Visit to Osaka

Location of Youth Hostel and Dinner at Indian restaurant


Yodobashi Electronic store and My talk

I had an official visit to Osaka on march second week to attend a meeting on 6th. I reached Osaka on previous day evening, stayed at Osaka Youth hostel. Later had a delicious dinner at Pariwar, an Indian restaurant. Its been quite a while since eating nan and butter chicken. The taste was very much native unlike in Fukui restaurants. The final serving of ginger tea brought a sense of wholesome food. I then headed to Osaka station and roamed around 'Yodobashi Camera' electronic store. The next day, had to leave the hostel in early morning to reach Senri-chuo station where I met the boss. We both then headed to National Cardiovascular center and were the first of the visitors to reach the place. The presentaton session was only in the morning ending with a serving of lunch box in the noon. The way back to Fukui was interesting one as we both travelled in a long ride through rapid train instead of express one, which facilitated some very useful non-stop interactions with boss.

University Farewell party

Graduating foreign students and Arabian dance performance

"Chookar mere manko" hindi song by Tiwari and foreign students posing with Uni president

Its a long break since I penned my last post as it was too tough to squeeze time for it. This event was a month back organized at University of Fukui(Bunkyo) campus. Every year the University of Fukui organizes a farewell party specifically for foreign graudating students. Its a nice get-together in which they also invite students from medical campus. After the valedictory address by the University president and graduating students, the dinner party started accompanied with various cultural programmes delivered by students of different nations.

My Abode!

Found a koool map creating site recently, where in you can geographically depict your present residence. I say it koool since it also comes with options of zoom(in or out), map visitor locations and other statistical info. The zoom function is powered by google earth, so one can zoom in to get closest details of any site in the world!!!. I was awed when I could even spot my apartment by zooming in (using + mark on the right-lower side of the map).

February B'days

The end of February also had two birthday celebrations. One was our dept. staff - Kasamatsu-san (Feb 23rd) and the other of Miguel (Feb 28th). The former one was celebrated in the dept. by having a delicious cake made by Kurokawa-san (another dept. staff). Later we had freshly brewed filter coffee made by Kasamatsu-san.

The Miguel's b'day event was held at Bunkyo campus in the late evening of Feb 28th. It was a fundoo dance party with many foreign and japanese friends dropping in to wish and make it big and memorable for him.

Visit to Morita-sensei’s house

Japanese Onigiri and Aloo sabji


Our group and Sensei preparing pizza

My Japanese teacher invited me and my friends to her house for dinner on last Saturday of February. The evening was spent chatting while having delicious vegetarian dishes. As far as I know, she is the only Japanese vegetarian that I know over here. It is very hard to find a vegetarian in Japan considering people here mostly consume meat or sea food products almost everyday. It is hard to survive as a pure vegetarian and my sensei says she became veggie since 10 years. In general, for veggies India is heaven as there are numerous mouth-watering veg dishes available so easily if one explores indian cuisine. Even my japanese teacher had made Aloo ('potato' or 'jagaimo' in japanese) dry curry so much so that it tasted truly indian flavor. Towards the end of supper she offered 'masala chai' which was one of the best that I had ever. Finally our long dinner ended with freshly prepared Chinese tea.

Winter trip to Nagoya

Little World Open Space Museum and Ainu House of Hokkaido, Japan


German edifice and Indian building style


Nagoya City and Nagoya Castle

Nagoya Aquarium - Dolphin show and The Waving Whale

Since past two weeks a series of outings also kept me busy along with my research work. The first outing was on 20th and 21st of last month. It was winter trip to Nagoya organized by University of Fukui. The university trips appear to come so frequently these days as I fondly remember the last year's summer trip to Toyama and Nagano just happened in the immediate past. Originally I had not planned to attend this year's trip in spite of repeated requests from F.da-san, since Nagoya is a nearby city and can be visited anytime and partly also to save my chance of being selected for better ones in future. Finally just 3 days before, I changed my intention to go and have some fun. In the ensuing two days I had many memorable moments while exploring different places along with friends. To give a brief description of the trip- The first place visited was called “Little World”. Spread in a huge area of land was a man-made miniature representation of traditional housing patterns of various countries such as Peru, Germany, Indonesia, Thailand, Middle East nations, South Africa, and of course mine, India. The ancient housing architecture of different countries enthralled me so much so that I wondered how human minds were still naïve in those days. Nevertheless, some of them were modern too. However, I found Indian version was too modern to be called it as style of ancient kerala. To my surprise, I heard kannada song being played in the Indian restaurant over there.
The next place visited was Meiji-mura (Meiji village). It was a symbolic of buildings and lifestyles during Meiji period (~17th century). In the evening we went to Nagoya city proper and stayed at a dorm near the Nagoya rail station. After a refreshing bath in hot spring (onsen), we had traditional Japanese meals with sake and karaoke.
The next day we visited popular Nagoya Castle followed by Tokugawa art museum in the morning. The afternoon was spent in the famous Nagoya aquarium. Right at the entrance one can see dolphins sailing in huge water chambers. Later, it was a spectacle of sorts to see dolphins and whales performing high jumps, rolling and swaying rhythmically in concert with each other. Later, it was amazing to see a varied number of aquatic fauna and flora. The final moment of the day came when I saw a large group of penguins in a wide enclosure with artificial snow fall.

Matsuoka fest

Its been quite a time since I contributed for the last post. The past two weeks were a mixture of fun outings and hard work at research front. So hardly could make time for posting in the blog. On Feb 18th, the local Matsuoka municipal council (not sure should I call council) in Fukui organized a gathering of localites extending invitations even to foreign residents at our dorm-mates. The event was fun-filled with singing and dancing by local and international groups while having a delicious dinner. Teams were made and a quiz game was held too. Win or Lose, prizes are always distributed to all..no one returned empty handed!!