想い出は遠くの日々

I’ve noticed that I have a tendency to write about special things that happen to me in Japan. However, I don’t write about the mundane things that happen in my daily life. For this blog entry, I’ll share a bit about my daily life: what I have for lunch everyday.

From my co-op coordinator, Yuko, during my site visit mentioned that among all the NTT laboratories, the Musashino (my lab) is the newest and probably the largest among the NTT research labs in Japan (save for the huge NTT lab that does physical science research down in Tsukuba). With regards to foodstuffs, my lab contains the following: 2 cafeterias and 1 restaurant but mostly we eat only at the cafeterias on a daily basis.

So, regarding lunch… on a typical day when noon rolls around, the lunch bell chiming followed by the office lights shutting off indicates that it’s lunch time at NTT. Lunch is very exciting for me because I am often accustomed to the horrors of cafeteria food back in Canada. Here in Japan, the food is actually edible on a daily basis. My coworkers often complain about how bad the food is… I usually retort, then you should try the cafeteria food I eat in Canada.

Anyway, I usually sit around for a little bit longer depending on whether my coworkers are still diligently working… when everyone is ready for lunch, we head off to the cafeteria building. Since the NTT Musashino laboratory is a huge complex, obviously there are multiple buildings that serve different functions… and the cafeteria is in its own building. I’ll take a little time to describe the two main cafeterias in the lab:

2nd floor Cafeteria: this serves main entrees that vary each day. Sorta like the Village 1 cafeteria in UW but they serve edible foods such as fried pork cutlets, grilled fish, and the occasional Japanized Chinese food. I sometimes end up with days with all the foods I want to eat (but can’t eat them all) or days where the menu choices are dismal (which brings us to the 1st floor Cafeteria). But among the two places, this is more healthier (a more balanced lunch) one, I think.

1st floor Cafeteria: I label this Cafeteria as the ‘junk food’ arena. This cafeteria’s menu remains static serving: curry, pasta, fried rice (they call it ‘pilaf’), ramen, udon, soba, and sushi. By default, if we couldn’t find anything we want to eat up on the 2nd floor, we always end up down here cause we can find at least one tasty thing to eat from the static menu.

Everyday, my team and I follow the same ritual: we start by starting at the 2nd floor food display case. After some general consensus by mutual facial expression reading, we decide whether to stay or not. Being such a great team player (and unfamiliarity with good Japanese food), I leave the decision whether to default down to the 1st floor to my coworkers.

So here are a random assortment of foods I have eaten at NTT which I have taken a liking to (or moreso, foods that I remembered to take a picture of):

Special thanks to Suzuki-san for taking pictures with his camera phone (I keep forgetting my camera during lunch, shows that I care about my stomach more :p)

Grilled fish, Miso Soup, Small Rice – 430 yen
Comment: This is what I usually eat. Since there’s always some kind grilled fish being sold everyday, I usually pick this up. There’s only one type of fish that I can’t eat and that’s the one that they grill a fish whole without gutting it (and plus it contains very fine bones that I choke on; my Japanese counterparts have no problem with this).

Nami Sushi – 610 yen
Comment: To continue my fish and rice diet, I pick this up often down on the 1st floor… when ordering this, I often hear 2-3 more of the same orders of sushi cause my team loves raw fish as much as I do.

The only thing I’m missing here is probably the pasta I pick up when I want something remotely tasting like Canadian food…

Anton needs to scan in those caption/picture drawings we made on Thursday… here’s a sample of captions:

Conan the Barbarian guards his jam jars.

It is illegal to eat pizza with pierced lips.

Hi, I am Tongxin, but where are my arms and legs?

Imagining a girl, kissing a lamp post.

Half a year later, half way around the world, here I stand… in a land where people look like me, but yet I am not one of them. But yet I have no regrets… this is the only path… this is me, here and now.

It’s a nice Saturday night and I’m sitting at Starbucks drinking a warm hot chocolate as I type this reflection of myself. Especially in busy Tokyo, I find it hard to find time for myself… to get my thoughts down in writing.

