Day Five: Another day at the office

Well, its Wednesday, only one more work day and then Friday we are going to go to Kyoto to go sight seeing, so tomorrow is last day in the office. TG!!! This morning Brigette and I went to a different coffee shop and had caramel macaroon latte. AMAZING! So nothing exciting to write about for the work day. Same ole, Goofey sent me a voicemail this morning as a surprise for when I woke up! It was so great to hear his voice again. I am soooo homesick. I miss home, and Odie and Blankey but most of all my darling! hearing his voice made me tear up... Almost time! I got a little more sleep last night which gave me some sanity! I think not sleeping during the night was just making time DRAG by. After work, Yukiko took us to the store to go shopping. Let me tell you, its such a weird concept to me. You go in on like the 3rd floor, there are clothes, shoes ect, go down to second floor, cosmetics, jewelery ect, 1st floor is regular grocery store where I bought some kit kats and some Bonito! Can't wait to try it again! Basement is seafood mart and elaborate desserts and fruits. Their apples are HUGE here along with radishes! They are like 2-3 feet and like 6 inches in diameter! INSANE. I wish i could have taken some pictures of everything but couldn't . We went out to dinner at a restaurant that was a great time! Had some beer, which was Lagar and Pilsner mixed 50/50. Then had some Sake then another beer. Dinner was elaborate. Started out with some raw vegetables, beets, pumpkin, white vegetable which reminded me of cucumber, and then some root vegetable which tasted like root.. Next we had some amazing sashimi. It was sooo fresh, Salmon, Tuna, Macerol, Octupus, Yellow Tail Fish. Was soo very fresh. Then had some Lotus Root salad. It was the root of the Lotus flower raw/plain and then breaded and fried.. YUMMY! We then had some Kobe beef, ugh so good but very fatty and hard to chew. We put some Japanese Pepper on it, OMG stuff is amazing. Will be trying to find this pepper to bring home. It was sooo good, nice flavor and then like 20-30 seconds after eating it you got some heat and hotter flavor. It sort of made my lips burn but it wasn't really HOT or spicy, hard to explain but amazingness! Dessert consisted of Green Tea Ice Cream ( this was sort of eh... very bitter and not sweet at all), Blood Bean Pudding/paste which tasted like Dates which made me remember my very young years of picking dates off treas!! SOO GOOOD! and then squares of Tapioca. I do remember now that I do not like tapioca, didn't like it in Hawaii and for some reason the consistency just makes me almost gag! I think the only consistency that draws this reaction out of me! All in all it was great! It is now 10pm and I am sooo tired. I think I am going to go read some more and call it a night! Hope all is well in the US and I will be home sooooon! It is starting to feel very close to being time to go home and I am getting so excited!

Day Four continued!

Peeking in ( this is what happens when you get up way to freaking early and are bored and only play with your camera! )

Mos Mos SHI from Japan ( Good Morning/Hello)!
Well I am sorry about last night but let me continue. Meetings = boring so that equals my day besides the whole lunch thing but I would rather not recount that again!
Last nights dinner was amazing though. We went to an old style japanese pub where all the older generation go. They smoke and drink and its fun.
There was SOOO much food. Had cooked EEL with the head still attached WEIRD...But had asparagus with Bonito ( fish shavings ) taste sooo much like bacon I wish all the bacon fans could taste it! Pink Salmon was amazing.. Baked/grilled eggplant. Asanti beer ugh i love the beer here! Rice bowl. Had some sashimi white/clear fish. had some steak and some sauteed onions OMG it was soooo amazing! My body loved me, it was like I KNOW THIS!
Here is a picture of how dinner was cooked, look closely and you can see all the fish raw WHOLE!

