Even our chocolate is bigger...

I brought back 2 boxes of See's chocolate truffles to give as omiyage to some people. One went to my lab, and the other went to my English tutee family. Universal first comment? "Wow, they are so big!"

milk carton toilet paper

I just went to the grocery store...where I bought toilet paper made 100% from recycled milk cartons. I kid you not. There's even a little cartoon on the back showing what part of the milk carton it came from.





And yes, I am as big a nerd as my last post suggested. And a dork too, for being so happy in the supermarket that I rocked out to Justin Timberlake's sexy back while browsing for cereal and milk. :-P

brain rush on longitudinal analysis

So I got a data set from some researchers which is longitudinal. I know nothing about longitudinal/survival analysis, basically. So, I picked up Singer and Willet's Applied Longitudinal Data Analysis. I have now read about 3 chapters (100 pages) on the survival analysis, the second half of the book. I am totally blown away by the awesomeness of this book! It is absolutely perfect. It is clear, well-written, logically organized, and fascinating. The examples they work through are real data sets from real published studies, which are all extremely interesting. The level of math is just right for an applied sort of researcher, i.e., they use the math and the equations to illuminate the concepts and let you know what's really going on in the model, so that you can interpret the numbers that come out of your program. They don't go into huge long proofs or derivations of interest really only to statisticians. And it's easy to understand!

When I started this year, I knew practically nothing about statistics. I.e., I didn't have stats even at the high school AP Statistics level. Then I kind of stumbled my way through multivariable analysis of cross-sectional data (which is the first kind of data I had to work with) by working through another excellent book, Multivariable Analysis: A Practical Guide for Clinicians, by Mitchell Katz. Then, I got a feel for some of the terms and what their values meant and how to interpret them. From there, was a long brain-numbing hiatus of doing practically no work, no data analysis, and feeling stagnant. Then, I got this new data set, full of bewildering and difficult to interpret variables and numbers. And this new textbook. And I am totally on a brain rush from learning about survival analysis. FINALLY, I know what "proportional odds" and "proportional hazards" means. Finally, I know the difference between odds and hazard, words I casually encountered all the time but only fuzzily understood. All kinds of things make tons of sense now, and are beautiful to boot. I knew from my other reading what a "logit" technically was, but it wasn't until I read this book that I suddenly realized *why* researchers apply this particular type of transformation. Ahahaha...things are falling into place. It is awesome. And it is a testament to how easy this book is to understand, considering that I would consider myself an absolute beginner and self-studier of statistics, and can still grasp and love these concepts as they are presented here. But there are no gimmicks. The insights can be quite deep. It's not like, "X for Dummies" style of writing, full of artificial humor or interest that is quickly tiring.

Yah. I'm on a brain high. It has been awakened out of slumber. Atrophy is beginning to slow, maybe even reverse. It's a nice feeling I'd forgotten.

back in Matsuyama

It's raining in Matsuyama, but it's warm enough at night for me to sleep with my window open. So, I can hear the patter of the rain now as I type, and it's very soothing and breezy. Particularly nice, though, to be indoors and dry.

On the train ride from Nagoya to the Nagoya airport, I finally saw somebody else who sleeps with their eyes open. It was a young guy sitting across from me, and he was kind of slumped over to one side, such that when he slept, only one eye was partway open, instead of both! So it was extra-creeping. I know, because I also sleep with my eyes open sometimes (and have freaked out people with some regularity), that he really can't see anything out of that eye while he's dozing. But it was freaky nonetheless. I couldn’t take my eyes off him, and because his eye was open, it sometimes looked like it was staring directly at me, giving me the evil eye! And, because when you sleep your eyeballs kind of drift, I watched his pupils drift in and out of view, sometimes rolling up towards the back of his head (so all you could see were eye-whites), and sometimes rolling directly into view so it was staring at me. Creepy. Cool. I finally know what it looks like!

