Chasing Daylight

 At least, that's what it felt like on the flight over here. We were flying to the east, so the sun was up the whole time. The flight from Chicago left at around 2:10pm EST and we went in a high arc over to Narita Airport. Never been to Canada, but I flew over it apparently, so that's where these mountain pictures are from.

Anyways, straight up the Great Lakes, into the southern parts of Canada, up deep into Alaska and out into the Bering Sea, then pretty much a straight drop through the Pacific and down into Narita. It was supposed to be a 13 hour flight, and it was, until we got to the airport. It had been raining all day, so the terminal was a little backed up and we ended up flying around the airport for about an hour before we could land. However the ride itself wasn't too bad.

I sat next to an older Japanese guy from Yokohama, and after a quick すみませんけど、英語を話せますか? (Excuse me, but can you speak English?) we were talking for most of the time we circled over the rainy airport. He helped me practice my Japanese some, which surprisingly wasn't that bad, and told me a lot about Japan and Japanese people. He also helped me get to my dorm by pointing out which rail I'd want to take and where. Overall a really nice introduction to Japan before I even got there.

So after that it was about a 40 minute train ride from the airport to the Ueno station (I'm going to throw this in here, but man is the transportation good. I mean it definitely costs quite a bit but there's really nothing better and nothing faster), then a 10 minute taxi ride from there to the Oiwake Lodge where I'd be staying. Had an introduction session with the house manager and then I was in my room for the night. It gets dark around 5, so it was dark by then and I had to unpack, and I just decided to take pictures the next day.

 So first thing's first I guess, my elevator (and all of them I've been so far) greets me on the way in and says goodbye on the way out. Also I found it interesting that most of them are handicap accessible, and have separate buttons lower on the wall. To the right is the view from downstairs, it was still a little rainy so it was a bit overcast outside, but still pretty nice. Also Japan has a lot of trees and plants and flowers pretty much everywhere, but you'll be able to see that later.

Dorm Lounge

 So the street my dorm is on is a very long one that spans most of Todai's campus (the word for college in Japanese is daigaku, so Tokyo Daigaku is shortened to Todai), so most of these pictures are of shops, restaurants and sights along that road. There's also a few pictures of the Todai campus as well.

There were so many restaurants I didn't quite know where to eat, though I did end up buying quite a few omiyage (rice balls) from Seven Eleven. I don't really care what's inside, it's usually good, not to mention really cheap. Hopefully I don't go broke buying them though...

 Lots of interesting buildings that are and aren't part of campus along this street. It's a nice mix of modern and traditional architecture.

 There's also a lot of apartments like this. The foot print of them is fairly small, taking up no more than a half to a fourth of a block at times, but they either reach far back or far up to accommodate.

This is actually pretty tame as far as store fronts go. They're always inviting and you're always greeted with shouts of いらっしゃいます(welcome) whenever you enter.

 The streets are always full of people walking somewhere, even when it's raining. Most of the stores sell cheap little umbrellas, so you see them a lot. Also there's tons of trees and flowers along all the sidewalks, which makes the walk even nicer.

There's so much food man, so much food. I could fill up an album with pictures of it all. But in the Family Marts (which are basically convenience stores) and Seven Eleven's, there's always tons of omiyage and sushi. Also cup ramen, breads, drinks, noodles and so on.

 More trees, these are on one of the outside entrances to the campus.

 One really cool thing about the street, and a lot of them like it in Japan, is that there are tons of little side streets that usually have their own thing going on. From ramen shops to small festival like events and other stuff. I saw some dancers in kimono's on this one, but they were too far back to get a good picture.

Saw this guy hanging out a little bit away from my dorm. There was a sort of temple behind it, but it was covered so I couldn't get a decent picture.












So those are just a few of the pictures, I'll upload the full set on either a picture site or my facebook page, or both, and then edit this post to link them here. Alternatively I can just make a running post with all of my pictures in it. I'll have to decide how to do it later.

