Randles like Candles

Move to Maryland

2008-10-12T04:33:00.002+09:00

As most of you know I have finally moved back to the US to start a job in Arnold, MD. I have been working two weeks now and been in the states for almost three.

One of the common question I get is, "Do you have or feel some culture shock?" That is a tough one for me because I figured I go back to the states once a year to see family and do other stuff and I thought I remembered what America was like and how people acted. That is mostly true but there are still surprises every once and a awhile.

The first night I was in America i stopped by a grocery store to pick up some necessities. The first thing I did was put my basket on the belt to the cashier. In Japan you put your basket on a stand and the cashier rings you up putting your purchases into another basket. The cashier in America was not impressed.

There has been other little things. I caught myself bowing from time to time when saying sorry. Not seeing all of the taxi cabs around. Also seeing all of the big SUVs. There were some in Sendai, but they were the exception not the rule. Going to my first Ikea store, which may not be American but it is somewhat mind blowing. Sometimes switching back to Japanese for some automatic phrases. Now that I have a cell phone it is a little bit odd now that anyone can call me. While in Japan I had to call everyone because the cost to call Japan was pretty high. By the way if anyone wants my cell phone number send me an email and I will send it to you.

One big change that I have needed to get use to is the size of my new apartment. I think the old apartment was the size of the master bedroom in the new apartment. Also I have a much better view from the new apartment. Here are some examples.

Now if you can compare this to the view from my old apartment in Sendai.

So i have moved up a little bit in the world. I also moved into a two bedroom apartment so I have a spare room that I don't use and a a bunch of space that I don't use. I also own a car for the first time in four years, so now I need to pay attention to gas prices again.

Thats all for now.

Fire/Earthquake Drill in Japan

2007-11-22T21:25:00.001+09:00

cimg2779, originally uploaded by ehud4242.

Just your normal everyday earthquake drill in Japan.

My New York City Trip

2007-11-22T19:05:00.000+09:00

At the end of October I had a conference in New York City. The conference was the 2007 IEEE International Ultrasonics Symposium. It was a good conference and I got to meet a bunch of people from different fields.

I did not have very much time for walking around NYC but I did get a few pictures on the day that I arrived. My initial plan had been to walk to the USS Intrepid from my hotel on 53rd and 6th. Little did I know that the Intrepid was not in the dock and would not return for over a year. After learning that the Intrepid was not in port the hard way, I walked to Rockefeller center where they already had the ice in place for people to skate .

I walked around a bit more but there is not much more worth posting. I walked around Central Park at dusk and that was really neat and eerie place to be at dusk.

The last comment from NYC was that because I for a change was the only native English in my group I was in charge of leading around my group of Japanese colleagues. They seemed to expect I would know where to go to find a good lunch. We never got sick and we never spent more than $25 on a meal, so I guess I didn't do too bad.

After the trip I went up to Argyle for a little less than a week to work on installing smoothwall and freenas on different machines. While I was there I took this picture.

I guess cats and dogs can live together.

Guess What I did Today

2007-09-25T16:08:00.001+09:00

Graduated, originally uploaded by ehud4242.

Finished

My third broken bicycle

2007-09-01T16:05:00.001+09:00

Well it has been way to long since I have put a post up. Not much to say just a little thing called life and a PhD have been keeping me busy.

The good news is that yes I have finished my PhD work. The only thing left is to print out a bunch of copies of the thesis and get it bound. In another month or so I will be officially finished.

The primary reason for this post today, other than to say that yes I am still alive, I to talk about my bicycle. In a previous post I mentioned that I had bought a used bicycle from a friend who was leaving Japan. The bicycle was a nice big Trek bicycle that fit me. I was happy to have it because it made it easier and more enjoyable to go out for rides. See the previous post.

Over the past week or two I could here a new "creek" in the bicycle but I was not sure where it was from. On Wednesday I was on it again and the entire bicycle felt wobbly but the "creek" was gone. Looking over the bike and frame I found this where the center tube meets the down tube and the cranks for the pedals.

To say the least that is very bad and unsafe to ride on. I am going to see if I can get the frame replaced by Trek.

The other funny part about this story is that this is the third bike that I have "killed" while in Japan. The first was my eight year old mountain bike whose frame broke a few months after arriving in Japan.

The second was standard Japan bike that I showed in the previous post. That bike I was definitely too big for and probably too heavy for. That one died due to the spokes on one of the tires breaking and it was not worth fixing after only 21 months of riding.

My last bike only lasted one year. The next bike I get will be lucky to last 6 months.

Anyways here is a couple of pictures that I took while bicycling to the sea.

A little explanation of me

2007-03-31T15:59:00.000+09:00

I don't know if many of you go to xkcd but it is well to quote its author, "A webcomic of romance, sarcasm, math and language" (Randall Munroe). Anyways I found his last comic especially amusing. I think it will help people understand me a little bit better.

The original link

An article about my parents next buisness venture

2007-03-16T10:15:00.000+09:00

Today the local newspaper in my hometown published an article about my parents next business venture, a cheese making business.

The Post Star Article

I was not thrilled with the fact that the Post Star could not spell our last name correctly and a couple of other points but in the end, no publicity is bad publicity (or at least I hope).

I should also say I am sorry that I have not posted much of anything lately, I have been very busy with my research and thesis. I will not make any promises for future posts but you never know if and when I will get the writing bug again.

Thats all for now

Glass ware at a DIY shop

2006-11-28T23:29:00.000+09:00

Just an interesting picture showing a bunch of glass ware that you can by at large hardware store (like a Lowes or Home Depot). For most people you are like so what but to me as a scientist/researcher/mad scientist this is really cool.

I will try to keep posting stuff.

Installing a Washing Machine

2006-10-21T00:05:00.000+09:00

So as part of getting a new apartment I purchased a used washing machine so that I don't need to worry about going to a coin operated laundry. So you might think that I had to do some fun plumbing similar to what is shown on the left.

Far from it. The plumbing for adding a washing machines to an apartment is surprisingly easy. In my case it was just two water connections.

As can be seen below.

The water supply.

The waste water.

