Student Clubs

Yet another school year is about to start at the University of Tokyo, Komaba I campus. The undergrads are on holidays so it’s very quiet and the cafeteria is only open at lunch time. Today’s weather was nice so I walked around the campus on my way to lunch and took pictures. Starting from April, the student clubs will be competing with each other to recruit freshmen, and about a third of the advertising boards are already on display.

Undergrads playing tennis all day

I heard there are about 8 distinct tennis clubs. The tennis court is basically occupied all day by highly motivated students who sometimes scream their enthusiasm at the top of their voice. Our lab’s building is located next to the tennis court. At first I was impressed because I thought there would be only about one club per sports, but if that were true, it would mean those guys I see on the tennis court never stop to eat or study. One of these circles is called the Tomato Tennis Club, so I also wondered if they sometimes threw tomatoes at each other, then go to class with stained T-shirts and call for bloody murder. (^-^)

Karate increases your IQ.

Karate Club: “Be SMART!”

The Karate Club’s board is the same every year, and it took me a few years to understand it. In English, smart means intelligent, but the Japanese somehow changed the meaning to (physically) fit. I’d like to know how the meaning changed when passing from one country to another.

There are a number of foreign words that mean something different here. The most striking example I have encountered so far is zubon, which means pants. However, it actually comes from the French word jupon, which is a kind of skirt. I’m thinking maybe one of the first French guys to come to Japan saw people wearing the traditional hakama and thought it was a skirt. The Japanese would have asked the French how to say hakama in French, pronounced the word jupon as zubon, then extended it’s use to modern pants as well. I don’t know if any of this is true, but it’s amusing to think about.

Alex Louis Armstrong

Body Building Club: “I’m impressed.”

This is by far my favorite board, for no other reason than the fact they painted Alex Louis Armstrong from my all-time favorite manga Full Metal Alchemist. It’s difficult to translate 我輩感動 exactly. 感動(kandō) means emotion, and it seems that 我輩(wagahai) is a pompous was to say I/us for males. My PhD adviser translated it as I’m impressed (in this context, with your body).

Armstrong is not my favorite, but he really fits perfectly to the body building  image. If you have no clue what I’m talking about, the first 30 seconds of this video will give you an idea, but please keep in mind that it’s only a side character, so please don’t go thinking that this is what Full Metal Alchemist is all about. (→Read it. Read it. Now.)

A number of these club advertising boards are hand-painted and most clubs make a new one every year, so it’s very entertaining to walk around and look at them. There is almost a club for anything you could imagine, even ice hockey! I’m a regular member of the Taekwondo Club and a “ghost member” of the Wandervogel Club (mountaineering). Wandervogel is another loan word, from German. It means wandering bird and was adopted by a number of German youth groups at the end of the 19th century. [Wikipedia]

Swimming Spiderman

Swimming Club: Water Polo Team

This one’s funny too. Spiderman doesn’t strike me as having anything to do with Water Polo. But that’s right – why wouldn’t he be able to swim? … one of his arms is really huge…

Anyway, from now on I’ll try to blog a little more often! Hurray!

The big Kantō earthquake

It only seems to happen once every few months, but I feel the sudden urge to write something.

I broke my camera 6 months ago and am restricted to the poor photo quality of my cheap cellphone. There are worse things in life. But there are times I really wish I could have taken decent pictures.

Hermiさん☆

Things are going better and better for my PhD. I got some major results, though they still have to be reproduced. I was doing one of those major experiments in Tōhoku University, located on the mountainside in Sendai, when the big Kantō earthquake happened. The building didn’t crash down, but it was very impressive. Actually, it was shaking so much that just staying under the desk required a lot of focus. What’s incredible is that I had finished my experiment the second it happened, and I had checked out of the hotel that morning. In other words, all I had to do was put my experiment in my suitcase and leave the building. After that, I stayed in Sendai with some people from Tōhoku University, helping each other out for water and food, until the Canadian embassy organized a bus from Sendai to Tōkyō. Just in time to renew my soon-to-expire visa at the Tōkyō Immigration Office.

Sendai snowman

Everyone was very worried abroad and back in Tōkyō, but I can’t say that I had a hard time. Actually, I had a great time. I made some great friends, and I was able to see a side of mankind that I had never had the chance to see before. Even complete strangers were helping each other out with a smile on their face. People formed small networks, relaying information, and sharing whatever little food or water they had. No one was breaking into empty shops or houses. People waited calmly in lines several hours long to enter mostly empty supermarkets. An old lady asked me if I had a bag for my groceries, and gave me one. She had just spent a few days in Korea the week before with her husband, so we talked about that. It made the wait considerably shorter, and the snow a little warmer.

Here is a snowman. I made it after carrying 20L of water up the mountain. If you look closely, it has hair

Waterbears （クマムシ）

Also called tardigrades （緩歩動物）, these little guys can survive temperatures from -273℃ to +151℃, pressures higher than under the deepest oceans, and didn’t die when sent into space and exposed directly to solar radiation for 10 days. They are less than 1 millimeter long and some of them can have up to 40,000 cells. The genome of Hypsibius dujardini was sequenced recently and is available online for any interested scientist. I’d like to study their ability for DNA repair in the future as a side project in my own lab.

Other than that today I was talking with Terada-san about participating in taekwondo competitions. He said it was difficult for a graduate student because you need to train more in order to prepare for the competition. But I don’t do any special preparation, I just go to the competition like that and see what I can do. 「ある程度強ければ、それで結構です。」 (I can’t find a satisfying way to express that in English). Just when I was explaining this, I noticed that two lab members – the assistant professor and another graduate student – were walking just behind me. After greeting them there was a long minute of silence before I managed to change the topic. Luckily, Terada-san cooperated. 笑

Boys over Flowers & 鋼の錬金術師

I’ve been watching the Korean drama Boys over Flowers recently and it’s quite addictive. It’s fun to watch the two main characters insult each other. I also prefer this version over the Japanese one. The bullying scenes at school are much more impressive, and the heroin does a jumping back spinning kick instead of just a simple punch or kick. (This video clip is in Tagalog, not Korean.)

The last Full Metal Alchemist volume was quite good. At least my favorite character didn’t die, and now that it’s over I don’t need to worry anymore. This is going to be my Windows desktop wallpaper until the next time I change. Roy Mustang様(=￣▽￣=)v

両神山 Mt. Ryokami (Nov.13-14)

久しぶりにワンダーフォーゲル部で山に登ってみた。

７月から長く体調が悪かったので、できるかどうか自信がなかったが、韓国に行ってきてから全然元気になったみたい。

この写真は両神山頂から見られる景色。富士山は写真の真ん中にある。携帯電話でとった写真ですみません。カメラを忘れていたんだ。

ルートもアップしてみた。興味ある人、ご参考までに。

一日目はオレンジ（８時間ぐらい）、テントを立てた場所は青、二日目は緑。トータルで10㎞ぐらい。二日目、リフトの上に歩るくと、石があって楽しかった。あそこは景色が感動するほどだったのに、ほとんど止まらずに進んでいった。

どうでもいいところでタルミをするより、我慢して美しいところで休んだ方が満足できたのだろう。そして今度、カメラを忘れないように（笑）

I’m in really good shape these days! Let’s keep it this way!