Captains log, stardate 20080131. The final blog entry from Tokyo. Today was busy because I had lots of things to sort out at work. After work we went to Sugamo to a temple. In the bottom picture you can see Nicola pouring water over the statue. She then ran her hand over the statue to clean it. The idea is if you have a problem then washing the statue in this way will wash away the problem. Then we went to Shinjuku for a farewell tempura meal with Takane. This is seafood and vegetables fried in light batter with dips. It was delicious. We had fried shrimp, fried mushrooms, fried fish, fried eel (which was very tender and delicous). The one part I was not so sure about was fried flower bud (I kid you not!). This was very bitter and even some Japanese don't like this; a bit like marmite in dividing opinion. We rounded off a very nice meal with some miso soup with mini clams in. Now we have to pack and tidy the apartment and the Liverpool vs West Ham game is on TV. Anyway, we'll be very sad to leave Tokyo but very happy to get home to see our friends and family.
So here I am. It`s 3.30 am and I`m doing a shift in the lab with another 4.5 hours to go. I sit and read my book and occasionally glance up to make sure that the beam of atoms that we are sending at the surface is still strong enough. On a screen is a picture showing the atoms that we`ve collected that have bounced off the surface. Every 2 hours there`s a whoosh and a whirr as the detector moves along a bit to collect the atoms that have gone off in a slightly different direction. I don`t have much to do. I might have to flick a few switches and turn a few nobs. I`m reading the new Charlie Brooker book; a collection of his newspaper articles. My brain can only hand short stories and can only think about one subject for a few paragraphs. My day started at 8am. In the afternoon I had a `break` which involved Nicola and I in a mad three hour round trip across the Tokyo Megapolis to buy some souvenirs from Harajuku. Yesterday we got up early and trudged around for hours looking at Mt. Fuji. I`m knackered. Despite all this I wouldn`t want to be anywhere else right now. Because we`re getting data, which is why I`m here, and because I have a bag of mini doughnuts and a Royal Milk Tea from the vending machine.
Today we travelled on a bullet train to see Mt. Fuji. The trains were absolutely gobsmackingly amazing. Probably the highlight of the trip for me. Clean, cheap, efficient and VERY VERY fast (see the video from inside). We set off from Tokyo at about 10.23am and the 90.8 miles journey to shin-fuji (the shinkansen station at the city of Fuji) took 75 minutes. For the nerds it was an 300 series (top speed 168mph). We tried to travel on the N700 (the fastest train in the world, top speed 186mph and it goes around corners at 158mph) but didn't time it right. For a video of one of these in action check out these 12 amazing youtube videos taken by people with a lot of time and patience. The trains carry a lot of passengers but they run every 20 minutes and each train has 16 carriages (see second video of train leaving). The inside of the train was clean, spacious, comfortable. It was a bit like being on an aeroplane. We got more legroom than in business class on Japan Airlines. On the back of every seat was a helpful guide as to where everything was (even down to litter bins). Question is, why can't we have trains like this in the UK?
We were lucky enough to get a glimpse of Mt. Fuji. This is only possible at certain times of the year (cold days mainly) and only then early in the day. As we got closer to Fuji the clouds and mist built up and by the time we got to fuji city we could only just see the top. You can see Nic in front of Fuji at our closest approach in the photo. I kind of wish we had set off earlier but we did get up at 7.30 am (on a sunday) and we were very lucky to see what we did. The mountain itself is very beautiful and awe inspiring. It seems very tranquil sat there in the sky. It looks like the land has been squeezed into a point in the sky. It's easy to see why it inspires such devotion and has long been a symbol of Japan. It seems almost spiritual. All day I could barely take my eyes off it and I just wanted to get closer, closer. I can understand what makes people want to climb it. Nic even said she wanted to have a go.
Sorry if the video quality is bad. YouTube has messed it up. Even though a post from the other day using a video from the same camera with the same settings looked fine.