When I got back I had a stack of utilities bills waiting for me in my mailbox. As I went to go pay them at the convenience store, I noticed that my gas bill was late, and the little slip with the barcode wouldn't scan at the store. So, worried that I would be slapped with huge late fines that would double every day i was late, I figured that I'd have to contact the company myself, rather than wait for them to hunt me down. They had a website, but no contact information for email…just fax and phone. Irritated, because I hate having to call people up in Japanese (even though I can do it now! Yay!) I just sucked it up and called them. They were surprisingly nice! In a momentary brain freeze, I forgot the correct word to use for "late" and didn't know the word for "bill" to begin with, but somehow the intention got across anyways. I said my name (didn't even need to spell it!) and the operator found me in their system immediately, together with my address. It was as though I was the only late payer that month or something. Then, shocker of shockers, they dispatched a gas company worker over to my apartment to collect the cash! She asked me how long and when I was planning to be home, and I said whenever. I called around 4pm, and she said, "we'll have someone over by 6pm." Ridiculous. 2 hr turnaround time!? For a house call!? I mean, the guy eventually showed up at like, 5 pm. I paid him for the late bill, and for the current month's bill as well, all in one go. How convenient! No late fines, as far as I can tell. I can't even IMAGINE if PG&E showed up at my house in California in order for me to conveniently pay a late bill. Never. It would never happen. Let alone within 2 hours of me calling. It's at times like these that I feel that Japanese society is very close. The call was so easy and hassle-free, it was as if I called up a neighbor and they said "Yep, coming right over!" Amazing.

Lost in Takayama

So the second day in Takayama was somewhat eventful also. More meandering thoughts.
It rained like mad in the morning, due a typhoon kind of sort of passing over us. I passed by the morning market, then checked out the merchant house next door to Yoshijima-ke, which was also interesting. Unlike Yoshijima-ke, Kusakabe-ke has stuff in it. They have displays of everyday things that people used, such as combs, pottery, chests, etc. I suppose that solves the "where'd they put their stuff" question. They stored it in big chests and probably put it in the corner of a room or something.

Then, I decided to go on a walk. This turned out okay. I tried to follow the "west mountain walking course" on my map and ended up climbing a huge hill. If I had known it was such a hill at the beginning, I might not have done it, so I'm glad I didn't know. The rain was just clearing up and it was fine and misty and a little wet and drizzly. And I was alone, on a hill, in the middle of huge tall cedar trees. I felt…good? Walking alone gives you a lot of time to reflect about a lot of things. My life suddenly felt so trivial in some ways…well, not so much trivial as cluttered with trivial things. What do I do on weekends for fun? I eat, I shop, I watch tv. My life is filled with stuff, with the material. I don't consider myself to be terribly spiritual, but I'm not immune to finding meaning in the everyday. It's the novelist in me :-P Standing in front of shrine that's flanked with cedar trees 3 times as tall as it…was breathtaking. There's something that speaks to me about the cleansing that occurs before entering a shrine. Usually, there's a fountain of water before the entrance, with one or several ladles laid out. You purify yourself in the water by grabbing the ladle, scooping some water, and pouring it over one hand, then the next. Then you take a handful of water to your mouth, also an impure place. You finish by tipping the ladle towards you, letting the water run out and purify the handle where you grabbed it with your impure hands. The act of touching the cold water to your mouth is I think what does it for me. Walking towards the shrine entrance, I do suddenly feel purified and cleaner, somehow. And then standing in awe of the woods just heightens it. I need to cleanse my life of trivial "stuff".

Anyways, back to my walk. Due to insufficient signage and a terrible map, I got lost. I wandered through a graveyard in the hills, then down a tiny staircase cut into the hill. My Teva flip flops are amazing, except for the fact that the treads will only last about a week's worth of walking through gravel and dirt. :-( So much for that. I come down off the hill, fully prepared to be lost, but lo and behold, it deposits me in front of the museum I was planning to visit next. Not only that, but I am exactly in time for a performance scheduled to start in 5 minutes. I enter the museum and it's only me and another obviously tourist couple. I watch some very cute mechanical dolls. I even get served green tea and sweets by a mechanical doll, and one of them writes me some calligraphy to take home (kind of ugly, but sweet anyways).

In the afternoon, I was feeling pretty broke so I thought hey, why not embark on the "east mountain walking course" ? It supposedly passes by a zillion temples and shrines, and hey, unlike museums, those are free! So I embark on what's supposed to be a 4km/2hr walk. Again through the hills. Again much self-reflection, until the point where the signs disappeared and I walked right off the map and ended up on the other side of the hills from the main town. At the last point where I definitively knew where I was, which was a rusty playground park, I went to the bathroom. This would be the first shit-pit experience I've had in Japan…i.e., a gross bathroom in the middle of nowhere which doesn't flush and is basically a hole in the ground. But! But! But! There was toilet paper!!!! Who on earth stocks these bathrooms with toilet paper? Or perhaps a better question might be, how old was that toilet paper? I don't want to think about it. Anyways, I definitely ended up in the middle of nowhere. I think I was still in Takayama. By this time, I was getting tired, so the prospect of getting more lost was rapidly losing its appeal. On top of which, I realized that I'd lost my sense of direction, so I didn’t know whether turning right or left would take me towards or away from town. I think that finally convinced me to double back to where I knew I was, and go all the way back. Sadness. I don't like doubling back, generally. And I got really tired. Later, I found the rest of the trail and realized I had wandered way way way off course, because the rest of the trail was actually fairly close to the town. But by then I was too tired to wander it all and just headed back to the hostel.

