It's the Final Countdown

 Anyone who did not start singing when they read the title needs to learn a little about 80's music.  Watch this video before proceeding with any part of this blog.

Now we may continue.

I have no idea how much food I actually brought with me, but I have eaten almost all of it.  Raisins, trail mix, tea, granola, and peanut butter crackers take up a lot more room than one might think.  Oh yeah,  I also had beef jerky.  As I wasn't sure what would make it through security and what wouldn't, I put it all in my checked bags.  I now have a bit (quite a bit, actually) more space.  It might also be that I've repacked things a few times and worked out a better scheme.  In any case, checking out tomorrow morning.

Last night I had a bit of concern that I missed something regarding the quarantine procedures, so I read all of the paperwork one more time.  It was just a feeling.  The problem is I know I'll wake up in the morning and have the same nagging feeling and be worried I screwed up something.  Then the police will come hunting me down and deport me.  If that happens, well, I'll have one more interesting travel story.

Before I get on the plane I need to see if a currency exchange in the airport is open.  When I deplaned there was an announcement saying things were closed, but that may have been my tired mind creating things.  Hopefully I'll be able to make that happen.  A bit of cash on hand will be necessary to function.  If not, I'll figure it out.  I know that ATMs at post offices and 7-11 stores will allow me to take out cash using my US based bank card.  I'd like to avoid that, though since I brought some cash with me.  As Lego Batman says, "We'll wing it.  That's a Bat pun."

Two more nights

 I have only two more nights in quarantine, then I'm free to go about masked and distanced business.  This morning I told Malachi I would try to fold a crane from a gum wrapper.

There it is next to a toothpick.  It's about half of a Trident gum wrapper.  You have to start with a square, so that's the first step - tearing the end off a rectangular piece of paper to make it a square.  It's not as difficult as it might sound.  Two folds is all it takes to get the crease in the right place.  One of the folds is the first step in making the crane, so that works nicely.  It's the smallest crane I've folded to date.

Last night I watched Hush from Buffy Season 4.  It's among Jen's and my favorite episodes, but not one we typically watch at night.  I think the appropriate question to ask after seeing that episode is "After the Gentlemen, what's your second scariest/creepiest television or movie monster?"  It first aired in December of 1999.  The fundamental problem faced in the story doesn't translate to today, but if you put yourself in that time or before it works very well.  This is not an episode I'm planning to use in class.

My lunch today was tantanmen.  It's not a Japanese dish.  Rather, it's based on the Chinese dish dandan.  This was spicy ramen with pork and egg.  No extra sauce or flavor packets.

Windows has a translator program built in.  It even accepts "ink" input.  Right in the middle is "tantanmen," and I could even read it in 7-11.  When I tried writing it on my computer, though, I would get really crazy output.  Computers are not perfect, by any means.  So, I ended up searching Wikipedia.

I've been asked a few times if it is odd or difficult keeping track of the days and nights.  It really isn't too bad.  When I wake up in the morning, I know it's the previous night in Michigan.  If I have to be aware of a particular date, like Gabe's birthday coming up here, things get a bit more complicated.  Even there, though, it isn't terrible.  I can always set my school Outlook calendar to give me a reminder if I need to.  Since that is tied to SVSU's servers, it stays on Michigan time.

So, that's what I have for today.  In less than 48 hours I'll be in Tokushima.  Counting down in a reasonable manner so I don't go stir crazy tomorrow.

My last room

 Having stayed at The Royal Park Hotel - Haneda for almost 2 weeks now I can say with certainty it is a nice place.  The beds are comfortable, the in-room amenities are great, and the staff are all very helpful.  If I ever have to quarantine for two weeks in a Tokyo hotel again, this will be my first choice.  

Today was the final room change for me.  

 

The hotel had been bouncing me between two rooms.  Today I was put into a third.  Saturday morning is when I leave.  It is going to be a little weird being around people more regularly.  Especially people who will want to talk with me.  At least I assume the students and faculty at Shikoku will want to talk with me.  It's also going to be a bit weird going outside again.