Apologies for the lack of updates so far this week, which is due to a combination of internet problems and the fact that we haven't done much of interest. Chris is back in the lab working hard to get some results and the weather has been awful so I haven't ventured out much. Above is how the RIKEN campus looked yesterday after heavy snowfall all over the greater Tokyo area. We've also had rain, and today gale force winds have hit the area.
Instead I've decided to stay in the warm and catch up with the Japanese music charts via an excellent TV show called 'u la la'. It isn't in English but that doesn't matter. The show is hosted by an excellent presenter called Shelly (presenters at home could learn alot from her) who discusses the music charts and has J-Pop stars on as guests. Today's guests were a boy band who sounded alot like the B-Sharps, Homer Simpson's barbershop quartet. Shelly then calls a shop assistant in the Shibuya HMV via video phone to talk about what's hot today - he says that today people are buying the 2008 Grammy compilation with Kanye West and the Amy Winehouse album.
What's surpising about J-Pop is that alot of it is actually quite dull, especially the boy bands. Exile are the most popular boy band this week and sound just like Westlife, and let's be clear about this - this is not a good thing. The other surprising thing is the massive popularity of Radiohead over here, who are top of the single and album charts right now and are the soundtrack in shops, restaurants and bars all over the city. The best thing about Tokyo Top10 though was Misia, who probably compares most to Gwen Stefani - thanks to the wonders of teh interwebs you can view her amazing 'Royal Chocolate Flush' video right here:
Off to the Shibuya district of Tokyo today to do a bit of people watching. Shibuya is a magnet for Tokyo teens and as such is lots of fun with loads going on. We left the metro station and immediately came face to face with the Hachiko crossing, the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world - the video above demonstrates how busy it can get (and bear in mind this is a very cold Sunday in January - imagine what it must be like in warmer weather when more people are out and about).
We strolled up Center Gai, where Tokyo fashion victims come to pose and show off and popped into HMV to browse their selection of English language magazines before wandering ro und the huge Tokyu Hands homeware store. There are apparently three main teen trends in Tokyo: Center Guys - who seem to have copied Jon Bon Jovi :( , Hime Gal - who are all huge sunglasses, designer dresses and dyed hair with Paris Hilton as a role model and Gothloli - a strange mix of victorian dresses, lace cuffs, hair bobbles and soft toys worn by girls from the suburbs. We also visited the Shibuya ranKing ranQueen store but disaster! They were out of F Cup Cookies and all other types of cookie too.
Chris has been pining for curry ever since he arrived and so we went to what our guidebook bills as the best curry restaurant in Tokyo, Dhaba India in posh Marunouchi. Not wanting to take chances with curry in another country we played it safe and ordered two of the mildest dishes on the menu - butter chicken and creamy lamb curry. While the lamb worked out fine the chicken had been marinated in nitric acid and served in lava sprinkled with gautemalan insanity pepper ie V HOT. But for all that it was fairly authentic curry restaurant and full of happy locals.
Chris additional: I just want to add a bit more about the curry (in case any of my curry loving friends are reading: - Luke I'm thinking of you here esp.). The curry house had several Indian diners in it (a good sign), the chicken contained bones (never experienced that before), the naan bread was very doughy and gooey in the middle but they had Kingfisher beer (Nic preferred the Japanese sapporo brand). It was southern Indian so the choice was quite limited in terms of the variety of curry and rice. The dishes themselves were nice (butter chicken was a bit over spiced) but the portions were too small. Overall, very nice but the best curry house in the best city in the world for food was not half as good as the excellent takeaway curry in my local village (Massala Express in Edlington).