So as you can see from the pictures water supply comes directly from the tap on the sink with an adapter on the end of the tap for the hose to attach to.

For the waste water, I take out the gray waste water tube for the sink and insert the white tube for the washing machine. Beneath the bottom of the cabinet for the sink there is a pipe that comes out of the floor which I assume goes to the septic system. So obviously I can't use the sink while I am doing laundry.

What is interesting for this entire installation all I needed was a Philips head (called a plus driver in Japan) driver and a knife.

I just wanted to post this so people can get a little contrast for typical plumbing that they are use to.

Please feel free to comment.

Hanami (Cherry Blossoms)

2006-10-07T05:01:00.000+09:00

First off I should say this that hanami are in bloom in April and May. So this post is a bit late. To compound things the text was written on my flight back from Singapore. It has been waiting for me to put together the photos that I wanted so I finally decided to sit down and do it. Think of this as an incentive to come out to Japan and see the hanami next year.

I know this is very similar to one blog post that I have already done but there are always so many good photos (If they are not any good, don't tell me :) ) that it is hard to resist putting them up. So here are a few of my favorite shots from this year. I also went to the botanical garden close to my apartment this year and caught those flowers in bloom.

New apartment

2006-10-07T04:22:00.000+09:00

Well I don't have much of an excuse for not posting much lately its just that I have been kind of busy.

From the title you can see that I have a new apartment now. So, I have been doing the moving type stuff lately.

The apartment that I moved to is probably a little bit more of a normal Japanese apartment, if not in style at least in size and layout. It is just your basic bachelor pad. It has its own kitchenette and bathroom. The other nice feature is that there is a loft above the kitchenette/bathroom. I have put my bed up there to free up space in the main room. Trust me there is still not a lot of space in the apartment.

There are several nice features of moving out of my old apartment. One is that I will not forget to bring ingredients to the kitchen when I am cooking. My old apartment had been in a pseudo dormitory, so that meant that it had a separate shared kitchen for each floor but I had my own refrigerator in my room. This meant that when I went to make scrambled eggs I would bring most of the ingredients from my room to the kitchen. This would include,

Eggs
10 yen for the range
Milk
Bread
Cheese
Onion
Margin
Orange Juice

After scrambling the eggs I would but them on toasted bread with the cheese. The OJ was for drinking with the sandwich. Almost every week I would forget one of those ingredients (I don't care to admit to the number of times it was the eggs). So with the kitchen and fridge right there I don't need to worry about forgetting any of the ingredients (Well except maybe going to the store to pick something up).

A couple of nice things are, I am closer to the lab. This move will cut 5 to 10 minutes off my trip in every morning. Also any friends or family can now come and stay at my place if they come to Japan. At the dormitory they did not want people staying overnight.

However, the quality of the view out my window has gone down significantly. At the dormitory I had,
or .

However at the new place this is the view.

If you can't tell that is a brick wall. The change of going from the third floor to the first floor is pretty significant.

I will try to do a better job of keeping this updated.
Andrew

A new/used bicycle

2006-09-08T21:42:00.000+09:00

Last week I bought a new/used bicycle from another American friend who was returning to America. This has been very nice for several reasons.

Before I only had a Japanese bicycle that was too small (see picture below)
The Japanese bicycle was broken
It is probably a good thing for me to get off my butt and get some more exercise.

We will see if this will spur at least more photo taking because I will take the bike out on more trips.

Funeral over the weekend

2006-09-04T08:55:00.000+09:00

I know I don't post as much as a I should but that is life.

Over the weekend I went to a funeral. I am not going to go into details because I don't think it is appropriate. Rather I am going to give you a link to a wikipedia article (link). Look at the sections listed for wake, funeral and cremation. I took part in all three with to a varying extent. If you have specific questions or comments please email me.

Andrew

The touring day of Singapore.

2006-08-11T18:01:00.000+09:00

So the group of us spent a day touring around some of the more famous spots around Singapore. I was sad that we could only spend one day but such is life.

The first up on that tour day was a trip to an island that had formerly been a gun emplacement for the British when Singapore was a colony. On this island there was a bunch of the standard tourist traps but there was also a bunch of good scenery.

This is the merlion, what I call the mascot of Singapore.

Then we went down to the beach and out onto a smaller island which according to the sign is the furthest southern point on the Asian continent. Which also makes it the furthest south that I have traveled (Surpassing Shreveport Louisiana).

While walking along the beach we found a coconut that had fallen from the tree. Some how I got the idea to break it open, whether it was someone else who suggested it or not I can't remember. So here is some of the pictures of me doing that and the results.

It would have probably been better to use a sharp machete but all I had was the corner of a concrete block embedded in the ground.

After this we took a gondola ride back to Singapore and then up to a mountain. Here are various shots of the harbor from inside the gondola. Mind you some of these pictures were taken through the plexi-glass of the gondola so the quality might not be that good.

For the last part of the trip we went to a botanical garden that had a dedicate orchid garden. So I used up a bunch of pictures on that. Here are some of the highlights.

Finally that night we went to little India for dinner. Here is a picture of dinner. mmmmm... mutton.

As always there many more pictures on flickr. For starters looks under Singapore.

The last service at the old church building

2006-07-24T11:02:00.000+09:00

Last week we had the last service at the old church. We will be building a new church. Below is a picture of the original church.

And here is a picture of the congregation after the service.

As the new building goes up I hope to put together more posts.

Merlion & the CBD

2006-07-03T10:42:00.000+09:00

Merlion & the CBD
Originally uploaded by voux.

This is the merlion that I showed in the previous post. This showes what I hoped to see when I took my pictures.

The First Set of Pictures from Singapore

2006-07-01T17:09:00.000+09:00

In this post I will include some of the pictures that I took during the conference. Sadly I did not have a lot of time during the conference to take pictures or walk around much. These are just some snap shots that I took as I was walking to and from the conference. Notice the architecture there. It was all I think very new but what I liked is that typically designers tried to not make all the buildings either simple rectangles.

This next set is some shots that I took while walking around at night after the last day of the conference. Some of the shots are not great but that is the only chance I had t get some of that stuff.

