Monday, June 16, 2014

2014年6月9日ー13日

June 9th-12th:

Contrary to the previous week, I was very productive this week. On Monday, I began creating my next sample. I loaded 200 grams of pure titanium powder into the Spark Plasma Sintering machine at 800 C and 45 kN of pressure.
So hot it's not even funny.

Isn't she lovely?
I removed the sample, cut and sanded it appropriately, and ran an X-Ray Diffraction, HF Acid Etching Microstructure Observation, Vicker's Hardness Test, and O-N Content tests on Tuesday. By the way, HF (Hydrofluoric) acid is the stuff Walter White and Jesse used to dissolve a human body in Breaking Bad. Extremely corrosive on human tissue. Gotta be careful with this stuff. On Wednesday, I ran my first extrusion with my friend Shirai. It's also a pretty dangerous process. While the preheated metal billet is pressed through a die, everyone in the room has to duck behind cover incase something shatters into granade-like shrapnel. Also the coil that heats the press runs on 400 V (if I remember correctly). Either way, if you touch it you get seriously burned and shocked, possibly fatally. Aside from those two factors, you are handling a hot metal that glows because it is on the verge of melting. Science can be pretty exciting..
Anyhow, on Tuesday night, I was eating dinner with some hall mates in the common room when we started talking about pets. I talked about how much I missed my python Casper and my cats. Overall, I just miss animal contact. The deer in Nara were super awesome. Animal interaction does miraculous things to my psychological health, not that I am in poor psychological health really.. So just as we were talking about it, another hall mate of mine came back to the dorm with his host family. And guess what they brought....
That's right. A DOGGY!! His name was 桃さん Momo san. "Mr. Peach" if you directly translate it. Also, that is my RA Mari on the left, the owner of the dog in the middle, and my friend Erika on the right.

I love animals.
That was like the highlight of the week for me. Oh! And the fact that I booked a flight to visit Maika in Taipei from July 4th-July 8th! I'm extremely excited to see the country with her. It looks like a foodie's paradise, a place meant for us.

Ok. So Thursday was a fun day. I was playing guitar late at night with my friend Johanes, when a group of my hall mates came home drunk. My friend Ben from Berkeley, Andy from Germany, and Joon and Yonji from Korea. They convinced me to join them for a midnight park stroll, with a little bit of whiskey. I didn't drink much at all, rather I was there for the scenery. Here are some pics:


The lake at the park under the full moon.

A funny, and kind of romantic picture of my drunken friends. 


June 13th: 

Friday was pleasant. I woke up at 5 AM to witness the start to the world cup. I was pleased with the 2-1 result in favor of Brazil against Croatia. I lived in Sao Paulo for about 3 years, so I will be rooting for the Brazilians. Unless they happen to play the Swiss or the US (neither of which is likely..). Took a 2 hours nap after the match and before work. I spent the morning cutting small samples of my metals to make carbon content test samples. After lunch, I came back to this. That position looks ridiculously uncomfortable. Later I ran a carbon content test using the machine pictured below.

I don't know how he doesn't get extreme neck pains.. 




After lab, I met up with my friends from the hall to go see the fireflies in Umeda. Yes, the middle of the city has this tiny garden where you can see fireflies. Here are pictures from the night:

Some lanterns celebrating the fireflies.

Looking up at Umeda Sky Tower. How have I not been to see this building yet. It's got some pretty cool architecture.

A further view.

After waiting in a long line. This was the pathway into a tiny forest with a creek where the fireflies were mating.

Yes, those are all fireflies.
A little blurry. but a cool shot leaving the firefly garden.
After checking out the fireflies, half the people became surprisingly drunk in like 40 minutes. Me, along with Shinji, Erika, Jiho, and Shogo ended up having to herd the group towards a conveyor belt sushi place. We ate a satisfactory sushi dinner and headed to an arcade near the station before the last train left at midnight.

The daiko drum came is always a good time. 
AND, for your end of the night drunken business man.....

