On Friday 2 weeks ago, I made the rather arduous journey to the American Embassy in Tokyo, just to cast my vote.  My vote won’t even amount to much; Obama won’t win in my state.  But, I still feel good that I did.

It was a particularly rainy Friday.  I walked to and from the train station wielding a clear umbrella, iPod ear buds in my ears blaring music that was furiously loud but somehow still very mellow.  Furiously loud and mellow at the same time is a phenomenon that fascinates me, as a contradiction that’s hard to pull off.  Cute rocker boys with glasses seem to be able to pull off something similar.  So do furiously rainy days in which I walk around and feel totally peaceful.

And then there’s Obama.  You don’t want the leader of the country to be furiously loud or mellow.  But he’s maybe the closest political equivalent– fiercely passionate yet always exuding this very calm serene exterior.  And as admirable as that is, it’s probably only reason #30 or so why I voted for him.

I just woke up, hoping to know the results of the election.  I’d rather know before going to work– I don’t really want to cry at work.  I am sitting here eating dried mangoes, refreshing CNN every few seconds.  America, you can do it.  Please make me proud.  Usually I’d find such a statement presumptuous.  Now, though, it really isn’t.

Not sure what brought on this musing, but I wrote this up before I’d even heard that Beyonce wrote a song of the same name.

I’d take really good care of my hair, but style it messy, and wear brown plastic horn-rimmed glasses.  My wardrobe would be mostly dark colors: t-shirts, skinny jeans, converse sneakers, and scarves. My hobbies would be the cello, the guitar, and ink drawings.  I’d be quiet but fiercely opinionated, and not a pushover.  I wouldn’t wear cologne but i’d smell very clean, like soap.  I’d have a cat, black with white paws, named Juniper.  I’d be crazy awesome at baking cupcakes and stir-frying pad thai (because everyone knows that the way into a girl’s heart is through her STOMACH!).  On a first date, I’d always arrive at a girl’s door with a single iris.  I’d still be a computer scientist/electrical engineer.  I’d listen to opera and hip hop and hard rock.

i miss my brother A LOT.

i don’t often get to spend summers at home– i haven’t been home for more than a month since freshman year of college.  but i was home for most of this summer, and my brother would sometimes wake me up in the morning and make lunch for me.  we’d watch the colbert report every night after dinner.  we’d play hamtaro olympics because it’s ridiculously silly, and hurt our stomachs laughing.  my mom sent me an email about his latest swimming meet where he did really well.  i thought about how much i miss him and felt immensely sad.

come visit me soooooon!

what things one can find in a japanese grocery store.  baby blue nail polish that sparkles like sugar, topped with candy and flower shaped stickers. I feel like licking my own fingernails.

My coworkers Kin san and Yonekura san took me to Asakusa shrine this weekend.

Asakusa is one of the most old-fashioned looking parts of Tokyo. Asakusa shrine is famous for its big red lantern at the gate. Beyond the gate is a gallery of little shops selling food and traditional crafts. I gathered from the trip that Yonekura san is very fond of Asakusa. He pointed out which booths sold his favorite treats and told us to try them too: dango (mochi on a stick, in this case, with a nutty-tasting powder sprinkled on top), fried manju (flour surrounding a sweet red bean center), and sweet iced green tea. They were all delicious. It was nice to see the food being made at the booths, too. Yonekura san translated into English for me a delightful traditional story about dango. It went something like, “There was an evil demon. There was also a good man. The good man recruited animals to help him fight the demon. He convinced them by giving them each dango. This way, he recruited a dog, a bird, and a monkey. The team stabbed the demon. In the end, there was happiness for all.” If only all stories ended this way =)

I got a fortune at the shrine (just because I’ve always seen this being done in manga), and it told me that I will be having good luck and traveling to many new places =P. To receive your fortune you shake a tin until a rod comes out, imprinted with a number that tells you what drawer to look in. Then you open up the drawer and take the first sheet of paper. If it’s bad luck, you can tie it to a railing to dissociate it from you.

This was full of incense, and wafting the smoke towards your face is supposed to bring you good luck or grant wishes. Kin san said men often did this to wish for more hair =P.

