japan

17
Aug
2016

Sightseeing!

Publishing this nearly three weeks after it was written, because it’s taken me that long to get the photos ready inbetween other activities.

I have a busy work schedule while I’m here, but I would be missing part of the point of a research exchange (and disappointing myself) if I didn’t get out and explore as well. The theme of last Saturday was steps.

I decided to visit the Atago Shrine, in another part of Fukuoka. I caught a subway to the area, and discovered that the Japanese are not afraid of steps when designing subway stations:

Many, many steps at the exit from a subway station

So I climbed those steps. Then I walked a few hundred metres and arrived at the start of the approach to the shrine. This is reputed to be the oldest shrine in Fukuoka, founded around 2000 years ago. It is notable, in a non-religious sense, for being at the top of a rather steep hill. So there are steps. Lots of steps. There are these steps:

Steps between Torii

and then some more steps that I didn’t keep a picture of… and then a short walk through a residential area… and then more steps:

More steps, another torii, and some stone lanterns

and more steps:

Steps, this time from above, with a torii and a red handrail

and finally, this is the view from the top. Totally worth it.

Foreground: inscribed stone fenceposts of a temple; mid-ground: cityscape; background: sea.

Apart from the view, I didn’t find anything particularly remarkable at the top… but I did fall in love with a tiny little shrine that was perched on the hillside about half way down, with some tiny torii (temple gates) that I had to bend over to walk through:

Small concrete torii in woodland

There are some (better) photos by somebody else here.

Summer is fireworks season on Kyushu, and on Saturday night I caught a train to a nearby town to see a display of 8,000 of them, spaced over an hour and a half. In the process I enjoyed some Japanese food stalls, including my first go at skewered fried squid.

After a late start the next morning, I set off to Tōchō-ji, the first of a set of Zen Buddhist temples of the day. This one is remarkable for having a 11-metre high Buddha, the largest wooden one in Japan. It is awe-inspiringly big, in a way that wouldn’t come through from a photo… which is perhaps consolation for the fact that the temple doesn’t allow photography anyway.

The rest of the morning was spent wandering around a whole set of temples that form a sizable self-contained complex, including one that is said to be the first Zen temple in Japan and the place where tea plants were first imported. These city-centre temples provide surprising oases of shade, calm, and nature in the middle of a dense urban area, and make for very pleasant exploration. I was struck, on both days of this weekend, how closely integrated old and new architecture are in the city. It’s common to see a Chinese-style temple roof joined onto a modern office block.

Here are a few more pictures:

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Tourism count so far
(at time of posting)

Temples: I’ve lost count. Lots.
Castles: 2 (1 ruined, 1 rebuilt in concrete)
Museums: 4

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Posted by simon in Working in Japan
16
Aug
2016

Squid and barnacles

Last week, in a change from my usual desk-based work, a professor invited me and two Japanese students to help him with some fieldwork.  An important consideration for marine renewables is biofouling – how fast the subsea surfaces will become encrusted in barnacles and other creatures. A number of people around the world, including researchers at my home institution, are investigating this, but the answers depend a lot on the local water conditions, so it’s valuable to do it in different places.

The experiment is about two hours drive from the university, on the outer breakwater of a small fishing harbour in a fast-flowing tidal channel. We drove over in time for an early lunch before starting work. In this sort of scenario in the UK I’d probably expect sandwiches, but the professor treated us all to a restaurant meal. I have no idea whether this is normal, or whether he is just very kind! This being a fishing village, fish is what they serve. As we entered, a look of doubt crossed the professor’s face, and he asked whether I would be OK with raw fish, clearly expecting that a Brit would not be. I assured him that I love raw fish, and that it is one of the good things about being in Japan… so then I think he decided to challenge me, and/or provide amusement, and he ordered for me.

