Return to Mt. Tsukuba, PhD Research Topic Selection

How does going to a party, celebrating a friend`s surprise birthday at the party, finishing off at 3am in the morning, then going to Mount Tsukuba, returning at 8.30am and then going to meet your PhD supervisor to talk about your PhD research topic sound? In a word, I would say crazy....and crazy it was! Saturday 21st June was a crazy day. I don`t think I can capture the craziness with words so I`ll just end it here. But when I say it was crazy, believe me it was....if you are reading this Abraham, Kristina (birthday girl!) and Jurate, it was real fun that night!

I have now reached the point that I was dreading ever since I arrived in Japan. I now have to decide what I`ll be doing for my PhD and that`s really bothering me. What I decide now in 2 - 3 months will then decide how the next three years of my life will be spent. And its not just the next three years but actually my entire life that depends on what I will do for my PhD. For my MSc, I had in my over enthusiasm chosen a very complex research and as a result I spent almost two long years laboriously working to complete it, even working on Diwali and New Year!...but it was worth it.

Yuta sensei explained that his policies of the Roboken Lab was that students principally decided their own research topics depending on their interest and specialization and most of the time, they were allowed to continue in their chosen fields. So, I now have to think about what I`m going to do. My PhD entrance exam is on August 20th and there are countless application forms to be filled. I just had a stroke of luck though and that is I`m not required to have an English language skills assessment. But from now till August 20th, I think I`ll have sleepless nights trying to think up of a research topic.

Ushiku Daibutsu at Last

After about 7 weeks (and 7 attempts), we made it to Ushiku Daibutsu at last.

And it was worth waiting for 7 weeks. I had read how big the statue was but had not really imagined its enormity. At 120m high, it is incredibly huge (ずいぶん　大きい). To get an idea of how big it is, take a look at this pic and compare the trees and roads surrounding the statue. This was a wall pic and I managed to take a nice pic such that it looks like a real ariel shot. It is listed in the Guiness Book of World Records as the World`s largest statue of Bhudda. See this pic if you don`t believe me.

I had also read that the statue was also visible while taking off or landing at Narita Airport but had doubted that claim initially. However, Narita Airport is just nearby and we saw numerous planes flying over the statue. So, if you`re coming to Japan and have a window seat, you might want to keep an eye on for the Daibutsu!

Anyway, Ushiku is about a 50 min bus ride from Tsukuba and the Daibutsu is then another 30 min bus ride from Ushiku. There were 7 of us together and it made the trip fun. The Daibutsu is surrounded by beautiful gardens and there are also rabbits and squirrels there that you can feed. Not forgetting the fish that literally come to the edge of the water for food. I had never seen fish going crazy for food like this.

Returing from Ushiku, we had to take trains as the buses back to Tsukuba were quite late. We went to Toride and Moriya (my second visit there) and had an early dinner and then took Tsukuba Express back to Tsukuba. Here are all the pics of Ushiku Daibutsu.

Born Without A Master

I learnt how to write my name in Kanji (Chinese characters) today. Uptill now, I had been writing my name in Katakana; today my sensei showed me how to write it in Kanji.

My name`s written as 兄主。The first Kanji means "elder brother" and the second "master".

We were also asked to explain the meanings of our names. As I didn`t know mine, I checked it up on the Internet and what I found what quite interesting. My name means "Born without a Master" or "One who has no Master". So as you can see, there is some correlation between my name and the Chineese writing of it as both are concerned with "master".

Injured in Action

Like most other foriegn students (my classmates), I had a bike-accident today.

It was drizzling and the bike path was quite slippery and clever me was a little too fast on my bike. Returning to my dorm, there was a sharp turn and I saw this Japanese student at the 11th hour and swerved too sharply and too suddenly.....the outcome?......I bounced twice before coming to a halt and almost had a finger nail ripped open.

Luckily there was no one around, other than the Japanese guy. to witness my spectular crash landing so my pride remains intact (though I know I am not doing a smart thing by declaring I fell from my bike on this blog).

Anyway, there will be no more bike stunts from me from now on.

Hirasuna Festival Pics

I finally managed to trasnfer the festival pics I took with my cell to my laptop...the resolution isn`t very good. Follow this link.

Test Results, Yamabica Robot Contest

I received my test results last week. I still remember very vividly when I did my EN433: Mechatronics Applications final examination at Uni. of the South Pacific in November 2004. I had thought at that time that it would be one of my last written exams....of course later from 2005 to 2007, I studied for the Diploma in Tertiary Teaching and had examinations in that too but I never considered those to be "real" exams. And yes, there were also examinations at MSc level but they were of a different genre. I had thought that I had passed that phase of my student life where I would study late nights for exams but now here in Japan, I am still having exams.

For Grammer Part 1, I scored 42/44; Grammar Part 2 = 98.5/113; Listening = 37/44 and for Writing, I was graded as as A. Well numerically, these scores look ok but I think a fundamental shortfall of the current course is that I`m not praticing my Japanese language outside of classes.

