Underestimating the jetlag

It is six in the morning. Me and Henrik is sitting in the control room and we just started the latest measurement. Tine and Robert went to bed a couple of hours ago and I think they will return around 7-ish.
Things are going quite well with the experiment, and I'm slowly beginning to understand parts of what's really going on.

Yesterday I ended up doing an 'all nighter', and when I went back to sleep, I couldn't. I guess I underestimated the jetlag. When I finally fell asleep I ended up sleeping till five in the afternoon, so I almost didn't see sun today.
I don't know when I'm going to sleep today, but we have to check out at 10 tomorrow, so I won't be getting much rest.

People have asked me about more technical details concerning the project. I'm working on another, more official, blog which(hopefully) will be ready in a couple of days.

As you may have seen, I have added some pictures to the blog. It occurred to me that none of the pictures contained people, so here's a picture of our team:

From the left it's Robert, Tine, me and Henrik.
The picture was taken at this really nice Chinese restaurant Shin-ichi took us to today.

If you want to see some more pictures, I have created a flickr account: http://www.flickr.com/photos/tobiasharlang/

So, these are my final hours at KEK. Tomorrow I will be going to Tokyo! I'm really looking foreward to it, even though none of us has had the time to check out where to go. I guess we will figure it out on the 45 min train ride.

Sayonara

Japan - is it more than particle accelerators?

Konnichi Wa.

After finishing my post yesterday, me and Henrik (who is one of the phd students) had a beer on our way home from the lab. Suddenly we decided to have some of the fries from the vending machine I wrote about yesterday. Is was so wierd. The machine actually started cooking the fries once we had put coins into it. But even though the fries were warm, they were still really disgusting (as one might could have guessed).



Anyway, I'm having a nice time here. Everybody are so kind to me, even though I feel like a six year old when it comes to the academic aspects: since I arrived I haven't spoken to a single soul who hasn't got a phd (or is in the middle of getting one). This is in a way inspiring, and what I understand of the project seems very interesting, but I can't help feeling like I'm just standing in the way sometimes.

The japanese professor, Shin-ichi, is doing all he can to make us feel welcome. Today he took us out for Sushi. It was one of those sushi restaurants where the food is served on little plates on a long conveyor belt, and then you just grab whatever plate of sushi you want to eat. The sushi was very good and surprisingly cheap; after stuffing ourselves for an hour we only had to pay around 1000 yen (50 kr.) pr person!
Even though the restaurant was filled with japanese people, this was the most tourist-y thing we have done so far. It is really strange to be in such an exotic country without exploring it. I'm happy that I'm having af few days in Tokyo after the beam time is over on monday.



Yesterday me and Robert spoke to the Japanese project director, Shin-ya Koshihara. He is the guy Niels had an email correspondance with in regard to my stay. Talking to him was one of the main reasons for my visit, but the talk didn't really clear up anything for my part. He was pretty vague in his promises, but Robert assured me that we would figure things out via email from back home.
It feels a bit wierd that I have been arranging my trip for so long, and that the most fundamental part yet is so unsure. I'm looking foreward to getting all this under control, so I can plan my stay.

Right now I'm at the control room at the facility. The guys just got things up and running, and I think we are expecting to do measurements full time until our beam time is over. So right now I don't know when I'm going to sleep again, but I think that I can stay awake throughout the night without trouble.

Good bye for now.

The debut

So this is my debut. As a blogger, as a visitor in Japan and as participant of a scientific research project.

I just started up this blog page and I'm trying to figure out how it all works. But more important: I just arrived to Japan yesterday!

I should probably start at the beginning: For those who don't know it, I study nanotechnology at the University of copenhagen at my third year.
Since I started studying at the university I have wanted to become an exchange student. For several reasons the idea of going to Japan seamed very attractive to me.
In the summer 2006 I spoke with one of the professors (Niels) at my university, who told me that he could probably make a deal with one of the professors at a university in Tokyo. This got me very excited and I started taking care of all the formalities (which are quite a few) while the professors kept an email correspondance going.
Later on Niels and Robert (which is another professor at my university) decided that I should tag along their research trip to Japan here in Februrary. So here I am.

The purpose of this trip is to use a so called synchrotron which is located at a research institute called KEK. I will not bore you with all the technical details, but this equipment is really state-of-the art and there are only a handfull of these worldwide due to the expenses of building and maintaining them.

If you want to know what all the fuss is about, check out these links:
http://cmm.nbi.dk/
http://www.kek.jp/intra-e/index.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchrotron

Back to the story of the trip. We arrived yesterday (thursday) at 10 AM (+9 GMT) at Narita airport, where we took a bus directly to a smaller town called Tsukuba. There we were picked up by one of the professors who - to our amusement - drove a Volvo. The professor is called Shin-ichi Adachi and is a really nice guy. He drove us to the research institute and showed us around. This is a huge place (appr. 5 square km) containing its own dormatory, mini market and cafeteria.

There are so many peculiar things about this place. For example, when you enter the dormatory hall you have to put your shoes in a cabinet, and put on some plastic indoor shoes you are provided with. Also, they have vending machines for everything. At these machines you can buy everything from sodas or beers to cans of hot coffee. There is also a machine where you can buy french fries and other hot meals! I'm going to try it out sometime - and I will probably regret it.

There is so much more to tell, but I'm going to bed soon. The time is now 00:45 AM (I am still in the lab...*sigh*), and I have to get up urly tomorrow morning.

I will (hopefully) write another post tomorrow. Also, I hope to get some pictures going soon.


Good Night.

EDIT(Thursday): I have now added some pictures to my posts.