Day 5 - First Day at the Lab

I decided not to finish day 4, particularly because I'm exhausted and there was not very much to say (to sum it up, we went to this kickass fried-fondue-esque buffet for lunch, visited the old site of Osaka University, visited Osaka Castle, and went home). Just check out the pictures.

As for today, it was a day of firsts. I ate the first fish I've eaten since I was old enough to know that though there are starving kids in Africa, chances are we wouldn't be inviting them to dinner anyways. I also went into the lab for the first time, met Kuboi-Sensei for the first time, and rode a bike for the first time in a long time.

Kuboi-Sensei:

We all met Kuboi-Sensei this morning when he walked into the lab and basically said "hi, I am Ryoki Kuboi, I have meeting, bye." A bit later, Kuboi-Sensei came back into the lab to speak to Joey and I, where he proceeded to turn a 5 minute speech about what we'd be doing into a 30 minute philosophical soliloquy about fusion, and researching yourself. He also says "ne" at the end of every english sentence, which is a bit difficult to explain, but from my understanding it is the Japanese particle used when you ask a question but fully expect someone to agree with you. I like to think of it as the rhetorical question marker. It's kind of like saying "right?" at the end of your sentence. Most of what I gathered from the conversation was that we'd be doing a lot of work, and that fusion is good.

I also met some of the masters students in the lab, which was nice because they're pretty much the first Japanese people I've met that are around our age. It was a plus that they spoke very good english, and I wasted no time informing them that I like to drink. It's quite amazing how organized the entire lab is, and how much they utilize their space. No space is wasted, and even among all the chaos of the experiments and instruments in the lab, the entire place is very functional.

Not long after getting to the lab we went over to the international student office where we met Tanaka-Sensei, the head of the office. We chatted and hung out for a bit, scheduled our Japanese lessons, and then went to lunch.

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. Later on we got our bikes and one of the guys in the lab took us to dinner and showed us the route home. Dinner was uneventful, except I happened to look up at the TV and saw this contest where this one guy held a balloon to his mouth and the other guy had to blow the balloon up through the first guy's nose. It was pretty weird in an awesome kind of way.

The bike ride home was exhausting since for the most part it was uphill. Luckily it was pretty uneventful, aside from Joey running me off the sidewalk. I don't really know where the hell the phrase "it's just like riding a bike" came from, because either I never really knew how to ride one to begin with, or all the jackasses who say that haven't taken an 8 year hiatus from bike riding.