ギリギリ

It's been approximately two months since I've updated huh. I've been busy I guess.
Taking in as much Japanese culture as I can, catching up with Japanese, trying to learn and speak as much as I can before I go back to speaking and hearing English everyday in Vancouver again!

Actually I'm trying to finish my experiential report right now. December's a really busy month. I'm constantly thinking about what to bring back to Canada, thinking about how to thank all of the people I've met during this work term, thinking about how to spend the limited time I have left here in the country I adore so much!
It feels like I have a lot of unfinished business, but I think it's about the right time I go back and take care of the things I've left behind...

In the mean time, despite how busy work has been and the chaotic thoughts that have been running through my mind lately, I want to enjoy my last month here as much as possible.  Actually I really miss those first few months when I wrote about cutting the perfect apple bunnies.. How nostalgic. I'm not sure if I'll get a chance to update before I go back, so until then, sayonara :)

MVE Conference Wakkanai, Hokkaido Oct 12 - 14

天気：雲

こんばんは。

今日稚内、北海度から帰りました。

この三日間、稚内のところを見たり、たくさん新鮮の海産物を食べたり、発表をしました。

まいにちたくさん頭がいいの人に会いました。

最初の日稚内のミルクロード風車・宗谷岬ウィンドフャーム（milkroad windmill / Cape Soya wind farm）に行きました。凄いところです。稚内 の目標は日本の一番新しいエネルギー町になります。

後で、稚内メガソーラーも見ました。稚内電源もここから来ている.

最後日本の最北端地を見ました。風が超強かったです。

服を持ってませんから、皆さんはさむかったでした。でも、風景はとても素敵だった。

その夜、飲み会出席しました。食べ物は多くて、美味しかったよ。

第二日目、MVE会議でたくさん日本語の発表を見ました。日本語をちょっとできませんから、皆さんの発表はあまり分かりません。残念ね。。とにかく、図があるから、少しをわかりました。
昼ご飯の簡易ラメンが高くてが、おいしかったです。簡易ラメンは１５００円。
晩御飯は同じの場所でたこ鍋を食べました。この夜はあの夜よりたくさん人でした。
この夜、二人の女性をあいました。親切なひとですよ。あなた達もANAホテルに泊まりましたから、一緒に帰りました。帰るまえに、北防波堤ドーム（bouhatei dome) 行って、写真を取りました。ドムが非常に長だった！

私の発表は次の日。
最後の日発表の前に、とても緊張しました。発表が来た時、powerpoint のタイマはだめでしたから、緊張になりました。発表終わりましたの時間、元気になりました。後でいい晩御飯を食べました。


じゃあ、疲れましたから、おやすみなさい。
ベッシー

3 months left.

Temperature: cool.

How time flies.
I must say, I'm quite satisfied with what I have accomplished these past 4 months, although there are a few things I still need to do before leaving Japan. This post is to permanently record what my goals are for the next three months so I can hold myself accountable for what I want myself to do.
First I shall write a list of accomplishments for the past 4 months I've been in Japan. One problem I've noticed with myself is I don't really understand myself all that much. There is still much to learn...

Accomplishments:
- Read a million research papers
- Self taught machine-learning concepts
- Wrote a program for work
- Conducted experiments
- Wrote a paper for a non-reviewed conference
- Discussed and prepared for my very first presentation
- Illustrated a picture for my supervisor's research paper
- Travelled "all over" Japan.
- Became best friends with Google translate
- Climbed Mount Fuji
- Learned a bit of Japanese culture
- Learned how to use Japan's train system
-.... all I can think of for now.

Goals: (broadly for now..)
- Go jogging or biking at least twice every week
- Sleep early. No later than 12am.
- Brush teeth at 9pm to prevent myself from eating before I sleep..
- Reduce sugar intake, do not buy candy, icecream etc everytime I go grocery shopping.
- Learn Japanese. Review everyday - Kanji, Grammar, Use it.
- Machine Learning class
- Artificial Intelligence Class


List will be updated if I do happen to have more things to add.
Hopefully Ill be updating more often as I will need to review my list of goals every now and then.
Next week I go to Wakkanai, Hokkaido to present my research. You have no idea how nervous I am...

Bess

Typhoon Roke

天気: Typhoon,　強い風,　たくさん雨
feeling: ちょっと怖い

今日遊びたいですが、台風ロケ来ます。ロケはとてもつよくて、こわいです。
雨も部屋に入っています。どうしようかな？
この朝じゅう一時頃起きて、パンを食べて、それから日本語をべんきょうしています。
明日も休みます、そうしていい天気がほしい。
来週の休みghibli museumに行きたい。
もう四ヶ月、日本語を改善しませんですから、毎日勉強しなければなりません。
十二月までに日本語を上手くなりたい。
カナダのともだちにあいたいよ！ひさしぶりです。

先週東京ゲームショに行きました。ゲームはちょっとわからないですが、とても楽しかったよ！
たくさんきれいなcosplayを見て、新しいカメラをかいますから、たくさん写真をとりました。

あまり女性をみませんが、たくさん男性いるよ！
これ、見て!見て!