A few minutes after getting there, my talkative Belgian-turned-Israeli roommate came back. Apparently she had a similar experience with the eastern mountain walking course, except that she started from the other end. So I felt less silly, though of course I had the advantage of being able to read Japanese. Because I had some delicious soba for lunch, I wanted to get some more for dinner, and I invited her along. She is very religious, with very religious dietary restrictions, resulting in her being generally vegetarian outside of Israel. On top of which, despite having previously traveled in Japan, she'd never actually eaten Japanese food in Japan (like in a restaurant), relying instead solely on conbini bread, yogurt, and cheese. So I thought, hey! We can eat soba. She might like it. It sounded like a good idea. Except for the part where on Tuesday, practically every freakin restaurant is closed for holiday. And Takayama is DEAD by 7pm. There was just NOTHING out there. We walked, and walked, and walked a bit further, stopped by several remaining open places to discover that they were out of budget, or not vegetarian, or whatever. So, an hour and a half later, we'd circled back practically to our temple lodgings, and given up. I spy a nearby Lawson and head over there to pick up something cheap to eat….and she tags along before going back to the temple. Lo and behold, there's this tiny diner-type place right next to Lawson which was super-cheap, and had udon. Was it vegetarian? Yes, says the nice lady behind the counter. Woohoo! So we sit down at the counter, and she eats the udon, and I order the katsu-don. Yum. She picks out all the wakame, which looked pretty funny I guess. But, her very first Japanese meal in Japan! (she'd also never ever eaten with chopsticks before in her life, so we asked for a fork and spoon, and she ate the udon spaghetti-style). Yah. Triumph. We left the diner and she was like "I did it!" and I said, "Now that wasn't so bad, was it?" :-D


Anyways, I am back in Matsuyama now, and past the initial rush of being back in my own place, my own apartment, am settled back into my lonely evening routine. And have a pack of people on back about my presentation, which I must finish a draft of pronto…even though I've still got like 20 days til the actual presentation. Yay, work. Yay class tomorrow. Detect the sarcasm? I'd much rather be traveling still...

Takayama thoughts

disorganized and random, as they come to me.


Yoshijima-ke (Yoshijima house) is amazing. The ceiling is perhaps one of the most interesting parts. And the patterns of doorways. Looking through each doorway yields a surprise, a new viewpoint, and they seem to be able to be rearranged in infinite many combinations. I love also the connection between the outdoors and the indoors, the veranda running around the outside of the rooms, overlooking gardens. Though it suddenly occurred to me that to keep the veranda clean enough to walk on barefoot, a significant amount of daily scrubbing would be required. Just witness the deck on my house…could be walked on barefoot when we moved in, but filthy after not very long. The kitchen area is connected with a cute living area is connected with the well and is partly open to the sky! The gorgeous breeze blowing through the house.

It was very quiet, with only a few visitors. I could sit on the tatami and flip through gorgeous magazine articles and a book about the house. I could sit on the tatami and contemplate the gardens, while looking through shoji screen doors. While listening to bach's preludes on the piano.

It struck me that part of what was so peaceful was that there was practically nothing in the house. There was so much open space, so many empty rooms, huge open spaces in the high ceilings, populated only by soothingly three-dimensionally geometrical (but oddly irregular) rafters. So much space to just feel the breeze and contemplate. AND NO STUFF!! The lack of stuff amazes me. I wonder what the house looked like when people lived there. Perhaps not so different. I didn't exactly see a lot of closet space, though, so I wonder where people stowed their clothing. But perhaps back then, people didn't have so much clothing. Even for a rich merchant, how many kimonos or whatnot could each person own? But then, one must calculate that even under such a large roof, it must still have been crowded with the number of people who had to share it. So…stuff? Anyways, its stuff-free now. I only mention it because I remember thinking what a gorgeous place it was, a beautiful serene retreat. I would want to live in a house kind of like that. Ideally, a cross between Yoshijima-ke and the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum. They both have the indoor-outdoor connection quality that I like. And yet, I catch myself wondering if I could practically live in a house like that. I think every wall would have to be a sliding door concealing storage space in order for me to stow all my stuff out of sight and maintain the clean minimalist lines.


