Quick update

I've uploaded some more photos of my most recent weekend's excursions: Kyoto and Kobe as well as some of the Van De Graff generator at Osaka U.

Here's the link.

The weekend that was (very wet and misty)

As the title says: the weekend was blurry misty. Saturday it rained, a lot, Sunday was sunny, a lot. That's my obligation as British national disposed of I can now actually talk about what I did. Which to be fair wasn't much either.

Friday night I managed to sort myself out so that I could go out with some of the guys from the lab. Unlike typical trip to the local pub (certainly for my department anyway) here it meant we went to a bar which served good food as well, frankly this was a double wammy of win that was improved by the fact it was pretty cheap. About 5 rounds of drinks as well as about 15 different dishes worked out as about ¥3,000 each (about £25) given that in London 5 drinks alone will set you back most of that I consider it a good evening.

The food was really good, mainly small bits but it mounted up and by the end I was full(ish). Some interesting things I tried included: chicken cartilage (chewy but nice when deep fried in batter) octopus and squid in various forms (all of them dead) as well as something that was a called 'mountain potatoe' and when cooked had something close to the consistency of mucus, that being said it still tasted awesome as it absorbed pretty much any flavour put in it.

Saturday was a lot wetter than I was hoping for but I'd planned to be inside so no real loss: I went to the Osaka Aquarium (Kaiyuken) which like the biggest aquarium in any country instantly makes it something not to miss (according to the guidebooks and most likely the money given to the guidebook's authors). In this case it was reasonably justified as I doubt it'll be many years before I see sunfish, finless porpose or whalesharks in the same place (or at all given their survival chances).

From Osaka Aquarium

From Osaka Aquarium

I felt a little bad as a lot of the tanks there seemed small (especially for things like dolphins, sea lions and the whale sharks) but nothing seemed actively insane so hopefully they're ok. Obviously I saw more than those listed but a lot of what I saw were fishes: interesting to me but I'm not going to list them here (although I have to say the Jellyfish were awesome... but maybe that's just me).

After my pseudo-aquatic adventure (and negotiating all those children and people without GBH was something of a trial) I tried to take in the sights of Osaka through the medium of Ferris wheel (apparently the Tempozan was the largest wheel until 1997 when it lost to a rival within Japan, which lost to the London eye before several others successively claimed the title). Unsurprisingly this ended as mainly an exercise in watching the mist, and the clouds, and the rain but was nice and on a good day must be stunning (or terrifying depending on your love for heights).

After my trip I returned to the bar I'd eaten at the week before in Shinsaibashi and had more octopus (I really like it, ok?) and it's at this point the mist really rolls in. Japan is pretty easy to drink in for less than I'm used to in London and the people are very friendly: I made an friend at the bar and several hours were spent trying to understand each-other (phrase book = most useful thing ever). The excitement left me a little stranded at the end of the night when I managed to get the last subway home but missed the connection to the last monorail (pretty much all public transport bar taxis shut down at about 12:30, which is when I arrived in Senri-chou for the connection).

According to some of the people in the hostel it's traditional, upon getting stranded, to find an internet café where you can get all you can drink drinks and 'net time for a fixed fee that will cover several hours kip, unfortunately I was stranded away from a café so had the pleasure of walking home in the rain. It was actually quiet nice: my umbrella kept me dry enough (lesson the second as well as a phrase book carry an umbrella) and it was interesting (in a torrential kind of way) although any longer and I may have enjoyed it less (2 hours was more than enough time to sober up).

Home safe I slept it off on Sunday and have a coffee and reading day back in Senri-chou in the sun shine.

and now it's back to another week of poking circuits and science!


I think the heat has gotten to me .... this is a disturbingly chipper upbeat post... ah well maybe its tiredness.

first visit to MUSIC

Well I finally got to see what I'm working on today: MUSIC. Housed in the RCNP (Research Centre for Nuclear Physics) at Osaka University it is a FFAG (Fixed Field Alternating Gradient) that will be used to accelerate muons (a heavier version of the electron) these will then be studied and used to probe matter as well as generally make people go 'oooooh' (and then hopefully give us money to make us go away).

Like any good student while I was there I maintained complete decorum, for about 2 minutes. The whole facility was intensely cool, very much like something out of Half-life. As a building it is not made for humans, it's made for machines, humans just occasionally have to move around it: you're constantly ducking under piping stepping over cables, there are rooms full of boxes each controlling enough power to keep the average home going for month, the corridors are half shared with massive (utterly massive) bundles of high voltage cabling and most of the doors have fail safes on (and are generally about 50cm thick iron).

