Weather: sunny, then the calm before the storm and thunderclouds · Lunch: Gyu-kaku at AEON · Dinner: PRONTO bar, sandwich and fried shrimp · Sleep: it was good, alright. But am I saying anything new?
For anyone still interested in the tropical storm, I can report that it did not change direction and did not destroy Nagoya. Unfortunately, though, it did affect Japan along the coasts, even if luckily not catastrophically. Here we got off relatively lightly; the air just cooled down quite a bit. It’s at times like this that I realise how decidedly warm and dry Hungary is compared to Japan, because in the 22°C weather I was almost cold. The others, meanwhile, were just walking around in short sleeves.
In any case, I slept right through everything again; I think if there’d been a magnitude-6 earthquake I wouldn’t have woken up to that either. I quickly fired up the science and also talked a bit with Zoli about our shared idea. From an engineering standpoint, too, Japan has calmed me down — I no longer want to rush around so much and react impulsively, but rather to think things through calmly and plan properly. We have so many good tools here: AI, the V-model, the CPS model — why not think things through a bit systematically?
In the science, luckily, I managed to get over the dead point. There are new results, and now I know what it was that had slightly thrown things off. True to my bad habit, I had overcomplicated the reward function, and that made my work a bit harder. Meh, never mind — you learn from this too.
Lunch
I ate at Gyu-kaku. The cashier was very kind; she saw that I was having a bit of trouble with the kanji, so she gave me an English-language menu. More or less we still discussed things in Japanese, but it helped a lot that I knew what was what and how to read it out (and “kore wo onegai shimasu” is a magic phrase). This time I ordered a really big one, and tried out further expressions (e.g. when I received it, “it looks delicious”).
What I really love about Japanese food is that they slice the meat so finely, and so it stays crispy and tasty. Not exactly a steak or a cutlet. Honestly, I like it better that way. What I ate was roughly an onion-fried sirloin: pork and beef mixed on a bed of onion.
Bookstore and ATM
I have to confess, I love to read and I also love to collect books. But lately I’ve fallen out of the habit so much that there’s now an uncountable number of books waiting for me to read them. What’s the solution to this?
Naturally, that we buy more books, so the list towers in front of me even more. But after all, we’re in Japan, where it’s astonishing that books actually don’t cost all that much. That’s exactly why I quickly bought a few books — if only to be able to compare them with Hungarian textbooks: based on that inspiration, I might even write my own book. But beyond that, I’d like to keep myself in shape.
I bought the books. By now I’m very used to the konbini routine, where you take a bag (for the shopping) and scan that too. But however I looked for the barcode, I couldn’t scan it. I felt very inept, scanning the bag and it simply not registering, whatever I did. In my distress I finally asked the cashier how I could buy it. To which she told me to just move on at the self-checkout: and indeed, I was able to buy the bag for a mere 5 yen. Of course I feel silly, but at least I have something to tell.
The other thing is the ATM. I can pay for the dorm in cash; there’s no option to pay by card. I tried to withdraw cash at several ATMs, and that’s when I realise: you need the “international card” option, not “withdraw” right away — that one is for Japanese banks. I’m writing this down mainly so that if someone ends up in a similar situation, they’ll know about it.
Night – Tsuruma Park
Towards evening, walking in the park, I decided on the one hand to eat that sandwich I’d bought in preparation for the tsunami, in case I got locked in somewhere. On the other hand, the onigiri — which, somewhat disappointed, I realised was plum-flavoured. And in my back pocket, the new Spy × Family manga I bought today fit just perfectly (in that respect it’s quite practical).
It’s interesting how much plum (dried plum, at that) is a thing here as a dessert fruit. There’s plum dumpling, and apparently even onigiri. So I made a night-time detour and eventually dropped into a bar called Pronto. It was still open and was taking orders until 22:30. So I ordered fried shrimp and a pancake (this one, though, was more the American, thick-batter kind). And as they say, the appetite comes while eating, so I ordered some drinks too: a Highball Kaku on the one hand, and a Cassis Orange cocktail on the other.
So I also had my first alcoholic experience in Japan. But it felt good!
Photos
