So last weekend I went to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum in Katsuyama with Hitomi, but I’ve been busy so I didn’t get a chance to sit down and pick out and resize photos until now…

Last weekend was the first weekend it really began to feel like spring. It’s still cool, but it’s warm enough that I don’t need to take my winter coat with me. Plus, the sun feels warm now, so it’s really that perfect, early spring weather. I’d been wanting to go to the dinosaur museum since I read about it on Fukui’s entry in Wikipedia before I came here last year. When I was a kid, visiting the Milwaukee natural history museum was my favorite thing to do (and I still remember the museum more strongly than anything else from that part of my childhood). Things kept coming up and I kept putting it off, but I finally got the chance to go! And it was a perfect, gorgeous day to drive around.

Fukui is beautiful! Especially at this time, the mountains are all covered in snow, but the snow no the ground has just started to melt away. The sky was brilliant, with a deep, endless indigo straight up blending into light cerulean on the horizon, where it was met by the mountains. And since it’s all countryside, the air smelled so fresh and clean. Take a look:

And then, finally, the dinosaur museum appeared, like a big silver egg popping up out of the forest:

The museum is located in the middle of a mountain, and the excavation sites are all nearby, so you can see them as you drive up to the museum. It’s an incredibly inconvenient place to get to, however the effect is amazing… You have to leave civilization and clime up a mountain, and the only thing you can see from the museum area is craggy, snow-covered peaks and enormous tine trees all around. And, of course, giant dinosaurs emerging from the ground to swallow unsuspecting visitors:

The museum is pretty new, apparently. In fact, nobody thought there were any dinosaurs in Japan until the 1970′s when the first bones were discovered. The design of the building is incredibly cool. On the ground, it looks just like a giant silver egg, but when you enter, you descend a huge escalator that goes through all three (underground) floors to the bottom level. It feels like going back into time, which I’m sure was a totally unintentional side effect on the part of the architects.

At the bottom of the escalator are some rocks and stuff… you know, boring geological crap that nobody really cares about, but they pretend to just to humor the museum officials. Then, after that, the DINOSAURS!

One really cool aspect about this museum is that the dinosaurs are all on ground level, rather than up on podiums or hanging from the ceiling. This way, when you walk around, you really get a sense of the real size of these things, because you can imagine them all around you. I guess it’s partially because I haven’t been to a museum besides the Philly one in many many years, but the dinosaurs all seemed so much smaller this way. Allosaurus was only a little taller than me at his shoulder height, and the diplodocus wasn’t enormous either — tall, yes, long, yes, but not enormous. I liked it better this way. The dinosaurs in Jurassic Park were about twice as big as these skeletons were, and while it was cool to watch them, smaller dinosaurs feel more real. It’s also really jam-packed with dinosaurs, so I guess prehistoric Tokyo was a nightmare to drive in as well.

This dinosaur was really cool. He was about the same height as a horse, and I thought he would be one of the coolest pets/vehicles to own.

Another awesome aspect of the museum was the models. Some of them were animatronics, some of them weren’t, but they were all so detailed. And there were more of them here than there are at many museums. The details on their skin and faces were quite convincing. Even cooler, the whole museum is just one big down with multiple layers, so everyone is technically in the same room. However, the dome shape of the building makes everything echo like crazy and plays with the sound distribution in a way that makes everything seem ethereal and magical. Have you ever been to one of those whisper chambers in the old buildings in DC? You know how you can stand in one spot on the floor and hear someone whispering like 100 feet away, but if you move an inch the sound changes? That’s how this museum was, but not just one spot — every single spot. So wherever you walk, you hear vanishing voices and footsteps and sounds that make it really feel like a place out of normal time.

There were often bronze sculptures accompanying the skeletons as well, and the detail on them was absolutely superb!

Above you can see Fukuisaurus and Fukuiraptor. (Guess where they were discovered!) These models were so beautiful. Actually, the museum has tons of models of dinosaurs, including the models of the tyrannosaurus, dilophosaurus, and velociraptor from Jurassic Park. (Photographing those was not allowed.) They were so, so beautiful, and seeing them (as well as many famous paintings that I had seen printed in National Geographic as a child) really made me want to do some dinosaur art. Actually, I’d really like to try some dinosaur sculpture, though I don’t know the first thing about bronze casting. I think I’d like to try some day though. Those models were so beautiful, I think I actually drooled on more than one occasion. I really do want to make one!

