The whole group took bikes (rentals, they came with the house!) to the campus and got lost a bunch of times on the way. We took the wrong map (the realtors left a map of how to get to campus, along with many other helpful laminated posters) but managed to meet Prof. Lindeman at the campus. The bike ride was about half an hour long which isn't bad, but we currently have found a much quicker route. The original route we took contained a lot of hills, and the combination of the oppressive sun and my lack of exercise prior to a physically exhausting bike ride almost made me black out. At one point, I had to stop and gasp for air while everything got fuzzy around me. After a few minutes and a trip to a nearby vending machine to get water, I was back on the bike. I have not had the same experience since then, and I am actually greatly enjoying the morning and evening commute.
At the Toyonaka campus, we walked around with Prof. Lindeman for a bit, beginning our walk by grabbing drinks at the vending machines near the Cybermedia Center where we will be situated. I got a Calpis Soda, which is like carbonated yogurt. It sounds odd but is actually pretty tasty, especially since it doesn't leave that sticky feeling in your throat like most American soft drinks. I also learned that Coca Cola made in Japan does not have high fructose corn syrup in it like it does in America; instead, they just use pure sugar.
After getting an informal tour from Prof. Lindeman, we went up to the 5th floor of the Cybermedia Center and met Kiyokawa-sensei, who has been very helpful in our preparation to come to Japan. Kiyokawa-sensei gave us a brief tour of the lab and we met some of the lab students on the way.We then went down to the cafeteria to get lunch with the students. I had some rice and Japanese fried chicken pieces with bottled green tea. The chicken is pretty tasty and I guess it's their version of chicken nuggets. Honestly, they taste like really good Kowloon chicken fingers in ball form. I'll have to take a picture next time I get them. The students gave us a more formal tour of the campus, telling us where we can buy different things, how to use the library, and where to get money from an ATM (which accepts my card!). We didn't stay much longer after the tour, but we did pick out where we wanted to sit. Ultimately, everyone but one ended up in the same room, so I guess it didn't matter that Khoa and I called dibs on the room with all the games set up.
Since we still had half a day to spend, Prof. Lindeman took us on the monorail to a small shopping plaza off the Senri-Chuo stop. There, we saw our first McDonald's and looked for some more stuff for the house. Although we didn't find much, we did go into a Target-like store that had a grocery store built in it and found a kid's arcade which had lots of Pokémon stuff for me to photograph. After taking the monorail back, we grabbed our bikes from the university and biked to a Wal-mart-type store to buy what we needed for the house. With some more household items, we biked home. Over dinner, we discussed how we were getting to campus on Friday; some of us wanted to walk and some waked to bike. There was also talk of buying a used Japanese Wii so we could play Brawl and just to have a console in our 4-month home. Shortly after dinner, we all went to sleep, exhausted as usual.* * *
June 18th, 2010: I still can't really believe I'm in Japan! It doesn't seem too strange, but it's still pretty exciting.
Today, we woke up early and biked to campus. Five of us took our bikes and two walked to campus. Taking the main road, the trip took about 20 minutes, which was a decent amount shorter than the first time when we got lost. In the lab, we pretty much sat around for a while not doing much, although we did get set up on the wireless. We met with Prof. Lindeman and talked about our MQP, which was initially the "Cyber Clock" idea. Prof. Lindeman's initial idea was that there would be a big LCD display at OU and WPI that displayed the time in a unique way, most likely through user-generated content. Through our discussion though, it seemed like we wanted to do something more substantial.
We ate lunch at the cafeteria again after our meeting, and when we got back to the lab we mainly just hung out with Prof. Lindeman's second daughter, Momoko (age 7). A long period of time went by where we didn't accomplish much, and we left campus around 5:00PM. Unfortunately, it had started raining and we had to bike home in the rain. It wasn't too bad, besides the fact that our clothes were drenched and we couldn't see for most of the ride home. Luckily, we were able to get dinner at the bento place down the street so we wouldn't have to prepare a meal. While eating, we watched some Japanese TV and it was everything we could have hoped. Nothing made sense and that is why it was enjoyable. I learned that the Pokémon Sunday show is on every Sunday morning at 7:30AM, so I'll have to wake up early some time and find out what channel it's on.
(Check out all the photos from 6/16/10 to 6/18/10 here!)
For our first weekend trip, we decided to go to Nippombashi, also known as Den Den Town. Den Den Town consists of a ton of different electronics, comic book, and other types of shops and is a haven for anyone who's into Japanese culture. We figured we'd be able to easily find a used Wii and a copy of Brawl there, and it would be a great place to just walk and look around.(Next time, I will recount our trip to Nippombashi. Stay tuned for my next blog post, "Adventures in Den Den Town!")
> To Be Continued...
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