Friday, July 18, 2003
Konnichi wa!
Not too many days left that you will be reading that as my introduction. I only have 1 week left in Japan before I get to come back and enjoy heart-stopping burgers and fries, Atlanta summer smog and those charming Dawg fans. Oh, so much to look forward to! It's sort of sad that the best thing I can say about Georgia is that my wife is there. And, to be honest, she isn't right at this moment.
I've had a busy two days. Yesterday, I toured the labs for the non-oxide ceramics group at NIMS. And I finally uploaded the picture of Dr. Otane, the guy that showed me how to make a large, single CeB6 crystal from powdered material. This is the RF induction furnace we used to make it. If you caught the PS on the last post, it may finally make a little more sense. Do a Google search on 'electron beam emitters' and you may get a better clue. There is definitely some very interesting and groundbreaking research going on in materials science. We can make materials that we haven't found nature capable of yet. Granted, we do have a microcosmic reference frame with relation to the universe, hence the use of the word 'yet.'
Tuesday evening, I had dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant with Dr. Sekine, his daughter and some Meikei science teachers. The room we were in was very nice with a fancy chest on display. These chests were used after weddings to carry the brides belongings to her new home. I don't know the full story, but they may have also sometimes contained a dowry. I'll need a second opinion on that. I actually went to this restaurant just to observe the garden a few weeks ago. The place specializes in tofu dishes. Most Americans think tofu is a tasteless, gelatin-like, white blob of goo but tofu here in Japan is quite different. Here, there are actually many types, and in all cases, it seems that the way it is prepared makes all of the difference. For those that don't know, tofu is soy protein curd derived during the processing of soybeans. Every dish we had at this restaurant featured tofu prepared in some unique way. Even the dessert was tofu ice cream. That probably brings up images of ice cream with tofu chunks, but it was actually the typical texture of plain ice cream and quite delicious.
I also spent a good bit of time observing the last few classes at Meikei yesterday and today. Today was okay, but all of the science classes I could find were testing or watching a video. Their summer vacation starts next week in the school year that runs from April to March so not too much is going on before the 6 week vacation. I went to a class that Dr. Ahmadyar was substituting for. An English teacher is out from time to time with pregnancy related issues and they don't have a substitute system, so the other teachers fill in on their 'free periods.' It was an English conversation class so it was actually pretty easy to follow along for once. The real fun was yesterday, though. I went to a physics class taught by one of the two females in the science department. The students were making pinhole cameras and it was exciting to watch. Well, I guess in that picture they were developing, you can see some black cameras set up on the right. I was about to leave to see something else when the teacher brought me the materials and diagrams to make one myself. I couldn't be rude and not comply, and consider the fact that it looked really fun, I had to jump in. My actual photo turned out pretty badly. Exposure time was 20 minutes and I took one of the last remaining places in the window so my 'shot' wasn't bright enough to expose the film enough. I took a photo of some girls setting up their cameras. One of the few female photo-ops in a physics class!! And you can see what my pinhole camera saw! I'll bet you expected some girl-on-girl action after the intro to that one, you sick puppy!
Continuing with the tradtition of being treated to dinner, I had dinner tonight at a restaurant just 2 blocks from Ninomiya House. I was the guest of the school principal, the science division head, the director of student affairs and his wife and, of course, Dr. A. The meal was mixed Japanese fare, but the highlights were a beautiful dish of sashimi that you can glimpse in the photo of Mr. Kano, the director of student affairs, Japanese beef, the sweet bean jam dessert, and of course, the sake.
The last touristy bit I'll leave you with today is a short clip of students practicing kendo. Kendo is traditional Japanese sword fighting and competitors score points for head blows (they wear heavy masks), body blows, wrist hits and throat skewering. It's not as violent as it sounds, they use bamboo swords, but it actually sounds violent. The bamboo swords make a loud popping sound when a hit is delivered. If you saw the movie Kung Pow, the grilled mask guy in the field near the beginning of the movie was wearing a kendo helmet.
No, no! No punchey in facey!
