Time for an Update… or two… or three.

The last few days…

Friday 12th August 2011:

Friday was pretty damn okay. I woke up nice and early, headed onto campus, and finished writing up my project report. Yes – finished! I have one complete draft. Score.

All the practical work is now complete and so I’m done with labs. I’m pretty sad about this actually, because I really enjoy being in the lab – but at least it means that everything is finally coming together!

I now really need to start working on my presentation. It will take place at 4pm on Tuesday and so I need to draft up some slides and begin practicing ASAP. Unfortunately, I’ve been pretty ill for the last few days though, so that’s not progressing with quite the haste I would have liked! More on that later.

So… Friday… Friday (Gotta get down on Friday)… I sat at my desk for effectively the entire working day. Anything interesting happen during this? Not a lot. I had a few emails… Oh, and Toshi came back from his internship for the last few weeks so was talking to me and Davis for a while. Other than that 20 minutes of socialising, I did nothing to warrant blogging about, haha.

I left at around 4pm to go to Anna and Kyle’s UTRIP presentations. They were really interesting, and I enjoyed it a lot. After that, we had a brief beer party with the Astronomy department. They’re cool guys. Yoshi was there (from the Onsen) so it was nice to see him again. We all sat around chatting and drinking (apple juice, in my case), and then left after about 2 hours. Anna, Kyle, Anet and I then went out for dinner. We had Okonomiyaki again. It wasn’t as nice as the one I had with Maria, but I still enjoyed it a lot! There were 8 of us and so we spread out over 2 tables. I was with the UTRIPpers, and the other table was TODAI students.

After the okonomiyaki (and perhaps a few too many Highballs), we headed back to Hakozaki. Kyle stayed with the TODAI guys and I think they went out. I probably should have stayed too because I ended up spending the evening lay in bed watching “Breaking Bad” on my laptop. You know… ’cause I’m cool like that?

So… When I said Friday was ‘pretty damn okay’. I meant it. It wasn’t a bad day by a longshot, but relatively little happened. I feel like the bustle and business of the early UTRIP days have passed now. Too many people have gone home. The end is nigh.

Saturday 13th August 2011:

I will make this brief. On Saturday, I did buggar all (Excuse the unnecessariness).

Why? I felt ill.

Why? I’ve woken up for the past 3 days in cold sweats. I’ve spent most of my waking hours feeling nauseous. I have no energy. I feel completely and utterly drained.

Why? You tell me.

As much as I love Tokyo… It is knacking my immune system.

So yes. Saturday I spent in bed. Apart from a brief walk to 7-eleven to pick up some lunch, I didn’t leave my room.

It makes me feel terrible that my last Saturday in Tokyo was spent this way, but I felt physically incapable of anything else. I think I had (wo)man flu.

In the evening, I heard drums and music outside, so I went to my balcony to have a look. There was a festival going on in the park below. It looked pretty cool actually: Lots of people dancing around in yukatas. I was going to go check it out, but was getting dizzy when I stood up.

I could have perhaps worked on my presentation during the day, but I was just too exhausted. I could have blogged, but no.

Failofaday.com

Sunday 14th August 2011:

Today I was out of bed! Woohoo!

Albeit, at around 1pm. I was still in sickness-recovery-mode until then.

I met up with Maria and Hiroaki today. They had rented a car to take me around Tokyo. So far I’ve travelled everywhere (with the exception of the excursions to Kamakura and Fuji-san) via metro/train and so it was awesome to be able to see some of the city above ground for once!

We were originally planning on meeting up at 11:00, but because of unforseen (and unblogged) purposes we had to postpone. It was a shame, because we kind of lost half of the day, but never mind. We still had an awesome time.

After a brief drive around, we decided to go to the Shinagawa Aquarium. We had to queue for about 45 minutes just to get a parking space in the end, but it was worth it! It was a lot of fun, and really nice to get out of the insane August heat for a while. As we were going around the tanks looking at all the fish (etc), Hiroaki was telling me the Japanese names of them all and I was telling him the English.

I took a lot of photos, but you were not allowed to use the flash in the aquarium and so they are all too blurry to use on here 😦 Massive technology fail.

