Miguel reminded me of this epic blog while he accused me of eradicating hbar from our next paper:

"you are the ultimate responsible for all hbar=1 in the world!". Even after I tried to convince him that this was not true, that I love hbar, he replied with "I know you hate hbar, you are not going to convince me.  you even have a blog... ". Which was this blog!!!! and the last post is from Nov. 7 2012?? Come on guys, put a little effort in!

OIST-u desu ka

Between the Sun Marina and the Rizzan Sea Park ist a small burger place, which does not only have really juicy burgers made to your liking, but also gives you a surprisingly large discount because you are from OIST. Or at least that what it seemed to be. The waitress/chef/owner threw a sentence at us containing the word OIST, and our bill was not at all what it was supposed to be. Well worth a try.

Everything Sport

Are you looking for new running shoes, but would like to have a choice of thousands? Looking for a new bicycle, but would like to have a choice of hundreds? Need anything sport related or anything else sports related or anything related to sports and the outdoors? Sports Depo (not a typo) has pretty much everything you can ever want and it is only a short 50km round trip. And the useful Nitori (household goods) is just next door. Ask Steve nicely or push Jeremie to have another look under the mattress in his room.

You lost your resident card?

In the completely hypothetical case of you losing your resident card along with, for example, the entire content of your wallet (still hypothetical case, it would certainly never happen to me), fear not: getting a new one won't cost you a dime. Just the best part of an afternoon.

The first step is to stop by the police station to declare your loss so they can give you an official document certifying it. Sometimes they give you a paper slip, sometime the full document with the seal and everything, ask for the latter, just to be sure.

Next step, the Naha District Immigration Office, Kadena Branch. Enter the building, take a good look at the people that are already there since there is no clear line or ticket system, your turn will be after theirs. Wait for said turn, state your case, show your passport, fill up the appropriate form, paste a passport picture of yourself on it, wait half an hour and voilà!

Needless to say, it helps to speak Japanese or to have a wonderful research administrator to do the talking for you. Of course, what helps even more is not losing your wallet. Stupid hypothetical case.

Surprise at the Border

Thinking that your brand new Japanese residence card will make coming in and going out of the country easier? Of course, who wouldn't.

But behold, there is a yellow-whitish form called DISEMBARKATION CARD FOR REENTRANTS which apparently has to be filled each and every time and which gets stapled into your passport. And of course it is accompanied by a stamp, confirming your departure.

So no さようなら to paperwork...

Some home (and not so home) comforts

So we all made it safely to OIST, and now after a week of adjusting I think its safe to say we are beginning to get settled here. We quite quickly got the essentials covered. Scones...

and a local...

Clearly any of our old family from UCC will notice that the scones are quite different from the classic 'bricks' we were accustomed to from the main, or the much nicer freshly baked scones from the kiwi. But these triangular delights are pretty good. 

While the local has a wonderful name: The Grand Line. Remarkably when this is said aloud by a native Corkonian it really sounds like someone is saying "shall we head down to the Crane Lane." It's like we haven't left at all.

There are some most welcome new features to our new life. In our first weekend here Mossy and Steve went biking it and discovered this little place for a spot of snorkling.

Seem this won't be such a tough place to adjust to after all. Now we just need to get back to some of the science.

Introducing the group blog!

After much debate regarding the name I finally put it all to rest and created the group blog. Welcome to our world of fun, food, beers (not me), and other weird stuff Gillet likes! We all arrived on 30/09/12 and have much to say so enjoy the madness!