If you look closely, you can spot the drool about to drop out of his mouth. Too funny.
Anyhow. I will continue soon.


Wednesday, June 11, 2014

2014年6月5日ー8日

June 5th & 6th:

I'll be quite honest with you, I was not very productive during these days. On Thursday, I managed to consult with Imai Sensei on what to do for my next experiment. You see, the main reason my titanium samples with nanotubes dispersed were so much stronger than the pure titanium samples was because when I extruded the materials at 1000 degrees Celsius, titanium began to mix with the carbon nanotubes to form the ceramic, titanium carbide or TiC. I was able to observe this through the electron scanning microscope by seeing vast quantities of TiC particles on the fractured surface of a tensile test specimen. Basically, there were a lot more TiC particles, than unreacted nanotubes. And here's why:


This is called a phase diagram. It tells you what chemicals are in your mixture, based on how much solvent is in the solution (x-axis) and what temperature you are at (y-axis).
My solution was 0.5 weight percent C, which converts to roughly 2 atomic percent. Any temperature above 882 Celsius will cause the carbon to react with titanium.
So, the goal for my next experiment is to keep the temperature under 800 Celsius to preserve the nanotubes. Hopefully that will improve the strength even more in the end. So that's the course of action right now.
Anyways, I also went to this bakery called 神戸屋 Kobe ya, where you pay 400 yen, and you get to fill a basket with as much break as you'd like. You also get a drink on the side. It was my lab mate's idea, so I went with two of them. It was a good time.
Awww yeah!! The second time i went, I brought some jam.. Bread is a little bland on its own.. haha.
To show how productive I was... A picture of a the lowest-splash path line while peeing in a urinal. CAD style.
June 7th:

I slept in, played some basketball. I run the same shooting drill every time I go out. I'll diagram that next time I have the time. My friend Ben joined me for basketball a little, and then we got some food before our big 飲み放題 "all-you-can-drink" night out with the hall. It started raining, so check out this undersized raincoat I got for 500 yen:

Everyone was laughing cause it looks like a skirt if you cover my top half.. Do it! I dare you!
The night was a wild one. I drank the strongest alcohol I've ever had, Spiritas (96% alc vol.). I might as well have drank the pure ethanol from the lab we use to clean our samples.. The drinks were fun, and we headed home around 10:30. There, someone suggested for me to bring my guitar out and play. I went to my room, remembered the G-string was broken, tried to restring my guitar while intoxicated, lost one of the pins that hold the strings in place the base, spent 20 minutes searching for it, gave up, and just fell asleep. I found it above my headboard the next morning... Nice Franc. Here's a pic of my hall mates drunkenly trying to find money to pay.

We played some great Korean drinking games. This more-or-less sums up the night..
June 8th:

On Sunday, my friend Emilio intended to take me to this Zen Center in downtown. And by intended, I mean we rode the train to some random part where he thought the place was, but it turned out to be in eastern Osaka, not central Osaka. Miles of walking and several frantic, mistranslated phone calls later, we decided to give up and just get some dinner. We walked to Shinsaibashi for food. I'd never seen the place so abandoned. Nonetheless, we managed to stumble across this delicious Curry Udon (my favorite!) place. I won't say it's as good as つりとんたん, but it certainly hit the spot.

A la carte style udon shop with tempura toppings. Good stuff!

Tuesday, June 3, 2014

2014年5月30日ー6月4日

May 30th:

Our last full day together. We slept in comfortably from the previous day of travels, blogging and just enjoing each other's company. Since I had no shorts left, I rolled up my pants to combat the heat. Check out the super hipster outfit I conjured up.
Rockin' it or rockin' it?
We ended up walking around Shinsaibashi and Dottonbori one more time and wound up eating McDonald's for lunch. The first McDonald's I've eaten in a loooooong time... Afterwards we started heading up towards the dorm for a big dinner party I had planned out with my friends. But not before I got on this big screen at Dottonbori:

Yup.. I'm a horse jockey. With a giant head.. The ad is for a horse race, the Japan Derby. 
Anyhow, here are pics from the dorm dinner party.

