Plum Blossom

I probably said this before already, but Tokyo is, apparently, the city with the most restaurants per capita in the world. It's almost as if eating at home is a strange experience to be savoured occasionally. On every street, every corner, there is a restaurant or ten. The sheer choice makes it hard to pick. There's a cuisine for every palate, and also cuisine for every wallet.

It is hard to say whether I am blessed or cursed to have a good friend who is a gourmet, because it increases the number of times I go to the restaurants for people endowed with thicker wallets than mine. However, today was not one of those days. Today it was my fault.

Last year, as my faithful followers surely remember, when I was visiting Nikko with some friends, I was talked into going to a yuba restaurant, and it was a fateful day. It was love at first taste, even if I still have trouble with the name. But I had to wait for almost a year before I would have an opportunity to have shoujin ryouri ("devotion food") again.

I had a vegetarian phase, long ago, but in the end I went back to meat. There's something deeply delicious in, for instance, yakitori or hirekatsu, and it would be very difficult to give it up again. But let me tell you, those monks knew their food: even without meat (okay, maybe with an occasional rabbit scam), they led a full culinary life.

Anyway, the point is, the food was great. Superduperamazing. I loved every bit of it, even though some people would say it had no meat. It had meat: crab, scallop and fish. To those people who don't think that is meat... Why haven't you failed biology?

I wanted the course with more yuba, which was incidentally discounted this month. Yay! However, they would only make it for at least two people, so J sacrificed himself at my altar of yuba. Em went for a bit less extravagant and more tofu-oriented course.

The restaurant itself was very strange. You know how in some izakaya each party gets their own room? Well, you probably don't. But it is so. Those rooms are often quite small, just big enough so that the allotted number of people can squeeze around the table. There's hardly a place to put a bag; or rather, there wouldn't be, if they didn't have boxes under the seats in which you can pack your things. This one was similar, in a way that Zastava 750 (or for you international visitors, Mini Morris) is similar to a Cadillac stretch limo. It was three metres by four, at least, with a definite tang of hotelicity and a strong suggestion of apartmenthood. Even the corridor between the rooms was un-Japanese in its spaciousness. I felt a bit lost at first, until the food started coming, and then nothing mattered any more.

There are some pictures at the usual place. I'm very near my quota, and if I want to upload anything else, I will have to take something down.

Fortunately for me, I rarely want to upload photos. Today, you were lucky.

Chocolate Sparkling

I just got another drink-related surprise. The co-op store at my campus just got a new addition to its shelves: "Chocolate Sparkling", "new combination of soda & chocolate flavor", "Soda & Chocolate W チョコレートフレーバー" ("Soda & Chocolate Double Chocolate Flavour"... Excuse me? Double what?!?). With pieces of chocolate drawn floating about the bottle, and a disclaimer that it does not use chocolate (the ingredients are, predictably, sugar, soda water and flavouring - I almost kind of miss the "1% fruit content" thing). The drink colour is amazingly non-evocative of chocolate pale yellow. I wonder what it does remind me of...

In the meantime, my lil brother has gone back home. I know I didn't tell you that he even came here, but... some deductive reasoning, please? Anyway, he's been here for a month. When he came here, he was all happy about being able to wander around Japan for a whole month. Already starting with the following day, the tune changed: now he was moaning how he only had a month! It's fantastic how you can present the same fact with two completely opposite meanings, right? Anyway, it got worse with his departure date growing close. Apparently he's been four times to Odaiba, because he really liked some overpass or something.

My mother got addicted to kuzu powder and matcha. I started typing how people will get hooked on weirdest things, then remembered I have difficulties walking past a シュークリーム without getting one. To each his own, I guess.

The Basket Case

Yesterday I went to my second basketball game ever. The first one was 22 years ago. So you might say it was somewhat a new experience for me. J asked a bunch of people, but ultimately only Em and (anagramatic) me went along. Apparently, it was her first, despite having fuzzy feelings about basketball. We cheered for the home team (Toyota Alvark), booed the Mitsubishi Diamond Dolphins (actually, only J did - apparently, Em and me are too Japanised already), ate overpriced bad hotdog and overpriced bad minidonuts, concluded Cola was average, and found my favourite cheerleader and Em's favourite player (although, "I liked him better when he was too far to see clearly"). Afterwards, we pigged out on tempura. Good times.