One of the sad things about the timing of this trip was that the tiger thing with water coming out of its mouth was being cleaned so we couldn't see it. Here are a couple of pictures I got of it but they are not all that great.

The first Singapore Post

2006-06-30T14:39:00.000+09:00

Hello everyone again.

I am actually typing this on the plane coming back from Singapore. Not that I won't get a chance to post it until I get on the Internet again.

So first off why was I there?

I was in Singapore to present a paper on my research (APCOT2006.org). The presentation I guess didn't go as bad as I thought it did and I met a bunch of interesting people doing other types of research or dealing with some of the same topics as I deal with.

In some later posts I will post pictures from the trip.

For now i will leave you with a link for googleearth to go Singapore. If you are like me the first time that I realized that I was going to Singapore I could not place it on a map so this should help some what.

Googleearth (tested in v4 however it might work in v3)(This is a collection of links that I found. Depending on how I feel and ambitious I am I might set up my own site for storing kml file.)
maps.google.com

Here I will put some of my thoughts of Singapore. I always thought that Japan was known for its clean cities. Singapore puts Japan to shame. things were really clean there. The second thing to note that for me was odd the first day or to was that we were basically on the equator the sun did not come up as early as it does in Sendai in the summer. There are two official languages there, English and Chinese. Guess which one I used. It was really nice to be in a country again where I could speak English with people. Singapore also seems to be a very international city/country. This made it feel like I didn't stick out as much as I normally do in Japan.

As I will mention later the architecture there is probably all new but I liked it. To me the prices were not that bad compared to Japan even though it was listed in the top 20 of the most expensive places to live in the world. The food was good there even though I really don't know what is truly from Singapore. But again because people understand English I could always ask for not spicy. Also the variety of food was quite good also.

A few of the points that I didn't like about the city but there is really not much that can be done about some of them. One was the humidity. The second was related to the first and that is the amount of electricity that must be used for cooling. During the conference I was in a suit and tie every day and as long as I was in AC building life was good. When I went outside I began to pour sweat out. The third thing that I didn't like was pushy restaurant owners.

Otherwise I really liked the city and highly recommend it to people for a visit at the least. I don't think it would be all that bad for somone who was single or as a retirnment home either.

Google Earth - Home

2006-06-17T18:33:00.000+09:00

So this week google earth 4 beta came out. Now how does this relate to Japan and the like. For one it has a Linux client so I can use it now and secondly they have improved the resolution around Sendai. So this means that I can now actually find my apartment.

So still why the blog post?

Well because I am paranoid that if I post my address (even though I probably have in some other way and just don't realize it) some maniac will come to my door. So if you want a link to see where I live send me an email or an IM (all contact info is on the right) and I will send it off to you.

So thanks google for putting out this nice product for free and a Linux client.

Google Earth - Home

A relatively small Japanese pagoda

2006-06-05T15:25:00.000+09:00

cimg2071
Originally uploaded by ehud4242.

On a weekend trip I saw this pagoda. It just so happened there was enough space to setup a forced perspective shot.

Here is the original without me in the shot. I will put more photos up of this trip later.

Chevy and Bicycles

2006-05-19T22:11:00.000+09:00

Just an amusing picture or two.

Who knew that Chevy made bicycles too.

Dentisist in Japan

2006-04-15T15:00:00.000+09:00

Today is just a short post on a topic that has come up for me in the past.

Dentisist in Japan operate a little bit different than they do in the US. Here no appointment is necessary. So sometimes the wait is a little long but there are enough densist around that it is not too bad.

The second item that comes up is that when the dentist cleans your teeth he or she only does one half at one time. So when I went they cleaned by lower jaw first and then I went back a week later and they cleaned my upper jaw.

The price for this is quite reasonable or at least what I ended up paying. In Japan the the health care system is government operated so that makes prices reasonably cheap and espically for students.

Thats it for now,

Survey Marks

2006-04-08T09:50:00.000+09:00

Yes I know it has been a while since I posted. I have been bery busy as normal and just could not make time for this. Oh well such is life.

Here is an interesting topic for some people, survey markers. I don't remember seeing these all that often in the US and it was pointed out that you see these all the time here. These are primarily used with marking property boundaries.

Here are a couple of examples. The first one I think ins intersting because the survey marker was molded int a cement wall.

The final example, I am guessing is for putting new survey points in.

I am not sure if these are more common because I am in a city or not, but it shows the value of people's property.

You can see more examples atflickr.

Trash Day at the Lab

2006-03-03T18:53:00.000+09:00

Just a couple of pictures of trash day at the lab.

Basically in my lab we have a storage room in the back that every couple of weeks we need to empty to take over to a main collection area. Of course like everyone else we need to see what is the least number of trips we can make. I am of course guilty of this.

A somewhat common scene

2006-02-25T16:43:00.000+09:00

cimg1555.jpg
Originally uploaded by ehud4242.

Today I am only have a short post for you. Specifically I am looking at this display that I saw outside of Sendai Station. This display tells you how much energy solar panels are converting to electricity and how much CO_2 is not being produced because of these Solar Panels. These Solar Panels I believe are part of the compliance with the Kyoto Accord. So if you are in Japan you might see displays like these near new buildings or buildings that have been recently renovated.

My Morioka Snow Festivile Trip

2006-02-18T17:56:00.000+09:00

Well last weekend for a change we had a Saturday off so Ye-san and I went on a trip to Morioka which is north of Sendai. The reason for the Trip was to go see the a snow festival in a town outside of Morioka. Here are some of the picutres of the snow festival.

This festival was nice except for one thing which was that it is designed for children. Ye-san and I got their pretty early and we wanted to stay until the evening because they would light up the snow sculptures. However there was nothing then to do for four or five hours so we went back to Morioka to look for someplace else to go. We ended going to a museum where you can make get some hands on experience doing traditional Japanese crafts. Some of the photos are here.

The highlight was I made nanbusenbei. Nanbusenbei is kind of a traditional cookie or cracker in Japan. Here are a couple of the pictures for this.

From there we went back to morioka and I grabbed some night shots there of the city skyline, which I think came out pretty good.

The final photo that I will show here is of someone who obviously missed their bus and had been waiting a while.

