Monday was the last day of language lessons and orientation with our big group at the Shonan Village Center. For our last night of orientation, we went out as a big rowdy group to Zushi city for beers, sake, and shoju, which was really fun! I’m sure we looked like quite a herd of animals to everyone on the bus and while walking around the streets of the city aimlessly. On Tuesday morning after breakfast we got on a bus to the Tokyo train station.
The Okazaki 4 (David, Bill, Kevin, and myself) had tickets for a 12:33 bullet train (shinkansen) and we spent the late morning at a Starbucks in the train station. Most of the signs are in English so it was pretty easy to find our way around the station and to the correct platform. Unlike Europe, the train doors are only open for a few minutes before the train departs. The train came to the platform around 12:15 and the train was cleaned until 12:28, when the doors were open for only 5 minutes before a swift departure. The train moved a bit slowly out of the city but once we got to the country side we flew. I love taking the train; it’s so relaxing and quiet and you don’t have to wait for the seatbelt sign to turn off before moving about the cabin. The shinkansen ride was 1.5 hours, then we connected to our Okazaki connecting train in Toyohashi. The regional train ride was short (less than 20 minutes) and we were in Okazaki by 2:40.
My host researcher (Dr. Iguchi), the professor I’ll be directly working under (Dr. Ogino), and graduate student Toyodo-san picked me up from the train station with my large checked bag that I had shipped from the first hotel directly to Okazaki. They already had my apartment key and helped me carry my bags to my room. More about my amazing room later…After dropping off my stuff we went to the lab to talk with Dr. Iguchi and Dr. Ogino for a while about the project and basic Okazaki/lab things to know. Dr. Ogino also showed me where the fish are kept and presented some of her previous data. I’m really excited to learn a new method for my project and I think this summer will be very productive.
Later that evening, some of the lab members took me to the mall to get some food and some lab shoes (no street shoes are allowed in the building). The mall is pretty awesome: it has a nice grocery store, a movie theater, lots of restaurants (fast food and sit down), a nice department store, and lots of little mall-type stores. I got some basic groceries for the next couple of days, some shoes for the lab, and then we had dinner together at an udon restaurant. That night I unpacked my things and got settled in to my new apartment.
My apartment building is less than a year old and was specifically made for visiting researchers who come to one of the research institutes in Okazaki for an extended period of time. My apartment is absolutely AMAZING! I have a nice kitchen (I probably won’t use it to cook but maybe I’ll have some friends over who know how to!), nice desk and a closet area, and even a small balcony. But…the bathroom is really where the money’s at. I have my OWN washer and drier (woohoo!), a huge sink with lots of storage and shelves, and a Japanese style bath. The Japanese bath is one of my new favorite things about living in this country so far. The room has a plastic floor and a drain with a mirror, shelves for shampoo/soap, and a nozzle showerhead. First you rinse yourself off with water, then get into the tub to relax for a few minutes, then back out to finish washing your hair, scrubbing with soap, etc. Then you get to sit in a nice hot bath and relax! Not to mention you get to spray water all over the floor, which is always fun. The only bad part is that I don’t have wireless internet; I may be able to get LAN set up but I’ll have to ask someone else who’s living there to see if they got it to work. Other than that everything is awesome!
So after I got settled in to my apartment, how did I spent my first official day in the lab? On a trip to Lake Hamana, of course! Dr. Ogino told me about the trip a couple of weeks ago, and I was more than willing to hang out with the members of the lab before getting to work J. We checked out a cool cave and then relaxed at a hotel on the lake. One of the popular things to do at these types of hotels is to go to the onsen. Before dinner, I went with two females from the lab to the onsen to shower and relax. The onsen is a hot spring where you do a similar routine to the Japanese style bath, except for just being by yourself you’re in a room with other naked women. Kind of weird to sit naked next to someone you’re going to work with, but when in Rome…It was actually really relaxing and didn’t feel weird at all. After the onsen we had Japanese curry dinner with everyone (including Iguchi-sensei) and then began the drink fest. There was a ton of sake, shoju, wine and beer. I ended up drinking a little bit of everything while chatting up my summer lab mates, eventually staying up until 3am before finally heading off to bed.
The day started pretty quickly, however, and by 7:45 I was out the door and on to a few more sightseeing trips before heading back to Okazaki. We went to the beach/sand dune area and saw the Pacific Ocean and some surfers, then went to a really cool castle before having an unagi (eel) lunch. I napped on the drive back to the lab and am now doing a few things around here before heading home to see if I can get a gym membership, a bike, and some kendo classes.
Needless to say this week has been a bit crazy but also a lot of fun. I’m looking forward to getting into my summer routine of working, extracurricular activities, and sightseeing. This weekend I may try to go to a nearby town for sightseeing (Inuyama or Nagoya) or may go on a hiking trip in the nearby hills. There hasn’t been any rain here so far but it has been getting hot. Summer time is here!
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