Anyway, what I thought was the silliest name ever (exacerbated by Japanese pronunciation - "arubaruku"), actually has a reason. I know I usually say "just #$% Google it", or "Wikipedia knows"; but since most of you can't read ja.wikipedia.org, the origin of the name is apparently the arabic word meaning "lightning strike" (and boy, they are fast!); and also, Al-V-ark serves as an Arabic-French-English wordplay for "The Victory Ark". Stilly, but hey.

Also, as someone pointed out, I owe you a school-related update, even though almost every one of the three people reading this blog already know. I passed my scary entrance exam, and I'll be starting my Master Course classes in April. I guess the teachers were properly wowed. Till then, I'll be attending the fun Intensive Japanese Course once again. Yay!

I moved. If you have the old address, ask for the new one.

Exam Saga Continues!

A quick note today: half an hour ago the results of the written part of the entrance exam were published. My number's up! (And I mean it in the literal way.) I will have my interview on Monday morning; if that goes well, I'll be a real Todai student. Wish me luck!

My Friday evening plan: fiddle with TeX and the presentation. My Saturday plan: Game Day in Castle Tintagel. My Sunday plan: go fishing for the first time in ages. My Monday plan: wow the teachers and pass the entrance exam.

Let's hope everything goes according to the plan, eh?

Entrance Exam

Today I had my written entrance exam. I was scared I'd fail like a kanji tattoo, but it seems like it's going to be fine. For those I haven't bored to tears yet, the exam I took had two sections (T and A, I kid you not!). The T section had 5 questions, and the A section had 6. T is mostly basics (maths, computing, physics), while A has some more specialised topics (Internet protocols, programming, logic circuits, GIS...). I had to choose 2 questions from the T group, and one more question from anywhere. However, despite always having been partial to T's, I chose 2 T's and 1 A instead of all three T's. Three T's is just too weird. Anyway, here are the questions, as far as I can recall them, after my 2-hour trial and/or tribulation:

1. {a_n} is a sequence of the form: a_n = a_n-1 + a_n-2, a₀ = x, a₁ = y
   
   
   
   1. There is a recursive algorithm to calculate a_n. Explain it, and show its complexity.
   
   
   2. [a_n, a_n-1]^T can be expressed as a product of Q and [a_n-1, a_n-2]^T, where Q = [ q₁₁, q₁₂ | q₂₁, q₂₂]. Calculate Q.
   
   
   3. Show an optimised algorithm for calculating a_n by using Q. Show its complexity.
   
   
   4. For x=1 and y=3, calculate a₄₈
   
   
   5. {a_n,m} is a sequence where a_n,m = a_n-2,m + a_n-1,m mod m. Show {a_n,m} is cyclic.
   
   
   6. What is the period of a_n,3?
   
   
   
   


2. There is a test by Alan Turing that determines the quality of artificial intelligence systems.
   
   
   
   1. What is its name?
   
   
   2. Describe it (in about 5 lines)
   
   
   3. In about 15 lines, describe its influence and criticisms, using these words:
      Loebner prize, common sense, John Searle, speech recognition, Chinese Room, natural language processing, Eliza
   
   
   
   


3. In C,
   
   
   
   1. define the sort function of signature: void sort(int array[], int n).
   
   
   2. for a structure List { List *next, int v }, define the reverse function of signature: List *reverse(List *list).
   
   
   
   

I think I didn't do too badly. I'm pretty sure I aced the TOEFL two weeks ago, and that I'm over the threshold with the current offering. And if I am, I'll probably do well on the interview next week, since I'm told they'll be asking me about my research plan. And I know in quite a detail what I want to research. The quotas are not too bad either, despite what I thought before: 45 candidates for 19 places is not too bad. So even if I don't manage to pass, I'm satisfied that I did the best I could, and didn't make a monkey or a cabbage out of myself.