Yes that little guy was sitting on the bench at the bus stop that while we were waiting for the bus to come to take us back to Morioka.

This was not that exciting of a trip but it was just nice to get out and see someplace different. Here is the link to all of the photos from the trip.

Until next time,
Andrew

Valentine's Day and White Day in Japan

2006-02-14T13:31:00.000+09:00

Valentine's Day and White Day in Japan

So this is worthy of a blog post. I just found out Japan's Valentine's day this year and how it works. You can read the article but here are the highlights.

The Japanese celebrate St. Valentine's day in a rather unique fashion. Women give the men gifts of chocolate as well as other gifts.

This is obviously a little bit different. The article goes on to say that there is the opposite of this holiday in March called White day where men give gifts to the woman or women in their life.

I have another post I need to put up but I need to get it organized before I do it so you can look forward to that hopefully later on this week.

New with the Old

2006-02-09T17:11:00.000+09:00

cimg1447.jpg
Originally uploaded by ehud4242.

This is a picture that I took while on my way to church. This is one of the interesting things about Japan. Some of the things that you see where the "old" collides or combines with the new. In this case you have a rather old house but it still has a satellite dish on it. I will try to find more odd stuff like this.

Click on the link to go to the flickr page where the photo is stored to see the highlited section with the dish.

Electrical outlets in Japan

2006-01-30T11:04:00.000+09:00

This is a photo that I in my lab. Can you see anything wrong with this photo.

When I was growing up I remember seeing videos of that you should not one use three prong to two prong adatpers. You should also not use outlet expanders as seen here to plug more things in.

In this picture you can see both of those rules have been broken.

Now here I am suppose to come up with some type of conclusion for this picture but I have none.　Maybe the circuits are built better here but I have a hard time believing that. Probably it means that again in the US we are taught to be a little too cautious with circuits.

EDIT: The more I think about this in the US it is acceptable to use power strips and surge protectors to expand outlets. So maybe we do this anyways. I still think though that surge protectors and power strips have been designed with more redundancy and insulation than what I see here.

My Flickr photo feed

2005-12-13T01:53:00.000+09:00

Well if you have not guessed by now I am using flickr to store my photos. I have gone through and uploaded all of my old photos so you can still see those from the ophoto days. Here is a link to my main feed and here is a link to my tags. For people who do not know tags our well tags that I add to all of the photos to make them easier to organise and browse.

The other fun thing about flickr is that it also has rss feeds for the photos so you can use this feature to let you know when I add new photos.

Please fee l free to browse the photos and download any of the ones that you want. Almost all of them have the orginal hi-res versions up there so if you need photos go ahead and use them.

This will probably be the last post from Japan before I come back to America for Christmas and New Year's. I don't think I will post much from the US unless something comes up.

So Merry Chrstmas and Happy New Year.
Andrew

Happy birthday Josh

2005-12-10T02:53:00.000+09:00

For those that know the Painter's Birthday Song and have a sense of humor.

Happy Birthday Dirge

For everyone else move along.

TIMEasia Magazine: Mirror, Mirror...

2005-12-09T21:41:00.000+09:00

TIMEasia Magazine: Mirror, Mirror...

As Promised here is the link to the time article that talks about men and their makeup, at least in Asia.

Deodorant and Japan

2005-12-03T13:11:00.000+09:00

Now with a title like that you are probably wondering what the heck is this blog post about or where are we going with this. Well last weekend I went looking for to buy deodorant because I was almost out and did not think that people in the lab would appreciate me going without deodorant for a couple of weeks. So I went to a drug store to look for deodorant. No dice. I went to another drug store and a supermarket and still no deodorant. The second supermarket did finally have some, however only a roll-on and a spray-on deodorant. For contrast think back to the last time you went to a supermarket and think about how many different varieties that they had for deodorant. Granted the supermarkets in japan are not huge but you could definitely call the second one a small to medium sized supermarket by American standards.

I will admit that I might have missed the deodorant in the other stores because I was looking for in the wrong place or looking for the wrong thing. But still next time you come to Japan and have left the airport you are going to probably have a hard time finding deodorant.

I asked one Japanese member of my lab who had spent 1 year in the US if he knew what deodorant was but he thought of it in terms of perfume. So basically it is not used very often here.

On the contrary you would be surprised by the number of facial creams and hair products for men that you can find here. I should find the Time article about that.

Japan and Thanksgiving

2005-11-28T13:49:00.000+09:00

This is one of those kind of similar to the ice cream post, in that a few people have asked me this, does Japan have Thanksgiving?

The answer in my opinion is no. The reason being is that there are some holidays here in japan where they might go to temples to ask for another good year or something along those lines. I am not sure if there is a really a day that they give thanks. Borrowing from tonight's (Sunday's Night's) sermon who are we giving thanks to? In my opinion God. If you look at the origins of the first Thanksgiving (or at least what was taught in school) the pilgrims were giving thanks for a good harvest and good friends. So for this reason I don't think the Japanese do not have what I would call a Thanksgiving.

The Japanese do have a holiday on Nov. 23 that is basically a workers or labor day. So if you see a holiday on the Japanese Calendar that is the one.

I guess I should say what I am thankful for. Several things actually. One was a good turkey dinner (the first turkey I have had since a Turkey Club Sandwich in Korea in June) at Church on Sunday. Pictures below.

Trust me, this made my week.

The leaves finally changing here with color are nice.

To all of the people who comment on this blog and just a new way for me to put stories up of what is happening around me right now. Finally, I am thankful for my family and friends both in the US and in Japan.

Well thats all for me. I hope everyone had a good Thanksgiving.

Stanely and a Fashion Show

2005-11-28T10:24:00.000+09:00

The last installment for this will talk about the fashion show for each of different countries. So with out further adieu I will just begin.

China

Wighuru

India

Pakistan

Nepal

Indoneshia

Bangladesh

Korea

Mongolia

Romania

Vietnam

Russia

Jordan

Japan

Just all of us after the event.

