Kyoto, and now to Zurich

By zach | Published February 27, 2010

A few weeks ago, I was in Japan with Christina, and we visited Kyoto for the weekend. I am finally getting around to posting my pictures. It was snowy and cold on Saturday, but the weather cleared up on Sunday, and we had a good time, aside from a misadventure or two. (I am now the proud owner of two Nikon camera battery chargers.)

Now, I am preparing for my trip to Zurich next week. Mostly, this involves working on the presentation about my dissertation research that I'll give there on Thursday. Yesterday, I had to do some painful cutting to get it down to 45 slides, but that is probably still too many. I will have to do a few practice runs this weekend to see how long it is. I am nervous and excited about the trip. I want it to go well, and for ETH and Zurich to be as awesome as they sounded over the phone.

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Nagasaki Lantern Festival

By christina | Published February 24, 2010

This past weekend I went to visit Nagasaki for the lantern festival. The weather was really nice and I had a good time overall, but the lantern festival was extremely crowded, and so I didn’t get to see as much as I would have liked. I could have tried to squish in more, but I am not a fan of huge crushing crowds, and so I decided that it wasn’t worth the extra squashing. I also went to visit the Dejima reconstruction, which was neat. I like the sorts of places which try to show you how people used to live with furniture and food and such. I particularly liked the wallpaper, but it certainly looked like it was a pain to put up.I had some delicious Nagasaki Champon, as well. It’s a type of Chinese-style chicken soup with various shellfish and fish and cabbage and things in, and the bowl I got was nice and peppery and tasty.

The weather has been nice for most of this week, but I hear it’s getting worse starting today, and we may well have a big storm tonight. Hopefully the weather isn’t too bad for my lesson tomorrow!

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Japan Adventure

By zach | Published February 10, 2010

I have been having a good time in Japan with Christina. I got into Fukuoka late last Friday night, and the next day we wandered around Dazaifu. There, we saw the stone garden at Kōmyōzen-ji, a Zen temple, and Dazaifu Tenman-gu, a Shinto shrine. Then we headed back to Kitakyushu after eating some delicious ramen. On Sunday, I was very jet-lagged, and we mostly sat around at home. During the following week, I found out that my PLDI paper was rejected in spite of the good reviews. On the other hand, I also found out that I’ll be visiting ETH Zurich for an interview during the first week of March, which should be exciting. I am sad about the PLDI paper not getting in, but I’ll be able to make some big improvements and rerun the experiments on a bigger machine at the Intel lab, and resubmit to OOPSLA at the end of March. Anyhow, what I’ve been doing while Christina has been at work is working on said improvements.

This past Saturday we ventured up to Kyoto on the shinkansen. I will make another post about that because now it is time to make French toast.

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Kyoto in the snow

By christina | Published February 9, 2010

Zach and I went to Kyoto! We had a good time, although the weather could have been better and there were some camera battery mishaps. We ate some tasty miso ramen, and I finally figured out why my sister wanted Subway so much when I went to Kyoto with her. Sandwiches without mayonnaise are a true rarity in Japan. Good cold cuts are hard enough to find. We were very lucky to fit on the bus on the way back to Kyoto station–if we had waited at the next stop we wouldn’t have been able to get on, and then we would have missed our train!

 

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Dazaifu Again

By christina | Published February 1, 2010

Zach showed up on Friday night, so on Saturday morning we went down to Dazaifu, which he had never been to. Winter is not the nicest season, sadly, but it was still a good way to pass the first jetlaggy day. We wandered over to the national museum, but Zach was getting a little bit bleary at that point, so we didn’t actually go through the exhibits. Then we had ramen and got me some new shelves and went home for a nap.

Next weekend we go to Kyoto!

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