Please Enter My Domain

Many of you have been waiting quite some time for these exclusive pictures of my wild and uncharted habitat. The BBC documentary deal has been indefinitely postponed, but international rights agreements have enough loopholes that I was able to sneak these shots off the set.

We'll start from the building my Friday seminar (3 hours of discussion in acad-
emic Japan-
ese, but I'm learning things slowly) is held in. About half the campus buildings are in this elegant style; the others could have been stolen from your average community college. The smell of the older ones, though, always brings my nose back to the school buildings of Germany--does this make me sound like an elitist wine connoisseur or what?

A quick turn as we cross the street back to my dorm and it becomes clear that students, accust-
omed to an excellent train system and no longer required to take PE-type courses, are habitual bicycle users. As a fellow addict, I can't offer much criticism; I rode the 50 meters to this computer center just to save a few seconds!

OK; we're getting close. The dorm is straight ahead on this path, and the Sherlock Forest that greets me every time I bike out in the morning is on our left.












Here's the main entrance! I'm glad the picture is of a sunny day, which we have more of and with better tempatures (though probably worse air quality given the distance from the ocean) than in Berkeley.









Just one flight of stairs brings you to my floor, which was a big relief when I arrived with over 150 lbs of luggage. My mailbox is among the gray bins on the far left.

If we go left at the top of the stairs, we enter this little communal hangout nook, where people watch silly enter-
tainment shows or maudlin TV dramas and pretend to study. No, I don't know why there is a separate hand-washing sink when the communal kitchen is on the other side of the right wall.

Here are three of the four other UC exchange students working in my favorite part of the dorm, preparing a group dinner of spaghetti topped with soy sauce and salmon. Yes, it was delicious, largely because I didn't pay for it. At times it gets busy in here, but I love that people are always dropping in to cook and chat.


That's all for now. Here's to cross-cultural bonding!