So I spent the first couple of hours at work on Monday preparing for the talk I was to give in the afternoon. Luckily, since I had just given the lecture to the 3rd year undergrads this past Thursday, I was able to recycle a lot of the basic information and just add in some more specific details.

Let’s hear it for Copy/Paste!

I spent most of Monday afternoon before the meeting preparing for the experiment that I am running today (actually as I write this) in the 3000-ton press on the first floor. For synthesis experiments like this, I most commonly use the 2000-ton and 3000-ton presses here in the GRC. For those of you who have never seen such equipment before, here are some pictures.

Haruka with ORANGE-2000.

Me with ORANGE-3000.

To put two things to rest right away… First, yes, these pictures are a few months old, from back before I started shaving my head. Second, although it may not seem it from these photos, the 3000-ton press is actually significantly larger than the 2000-ton press. As proof, here is a picture for scale:

Me with Haruka.

As you can see, I am significantly larger than Yano-san. Significantly. Like, a factor of 2-point-something.

Anyhow, I had originally intended to do this experiment last Friday, but the last experiment I did ended up rupturing several anvils, and the new batch had not arrived yet. I had to postpone the experiment to the next available day on the schedule, which was today. Thankfully, the anvils arrived late Friday afternoon (just barely too late to do the experiment; grrr…) and I was able to run today.

After the group meeting got out, just before 6 pm on Monday, I was asked whether or not I had submitted my research grant proposal. I said that I hadn’t, as the deadline is this coming Friday. I was then informed that the deadline for non-Japanese proposals that are to be submitted in English was last Friday. Needless to say, I was taken aback by this, as I had no idea. I was told that this information had been emailed to me, and I went to check, and sure enough it had.

In Japanese.

I will repeat that. The administrative office sent an email saying that non-Japanese speakers who were submitting English proposals had an earlier deadline, and they sent this email to the non-Japanese-speaking GRC folk in Japanese.

Hence my confusion.

Anyway, it turns out it is not a big deal, as it is only a soft internal deadline, which is a week before the hard internal deadline, which is three weeks before the actual JSPS deadline. (JSPS is the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and acts kind of like the National Science Foundation in the U.S.) Another excellent example of the multi-layered bureaucratic structure here.

I finished preparing the proposal about 2am Tuesday morning, and finished revising and polishing it on Tuesday. In addition to working on the proposal, I also finished preparing for today’s experiment, which was another few hours of lab work.

I also had my first Daddy/Husband panic attack on Tuesday afternoon. Sara was supposed to go to City Hall to pick up some paperwork so she could finish filing the last of the necessary forms for her and Emi’s Visas at the immigration office that afternoon. What should have been a 1 hour excursion turned into four hours without any sign of her. Several phone calls went unanswered, and I began trying to figure out how the hell to report two missing people to the local police in a language I can’t speak.

Luckily, she finally arrived here about 5 minutes before the aneurysm actually burst, and my mind was put at ease. I finished the lab work at about 7 pm, and Sara stuck around here so we could walk home together. We stopped at the grocery store on the way home to pick up some snacky foods and ketchup, the latter of which I had ruthlessly devoured the last of that morning.

Emi was really good the whole time, and it was time to eat when we got home. She got a tad fussy for a while, and now you know the reason for the Stewie Griffin video I posted.

So, today I got a bit of a later start than I had intended, and came in here to start the experiment. It was a bit different than usual because the computer that monitors the pressure and controls the heating in the press died yesterday. It was replaced, but the programs and such work a bit differently than what I am used to. Haruka helped me get the press cleaned and ready, and after a brief explanation about the new computer from Shinmei-san, it was time to begin compressing.

Which is a five hour process, by the way.

So, during this five hours, I worked with the Research Administrator for the GRC, Yamada-san, on translating the title of my research proposal and submitting the preliminary proposal to the JSPS website. We ended up taking care of a lot of things today; see if you can follow this trail with me.

