doctor (whom we had failed to get hold of for the second time whilst we were visiting KuanTan HERE) and then had to post it to me [Tokyo, Japan]. Fun. eh? MMMmmMmmMMmmm
Anyhooo, it's been sitting in the apartment for a while, on the account of me stopping the herbal medicine ingestion on account of 1. the lack of time to boil the stuff whilst doing my experiments, 2. the negative effects it seemed to be having on my poor little stomach - which seemed to be under undue stress at the time, and 3. It really doesn't taste that nice. I've gone through the whole week drinking one pack, twice in one day, every other day, and tonight, in a very uncharacteristic show of forward planning, i picked out a bag of medicine to boil for tomorrow morning and pour the contents into the nabe pot to boil; only to find that dust comes out of the bag (usually the stuff looks like a bunch of dried twigs). This is NOT a good sign.
There are definitely holes in the big 'herb' (I bet you its just garden compost material) which resembles a sheet of yellow card in a kind of pear shape. The holes aren't meant to be there, and the dust now looks suspicously like the left-over munchings of BUGS!!!! OooOOoOOoh.
One bag i pulled out was particularly affected by this holy disease, and I didn't have to look hard to see some very happy larvae, who looked suspiciously well-fed.
It's a beautiful, sunny autumn day and the leaves of the ginko trees on campus have turned a vibrant yellow (or golden - whatever you like to call it). So, here are a few photos from campus.
Okay I should really work out how to edit videos. anyone have any suggestions? I would love to have his little dance put to some music. or a commentary. I guess you should mute the sound on this video too, otherwise you just get the sounds of Greg playing mario kart...
That is Mr. Fish performing hypnoDANCE. We won him/her/it (well YOU try sexing a goldfish!) at a local matsuri (festival) in Tokyo. He likes to dance his little hypnotic dance in the hope that we will feed him till he explodes.
Something I found from a while back. It was just after the trip to Gifu for Lan's micro gravity tests and I was told to go to Midori to look at a old earthquake museum (story HERE)
Anyway the video is the scene from the window during a journey to Oogaki from Nagoya train station in Japan. beautiful paddy fields and mountains...and fresh air! (well maybe not inside the train
By the way, it's best to mute the sound. All you will get is static.
There is a strange creature living in the shaking table experiment area (and its not the mice who find it hilarious to use the control board of the shaking table machine as a toilet facility). It attacks my recording equipment and seems to have a particular fondness for the camcorder and displacement sensors. It weaves a sticky web, which looks suspiciously like gaffer tape... I call it the gaffer-spider.
Another month sees another Metro Manners installment. This time, I think they were hinting at last years overly raucous Yamanote line [山手線] - actually on JR and not on the TOkyo Metro - party which, until last year, used to take place yearly (Halloween time) on the said line. Basically, someone would organise a particular carriage and train, and people would turn up in costume with alcohol. The party carriage would do its loop of Tokyo and partying would be had.
This was all well and good until last year, where things got a little silly and (mostly drunk foreigners) over-enthusiastic/socially inept people managed to harrass innocent commuters and break stuff in the carriage. Anyway, the actions of some idiots managed to get JR very upset, and call in extra security to ward off any idea of a party on the Yamanote line this year. And it would seem that Tokyo Metro would like to point people in a similar direction.
It's GeoKanto time again! Last year, the Kanto [関東] regional gathering of geotechnical engineers was in Maebashi [前橋], my first Japanese [err... well, first ever] conference. This year, the conference was held at Nihondaigaku [日本大学], one of the largest Universities in Kanto, possibly Japan. They have a multitude of campuses across the Kanto region, one of which is not too far from Todai [東大] north of the Imperial Palace in Ochanomizu [御茶ノ水]. The one we were at was way out East on the Tozai line [東西線] near Funabashi [船橋].
Despite all the proceedings and 99% of the presentations being in Japanese, I and the other foreign students were presenting in English. So that was fun. I didn't understand any of the other presentations and mine was the only English one in my session, so I'm not sure anybody apart from the chairman (who was actually Yamada-san, our assistant professor), actually understood the presentation anyway.
I did notice that there were some undergraduates from other universities (Chuo uni [中央大学] I think) who were busy sniggering at any glitch in their fellow students presentation, which didn't seem particularly nice/helpful, but nevermind.
The campus seemed HUGE! and there was this, rather trendy looking building on the way to the venue. The weird tube shaped structure seemed to hold a oblong lounge. Nice design, but seemed like a bit of waste of space. On the other hand, It must be quite nice to design an interesting building outside of the confines of Tokyo.
Also, there were some very pretty Chrysanthemums just at the entrance to the campus. Again with the HUGE.
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