The Tigers Win the Pennant!

Last night the Hanshin Tigers, the Osaka baseball team, won the Central League pennant. We were at the restaurant and saw the end of the game, and people started going crazy out in the streets. So I guess it's a big deal. I've been watching their games, they have an excellent bullpen trio who pitch the 7th, 8th and 9th, known as "JFK" (Jeff Williams, a gaijin, and Fujikawa and closer Kubota). I've also been listening to the Phillies when I get the chance, and it looks like they have a pretty slim chance now. It also looks like Boston is the place to be this weekend if you like chaos and riots.

The Tigers go on to the Japan Series, aka the championship, against the winner of the Pacific League. Apparently the playoffs are a bit shorter over here...

Moo ichido Osaka ni kaette, hamubagu o tabemashita

I left Uchinoura amidst the outer bands of Typhoon Longwang, which was headed straight for Taiwan (not Kyushu, fortunately). The weather was very breezy and rainy, but the airport trip was uneventful, despite the fact I had to catch a bus and get on the plane myself. I'm now able to understand when the person at the ticket counter asks me if I want a window seat, so that's good.

I'm back at Osaka U. overnight, then there's no more room at the inn, so I spend the weekend at a "wedding" hotel two stops down the monorail line. It may sound dubious, but these hotels are the western-style ones in Japan, and they specialize in hosting weddings (ergo the name). They are not to be confused with the seedier "love" hotels you may have heard about.

I've discovered a website that describes Japanese cuisine, so now I can figure out a posteriori what it is I've eaten. The Thursday before I left Osaka for the space center, I was taken to an establishment specializing in okonomiyaki, a sort of pancake/pizza thing that is prepared for you on a grill at your table (a la Benihana, but authentic). The base is a sort of gooey cabbage batter, and seafood, green onions, mushrooms and a brown sauce sauce are mixed in. The custom is to then drown it in mayonnaise. I had octopus, which was quite good. The taste of the cabbage and sauce is good as well, but the texture is good only in measured quantities.

At USC, two ladies cooked all the meals for us at the living quarters, and the food was really quite tasty. There was a lot of fish, but one lunch we had kare raisu or curried rice, which had a certain Indian flavor but was somehow Japanese. And of course we had plenty of tonkatsu or pork cutlets.

Tonight I went out with a few of the grad students to a tiny greasy spoon type place, where they serve things like hamubagu (a hamburger without the bun) and hamubagu chiizu (can you guess?). I got what amounted to a deep fried hamubagu, which wasn't bad. I have also seen people in the cafeteria eating odd rice omelets called (oddly enough) omuraisu. I'll have to try one of those. I've been eating a lot of noodle bowls.

Nothing, however, comes close to iseebi and sashimi in Uchinoura.

Ashita Osaka ni kaerimasu

Today is my last day of satellite ops, as I return to Osaka on Thursday. A new operator arrived yesterday to take over the grunt beat from Ohno-san (and me), so now there are four of us doing two jobs (actually three of us doing one job). So I have not much to do in my extra-lame-duck status.

I like what I've seen (and tasted) of the rural south of Japan; watching the fishing boats come and go and hearing the odd insects at night is very soothing, although I suppose the typhoon bearing down on Kyushu might change that. Maybe I'll come back someday. But I guess it's time to go back to the big city and get something accomplished.

Sore ga ebi nai deshita, sore ga boku no tsuma deshita!

Not much more to report today. We just finished すざく operations, so I'm going off to bed soon. I learned a bit more about what I ate yesterday, and it wasn't quite a shrimp (ebi), but it was a spiny lobster (iseebi, pronounced "ee-SEH-bee"). In any event, sono iseebi wa totemo oishikatta desu nee!

Oyasumi nasai!

Ebi wa oishikatta desu nee!

Today we had the day off, so we slept in. The weather was beautiful, finally clear enough to see the ocean, breezy and not so humid. I wandered around and took some pictures:

http://space.mit.edu/~milleric/personal/photos/usc_2005_09

In the late afternoon we went down to the 4-stoplight town of Uchinoura, and went to the onsen, or bath house, which is a very traditional part of Japanese culture. In fact, in most homes (and the living quarters here) the bath/shower is set up and used like onsen, with a separate shower and soaking tub. You shower first, then get in the tub (with no soap!), relax, then get out and shower again. And then maybe get back in the tub. The whole process is supposed to cleanse your body and your mind and keep you healthy. The water at the onsen is very hot and very clean, with no chemicals or chlorine, so I'd say that's healthy. Anyway, it ain't like the jacuzzi at the Holiday Inn.

After the onsen we went to a restaurant and ate a giant shrimp (as you'll know if you looked at the photos already). The shrimp is lobster sized, and looks like a lobster, but I was assured it was indeed a shrimp or ebi. And yes, it was raw. We had giant ebi, large ebi, snails, sashimi, broiled fish, ebi in broth, scallops, rice, and beer. It was quite delicious.

Alas, Kotooshu lost in a tie-breaker match today to Asahoryu the Mongolian. But nevertheless the foreign domination of sumo continues. Will there ever be another Japanese champion?

Back to the grind tomorrow...

Kore wa tanoshiku nai desu ka?

