10th Oct 2006

Orientation lecture at 10am...which was nice... I'm the ONLY person from the UK in the whole of the new International graduate intake for Civil Engineering (which is also the ONLY department, I found out today, that will let you attend a course with no grasp of Japanese and off lectures in English as well as the only department who don't' force you to take a research year to get used to Japan) and one of 3 ppl from Europe...most ppl are from Asia...Pakistan...and Nepal are more popular...and people seem to be able to guess I'm British for some reason ... usually happens after I start talking...hmmmm

THEN in the evening we had a welcome/good bye party...(one of the PhD students is leaving...) which was cool, food was provided which included hand made Vietnamese equivalent to spring rolls (very nice) which were cooked on a portable gas stove...incase people who stay late in lab need to create dinner (note that there are also a bad number of Duvets and Bedding material in the common area of the lab...NOT a good sign...I thought they were joking when they said you could live there...apparently some ppl do) there was also pizza...meat and beer (Japanese of course) some fruit wines and Sake...which I was made to try and was not particularly impressed...it was a lot weaker than I thought it would be...but not my kind of thing....

The new Swedish guy (Carl) also brought some Swedish schnapps...which all the natives were eager to try...which was amusing in itself... Prof Towhata (head of department) was also there and fully joining in with the drinking...which was hilarious as he then started complaining that he was drunk... and also accused Carl of looking very scary in his application photo...then drew a picture of an angry Viking hatted man on the board to further illustrate the fact...more importantly the people in my department seem to get on very well and are a good laugh.... especially when trying to get each other drunk...