hey guys!
i’m in japan right now, working at banyu (the japanese division of merck) in tsukuba. i’ll probably also be blogging at my real blog (snix313.wordpress.com), if you want to check it out.
the coolest thing about japan: heated toilet seats. not joking. they’re everywhere. in the airport, at work, in my department head’s house. you don’t really think about how much of a pain it is to sit on a cold toilet seat until you don’t have to anymore. there are also other toilet options, such as washing after you’re done? not really sure how that works…
my apartment is huge (by japanese standards). all of the people in company housing (interns included) have a decently-sized kitchen, bathroom, and pretty big bedroom (about the size of my bexley room). i’ll be posting pictures somewhere sometime.
my japanese sucks. no, really. but i know just enough to usually figure out general topics, even if i can’t actually understand what people are saying. my japanese most of the time consists of “hai, wakarimashita,” “sou desu ka?” and “sou ’su ne,” unless someone actually starts a conversation with me in japanese (i have this habit of speaking in whatever language people speak to me in - this is usually english); the rest of the MIT interns have much better japanese than me. :\
japan’s rainy season is this month, but the weather is still a lot better than boston weather. it rains maybe an average of 1-2 times a week, and it’s never windy and cold and crappy even when it rains.
i really miss tkd and you guys. 
one of my mentors said that there was a tkd club at tsukuba university, which is nearby, but i still haven’t actually contacted them yet. i’ve been beating up on other interns as a substitute for actual training. 
see you guys in ~2 months!
-snix
21 Jun 2008 snix313
Wow, toilet seat warmers!? They have advanced since the early 1900’s…I say this because Roald Dahl, the Norwegian children’s books writer (author, famously, of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach, The Twits, Mathilda etc.), talked about how they *used* to warm toilets back at his boarding school in the his autobiographical book, “Boy”.
In any case, apparently, there used to be a teacher who would, in the middle of winter, send one of the boys to the outhouse to sit on the toilet and warm the seat before he’d go. Pretty weird. But I am totally with you about cold toilet seats on a cold day. Particularly the morning. And for girls. It sucks. Although, I think you meant “you don’t really know what you are missing until you experience it” when you wrote “you don’t really think about how much of a pain it is to sit on a cold toilet seat until you don’t have to anymore” — haha, unless this isn’t your first WTS experience, and then it was taken away from you? That’s pretty tragic.
God, I can’t believe I just spent 2 paragraphs writing about warm toilet seats…you suck.
Aww, don’t beat up other interns! Find a tree…hehe
Snix! Last week, someone stole the sunglasses I got the day I went with you to the Galleria. T_T I’m so sad…anyways, remind me to pay you when you get back. I went again yesterday and got a different pair, from Aldo’s. You’ll have to tell me what you think — actually, just kidding. I was such a pain last time we went, lol, I know I vacillate and can never make up my mind.
What do “hai, wakarimashita,” “sou desu ka?” and “sou ’su ne”
mean?
“hai, wakarimashita” is a way to say that you understand/understood what someone just said.
“sou desu ka?” is a way to say something along the lines of “really?” or “is that so?” or something like that.
“sou ’su ne?” is similar to “sou desu ka?” except that it’s more used to confirm rather than ask.
at least that’s how i see these things.
dude, mary, i discovered yesterday that my sunglasses broke!
but i think it’s fixable, i’m just too lazy 