Japan from the outside in

Bre and I have been in Japan for 1.5 months now.  Despite our time here I still feel at times like an outsider.  There are some things that used to seem foreign that are becoming normal.  For example this photo below is of one the Hokkaido University dormitories near our apartment.  The painting looks wild and I assume has all kinds of cultural context that I don't understand.  It isn't that I have gained the cultural context to understand the mural so much as I have just become used to this mural and also I have become used to the idea of not understanding what is going on.  Living in a country where I am not familiar with the culture or language just means that not knowing happens that much more.

Bre got a giant fancy Mac Pro to run her tsunami models on.  She was able to use some of her research funds to purchase the computer.  It came to her office the other day when I happened to be there.  For scale I had Bre crouch next to the computer.  She also got the 27" monitor.  I teased her that the monitor is so big that she wont be able to see Adit any more; Adit shares the office with Bre.

Here is a photo of the computer all set up.  Note Bre's giant smile.

I found this bike on my walk yesterday.  I thought it was pretty funny to put it in the middle of the frozen stream.  Like it is a statement about the impermanence of human construction, or the universal prankster nature of college students.  Perhaps someone read one of the feminist signs saying "a woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle" and took it literally.

This crow looks like it is trying too hard.  Take it easy crow!  Don't have a cow, man!

There is a murder of crows, and they look murderous.  Get it?  A group of crows is a murder, and these Jungle Crows look like they could take you out, especially in a large group.  Bre and I tried eating lunch in a park downtown on one of our first days in Sapporo.  We were mobbed by crows and barely managed to fend them off long enough to eat our lunch.

This crow could tell that I was taking his photo and he didn't trust me one bit.

I like the way the light looks coming through the clouds to the West of Sapporo.  I took this photo about an hour before sunset, so the angle of the sun is quite low.

The wires here are held together with this wire coil.

That's all for now.

-Kyle (and Bre)