I never would have thought....

that the first time I would really get sick on this trip was in Japan. I figured for sure something I ate would nail me in southeast Asia, but it never did.

Well, this week I either ate something bad or caught the flu. In any case it hit me right after I ate dinner, but I'd been feeling bad all day. I went to bed at 8pm and had a strange repetitive dream all night long. It was like I had to put together some puzzle and every time I did it wrong, the dream started over. I felt like I was in Groundhog Day after a while. I didn't get any real sleep until about 5am, and slept until noon. Luckily I was sick for the better part of Wednesday (when I have no class) and Thursday (when I have a 4:30 class.) I was able to attend class Thursday but literally had sweat stains in my shirt in an air conditioned room. It was not fun.

The fever finally broke that evening though I was still a little off until today. On the plus side, I lost about six pounds, much of which I'm sure was dehydration. So right now I weight about what I did when I started graduate school in September of 2005. I've started doing pushups and situps in my room and am going to start running as soon as my running shoes arrive. I really can't wait to start exercising again.

Friday night the Brandeis crew came up to the Waseda area for dinner and instead of going out we had an impromptu poker game at the dorm. Dan was the first man out when Matt chased him off with two pair.

Down to three people, Jeremy and I went head to head. The flop came up Q-9-something low and Jeremy bet large. I reraised him enough to put him all-in and he gladly called and flipped over his pocket kings. I let Dan deal out the rest of the cards and started laughing and said, "you really aren't going to like this" as I flipped over my pocket aces.

Matt then made the mistake of calling my all-in on the turn. I had a full house, he was drawing dead so the first annual Brandeis Tokyo Poker Open (whatever) goes to yours truly. The Y2000 I won will probably all be spent in the same place.

I think the Japanese diet appeals to me...

I only brought one belt with me, and when I arrived I could not even come close to fastening it. It was an older one that I'd bought before gaining weight.

6 weeks after arriving I can get to notch one. I've lost about 20 lbs and haven't really done a lot of exercise. However, I walk a LOT more here in Tokyo than I ever did at home. Once my real running shoes arrive sometime next week I should really be able to kick it up a notch.

I have also noticed that I simply eat a lot less here. Food is not as readily available here as it is in the States, so I simply wait for my meals instead of snacking a lot.

I talked to a good friend about getting on a proper diet and eating a lot of protein, minimizing carbs etc. That is exceptionally hard to do here since rice is served at every meal. However, most Japanese folks seem to be pretty slim so perhaps they know something we don't. Their eating style certainly appeals to me.

Insects can be tasty (aka A Night Out in Ginza)

The Brandeis Crew went out last Friday night to meet with Hiroki, an IBS alum (and founder of our Emerging Markets Investment Club) and some other students who did their exchange semester at Brandeis for dinner and drinks.

Candise, Matt and I headed over together. Since Candise needed to do a little shopping first (it is Ginza, after all) I snapped the picture above and this one below. If you look at the middle of it and zoom in a bit you might be able to make out the "Mikimoto" sign.















We ended up at a very cool little restaurant in Ginza that is planted firmly under the subway tracks, so there was a regular rumbling to be felt throughout the whole meal.

It was the first time I tried yakitori, which is grilled chicken. And by this I don't mean just meat. You get meat, skin, liver, and gizzards. All of which I kind of tasty in their own way. The small whole shrimps that we ordered as an appetizer (very good dipped in mayonnaise) were a foreshadowing of things to come....

Here is a quick look at some of the crew...Hiroki is hidden on the end.















We then moved on to a street festival near Hiroki's office.















I might have mentioned in a previous post that Kully and I almost ate a cricket, but we chickened out. After fortifying ourselves with a few frosty beverages, I noticed during the stroll that a booth was selling fried crickets.















I was about to issue a challenge when Dan, Jeremy and Matt all popped one into their mouths. So much for that, so I followed suit.

They were obviously cooked in some kind of sugar because they were sweet. They actually tasted pretty good.

Jeremy's wife Bonnie was skeptical, as this picture shows, but she was (and is) a trooper and gave it a try.















After spending Y500 for our first beer, we found a stall selling them for Y200. They were a lesser brand, but hey, relatively cheap beer in Tokyo is not to be scoffed at. I bought two.

After this we ended up going over to Hiroki's office, which is easily five times the size of any of our apartments/dorms and left us wondering why he didn't just live there (it had a kitchen and shower.)

Anyways, Hiroki had bought some beer and broke open a bottle of Remy Martin.















Cross cultural joke exchanges followed (some required explanation, some did not) and then things got.....weird.

















Jeremy/Elvis and Hiroki















Dan The Man, wearing this because we convinced him it would bring the Cardinals luck.















Come sit down, we'll have coffee, we'll talk.















Candise with wings...

I want to speak for the whole Brandeis crew and thank Hiroki for his hospitality. We had a great time and will definitely meet up again before we all leave Japan, hopefully more than once!

Earthquake!

I didn't have to wait terribly long to feel my first earthquake here in Japan. At about 6:30am I was woken up and groggily realized my bed was shaking. I looked up at my dresser where I had a towel hanging to dry and watched it sway back and forth and realized what was going on.

It wasn't terribly severe, so I went back to bed.

When I woke up I went onto the US Geological Survey site to see if I was dreaming or really felt it. It was real alright, though not terribly strong. As I am in a brand new building, earthquakes don't worry me that much. Though being on the 10th floor probably causes a little more sway than in some other places.

So one more thing is crossed off my "to do" list in Tokyo. I experienced an earthquake.

Kamakura

My buddy Dan and I met up and took a trip down to Kamakura today. Kamakura is about an hour south of Tokyo and is know for having many, many temples and shrines. I was thinking we'd be able to blow through the highlights in one day. Now I know why Mike has made so many trips.