Cutting tons of veggies and preparing batter.

Focused on the Takayaki.

All the food prepared.

Before we headed to karaoke, it was time to have some fun.

A bunch of my hallmates from Germany, US, Korea, Netherlands, Finland, India, Ireland, and Taiwan. And that's not even half the nationalities in this dorm. Such a great group of individuals.
Karaoke
Even though Maika knocked out pretty early and slept through most of the songs, we all had a great time singing until sunrise. About an hour before we headed out, I went outside for some fresh air and took this shot.
What? You were expecting something nicer? It was 4 AM at a random station in northern Osaka. 
Anyhow. The train ride felt like it took forever. I was dead tired, but it was my first time seeing the 5 AM work commuters and the overnight shifters. I must be a struggle to do that everyday. We made it back to the hotel around 6:30 AM, where I knocked out while Maika prepared for Taipei. I awoke at 9:50 AM to walk Maika out to the airport shuttle. I was so tired, seeing her off is a bit of a blur in my memory. I just remember waking up at 4 PM in the hotel feeling very lonely. Japan can be tough for foreigners because we make up a measly 1.5% of the population, while Japanese citizens make up the other 98.5% (I'm quoting Wikipedia here, but it seems correct based on experience). Point is, I miss home and I missed it especially hard when the only slice of home I had for a week disappeared again. Time flies however. And I know the minute I step on the airplane back to California, I will miss Japan. So chin up, back to intensive research and adventure-filled weekends. And all my love to Maika for a such an incredible week. 

May 31st-June 4th:

I spent the weekend catching up on sleep, cleaning and getting some exercise. I also got a chance to video chat my oldest brother Mario, who won his first AA beach volleyball tournament. He is officially ranked AAA, and able to play in professional level tournaments. Congrats!!! Ich bin stolz Märu! Anyways, we were wearing the same tank top, which was just too funny so I got a screenshot. 

On Monday I put the final mark on my first lab experiment here. For the past two days, I have been reading articles on various carbon nanotube dispersion methods to prepare a procedure for the next experiment. Occasionally, I took a break to catch up on my blog, which I have now officially accomplished for the first in like a month and a half! Woohoo!

2014年5月27日−29日

May 27th:

On Tuesday, I introduced Maika to Kobe, the western-influenced port city just west of Osaka. Our first goal was to try the world-renowned Kobe beef, which comes from cows that are apparently massaged and given beer daily. Here it is:
This meal cost 2,500 yen. The Kobe beef morsels weigh in at 80 grams. They were very tasty, but I'll stick to supermarket beef from here on out...
Also, our waitress placed these 1st place Kobe beef competition trophies on our table to prove the worth of their meat. And to take pictures with, she said. 
We headed to Harborland, the place I visited with my friends last time. If you want to see pictures of the place, either visit Maika's blog or go back and look at my older post of when I went there for my firs time.
For dinner, I had organized a double date with one of my lab mates and his girlfriend, Motohiro and Sayaka respectively. They took us to a restaurant called Nin-Jin. The entrance consisted of a hatch in the side of some random building in some random narrow street in the downtown area. We were greeted in ninja fashion by our ninja waiter and led to our table, or should I say room -- or maybe more of a closet by American standards... I struggled to fit myself, but the experience was cool. Apparently in traditional Japan, dining rooms were no bigger than about 4 cubic meters. The waiter presented our full course and 2 hour all you can drink dinner in strange mumbles; he was a character.. We also had to use "ni" for yes, and 厠 kawaya (or "river room") for bathroom. Here are some pics from the restaurant.

The restaurant was a maze of staircases and narrow alleyways branched with the tiny rooms where we ate.

Our ninja waiter, my friend, his girlfriend, and the magical ninjutsu dessert we were served.

The entrance to our dinner room. And he's like a foot shorter than I am... I barely fit..
After dinner, my friend had prepared plans for us to hike up into the hills of Kobe to a spot where couples attach locks to this giant structure. Oh! And the view was incredible. Here are some pics:

We have officially left our mark on Kobe. C: Our's is on the right side incase you can't read katakana or hiragana.