Me and a Japanese professor, each with a plate of transparent squid sashimi in front of us

Photo: Yutaro Torigoe

What turned up a little while later was all the edible parts of a whole squid, laid out in strips on ice in a squid shape, raw and transparent. The head and tentacles were taken away to be cooked and made into tempura, leaving me with the rest. I won’t say that squid is my favourite sashimi – I find the taste a little too mild and neutral – but it was certainly nice, and as I chomped my way through I think the three Japanese people present were both pleased and a little disappointed!

After the meal the professor showed me the fish market downstairs, where I saw more squid in a tank along with many, many other aquatic things that I don’t know the names for. And then we set off to do the work of the day.

Suspended on the side of the breakwater was a frame containing metal plates, each with a different paint or other coating. Every month they are removed, photographed, weighed, and returned to water, and that is what we did, as well as collecting data from instruments that were mounted on the frame to record factors such as water temperature. It was interesting work, but did involve being exposed continually to the mid-day sun and 36C heat, and when we finished after two hours I had just about reached my limit for warmth and sunshine.

A good, if exhausting, day, a break from my desk, and a chance to see some new bits of the Japanese coast and countryside. Thank you, sensei!

Me, two Japanese students, and a Japanese professor, standing behind a barnacle-encrusted metal frame

Posted by simon in Working in Japan
15
Aug
2016

Academics are the same everywhere ;-)

Today and tomorrow are the public holiday of Obon, a time that people take off work to honour their ancestors with their families. I’m working, because I have a very limited time in which to do my project, and I’m finding – judging by the lengths of the job queues – that the university supercomputer that I’m using is busier than on a normal day.

I suspect that a lot of Japanese academics, visiting their families and freed from the responsibilities and interruptions of their offices, are using the time to get on with research – just like at home!

Young person looking at an early IBM PC-compatible.

Waiting for computer time. Image from Bundesarchiv collection, licensed CC BY-SA 3.0 de

Posted by simon in Working in Japan
08
Aug
2016

I’m still here!

I’ve been a bit quiet, haven’t I?

Sorry.

The truth is that I’ve been really busy. During the week, after some initial delays with getting access to computing facilities, I’ve been working pretty hard to catch up on my planned schedule of work. At the weekends, I’ve been out having adventures, and I do have a post drafted to tell you about last week’s – but I want to wait until I have photos ready to go with it, and that is suffering from lack of time for photo processing during the week – since it’s obviously a lower priority than my research!

Please be patient; I will write more – both about work and play – in due course! In the meantime, here’s a blurry phonecam picture of me with SpaceGodzilla (actually, the original suit from one of the movies) at an exhibition on the art of daikaiju:

Me, posing next to the orignal SpaceGodzilla suit.

Posted by simon in Working in Japan
26
Jul
2016

One week in

A view of university buildings among treesSo, I’ve been here a week now. I’ve done a lot of settling in, a certain amount of figuring out systems, a decent bit of useful work, and a little tourism.

I’m on a small campus here which consists almost entirely of research institutes – so there’s little or no undergraduate teaching. In that respect it’s a little like home… except that “a small campus” here means around 100-200 academic staff, still an order of magnitude greater than Orkney! The first thing I noticed when I arrived was that the campus is noisy, and not from anything man-made: trees and bushes here are loud, filled with cicadas (or similar. I’m no biologist). In summer in Kyushu, you can hear green space coming! Beyond that it’s fairly ordinary university-campus buildings, although the presence of the QUEST experiment is rather cool.

I was told before I came that “the language of the lab is English”. It’s interesting to see what that means. It means that the staff can speak English, and any foreign students use English as a mutual language. The Japanese masters students understandably avoid it as much as they can, except when forced to use it in occasional meetings and presentations. It’s brought home to me something that I’d thought about before: what an advantage people from English-speaking countries have from the start as they go into academia. For the Japanese students here, use of English is a prerequisite for an academic career, and becoming proficient is an extra burden on top of their subject-related study and their research.

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Tourism count so far

Temples: 3
Castles: 1 (ruined)
Museums: 2

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Posted by simon in Working in Japan