 That's what I ate for dinner last night.  It was soba of some sort.  I've learned to recognize the word for spicy.  One of this things packets has "spicy mayonnaise" written on it.  It was horse radish sauce, but like what you get at Arby's.  This particular noodle bowl was okay.  Not the best I've had here.  The heat wasn't significant.  I don't think the sauce added much.  That's bound to happen, I guess.  And it was a lot of food given how little I do in a day.

I had to wait a rather long time after my room change to get my last days of food.  Two Germans were outside my door having a rather lengthy conversation.  I just waited them out.  This time I bought some cheese buns, a few miso cups, another soba bowl, and a sandwich.  The sandwich is for dinner tonight.  This one is made with wheat bread.  Still crust-less, though.  You can't always get what you want, I suppose.

Three more nights.

Right on schedule

 To keep myself occupied, I have a daily schedule now.  I made it on Sunday afternoon.  It's broken down by the hour.  I'm not super regimented about it because that's not healthy.  However, knowing that after I finish this post I'll spend some time playing the ukulele followed by studying Japanese helps.  Yesterday was the first day of the schedule.  It was also the first day I managed to stay up past 9:30 without feeling dead tired.  Progress.

I ate ramen for lunch.  The very bottom row of text, last 4 characters.  Those are katakana for ramen.  The sort of backwards "c" with the bar over it is "ra."  The horizontal line indicates you hold the "a" sound for an extra beat.  The next character is "me" with the last being "n."  The red characters read "Miso First Place."  This is the only cup noodle I have had that has the laurels on it. The little TRY at the top says "Tokyo Ramen of the Year."  Given the things we compete over in the US, I am in no way surprised there is an award for ramen.

It was good.  There were two kinds of meat.  They tasted like beef.  One was thin slices about the size of a nickel, and the other was little bits of fried ground pieces.  The sauce that came with this was perfectly clear and somewhat spicy.  Very oily.  Mixed in, though, it gave everything a sort of mellow heat.  But just enough that you can taste it.  

I'm also getting better at holding my chopsticks properly.  Nearly every variety show features eating.  Some number of people eat something, and others watch remotely and talk about it.  I noticed everyone who eats with chopsticks holds their hand the same way.  I learned to use chopsticks with my ring and little fingers curled in - like a fist.

 That, it turns out, is considered rude.  It seems you are supposed to hold your hand like this.

 

Also, the chopsticks should not cross.  The things I'm learning from reading in my spare time.

I can now fold a crane without using a table, and I can make the circular box I showed previously from memory.  Once I'm done with the ukulele I'll look up instructions for some other animal and practice folding that.  The most valuable lesson I am learning while in quarantine is just how much time I waste avoiding doing things.  I have no doubts I'll fall back into that habit, but I'm going to try to maintain this sense of "just do the thing you're wanting to do."  With a bit of persistence I'll strike a better life balance.

Look at me, all growing and changing.  It would be adorable if I weren't a 44 year old man.

Entering the doldrums

 This morning was super clear.  I set up the little phone holder tripod John put together for all Physics faculty when we had to teach remotely this year, and took about 50 shots of Mt. Fuji (Fuji-san, as it is called here) with the intent of practicing some image averaging to see if I can't get a clearer picture.  I'm not sure how well it worked.  I used Gimp, which is like an open-source version of Photoshop.  The top image is one of the pictures from the camera.

 And this is an "averaged" image.

The averaged image is 2.5 times the size in memory (5 MB compared to 2 MB), but I'm not sure it's 2.5 times the clarity.  Or even 1.6 times the clarity (square root of 2.5, since total number of pixels has to be split amongst the two dimensions somehow).  If you download them and zoom in you can see the mountain is a bit clearer in the bottom image, but not a huge amount.  It might be because I can only pull jpg images from the phone, and these have some smoothing and compression on them to begin with.  This means the noise in a single picture is averaged out by examining neighboring pixels.  Ideally I'd pull the raw images from the phone and average those.  I have a separate set that I took without the tripod and a bit zoomed out.  These are larger files, but that might not matter.  It's something to pass the time.