Next, we rode a boat down the river to Ryogoku and then took a train to Akihabara. Akihabara really is everything everyone says about it. Sooo many electronics parts stores, crammed with microcontrollers, LEDs, switches, sensors. There was one robotics store that holds 1 hour sessions where you can assemble a robot from a kit; they provide tools and assistance. These are the robots that are shown in this Keepon video, and it even seems like the same store.

The workers knew Yonekura san so we got to play a soccer game with the robots using playstation controllers. There were 2-legged ones, and a 4-legged one.  They kick quite well!  We laughed so hard at their “special moves” (you see their special moves in the Keepon video).  The 2 legged ones even had a victory pose to use after a goal. And if they toppled over for any reason, they had a way to get up quickly. I’ll have to come back to Akihabara later– we didn’t even have a chance to venture into the games section.

I’m very grateful to Kin san and Yonekura san for such a fun excursion and pleasant company =).

I’ve been reading “The Emotion Machine” by Marvin Minsky and I’m enjoying it, a lot.  I am sort of ashamed that I missed out on the chance to take his class.  There are so many texts that miss the point of AI, I think; I read many such misguided texts and I wish I had discovered Marvin Minsky in highschool.

Honda’s vision is to make a robot that can move and interact with the world and give it enough intelligence that it can build up knowledge about the world from those interactions, like children do.  While there are other research groups with similar goals, I’d argue that Asimo is the cutest humanoid robot.  The first time I had to perform some tests on him was the first time I saw him up close.  I seriously wanted to hug him.  He’s small, with big feet, and large “eyes”.  When he walks around, he turns his head first, making him look a little confused.  He has a frame that covers his wires but he’s not human-looking enough that he falls into the uncanny valley of creepiness.  And I’d also argue that cuteness will be a big factor in the success of this kind of robot.

I’m being totally academic and serious here.  Ok, so it’s no secret that I am an overzealous fan of cute.  And if I had it my way, everything in the world would be cute, from toilets to trains to garbage cans, whether it needed to be cute or not.  Wait.  Isn’t cute for cute’s sake?  Does anything need to be cute?  Most times cute is just an embelishment or a marketing ploy.  But yes, actually, there are times when cute serves a purpose.  Children need to be cute.  Think about how annoying they are.  Imagine if an adult had the behavior of a child.  Picking his nose, screaming in public, pulling on your sleeve every 5 minutes to ask you to tie his shoe.  But we love children!  Children get away with this mostly because they’re cute; the urge to fawn over and caress and protect anything with baby-like proportions is surely evolutionarily beneficial.  We put up with the ridiculous demands of children because of their doe eyes.  We refrain from strangling them because their dimpled roundy faces.  They act inappropriately because it’s their way of testing hypotheses.  And they pester us with questions because they need others to help them learn.  Just like a learning humanoid robot will need frequent affirmation for the conclusions it’s drawn, just like a learning humanoid robot will break your favorite coffee mug, ask you rude questions, and need repairing when it falls.  And imagine getting pestered by Creepydoll McSandbags here.  I don’t think I’d answer his questions patiently in a manner conducive to his learning. I’d answer quickly and leave!

Asimo on the other hand, looks like a child explorer from an alien planet, complete with robotic back-pack, here to gather information for his 3rd grade class project about the earth.  How could you not be happy for him as he figures out how to navigate the building, or feel compelled to help him out when he’s a bit stuck?  A cute humanoid robot is going to be the most successful at acquiring knowledge like a child, because people will enthusiastically and naturally interact with it closer to the way they’d interact with children.

Today, I visited the Inter Communications Center in Shinjuku. It’s a museum full of the work of Japanese media artists. In other words, an art museum for geeks =P. Attractions included a Tenori-on to play with, a really pretty procedural particle video (the explanation of the various equations was in Japanese, unfortunately), a room where you could catch projected images on your hands if you held them out, like colorful funny-shaped raindrops, and a pressure sensitive area of the floor with projected grid lines that warped under places where you walked and bounced (hey, sounds like a group project idea from TUI). I couldn’t take any pictures except for the outside.

(Note: full image and next are portrait. I crop all thumbnails to be landscape so they’ll be uniform.)