One of the strangest things about the whole site is that it's old, the first cyclotron was finished in 1973, so the whole place is well established and worryingly organic in feel at times this feeling strongest when comparing the equipment: on one hand is MUSIC, built less than a year ago consisting of finely polished metal shaped to incredible precision; on the other hand are the sections of proton beam pipe, lengths of well used metal held aloft by metal segments, controlled with magnets that are chipped and bruised.

Anyway, rather than ramble further I will leave you this link to my picasa album, it has several pictures of the experiment hall and control room - hopefully the captions will give some idea of what's going on feel free to leave questions in the comments though. 

PS feel free to look at the other albums with photos from my trip so far

The day the work began

Today was my first day working in at the Osaka University physics dept. it was a bit messy. After running late (combination of late start and missing the bus) we managed to meet our supervisor out here at about 10, we then got a tour and proceeded to wow him with our lack of knowledge (seriously he looked shocked). The up shot is that I now have about 100 pages of a book to read and a 2nd year undergrad experiment, calibrate a scintillator, to do by tomorrow afternoon (can't use the lab tomorrow afternoon so some analysis can be done but we also have to give a presentation at the weekly group meeting at 6). In short it's a bit stressful, especially as the experiment doesn't seem to be working as expected.

That was pretty much my day, the weather has been clearer today (at least no rain) and hot again.

Hopefully tomorrow will be better and I can get on with some proper work, until then I leave you with an explanation for the platypus...

UPDATE: In addition to platypus I think people should read this essay on the Burqa. It explains concisely and clearly why banning the burqa is pants-on-head stupid.

Travelling in Japan (or why staying up till 6 isn't clever)

Well I'm now in my base of operations for the next two months: Osaka. I started off in Tsukuba where the KEK centre in and travelled down this afternoon, and what have I learnt? That despite the assurances of my Australian flat mate travelling hungover is not a good thing.

Last night was our collaboration dinner in which our hosts took us all out for a traditional Japanese meal. It was excellent, we had our own small room and as much beer and food as we could eat in 2 hours for ¥5,000 (about £35). The food was delicious and much more than sushi: there was lots of tempura, meat and veg cooked on table top hot plates (each person had their own little burner upon which they could cook their food) lots of sashimi and all sorts of other odds and ends (giant Japanese radish for example). After this we had 3 hours of Kareoke which once you're drunk enough is a lot of fun (and after all that free beer we certainly were), a very sore throat and several bleeding ears (I can't sing) we moved to the other end of town to watch the England - USA game. By the time we finished it was 6am and the sun was up.

Four hours of 'sleep' later is was time to get up again to get down here. I have no idea how I managed this. I was supposed to be travelling with a fellow PhD student but he'd got up, checked out and then gone to sleep in his supervisor's room for the afternoon as of writing he's still not here and in an hour and a half they close reception so he's cutting it fine (I've heard he left at 6 - its a 5 hour journey). The journey itself was several parts: first a train from Tsukuba to Ahkibara (I nearly forgot my rucksack with my laptop in it luckily someone got it to me this was the same person who woke me up at the station as well people are lovely!) After this first train was a second to get me to the main Tokyo station (Akhibara is a suburb) then 2 hours on the bullet train to Osaka then another train and a monorail to where I'm staying (which is right on the outskirts).

I passed some amazing scenery on the journey and I have one photo to prove it, unfortunately for most of the time I was passed out with only intermittent bouts of paranoia induced wakefulness when my brain remembered that I may actually need to get off the train at some point.

One thing this journey taught me is how amazingly useful it is that most people know at least a little English without it I would have been stuffed, the second super useful thing is that most signs here have an English translation, that being said I'm certainly going to have to try and learn Japanese.

Anyway this will probably be revised soon once I'm actually feeling better (still a little hungover and very tired) also I'm getting kicked off the public PC I'm using (the wifi here is bricked).

First Missive from Japan

Right this is an attempt at a travel log.

I've now been in Japan a day and a half having arrived late afternoon on Wednesday and it is now early morning (ie 6am) Friday.

I've not done too much so far: after arriving the four of us travelling (all of us from my group @ uni) had the joy of a further 1.75 hour bus ride to top off our 10 hour flight before we arrived at Tsukuba. A huge meal and a lot of beer later I think (I think we ordered pretty much everything off the menu) it was time for a restless night. Thursday (the first full day here) consisted of the workshop I'm attending so another bus ride followed by 10 hours of conference in a sweltering lecture theatre.  We finished the day with a traditional (or so I'm told) Japanese meal which had a minimal amount of sushi but was lovely none-the-less: several small courses and a bowl of fish and vegetables on a burner.

Anyway I'm now running late if I want to get some photos taken before breakfast and another 10 hours of conference so I'm off