Day Four: First Bad Experience

Well please forgive me for not making a long posting entry tonight.
I am still not sleeping well. I only slept about 3.5 hours last night. i was awake since 4:30am. I went to bed around 12:30am awoke around 2:15 am went back to sleep around 3:20-4:30am. Today was filled with meetings again. Went to lunch at the hospital cafeteria, had Chicken with rice, soy sauce, ginger and shredded seaweed.. I beg and plead never ever feed me seaweed. My eyes swelled up and watered and burned so bad for about 3 hours we thought I was going to have to go the hospital. It was as if I was cutting onions times 30! I found out a lot of people who are allergic to seafood are allergic to the iodine ( which I am ) and there is a huge amount of iodine in kelp and seaweed. Just think of the movie HITCH, that is what I looked like. We went to old style Japanese pub. It was soo much fun, will explain and post pictures tomorrow. I am sorry if there are a lot of mistakes in my typing as I am doing it without seeing very well.
Good night and talk with everyone soon!!!
Trin

Day Three: First Working Day in Japan

Well today wasn't quite as interesting for a blog posting. I still am having a horrible time with sleeping. I went to bed around 10pm and did about an hour to two of reading before I fell asleep. I keep waking up every hour. At 3am I could no longer sleep... I kept trying to sleep but only kept dozing off here and there but haven't had more than 2 hours of continuous sleep. I finally got out of bed around 7:30 to quickly shower and get ready. Met up with Brigette, had breakfast at Starbucks then got to work around 10am. Let me just say, dressing culture here is sooo different. Everyone wears suits, seriously walked out of my hotel this morning and thought I was in the Japanese Matrix.. Men all have suits and briefcases, woman also wear suits. Its more a rarity that someone is not in a suit! Had a quick tour of the facility before having brief introductions. Went to lunch at noon. Had some fried chicken, Miso soup, dried tofu and rice. Oh how I love rice. I am finally mastering the art of chop sticks. There are no such things as forks or spoons anywhere! I can now eat vegetables ( lettuce, pickled radishes, salad ), rice, noodles, meat, sushi with chop sticks!!! Went back to the office and had meetings until 6pm. We then proceeded to go across the way to the next building and there was a welcome party for Brigette and I ! It was a lot of fun!!! Everyone was so excited to meet us and ask questions even if they could hardly speak English they tried their hardest. I so should have taken pictures of the food, it was pretty elaborate. Had Octopus Sushi tonight! VERY INTERESTING, not sure I am a huge fan.. Its kind of squishy, and chewy, and ewwyyy!!! YOU MADE ME INK was all I could think about while eating it ( don't think that helped matters)!
I am starting to get VERY homesick. I want to just come home, I am enjoying my stay here don't get me wrong but to think I just hit half way is hard to imagine. I don't think it is helping that I feel like I have morning/hung over sickness, every move and I think I am just going to PUKE!
My feet are still swelling and feels somewhat worse. Today my ankles are getting purplish/pink bruises. Where there were creases in my feet is now red and looks like scratches on my skin. Well it is almost 10pm, I have so much to do tonight, need to edit some photos, and have so many reports to prepare for tomorrow I guess I should be doing that! Here is a picture of CarnaBioScience Employees! Masa 2 is the one with his arm around me, we are the competitive Carna Photographers!!! Good Morning America! Have a great Monday!

Day Two Adventures

One must never be afraid to venture out and explore no matter if you are comfortable or not!
Well today was so productive and adventurous!
It first started out that I awoke at 5am (3pm east coast time) and got up and went online for awhile. I went back to bed until 8:30 but could not sleep. I finally got up and played on facebook and arranged my fantasy teams ( no worries, I might be halfway around the world but sports have a place in my life) and cleaned up my mess from throwing everything out of my bags! I don't have any draws or anything to unpack so I am totally living out of a suitcase for the week. I took a nice long HOT shower which felt amazing. At 10:30 I finally ventured out for some breakfast. I went to Starbucks and successfully ordered ( in Japanese) a caramel latte and a donut... キャラメルカフェラテ & ドーナツ I was SOOOO PROUD...
I then walked around this HUGE shopping mall. I finally ended up going to 0101 ( a big department store) here in Japan. ( this was taken at night)
I fell in LOVE with a couple of rings. They are Rose Gold/Pink Gold with either diamonds or blue diamonds in it. So gorgeous and only like 50-60 dollars. Mind you they are small. The rings here fit me, everything does so far its amazing! If anyone knows how durable rose/pink gold is please let me know.. I know it is gold mixed in with copper...
I then went back to the room and rested some until 1pm. My feet are so swollen I can only stand to be on them for 2-3 hours at a time.
We then went about 2 blocks north and found the bus which took us down to the port of Kobe.
Went up to the top of the building and what amazing views! This one is looking inland! Look how many buildings there are and the mountains!
Here is one looking out towards port Island, tomorrow i get to find out which of these buildings my work is in!
It was cool, on I think it was the 3rd floor, there was a revolving restaurant!
Then walked around the flea/yard sale market for awhile.
After went and checked out the Yamato1: Superconducting,electromagnetic propulsion boat! Thanks to Kawasaki Marine Engineering Museum! Thing looked like something out of a movie!
If you are bored on YOUR sunday afternoon google it! Its pretty cool to learn about and see!
Got back on the trolley/bus and did the city loop! Amazing thing to do, mind you I had no idea where I was going but could tell it seemed to do a loop so stayed on it til I knew I was near the hotel again! Walked down to the Kobe Museum and went in there!