Muddy-san
Not too many days left that you will be reading that as my introduction. I only have 1 week left in Japan before I get to come back and enjoy heart-stopping burgers and fries, Atlanta summer smog and those charming Dawg fans. Oh, so much to look forward to! It's sort of sad that the best thing I can say about Georgia is that my wife is there. And, to be honest, she isn't right at this moment.
I've had a busy two days. Yesterday, I toured the labs for the non-oxide ceramics group at NIMS. And I finally uploaded the picture of Dr. Otane, the guy that showed me how to make a large, single CeB6 crystal from powdered material. This is the RF induction furnace we used to make it. If you caught the PS on the last post, it may finally make a little more sense. Do a Google search on 'electron beam emitters' and you may get a better clue. There is definitely some very interesting and groundbreaking research going on in materials science. We can make materials that we haven't found nature capable of yet. Granted, we do have a microcosmic reference frame with relation to the universe, hence the use of the word 'yet.'
Tuesday evening, I had dinner at a nice Japanese restaurant with Dr. Sekine, his daughter and some Meikei science teachers. The room we were in was very nice with a fancy chest on display. These chests were used after weddings to carry the brides belongings to her new home. I don't know the full story, but they may have also sometimes contained a dowry. I'll need a second opinion on that. I actually went to this restaurant just to observe the garden a few weeks ago. The place specializes in tofu dishes. Most Americans think tofu is a tasteless, gelatin-like, white blob of goo but tofu here in Japan is quite different. Here, there are actually many types, and in all cases, it seems that the way it is prepared makes all of the difference. For those that don't know, tofu is soy protein curd derived during the processing of soybeans. Every dish we had at this restaurant featured tofu prepared in some unique way. Even the dessert was tofu ice cream. That probably brings up images of ice cream with tofu chunks, but it was actually the typical texture of plain ice cream and quite delicious.
I also spent a good bit of time observing the last few classes at Meikei yesterday and today. Today was okay, but all of the science classes I could find were testing or watching a video. Their summer vacation starts next week in the school year that runs from April to March so not too much is going on before the 6 week vacation. I went to a class that Dr. Ahmadyar was substituting for. An English teacher is out from time to time with pregnancy related issues and they don't have a substitute system, so the other teachers fill in on their 'free periods.' It was an English conversation class so it was actually pretty easy to follow along for once. The real fun was yesterday, though. I went to a physics class taught by one of the two females in the science department. The students were making pinhole cameras and it was exciting to watch. Well, I guess in that picture they were developing, you can see some black cameras set up on the right. I was about to leave to see something else when the teacher brought me the materials and diagrams to make one myself. I couldn't be rude and not comply, and consider the fact that it looked really fun, I had to jump in. My actual photo turned out pretty badly. Exposure time was 20 minutes and I took one of the last remaining places in the window so my 'shot' wasn't bright enough to expose the film enough. I took a photo of some girls setting up their cameras. One of the few female photo-ops in a physics class!! And you can see what my pinhole camera saw! I'll bet you expected some girl-on-girl action after the intro to that one, you sick puppy!
Continuing with the tradtition of being treated to dinner, I had dinner tonight at a restaurant just 2 blocks from Ninomiya House. I was the guest of the school principal, the science division head, the director of student affairs and his wife and, of course, Dr. A. The meal was mixed Japanese fare, but the highlights were a beautiful dish of sashimi that you can glimpse in the photo of Mr. Kano, the director of student affairs, Japanese beef, the sweet bean jam dessert, and of course, the sake.
The last touristy bit I'll leave you with today is a short clip of students practicing kendo. Kendo is traditional Japanese sword fighting and competitors score points for head blows (they wear heavy masks), body blows, wrist hits and throat skewering. It's not as violent as it sounds, they use bamboo swords, but it actually sounds violent. The bamboo swords make a loud popping sound when a hit is delivered. If you saw the movie Kung Pow, the grilled mask guy in the field near the beginning of the movie was wearing a kendo helmet.
No, no! No punchey in facey!
Muddy-san
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