Sendai living

Here I am, writing from Sendai, Japan! I am here for a period of study / work / research in a robotics laboratory of Tokoku University of Sendai (仙台). It's use that Ph.D candidates go abroad to improve their knowledge and deepen their research, before to work on (or during writing) their doctoral thesis.

It may be that you are unable to see the Japanese characters in this post (and the next ones), but they are not important to understand what I write ;-). The kanji here to the right simply mean Japan (Nihon or Nippon).

Sendai is cold, and this was the first thing they said to me about this city. Among other things, there is some hole somewhere near the window in my room and sometimes the poor heating machine fails to contrast the cold that comes from outside. With some blankets and other arrangements I was able to close almost all the possibilities that the cold has to enter. Yet, I still feel a cold wind :-).

My apartment is small (according to Japanese customs), it's like a single room of a three-star hotel, plus a small kitchen. The condominium is the typical Japanese condominium that can be seen often in Japanese cartoons, with landings outside.

I live in an area of Sendai which is called Mukaiyama, whose translation, according to someone here, is "the mountain over there" or "the mountain in that direction" (Sendai has many mountains), according to my vocabulary, the translation should be "in front of" or "on the other side". One of the first kanji I learned to recognize is Mukaiyama itself (向山): in this way it is easier to come back home getting down at the right bus stop. This is because some buses have a number to be identified, others only scribblings. Another kanji I learnt is the one with which I can arrive in the center of Sendai: Sendai eki (仙台駅), that is Sendai station.

Christmas here is a little bit different with respect to Western Christmas. Here they celebrate the Christmas time, with lights, colors, Santas, but not the religious Christmas day (the greatest part of Japanese people is Buddhist or Shintoist): actually, during the Christmas day I was working in the laboratory. Despite of this, Sendai's streets are famous for this Christmas decoration, that you can see in the photo to the left.

After some days from my arrival, my collegues, according to Japanese hospitality, brought me around Sendai: it was a sort of "welcome party" (they called it "Daani paati"). Japanese pubs are called "izakaya" and are very similar to the rest of the pubs of the world: here you can talk, meet people, drink and eat something. Here they have a custom, that they call "biking" (don't ask me why) and that is very similar to our "happy hour": you pay some amount when you enter in a pub and then you can drink as much as you want, you will pay only what you eat.

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