Mike,

I’m getting a little back-logged here with pictures and stories. Could you send Adam over to help me put these pictures on your blog? I’ll pay him with a dozen varieties of fresh, yummy mushrooms per story.

Due to popular demand here’s more about food.

–rakkity/Shamaru

Friday is shopping day for the guests of Nobeyama observatory, since no meals are servedon weekends. A driver picked Mukul and me up at the dorm (we were the only visitors at that time)and we drove to the closest supermarket–about a 20-m drive away. The store was like an American supermarket, except they didn’t accept credit cards and had no ATM. Since I was short of local currency, I needed an ATM. Our driver didn’t speak much English, so I mimed sticking my ATM card into a slot, and pulling out bills. He understood immediately, and took me down the street to the post office, where I filled up my wallet with several 10,000-yen bills.

Back to the store. I wandered down the produce line, and found mushrooms. Mushrooms galore! The greatest variety of mushrooms I had ever seen. It was a mushroom lovers paradise. I was tempted to buy several packets of odd varieties, but ended up picking just one. I went on to the fruit area. They had some good looking big apples. Initially I was turned off by the size. because in the eastern US, the bigger the apple, the worst the taste. But Mukul assured me that this is not the case in Japan. He also encouraged me to try a persimmon. (He bought 6.)

Then on to the meat area. I selected two packets of sliced fish from the myriad of choices. The only way I could cook these little fishlets in my room was to fry them, so I had to get oil. After wandering around a bit, I found some shelves with a huge array of bottles containing what might be oil. There wasn’t a single English word on any of the labels. I began to wonder if they might in fact be some other liquid–vinegar, perhaps? I turned around, and on the opposite shelves there were other similar bottles, and one of them, thankfully, was labeled Italian Olive Oil. I was saved. Got the smallest one there–200 g.

I also found some shelves of wine, whiskey and sake. I decided to try a local red wine called “Alps”. A few other items like broccoli, cereal and milk, and we checked out. My tab for the weekend spoils was 5500 yen.

That night I cooked one of the packets of fish, 1/3 of the broccoli, and half the mushrooms. Delectable, if I do say so myself. For dessert, I had half the apple, which was perfect.

My own meals are not as complex and colorful as the ones we have been having on weekdays. If you are a mushroom and fish lover, you would enjoy Japanese cooking very much. I am, and do. The only thing I can dispense with is the vast quantities of rice that everyone eats. But there’s so much food in our meals, I can get by with only one scoop of rice, and I’m satisfied.

I look forward to our next supermarket foray. This time I’ll get 3 or 4 packages of mushrooms, and some other kind of fish. Itadakimasu! (Bon appetit!)

Shamaru

Shopping Day

Rakkity ( December 4, 2005)

It was snowing lightly when I started out on my bike excursion yesterday. My plan was to check out the museum in Nobeyama village, and then ride to the tourist town of Kiyosato. The bike I had picked out was a woman’s bike (they all were), had exactly two gears, and the seat was too low. But the bike path was flat and easy, so I got to the museum in about 10 minutes, and found it was closed. The notes I had read said that the museum was open on Sundays, but the notes were pretty old, so the hours may have changed recently.

So I rode on up to Kiyosato on the bike trail that parallels the main highway (141). In about 2 km, I reached the highest point on the road (shown by a sign in English)–1360 m. That’s about 3000’. As I continued on, the snow started falling in earnest. My glasses were fogging up, and I could only catch glimpses of the ground now and then.

There happened to be a little store like a mini 7-11 across the street, so I decided to stop and go in just to get out of the snow. A little lady, the proprietor, was sweeping the snow off the steps and in a large area outside the shop. I started to brush the snow off my jacket and pants, but the lady waved her hand indicating it didn’t matter if I dumped snow on her floor. When I looked around in the store, there didn’t seem to be anything warm or hot for sale. So I bought a can of Sapporo beer, paid 105 yen, said “Arigato!” and went out to continue riding. I didn’t get far into Kiyosato before the falling snow got really thick and furious, so I decided to turn around, .I shot a picture of a park from a bridge before heading back. Didn’t see much of the town, but maybe I can next weekend.

The cars on route 141 were driving verrry cautiously, going only 20 kph or so. Apparently no one has snow tires. On the way back to the “highest point”, I found a nice looking restaurant. It reminded me of the Italian refugios. Lots of wood paneling, old, massive table, and big windows to look out at the view (which was mostly white on white). I asked for a beer by pointing at one in the menu. Then the waitress asked something incomprehensible. She went over and picked up mugs of 3 different sizes. I smiled and pointed at the middle one. She also brought hot tea and two little slices of braised beef, which apparently always come with beer. Everything was great. Afterwards I polished off a dish of ice cream, which they never provide at the observatory.

The tea house was just above the railroad where it reaches its highest point, 1375m. There’s a good walking/biking trail by the railroad, and it turned out to be a shortcut back home. I saw some charming Japanese houses and even other bikers on the way back. When I returned to my room, I took a hot bath and defrosted.

