2013/07/05

Lab, Ginza, Iidabashi





Wednesday

On Wednesday, my throat wasn’t any better. The problem was - everything else was alright. So even though I went to talk to Soeda-san, we agreed that a visit to a doctor wouldn’t probably help much, since it’s kinda difficult to treat a dry throat and lost voice if you don’t have any other symptoms. I tried buying a mask - first of all, it is supposed to prevent dust from coming inside one’s nose and mouth (and let’s face it, Tokyo’s much dustier than Prague), second it also means I breathe warmer and more humid air, since the new air gets kinda mixed with the air I breathed out. I wore the lace pink dress you’ve seen a zillion times with a shirt over it and my favorite brown belt. It was kinda chilly, so I put on also knee high socks and to save my shoulders, I took a backpack instead of a handbag.

At Todai



At Todai's toilets. Sorry, it's the only place near my lab with mirrors.





At noon when I went for lunch with my labmates, I was able to talk almost normally! I got a soup (I thought I remembered the name but I guess I didn’t, because google didn’t give me the right picture) and wakame salad (normal salad with a bit of seaweed). The cool thing about all the cafeterias here is that they have free tea!
As for work, I just designed primers (well OK, a smart PC program did) and that was it - they were supposed to arrive next morning, so I was done pretty early and had about two hours to study Japanese. Then we had a botany lecture about new species in Borneo - it was very interesting. The professor talked not only about the plants themselves, but also about how they prepared the excursions and how the publication of results went.
Afterwards, we had a quick dinner with my roomie and headed once again for Ginza with one more girl - to get some more skin care stuff, and especially to get some fresh produce at Hanamasa. We also stopped by at Donkihote store and then barely made it back home in time. I took some pictures of the buildings and shops in Ginza and I also tried to take pics of how the Matsumoto Kiyoshi and Donkihote stores look like - sorry it’s blurry, but I was trying not to look like I was taking pictures (I wasn’t sure if it was allowed or not).








Hair products



Make up




Donkihote









Hanamasa


We also went to Maruetsu Petit for food - the ice creams were on sale for 200 Yen/cup, which is a great price. My Japanese teacher said that Häagen-Dazs makes the best green tea ice cream, so I wanted to try it. The cake was 1/2 price, so we got it too. 



I also got a UV-spray and lash glue at MK, 3 pairs of lashes (50 Yen each) and a Missha x Hello Kitty discounted set at Donkihote. I mean, I love Missha and I love Hello Kitty. What can be better than the combination of these two? I paid only 1600 Yen for the set - it had 6 masks, a body cream and a BB cream - that’s an amazing price. At Hanamasa, we got tons of stuff, this is what I bought - Tofu (40 Yen), peppers, sweets, ginger. My roomie got fresh octopus, which you’ll be able to see in a bit.










We went to sleep at like 2 a.m., because we ate some fresh octopus as, er, sashimi.



Thursday

On Thursday (if you’re interested in my medical condition) I got a nasty dry cough. I wore the mask, but I still felt like the biggest nuisance on earth, making loud noise and generally being slow at work. We opted for sweet breakfast.




I run the PCR with my new primers and then put them on ELFO, isolated the DNA from the gel and put it into freezer, because my sub-supervisor needed to go home early (does that mean my will to work reached Japanese level?). I missed the afternooon lecture, because I needed to attend the lab seminar (held in Japanese, so I understood veeery little). Before that, we cleaned the floors, as apparently here, researchers (or at least students and tech staff) are required to do the cleaning by themselves. Basically, even though I’ve done all the techniques many times, I had to learn working with completely different machines - the only things I wear more or less familiar with were the centrifuge and PCR machine. Otherwise, all the equipment and protocols were pretty different from ours. The only thing I did all by myself was getting the DNA from gel (and even an ape could do that), so I hope I’ll eventually become more independent and less in the way of others. In the evening I just went quickly to the 100 Yen store to get some new masks and I got nail stickers while at it. I passed by Ribon magazine and got it, since it had stickers (I don’t have tape in my lab to attach the gel photos in my lab notebook), correction tape (again, something I needed for lab) and letter set (my friend asked me to get her some from Japan) - so I basically got 3 things I needed and a magazine to practice Japanese. Then I went home, because I wasn’t feeling particularly great and I took some pics of Iidabashi on my way.




I wore a black skirt with black blouse, black belt and black bag. Black shoes if you wondered. 









Dinner


I took a bath in the evening


This mask is not bad - quite moisturizing, but nothing extremely miraculous.


Yours truly
Vita

2 comments:

  1. Vita I L-O-V-E to see so many hello kitty stuff, you must be in hello kitty heaven! Get better soon dear!
    Oh and green tea icecream? that seems amazing too ^^

    ReplyDelete
  2. These photos are very nice and i love your outfits too. It's a very interesting post.
    Un endroit que je serai heureux de visiter.

    ReplyDelete