Thumbs up from an iguanadon!

A ramp goes up from the lower level to the next level, where you can see pre- and post-dinosaur animals. It brought back so many memories from childhood; reading magazines and books about all these guys was one thing, but seeing life-sized super-realistic models of them really stunned me.

I just like this guy’s name: necrolemur. How cool is that?!

Hi-five from a sloth!

The dioramas for the prehistoric mammals were really awesome. Mainly they were just the bones in some wicked pose in front of a painting of the creature in a habitat, but they really had a good effect. It was much more impressive than other museums I’ve seen in the US. Generally, prehistoric mammal exhibits have always taken a back seat to dinosaurs, but at least in Katsuyama they still put a lot of effort into the displays.

Here’s another view of the lower level from the 2nd floor.

After the main museum, we went to the “Dino Lab,” where there are lots of touchable things, including a plastic model T-Rex. Up until this point, I was enjoying reading the names of the dinosaurs in Japanese, but here I started to hear them on the speakers. This is when I noticed that dinosaurs sound cute and silly in Japanese, rather than scary or menacing. For example, if this exhibit were in the US, it would have said something like this, in a deep, scary, dramatic voice: “ALL FEAR THE TYRANNOUSAURUS REX, SCOURGE OF THE CRETACEOUS, TYRANT, AND ALL AROUND NASTY GUY!” And you would see parents trying to coax screaming and crying children that the bones are harmless and that the dinosaur can’t really hurt them. That’s how dinosaurs should be portrayed. However, here in Japan, you hear a very dainty female voice speaking very softly in cute tones something along the lines of: “Please look in the direction of the tyrannosaurus’ teeth. Notice that they are very long and sharp. This was very useful for helping him to eat.” Add on to that that Tyrannosaurus in Japanese sounds like “teeranoSAOworassoo” and you can’t help but let a cute little “aww” slip out. Such a shame…

Afterwards we went outside and looked around at the view again. Photos really don’t do it justice. The landscape is so beautiful, and the isolated location just makes it feel really special. It’s an awesome museum. I want to go back again soon. (But even moreso I really want to make a bronze dinosaur sculpture!)

Yesterday was White Day here in Japan. For those of you not aware, the concept of Valentine’s Day is a little strange in Japan — here, on Valentine’s Day, women do all of the work and men just have to sit back and bask in the love and adoration (in the form of chocolates) that they receive, whether it’s “real” chocolate, or “obligation” chocolate (given by coworkers, employees, etc., who don’t really want to give you chocolate, but are forced by society to do so).

So on White Day, it’s the men’s turn to give the gift. Originally when the holiday was coined, it was a gift of marshmallow or something, but now just about anything is ok. And the gift is supposed to be 3x more than the chocolate received, and of course there is plenty of obligation chocolate to give as well.

Sounds like a clever marketing scheme? Well that’s because it is! But what makes it so much worse than the marketing scheme of American Valentine’s Day is that there’s virtually no mirth about the whole thing. When people complain about Valentine’s Day back in the US, it’s usually because they’re single and bitter, or poor and bitter, or just don’t want to spend money. But in any case, there’s still plenty of atmosphere — movies on TV, romance in the air, love songs on the radio, etc. Here, Valentine’s Day is a little about that — mainly the excitement about giving or receiving chocolate. White Day, on the other hand, carries no fanfare at all. There aren’t any special decorations, or songs, or traditions other than buying and giving. In fact, the only way you know it’s White Day is because the stores are all screaming at you to buy buy buy something.

White Day isn’t a bad concept, really, but the execution is masterfully poor. There just isn’t much of an atmosphere about it; and when you get down to it, the atmosphere is really what makes all holidays special — not the holiday itself. (That’s why nobody gives a crap about President’s Day or Columbus Day either.)

Incidentally, yesterday was also Pi Day — 3/14. Now that’s definitely something to celebrate!