I'm channeling Helen and Karen from church.  Today I made some butterflies, flowers, and a bunny.

These will make small gifts for people as I need them.  Provided they are acceptable, that is.  I have an Altoids tin that's about half full of them.  I also have some in red and some in white.  Some of the flowers have white or yellow centers to contrast the petals.  When I finish this post I'll be practicing the origami box I posted about before.  (Also brought a bit of Tom from church with me.)  Last night I figured out how to make the walls different heights.  I'll make some as boxes and some as lids.  Maybe that will be decent as wrapping.  Add it to my list of things I need to ask about. 

5 more nights here.

Different foods

 Tami, Brianna, and my mother have all publicly stated I need to branch out with my food choices.  Jen has said the privately.  One reason I don't spend a lot of time perusing the options at the convenience store is the Overseas Entrants Locator app.  That's the thing that quasi-randomly sends my phone a notification that I need to report my location.  I say "quasi-randomly" because during the week it happens at meal times.

When I get that push, I am to open the app and tap "I'm Here!"  The app then sends my GPS coordinates to the Ministry of Health, Labor, and Welfare.  Now, the uncertainty in position for a consumer grade GPS system is a few meters.  It can tell if I am in the hotel or if I am in the restaurant or further afield.  More than a few people over here have expressed frustration with those who ignore the containment restrictions.  I'm reading comments on Japan Times, and on the JapanLife sub-Reddit.  I'd rather be considered one of the more careful people.  That said, here is what I brought back from my trip to 7-11 today.

There's actually a second sandwich in the refrigerator.  I planned to eat the ham cutlet for lunch (which I did), and leave the other one for dinner.

A flight crew walked into the store right before me, but I took a little more time making choices.  The bag is "Salty Rice Crackers."  I haven't tried them yet.  The sandwich was okay.  Crust-less white bread isn't really my jam.  (This is more my jam.)  The filling was a ham cutlet, shredded cabbage, egg salad, and "sauce."  The best way I can describe the cutlet is to think of a breaded pork tenderloin, but made with a 1/8" thick cut slice of ham and cold.  It has good flavor.  I firmly believe in the US we under-utilize cabbage as a sandwich topping.  Coleslaw just adds so much to shredded pork, hotdogs, cheeseburgers, lunch meat, shredded chicken... Right now I can't think of a savory, meat sandwich that wouldn't be made a little better with a bit of vinegar based coleslaw.  Needless to say, I liked the cabbage.  The addition of egg salad would have turned Jen away, but this wasn't heavy mayonnaise based stuff.  It was pretty much sliced hard boiled egg with mustard and pepper.  All in all, I liked the sandwich.  It is miles better than airport convenience store sandwiches from the US.

To close out this post, I want to link to a video that Malachi and I saw a year or so ago.  I turns out it is part of a series.  Enjoy!

My very first earthquake

 

That red dot marks the epicenter of a 6.6 magnitude earthquake that happened this morning.  It's a screenshot from the USGS webpage.  The link is to their Live Data.  While I was writing it was upgraded to a 6.8.  In any case, it is about 400 km (250 mi) away from where I am.  I felt it.  It was weird watching hanging clothes start swaying and feeling like I was a bit drunk, but not quite.  Nothing was too terribly wonky.  Everything stayed put on tables and such.  It didn't seem to be that big of a deal, so I glanced out the window.  Even while the shaking was happening, the buses were running, and people were going about their basic routines.  I saw someone go into a building.  The hotel emergency procedures say to protect myself from falling objects (there were none) and once the shaking stops, secure an escape route and follow announced orders.  No orders were announced.  I am still in my room.

I was told by people at Shikoku that Tokyo experiences about one earthquake per month that can be felt.  Even though I can't explore the city, I feel nature is doing what it can to make my stay memorable.  Two days ago the sunrise shining on Mt. Fuji.  This morning a small earthquake.  My second night there was a thunderstorm (even though it was nothing like a thunderstorm in the Midwest).

I suppose I should get back to grading.