Note on the Tenori-on: One beauty of it is that by pressing on it mostly-randomly, you can make pretty nice music, unlike if you randomly banged keys of a piano. Also, I found out when messing around with it that you can save different melodies as layers and switch between them quickly (making it easy to have a refrain and a verse to your songs).

For the first time since I’ve been to Japan, I had conveyer belt sushi. It was all nigiri. Also for the first time, I’ve had fish that I can’t identify by name.

Walking some more around Shinjuku, I tried this softserve swirled Black Sesame (it’s been recommended to me) and Honey icecream. Black sesame is almost like chocolate, but with an earthy, seedy sort of aftertaste.

I am amused that there is a Pachinko (gambling) place called Grean Peas.

Also, I stopped by Okadaya, a 5 story fabric store with everything from Hello Kitty prints to kimono fabric to stripper-worthy gold pleather. I got this pink elephant print fabric- hopefully it will turn into a cute bag.

Lastly, an appropriate stained glass for commuters rushing to catch the last train home: (Shinjuku San Chome Station)

A picture of my apartment complex:

and a vending machine outside the complex with funny Japanese drinks =):

also, I put up a page with random things I’ve written.

I’m kind of embarassed to take pictures of food when I’m at a restaurant, so  here is a sampling of the food I’ve brought back to eat while re-watching ugly betty.

mos burger: Japan’s original fast food burger chain.  Tsujino san told their specialty is rice burgers, where the bun is replaced with a patty of sticky rice.  Inside was Korean BBQ flavored beef.  They also have chicken and seafood versions.  Tasty, but very messy.  I’m glad I had it to go.

Sushi to go from some department store in Shibuya: Toro (Fatty Tuna) maki, Saba (Mackarel) nigiri, and Cucumber-with-something maki.   Ready made sushi in Japan rivals some restaurant sushi in the US.  The more excellent sushi to go meal, though, was the one I got from the food court in Isetan department store, Shinjuku.  The even gave me an icepack to keep it cool, and the soy sauce came in a tiny bottle.  Word of warning– food courts in department stores don’t have seating areas.  And if they have benches, the benches will have signs that say “Don’t sit and eat here.”  Just believe me and don’t walk around the food court for 15 minutes, looking a fool, like I did.

Convenience store: Haagen-Dazs Azuki (red bean) Milk Icecream. I love that Haagen-Dazs has a Red bean flavor here!  The ice cream base is a sweet cream flavor, with bits of red bean sprinkled in it.  A must-try for any red bean lover.  Haagen-Dazs has a lot of other weird flavors here.  I will take it on as my personal mission to review each of them for you, dear reader.

It’s sort of amusing to me how like puberty my current situation is.

Feeling awkward and uncool and nervous about talking to people… check.
Feeling like i’m totally out of the know, in terms of fashion and inside jokes and goings on of people around me… check.
Fighting a raging battle against acne… check.
Feeling like every female around is totally glamorous except for me… check.

I just hope this awkwardness will end sooner than 3 years =P

My boss helped me get a cell phone from Docomo.  I had a hard time picking between this shimmery white/almost lavender and a dark pink.  Phones certainly don’t come this cute in the US!  Also, they don’t come with a little mushroom plushie (Docomo’s logo).  Would you believe me if I said I didn’t go with Docomo just for the mushroom?

I did, however, partly choose the phone because it lights up through the cover in pixelly animations whenever you get a call.

Here’s what it looks like opened up.  Lambie butt- teehee.

Heather and I made a trip to Junie Moon this rainy afternoon.

It was already cute from the outside:

And I wasn’t allowed to take pictures in the shop, but you can kind of see the inside of the shop from this close-up of the window.

It was over the top tooth achingly cute, even for Japan.  There were Blythes, kits to make Blythe clothes, Blythe accessories, stickers, folders, and stationary.  I wish they made those clothes in human size.  We didn’t manage to see the gallery show– it seems like it was closed early because they are preparing to set up for the next exhibition.  I guess we’ll have to come back again– which I don’t mind at all~

Tokyo train stations are amazingly easy to navigate, clean, colorful, lively, and just beautiful.  The easy to navigate part is especially impressive considering it might be the world’s most complicated city subway system.