1) I write the proposal in English. No problem.
2) The descriptive title must be translated into Japanese for the submission process, and can be no more than 40 characters. Yamada-san took care of this. I don’t know what I would do without him.
3) Submit the proposal to the JSPS web system. Which is written entirely in Japanese. Again, thanks go to Yamada-san.
4) Receive PDF file of proposal with new cover sheet.
5) Print this PDF file.
6) Take hard copy of PDF file across campus to the research office at the University for them to look over and check for formatting errors or other logistical problems.
7) Receive either corrections or the green light from the research office. (Rinse and repeat Steps 6-7 as needed.)
8) Submit final version of grant proposal to JSPS web system.
9) Wait 5 months to find out whether or not the proposal is funded.

Today, we got through steps 1-6. Hopefully things will be in order and I can finalize all of this tomorrow.

The huge amount of bureaucratic machinations aren’t the most difficult part of the proposal process, however. We are not given a character limit or anything, but we ARE given a very limited amount of space and a minimum font size. This is universal, whether written in Japanese or English. Since I am writing in English, I don’t have the luxury of using Kanji characters, which significantly reduce the amount of space taken up by Japanese writing. This means I am limited to saying about half of what the typical Japanese proposal has room to say, which makes it harder to fully develop and give enough details, and that can be frustrating.

On a good note, though, I received the final electronic version of my latest paper, which has just gone live in the Journal of Earth Science. For those of you who are interested, it can be found by CLICKING HERE. Good times.

And that leads us to now, where I am about 3 hours into the 4 hour heating cycle. Unfortunately, the thermocouple broke during compression, and I can’t seem to find the reason why. I hesitate to call shenanigans, but I will keep an eye out for signs when I take it out tomorrow. So, one more hour until I can quench the sample and set it to decompress overnight. The press is booked by a student tomorrow, so I need to make sure to vacate the space for her as early as possible.

Now that I’ve bored pretty much all of you to tears, I suppose I’ll call it a day in Blogsville and head back downstairs to check on my little alchemical concoction. Thanks for stopping by, people, and until next time, I bid you all a Metal farewell.

-Matt

Anyway, as I said, Emi slept in transit both ways, and really only woke up while we were actually IN the consulate trying to get everything taken care of. Of course, she was fussy then, so Daddy had to use every magic trick in his arsenal to keep her placated, much to the amusement (or bemusement) of the Consular staff. I got smiles and a compliment on my singing to her, which is always nice.

Ego stroke for the win.

So, to answer the questions of anyone who might be asking, no we didn’t get any pictures of the trip. She was asleep for most of it, and the one time she was awake we didn’t have our camera, as they confiscate and hold hostage anything electronic when you enter the consulate building. I was actually kind of peeved about that, because I would have loved to get a picture of Emi with the American flag as a backdrop, but it was simply not meant to be.

Thanks, terrorists, for ruining that photo op. Uncool, guys.

Anyhow, we managed to get the paperwork finished without too much of a hassle, and everything seems to be in order, which is a very good thing. Emi’s passport will be mailed to us in about two weeks, and then she’ll be almost legal. Almost. The passport will end up bearing one of the following three photos:

Emi shows us innocent curiosity.

Emi the happy drunk.

Emi is not in the mood for your shenanigans.

I’m pulling for the first one, and so was the woman at the consulate. Hopefully it will work out that way.

Before I move on, I would like to take a moment to address the people who designed the layout of the roads and walkways in downtown Osaka.

What were you on?

Seriously, what should have been a 15 minute walk, TOPS, was made into a 45-minute safari through an urban jungle because the walkways are not the same as the roadways, and only the roadways are shown on the maps. We had to double back several times and climb more stairs than I care to recall. Then, when we finally arrive at our destination (according to the map) we see nothing. Luckily I saw a tiny American Eagle on the side of a building out of the corner of my eyes before I gave up and went to the police station.

I was either going to ask for directions or have them lock me up for my own safety and that of those around me. Either would have worked.

Anyway, once I was able to determine that the method to the madness of downtown Osaka is in fact no method at all, it wasn’t so bad to navigate. Whatever my gut instinct was, I did the opposite. We got where we were headed with no problem.