This morning I was at Hida-no-Sato, or Hida village, which is a collection of amazing traditional architecture--mostly farmhouse type architecture. All the houses were moved and collected in one place, for easy preservation and viewing. At the first house, I struck up a conversation with an elderly man sitting in the entrance. I thought he was something like the house-attendant, and I thought there would be one at every house, explaining the details of the structure. It turns out he was a volunteer guide, and he kind of attached himself to me as I went through the other 11 or so houses, explaining each one each step of the way! It was so awesome. Of course, it was all in Japanese, and old person-ish Japanese, which meant that I only understood about half of it at best. But still, I learned a lot more than I would have otherwise, I think.

The houses there were also soaring, sort of similar to Yoshijima-ke. Because they have extremely deep roofs (picture a rectangle as the first floor, topped by a ginormous isosceles triangle thatched roof), they had enormous attic space, two or three stories by itself. Hugeness. The attic space was where work such as sericulture (silkworm raising) was carried out. The isosceles triangle shape provided stability against strong winds and earthquakes, as my guide informed me. Huh. Geometry to the rescue.

They keep fires burning in the houses 24/7. Most of the time it's just a small tinge in the logs in the irori, or lowered hearth. There are no chimney's or anything. The second house I went into had a full on huge fire burning, with smoke pouring out of the house even. I went in anyways and got a lungful of smoke. And a stinging eyeful, too. But I asked about the no-chimneys thing, and about smoke buildup. Apparently, the smoke is good for the house. Most of the homes were so tall that anyways the smoke dispersed high up. And, a small amount of smoke was good for the wood, especially to keep insects out of the wood and out of the house. Not to mention good for the winter cold.

Takayama is deep in snow country, with snow as early as autumn and as late as April. Sounds like Boston, but maybe a bit worse. In fact, spring is so late that Girls and Boy's festivals which are usually 3/3 and 5/5, are celebrated a month later than usual. So, Hida-no-Sato was flying carp banners in anticipation of boys festival.

What I ate all day: Hida beef. Hida is land-locked, so it's not known for it's seafood, but rather for it's beef. It was indeed lovely and tender.

Miso. I've had two local miso-based dishes so far on this trip. The first was a few days ago in Nagoya station, where I had miso-katsu, which is tonkatsu (deep fried pork cutlet) rubbed with miso sauce. It was divine. Actually very good. I was surprised, because I'm not the hugest fan of tonkatsu, and wasn't in the mood for really fried greasy food. But, the miso paste somehow made the tonkatsu less greasy-feeling, probably by absorbing the oil. And the miso paste itself was really, really yummy. Then today for dinner I had hoba-miso, which is miso and vegetables grilled over a big dried magnolia leaf.



Again! The miso paste, melted all over the veggies and beef, was so divinely yummy. I'm a miso convert. I mean, I liked miso soup but I never thought it was anything to write home about. Maybe because I grew up with it. But I think that it's also possibly because most miso soup is actually quite dilute. Having hoba-miso, which is very strong, salty, and….miso-ey….has changed my mind about miso. Mmmmmm.

musings on home

oh my god, I feel ridiculously petite. Obesity. Everywhere. And I had a huge huge burrito of heaven for lunch. Portion sizes, seriously. That burrito was the size of my head! No wonder Americans are so obese. I am *not* that petite!

The notable absence of kawaii. I feel cute-deprived.

Service--I miss the service. The quality of it is different here. Macy's sucks. "Omatase-itashimashita" goes a long way towards making me less frustrated at having to wait or being ignored by personnel.

There is so much freakin' space, everywhere. The mall is depressing.

The cute kitten that I left in October is now a full fledged cat. It's the spitting image of our old cat, except bigger, cleaner, friendlier, and probably without the psychological flaws of having once been homeless.

My grandmother ordered NHK on cable tv for $30/month. Totally worth it, considering that she watches tv pretty much every waking minute of the day. But it's so bizarre to hear it all the time in the background, playing the Japanese news and stuff. As I left today, I even heard her watching "furusato ichiban," which is the show that I usually watch at noon while having lunch in the lab. It's almost like I never left at all!

Nice yarn can be had for cheaper in Japan. Nice yarn like luscious 100% merino in zillions of colors.