Monday was a national holiday, Ocean Day, upon which the Japanese celebrate the bounty of the ocean by going out to do karaoke on Sunday night. I think there were fireworks, too. At any rate, I spent most of the daytime over the three-day weekend asleep in my room, as is my wont, so I have no idea if there were any festivals.
About half of the SANC students spent most of the weekend in Kyoto and Kobe, seeing the sites and staying (in the latter city) with our first-year Japanese teacher Nishimura-sensei. I did not attend, for three reasons: 1) That region of Japan is about 10 degrees hotter and 50% more humid even than Tokyo. 2) The whole trip cost each person about $300. 3) I've already been to Kyoto.
So, I was happy to stay behind. They were leaving on Saturday morning, so we got together on Friday evening to have a light night out. It began with the most amazing meal I've eaten since coming to Japan this summer: all-you-can-eat sukiyaki for about $16. We had 90 minutes to stuff ourselves with as many plates of thin-sliced beef and pork as possible. I even ate some of the veggies and noodles, and, naturally, drinking the remaining sukiyaki sauce like a broth (or, as I call it, "meat tea") is half the pleasure. Now, I'd never had sukiyaki before, but only shabu-shabu, and one of the key differences that I really enjoyed was the raw egg. With shabu-shabu, you cook your food in boiling water and dip it in sauce. Sukiyaki is already cooked in the sauce, and then you have the option of dipping the meat or what-have-you in raw egg. Awesome. P.S. Salmonella is not a problem in Japan.
After that, I bought a flask of shouchuu (Japanese spirits) and we went karaoke-ing for a couple hours. Standard karaoke fun, no need to go into much detail there.
Saturday was far more interesting. You see, a few Yale students have come to Tokyo to do some internships, like I did last summer, and so we went out with them to Roppongi that night. It began with your typically intense pregaming, followed by dancing at 911 (a Roppongi staple for us) and then a quick trip to the bar one of the SANC students tended last summer, where we got free drinks. Now, one of the interns was already pretty drunk, and, though I was possibly too drunk at the time to notice, she became too drunk (yes, we covered this several weeks ago, it's possible) after that freebie.
Thus, somewhere between that bar and Muse, we lost her. I mean, completely lost her. We had no idea where she was, and she didn't have her phone with her. We ended up searching both Muse and the surrounding area for about an hour and a half, all the while becoming unpleasantly soberer. What was meant to be an all-night party was brought to a screeching halt by all of our worrying, and we ended up taking cabs back around 2- or 3-ish.
Turns out, she was okay. Managed to get in touch with her the next day around noon, and it seems that some nice folks got her in a taxi and home somehow. That was incredibly lucky, given how easily it could have gone the other way--drunk girl alone on the streets of Roppongi, a district well known for sketchy foreigners and Japanese alike? I'm just glad she was fine.
Sunday! A couple of us met up with a Tokyo native cum Yale '11 student and found an all-you-can-eat Indian curry buffet for about $15 in Shinjuku. I'd been craving Indian for a while, so, even though it wasn't the most delicious curry ever, the price was right. 15 bucks at Zaroka in New Haven will get you, well, one order of curry, after all. That makes for the second excessive eating episode of the past week.
Wednesday! Finally had a chance to wear my suit. After class, we went to the University of Tokyo to engage in one-minute interviews with the inestimable Professor Koshiba, 2002 winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics. (He invented neutrinos.) Basically, we were tasked with the creation of one question to submit to him. I wasn't really sure how this format was going to work, but it turned out that we all sat down in a room with him and posed our questions one at a time. Some he answered in English, some in Japanese. He turned out to be a really funny old guy. Highlights:
- He had no interest in physics until grad school, when a senior student invited him to participate in an experiment, and he thought, "Huh, this is something I can do."
- He was good friends with Feynman.
- He explained the lack of success curtailing nuclear proliferation with the following metaphor: "Imagine two of you have a dagger, which you can use to easily kill lots of people. And you say to everyone else, nobody should have a dagger. But everyone else is thinking, 'They've had so many daggers for so many years, so why shouldn't I get a dagger too?'" That pretty much sums it up.
- Nuclear fusion probably will not be the next energy source because the easiest method of bringing it about unleashes a shit ton of high-energy neutrons that will kill us all. Apparently he hasn't seen Back to the Future II. Mr. Fusion looked perfectly safe to me!
- He went to the U.S. in 1951 to study at the University of Rochester. While he was on a train on the way there, he got into a conversation with an old lady who had never heard of Japan. That left a lasting impression on him. America is such a big country that it can go to war with a place that some of its citizens don't even know about. Makes you wonder if we've been anywhere other than Iraq recently.
- The universe is probably going to keep on expanding until we all die of cold. Stupid dark energy.
- He used all of his Nobel Prize money to help start a foundation to encourage the study of science in Japan. Now that's just too damn nice. Stupid nice funny old man and your nice funny ways!
Today (Thurdsay) we went to an all-you-can-eat $8 buffet at Shakey's in Shibuya. That is all.
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