Rocking in Hakata

This is the second time I’ve embedded a video from the TED conferences. (In the past I mused about the “Kiki / Buba” psychological phonetics experiment related to synesthesia posited by Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran. I also highly suggested Burt Rutan’s talk.) Last time I only dropped the relevant clip onto the page, but this time the whole thing is related to Japan. Origami is a traditional Japanese art, after all. Therefore I have chosen to embed the native TED video player here. (I have no reason to suspect that they’ll pull their own video, after all.)

I actually discovered Robert Lang through his website when one of my friends in America sent me a bunch of random links they thought were cool. I was knocked out by his work. Then I happened to catch this lecture in my catch-up podcast combing. It really makes sense that folding methodology would lead scientists to borrow from artists who borrowed from mathematicians. I enjoy silly topology experiments (like this and this) sometimes when I’m bored and not learning physics. Yes, my interests are both legitimate and juvenile at the same time. LOVE IT. Anyway, I’m surprised that these worlds hadn’t merged in a more visible way before. I love it when cultural coolness from the old days turns into cutting edge technological prowess.

Interestingly enough, origami in space has been in the headlines at Tofugu this year already, albeit on a much dumber (and smaller - 3.1 inches, to be exact) level. And Japan Probe has done posts on at least 3 modern origami masters; Robert Lang (American) from the above speech, Eric Joisel (French), and Satoshi Kamiya (Japanese).

• » Comments (1)

Hey all - I’m back from my insane almost month-long period of excursion after excursion. (Seriously…it’s the 26th and this is my first post this month…wacky…) I’m settling back in, getting over a wicked chest cold, catching up on my RSS subscriptions (and the Olympics and U.S. [Biden?] and World [Russia - Georgia] politics). MAN am I out of the loop. While I’ve been gone, some really cool stuff has been going on. The biggest deal would be the reintroduction of the Japan Blog Matsuri, started by Ken Y-N at What Japan Thinks. This month’s JBM was held by Shane over at the Tokyo Traveler, and was focused around the theme “Impressions of Tokyo“. Go check it out and start to think about whether or not you’d like to contribute to next month’s matsuri, which will be hosted by Tae Kim. I know I’m in. I just gotta find something coherent to write about.

Also - I discovered this really cool tool cleverly called Keiken [Japanese] via Bryan at A Walk in Hachioji. (Curiously, the specific post I found it in is no longer on his page…but it existed in the RSS feed earlier…hmmm.) Here’s a map of my experience of Japan so far. It includes shenanigans from my time studying abroad all the way to present day. And while I’m sad that I’ve still not been to Okinawa, I think it’s sadder still that I’ve not been to Tokushima… Ha ha ha. I’m not sure if the Javascript is actually working, so I’ll try to replace it with a self-hosted image later. In the meantime, the link does work. How many points do you have? I’m currently at 107! Wahoo!

• » Comments (0)

Ah, the summer baseball season. Crowds of students cheering on their teams, teenage players relying on their classmates for moral support. It’s good fun, sometimes taken far too seriously. (Take for instance the insanely militant, formal, ritualized cheering style…) Here is a quick video clip and fourteen photos of my latest field trip; a cheering outing to keep our team’s spirit up as they played in the big stadium in the capital. They lost 4 to 1, but they had a blast, and we had fun too. It’s a huge stadium, and the schools simply can’t fill the stands. It makes things a little bit eerie, actually. But still, it’s a great experience. Good season, Hakata. Better luck next year!

• » Comments (2)

No, I didn’t mean “pee sticks.” I’m not talking about pregnancy tests like most hip people would think after Juno’s rampant success. I’m talking about actual peas, and sticks made from them. For snacking purposes. Apparently, these Pea Flavored Pretz are Glico’s latest “limited time flavor” offering for summer. They were honestly surprisingly tasty. On a more disturbing note, I also found Tohato’s most recent attempt at novelty flavors.

The coffee float corn snacks were surprisingly good, though I still had a few momentary jitters about it as I remembered what I was eating. Weird. But tasty. Doable, even.

The cream soda snacks were much weirder. They had a coating that made them slightly fizzle on your tongue (think pop rocks or dipsticks) and a tartness to them, too. It was definitely a novelty thing, but hey - I’d have regretted not trying it. Having said that, I’d regret eating it again too. Ha ha.

• » Comments (1)

Here’s a news segment about Matsuyama Chuo High School’s wonderful “English Day” event. For some reason, my physics class seems to have jumped into the spotlight for this clip. For those of you back home who wonder what kind of job I do…this is more or less what I do.

• » Comments (14)