ShabuShabu - all you can eat pork

Weather: Typhoon
mood: relieved

Today I went with the other co-ops to have some all you can eat Shabushabu in the Daiei outside Shioiri station. Aside from the pork, I really enjoyed the AYCE icecream and drinks. They had a wide variety - milk tea, melon soda, calpis soda, green tea icecream, vanilla, melon, chocolate, strawberry. Of course I couldn't try them all... One thing I was surprised at was females are charged 100 yen less than guys. That is, 1580 yen for girls/women and 1680 for the guys. I really don't have anything to say about this, but it's beneficial for me I guess! haha. I'm gaining a bit of weight for sure though. I've been binge eating all of the different types of Japan junk foods ever since I arrived here. There's just so much variety and I don't really get this type of freedom when I'm at home. It's really difficult to restrain myself when I have to go to the grocery store to buy my vegetables fresh every week!!

As for work, I got up extra early to finish implementing the practice portion of my program for the experiments in the afternoon. I was stressing over it last night wondering if I had enough time to finish it. It turned out great, and the two subjects that showed up (one had a meeting and the other pulled a no-show) came and finished the experiment with no problems. One point that was for sure inevitable was that the task was tedious, repetitive and boring. Haha.. as is with most experiments. My questionnaire was all in english and my subjects spoke mostly Japanese... and my english was probably not the easiest to understand so I was trying to explain it in more simpler terms too. I think if I have time tomorrow, I'll try to translate it into Japanese or something bahah. But then again there's a lot of manual data analyzing and sorting.... I rarely rant about work so there you have it. Not very interesting but I'm going to Wakkani, a city in the most northern tip of Hokkaido in Japan!! I'm really excited but I'll probably be really nervous as well since it'll be my first time presenting to a whole bunch of really smart researchers ( my supervisor told me..)

Getting late, heading to bed, good night!

Lazy weekend Day 2. Tamagoyaki, Hakone trip (Aug 24, 25)

Weather: cloudy, humid

mood: meh

Today was my second day in my dorm room. I wrote a list of things I needed to do and buy though. I went to buy a whole bunch of essentials for cooking and dorm stuff... After the other co-op left, she left me a non-stick frying pan (which is the greatest invention of all time!!) so I found out that making TAMAGOYAKI was possible!!! Waaa I love tamagoyaki. It was my first time, I made it with random portions of sugar, soysauce and 5 eggs after reading how to make it on a blog. This is the end result! Not bad presentation-wise but the taste could be improved. I read on another website you should add dashi soup stock. Maybe I should do that next time. After making it, I packed them up and put them in the fridge for dinner tonight ^^. 

Hakone Trip - August 24, 25
So we decided to go to Hakone for its hot springs. (Onsens)
Hakone is a popular touristy place to go and so we booked a ryokan to stay the night.  The ryokan cost us 9100 yen for dinner and breakfast. The breakfast and dinner were  really filling. So many dishes and variety. They also provided yukata and an overcoat/sweater thing for sleeping and after you get out of the onsen. There was an onsen outdoors which was okay imo.

 Cable car! 

 We went up using the rope-cars to Owakudani where the black eggs are famous for extending your life by 6 years. You can have 5 for 500 yen. Wikipedia says they only recommend 2.5 eggs at most.

 Black egg boiled in the sulfurous onsen i think?! Inside is just like a normal hard boiled egg 

 Most places in japan have their own specialty foods, and owakudani's was obviously the black egg. So I had myself an egg flavoured icecream. It was very creamy tasting. yummy.

 We took the pirate looking ships to ... someplace but had to leave because everything was closed and it was pouring rain. 

 The next day, before leaving we headed for the Gotemba premium outlets which totally reminded me of the seattle premium outlets in the states. @_@ Didn't really do much clothes shopping just walked around and left. 

A nice view of mount fuji!!! it's huge!

Yup and that's all for today. I have a few things to do.. things I've been delaying for the longest time. See ya!

August

It's been a busy month. Beginning of the month involved being anxious about the coming 2 week vacation and trying to get things planned out. When vacation finally came (Aug 8 - 22) we were off to the Kansai region and surrounding areas.