Anyone else remember Willow being tested by the High Nelwyn? I would have passed on that day.

So, ridiculous city design aside, we got our stuff done fairly quickly, and hit a fairly renowned Italian joint on the way back to the station, because Sara was ravenous for anything that wasn’t Japanese. Ridiculously awesome all-you-can-eat buffet, 2400 yen, and 80 minutes later, and I was full to bursting. We headed on back to the station to catch the bus back to the airport and arrived just in time to be about four and a half hours early for our flight.

Unfortunately, because we got the cheap seats, we weren’t afforded the luxury of changing our flight time, and the attendants merely laughed at us mockingly and sent us on our way. We went to the counter and paid what was the equivalent cost of a third ticket just so we could catch and earlier flight home. It was worth it though, as we got in around 6-ish rather than 10-ish.

A good day overall, but we are exhausted like whoa, and all those stairs have left my back screaming… Screaming for Vengeance. We’ve pretty much collapsed and are waiting for sweet sleep to overtake us.

So why am I still awake?

Well, Emiko slept all day during the trip, so guess who’s wide awake?

God have mercy on our souls…

-Matt

    

Daddy’s gotta do what Daddy’s gotta do, though, so I sucked it up as best I could, kissed my girls goodbye, and made the three-point-something kilometer walk into work, arriving just after 8am. It was an eventful day at work, with a lot of interesting things going down. I think I will discuss all of that in a separate post, because if this one gets anymore tangents, it’ll start feeling like having a conversation with Keith Richards.

Much of my day was again taken up by dealing with all sorts of paperwork regarding Emi’s birth and things related to it. At the University I got the following items taken care of:

1) Reporting of Emiko as a new dependent.
2) Renewal of Health Insurance (for Sara and I)
3) Addition of Emiko to my Health Insurance plan
4) Documentation providing for Sara’s maternity leave
5) Hospital stay/delivery verification forms
6) Financial reimbursement form for the hospital stay and delivery
7) Paperwork to allow for the addition of a new dependent allowance in my salary for Emiko
8) Receipt of new Health Insurance card that lists all three of us as valid beneficiaries
9) Filled out bank account information form for submission at City Hall

I had to go back and forth between a few different offices to get all this taken care of, but it was time well spent because I was able to get everything done that I could possibly need to get done before returning to City Hall. Speaking of City Hall, that’s where I spent a couple of hours this afternoon. After bringing all of the above paperwork with me, and including the hoops I jumped through like a good little monkey yesterday, I now have the following things completed:

1) Filed Emiko’s Certification of Birth
2) Received certified copies of Birth Certification for US Passport application (the certified copies are literally photocopies with red stamps on them, which disturbs me a little)
3) Registration for mother/baby health care discounts
4) Receipt of coupon packet for pediatric appointments
5) Registration for Infant Health Care Assistance
6) Receipt of Emi’s Infant Health Care Assistance Card (when presented with my Health Insurance card, her appointments are FREE!!!)
7) Filed paperwork for Child Allowance from the city (13,000 Yen/month, paid 3 times yearly – bonus!)
8) Registered Emiko as a foreign resident of Matsuyama
9) Received Emi’s Alien Registration Card

So, now that all of that is done, and my head is spinning from the exorbitant amount of paperwork required to do ANYTHING here, we only have 5 simple steps left to go before everything is all squared away with Emi-chan.

1) File for the U.S. Passport at the U.S. Consulate in Osaka. The kicker here is that we actually have to go to Osaka to do this. Mother, Father, and Baby all have to go to Osaka in order to apply for the passport for a foreign-born United States citizen. No exceptions. So, Sara, Emi, and I have to fly to Osaka to do this. We are slated to do that this coming Wednesday, October 6. That’s right, thanks to overloaded bureaucracy, we have to fly our 14 day old baby across the country to file paperwork and make her officially a United States Citizen.

And yet someone visiting for three days from another country can give birth in the U.S. and their child is a citizen with no problems. The imbalance is striking.

