Today we went to the Kyoto Disaster Prevention Centre to learn about what to do in case of fires or earthquakes. It was so much fun! We started out in the earthquake simulation room, which shook at up to a magnitude of 7 on the Japanese scale. Next we learned the proper use of fire extinguishers by aiming training versions filled with water at a screen that played a movie of a fire while responding to where and how much we were spraying on it by lessening the fire gradually. After that was a simulation of getting through smoke to an exit during a fire, which my group failed at spectacularly. We took a wrong turn and ended up in front of a wall, with the people in back yelling at the people in front to open the door and move forward, and the people in front yelling at the people behind to turn around because we’d hit a dead end. The operator had to come get us and point us in the right direction. The typhoon wind simulator was also a ton of fun. We went in four at a time to stand in a chamber and be blasted with winds of up to 32 meters/second. I went twice. After that! A whole group of us went to Shijo to see an exhibit of movie costumes and sketches. It was amazing. They had costumes from Rear Window, My Fair Lady, Gone with the Wind, Last Samurai, Fight Club, the Great Gatsby, Moulin Rouge, and Titanic to name a few, and worn by Joan Crawford, Liza Minelli, Julia Andrews, Barbara Streisand, Elizabeth Taylor, Marilyn Monroe and more besides. Overall it was a pretty amazing day.
-Sake is expensive in restaurants, but that could just be me, because I’ve never ordered alcohol in a restaurant before.
-Trash day comes twice a week here, I guess that they just don’t have to space to hold on to as much of it as we do in America.
-If you lay down in the hallways of your university, be prepared for some odd looks.
-Do not eat while walking, it’s unseemly. Of course, I broke that rule twice today.
-They grow sweet corn in Hokkaido, who knew?