Our first stop was Engaku-ji, which is directly outside the Kita-Kamakura train station. I was little disappointed with my pictures as I was having a very tough time with either under- or overexposing my pictures. Switching from the UV filter to the polarized one helped cut the glare of the bright, sunny day, but I still feel like I need to head back down to visit Engaku-ji again. We are going to try to time it so that the foliage is turning when we go back. Maybe a few weeks. My first round of pictures did not come out so well, but I'll add a few here anyways.

These are from Engaku-ji







































































And just like the Imperial Palace gardens, Kamakura is saturated with huge spiders. The webs make for some interesting photo ops though.





























We then walked down the street and entered Jochi-ji, a much smaller shrine which contains three wooden statues representing nyorai (past,) amida (present,) and miroku (future.) The shrine was established in 1238, but like many in the area the buildings were mostly destroyed in the 1923 Kanto Earthquake and have been rebuilt since.















We spotted a small sign that pointed us to the Big Buddha (Daibutsu) and began working our way up a good sized hill. Little did we know that this was actually a hiking trail, and a quite strenuous one at that. We were not too thrilled at this but were already a good way up the hill so decided to see it through. Doing so probably gave us the highlight of our day.

When we finally got to the top of the trail we stopped for a drink. We could do this because we were in Japan, so of course there were vending machines on top of this hill. We started making our way to Zeniarai Benten, a shrine that people visit to clean their money. Legend says that money cleaned at this shrine will double in value (though not immediately.)

In any case we were starting on the path when I noticed many of the Japanese tourists were pointing excitedly and pulling out their cameras. I looked and noticed a large, solitary mountain with a dash of snow at the top. I turned to ask Dan if that was what I thought it was and a Japanese woman excitedly got our attention and pointed and told us "Fuji-san! Fuji-San desu!"















And so it was. The recent passing of the remnants of the latest typhoon has produced so much wind and rain that the lingering pollution had been scoured from the air, making Fuji-san visible when on almost every day of the year from this vantage point it is not.

Given that it is too late in the year for us to climb Fuji-san, I thought the opportunity to snap a few photos was fantastic. A little bit of video as well.

After that little respite we worked our way down to Zeniarai Benten, where for some reason I did not take any pictures. It was a beautiful shrine, located in the middle of a gorge/valley. I'll get some pics when we visit Kamakura again.

We then made our way into town to see the Daibutsu, which was very impressive. It was very crowded, but I managed a few shots that isolated the Buddha and projected his serenity a bit.















And that was about it. More and better pics next time, I promise

Karaoke highlight from 10/08/2006....

Total Eclipse of the Heart....Dan Band style...



This was one of the openers by Jeremy. It was classic.

We ended strong with Bohemian Rhapsody and the Slaters were convinced (as we all have been) that people do karaoke because it's actually a lot of fun.

My top moment? I'd have to say it was an extremely soulful rendition of Marvin Gaye's Sexual Healing. The only way to sing it is to live it.

Learning Japanese is hard...

The t-shirts I ordered off of J-list came in today, here they are:




The first one is fashioned after the logo of a popular noodle chain, but with different wording. “Yokozuna” is what the top-level sumo wrestlers are called. Given my size in comparison to the average Japanese person, I felt this shirt was made for me.








The second one gives a warning against “chikan” or gropers. Japan has a large problem with men groping women on crowded subway cars. Women have complained to the point that some subway lines off women-only cars during their busiest times. I have never seen one, but apparently they are always full of women seeking to escape the grasp of salarymen. Women's lib has not made its way to Japan.








The third says “stupid foreigner” in kanji and is something you will hear eventually if you are gaijin and live in Japan long enough. Hopefully my attempts at learning Japanese will allow me to recognize when I’m being addressed as such and respond accordingly by laughing loudly.




Japanese class is quite a lot of work, so much so that many people seem to have dropped down to the lower level. I’d estimate that it is going to involve about three hours of homework on a daily basis at a minimum. This makes me very glad I took the management game class and was able to bank a full credit before the semester truly started.

I am certainly wishing that I took the time this summer to memorize hiragana and katakana. I didn’t, and now I’m paying for it. Such is life.

I think I have a different attitude towards the class than others who might drop it. I need so few credits to graduate that I do not need to get credit from my Japanese classes in order to graduate from Brandeis in the spring. I can just transfer back my three business classes and still take a minimal class load in the spring.

I think that even if I’m not absorbing as much from the class as my fellow students, being in an environment when I’m forced to speak Japanese for three hours a day will vastly improve my chances of gaining the solid grasp of the language that I’m hoping for.

I am sitting in one of my free elective classes right now entitled Japan in the 20th Century. It is essentially a history of the country from 1900 to present. I think it will be very interesting to hear what the Japanese students feel about the Japanese army’s conduct during WWII. One person I spoke to in my Management Game class seemed to not believe that Japan had done anything wrong, that reports that they had were not accurate or written by the victors. Much of the class is going to focus around the Pacific War, which for Japan ran from 1931 until 1945.

While I’m certain that the victors do indeed write the history, Japan’s recent admission that they forced Korean women to become sex slaves for the Japanese army would seem to indicate it is the Japanese who are not coming clean about their past. We are scheduled to discuss Japanese pre-war aggression and “The Manchuria Incident” which the rest of the world would know as the Rape of Nanking where the army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of civilians by some estimates.

As I said, it will be interesting!

Next week I will start my other class, Corporate Strategy. I was going to take a class on the Japanese economy, but I feel like I need to take a class that will force me to continue to use the analytical and strategic skills I gained through last year’s coursework.

Excuse me, now. It's Friday night and I need to study some more Japanese :)