This will be the last post relating the Flat Stanley project. There are even more pictures than are shown at my flickr account. Below is a link to just the photos related to Stanley

http://www.flickr.com/photos/20969726@N00/tags/stanley/

I will be adding more pictures to that over time (there is a 20 meg upload limit and I use that up pretty fast). Those pictures will both be new pictures, pictures from the ophoto account and other random pictures that I never posted before.

I hope people have enjoyed the Flat Stanley project, because I have.

Post 1 of 2 on the Amigo Festival

2005-11-24T13:10:00.000+09:00

The first in a series on the Amigo festival. The Amigo festival was held at my dormitory last weekend. The Amigo festival is basically an international festival where people make different foods for their part of the world and then there is a series of skits, songs, dances and a fashion show to showcase all of the different cultures.

For this event I was in charge of the sound mixing.

This meant that the pictures I got were from the side of the stage instead of the center. Also sadly my camera does not do well in low light conditions so the pictures are not that great. The good news is that Flat Stanley was s placed very nicely in the pictures that I took. I also had a friend in the crowd with a tripod so she was able to get some good pictures in the low light conditions.

Onto the show. The first show of the day was a Japanese Drums group. These are quite nice, but very loud. One of the fun things that they did was they had the children come up and play a little. See pictures below.

This picture is a good shot of where Flat Stanley was stuck.

Next was a Napalese dance which is one of those sad cases with most of these photos that to see it was very impressive unfotunatly you can only see the pictures from the event.

Next Up I will post the pictures for the fashion show.

Pictures from the top of my Lab Building

2005-11-23T16:23:00.000+09:00

This is the last of the pictures of Flat Stanely before I mailed him back to America. These were taken from the top floor of my building where my lab is to show off some of the scenery around where I am.

This is not the last post for Flat Stanely because I have well over 100 pictures or so to sort through for the International festivile at my Dormatory last weekend.

Sendai soccer Game

2005-11-14T17:32:00.000+09:00

So This weekend Flat Stanley along with several friends from church went to a soccer* game. Sendai's (仙台） team is Vegalta (ベガルタ [Pronounced begaruta, this made for some confusion this week when speaking to friends at the lab]). Sorry for that long side bar. So we went to the soccer game and sat in the Sendai Fan section. This meant that we were surrounded by yellow with some blue. In the pictures below you can see some of the opening festivities.

Here are a couple of pictures of action during the game of the fans cheering and of the action on the field.

These flags shown in these pictures are waved around whenever there was a big play or a goal.

Finally here is a picture of the group that I went with to the game in front of a statue of the team's mascot.

Before I forget Sendai won 1 to 0.

*FYI in Japan they also call soccer "soccer." I find this interesting because I was taught in French class in high school that the US was the only country that did not call soccer "football."

A picture in front of a random temple at night

2005-11-12T14:12:00.000+09:00

This is a picture that I took last night in front of a temple on my way back to my apartment.

Stanley is leaning against the post to the right of the center door.

The Beginning of the Flat Stanley project

2005-11-08T11:29:00.000+09:00

Yesterday in the mail I received Flat Stanley. Below is a quote of the description for Flat Stanley.

This is what the Flat Stanley project is - it is a book that tells the story of a child named Stanley that has a bulletin board hit him. While this may seem tragic it enables him to be mailed in an envelope to places all over the world.

So over the next two weeks or so I will be taking Flat Stanley around with me to the various places I go and take pictures with him. I will post the pictures and descriptions here for people to see.

Hopefully I will get out and do some stuff over the next couple of weeks instead of go to the lab everyday (I probably still will go to the lab everyday).

Below is a picture of Flat Stanley.

Japanese Ice Cream

2005-10-31T10:18:00.000+09:00

Well lately I have been thinking to myself that I wanted to post more to the blog but I did not want to just post “crap.” So the other day I was talking to my younger brother and he asked me about some rice covered ice cream here in Japan.

Tonight I was looking at what I think he was talking about with the rice covered ice cream and it hit me (not the ice cream[I sometimes need to correct Japanese students on English grammar {scary thought} so this is to be clear what the it refers to]). If Josh is curious about rice covered ice cream everyone will be so that would make a good post for the blog (and it gives me an excuse to buy some more ice cream[insert sound effects of Homer Simpson for donuts] mmm ice cream[/effects]).

So I went to the local Seiyou (actually owned by Wal-Mart) and picked up a couple of “Japanese” style ice creams. The first is a green tea ice cream and the second was the “rice” covered ice cream, which are shown below before and after taking them out of their packaging.

I only put out a few of the the green tea variety.

For reference I have also added shots of the ice cream after cutting them in half. Sadly things begain to melt because of the time it took me walk back to the apartment.

What you can see for the green tea ice cream is that it has a kind of outer and inner shell. For the rice covered ice cream there is an outer coating around the ice cream middle.

I sampled both varieties and came to this conclusion. The green tea variety was not really an ice cream but rather more of a frozen green tea with sweeteners. The rice covered variety the ice cream in the middle was a good basic vanilla and the outer covering added a nice texture to the whole affair.

The green tea variety I sadly really did not care for. I to drink green tea either hot or cold but this does not do green tea justice. I really think the sweeteners take away from the overall taste.

For the rice covered variety, it was quite good, the vanilla was good and the covering was also nice. I am not sure if the covering is actually rice or made of rice. Maybe during the next week or two I will try to ask someone.

Finally in conclusion there were some more Japanese ice creams that I did not try for a couple of reasons. One very simply was that I was afraid of the flavors. I could not read the boxes and the pictures did not fill me with confidence. The second reason was these were not sold in individual packs so I would need to buy a big box. I do not have a freezer nor the appetite to eat that much ice cream at once (besides, mothers around the world probably frown on that). Below is a picture that I took of the display in the store.

An excuse to test out my calendar

2005-10-19T17:11:00.000+09:00

This an excuse to test out the calendar on the side. I copied this from someone else. If anyone wants source code I would be happy to give it to you or you can copy it right out of the html code for this page. I know I probably don't have the colors right but I am not a graphic artist.

In other updates I have added a bunch of buttons all for getting in contact with me so you can take your pick.

