Steph's Trip To Japan
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26 July, 2004
Today we were mostly up around 7. Breakfast was, as it would continue to
be as long as we were there, toast with butter or jelly (but not grape jelly)
and hard-boiled eggs. Mm, yummy. There was some fruit juice in jugs, but I
preferred to drink cool water out of the water cooler. Did you know that all
tap water in Japan is safe to drink? And that you will likely not find a water
fountain anywhere?
I believe today was the day we did our laundry. The washing machines were
old, but we figured out how to work them after the fact. There were no
dryers, much like most of Japan, so we hung our damp clothes in our room,
on the walls, over doors, on rack, and over the railings outside (remember,
it was a room with 3 girls). It took about a day and a half for everything to
be dry.
At 8:30 we trooped out to the science building to get Oriented (as in, we
listened to our orientation). Dr. Shirayama was introduced to us again, and
he gave a lecture on meiobenthos, a type of water dwelling creature. We
took tons of notes and even watched a video on his PowerPoint
presentation.
After this we trooped back and grudgingly changed into long pants and
long shirts. It was still VERY hot. I don’t know what they were thinking, but
they told us that while on the boat, long clothes would protect us. Like
cotton’s ever withstood a boat wreck. “Oh ow! My leg is broken in three
places and I’m bleeding internally, but thank goodness my cotton shirt is still
in one piece! It sure would be bad if that got ripped!” Anyway, we went
dredging in two different areas of the bay—one more mudlike, one more
sandlike. Dredging was accomplished by dropping a weighted bag off the
edge of the boat and powering along for a minute, then stopping and
pulling the bag up with a crane. We emptied the contents into the buckets
provided, and went back to the lab. We left our collections there and went
for lunch, which was a sort of Japanese boxed lunch they had bought from
caterers. They had lots of traditional bits in there, like pickled radish and
seaweed, but it also had rice and characteristically flavored meat. So I ate
that. :P
We went back to the lab and used buckets and sieves to sieve out the
creatures. One group of creatures simply floated around in the water (I
believe these lived in mud), so they were easy to get out. The ones that
lived in the spaces between sand grains didn’t want to come out, so we did
several separation techniques that will be very useful in October when we
do our NaGISA sampling in the gulf. We broke out the microscopes and
studied for a couple of hours, I won’t bore you with that. Those that didn’t
accidentally throw their specimens out (that is, everyone but me) put their
specimens on slides to put under this powerful microscope hooked up to a
digital camera. We got some great pictures this way.
We eventually left to get dinner at a nearby restaurant on the sea
(everything was by the sea, just like anything in Niceville is on the gulf)
where they had already prepared our meals. They had been preordered,
and I don’t remember but I think we had pork of some kind. Plus seafood, it’
s not Japanese if they don’t slap a couple of shrimp on your plate. I think I
ate mostly rice. And the salad goo made its second appearance in a tiny
salad they served everyone.
Some time after our family walked to the city of Shirahama and looked
around, stopped into a grocery store and bought stuff, and checked out the
various buildings. I found a rental place, but no DVD store. Sad. But I
bought lots of Pocky, so that kinda made up for it.
I spent this night playing with Shiba and Keese and their Japanese <-->
English translator. It was fun, as we described words and stuff to each
other. I think we did this the night before, but we really broke it out tonight. It
had a game on it, a sort of fill in the letter game. For example: b_ll. Any
American can put at least 4 letters in that blank to make it make sense, but
this game gave no English hints, so we just guessed away. They were
pretty funny too, trying to put letters that just don’t go together next to each
other. As_ess. And they would put an r. Or l. Or q. It was a lot of fun, really.
When I got to bed, I could hardly see the floor. There may as well have
been no floor at all. I practically slept on top of my suitcase.