Our locks with the city in the background. 

Which view is better, the foreground or the background? 


You can see Harborland in the distance. Its the red tower with the bright white structure to the right.

A great night! Thank you so much for showing us around Motohiro and Sayaka. You two are a lovely couple.

Ok last one. 
May 28th:

We rested up on Wednesday and used the time to catch up on our blogs a little, though it clearly wasn't enough time for me.. I only hope all this blogging is worth my time. I guess if it isn't for you all, it will be for myself somewhere down the road. Anyhow, we took a lunch break at Mos Burger, Japan's most popular burger joint. Here's what we ate..


This was a chili and sausage burger with donut buns.. Strange..
For the evening, we headed up to station nearby my dorm to eat at my favorite ramen shop with some buddies of mine. We had great conversation the entire time, and followed the dinner with some ice cream and a visit the local arcade. The arcade games were pretty difficult, so we went to the puricura machine. Please do yourself the favor and look into this relatively new Japanese fad. Basically, it's a photo booth where your pictures are edited so your eyes become massive and anime-like, and your skin is overly clear looking. I'll try and upload a picture of the print out we got. It was disturbing, but we all got a great laugh out of it.

Here we are at Japan's most popular arcade game. From left to right, Maika, Felix (Germany), and Duncan (New Zealand). Thanks for joining us guys. Maika and I had a great time.
After a fun evening, we headed back downtown. Here's another fucked up salaryman passed out on the train. At one stop, the conductors had to come in to check on him and prop him back on his seat. He just ended up knocking out again, with the broken beer can leaking booze all over his plastic bag. Just too classic...



May 29th:

I was looking forward to Thursday a lot because it was finally an opportunity to visit Nara, a small city famous for its Buddhist temples, and overcrowded, human-friendly deer population. I exaggerate overcrowded. Literally, every city block toward the east of the city has at least a whole heard, wandering around eating special 鹿せんべい, rice crackers made specifically to feed the deer. And if there's something you should know about me, it's that I love animal interactions. Anyways, I'll let the pictures to the talking.

Maika taking a pic of a tower behind me. And of me taking a pic of her taking a pic. And of me taking a pic of the lovely building behind her.

The tower behind me.

My first Nara deer encounter.
Offering it a ricecracker. 
So precious.

Big antlers this time of year.


Here's a video of the deer chasing Maika because she was holding rice crackers.

Nara was incredible crowded with tourists and field tripping students. Normally, crowds can get annoying, but the school kids were so kind. They would ask to take picture with us, and some even dared to practice their English with us. They read their scripts nervously, using simple phrases like, "May I ask you some questions?", "Do you like Nara?", "Where in Nara is your favorite place?", after which they would say "Thank you for your time. Here is a present for your cooperation." and hand us their handmade bookmarks. It was so cute; they didn't even pay attention to the answers we gave them because they seemed too nervous just reading English. I love Japan. They raise their kids very well in school. Here are some more picture:
A massive gate to the temple.

Guardians in the gateway.



Pretty.

The temple, with burning incense at the foreground. 

The type of kids I was talking about. School kids here always wear bright colored hats so cars can spot them.






There tons of lanterns by this temple. 


More lanterns

More lanterns.

Me being cool.
 Before we left, I got to try the famous Mister Donuts. I was not disappointed. The donuts were much lighter than their american counterparts, so you don't feel as guilty after eating them..
We went back to Osaka to eat dinner at my favorite curry udon place that Suguru introduced me to. This place should look familiar.

She finished the whole bowl. I'm proud of her. I guess its such good udon, its hard not to...
After dinner, we finally got to ride the HEP5 ferris wheel in downtown Umeda. Each compartment came with its own speakers that you can plug your phone into, so naturally we enjoyed 10 minutes of Coldplay with an unbelievable view. One of the happiest moments of my life. Tears formed in my eyes at the top. Here are some pics.





We were feeling bliss.