Today we went to the harbour area at Odaiba. We went to the Fuji TV studios and saw TV shows being made. Other things we did
* Rode on a monorail * Stood in a 1200 tonne ball 25 floors up * Seen a huge replica of the Statue of Liberty * Eaten in a Japanese McDonalds ("shakka shakka chicken!") * Been to a replica 1960's Japanese street * Went to the emerging science museum (Chris says; "ace, they had a nanotechnology bit, which is what I do at work") * Stood inside a neutrino detector (for finding tiny subatomic particles) * Had an infra-red heat scan of our faces (see picture) * Seen the autograph of Buzz Aldrin, second man on the moon * Had my picture taken with the car from Back to the Future * Been to the largest car showroom in the WORLD * Had a ride in a driverless car (look, no hands)
Today we went down to Roppongi, which has traditionally been the sleazy part of town where all the bars and strip joints are. A few years back a massive development was made which is several skyscrapers with offices, residential apartments, shops (very, very expensive ones), an art museum, a garden and loads of other stuff all in one place. This was designed by Jasper Conran. We went to the big tower (middle picture) and paid about £7 each to up to floor 52 in an express elevator. Here there is a 360 observatory that gives the most stunning views of Tokyo. I was gobsmacked. The sheer size and scale of Tokyo is hard to convey. It makes London look like nothing. As far as the eye can see in all directions. In the distance I saw some black clouds on the horizon. Nic then pointed out that they were mountains. Mt Fuji is HUGE. Even from 60 miles away it looms over all of Tokyo. I have some pictures of it on the horizon but they have a bit of haze and anyway we're travelling on the bullet train out to a place nearer to Fuji on Saturday so I'll have some better pictures by then.
For an extra £7 we got to go up onto this platform where a lady took a picture of us with a wide angle camera. The top picture shows this. The red and white thing is the Tokyo tower. We went over and paid another £7 to go up to the viewing deck here. The views aren't as stunning but a nice panoramic view of nightime Tokyo was to be had. The worst bit had a glass floor. Not good for my vertigo. We stopped off for an Italian meal. I had a large order of spag bog, cheesecake and beer. Nic asked for clams and tomato cream sauce pasta but she got octopus and chili sauce with some clams on! She also got earl grey tea with milk in! Poor Nic. The chocolate cake made up for it. Both meals combined cost £15. Tokyo is very good value for money and the food is amazing. Anyway, we're both shattered now.
Today we stayed around the apartment and relaxed to recharge our batteries. I took Nic to the subsidised canteen at RIKEN around the corner. We each had a main dish, a bowl of rice and pickled veg, a bowl of miso soup, a dessert and green tea with free refills for about £2 each. We then had a stroll in the sunshine and stopped off for a lazy coffee. Nic had an attack of the jetlag and spent most of the afternoon on the sofa asleep. We went up to the supermarket in the evening where Nic bought an apple that was almost as big as her head for £1 (see picture). At home I cooked a nice steak, with cauliflower and potatoes with gravy and a glass of red wine. Delicious.
Today we got to do a couple of things that not many people from the west have done, even those who have visited Japan. Our host Takane first arranged for us to visit a genuine noodle bar in a neighbourhood just outside of central Tokyo where tourists never go. It was a tiny shack with a couple of tables and some seats at a bar where locals go to sluuurrrp their noodles (and slurp they do). Takane helped us order and Chris had udon noodles with tempura vegetables and shrimp in a soy broth, I had the same but with chicken tempura and we all tried two different types of sake. My chicken tempura was yum, really light and tasty with a proper broth.
This evening we were honoured to be invited to the RIKEN tea ceremony club where we joined their tea ceremony practice. The ladies very kindly lent me a kimono, which you can see in the picture above. It's an elegant outfit but much more complicated (and uncomfortable) than it looks; it has about 5 layers, loads of ties and panels and it took two ladies more than 20 minutes to make me presentable. The tea ceremony is thousands of years old and very exact so the ladies attend each week to learn from an experienced teacher. All the tools used have significance and a special powdered green tea called matcha is used. However for all the ceremonial stuff the ceremony isn't hugely serious and is a great excuse for the ladies to have a good chat and a laugh together. Things we have learned today: * chicken tempura kicks KFC ALL OVER * Kimonos are very hard work but I still want one to wear round Donny town centre * Those of you who thought I would chuck green tea down someone elses 500,000 yen kimono were WRONG WRONG WRONG!!! Thank God.
