Day 6 - Get Fucked Up

To quote Dr. Williams at lunch the other day:

"I mean how can you not like this? See if you take two things that are awesome by themselves and put them together, how can it be anything other than awesome?"

Take sake bombs for example. Sake is awesome. Beer is awesome. Thus, sake bombs are awesome. It doesn't work for everything though. For example special things are awesome, and the olympics are pretty awesome, but I wouldn't call the Special Olympics a winning combination. Same thing with the WNBA. I mean women are awesome, basketball is awesome, but womens' basketball is pretty unawesome. Oh and if anyone I've offended wants to pick a fight, bring it on. I never turn down a fight I know I'll win.

Day 6 (yesterday at this point) was my second day in the lab. I decided not to ride my bike, partly because Tim hadn't gotten his yet, but mainly because I hated every second of the experience, so we walked to the train station. It was fucking hot out and the huge hill we have to walk up to get to the lab didn't help things. I got to the lab and set up my computer at my shiny new desk and began reading/correcting papers.

At about noon we went to go get lunch. The Japanese won't eat until everyone's at the table and they can say Itadakimasu, which is kind of like their grace I guess. I've felt like an idiot a few times because I tend to sit down and start eating before I realize that everyone's looking at me funny. Yesterday I just felt kinda bad because it took me forever to get my food and everyone was sitting there being hungry. After lunch we came back to the lab where I continued to try reading those papers.

At some point some of the undergraduate students came to the lab and I met Ena-san and this other girl whose name I forgot. When people go on trips they'll bring back a "souvenir" which is a lot of times just a pastry or sweet or something, so Ena-san brought back these small cookie things with cream inside of them that were Oishii (delicious)! A bit later me Joey and Claire were sitting around and this sweaty disheveled kid walks in panting. We thought there was a fire or something, but turned out he just wanted to introduce himself (Matsumoto-san). He mentioned he was very into anime, and a bit later he showed me his collection of manga, and then he showed me some tentacle porn.

Just kidding.

He never showed me his manga.

At about 3PM we all went out for a coffee break where someone asked me if I watched any anime and, in a response that would earn me nothing but condescending looks in America, they were actually impressed. We spoke for a bit and all of a sudden Matsumoto-san mentioned the Tokyo Game Show. I thought it was just some crazy Japanese game show like the one where people have to say tongue-twisters and if they make mistakes they get hit in the balls, but it turned out it was a gaming convention being held this weekend in Tokyo. This got Joey and I very excited, so pending some further planning today we very well might be making our first trip to Tokyo this weekend!

After talking about our spare tires a bit (the Japanese are very weight conscious...it's what they call their beer bellies) we went back up to the lab and did our thing for a few hours until the welcome party.

The Welcome Party...

was awesome.


We went to this nabe restaurant that was all you can drink for 2 hours. It was basically a huge pot in the table with a broth inside it, and you put chicken, vegetables, and noodles inside it. They also had a boat with sashimi and raw seafood on it, and a plate of sushi at each table. I was feeling pretty adventurous so I tried everything that didn't have eyes. Sashimi is very leathery and though I had some fish here that i quite enjoyed, this stuff was pretty shit in comparison. Perhaps the best part of the restaurant was it was all you can drink for 2 hours, and thus we drank a lot.

Everyone was drinking quite a bit. Tuan-san apparently does this thing when he drinks where he takes one of the huge bottles of beer and just goes from table to table making people chug their glasses with him. I can't say I was too upset by the ritual, and I began doing the same. After about 45 minutes Hiro-san came by and asked to switch seats, so I went to go sit with Yuji and got waylaid by Kuboi-sensei. I wasn't too happy, because even minor interactions with Kuboi-sensei turn out to be long drawn out philosophical conversations, but I decided to speak to him in Japanese. He was very impressed and offered me sake. I know it may seem obvious, but this Japanese sake I had was sooooo much better than the shit I've had at home (particularly the bottle we got for Dan's MIT party). I actually really liked it. After about 45 minutes speaking to Kuboi-sensei I finally got a chance to leave his table and go mingle, so I did and caught up on my drinking a bit with Mokato-san.


After dinner a bunch of us went to a nearby bar for some more cocktails. I kept forgetting everyone's name so they all wrote on me. They also brought squid jerky to eat which was interesting. Being that at this point we were all pretty wasted, naturally my Japanese and their English became a lot better, and all in all it was a lot of fun.

Sayonara!