Homeless Japanese

Never seen a Japanese homeless person... and when I see the first (and still only) it would be in an ultra rich shopping complex in Mito that has Gucci and Salvatore Ferragamo stores...

Dreamers

Dreamers, like anywhere else... ah, the carefree youth when you don't give a damn for your financial status, so you don't give a damn if you get money for doing something, when you don't give a damn that it is cold outside... why would the Japanese be spared of such beauty? They talk about Japan being a super stressed country where from an early age people learn to earn a living, or make commitments to friends and family about being cool physicists, but still there are dreamers in this world... and, as it turns out in this case, people who are afraid of germs...

Starbucks

oh no, in Mito too...

As leaving the US was impending, my sister said to me, "you know what I would miss most about the US?", waiting for her to say something along the lines of boys, I was surprised to hear it was Starbucks... I said "Are you kidding me? Everywhere I go, I try to avoid Starbucks but it is freaking everywhere" and later thought maybe Ibaraki doesn't have any - man was I wrong...

Fish parts

So, my physicist, Japanese friend who works at JPARC, and I, like to meet at least once when I am in Tokai and go for a fancy dinner. He picks the restaurant and has not disappointed me, to this date, and we spend accordingly ~5000 Yen per person, for the meal only. The first time he took me to this super traditional sushi restaurant, the second, to a fun izakaya where we had nabe (Japanese hot pot) to stave off the onset of winter and commiserated about our love lives.

This time he took me to eat fish pod or nabe or fish soup or fish hot pot, made of ankar fish, a famous dish in Mito, the capital of Ibaraki at the most famous place for this in Mito, Sansui. So, it comes like this: with all the vegetables and mushrooms (Japan has the yummest assortment of mushrooms, as you might imagine) and fish, all on a separate large plate and then at the middle of the table there is this pot of boiling water - you make the broth yourself by adding a bit of the miso pod they give you. The nice waitress explained this all to us and then she proceeded to make it for us anyway. The idea is to not waste any fish - so she started naming the fish parts on the plate, and my friend started translating from Japanese to English. At one point, unable to find the English word, he goes "well, you have it": I would have guessed right away, but I was thrown off by the direct non-shy way he said this, because in my head I have it that Japanese people are pretty shy and while he is not super shy, he's not completely me either... but after some back and forth I said "ovaries?" and yeah it was the fish ovaries - not that yummy, specially when you know what they are... they do look different and almost just only skin and all... But, I ate it of course - lately I have decided I will try my very best to eat everything that is put in front of me... It was quite salty - he asked me if it was and I said 'no, it is great'. When the waitress asked later, he said it was probably too salty for me, because I am a city person - apparently there is this big thing between rural and urban Japan and the urbanites scoff at the bold tastes of the rurals... My friend himself is from Tokyo - and no, not a suburb, right from Shinjuku ward in Tokyo.

And, then like we always do, we went to this bar to have calpis sour - such a yummy Japanese cocktail. Today we commiserated about careers in physics and how I am contemplating leaving physics. He said: "I can never leave physics.. when I was little I fought my parents to do physics... and now them, all my friends, they all think one day I will be a cool physicist. I can't not be a physicist". It is a very good reason to remain in the field - in fact I will miss the cool aspect when I leave. And I want him to do well and become that cool physicist everyone wants him to be. We ended up discussing another one of my Japanese friends from grad school who has now come back to KEK at the assistant professor level and we decided my friend should try and come to North America for a postdoc stint. As much as I see no future for me in physics, at least not the future I want, I want my friends, who are deserving, to remain in the field... Constants comforts in my otherwise rapidly varying life...

Washing and Drying Clothes in Japan

the monumental task of operating any sort of machine in Japan... as also evidenced by my brother's imported-from-Japan car that talks to him and what not but all in Japanese and how he doesn't even want to deal with the movie-watching function since it is also in Japanese.

Anyway, this is how the washer and dryer should look like, if you are like me, and want your clothes lightly washed; i.e., in North America I always use the cold and delicate settings and air-dry my clothes, so...