It was a bank holiday in Japan today so we decided to join the crowds at the Asakusa Kannon temple which is Tokyo's oldest temple and was packed with people and atmosphere. To get to the temple you have to walk up a shopping street about 200 metres long with shops selling everything from ice cream to lucky cat statues to second hand kimonos. There is a thing making smoke that people were waving on themselves as it is supposed to heal or prevent illness and we chucked 5 yen coins into the shrine which is good luck. We then decided to go to Shinjuku to look at all the neon lights as it got dark and see what was going on. If you've ever seen footage of Japanese commuters being shoved onto packed trains by guards wearing white gloves - that's Shinjuku station and pictures of neon lit Tokyo are usually Shinjuku too. There's a giant Tower records in Shinjuku which had a live band playing and any CD you could think of to buy. We went and had a look around Takashimaya Times Square which is another huge department store complex, we stopped off for matcha green tea and coffee with whipped cream and to admire the view of Shinjuku from the top floor before going back to Tobu in Ikebukuro because Chris really, really wanted some spaghetti. On the way back we found a mini branch of the ranKing ranQueen department store in Shinjuku station - this is a shop where every product in the store is part of a top 3, 5 or 10 list according to popularity, from chocolate bars to hair perfume(!). We'll come back to ranKing ranQueen later as we're planning to visit the bigger store in Shibuya another day, but we mention it here because the number 1 cookie this week (rankings are updated every week) are F Cup Cookies as heard on Radio 1, which promise to increase your bust size if you eat them every day. Not sure if they work on boys!
One final thing - we've done alot of riding around on the Tokyo Metro today and the Japan Rail (JR) trains have little TV's in the carriages which show adverts. One of these is '1 Minute English' presented by Berlitz, but instead of teaching phrases that might be useful in the UK such as 'Burger and chips please' or 'I have food poisoning. Which way to the hospital?' they're all business based, like 'appointment' and 'the report will be on your desk first thing in the morning'. Things we have learned today:
* Apparently Nic looks quite Russian * You have tea before or after a meal, not with it, silly sausage! * The Japanese love their boy bands * F Cup Cookies really do exist and weren't made up by some idiot DJ
Off to the Imperial Palace today to show Nic what it's like - it's in a lovely park but you can't see much of the palace itself cos the emperor doesn't like nosy commoners looking in apparently, so it's surrounded by massive trees, as well as the moat and walls that have been there since the year dot. After that we went to a big department store near the palace called Daimaru, but it turned out that Daimaru is the equivalent of Selfridges ie a bit snooty and v expensive. So we got the train back to Ikebukuro, and went to the Tobu department store which is much more Debenhams. We had a Vietnamese set meal that only cost £6 including a drink. Nic had a rice porridge set and came with a big bowl of soup, rice porridge (savoury rice pudding with chicken, much nicer than it sounds) and a giant spring roll stuffed with veggies and prawns - Chris got the same with chicken vietnamese curry rather than porridge. Things we have learned today:
* The Japanese Royal Family don't have the same money grabbing instinct as our own - the Imperial Palace would have been opened up for expensive tours a long time ago had it been in Britain * Heston Blumenthal was right all along about savoury porridge * Japanese TV's are bilingual! ( though only for some shows like the news - the game shows remain gloriously incomprehensible) * Tony the Tiger speaks Japanese * Japanese 'jam' donuts aren't made from jam :(
All those stories about jet lagged westerners wandering the streets of Tokyo in a daze in the middle of the night are true - I (Nic) am writing this at 4 in the morning, unable to sleep yet unable to do anything vaguely useful either. After a 24 hour train/plane/train journey I finally arrived in Tokyo, exhausted but pleased to be here. Although I didn't get a plushy upgrade to business class it was a good flight. All we wanted to eat this evening was a dirty burger so we went to Wendy's in Niramasu, the next suburb along from where we are staying in West Tokyo. Things we have learned today:
* Japan Airlines kicks British Airways' ass * Carrying a big suitcase is much easier on the Tokyo Metro than on the London Underground * Wendy's in Japan is just as nice as in the US * Teenagers are stoopid wherever in the world you go * Everything in Tokyo is 'kawaii' - from the cute cartoons of immigration officials at the airport to the lovely tunes played on the trains to tell you that the doors are closing
Today was a marathon day. We vented the system ready to remove the manipulator. The engineers arrived at about 1pm and it wasn't until 1am that we had the manipulator back in, pumped down and the bakeout on. I had a headache and went in search of some aspirin from a vending machine and got locked out. What do you do? No-one is around and the guards just point and laugh when you try and explain your predicament through the medium of mime. I got back in by throwing stones at the lab windows to rouse attention!