That's all for now,

Imoni Party

2005-10-17T11:40:00.000+09:00

Imoni means something long the lines of potato. This party is basically like a harvest festival. This party is a relatively local festival in that if you ask people from Tokyo about this they would not know what it is about. The tradition of the festival consists of going down to the river sometime in late September or October and cooking up a few different soups.

So our lab had our Imoni party on Friday. Below is a picture of one of the typical soups that were made.

One thing you will notice is that the soups are made using a big pot over a camp fire. When I was thinking about this coming up this year I wanted to do bring something somewhat American to this event. What I came up with was S'mores. For a change I will not need to explain to you guys what s'mores are which is a change from last week where I had to explain to everyone what they are.

Last weekend I went to the import store and bought the marshmallows and the graham crackers. The chocolate is sold in almost all of the stores (it was not Hersey's chocolate close enough).

After one of the soups finished cooking I got one volunteer (victim) to get started cooking their marshmallow. I realized it is difficult to tell people that you want to cook the marshmallow but be careful not to burn it because it is easy to burn. The other thing I realized is that it would have been nice to have a table to work on but oh well. Finally, I now have more respect for my mother and other people who were in charge of metering out the chocolate and graham crackers because I was trying to keep up with the influx of people with cooked marshmallows.

Below are various pictures of the roasting of the marshmallows.

The cooking

Me trying to keep up with everyone.

And the aftermath.

A story from Argyle

2005-10-04T18:45:00.000+09:00

Well this does not have anything to do with Japan except that I am sitting at my desk in Japan to write this.

When, my parents farm began chopping (harvesting) corn this fall one of the tractors basically died. This was not one of your average dieing, this tractor went in a blaze of glory, well maybe not glory but defiantly a blaze. No one was hurt thankfully. The first picture is a picture of the same tractor as we had that I found on the web. The next two are of the tractor after the incident.

This is a shot of the hole that was made in the engine block from the tractor over reving.

More of the burnt out tractor

Basically what happened the governor on the turbo charger for the engine broke. This allowed the engine to get into a runaway condition. Once the engine was in a runaway condition it over heated and one of the pistons in the engine broke which beat the hole in the side of the engine block which you see. From there the tractor caught on fire and they ended up calling the fire department to put the fire out.

One of the surprising outcomes from this is after the fire we thought that it would be difficult to get rid of the tractor but within one week they had four offers for the tractor.

An updated photo

2005-09-29T21:15:00.000+09:00

Well you might have noticed a new picture in the corner. Someone, who will remain nameless*, thought that I did not look my best in the old photo. To be honest the old photo is over a year old taken within a week or two of arriving in Japan in May of 2004. For completeness here is the old photo.

I have updated the photo and I am not sure if I like it much better. It might be simply that I don't like getting my photo taken because I never know what to do in them. So please feel free to comment on which photo you like better.

* JOSH

Chronicle Careers: 07/08/2005

2005-09-27T21:42:00.000+09:00

A fear I had when I started this blog was that it could adveresly affect future job opportunities. This article is a short discussion of this topic.

Chronicle Careers: 07/08/2005

I guess this is a note to self and other fellow bloggers that we should remember that these blogs are public. I think I am going to review my entries at least grammatical errors for a start.

Discrimination against Left Handed People

2005-09-26T12:55:00.000+09:00

Ok so I am bias,

Last night at church someone announced a research project that they were looking for native English speakers. Cool, I go and check it and you get paid ichi man en (sorry I slipped into Japanese [10,000 Yen {A little less than $100}]) for like an hour or two test. I checked the requirements and one was to be right handed. That of course from my first post basically counts me out.

Oh well the test required that you be in a MRI and listen to sentences and then push some button depending on something. It sounds like that they are looking at what areas of the brain are activated while listening to English. There research that shows that left handed people use different portions of their brains for different things than right handed people. So the testers are just trying to limit the number of variables in the test.

The last interesting portion of the story was that is that one word that they used in the description was "gratuity" which was used with relation to money and travel expenses. So I guessed it had to do with getting paid but I was not sure. I double checked and here is the definition: something given voluntarily or beyond obligation usually for some service. Ok so I was about right, but the other funny thing was that another person from England was also not sure of the meaning.

I am not sure what all of this means except that I should probably improve my vocab.

A Chinese Meal

2005-09-26T12:44:00.000+09:00

Last Sunday I had dinner with some Chinese and one Taiwanese friends from my lab. The primary course for that meal was gioza. The closest thing to gioza that I can think of in America is egg rolls. But those are not even close, really except for the idea that you have some type of dough wrapped around a filling. For the traditional Chinese version these guys are typically boiled, however the tasty version is when you throw them in a frying pan with oil. I think I like that version because I am like my dad with the saying, "When its brown its cooking, when its black its done."

There is a version of these here in Japan also, however they are typically fried, or at least the times that I have bought them at the store.

There was a variety of different dishes that were served along with the gioza. There was some noodles and cucumbers, a weird black hardboiled egg and tofu which was warmed up, pigs ears (i think) along with a couple of other dishes.

All in all it was good meal and I highly recommend that you try gioza if you ever get a chance.

Below are some pictures from the event.

This is a picture of the stuff that goes inside the gioza.

The finished gioza afeter wrapping in dough and boiling.

Xe (pernouced Joh in Japanese and Yay in Chinese) finishing preparing the meal. There are sevral of the dishes on the table.

I will be home for Christmas

2005-09-17T15:10:00.000+09:00

Well on Wednesday night I made the reservations for the trip home for Christmas. For those interested, I will be arriving on Dec. 14 in the afternoon and will leave on Jan. 4 in the morning. On Thursday when I was looking at the news sure enough what did I see, the airline that I made the reservation with (Northwest) had declared bankruptcy. In all reality this is nothing major, it however does not give me a warm fuzzy feeling down inside.

The second thing related to this I saw that NW was offering a service that 90 days before departure you could choose your seat. I was like sweet, exit row seating here I come. As it turned out they are doing what I thought airlines should have done all along now which is charge more for exit row seats, basically making business class seats. This had been an idea of mine for a while would be to increase the price of exit row seats by $50 or so. I would happily pay that on the long trips to and from Japan.