Not an excellent day but a good one. Any day in the snow is better than a day indoors. Now if I could only find XC skiis.

shamaru/rakkity

Bike Ride

—

Mozilla browser window.
View larger image

Mike,

Today I made a great discovery – the observatory has guest bikes for anyone to take out. So tomorrow (Sunday) I’m going to ride to the history museum in Nobeyama, and see the sights of the nearby tourist towns. I walked about 5 or 6 km today, mostly on bike trails, and watched the winds whip up soil from the plowed fields nearby. The locals ought to leave the stubble like most American farmers seem to since the great Dust Bowl of the 30’s. But here we are in a deep valley hemmed in by mountains – unlike the Great Plains – so the soil probably just gets blown from farm to farm instead of into the Atlantic.

There were also quite a few dust devils over the farms. I haven’t seen any of those before except in western deserts. I didn’t get a picture of one today, because I was on a quest for camera batteries, but now, thanks to the Nobeyama Co-op store (Domo arigato gosiemas) my camera is re-empowered. Maybe tomorrow I can get a dust-devil photo without being swept up in one like Dorothy.

Shamaru/rakkity

Mike,

Here are two pictures of where my fingers are doing their pecking these days. The first is my workspace, where you can see my laptop sitting next to a keyboard and the corner of a monitor “pcheliog2” (which is currently crunching away on a project). Look closely at the laptop screen and you might recognize someone drinking an Old Fashioned.
The 2nd picture shows the bane of my existence, the Japanese keyboard–it’s about half katakana and half english. The upper line of keys has different locations for “&”,”‘”, etc. In fact almost all of the symbol keys are mispositioned for american fingers. And the space key is shorter to accomodate more katakana keys. What a mess! No touch typing on this baby, for sure. When I set up my password, which ends in &&, for this computer network, I didn’t realize I’d need to log in on another workstation to copy files over, and that that workstation has an american keyboard. My password didn’t work on it because the & is over the 7 (where it’s ‘sposed to be). The only cure was to change passwords, and let the new one propagate through the network.
If you think the Japanese keyboard is an accident waiting to happen, you should see the Japanese Mozilla browser. It’s an accident in progress. I’ll try to send a picture of that one later.

Shamaru (alias rakkity)

Mike,

I’m losing track of what I’ve sent you and what I haven’t. So here are all the URLs of Japan stuff:

The dorm room I’m living in.
Shots of the observatory and mountains.
I’ve learned how to say Schmahl in Japanese.

In the last few days I’ve written a lot of emails to P,B,&K which I should collect together. Since I have internet access in my room I can do that anytime.

How’s the hand? Why not a story on the blog? Or is it too embarrassing?

Ed (rakkity)

Rakkity

11/27/05

Chicago to Tokyo takes 12 hours by the polar route. Somehow, by the mysteries of longitude, you can leave Chicago at noon and arrive at 4 pm in Tokyo on the next day without ever seeing the sun set. I was lucky enough to have a window seat on my flight, and could watch the sun-dappled lakes of Minnesota, the windswept snowbound tundra of Alberta, and the magnificent snow-pinnacled mountains of southern Alaska, 30,000 feet below our airplane.

Larger Image
The experience of really being in an asian country was thrust upon me by the Japanese subtitles in the flight movies. That‚’s a new experience for me. And between the movies, when the screen shows the distance to the destination and traveled, the airplane height & speed and arrival time, somewhere over the Pacific the labels switched from Engilsh to Japanese, signifying that we were then in the Asian sphere of influence.

We landed at Narita airport just north of Tokyo right on schedule, and the previously omnipresent sun resumed its delayed descent to the horizon. Narita airport, fortunately, has lots of English signs mingled with the Japanese, and the staff all speak English, so it was a breeze to find an ATM, collect a caboozle of yen, and buy train tickets to the town of Kofu. Mukul led the way while I helped with his 3 bags. He says he regrets not taking enough clothes, because it‚’s going to be cold in Nobeyama. It was 60F here in Tokyo when we arrived, but Nobeyama is high up in the mountains, maybe they’ll even be snow.

I‚’m writing this on the clean, smooth express train to Shinjuku, an intermediate stop on our way to Kofu, The train left right on the minute and is due to arrive at 19:41. Do the trains run on time here? Will I find my way to the hotel? Tune in and find out in the next episode tomorrow.

Checklist :

o Filed down my outlet adapters to match Japan’s outlets (check)
o Stashed map of Tokyo-Nagano regions (check)
o Packed spare 512 MD sd memory card for camera (check)
o Packed USB to PC card reader to upload pix to Mike’s blog (check)
o Packed the supinator dynasplint to terrify the baggage checkers (check)
o Packed 5 dvds to watch on boring nights (check)
o Charged and packed 2 extra laptop batteries (check)
o And so on, and so on.

Why in the heck am I doing this?