Anyway, the headache got much worse and spread all down my spinal cord. It made my eyes bulge like they were ready to pop with a big pressure burst. I couldn't get any aspirin at 7-11 so I decided to sleep it off. Big mistake. I spent all night sat propped up in bed staring at the wall. It was too painful to put my head down on the pillow, too painful to watch tv, too painful to think. Finally dropped off for three hours at about 8am. Not the best day since I arrived and not ideal preparation for a six hour round trip across central Tokyo and out to Narita airport to meet Nicola, the cavalry.
A very frustrating day. We cleaned the sample by smashing atoms into it and knocking all the dirt off then we baked it with some heat then we cleaned the LEED (used to check if the sample has made a crystal) then we cleaned the holmium source and then... at 7pm it broke. One of the wires on the manipulator inside the chamber has snapped and someone is coming to fix it tomorrow. This means letting air into the chamber, after we spent two weeks cleaning the inside of the chamber from the last time air was let in. D'oh.
I'm eating pizza which I burnt. This was after I realised my lasagne was only for the microwave (which I don't have) after the container melted in the oven. It really has been one of those days. On that note, every system that I've worked with since I started this job has broken and needed the manipulator out. That's 3/3 in less than a year. Beginning to think I'm cursed.
We had a good day in the lab playing with the atom beam to make sure it was OK. This is done by bouncing atoms off our dirty surface into the detector. We moved the beam side to side and up and down to see what positions the surface was at (if we went too far the left or right with the beam, or too far up and down we got no atoms scattered back off the surface cos they missed it.) From this we could work out where the middle of the sample is. There was one worrying moment where the manipulator wouldn't move the sample around as we told it to but that was due to a small problem in some of the electronics. We soon fixed that one.
Steve is going in the morning. We just had his farewell meal which was EXQUISITE. It was a few villages away on the To Me. The couple who run it have had a restaurant in Ikebukuro for many years and are now retired. They keep a small restaurant as a hobby and because they are used to company each evening. We had about ten courses. The first was raw beef and carrot and broccoli. The veggies were cold and marinated in something very interesting. The beef was seared on the outside to clean it and then sliced thin and was delicious. We had soup courses and another beef course (this time with well cooked, slightly more gristly beef and more veggies). A course with baked rice balls was very nice. They are made into a triangular fishcake shape and baked for a bit then dipped in soy and baked some more. The one course I didn't like so much was set custard with bits of chicken in it and mint and orange on top. We had about 4 types of sake; hot, cold, clear and creamy with rice floating in it. All in a very elaborate and well served ritual order. Anyway, this meal was great. On the way back (about 9.30 pm) there were loads of people returning from work and kids just getting in from school.
Today we cycled through the peacefull neighbourhoods of Tokyo to the temple at Jouranji. There is a giant Buddha here. The place is very beautiful and very tranquil in a way that I couldn't really express in words. The bottom picture shows things that people want help with that they have written down. One of them had a name and loads of love hearts so I guess that person was wishing that a certain person would fall in love with them. After leaving the temple we had some sorbu noodles at a nearby place which were delicious. A great day.
I'm very tired today because I was up at 6am. I pottered round for a bit then had toast and coffee (pronounced cohee in japanese) and cereals. I bought the wrong milk and it had yoghurt in it but meh. Japanese TV is mad.
I went into the lab at 10am and we spent the day degassing the germanium sample we will be looking at.