My favourite was the turtle. It was enormous! So cool! (Wow. I sound like a child, not a twenty-something research intern. Woops)

We went outside for a while and had some Kakigori while we waited for the dolphin show. It was so hot today (34 degrees Celcius) so it was nice to have something cool. I managed to screw mine up though by putting way too much syrup on, and so it tasted like I was drinking hot, gooey lemonade rather than actual kakigori. Yet another of today’s many fails.

I still felt horribly ill today. In fact, much worse than yesterday. I really didn’t want to miss out on spending the day with Maria though so I fought through it. I felt like I was going to actually be sick for most of the day. I was probably great company.

We watched the dolphins perform, and it was damn impressive! I really enjoyed this bit, but found the heat outside pretty difficult to cope with. After the dolphins, we headed back to the car because Maria was worried about me in the heat and thought I should sit down somewhere with air con. i.e. the car.

We then headed to dinner. We were a little early, so when we got to the block that the restaurant was in, we had a look in a bookshop for a while. The books in Japan are beautiful. I really wish that I could read them, and then I could justify buying one to take home. Unfortunately, it would just sit on my bookshelf unread, and as a book geek, that’s not something I can deal with.

We then headed to the restaurant itself. It was a really nice tempura place. I ordered something off the set menu because it was easier than ordering each piece individually, and Maria and Hiroaki were doing the same. The food was beautiful. I had various types of vegetable tempura – my favourite was the shitake one – plus gohan, miso shiru and daikon (not a fan). I felt so greasy and fat afterwards though haha – I’ve never eaten so much fried stuff in my life! So… what do I do then? Order icecream tempura for dessert – Yes – It exists! It’s bloody good too!

After eating an excessive amount of amazing tempura, we went back to the car, and Hiroaki drove me back to my apartment. They couldn’t come in because we got lost a few times and the closest we got to the apartment was a one way street, with no available parking. I said goodbye to the two of them (although I’ll see Maria next week when she comes back to England) and walked the remaining way back to the apartment.

When I got back, I could hear the music from the festival again, and since I didn’t go last night I decided to check it out. I headed to the park (and nearly trod on a massive cockroach on the way *shudders*) to take a peek. It was awesome actually. There must have been about 100 people stood in a big circle, all wearing yukatas, and dancing to the beat of a drum and some traditional music. I loved it! I didn’t stay too long though, because it looked like they were trying to get people to join in the dancing. Considering that, a) I’m a terrible dancer; b) I’ve spent the last few days feeling like I’m on the verge of vomitting; and c) I just ate a massive serving of tempura… I decided to go back before I attracted enough attention.

So now I’m in my room, blogging, considering preparing my presentation, and also considering getting a very early night.

Only time will tell…

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Part 3 of 3.

Sunday 24th July 2011:

Finally… I am getting up-to-date, and am now blogging about today!

Today I woke up a little later. I was due to meet Maria at 10.30 so had plenty of time. I got dressed, surfed the internet a little, and then texted Maria about where to meet her at the station.

Unfortunately, I completely misunderstood her text, and thought that she meant we were meeting at 10.30pm instead. So after a brief moment of wondering what the hell to do with myself for the next 12 hours, I got a phonecall from her asking where I was. I can’t even work out how I misunderstood the text, but never mind. So I ran down to the station, and met up with Maria and Hiroaki, her boyfriend!

He was absolutely lovely, and I definitely approve of her choice in men 😛

I was a little embarrassed actually, because his mother and him had bought presents for me, and I hadn’t bought them anything in return! I did not realise that there would be gifts, and so I felt completely unprepared. Hiroaki had bought me some Japanese rock CDs because Maria had told him that I like rock music, and his mother had bought me a Japanese decorative plate, and also a Princess Mononoke notepad. I tried to thank Hiroaki in Japanese and accidentally said “Ohayo Gozaimas” instead of “Arigato Gozaimas”. Hilarity ensues. It was embarrassing. Bad start.

We then got the next train and headed to the restaurant to meet his mother. The journey wasn’t too long and we chatted a bit. When we arrived, I was introduced to his mother, and she was absolutely lovely. A really sweet lady. We walked to the restaurant, and she asked me a lot of questions about myself and my time in Japan, via Maria as the interpreter.

