May 31, 2008

Tokyo (JAPAN)

Soccer practice was scheduled at 10:00 a.m. this morning, and despite heavy rainfall, it is never cancelled. So, after eating a king's breakfast with Kumagai-san, I rode the trains to Ookayama campus to meet the TAIKAI soccer team (サッカー大会). Practice was somewhat light today since there is an important match tomorrow, but that didn't make it any more enjoyable with the chilly weather and wet playing conditions. I have yet to hear a single person complain in Japan (seriously!), so I went with the flow and がんばってed all the while. GANBATTE is a Japanese word meaning "work hard," but it carries a lot more weight than the English equivalent, so I have adopted it into my English vocabulary (hence the use of the "-ed" ending). Actually, がんばって is very similar to the Chinese JIA YOU (加油) meaning "add oil."

Rather than returning home after practice, I showered and changed into a fresh pair of clothes so I could work at the laboratory. First on the agenda was helping another graduate student, Robert Kloepper (Germany), put the final grammatical touches on his conference paper in preparation for a trip to Belgium. He is one of the most brilliant engineering students I have ever met (which is saying something because I have all six continents and most of the major universities covered). I was hardly surprised at the complexity of his findings, which are related to bettering a specific technique for modeling dynamic systems.

Afterward, I did some more work with my MATLAB programs, inching ever-closer to producing presentable results. I won't talk much about this process until it is completed because it hardly interests me, so there is ZERO chance anyone else cares.

What was interesting was when, at 2:30 p.m., Okuma-sensei ("sensei" means professor, and Okuma means "big bear") called us into his office and served freshly ground Japanese coffee. His "door is always open," so to speak, but today there was real purpose behind his joviality as he was being featured on Japan's national broadcasting network, NHK. Six of us sat at a table in his office watching a 60" jumbo-sized plasma television while he was featured on a discussion panel for improving the safety for mother's transporting children on bicycles.

Using simple demonstrations that everyone could understand, such as a spinning top (emphasizing the gyroscopic effect), he answered questions about the inherent dangers for small children mounted on bicycles. His "expert opinions" were supplemented by government facts, testing of prototype designs for new bicycles, and the obligatory movie actress/mother offering her input to the discussion. I could not keep up with much of what was being said (it was all in Japanese), but one thing I did catch were the ridiculous striped-socks Okuma-sensei was wearing! I pointed them out to everyone, and we all broke out laughing because it was all we noticed afterward. Fortunately, my professor does not wear his pride on his sleeve. (He later confessed that many people called him and sent him emails about the very same thing, so it was good that I prepared him for the playful abuse.)

I hung around the laboratory until 5:30 p.m., transitioning my efforts from research to studying Japanese. However, I had a dinner engagement with Fumiko Shogase, a Japanese girl who studies at Haverford University in Pennsylvania, and we met at Gotanda Station (五反田駅) at 6:30 p.m. She only recently returned to Tokyo, so knowing she would be craving Japanese food I took her to a great OKONOMIYAKI (お好み焼き) restaurant introduced to me by Takumi Kumagai. Okonomiyaki, which is a kind of Japanese pancake, wasn't the only specialty dish on the menu: it shares the spotlight with MONJAYAKI (もんじゃ焼き), a concoction that bears a startling resemblance to vomit (see below).

All of the food mentioned above is cooked on the pan in the middle of the table, although the proprietor of the restaurant frequently comes around to make sure everything is cooking properly. I have tried chatting with her on numerous occasions, but her Japanese is always in rapid-fire mode. The conversational sequences go something like this:

I say something... She replies with no fewer than 100 words per breath... I scratch my head, hopelessly trying to figure out what she just said. Eventually, I say something like, "One more time, but slowly please"... She pays no mind, and repeats herself equally as fast... I smile... She smiles... (Awkward silence)... She checks on the food, and then walks away to spare me further embarrassment... Writing this makes me wonder why I like the restaurant, and the unaccommodating woman, so much.

After dinner, I walked Fumiko back to Shinagawa Station so she could catch her train home. The story of how we came to know each other is actually somewhat interesting: we met while traveling in China nearly one year ago. I had recently finished my research work for the National Science Foundation and was backpacking overland from Beijing to Singapore. Fumiko had taken part in a summer volunteer program for China's under-privileged youth, and was doing some touring before heading back to the United States. Being a lone traveler, I naturally hooked up with the group of 10 or so Americans for a night out in the backpacker's haven of Yangshuo. My old travelogue from the day can be accessed here, and a blurred picture of Fumiko can be seen in the last picture on the page. However, since that picture is so obviously useless, I will ask her permission to steal one from Facebook.

Afterward, it was back to the house where Kumagai-sensei, my KYOIKU MAMA (教育ママ, or study-minded mother), took over my Japanese lessons. It is in such ways that my collection of TANGO CHOU (単語帳, or vocabulary flash cards) now number in the quadruple digits!