…monkeys!

These commercials came from Sweden maybe? I can’t remember. In any case, I’d buy any product so long as a monkey endorses it.

Somehow my neckties have become cursed. Maybe one of the ghosts finally followed me home from Tojimbo? I don’t know… but every night when I get home from work, the first thing I do is hang up my suit and tie in my closet. A few weeks ago, however, one of my favorite ties, a very beautiful red tie, somehow wandered into my washing machine and was ruined. I mean, I can still wear it, but it has no luster, no life, and doesn’t have the impact it once did. How sad. And then just yesterday, as I was hanging my laundry, I found another tie in there, crumpled and wrinkled and ruined — not as badly as the red tie was, but ruined nonetheless. It’s so frustrating because this is something I’ve been so conscious about and so careful about… I’ve never tossed a tie in the washing machine, and I definitely remember hanging up the brown tie. As Batman would say, there is no other possible explanation.

In other news, I’ve been internet-less for a week now — which partially explains the lack of posts recently. My regular internet host has gone on vacation or something and turned off his router again — the last time this happened was over New Years — so again I’m borrowing off the hotel (which is really far away) by dangling my router out the hall window and receiving the weakest possible signal…

However, this week, with Hitomi’s help, I was able to order fiber optic internet! Woohoooo! I always heard that Japan (and really the rest of the entire world) had faster internet than the US, but I was shocked to see how fast. Get this: my fiber optic internet access costs less than some DSL in the US, and is so much faster! IIRC, generally DSL in the US runs about $50 a month and gets you an 8 Mbps line. Here, I’m paying just under $60 a month and getting a 100 Mbps connection. I know — holy cramolie, right?

Today I woke up early and went to a high school in the morning to hand out promotional tissues and fliers for Aeon. It was a beautiful spring morning, and it was nice to be outside in the sun, so I was happy… and it was actually pretty fun to become part of the ubiquitous corporate present-giving culture of Japan. Other than that, though, work is reeeaaally busy these days — March is the end of the school year, so we’re getting a huge new student push. Rough.

This weekend I went to the Fukui Prefectural Dinosaur Museum (Finally!!! Do you remember how long I’ve wanted to go there, but kept having bad luck?) with Hitomi. My connection sucks now so I’ll write more about it and post some photos later this week (hopefully my regular internet source will come back and turn his router back on)…

News.com article

Sad news for all of us nerds out there. This article was a fairly good homage though. Better than some of the other less tasteful ones that I read. (“Gary Gygax rolls a natural 1 on his fort save.” Horrible!)

I bought a printer this weekend. A really monkey good one too! I’m really excited… I haven’t had a printer in a while because the quality is always good enough to want to print, but just bad enough to be thoroughly disappointing… This new one though… wow. Hot damn! It’s got 7 different inks — the most I’ve ever seen in a home printer — and of course a scanner (that seems to be standard nowadays). It can print on CD’s and DVD’s. It has a ton of other really nice features… OCR of course, and standard stuff that any good printer should have, but the most important feature is the 9600 dpi and 7 color printing. That’s seriously professional level. Basically, that means if I want to make professional prints, anything that’s under A4 size paper I can handle on my own.

Work has been busy… crazy busy really. And this month is even busier as the new fiscal and school years all begin in April in January… so March is when we get tons of new applicants. So my schedule is popping at the seams. I’ve also had 2 different colds these past 2 weeks, which sucks big time. But I changed some part of my regular eating habits and it’s helping me get a lot more energy, which is pretty important.

I guess there’s not too much to report. Life is normal. I saw The Golden Compass finally, as it just came out this weekend. The movie was OK, though the book was much better. However, the ending theme song was quite possibly the worst piece of music I have ever heard in any movie, ever. It was absolutely atrocious!

Other news? Well… uh… I beat Crysis. That was a really fun game. And I’ve been watching movies and going out with Hitomi. Pi-chan is healthy and enjoying things. The weather is just beginning to warm up the tiniest bit. That’s really it… I can’t think of any more. (Why is it that I can always think of stuff to write when I’m not sitting in front of my computer, but I can’t think of much when I am here?)