March 11 Earthquake

Japan is still trying to recover after the massive 9M Tohoku earthquake that struck about 2 weeks ago followed by a huge destructive tsunami of wave height of up to 23m.  So far, the official fatalities are over 10,000 with the number quite likely to be at least 25,000 based on the number of missing.  Plus, the nuclear power plant in Fukushima is still having serious problems and very difficult work is done to cool it down.  The areas around the plant do have higher radiation readings.  Tokyo (which is around 250 km away) also has about twice of it's normal radiation (which is not of health concern).  In Nagoya (450km away) there doesn't seem to be an increase of radiation.  There are also problems with power and control blackouts are being implemented to share the load.  Power cannot be shared from West Japan (e.g. Nagoya) since it is a different grid with different Hz.  Not a very good situation but I do admire the Japanese people's handling of this crisis - I think it would be more of a mess in other countries.

Well, regardless of the situation, here are some really interesting facts about the power of such an earthquake.  First of all, this large of an earthquake can only happen in a subduction zone where basically two plates collide and slide under each other which is primarily around the Pacific Ring of Fire.  90% of the world's earthquakes happen there and around 75% of the world's volcanoes are situated in it.

The Geospatial Information Authority of Japan has some amazing maps showing how much the main Japanese island (Honshu) has moved (or twisted) due to the earthquake.  On their website, you can find a map of the movement towards the earthquake epicenter.  One peninsula moved 5.3m.  Also, here is a map that shows the downward movement.  That same peninsula dropped around 1.2m and many of the coastal areas that got flooded by the tsunami moved down around 0.5m.  Since the earthquake (I guess due to the aftershocks) the land mass still continues to move.

The USGS has a nice interactive aftershock map.  So basically, here are the stats at this time:
8-9M: 1 (the original 9.0M)
7-8M: 2 (aftershocks shortly after the main earthquake)
6-7M: 41 aftershocks
5-6M: 341 aftershocks
4-5M: 457 aftershocks

I felt 3 of those - the main quake, the first 7.9M aftershock, and the 6.2M quake between Tokyo and Nagoya (a different fault line but still probably due to the other earthquake).

Edit: here is an awesome youtube animation of the aftershocks:


That is the power of nature.

Nomikai - Graduations 2011

March is graduation season in Japan - basically the school year ends and people graduate.  The new school year begins in April.  In our lab, around 8 people are graduating, some of them are staying and about 5 new students are coming in.  So, to celebrate those graduations, the whole lab went for nomikai - basically drinking party (all you can drink with some small food).  I completely forgot about it on that day and was asking one of my lab members if he wanted to go for dinner and he was really confused asking "today?".

We started off with this one restaurant (stage 1) and I drank a few beers.  There was some salad:

 Some other finger-type food:

 Fries with slices of kaffir lime leaves:

 Some fried rice:

 Dessert:

 Awesome disposable wooden forks:

After about 2 hours at that place, we had to leave... so most of us went for stage 2 to another nearby place.

Where we ordered a bunch of smaller (finger type) foods and of course drinks.  I got this sake which came in a glass in a box and when the waitress poured it, it went over the side to the box.  So you basically first drink the glass then drink the spilled over stuff from the box.

 We also got some very pricey sake to try as a group:

 This was the size and it cost around $20.  But we all tried a little and it was very tasty!

 And the drinking continued...

 Oh yeah!

 We all had some drinking by this time :P.

 Awesome sweet potato fries:

 The food was really tasty - some wasabi eggplant and chicken skin:

 Fish fins!  Tasty!

After being there about 2 hours - it was around midnight - we had to go (there is a time limit on these things).  So many of the people went back to the lab for stage 3.  I went off home since I had enough and was closer to home.  By the lack of people in the lab the following day, I assume that stage 3 went on for a while.  Good times.

While on the topic of drinking... I found an awesome liquour store near my apartment (like 2 blocks):

 which had a nice selection of foreign drinks and food:

 Hmm.. polish spirit:

 Also found a nice selection of Japanese plum wines:

 So... I got one - very tasty!

Food Update

I'm a bit overdue for a food update and of course food has been eaten and pics have been taken so... here it is...

First off.. Nagoya University cafeteria foods.
Some balanced lunch with a katsu of some kind (chicken maybe):

 A chicken don:

 A (quite rare) spicy ramen:

 Shrimp and veggie kakiage (kind of tempura):

 Balanced lunch - some beef/veggie stir fry with some potato cutlet, cabbage salad and tofu:

 A meal set with some gyoza, cabbage, and mabo tofu:

 Tasty chicken and beef combination with cabbage:

 Chicken tempura and some fried seasoned chicken and cabbage:

 Balanced lunch - hamburger with cabbage and some nice egg drop soup:

Next onto some restaurant choices.
First off, another pic of that spicy ramen I like at this Chinese restaurant near campus:

 At another Chinese restaurant, some veggie and seafood on crispy noodles:

 A nice bento from Bentoman (near campus) - very tasty meat and egg:

 Fried chicken set at Hisaya (Japanese restaurant near campus):

 A yakiniku (grilled beef) with onions set at Hisaya:

 A snack angel-like cake slide from Family Mart:

 A matcha (green tea) bun from a bakery near my apartment (mostly eaten - sorry!):

 Another pastry from that bakery:

 A pizza like chicken pastry from another bakery in Sakae:

 A sakura bun filled with bean paste.  That leaf is actually from the sakura tree:

 One day I was biking to school another way and found this awesome store of Japanese sweets:

 I went in and got offered tea and a sampler - very elegant place (also quite high priced).  So I bought something small/cheap packaged in a bag like this (name of the place):

 And it was this sakura dessert:

 In the bag was this ice pouch to keep it cool:

I bought this miso paste (I already talked about it earlier) and it turned out to have some dashi in it so you can basically use it directly to make miso soup:

 Last weekend, I decided to cook some things at home so I bought all these things.  Onions, ginger, cabbage, green peppers, eggplant, shiitake mushrooms:

 And some nice American pork on special:

 Cut everything up.. marinated the meat with some soya sauce, mirin, sake, ginger, and garlic:

 After cooking.  It was tasty but the meat could have used some kind of sauce:

 Next day's leftovers with udon noodles were better:

 Today, I decided to buy some already made things for dinner.  I bought some fresh egg noodles, some mix of veggies and chicken, a squid, some tofu stuff, and some dessert:

 And some small tomatoes:

 Results was this.  I don't have a microwave so had to heat it all up on a frying pan which made the squid a bit tougher than it should be but was tasty.  The beer on the other hand was a total disappointment - well, it was not a beer, just an alcoholic beverage with no alcohol that is supposed to taste like beer but it didn't - hehe.  But it had sakura on it.

Also, one day, I got invited to a sushi party at somebody's home.  It was a lot of fun.  Here was the table setup:

So, we rolled our hand rolls and ate them!  I was really not very good at it but it tasted good!

 Some desserts:

Today's blog post music has been brought by Kikkawa You's debut single (in PV form).  The release date has been pushed into May due to the earthquake.  I heard Kikka sing live and she is pretty good!