The restaurant was amazing. It was a really beautiful, posh Japanese place. Kind of the equivalant of where we used to go for Boxing Day dinner when I was a child… multiplied by 10… on steroids. It was surrounded by stunning gardens, and I suddenly felt horribly underdressed for such a place. We were then escorted through into the main restaurant area. We ordered drinks: A Japanese plum wine, that tasted quite a lot like the damson gin that Pete used to make when I was about 15, but much sweeter. It was delicious. Our food them began to arrive. We ate from a set menu, and Hiroaki’s mother had rung the restaurant ahead to make sure that it only contained fish and no other meats.

The menu consisted of many small courses. First we had a triplet of little appetisers. There was creamed potato with eel and some vegetable; a flavoured tofu cube, and a steamed egg dish. Next came what they called a ‘Jewellery Box’ which was a laquered box consisting of 2 layers. The top layer contained various sashimi including shrimp. I didn’t like the shrimp, but the rest was good. In the lower layer, there was a vegetable fondu selection: Seasonal Japanese vegetables with a thin creamy sauce on top. It was really good.

Next we had another appetiser which was a steamed pudding type dish, with more eel and some vegetables I hadn’t heard of before. After that was tempura. There were 2 vegetables, and 2 types of fish: Maria explained that one was salt water, and the other was freshwater. I only at the one as the other seemed to be whole – bones and head and all, which I couldn’t really stomach.

After this came the ‘main course’ which was a bowl of steamed rice with tiny little boiled fish on the top. It was really good actually, and the fish added a lot of flavour. We ate this with a bowl of miso soup that contained small mushrooms and seaweed, and some pickled vegetables. I don’t really like vinegar, and so I find it a bit difficult eating so many pickles here. Especially the daikon ones, which I don’t really like either. I ate everything anyway though, as the food was lovely quality and I didn’t want to offend.

Finally we had dessert: It was a steamed cream pudding similar to creme caramel, with a sweet sauce. It was really good.

The meal was amazing, and I felt really lucky to have been invited. I really appreciated it, and tried to thank Hiroaki’s mother in Japanese.

After the meal, we went for a look around the gardens surrounding the restaurant. It was really beautiful, and we saw at least 3 weddings taking place simultaneously. We looked at the beautiful koi carp in the pond, and Hiroaki managed to stroke a few. They were as big as dogs… I’ve never seen fish so big; and beautiful colours and patterns.

We had a stroll, and Maria lent me her scarf because I was getting concerned about mosquitoes again. It was pink and clashed horribly with my red dress, and so every time we took a photo, I took it off. I probably looked so vain, but I always look terrible in photos so it would be nice to get a nice one with Maria 🙂

We said goodbye to Hiroaki’s mother at the train station, and then went to a cat cafe. It was the strangest place I have ever been! Maria explained that they are called “Nyafes”… “Nyan-Cafe” because cats in Japan say “Nyan” instead of “Meow”. It was literally a room where you pay for entry, and then get free drinks while you stroke the cats running freely around the cafe. There were around 20 very well behaved cats, just lounging around on the sofas. We hung around there taking photos and playing with the cats for maybe half an hour, but by this point Hiroaki had started to have a bad allergic reaction to the cat hair, and so we had to leave early. His neck began to swell and blister which was a little scary. Maria helped to remove the cat hair from his clothes, and then we went.

It was a really surreal experience, but a lot of fun!

After that, we went to Yebisu Garden Place for a while. We sat in Starbucks to cool down and had Frappuccinos while Hiroaki started to feel a bit better. There was a Hawaiian Festival going on, which was kind of surreal. We then went to the pharmacy, and Maria helped me to buy antihistamines to help with my mosquito bites. I have since taken 2 and nothing has happened, but hopefully by tomorrow they will have had some effect. I can’t get over how uncomfortable this is!

We then went to Krispy Kreme donuts and I bought two: One for this evening, and one for breakfast tomorrow. I ended up eating both when I got home though… they’re just too good!

After that, we headed back to the train station, and came back to Suitengumae. I said goodbye to Maria and Hiroaki at the station and went back to the apartment. I was very tired because it’s been a busy weekend, and so we didn’t go out to dinner.

I have had an awesome day, and am really enjoying my time in Tokyo. I am starting to feel better now after such a bad week and so hopefully things will stay on a high.

Now… time for a bath and then bed. I am so sleepy!

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