The big surprise was the food on campus;
Lunch; tonkatsu (battered fried pork) with rice and curry (little pickled peppers in the rice which made it taste AMAZING and english mustard with the tonkatsu), miso soup and green tea all for, wait for it... £2.
Dinner; Udon noodles with seaweed and some other veggies and tofu with green tea... £1!!
Called at the supermarket for some butter and proper milk and now I'm drinking beer and about to watch some red dwarf.
Today was a quiet day. I got up early (because of the jetlag) and went for a 7am breakfast at Denny's. This cost £2.40 and was sausage, bacon (more like thin ham), scrambled eggs, lettuce with dressing, a slice of extra thick toast with cream butter and jam and free coffee refills.
I hung around the apartment all day doing some work and reading and doing a bit of consolidating. Later I went to the local district of downtown Tokyo (Ikebukuro) with Steve (my boss who is here for the week). We decided to go western and we found an Italian place on floor 11 of the Tobu department store. I had spaghetti bolognese, Asahi beer and vanilla ice cream for about £9.
Later I got the phone working and spoke to my wife for the first time since I got here which was brilliant. Nicola doesn't arrive until next Saturday so she's missing out on all the fun. I don't have any pictures of the food or the bright neon lights from today because my camera ran out of batteries in Ikebukuro before the first picture was taken. Note to self; take some spare batteries in future.
Today I got up at 4.30am to go to the large fish market at Tsukiji. We wandered around the hectic market looking at stalls with all sorts of weird and wonderful wriggling seafood and vegetables as men on little motorised trolleys whizzed around picking up shopping lists for restaurants. Then we went for the freshest sushi in the world. I had squid, sea urchin, octopus and some other things (!). The sashimi was the best part and the tuna was divine. The top picture is of the queue outside the small sushi restaurant.
Then we wandered across downtown Tokyo and to the Imperial Palace. The second photo is me posing here. After that we went to Asakusa (asak-sa) to the west of Tokyo where there is a temple and some shrines. This was EXTREMELY busy. It was bright and colourful and there were many shops selling souvenirs and sweets. The gate has a huge red lantern which you can see in the picture. In the temple itself I threw a 10 Yen piece over the head of the crowd into a big tub to bring luck in our experiments. Then we went home just as the midday sun was up. From 5pm I slept for 12 hours and then had an early 6am breakfast at Denny's. £2.40 for eggs, bacon, sausage, lettuce and dressing (!) with two slices of extra thick toast with cream butter and strawberry jam and free coffee refills. Yum.
Got to Japan OK. Total journey time was about 24 hours but Japan Airlines gave me a free upgrade to business class which meant; fasttracking through security so no queue whatsoever, a private lounge with a mini bar in which to wait for the flight and, on the flight, a bucket seat that turned into a bed and loads of nice free food and entertainment. Not too shabby. Anyway, Japan is great. It's just like the song 'pac-man' by Aphex Twin. Here's a picture of me eating some ramen noodles earlier this evening. You can see the effects of the travelling; my hair needed a wash which it has now duly got.
Captains log, stardate 20080131. The final blog entry from Tokyo. Today was busy because I had lots of things to sort out at work. After work we went to Sugamo to a temple. In the bottom picture you can see Nicola pouring water over the statue. She then ran her hand over the statue to clean it. The idea is if you have a problem then washing the statue in this way will wash away the problem. Then we went to Shinjuku for a farewell tempura meal with Takane. This is seafood and vegetables fried in light batter with dips. It was delicious. We had fried shrimp, fried mushrooms, fried fish, fried eel (which was very tender and delicous). The one part I was not so sure about was fried flower bud (I kid you not!). This was very bitter and even some Japanese don't like this; a bit like marmite in dividing opinion. We rounded off a very nice meal with some miso soup with mini clams in. Now we have to pack and tidy the apartment and the Liverpool vs West Ham game is on TV. Anyway, we'll be very sad to leave Tokyo but very happy to get home to see our friends and family.