More satellite operations today, starting at noon after finishing at 5 am. We're just about to start the real-time stuff for the evening. The satellite is in low-Earth orbit, 600 km up, completing a full orbit every 100 minutes. By the wonders of classical mechanics, only 5 orbits per day pass over the single Japanese tracking station, where I am currently located. Each pass is 10-15 minutes long, and it is during this time that satellite data (including instrument status and science data) is downloaded and new commands for the next day are uploaded. There are six or seven of us here who huddle around our respective computers during each pass to make sure the downlinks and uplinks go well and that the spacecraft and instruments are in good health. Checking instrument status is basically what I do during that time. It's really quite exciting to copy numbers off a screen, but at least I can understand numbers better than Japanese characters. After the 7 hours of passes are done (they're consecutive, fortunately), we write up the operation report, package the science data, and do some other things.

The Suzaku (すざく) satellite takes a vacation day every Sunday, so there are no operations duties to perform. Tomorrow Ozawa-san, Ohno-san (another operator) and I are going to a hot spring nearby, and then to a restaurant to eat extremely large shrimp for dinner. Apparently it's the regional delicacy, it's in season, and they're bigger than my head (from what I've been told). I'll keep you posted.

In sumo news, Kotooshu the Bulgarian suffered his second defeat in the fall tournament, so it all comes down to Sunday's matches. I'm rooting for him, because he seems to be about 100 lbs lighter than his competitors but somehow always manages to win.

Uchinoura ni Imasu

This morning I and Ozawa-san, a postdoc at Osaka U., flew down to Kagoshima prefecture to go to the Uchinoura Space Center. The airport experience was very efficient and pleasant (although the plane ticket was about twice what you would pay in the US for a 1 hour flight). The view from the plane was great, as we flew from the main island of Honshu to the southern island of Kyushu. Kagoshima is the southernmost prefecture, and it's very mountainous; the airport itself is on the top of a mountain, and flying in was very cool.

We then took a bus and taxi for 2 1/2 hours to get to USC, through rural areas and small towns and amazing scenery, over roads that seemed at times like a version of Route 6 in Pennsylvania if it were transplanted to Hawaii. The mountains and trees were straight out of an Akira Kurosawa movie, which I guess makes sense. The space center itself consists of a tracking station and launch pad perched on the side of a mountain, overlooking the Pacific. If you watched the launch movie, then you've seen it. I'll try to take some photos of the center and the ride back up to Kagoshima airport.

It turns out the internet connection is fine and there is a lot of down time here. My duties involve getting target and satellite maneuver lists from the scheduling center in Tokyo and running programs to create command files to upload. Fun fun.

Flying South

Today there was nothing much to do (except actually accomplish some work), and I didn't need someone holding my hand to get from the guest house to the office. Not that I really did before, but yesterday I had to switch rooms, and things have to be done properly with the appropriate paperwork, so someone had to come help me. Last night I managed to get some sleep, to boot.

Here are some photos I've taken of the campus:

http://space.mit.edu/~milleric/personal/photos/osaka_university_2005_09

The campus is not very large, it takes about 10 minutes to walk from one side to the other. It's quite nice, with lots of trees and a few ponds and a nice garden near Mt. Machikaneyama. Here is a map which is also sort of a picture:

http://www.osaka-u.ac.jp/eng/campus/toyonaka.html

The Earth and Space Sciences building, where I work, is part of complex 8. I'm staying in building 31 right now, but will move to building 23 in early October.

Tomorrow morning I'm flying to Kagoshima on the southern island of Kyushu. From there I will go to the Uchinoura Space Center:

http://www.jaxa.jp/about/centers/usc/index_e.html

and stay there until next Thursday. I don't know what I'll be doing, or how good the internet connection is, so this might be my last post for a while.

Day 2 and/or 3

I've been here two days and things are starting to settle down. I've had a lot of bureaucratic things to do, such as registering as an alien (I didn't realize I was one) and setting up a bank account (or signing over my immortal soul, quite possibly). That compiled with about 8 hours of total sleep over the last three nights doesn't make for a great time, but I'm coping.

More to come....

Arrival in Osaka

I've made it to Osaka relatively intact. I discovered upon waking Sunday morning that my flight from Boston to Detroit was delayed due to maintenance by 1 1/2 hours, and was scheduled to arrive 3 minutes after the scheduled departure of my connecting flight to Osaka. My options turned out to be to risk the Boston flight and probably miss the only Osaka flight for the day, or catch a flight from Providence to Detroit that would get me there in time. So Michelle and I drove down to Providence, which took a bit longer than going around the block to Logan, but I made it in time to Detroit. The Boston flight turned out to be 2 1/2 hours late into Detroit; I know this because the Osaka flight was delayed an hour for paperwork (which they never received anyway), and then they decided to hold the plane an extra 10 minutes for 13 Boston passengers. But at least I didn't have to run for the plane.

The Osaka flight was long and rife with Will Ferrell movies, but the booze was free.

I was met at the airport by Yamada-san, the secretary in Prof. Tsunemi's lab, where I'll be working. I tried (in Japanese) to apologize for being late, but I think I said I was sorry for being large or expensive. I missed the class on adjectives. I was surprised that I was able to understand (in Japanese) that we had to take a bus to the domestic airport (right near Osaka U) and then a taxi, and I was able to carry on a conversation about how much warmer it was in Osaka than in Boston, and how long the flight had been, and how long I had studied Japanese, and other inane topics.

We got to the Osaka U. guest house at 10 pm, 23 hours after I left Eastie. We were met there by a grad student of Tsunemi-sensei, Katsuda-san (I think, although I also think that means Mr. Pork Cutlet, so I might be wrong). I saw a bit of the campus in the dark as we went to the store for some food. I also saw the building where I'll be living starting October, it's nice with a pond in front of it and trees and crickets and things around it. I'll be at the guest house until Friday, when I fly down to Kagoshima to go to the Uchinoura Space Center.