Getting there
One thing we are always trying to enforce during our stay in Japan is to save money on transportation. The trains are efficient but also very costly. JR, one of Japan's train companies (there are many train companies in japan that operate trains in different regions of Japan) has this discounted ticket package called the "seishun juuhachi kippun" which translates literally to .. teenage 18 ticket. But you don't have to be 18 years old to get it. You can be a granny or grandpa or an internship student like me. There's a better deal for foreigners but we couldn't use that because ... it just doesn' t apply to us since we're staying more than a month. Anyways, I wont get into details but if you buy this ticket, you get a stamp for the day that you're travelling and you can travel anywhere using JR's trains with that one ticket and fixed price. The ticket is valid for 5 days. (doesn't have to be consecutive). It's a good deal but extremely incredibly slow, if you have the money, take the shinkansen. If you have time and want to save money, go ahead and try seishun. Make sure you know your schedule. Check out www.hyperdia.com best website ever if you want to get around anywhere using Japan's train system. After a full day of travelling, we finally arrived in the Kansai region, Nara where we stayed the night at the other co-op's apartment before travelling to Onomichi, our actual first destination!

Onomichi, Hiroshima
Long story short, we biked, we sun-baked, sweated, biked, biked, ferried, public bathed, and bummed on the streets for the first time in our lives. I'm pretty sure there were many more things to do but we were on a tight schedule and needed to head to hiroshima (main city) after staying one night and 2 days.

Nice couple we met on the train during our long journey

Biking in onomichi

 Choseikaku Villa, Setoda Island Japan

 Magnificent place, everything was blinding white. 

Still on our bikes.... it was a long, hot and humid day.

Manga cafe we intended to stay for the night didn't exist, all of the hotels ran out of rooms so we spent the night outside... Japan is a great place for bums imo. I felt totally safe with my bag out there. the only dangerous thing in the night were the mosquitoes. 

Watched the sunrise. I couldnt really fall asleep on the hard picnic table thing that we decided to camp out on.

Famous floating tori gate in Miyajima. Unfortunately I didn't get a very nice pictures. There were millions of tourists taking pics

Hiked up Mount Misen, highest point in Miyajima island 535m. It took us around 1 hr. 

After we got down, the tide came in and the tori gate was "floating" The sunset was beautiful.

We ate oyster okonomiyaki, it is the specialty food of Miyajima, either that or just Hiroshima..

The next day we went to Hiroshima (the main city) and visited the atomic bomb dome and museum which is highly recommended. Made me feel  like there's still so many things I'm not aware of... 

Hiroshima Castle at the end of the day

On the Sealiner to Takamatsu and tokushima, Shikoku!

 Finally arrived in takamatsu!!!

 After checking in our hotel in takamatsu, there was more travelling involved... went to Tokushima for the Awaodori festival!! dance for the fools.

 It was so lively, people everywhere. Festival food ftw. Didn't feel very good after trying the chicken skin dumplings tho...

 Famous dome thing in takamatsu

 Next day we went to the Shikoku Mura where they recreate a whole bunch of structures from all over shikoku island. This wooden bridge was super scary and dangerous

 um random bridge.

 Shikoku is known for their udon. It was pretty good for a reasonable price. You could also order udon in a tub!! it was really neat. But we couldnt finish that so we just ordered small individual bowls.

 Went to Ritsurin Garden afterwards. Beautiful but the pouring rain ruined half of our experience there.

 Next was Nara. Went to see the daibutsu!

 Daibutsu was ginormous!

The deer were everywhere. everywhere! You can buy rice crackers to feed them.

 We stumbled upon the obon festival. Festival for the dead. It was really beautiful. As we walked along the trail, we saw an endless trail of lanterns.

 Daimonji festival in Kyoto. We only saw two of the four (?) characters that lit up on the mountains...

 Kiyomizudera, Kyoto. Magnificent wooden temple. (above)

 Ginkakuji (silver temple) - the only thing silver was the bird thing on the roof. The garden was pretty nice.

 Kyoto, fushimi inari gates.... We went at night and were attacked by mosquitoes!!! Amazing place nonetheless

 Kinkakuji!!! Golden temple in Kyoto. Much more impressive than ginkakuji!

 Arashiyama, Kyoto bamboo forest!!

 Osaka~

 GLICOMAN!! 

There were crabs everywhere.

Osaka Castle, my favourite out of the other ones I've seen.

 Shinkansen back home.. We were exhausted.

The next weekend after our trip, we went on a 2 day trip to Hakone. That's another story.. I'm exhausted. Mann how does time go by so quickly! It's been a while since I've stayed in my dorm for so long. So far my dorm has only been a place I come back to eat dinner and sleep. This weekend will be my lazy weekend. Tomorrow I have to do some grocery shopping for my empty fridge though, and maybe do some preparation work for Friday. I have to conduct experiments to test my system.. can't screw up. I actually have to do some  quick implementation for the practice sessions... I'm not sure how well it would work X_X or whether it would work at all. I have to get to work 1 hr early to get it done tho.. Hopefully a couple of hours will suffice. *Crosses fingers*