{"id":103,"date":"2006-05-21T09:01:00","date_gmt":"2006-05-21T00:01:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/21\/picnic-in-komazawa-park-apartment-hunting-writing-proposals\/"},"modified":"2006-05-21T09:01:00","modified_gmt":"2006-05-21T00:01:00","slug":"picnic-in-komazawa-park-apartment-hunting-writing-proposals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/2006\/05\/21\/picnic-in-komazawa-park-apartment-hunting-writing-proposals\/","title":{"rendered":"Picnic in Komazawa Park, Apartment Hunting, Writing Proposals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n


\n\"Picnic<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\"Sharon<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\"Emily<\/a><\/p>\n


\n\"A<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

I’ve been very busy lately. Last week was a brutal week at work, as I was working on writing a funding proposal for a “Young Researcher” grant. It was supposed to be in Japanse, so I wrote a draft in English, then one of the secretaries here translated some of it, and I translated the rest. While my Japanese is ok for normal email and conversations, it is really not up to snuff for academic writing. It was a humbling experience. I’ll try to read more Japanese language academic papers, and try to do more formal writing to improve in this area – although it isn’t clear how important it is that I can write academic style Japanese, it is something that I would like to do. It is frustrating fishing around for the words to express something, and just coming up short. A humbling experience, but a good one all around, and the proposal did finally go in a few minutes before the deadline with many thanks to Professor Kando and Ms. Homma, who helped with the translation. <\/p>\n

In the past few weeks I’ve also been looking for an apartment of my own in Tokyo. It has been a trying experience because I’ve been spending 12 hour days at work, and then on the weekends spend all day talking with realty agents and visiting apartments. I estimate that about half of the apartments that I was interested in ended up not being available to me because when the agent would call the owner and tell them that I am a foreigner, they would decline to rent to me. That isn’t really too surprising to me, but it does make things difficult because it reduces my options. In the end, I found a place that I really like based on its location, size, usability, and to some extent, price. It is more expensive than I would like, but that’s life in Tokyo. The major drawback: it is next to train tracks, so I will have a constant soundtrack of city sounds to keep me company. I don’t really mind that too much though, since it somehow reminds me of my time in New York. A benefit that others might see as a drawback: it is a fourth-floor apartment with no elevator. I like the idea of unavoidable exercise. <\/p>\n

Finally, after two pretty hard long weeks of work and apartment hunting, on Sunday for the first time in weeks the Sun was out and Shining, the weather was beautiful, and I got a call from friends inviting me out to a picnic in nearby Komazawa Park. I met up with Maririn, the twins Moe and Nako, the birthday couple Gene and Emily, and soon-to-be-leaving Japan Sharon. It was really nice just sitting outside for a few hours, enjoying food, friends, cards (\u5927\u516c\u6c11 again) and the weather. I didn’t even get sunburned. How shocking. Enjoy the pictures from my surprisingly competant camera phone. <\/p>\n


<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve been very busy lately. Last week was a brutal week at work, as I was working on writing a funding proposal for a “Young Researcher” grant. It was supposed to be in Japanse, so I wrote a draft in English, then one of the secretaries here translated some of it, and I translated the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=103"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/103\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=103"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=103"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/fugutabetai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=103"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}