Well it’s all Mukul’s fault. Mukul is my “retired‚” ex-boss, a spry, talkative 77-year old solar radio astronomer who plans to live to 150, while he writes several dozen more scientific articles about radio flares on the Sun. He’s canny and clever, but he’s still in the 80’s computer-wise, and he needs to enlist help to program radio flare mapping, save data to DVDs, transfer data from computer to computer, and all that ‚Äò90’s and 0’s stuff. So he enlisted me.

At first Mukul asked if I’d go with him for a whole month to Nobeyama Radio Observatory (Nagano prefectorate, Japan). But I bidded him down to 3 weeks between Thanksgiving & New Year. Being Indian, he thinks it’s quaint that I want to celebrate those holidays with my family. I told him that my wife and kids would kill me if I wasn’t home with them on Nov 24 and Dec 25, and he accepted that. And it’s true, too.

The trip is being paid for by Shibasaki san (got to remember that “san‚”), the observatory director. He’s wangling the fare and hotel bills from his budget by creating a One-Day Symposium while we’re there. Mukul and I each have to give a half hour talk (Arggh. I hate to give talks) and listen to the Observatory guys give talks. Then we’ll all recover from our speechifying and listening by munching on sushi, sashimi, and sipping 20-year old sake. That’s the sum of the ODS.

The rest of our workaday stay in Japan, Mukul and I will be sitting in front of monitors, extracting data from the archives and making maps of solar radio flares. Both he and I have similar agendas. He’s got his flare lists, and I’ve got mine. By the end of 3 weeks we should have enough maps to supply Mukul with articles for another decade, and to supply me with more than enough projects until the end of 2006 when I retire. (But I’m really, really going to retire, not like Mukul, whose so-called retirement is more like what I’d call full employment.)

Nobeyama Observatory is located between two National Parks. Come to think of it, one of them is a “Pseudo National Park‚” (That’s what the map says.) So I’m hoping to do some hiking in the parks on weekends, if there isn’t too much snow. If there is too much snow (can there ever be “Too much‚”?), I may go skiing in a small ski area near the observatory. As much as possible I plan to walk around the nearby village looking for the “old‚” Japan‚”. And every day or two I’ll be writing up my experiences for the Millerblog.

My flight leaves at 9:15 am, Nov. 26.

Sayanara for now
Rakkity

The Friday before last, Patrick, Katie & I had arranged to play cut-throat (3-way racquetball) at 5 pm. P. and I arrived at the court at about the same time, but Katie wasn’t there yet, so after warming up, we started a game. P scored first with a blazing serve that I only waved my racquet at feebly. (Let it be noted that this was with my “good‚” right hand.) P’s next serve was a wall grazer that my racquet just managed to touch, but the ball didn’t make it to the front wall. 2-0 Patrick. His next serve was a hard one that I played off the back wall, but my reaction time must have been slow, so I misplayed that return, too. 3-0 Patrick. My thought process accelerated‚ Gadzooks! What’s wrong with me? And where is Katie, so she can rescue me from a debacle?

Finally, just as Patrick was about to serve again, Katie appeared, and I breathed a deep sigh of relief. We changed over to cut-throat, and had two long relaxed games. P won one, KT won the other, but I don’t really keep track of those 3-way games. I lose most of them, and don’t care a whit.

The next week was Thanksgiving, so we switched our Friday game to Tuesday. Katie had said she needed to start and end early, so we played cutthroat from 4:30 to 5:30. Katie left after winning the 2nd game, and since we had the court till 6:00, Patrick & I got set for a game or two. I had been playing backhanded while KT was there, and it felt great to swing fore-handed again. The score was 3-0 before long, and this time it was in my favor. I was going for “kill‚’ shots, and every one was hitting the mark‚ The “sweet spot‚”, the right wall one foot from the front wall and one foot from the floor. P made many spectacular recoveries, and dove for balls that I would never attempt. Then he’d roll over, and dash back, catch up my returns going to the rear, and play them off the back wall with his trademark back-hand wrist smashes.

But my kills were still working, and the score gradually moved up, 5-0, then 7-0, and when we got to 9-0, I could begin to relax a little and let the adrenaline drain off. P scored 3 points, then I killed the ball on 6 successive returns. For as long as I can remember, I’ve never had such a one-sided game against Patrick. It may be because P has been playing left-handed in our cut-throat matches that he’s forgotten how to play right handed. For myself, maybe playing right-back-handed for 4 weeks had improved my back hand and even my forehand.

So we went into the second game, and P couldn’t score for several serves. I was up 4-0 and on my serve, I thought to look back at him and check that he was still playing right handed. (Yes.) My kill shots in the “sweet spot‚” continued to work. Patrick had many a spectacular recovery of the front kills, and also side-grazers, low backwallers, and z-shots, but I wore him down, and kept him to only 6 points. Age and treachery again beat youth and skill.

Afterwards we talked to a big black guy who had been watching our game. He was shaking his head at some of our better moves. He wondered how long we had played against each other. When I told him that my daughter had just left after winning against us, he said, “Wow!”

Three days from now I head for Japan for 3 weeks. Should I bring my racquet? Do the Japanese even play racquetball?