 Anyways, yesterday was my first day at work, which was much much better than I expected it to be. The atmosphere is a lot like that at MIT, which I like a lot. The Masters, PhD and Post Doc students are all really laid back, and most of them can speak at least decent English, which makes things a lot easier for me.

Not to mention about 10 minutes after I got there someone saw the Gears of War 3 sticker on my laptop, which somehow devolved into a 30 minute conversation about Skyrim and anime. Turns out most of them are as much into gaming, anime and manga as I am, which gives us something to talk about.

There are about 7-8 Japanese guys, then one from Thailand, one from Paris, one from Munich and one from China all in the lab with me. Of course, because of my NDA (and the fact that it's too cool for most people to see anyways) I can't show pictures of the inside of the labs. I'll suffice it to say however that they are pretty damn amazing.

View from the window of my lab

 I'm planning on going to a few places with the guys from my lab already, one of which is Akihabara. It's basically the technological Time Square of Tokyo, and a lot of the guys have as much interest in that as I do.

We're also planning to go to Shinjuku at some point, and Todai's other campus, which apparently has some of the best ramen shops in the country. I might be working with one guy who's working on a self navigating Quadrotor, and we're probably going to go to one of those shops this upcoming Sunday.

Part of the University

Other than that I'm pretty much settled into my room by now. My desk is filled with random crap, as usual, I usually keep the door to my balcony open just because there's always a breeze around here, especially when it's raining, and I'm a 20 second walk from the nearest store, so it's really no problem to go get something if I need it.

The campus itself is really nice, there's even a few wooded areas with trails that run through them. You can hear all the crows and crickets when you walk through there at night, then again, nightfall is at 4pm, so I guess it's still day? I dunno.

Another part of the University

Anywho, this post was a long one, which I was sure it was going to be. There's tons more I could say, and many more pictures I could post, but for now I'll just leave it at this:

I'm happy to be in Japan, and it seems pretty happy to have me here.

I'll keep this updated as much as I can, though it does take some time to write considering the formatting is weird with pictures. But anyways, it's about lunch time and I have a few things to read.



P.S. The internet here is unbelievably amazing.

Where did I put that?

Holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap, holy crap... what the hell am I missing? Ok got clothes, laptop, shoes, towels, more clothes, paper, passport, iPod, other documents, wallet, rings, glasses, money, headphones, more clothes, random stuff (<-- that's the important stuff) and uh..

Uh..

Whatever, I'll just buy it there.

こにちわみんなさん and welcome to mah Japan blog-thingy-ish. Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

So as I'm very sure you can tell, I'm fairly excited about leaving tomorrow for 日本, and I'm more than sure the trip will be fantastic. However, this is an intro post, so I suppose I should do some introducing and whatnot.

For any random people reading this (for whatever reason that may be) my name is E.J. and I'll be travelling to Tokyo University (also known as Todai) for three months to do research under Professor Yoshihiko Nakamura in his robotics lab. As I said before I'm very excited about this, and this blog is for people to keep up with me and what I'm doing, and if it holds up, as a place to dump the thousands of pictures I plan to take...

..in the first 10 minutes after I get there..

BUT, that's not the point. The point is that I'll be updating this blog on a weekly basis at the very least. More than likely I'll make 2-3 posts a week, especially when I have a bunch of stuff going on. I'll make an effort for them to be fairly long and detailed posts, and probably put in a few tl;dr for the really long ones that people just don't have time to sit down and read.

Other than that, I have a bit more packing to do, make sure all my documents and stuff are in order, and then my flight leaves at 11:20am tomorrow morning. I'm set to arrive at Narita Airport at 4:20pm on Friday their time, which is 3:20am here (EST). For those of you who don't care for math, it's a +13 hour difference.

Anywho, I'll end this post for now. I have things to do that aren't sitting at my computer and typing out 15 page posts. Another thing is if you know me personally, feel free to email me or talk to me on Facebook. I'm taking my phone but only for emergencies, so it will be off for most of my stay there. Next post will be after I've landed and I'm in my room, so until then!