Saw some amazing cultural stuff and got a postcard of one of the special exhibits!
Went back to the hotel after visiting the flower clock !
Brigetta and I had made plans to meet for dinner at 6pm so this gave me some time to unwind/elevate my feet before then! We went in more to downtown to a restaurant which had raman.. Oh what a sight it was trying to order! Of course they didn't speak a word of english, we finally got across that we wanted two beers and some beef raman. It turned out we got across pork but not true beef!
After dinner and some good english converstation we decided to walk around some!
This is a very common sight in Japan, displays of the restaurants food!

Well it is now 9pm, I am exhausted and my feet hurt. I think I am proud to say it was a good day in sight seeing.. I am proud for not being afraid and hiding in my hotel room! We take for granted reading street signs, menus, subway signs all for granted. Its hard being plopped in the middle of a country where nothing is familiar to you. Its all good and an amazing lesson!
Goodnight everyone, enjoy your sunday because I already enjoyed mine! Now off to bed I go because I start work early in the AM and have a packed day! Thanks to all who have been keeping my spirits high with emails! It really does help!!!
Love
Trin

Day One of my Adventures to Japan

Hello to all who are reading this!! Well as most of you know, I left on Thursday from MA and arrived in SF at 4:30pm. It was for the most part a very safe and smooth ride, only once did i think the plane was going to crash from turbulence. I stayed at the Crown Plaza in Burlingame CA. It's about 2 miles north of the airport. I got in, dropped my bags, went downstairs hoping they were playing the Montreal Canadiens vs the Boston Bruins game but unfortunately not. I got a Sam Adams and some pulled pork sliders to go. Went back to my room, ate 1.5 and then decided to call it a night at 7:30 local time. Friday morning was the big day. I, of course, had severe jet lag and was up at 5am. Did some stuff online, finally got out of bed at 7, repacked for the day, showered and left the hotel at 9:10. Arrived at the airport, check in for International flight, the lady at the counter laughed and patted me on the back after I checked in, she handed everything back to me and I said now where do I go!! I got to security and started panicing severely. I had one hour at this point and the line snaked about 20 times. Thankfully I made it through in 40 minutes, grabbed a breakfast sandwich and then boarding began... It was the longest 12 freaking hours of my life being on that plane. I watched the map of where we were flying. Quite interestingly we hugged the coast all the way up CA, WA and Alaska. It was so amazing. I actually was quite mad because I had asked for an ailse seat and got a window seat, but amazing views! I got to see some icebergs or what appeared to be icebergs, they were the very small islands of alaska but it looked like white sharp objects coming out of the water. We then crossed the Bering Sea then came down I think Russia's coast to Japan. It was quite interesting when we neared Japan, because it reminded me a lot of Hawaii, there is lots of ocean then BAM there is land jutting up! The mountains of what I saw were very much like Hawaii, the feel and shape of them. I read some of my Robin Cook book, listened to music and watched Time Travlers Wife. It was good and weird/interesting all at the same time. I arrived at Osaka/Kansai airport at about 4:30 pm Saturday Local time. ( I crossed the international time line and feel all messed up). First thing after making it through customs and security, is Takashi and I got a beer! We then waited for the shuttle boat until 6! Took the ferry which wasn't too choppy and arrived in Kobe at my hotel at 7:45pm. Hotel is very nice!
Well, once checked in I changed quickly, the Brigetta, Nao and I went out to dinner at a Sushi place where all the plate of sushi had 2-3 pieces on it and it was all on a belt, so it went by you and you just picked up the plate you wanted! It was quite interesting. I had lots of Salmon and Tuna.. Got back to the hotel and turned in! That is the adventures of Day one... Check in later for day 2 as it is already 7 am here on Sunday!