Kawagoe

Heyho everybody,

firstly I want to emphasize how nice and friendly everybody is to me here in Japan. It is incredible. On Friday there was a BBQ held by the whole Institute and I've got first hand experience of what japanese BBQ is like: It is awesome. Heaps of little pieces of meat, seafood and vegetables is thrown onto the BBQ over charcoal and since the pieces are relatively small they are done incredibly fast. Usually they are not seasoned but dipped into sauce after they are done. And the grand finale consists of Yakisoba, prepared on a metal plate over the fire. Yakisoba is a mix of noodles, cabbage, chicken meat and a special sauce. It is DELICIOUS:

Something worth importing to Europe.

Unsatisfied, since the BBQ was officially over at 8 pm, Shinji and Isoji, the other person we share the office with, and his son went to a nearby drinking place. I am really getting used to these japanese style places. Isoji also showed us the toy he is playing with when he is not in the office (which is quite often, actually). The machine arrived not long ago so he spends his time trying to set it up correctly for the experiments he wants to conduct. Apparently he also decided that it is definitely female since it's functionality seems to depend on its mood. I don't think it has a name yet though. We might come up with something fitting. Maybe you have some suggestions? It pulls ions out of ash samples and does a mass spectroscopy. It also looks quite fancy:

The machine <please insert name here> and Isoji

On Saturday I was invited by another coworker, Tadashi, and his wife to a trip to Kawagoe which is also called "little Edo" because of its huge number of historical buildings originating in the Edo period.  They also invited friends of theirs, a russian-german couple with both of their kids. Quite an international and multicultural group. We had a lot of fun exploring the old city. After our first stop (lunch, duh) we went to Kita-in temple, an old buddhist temple. It is remarkable because the third Tokugawa shogun transferred part of the original Edo castle, which burned down in the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923, to the temple. And since the temple itself survived since then you can walk through the 400 year old interior of Edo castle. It as quite a sight to behold the beautiful traditional japanese architecture:

Little opening within the building.

Paper doors (Shoji) and rice mats (Tatami) on the floor.

Don't forget the stone garden.

The Tokugawa family crest (left) and the crest of the imperial family (right).

The premises of the temple also includes 520 statutes of disciples of the Buddha. If you look closely you can see that all of them have been fixed at their necks. This is because after the Emperor took over the country from the Shogunate in the middle of the 19th century, the new government tried to eradicate Buddhism. In this particular case government lackeys decapitated all 520 statues. Quite macabre.

All of them look different, quite amazing.

Our next stop was the street of historical buildings. Again, it was very interesting to see what old japanese cities used to look like:

Only during the Kawagoe festival is the street closed.
It gets very cramped with all the traffic.

I had a blast this weekend and I am looking forward to the next one, even though I don't know yet what I'll do.

See you around,

Nils