Final Thoughts for the Summer

I can't believe how quickly these 10 weeks have flown by.  We're all packed up and leaving for the airport in less than two hours.  Actually, it's funny, but I'm writing this at 9:30 am Saturday in Tokyo, and we will be landing at exactly the same time in California.  Lucky us, we get to do Saturday twice!

I remember at the end of last summer how desperately ready to come home I was.  And to be fair, I'm sure a big part of that was visiting 4 places over the summer rather than one, combined with how difficult our trip in China was.  But this summer, I feel a lot more settled, and a little sad to be leaving, although I am really looking forward to seeing family and friends.

This summer, I feel like we proved that we could live here in the future and be really happy.  We made friends (that got job offers last night, so they'll definitely be back next year!!), found favorite restaurants, and starting making a little place for ourselves in Tokyo.  So, whatever happens I believe that John and I have a beautiful future ahead of us, and I know that we'll keep working to make Japan a part of it.

Cake Buffet!

Japan is full of amazing things.  Most days I discover at least one thing that I love.  One of these discoveries was the fact that cake buffets exist.  You pay 1480 yen and get 90 minutes of all you can eat cake.  But besides cake they have lots of drinks and real food like pasta and curry to keep you from going into a sugar coma.

Weeks ago Raku and I decided we needed to go, but we finally got around to it yesterday.  That reminds me, I haven't talked about Raku yet have I?  One of the other summer associates working with Grant is here with his fiance, so we were introduced.  And we have so much in common.  Not only are we in the whole coming to Japan with a significant other situation, we could totally relate to the whole being in a relationship with a law student/future lawyer thing.  On top of that she just graduated with her MSW, but most importantly she's super fun!  Basically we were destined to be friends.  And it's been so great.  We go running together (she is an excellent motivator) and have all kinds of fun adventures.  We also plot together to figure out what to do with our lives once we actually live here.

Anyways, enough gushing about Raku, on to the pictures!

I think this pretty much says it all.

There were probably 30-40 types of cake, as well as jello, gummy things, and ice cream.

Our first selections.

Raku decided to go healthy with her next selection.  (And I'm sorry this picture is sideways, I've tried uploading multiple times, restarting my computer, etc. and it will not upload in the correct orientation no matter what I do).

Again, sorry it's sideways.  But, as you can see, I obviously know what the priorities should be at a cake buffet.

After our culinary adventure we set off to buy fake glasses.  There is this hilarious new trend where girls are wearing super thick black glasses.  My favorite ones are the kind that don't even bother to have lenses.  So, we clearly needed some.

I really loved these, even though I don't look like it in the picture.  But sadly, they were sunglasses, and that is just not good enough.

Raku's final selection.  We seriously spent about 2 hours trying on glasses searching for the perfect ones.

Mine!  I thought they were great because they combined 2 trends (floral print on everything and huge glasses), but John was horrified because he is a purist and thinks ONLY black frames are acceptable.  (let's just take a second to remember that we are wearing huge fake glasses without lenses...how serious do we need to be?)

Setsuden aka The Brown Out

Before John and I came here we were hearing all sorts of things about how there wasn't going to be enough power in Japan this summer because of the nuclear plants that are off line.  We heard that there might be rolling blackouts in the afternoons or that trains might not be running normally and that it was basically going to be a disaster.

Well, electricity is a big concern, but so far there have not been any black outs.  Instead, campaigns have started up, and everyone is voluntarily conserving as much power as possible (in the majority of cases) in order prevent black outs and to allow trains to function normally.  This is especially important to a lot of  tech companies because they say that having to turn computers and servers off for 3 hours would basically be devastating to their work.  (John can explain this better than me).  So, this electricity saving campaign has been named Setsuden.  I don't think anyone really loves it, but it's better than the alternative.

I've been taking pictures of everything I can to illustrate it, but I always seem to miss the TV screens that show current electricity usage.  Earlier in the summer consumption was at about 70-75% of what can currently be provided during peak times, but as it's gotten hotter consumption has increased to about 85-88%.  I haven't seen numbers hit the 90's yet, but I'm sure it's coming.

This is the main logo for the campaign that we see all over the place.  Lights are being left off as much as possible.  Air conditioning is being used sparingly, government offices (including schools) are required to keep it at 28 c which is 82 f and many other offices are leaving theirs that high voluntarily!

This is one of the subway ticket machines.  They've turned about half of them off to use less power.

Some vending machines have been turned off completely (notice the tape over the places you would put money in) while other are now set to turn off at night or to not light up.

Almost all down escalators (and some up) have been turned off.

There are also many encouraging signs.  This one says Genki for Japan, which sort of means health or energy for Japan.

A sign at a restaurant.

Well, you can't really read the sign hanging up here (blame John's iPhone), but it says Cheer Up Japan, and has a lot of signatures on it.

At Shrines, people will often buy blocks of wood and write wishes on them.  This one isn't in perfect English, but the sentiment is clear.