Ah well, I will be home over Christmas which puts me in a really good mood. For the people I know I will be seeing do you have any requests from Japan, or should I bring my normal, dried squid or some Chinese food.

Ah well that will be enough for now. I will not as many updates as I did last week because those had been topics that I had been thinking about for a while.

A Japanese Garden

2005-09-13T18:52:00.000+09:00

One Sunday morning a friend and I went to a Japanese garden close to my apartment. There really is not much to say except to look at the pictures. So without further adieu here are the pictures.

They had some large (I am guessing) gold fish in the ponds.

Over the counter medicine in Japan

2005-09-13T10:20:00.000+09:00

File this under the differences between the US and Japan.

The other day I was looking for Tylenol to take care of a headache. I was able to find it in the drug store without too much trouble. I checked the recommended dosage on the side of the box, and its one capsule per dose 3 times a day. Each capsule has 300 mg of Acetaminophen. Now if you pull out a typical bottle of over the counter Tylenol from a America, lets say extra strength or what ever it is 500mg per capsule, 2 capsules per dose 4 times a day.

So this leads us to one of three conclusions.

In America we take way too much
The Japanese are more sensitive to the medicine so they don't need as much
Take your pick on a get rich gimmick on either side of the pond.

What I am trying is to keep my dosages low so that I can get use to it. However, if the pain is bad and is interfering with my work I guess I will start popping Japan's Tylenol like it is candy.

Oh and one other side note you cannot buy over the counter drugs at convenience stores or super markets. Only at drug stores which are not open 24 hours like the other stores.

Last interesting note, Halls cough drops are sold in a connivance store in the candy isle while they are not sold in the drug store. The Vick's cough drops are the opposite. The Halls are the only one that I have found that are worth taking to prevent a cough.

So another nugget of information for future visits to Japan.

(Someone with more knowledge on any of these topics please feel free to comment)

Earthquake in Japan

2005-09-12T13:27:00.000+09:00

So four weeks ago we had an earthquake here in japan. As I am sure you can guess I made it through with no problems. For the size of the earthquake, 7.2 or so, and how close it was to sendai it is surprising there was not more damage. For me because everyone asks I was filling up a container with liquid nitrogen. So nothing special. Of course The next room over to me there were gas bottles full of Arsenic, silane (a poisonous gas that bursts into flames when it comes in contact with air) and a variety of other flammable and poisons gases. So nothing new. When the earthquake hit I shut off the valve to the liquid nitrogen and then dived out the front door because I was on the ground floor close to a door.

The only damage that I had to deal with at the lab is one of the buildings a water line broke which in a room on the second floor there was an inch or two of standing water. Of course there were more than a few cardboard boxes on the floor so this caused some problems. Otherwise there was no damage to the lab.

I really felt sorry for people who used the train system here. After every major earthquake the tracks are checked for damage. The problem is that trains are a primary form of commuting here in Japan. So when the trains finally came back on line I guess there were very long lines for people to get back on to get where they needed to go.

Transducers 2005

2005-09-12T11:54:00.000+09:00

Well from June 4th through June 10th I was in Seoul, South Korea for Transducers 2005. I had a poster presentation. What this means is that I wrote a paper for the proceedings and for the conference I made a poster that summarized my paper and stood in front of it for 3 hours to answer questions from other participants in the conference.

Our lab had 10 or so papers at the conference so we had those people plus the professors there with us. The group with the students got their a day early which allowed us to do some touring around Seoul for one day. Here is a couple of the picture that I got from there. The first is of the king palace are. Please don't ask me to explain everything because I have fogotten now.

The second is of the king's private garden.

I will not post any food pictures but I will leave it like this I was happy to get back to Japanese food. The food in Korea is very spicy. After more than a few meals did I come away with a burnt out mouth. The best way to describe some of the spices was that they continued to get hotter you eat more. There more several dishes there that I liked such as the yakiniku, you are given raw beef, a grill and some spices. You do the rest. The bubinbi is much better than what you can get in Japan. Those were the two dishes I liked the best along with one trip to TGIF's (one of those chains) where I got the first club sandwich that I have had in over a year or maybe 2. Sendai is not big enough to get those type of chains up here, if I was in Tokyo I would have no problem finding those types of restaurants.

Funny stories from Korea.

The first is that on the day that my group was out sight seeing twice I had young children come up to me and say hello. The first time that it happened I was not expecting it and the little girl started yelling hello at me until I turned around and greeted her. What struck me as odd is for the amount of time that I have been in Japan that has maybe happended to me twice and never by young children, while in one outing in Seoul it happened to me twice.

The second funny/interesting story was of my name tag at the conference. My name tag looked something like this.

Andrew Randles

Tohoku University
Japan

Now this is be worn by a 6 foot 2 ish guy with blond hair and blue eyes (see picture on side) and two or three people said to me, "You are not from Japan, are you?" I got a kick out of this, as did my lab members.

I should say the conference itself was very good and I had a good time. I met several interesting people and went to several interesting presentations.

Spring in Japan

2005-09-12T11:36:00.000+09:00

Now onto spring

Well much like the NY after a while I can't wait for spring, whether it be to get out side and bicycle a little bit, walk around or just get some fresh air. Now also like NY I think spring and summer are a little "sweeter" because you have come through a cold winter so you can appreciate the warmth and the nice weather better.

The highlight of the spring is sakura which are the cherry blossoms. The cherry blossoms that you see in Washington DC are the same as the ones here because those cherry trees were a gift from Japan. The cherry blossoms start blooming in the south where it is warmer and work their way north through the archipelago (archipelago refers to all of the Japanese islands which stretch several hundred miles). This is similar except in reverse in how the fall colors move south from the colder areas.

I have included one picture of a street with these trees in full bloom up the street.

I have several more pictures but just to put it simply they are nice to look at.

A second picture that I am including is just kind of funny that I took the same day.

I know that this guy is safe but the picture was something that I could not pass up. The guy on the ground is probably ready to take my camera away for taking this picture.