Many people have asked me why I am so resolute on following my path… my worst fear is to be lost. Lost… that is not an answer I would ever want to give to people who believe in me. I’m not saying that I hold the answers that stand before me, I am not that silly to say I know the solution to everything. However, I am neither pathetic to stand idle while waiting for some coincidental event dissolve the problems ahead of me. Actively searching for a way out isn’t lost… asking for directions isn’t a sign of weakness. The real definition of lost to me, to me, is those who have given up on searching for the answers… one is truly lost when one has given up. I would dread the day when I wake up asking ‘what are you doing today?’ finding that my answer, ‘lost…’.

It took many years of planning, careful execution, and contingencies to make this happen. There were certainly times that my self-reflection questioned the reason why I wanted to pursue this path. Everytime, the same answer comes back… this is what I want. Have I any regrets? No. Given the choice to redo my decisions in the past, I would not take it. To change my past is to change what I have present-day. I would not have met the people who I call my friends, I would not have seen the places that this path has brought me to, and I would not be who I am today. I am not that naive to think that changing my past would still give me that I have today… I am not going to deny who I have become, here and now.

I have been asked by friends would I miss Japan when my time over here is over. I would say no. I’m not cynical nor bitter about how this society works, I have enjoyed my time here so far… I won’t miss Japan because I know if I want to come back, I will plan to be in Japan for another round. I remember this well from a dear friend in first year: “If there is a will, there is a way.” This has worked before, and it will work again. For now, I have other priorities on hand… I have other places to see, other people to meet…

As my time here in Japan draws to a close, it’s time again to take a look at the big picture… I am excited to see what lies ahead of me.

I guess I had better apologize for not blogging for awhile… it’s a little difficult to get some good blogging time when 3 out of the 5 workdays involves a drinking party. Nonetheless, I enjoyed my week and guess I’ll make it up by blogging about what happened last weekend.

To mark the great achievement of 50 posts, I will be doing a two-parter for this entry.

So, a little background here. Back in Hokkaido, Vince, Tongxin and I decided that we should plan one more big trip before leaving Japan. Originally, we wanted to go off to Kyushuu but it couldn’t happen because of the lack of vacation days. Nonetheless, we were not deterred by this and we decided instead of going off to Kyushuu, we would go to Shikoku and Hiroshima. After the initial planning, we added two more awesome people to the group, Anton (the Waterloo boys are united once again!) and Jenn, and basically with that, the plan was done. For statistical purposes, I was the only person from the Tokyo area going on that trip.

Anyway, enough background. Last Thursday night after work, I head off to Osaka 大阪 by Shinkansen to meet up for the trip. After a lacklustre 3 hour train ride, I met up with Tongxin at Osaka station… then I proceeded to burn away the time giving Tongxin a hand at mailing her package back to Canada. 30 minutes of broken Japanese speaking and writing, we got the package mailed off… (and don’t worry Tongxin, if Canada Post fails to find your home address, your package will arrive at my doorstep in Toronto and I will laugh uncontrollably). Then we looked for food. Unfortunately, Vincent arrived not so later, so we ended up aborting the food plan and met up with him near the JJ (JJ is this all-you-can-play amusement centre with karaoke, bowling, arcade games, etc) at Sumimodou. I met up with Anton, Jenn, and Boon Hau (another unmet-CJP-person crossed off my to-meet list) at JJ then we proceeded to party it out for the night which mainly consisted of singing karaoke. FYI, I still suck at singing… now imagine having singing in Japanese. 5 hours of Japanese songs later, it was 5 am Friday morning and time to start off the trip.

Before I get started, I’m going to spend a little bit of time describing the method of travel. Since we’re poor students, we could not take the Shinkansen. Therefore, I guess the next best possible way is taking the local trains… ordinary slow trains that run between towns. Below is a map of the train route we took. The red line indicates the bullet train ride from Tokyo to Osaka. The green line was from Osaka to Shikoku. The blue line was from Shikoku to Hiroshima. And finally, the purple line is my flight from Hiroshima back to Tokyo.