So, I'm not sure if I've covered everything you're all wondering about what it's like here in regards to the recent disaster.  But if you have questions or want to know more, just leave a comment!

Ao Oni (Blue Demon)

I'm sitting here, having what is in my mind a delicious beer (but apparently not according to the users on BeerAdvocate), but perhaps my tastes have been tainted by the lackluster Japanese market.

The beer is unfiltered and has a full bodied taste unlike many other beers on the Japanese market. The nose is malty with some hints of citrus (but mostly malts). Once it hits your tongue its still pretty malty (as far as west coast IPAs go) but has a good amount of hops to balance it out. I would comment on the mouth feel, but no one cares.

Apparently the owner of this brewery worked at Stone Brewery for three years, which means this beer is very bitter by Japanese standards. Importantly, this actually tastes like an American beer and is not as light and "empty" as many other Japanese beers I've had. Even the very hoppy beers I've had that are trying to copy the West Coast IPA style seem to go just for insane bitterness and forget that there are other tastes that one might like to find in a beer to balance the tastes.

I only bought one can of this (for 410 yen which is more than it goes for in America) but I think I'll be buying some more in the near future.

Earthquake!!!

While perhaps a 5.0 earthquake does not warrant three exclamation marks, a 5.0 earthquake felt while in Tokyo tower does.

We went to Tokyo Tower for Wendy's birthday because they have a birthday deal that involves free cake. We actually live kind of close, so we just walked there from our apartment, waited in line for tickets, purchased them, rode the elevator to main observatory, and observed the view.

Turns out that Tokyo Tower is a hot date spot so there were many couples enjoying the view. This, and the fact that the windows were slightly dirty, made taking pictures difficult. Here's one I took from my phone. It's pretty bad as far as picture go, but you get the idea. I took some with my real camera, but my netbook can't process them (and I forgot the appropriate cable).

Anyway, after enjoying the views from Tokyo Tower we then went to the Tokyo Tower Cafe where they presented us with a free piece of (chocolate) cake. We sat down to eat the cake and suddenly the whole tower started to shake back and forth. The shaking was significant enough to cause the light hanging from the ceiling to noticeably shake back and forth. This went on for perhaps 3 minutes (longer than the earthquake because of the residual motion) and then stopped. No one else seemed that concerned. We then got on the elevator and went to the bottom.

Big Earthquake!

There was a 7.0 earthquake this morning a little farther out in the ocean from where the the original one was in March.  We're fine (and it appears that was no significant damage), but we definitely felt it.  The US Geological Survey is reporting that it happened at 10:57am, but they're wrong it was actually 9:57am.  I was lying in bed trying to decide if I should wake John up to go to church or just let him sleep all day, and then the earthquake hit and woke him up for me.  This one lasted longer than any of the others we've ever felt and it was the first time that I was absolutely certain it was an earthquake, not just my imagination.  We thought it must have been a big one, or else the epicenter must have been extremely close to Tokyo.  So we got up and went to church, and when we came home it was on the news.

Apartment Update

Alright, as promised, I'm putting up pictures of the new apartment.  As it turns out, our first night here was a freak occurrence, and there have been no more loud nights, so we're quite pleased with the place.

We now have a super high-tech bathroom.  This is the little control panel (on the wall about the toilet paper) that lets you have multiple flush options, multiple bidet options, and a bunch more stuff that I haven't even figured out yet.  There are also multiple control panels (two in the bathroom, one in the kitchen) to control water temperature and fill the bathtub automatically.

From the door this is the view down our apartment.  The first doorknob you see goes into the bathroom, then the hallway has closets on the left and the "kitchen" on the right.

Yep, this is my kitchen, still.   I'm getting bolder in it though, I think I'm going to attempt some beef bourguignon this week.

Underneath my one burner is our evil washing machine.  I am now able to wash and dry clothes like a pro (well...) but when the cycle is finished the door stays locked, and even when I push the buttons that are supposed to unlock the door, it still doesn't open.  John says I need to be more scientific in my approach, but what normally happens is I push the unlock button, nothing happens, I turn the dryer back on, push unlock again, turn it off, push unlock, turn it on, push ever button on the machine, yell at the machine, lie down on the floor in defeat thinking that our clothes will be trapped forever, sit up, and realize that it has miraculously unlocked.  I'm starting to think that there might just be a time delay from when I push the button to when it actually unlocks...

Here is our living room area.  It's still all one room, but having this much space is a HUGE deal in Tokyo.  The couch is even long enough for a person to sleep on!  If only we were living here when Christian came to visit.

This is our little table where we eat breakfast every morning!  In the old place, we always just ate it in bed, because as John said, it felt like the bed was most of the apartment anyways.

Here you can see the little divider that separates the living room area from the bedroom area.  It's also a dresser, so most of our clothes are stashed in there.

And we have a KING sized bed.

But, maybe best of all is our view, as you can see here, it is a normal out a window view, as opposed to our old view (below) that looked straight into an office that was about 6 feet away.

It was super creepy.