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Tuesday, 04 October 2005

First classes

Summer vacation is over and I attended my first classes today. My first class "Japan In and Out" is about the Japanese culture from an insiders and outsiders view. This class will be about the good the bad and the ugly things about the Japanese culture and society. This means a lot of reading and discussions about these subjects. Not really my thing, it reminds me of high school, so I'm not sure yet if I signup for this course.

The second course however, was more interesting: Innovative Japanese Technologies in 3M Based Engineering. 3M stands for: Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing. It is about shape memory materials, nanotechologie, control of mechanical systems, nanotubes and more. This sounds more like my thing.
Today we talked about shape memory materials, really cool. We experimented with this material and some liquid nitrogen. It was easy to understand but fun. The teacher just put some nitrogen in the paper cup and gave it to us. We didn’t wear any kind of protection; in the Netherlands protection would be a first priority. Really weird, since this nitrogen is about 77 Kelvin which will cause severe cold burnings if you put your finger in it. See the pictures on Flickr for more details.

At the OUSSEP assembly today, a weekly OUSSEP meeting they told us about October the 15th and 16th. There is an overnight bustrip to Kibi to the National Kibi Youth Center, no idea what that is though. We’ll also visit the Himeji castle and we may enjoy a BBQ and rowing boat. Sounds fun.

This Saturday and Sunday I will probably form a basketball group to participate with the yearly sports festival. All tall people against the small Japanese :)
We’re still searching a 5th person though.

And finally something about my host family. She is a former Japanese teacher and her husband does have an own company. He can’t speak English very well though. Last Sunday they were waiting for me in front of the dormitory. They drove me to their home near the local station. My host family are older people than most other host families, but they are very kind. Their house is of decent size, the door height is very low, I had to duck a lot. Most walls were made of paper. I’ll ask if I can take some pictures next time. After chatting for a few hours we went to the Osaka Expo ‘70 to visit a luxury restaurant and a Japanese garden. When it started to rain they brought me back home, ending this awesome day.

I also bought a mobile phone with GPS, camera, barcode reader, email/internet and so on. Use the QR-code (barcode) on my about) page or email me for my phone number and phone email.

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