東京大学〔二〕

Seamlessly continued the everyday adventures, weekend trips, and occasional purchases.

I found much pleasure in starting small conversations with people around me like staff at shops or restaurants, instructors of workshops, etc. And sometimes these even led to some special treatment or me getting some helpful info I otherwise wouldn’t have not gotten.

• Daily life
  • When I came to Japan for the first time in 2015 I tried nattō, as you do, but was grossed out by the taste and unable to eat it, as many are. Since nattō is healthy and cheap though, I wanted to like it, so I tried it from time to time, maybe once or twice a year and gradually went from being able to eat it but not really liking it, to not minding the taste, to kinda sorta liking it.
    Because what I had tried over the years was mostly the bog standard type with soy sauce and karashi mustard, I set out to determine my nattō preferences. Bought lots of variants (here just a few) and can now say that I
    • like 大粒
    • am not a huge fan of ひきわり
    • prefer types with wasabi or plum タレ over the standard soy sauce + karashi
    • like kimchi + nattō
    • am very aware of the fact that nattō being sold in packs of two to four doesn’t lend itself to trying out a large variety in a short time ^^
  • anticipated and watched Chainsaw Man and got myself a prime subscription on my amazon.co.jp account for the time
• Events and activities
  • Went to Kamakura to visit some 鎌倉殿の13人 locations and an exibition. While there, ate my first 田楽 which was incredibly delicious and had a miso soup with a fig which was super tasty as well.
  • Saw a BOOKOFF mascot in a store in Nagoya.
  • Visited the 印刷博物館 not once but twice for their letterpress printing workshop. The first time I went I chatted with one of the instructors and was given the tip that in a few weeks they’d do the workshop not with Latin alphabet movable type but with Japanese, so I immediately registered for that one as well. After that second workshop I then went through the normal exhibition and there was approached by the same instructor. She told me there’d be a special printing event in an hour because it’s the 150th anniversary of JR East and if I went to the reception now I could still get a pass for that. Thanks to that I then got to use an old railway pass printing machine and dating device. :)
  • Went to Kanazawa/Toyama, ate delicious sushi and visited a wooden sweet molds museum as well as a glass art gallery. Also the hotel there, INTERGΛTE, inevitably caused strong Stargate associations with the stylized “A” and 灯籠 on top of it which could as well depict a Goa’uld mothership above a pyramid.
  • Went to the Google office in Shibuya to meet a former NII colleague for lunch.
  • Re-visited 丼太郎 which was a stone’s throw away from my place back in 2017/18.
• Purchases
  • Re-visited the 奥野かるた店 and bought two kanji games. The one on the left in the picture is a special edition with more sturdy pieces in a wooden box. Because it had been used as a showcase model and had a few scratches it was heavily reduced in price, which I was made aware of by one of the staff members when asking for a rough explanation of how the game is played.
  • Got some merch from the podcast ゆる言語学ラジオ.
  • Used 代引き as a payment method for an online purchase for the first time (iirc the site I was using was neither accepting my Visa card nor offering convenience store payment).

This second month almost concludes my stay. There’s only a few days left, but I’ll take that as an opportunity to add one more post and include a general look back.

On to the … last few days. T_T