On Saturday May 31st, Roboken held it`s 2008 Robot Contest and I witnessed first hand some of the technologies that I would be working with later this year.

Now, if you have scrutinised this blog well enough and have been a good critic of it, you would have noticed that the title of the blog totally contradicts its content: I have so far not mentioned much about my PhD studies here but rather things and stuff I do.

Well the reason`s quite simple. I was overwhelmed by what I saw in my lab and so decided to do things one step at a time...and the first step was to concentrate on the Japanese language classes. When I first saw my lab, I thought: what am I, a student from Fiji - a developing country where there are "engineers" who don`t even have a first degree and yet still call themselves engineers, a country where a pothole in the road is repaired only to have it reappear as a much bigger pothole a month later, a country that has been independant for almost 40 yrs and even then can`t still provide a continuous supply of electricity for even 12 months without power outages (Don`t get me wrong....I do love my country), doing in the midst of some of the smartest people, in one of the most dynamic fields - robotics?????. Instead of a culture shock, a Technology-shock was what I experienced. Studying for a PhD was never going to be easy, I always knew that right from the beginning and yet I still chose to leap right into the Mecca of robotics. But hard work is something I`m used to...and that is what I`m here for right? So instead of writing about my lab before , I was all the time familiarising myself to it and now I can say that I have recovered my confidence to take up the greatest challenge of my life. Gambarimasu Aneesh!

Anyway, some details about my lab: The lab itself started in 1976(!) There are three professors and some 40 odd research members, most of them Masters students and a handful of doctoral students. Every year this time, a robot programming contest is held where the students get to choose their own research idea and then try and accomplish it. The event started at 10am and finished right at 10.30pm with a party.

Amongst my favourite was this demo...a robot that is able to identify a Coke bottle from some other bottles and retrieve it. Some other interesting robots: a robot that follows the shade casted by an umbrella. When a person walks with the umbrella, it follows the umbrella; and a soccer playing robot. Here are rest of the pics. Luckily I was strictly an observer but next year, I`ll also have to participate. If you have any (simple!) ideas on what to do, pls let me know!

Hirasuna Festival

My Kanji test was OK. I only made three minor mistakes so I was satisfied with my overall performance. But on Friday, we were given the schedule for next week and we found out that we have a MAJOR test coming up next week.

Well, thanks to the rain, our plan to go to Ushiku was again postponed, the 4th time in as many weeks.

After the test, on Friday night (May 23rd), I went to the Hirasuna Festival . If I haven`t mentioned it before, Hirasuna is one of the other dorms here at the University. My dorm is Ichinoya and the two are at the opposite ends of the University Campus. In comparison to Ichinoya, Hirasuna is much, MUCH more lively than Ichinoya; I suppose this is because its closer to the city center.

Anyway, the festival is one of the two festivals held at the University, the other one being the University Festival which is held sometime in October. Organised by students, there are performances ranging from dancing and singing to talent shows, and of course food. I had no idea that the festival would be organised on such a big scale so I hadn`t taken my camera, unfortunately. The festival reminded me of the carnivals and festivals back home.

We hung around for around two hours watching some talent shows, during which met up with Jurate`s friend Kristina and I also met up with Ronit briefly. At around 10pm, the festival was concluded by burning a huge bamboo structure, which Ronit told me represented a Kanji character. We then met Kristina`s friend, Adrian from Mexico and headed off to a Mexican restaurant, El Torito, for dinner. This was to be my first Mexican food.

After dinner, we met up with some more of Adrian`s friends and went to this Izakaya but it was really small and crowded, so we went to Cyberex, the amusement center that we had went to the weekend before. We signed up for four hours there, playing pool and table tennis and when we finished, it was 4am and dawn had already started to break! We then rode back to the University and parted with ohayo gozaimasu (good morning). It was about 4.10am when I reached my dorm room. I had signed up for a free bus trip that was organized by the International Student Center and Joyo bank and was supposed to convene at the Int. Student Center at 7.10am but I decided against going.

I woke up late the next day, lazed around, dozed off again and woke up again and soon found out it was 6pm! I had got bored with staying in my dorm room all day long so I again went to the Hirasuna Festival with a friend, Tito from Bolivia, who`s also in the same Japanese language class as I am. But this time, it wasn`t so much fun as it was raining. There were no food stalls. The only highlight was a beauty contest in which all the contestants were wearing Kimonos. After watching the crowning, we were about to return but saw that the finale of the festival was yet to be...a fireworks display....yes, thats right..a fireworks display in the rain!...it was quite impressive. An entire carpark was cordoned off and fireworks were launched from there. Back home, we didn`t have such big fireworks even for Diwali! I managed to get some pics on my cell phone. At times, the carpark looked like a small war zone with so much fumes. By this time, it was raining heavily and Tito and I went for dinner at a Chinese restaurant nearby. We were thoroughly soaked when we returned back to our dorm.

We have again rescheduled our plan to go to Ushiku next Saturday. But that's going to be a little problematic as I also have a robot contest in my lab the same day. Lets see if I can juggle both events together.