Although sunny weekends under the sakura sure are enjoyable, there is much to be said for rainy days with a book and a real breakfast.

In case you were also wondering, I confirm: whip cream does not make an adequate substitute for milk in your breakfast cereals. No matter how desperate and in a hurry you are.

Large load of laundry + Forgotten pack of tissues = EPIC FAIL

My shirts look like they’ve been gang-raped by a pack of fluffy teddy bears.

Tidbits of daily life in my very own secret underground volcano lair, otherwise known as Kyoto University’s Bioinformatics Center…

• Our lab building is one of the more modern on campus (remind me one day to capture some of the cool derelict buildings that sit on the edge of the campus: I swear, on sunny days they look straight from some Dr Moreau’s Island movie). The architecture is somewhat reminiscent of California-style 60’s: think John Lautner’s Desert Modern with more wood or Lloyd Wright with more glass… At any rate, it’s considerably nicer (and in better shape) than my last place of work.
• I spend my days at work barefoot (and I love it). Like most Japanese research labs, ours is a shoe-free zone: you are required to leave your outside-shoes in a locker by the door.
• Another typical Japanese tradition: food omiyage. Mix this with the fact that, out of a dozen researchers, there will always be one or two freshly returning from a trip abroad and you have a kitchen corner that looks like an international food court, all year round.
• We have, I kid you not, twelve different recycling bins in our lab. That’s not counting special items like batteries, pens, electronic parts etc., which all have their specific recycling deposit box in another building. Every friday afternoon, all the lab’s researchers have a giant round of Jan-ken-pon to pick who has to bring it all out to the campus’ recycling center.
• My morning commute from Kyodai’s international residence to the lab is approximately 10 minutes by foot (on a leisurely stroll). I believe this is the closest I’ve ever lived from work to date. Also: since the residence is all the way to the top of a small hill, while Kyodai’s campus is at the very bottom, I could ride my bike the entire way and not have to hit the pedals once (and possibly end up smashed by the Kyoto-Nara express train while crossing the tracks, but beside that). The hike back is way less fun.
• Beside the ever-impressive Entrance Ceremony and half a dozen redundant mandatory lectures on miscellaneous research-related topics, I am finally getting to the good part of huge layer-cake bureaucratic administrations: welcoming parties! Five of them, to be exact: one for each level of subdivision of each faculty or research institute I officially depend on. Free food (and booze): yay!

Mother, should I run for President? Roger Waters

Hearing this album for perhaps the billionth time since I turned 12, I just realised tonight that this particular piece of lyrics just doesn’t make any sense, being sung by an Englishman.

[...]

Class president, maybe?

[...]

I have way too much free time (not really).

I just spent half a day learning how to handle radio-isotopic material, feed my hypothetical SPF testing mice and properly dispose of dichloromethane (hint: not by flushing it down the drain), all in Japanese.

… Which would all be very useful if, you know, I ever worked with anything else than my computer and a blackboard.

I have about 15m left to learn the school anthem…

Hanami season is officially on.

First warm day of spring…

Having Yuzu tea and a strange-tasting “five-flavour” Omija tea in a cozy Korean tea house near Oike…

Yesterday was the day I chose to take care of all official administrative duties required by my new occupation and place of residence. Since I am not one to spread the pain, I went the all-inclusive package road and decided to do in one fell swoop: Foreigner Registration, National Health Insurance and Postal Savings Account (required, since the Monbukagakushō won’t give me my money on any other type of account)…

A delightful half-day excursion into the darkest recesses of Uji’s city hall and its – luckily adjacent – post office, made only more fun by the foreshadowing brought upon by close to five years living in Japan and nearly as many trips to a local city-hall…

First, was the usual cursing-under-my-breath of my parents’ screwed-up sense of humour whimsical inspiration, while trying to explain a frightened counter guy that, really, I could do with only two of my five given names and that anyway, the form would never fit them all. All in vain, of course, as the 500-pages form-validation manual for employees is very clear on that: [all] given names must be filled-in. Unfortunately said manual did not indicate how to deal with printer limitation on field size leading to half the names being left out of the printed version. But it only took another couple breaks of cold sweat and a dozen trips to various superiors to be settled by manual use of a ballpoint pen.

Then, I must be becoming really jaded (or I have done this too many times), but the only question on my mind while filling my slightly unusual (yet technically EU territory) place of birth was not: “will they take it as is” but: “how long before they come back to the counter with their world atlas in hand”.

I was wrong.

The employee who came back 10 minutes later, was carrying Wikipedia printouts. Times, my friend: they’re a-changing.

Incidentally, my current home address, not counting name and apartment number, is:
京都府宇治市五ヵ庄三番割官有地
京都大学国際交流会館おうばく分館.

Do you know how many kanji there are in there?

I do.

After filling out by hand eight different forms requiring my address, I. most. certainly. do.

And for the record: don’t even think of abbreviating 京都大学 to 京大 to save two kanji, because she’ll catch you and make you correct it like the naughty schoolboy that you are.

I just can’t wait to do it all again in six months when I move cities.

I need to dramatically raise the hang-drying capacity of my balcony…
Or start doing laundry more often than once a month.

A possible answer to the age-old question “what do they put in the water around here? “