Zemi Ryokou

Ahhh! Just came back from another trip, this time with my research laboratory pals. I know that I still have to talk about my past visits to the Toyota Museum, Expo 2005 and Tokyo, and I'll do that soon, don't worry ;)

Here in japan they do a lot of Zemis, which is a short for seminar. Its where the students can exchange general information about their research's progress. That way the teacher, who in my case has more then 10 pupils, can be informed about the status of his student's work.

Well, the plans were go to Mie Prefecture, to a big green area full of hotels, relaxation things and toys for the kids. There the zemi would be held, and we still would have time to relax a little, staying there for one night. Although not free (the charge was ￥8900 plus travel expenses), it was worth it.

I managed to get a ride with a motorized friend, so I didn't need to worry with train schedules and stuff. The downside is that we planned to meet at 3:30AM in the laboratory. Since I didn't had sleep the night before because I was making my presentation paper and I also didn't sleep before the travel for I was hanging out with some friends in a pub, I was kinda sleepy that day. Daijoubu, Daijoubu.

Arriving in the lab, I found many students playing WinningEleven (soccer videogame) in a big projection screen. Oh, nice life. We left in night time, in an old but nice manual-shift white little car. We stopped in a konbini to get some fast food (yes, our diet is not well balanced), and talked about many things such as nicknames. People here also call themselves by nicknames sometimes, not just the "lastname-san" thing. Because Kaneoka-san didn't had a nickname, I suggested Karaoke-san. They liked it, so I started to call him that ;). The fact that he is a sempai (like an elder to be respected because he has more experience in the lab) didn't mean that we couldn't make jokes and play a little as friends.

This sempai thing is a strange thing here. Its like an army hierarchy, with many ranks and roles. We all know that the japanese language has many levels of politeness depending on the social position of the speakers. Here is just a little bit exaggerated in my opinion. For example, in schools people are categorized by the study year: there are the ichinenseis (first year students), ninenseis, sannenseis, etc. It's expected to use the polite grammar form with older students, and the normal form with the younger ones. The same happens in the business model - employees with more experience in the firm have more status and a better salary.

Back to the car trip... travelling in japan is a bit odd, because there are no obvious boundaries between most cities. In the region I live we can see the same grey landscape, houses and sometimes rice farms here and there. It looks like you are just driving in one big city. We got lost trying to find the place, but with some maps we found our way. And for my surprise, in the vicinity there were many nice sports cars, even being in a countryside city.

Considering that I took a moving car's picture from inside a moving car, I think it was a nice shot ;)

At this time little I knew about the place we're heading, but later I found that it was just beside the Suzuka Motorcycle International circuit, hence so many racing things.

The park was a very nice place. Much green, space and silence. We arrived very early, like 6AM, so there was plenty of time to relax. We went straight to the onsen (hot spring), one of the key cultural things in japan. A common place in Japan is the Sento (public bath), where people bath in public, with separated places for men and women. The onsens are the same, but with natural hot springs. The hot water comes straight from volcanoes' springs, sometimes reheated. They also put more minerals in the water, so people believe that these springs have healing powers.

This was the front entrance of the onsen/poll.

Of course inside photography is forbidden, but I found a little picture about the place's onsen in the net.

This is the men's outside bath area. There is also an inside one.

As you can see, its a pleasant place to relax. One can think about privacy. Afterall, you're barenaked in a country full of perverted guys, surveillance cameras and strange habits. Not to mention google earth. I guess there are no privacy problems there, at least not in the men's area ;). That reminds me of Love Hina.

After almost 6 months of Japan, it was my first time in an Onsen. Let me teach the onsen "how-to":

1. Take off your shoes at the entrance, and put them in a small shoe locker.
   
2. Go to the counter, give your shoe locker key and show your hotel's card. You'll receive a small handbag with 2 towels - a big one and a small (about 80x30cm) one, and a kind of bracelet with your clothes' locker key embedded inside.
   