Shibuya Metro station:

Harajuku Station:

i decided Saturday morning to get a haircut. i tried a place i had seen while getting lost on my way to work, called hair wiz. this little town isn’t nearly as fashionable as Tokyo, so i wondered if i ought to wander farther. from the window, though, i could see that the hairdresseres themselves had cute hair cuts. and also that haircuts cost 2100 yen (about $23 dollars) which would be a good deal in the US. i showed a picture of the haircut i wanted (of hama chisaki, who played sailor mercury in live action sailor moon =P) and it turned out pretty close to the picture. mid-haircut, i was really worried that the hairdresser was only going to trim the ends a bit and be done. but then she started thinning my hair like crazy– and i knew that this was a place i would come back to. i feel very japanese with this hair =P.

as a side note, i randomly found silver polishing fabric at the convenience store, and since it was $2, i thought it would be worth a try. it is ridiculously effective– after a few rubs, my armor ring is now shiney as new.

a coworker Torii san invited me to join a community orchestra, and Saturday evening was its first practice. his wife also plays the violin, and their very well behaved and sweet three year old daughter sat between them during the practice and ate onigiri. Japan seriously makes me want to procreate– i think Japanese children are the cutest chilrden ever. this morning i saw a girl with pigtails and dimpled cheeks eating icecream and singing while her feet dangled from a chair. all the children i see look like they come straight out of advertisements. but i digress. we squeezed into a tiny room which hardly fit us and didn’t fit the cello cases. Torii san had apologized over and over that the orchestra was not good, but i think it sounded pretty in tune. i like how relaxed it is (i didn’t even have to audition, and i get to play first violin). i got to sit next to margaret, who was last year’s intern to honda and who had mentioned this orchestra in one of her emails to me.

the piece we practiced, a mendelssohn symphony, is quite pleasing. i always forget how much i enjoy playing with people. and after going for drinks with them (it’s called going for drinks here but it’s really sitting at a table and ordering any sort of beverage and eating a lot of appetizer-type dishes) i found that, just as margaret had said, the orchestra members are all very eccentric and lively and friendly (i can’t stand when orchestra members don’t even talk to each other– how can you make music together and not know each other well?)

all the japanese women i’ve talked to are the model of perfection. torii san’s wife is beautiful, gracious, and funny too. it also impressed me greatly that torii san went home with aino chan so that his wife could go drinking. all the women exclaimed to him, “ii otousan desu ne!” (”aww, what a nice dad!”) i think i must be the shiest extrovert in existance. I feel so happy after being with people, even without saying very much.

I registered as an official alien here, a few days ago. I was also planning to open a bank account, too, but to sign the offical forms, you need a name stamp, instead of a signature. The very helpful HR staff at Honda RI drove me to a special store to get a stamp made. I found it all very exciting. See, Amy has the same pronunciation as Eimi, which can be written out in kanji. I picked out a stamper (a swirly purple one) and a style of characters, and they carved it out for me.

My personal favorite transcription of Eimi both in appearance and meaning is “glorious truth” =P But I couldn’t remember how to write that at the store, and Irie san suggested another kanji. I looked it up when I got back to the office and what’s on my stamp means “truth shining through” or more literally, “truth leaking”. I’d like to ignore the literal translation, as it makes me feel like a pipe needing repair. Or a tabloid.



One of my current favorite San-X mascots is Korirakkuma (Lazy Bear Cub). I am rather fond of eccentric bear characters (the murderous Gloomy Bear, the pitiable Onsen-no-Kuma-chan who lost his mother at a hot springs and is traveling to every hot springs in Japan to try to find her). This lazy bear cub and his lazy bear friend just sit around, eat, sleep, and make “lazy noises” (i imagine “EhhNnnnnh” but according to the Japanese, laziness is supposed to sound like “Goron Goron”). My only extraneous purchase since I’ve been here was a Korirakkuma plushie. I had been looking for a plain one for a while (I don’t like it when he wears funny costumes). He is my substitute boyfriend. Oh, Korirakkuma. How happy it makes me to wake up and see your face on my pillow. Though I wish you’d help with the cooking once in a while. The other Korirakkuma item I really want is a shower cap– yes they make Korrirakkuma showercaps with ears!