Osoji wa oishikatta desu

Monday was osoji or "big cleaning" day in the lab. This is a year-end tradition in Japan akin to spring cleaning in the US, where people do a thorough scrubbing of their homes and businesses (and cleanse the stress and bad karma of the past year from their souls, neh?). School children have get down on their hands and knees and scrub the cafeteria floor and hallways. We spent the day cleaning the labs and our own personal workspace. Fortunately I have very little stuff in my own personal workspace, so I was able to goof off for a bit.

After the big cleaning, we went out for a tasty dinner. The food was a bit different from what I've had before, although there was the usual sashimi and various fish-based things, such as shrimp (with very tasty heads) and yakizakana (grilled fish, not Japanese gangsters). There was also an interesting soup containing what amounted to an egg custard (egg whites cooked to tofu texture) in broth. And a nabe dish, or hot pot of tasty broth wherein we each cooked fish, mushrooms, vegetables, etc. I believe it was technically chanko nabe, the favored dish of the sumo wrestler. It was, as I've said, quite tasty.

Japan's Hayabusa asteroid probe is running into problems. It seems to have landed successfully on the asteroid, but now it turns out it might not have collected any sample. It also has an attitude problem, and might not want to come home. It hasn't been the best year for JAXA, or space research in general.