3. Go to the dressing area, strip all your clothes (underwear too), take the tiny towel and head to the shower area.
4. Sit in your individual bench and wash yourself. There are liquid soap, shampoo and rinse available. You can also soak the towel in the shower, but not in the onsen itself.
   
5. Now you are ready to relax in the hot waters inside and outside. You can use kinds of buckets to pour the hot water in your body before entering. There are also a sauna and a cold water bath. When in the onsen, fold the towel and put it above your head. Don't make sudden movements, don't dive in the water and don't swim.
   
6. Before leaving, fully dry yourself with the tiny towel, go back, and repeat the steps 1-3 in the inverted order.

Well, pretty easy compared to the other japanese rituals. The funny thing is that little towel, with is not enough to cover both your frontal and rear areas. Regardless, people hold it in front as if it would cover something. I wonder how are the female towels - if there are 2 little ones, or maybe a big one, to cover the tits. Or maybe they don't bother with that at all.

Onsen is a family thing. I don't felt any malicious feelings between people, even with the young girls which came with their fathers. I wonder if the readers of the 7-year-old-girls porn magazines that I found on the sex shop come here to satisfy their perversions. Ack, better not to think about it.

The water itself is very good. I thought that it would be too hot (as many websites warned), but it was nice for me. Very relaxing. Its so good to go from the hot-bathtub to the cold one and vice-versa (thermal shocks are always fun), put your head below the hot waterfall, feeling the onsen's hot water below and the rain's cold drops in your head... In the 1 and a half day I spent in the hotel, I went to the onsen 3 times, which means that I liked it a lot. Or maybe because that's the only place we can take a bath ;)

Onsen aside, we slept a little in the conference room's carpet, and went to pick up the other colleages and professors in the station.

Crossroads with trains (!) are common here.

The station, just like the city, was old and grey, much different from Nagoya. As always, the media always shows only the nice places of japan.

He is using a bicycle lock as fashion accessory.

We went straight back to the conference room, and began the presentations. The subjects varied between a virtual museum and gaming transmission methods. I tryed to translate my english text to japanese, but the sentence patterns were very difficult for my poor japanese skills, I have to study more... So I explained everything in english. The result is that probably just the professors understood something about what I said. Its strange to be in a technology laboratory where few can understand english. I know that my grammar and structure are far from good, but at least I can understand english enough to read the materials I need for my research. Because they have all materials in japanese, they don't need english, so why study? Some of them try, though. Probably the lack of english leads to the famous "reinventing the wheel" problem.

Well, after some hours we decided to go to the amusement park, drive karts and have some fun. Because of the Suzuka Circuit, many of the toys were driving related, and there was even a farewell flag for Ayrton Senna.

Racing driver training. Or just some fun.

Slug car tracks above our heads.

Overview of the amusement park, with the "Jet Coaster". That's rollercoaster in japanese. The heart shaped twist is cool :)

The 20secs Jet Coaster was very cool, but my neck still hurts. And they didn't allow me to take videos :(. Unfortunately there was no kart racing for newcomers in the sunday, or something like that. So we went to see the Suzuka Motorcycle racing track. The engine sounds were very cool.

Just like in the old racing games.

I want more zoom!!!

Then there was some people driving karts, which puzzled me. I guess I really need to learn more japanese to know what goes one here.

Kart without bananas and turtle shells is not so funny.

Humm bees.

I wish to go to this creepy place! Looks fun.

Well, lets have some dinner then.

Oishii! Shrimp, salmon, beef, salad, dessert... first class, at least compared to my daily meal.

Time to sleep. Or don't.

Card games! I even played Truco with them :)

Well, it rained a lot in the next day, so we went home before noon. Oh yeah, the breakfast included fish, rice, miso soup, beans and other unusual things. I rather eat my toasted slices of bread with cheese and chocolate milk ;p

That's all, folks. If my wrist handles it, I'll post again soon.

Just a nice ferris wheel for the end of the post.