MIT Sport TKD Blog

things i’ve been doing lately:

- maid cafe - pretty awesome. i went with some other interns in my department and their mentors to akihabara, and while we were there, we visited a maid cafe. there was a long line (maybe 20-30 minutes?) and the food was pretty expensive and pretty average, in addition to an entrance fee of 700 yen per person. but it was soooooo cute (if you’re into those kind of cute things, like cute japanese girls dressed as maids serving you food). i don’t have pictures of the inside of the cafe, but i did take pictures of the outside (like a can of maid butter inside the souvenir store).

- kansai trip - most of the MIT interns in japan went to kyoto/nara this weekend (just got back!), which began with a crazy night bus that left at 11 pm and arrived at 6 am. i couldn’t sleep, mostly because of some sort of ear pressure misregulation, and as a result, a significant part of the trip was spent with me napping or almost accidentally passing out. the scenery was amazing, though; i took a ton of pictures of famous shrines and temples in kyoto until my battery died. the weather was amazingly humid - my hair evolved from normal to afro throughout the day, both days.

- training - last week, i started biking to work, which is about 7.5 miles each way. after the first day, my quads were burning, and the past couple of days, i’ve been waking up with calf cramps at 6 am, but it’s pretty good training. i’ve also been practicing forms in lab, to the point that the main topics of conversation involving me are tkd and my commute to work (gossip travels at approximately c at work). speaking of tkd, i’m going to a dojang next weekend! it’s a kids class, but i’m expecting something like a bunch of teenage black belts who can totally kick my butt, so i’m pretty excited

time for sleep; waking up for work tomorrow is going to suck.

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