Hi everyone, I'm at the Hilton Hotel in Melbourne Australia, having just finished my presentation! It went quite well I think, a nice lady from Sony Coorporation approached me after and expressed great interest in my research. Anyway, I will be going "home" (Japan) tomorrow morning and my snap-happy professor is taking pictures like mad, so I'm sure I will have a bunch of pics to post (as well as the ones from Thailand and Denmark) when I get back.
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Thought I should at least write a short post before I leave! I have a bunch of pictures and posts that I wanted to get on the site but I have simply been too busy with preparations for the trip and so on. Maybe I will have time in Denmark. ;) Ahead of me waits 4 days of thunder and rain in Thailand (according to the latest weather forecast) so I'm bringing my new books and 100 yen umbrella (don't say I'm not prepared).
Yesterday I went to a fireworks display in Atsugi, the same event I went to last year, and took a picture from pretty much the exact same spot as the previous time (it came out better this time though, yey).
Here's a small videoclip as well. This will probably be the only fireworks display I will go to this summer before leaving for Denmark. Less than 2 weeks now!
Once again the time for large amounts of volcano-black sand in your hair and burnt red skin has come. Aaaaaah.....summer....!
Typhoon "Banyan" is on it's way and will apparently hit Kanagawa this evening. Time to re-evaluate today's plans...On a completely unrelated subject, I just got a mail from Yamada, a guy I used to work at the same school with. He's now working at a hotel in Tokyo and tells me that the Danish soccer player Thomas Gravesen is staying there with Real Madrid these days. :P
Whoops, July has almost passed and not a single post from me this month! Well, my excuse is it's exam season and I have been bogged down in reports, work and exam preparations...:( However, I finally have my last test and presentation next week and then...well, then I have a whole bunch of other stuff I need to do but at least no more classes for a while! Yey! Anyway, below is a quick summary of July's highlights to make up for my lack of posts. Also, a bunch of new crappy pictures.
- Rainy season came and went.
- Deep Dish released their new artist album (not bad, not great).
- Music software crashed on me preventing me from creating music for the time being...
- Australia trip was nearly cancelled (long story) but is now confirmed (see updated schedule below for details).
- Took a bunch of tests and wrote a bunch of reports.
- Finished "Energy" and "Bangowana"-features in cell phone drum machine (once again, long story)
- Did a lot of work on new online music store. Stay tuned!
- Paid for my plane tickets to Thailand/Denmark.
- Watched Star Wars 3 (finally) and Batman Begins.
- Visited an elementary school in Ayase to "talk about Denmark".
- Huge earthquake hit Chiba, biggest one I've felt since Niigata...nearly knocked me over!
- Bought "new" Telepopmusik album (great!)
8/17 - 8/21 Thailand8/21 - 9/08 Denmark 9/09 - 9/10 Japan 9/11 - 9/17 Australia
Updated albums:
Tokai University
Kanagawa
Tokyo
Granola
Wow, this is pretty amazing. "Google Earth" allows you to fly around the world in 3 dimensions while looking at surprisingly detailed hi-resolution satellite images. The picture above is where I used to live in Denmark. Sadly, for some reason the maps around Kanagawa in Japan are not very detailed, so I wasn't able to find my humble abode in Hiratsuka, although I was able to vaguely pick out its location from looking at city names.
Check out this pretty sweet wristwatch from Fossil. It has Chinese kanji characters instead of arabic numbers and displays seconds using scrolling digital kanji. I want one.
It's bad enough that the tuition fees at Tokai are as high as they are, but I wish they at least wouldn't do stuff like spend huge amounts of yen on a Le Mans race car. We all know the race will be won by a Dane anyway.
Went on another outing to Yoyogi park this weekend. Yoyogi park is quite an interesting place since many people go there to practice or perform various activities that aren't possible in the tiny apartments most Japanese live in this. Thus apart from the usual dog walkers and people doing sports you'll see jugglers, percussion ensembles, actors practicing for plays, people dressed up in weird costumes, martial arts experts practicing with Japanese swords, etc. Some people had even set up a couple of speakers and DJ system and were having their own little "rave" where people gathered and danced (see picture). I want to see if I can't become part of this somehow!
In Japanese universities there is a whole culture associated with the so-called "kenkyushitsu" (best translation I can come up with is "research lab") where students gather to study and do "research". Each lab has a teacher and a number of students associated with that teacher. As in many other parts of Japanese society there is a strong emphasis of being part of the group, and each research lab is like a small community with their own little customs and events. Some students more or less live in these rooms that often have microwave-ovens, coffee machines and whatever the average Japanese student might need. Anywhere, here are some pictures from my research lab, that is actually pretty much empty most of the time, since the teacher is new and only a few students have been assigned so far.
Overview of the lab
Shhh....The computers are sleeping...
PCs
My seat
This is my seat when at the lab, where I am considered a "sempai", meaning "senior". Since I'm in the master course I have higher "rank" than for example 4th year students, and this brings certain privileges such as getting the good chair and the window spot. :P My monitor seems to have run off somewhere though.
Ayumi Hamasaki
She's a little quiet but I'm sure she's doing some groundbreaking research in the corner of the room.
Tatami mats
Some of the 4th year students felt it would be a good idea to have a Japanese style tatami section for recreation and relaxation.
...it even comes with...
Wide-screen surround sound DVD system
Is it a good idea to place a microwave oven next to a sub-woofer?
The whiteboard
Notice the amount of English on it and you can probably guess who's been using it most recently.
...and finally...
Teacher's desk
This is where my teacher, Taizo Miyachi, can usually be found.
The thing to do in Kanto last week was to go to "hanami" (rough translation: "let's use looking at flowers as an excuse for a huge picnic") and spend a day in the open with friends while enjoying the beloved "sakura" cherry blossoms while they're here. Apparently it's going to rain most of this week so the famously fragile sakura are probably going to be gone by next week, but I managed to do a bit of flower watching in Odawara and around Tokai campus, and finished it off with a picnic in Yoyogi park in Tokyo on Sunday. I've put up a small photo album with some pictures I took, although they don't really do the sakura flowers justice, as the weaknesses of the camera in my cellphone become quite apparent when trying to capture the details of Japans favorite pink/white flower.
No updates for a while, been busy/lazy/otherwise distracted, my apologies. Time for a giant photo album update I reckon! This time I've uploaded a bunch of the pictures I took before I started this site (more than 2 years ago) as well as some recent stuff.
After returning from Hokkaido I suddenly became very busy having to do all sorts of (unfortunately not very interesting) things and also participated in a conference, "Information Processing Society of Japan", where I did a presentation on the mobile music composition-software I created, and actually won an award for best presentation in the category "Community/Network Entertainment". This came as quite a surprise to me since the presentation had to be done in Japanese and all the other participants where...well, Japanese. Anyway here it is, posing with a cell phone:
I have just finished uploading my photo album from Hokkaido. Enjoy!
Btw: To all the people I need to e-mail or otherwise reply to, just let me get through this week and I promise to get back to all of you!
Not quite my birthday yet but either way my hosts in Hokkaido decided to throw me a birthday party today, including strawberry cake with candles! :)