Starting from Osaka, we rode the Sanyo Main Line 山陽本線 all the way down for 4 hours until arriving Okayama 岡山 where we switched off to the JR Marine Liner マリンライナー which brings us onto the island of Shikoku 四国. Shikoku is the smallest of the 4 main islands of Japan, famous for… not too sure. We got to Takamatsu 高松 at around 11:30-ish and it was about time for lunch. As with most places hat my friends and I travel to, we always try to eat the famous local foods. And in Shikoku, it’s udon. although I’m not a big fan of udon (well, not after eating real ramen in Japan), I would say Shikoku udon was pretty darn tasty (and now I know to buy Shikoku udon at T&T back home)…

The rest of the day consisted of touring around Takamatsu… mainly gardens and castles. You know, Japanese signs are sometimes confusing… for example, in the Takamatsu castle complex, there was this Bonsai (ornamental trees) exhibit and outside, there was a sign that says ‘No entry except on business’. I declared to Anton that I was on ‘business’ and went inside… afterwards, it is pretty clear that it was a tourist place. We stayed at a nice hotel for the evening… a short story here. After taking a relaxing bath at the hotel’s open bath, Anton and I were sorta slow in getting back into our room. Jenn, Tongxin, and Vince had the brilliant idea to lock us out by placing the ‘do not disturb’ sign outside the door and declaring that they’re *ehem* busy… Anton and I were not satisfied with that answer as good reason for locking us out. Not to be outdone by their scheming, we plotted our revenge (imagine what two great Waterloo CS majors can hash together)… when they eventually let us back in, let’s just say our revenge was executed flawlessly and completely, Jenn and Tongxin didn’t know what hit them

(things in sequential order…)

On Saturday morning, we started reversed back to Okayama 岡山 at 7 am and continued along the Sanyo Main Line towards Hiroshima 広島. I tell you, it’s not the destination that’s important. Long train rides are fine as long as I’m traveling with good company (and for sure, I had the best company). Hiroshima is famous for the site of the first atomic bombing and nearby, on the island of Miyajima　宮島, it is famous of the temple gate in the water. We arrived at around 11 am… had some Okonomiyaki for lunch, then off to the Peace Memorial Park, ground zero of the atomic blast.

To say that the feeling was solemn would be an understatement. I’ve seen many photos of Hiroshima after the bombing… but to be there in person, it’s a different feeling altogether. To see the T-shaped bridge and the preserved devastated building at ground zero, it makes me realize how fragile peace is. Considering that the people back at that time were probably no different from me, trying to make a decent living in times of turmoil, they were vaporized in an instant, gone. It could have been me. I would like to live to see my grandchildren one day.

Later in the afternoon, we ended up at Miyajima where we saw the Torii gate in the water. With the sun setting behind us, it was a beautiful sight… if Japan was to be described in a picture, this would be my entry. What I really liked are the friendly deer on the island… they’re not afraid of humans which makes me really happy because I like pet fuzzy things… I think the deer were sorta getting distressed cause I kept on trying to pick up the small ones. And oh, the deer likes paper. We found it easy to attract them when we had paper maps in our hands… hence, my cool photos with the wildlife.

After an eel dinner, we headed off to our accommodations for the night… a youth hostel. At 17 bucks per person per night, all I could say that this is an interesting experience. At one point in time, I had to mix my own bath water in a bucket cause the faucets either dispensed frikking cold or scalding hot water…

Then Sunday morning, I had to leave cause I needed to take my flight back to Tokyo. The rest of the crew stayed in Hiroshima a bit longer before heading back to the Kansai area. Of course, I do owe Anton, Jenn, Tongxin, and Vincent a token of gratitude for making a great trip. Thank you.

Statistics! I traveled at least 800 km on the surface by train and an additional 400 km in the air on the return trip. That’s a lot mileage in a short span of 3 days.