Next up Korea for Transducers'05

Winter pictures

2005-09-12T11:18:00.000+09:00

I guess in follow up to the last post one of the impetus for this blog was that ofoto or kodak or whatever had changed the policy of posting photos to that service which I had been using to post photos. I also for the longest time have not been happy with the service and had been thinking about moving. Talking with my friend Scott he mentioned that blogger allowed you to post photos in the blog for free. In some ways this is better than the ofoto method because one it forces me to choose only the good shots instead of dumping all of my photos for people to wade through. Secondly I can choose certain photos to discuss or tell the story behind.

In this post I will discuss some of the finer points of living in Sendai during the winter.

First off lets take a look at this picture that I took after or during a snow storm last winter (February or March).

Notice several things in this picture. One there is a road under all that white stuff put is not plowed and probably won't be. The reason is very simply that Sendai is similar to some of the southern states where they will get reasonable amounts of snow but it melts is two or three days. I would not say that all the snow melts after a couple of days rather most of the stuff on the roads melts and foot paths are packed down people to walk on.

The second thing to notice the person on the scooter is still out in the middle of this. This is not uncommon for people to continue to ride scooters or motorcycles no matter the weather. Also some scooters will actually have studded snow tires so that they can get traction.

Winters in Sendai are not anywhere near as harsh as they are in upstate NY. What they are damp which makes it hard to get warmed up, see next section. When it snows which typically is less than 6 inches but could be up to a foot or more (once or twice a year) it is a heavy wet snow and it is not uncommon to have two or three inches of slush underneath. So water proof boots are nice for keeping your feet dry.

A note on most Japanese homes and apartments is they don't have central heating. This means it can be difficult to get warmed up when coming back to your home. Most people use space heaters of some type to do the heating, whether it be gas, kerosene or electric. Personally, at my apartment I have a AC system which can be run in reverse so that it heats instead of cools. This is what I used to heat the apartment. I am a cheap bastard so I rarely turned it on, only when I was going to be around for a while.

The point of this is that you need to dress warmly not only outside but also when you are indoors.

Just so that this is not all warnings the one thing that I really liked this snow for was it made everything white (obvious I know) but when everything had been the dull colors from trees loosing their leaves it added some nice variety for an hour or two then everything was white.

The next post will be on a happier subject of spring and sakura.
Andrew

Explanation of stuff

2005-09-12T10:00:00.000+09:00

Well this is my first lets say real post to the blog. For all of you reading this whether it be family or friends tanks for stopping by to take a look. I guess this is kind of my way of putting up information and talk about what I am doing, and stories but I also am not sending out emails to people who don't want to receive any of my emails.

For those who don't know a blog is just a place on where some one ore many people post information on some topic or just what they are thinking about. They are pretty popular right now and they have been around for several years and I am now finally getting started on making one (not that I am making one, more of I am using this service blogger to make it).

In this blog there will be discussions of a variety of topics. Anything from current stories from Japan and my stay including pictures, to discussions on science and technology that I may have seen news articles about.

The title of this blog as you can see is up in the air right now so I will be thinking about that more in the future. You need to remember that this is going to be a public blog.

The name ehud42.blogspot.com comes from the fact that I always liked the story in Judges 3:12-30 which I will quote to you here.

12Once again the Israelites did evil in the eyes of the Lord, and because they did this evil the Lord gave Eglon king of Moab power over Israel. 13 Getting the Ammonites and the Amalekites to join him Eglon came and attacked Israel and they took possession of the City of Palms. 14 The Israelites were subject to Eglon king of Moab for eighteen years.

15 Again the Israelites cried out to the Lord and he gave them a deliver-Ehud, a left-handed man, the son of Gera the Benjamite. The Israelites sent him with tribute to Eglon king of Moab. 16 Now Ehud had made a double-edged sword about a foot and a half long which he strapped to is thigh under his clothing. 17 He presented the tribute to Eglon king of Moab, who was a very fat man. 18 After ehud had presented the tribute he sent on their way the men how had carried it. 19 At the idols near gilgal he himself turned back and said "I Have a secret message for you, O king." The king said, "Quiet!" And all his attendants left him.

20 Ehud then approached him while he was sitting alone in the upper room of this summer palace and said, "I have a message from God for you." As the king rose from his seat, 21 Ehud reached with his left hand, drew the sword from his right thigh and plunged it into the king's belly. 22 Even the handle sank in after the blade which came out his back. Ehud did not pull the sword out and the fat closed in over it. 23 Then Ehud went out to the porch; he shut the doors of the upper room behind him and locked them.

24 After he had gone the servants came and found the doors of the upper room locked. They said, "He must be relieving himself in the inner room of the house." 25 they waited to the point of embarrassment, but when he did not open the doors of the room they took a key and unlocked them. There they saw their lord fallen to the floor dead.

26 While they waited, Ehud got away. He passed by the idols and escaped to Seirah. 27 When he arrived there he blew a trumpet in the hill country of Ephraim and the Israelites went down with him from the hills with him leading them.

28 "Follow me," he ordered , "for the Lord had given Moab your enemy into your hands." So they followed him down and, taking possession of the fords of the Jordan that led to Moab they allowed no one to cross over. 29 At that time they struck down about ten thousand Moabites, all vigorous and strong; not a man escaped. 30 That day Moab was made subject to Israel and the land had peace for eighty years.

New International Version (emphasis added by me). (Possible errors added by me because I hand copied this section.)

So basically I like this guy because he is left handed, and is a all around good guy for leading Israel against the Moabites. This story is rememberable for the imagery in it. This one of the few if not the only time in the Bible that someone is mentioned explicitly who is left handed. As most people will know I am left handed so that is the connection.

The 42 is simply that comes from the fact that right now I have a IBM thinkpad T42 laptop. This also is the same user name that I use with skype, and my gmail account.

For my Rochester friends who know the story of how I got the name JapAndrew, that blog name had already been taken so that is why I had to go for Ehud42. Maybe that can become part of the title.

finally, will spend the next few post devoted to stuff that I have been meaning to tell people about but I have not gotten around to it.

So on to doing some more typing.

Andrew
(For people that are curious I had "nothing" much to do today (Sunday) so I decided to start typing up blog entries.)

First Test post

2005-09-09T21:24:00.000+09:00

Fist post.

Please bear with me as I get this set up.

Andrew

My picture