2) Wait. We have to wait 2-3 weeks for them to send us Emi’s passport. For some reason it’s ok to mail the actual passport itself to us when they finish it, but we can’t mail the paperwork requesting one to them. Instead, we have to uproot our baby girl and drop about $600 to fly out there and back. Can you tell this is a point of contention for me?

3) Once we have the passport, we have to take it to the local Immigration Office in Matsuyama to apply for a visa for Lowercase Emi so they don’t deport her. Not Sara and I, as we have visas already. Just her. The baby. Deported. Awesome.

4) Once we have the visa, I have to go back to City Hall to have Emiko’s Alien Registration Card updated to reflect her new passport, visa, and citizenship information.

5) Once we have all of this done, we can see about looking into the availability of Day Care. Sara’s ability to return to work after her maternity leave of eight weeks hinges on this prospect.

So, all in all, not too bad. Although I am glad I have been shaving my head, because I have a strong feeling that whatever hair hasn’t been falling out of its own volition would be violently torn out in a fit of unbridled rage while navigating the maze of red tape. Fortunately, it turns out that I love my little girl so much, that I almost don’t mind jumping through all of these hoops. Almost. I might be sensitive, but I’m not devoid of anger.

Speaking of being sensitive, I swear that becoming a father is starting to turn me into a woman. I find myself tearing up at random intervals and becoming a lot more sentimental than I’ve ever been before. I told Sara the other day that I think once Emi was finally out of hers, I started to grow one of my own. I know I’d rather be that way than one of those fathers who is aloof and doesn’t much care, but I would like to scale it back at least a little bit. It’s embarrassing.

Embarrassing or no, it’s that streak that gives me enough pride in my little girl to keep posting on here about all the little things she does. I finally got home from work just before midnight, and I found everyone in the house was asleep. Well, except for the dog, who generously stuck around long enough to help me clean my dinner plate. Once again, I left the camera in the hands of the women folk while I was at work, and once again it came up a tad on the short side (about 10% of the pics I usually take in a day). Still, they had some good ones.

With me being at work all day, Emi’s gotten the chance to get to know her Aunt Siobhan and Grandma Rebecca a bit, and she seems pretty comfortable around them. She’s also continued expending her repertoire of facial expressions to include these new additions:

“Eeeeeeexcellent…”

“Bring it.”

Snooty.
-or, alternatively-
British.

“You Can’t See Me!”

“Alright, new sweater! … Get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off, get it off…”

And with that, I will bid you all a good night, and pleasant Dreams. Big weekend ahead. Much love, people. Stay Metal.

-Matt

I guess in retrospect it was quite fortuitous that I forgot to include the videos that I took yesterday in my previous post. Here’s some more eye candy to keep your appetites for Emi-chan sated.

It’s amazing to me how much she is already picking up her head and becoming more mobile. She’s a strong little girl, which is a good sign. Strong babies are healthy babies.

So, as I mentioned previously, I went to Matsuyama City Hall today to get Emiko’s birth registration taken care of. I was under the impression that the form that was required to do all of this was the Certification of Birth that we received from the hospital, and which Yuki helped me complete the day before to ensure everything was in order. I brought the form to the Foreign Affairs desk, and they were very helpful and quite pleased that the form was completed. They then proceeded to give me SIX OTHER FORMS that also needed to be completed for various other things.

The kicker? All of these other forms had the EXACT SAME INFORMATION as was present on the birth certification.

I finally got through all of the paperwork, though because I didn’t have my bank account information with me, I will have to bring that with me when I return tomorrow to pick up the certified copies of the birth certificate that we need in order to acquire a passport for Emiko. Before anyone asks, no, I never have my bank information on me. Sara keeps my ATM card and bank book with her at all times. Secret to a happy marriage, right there.

Anyway, I’ll be back up at City Hall tomorrow for round two of the paperwork game. Wish me luck. Or a swift end. Either works for me.

-Matt

So, Sara is up and moving around fairly well now. They took the epidural tube out of her back this morning, and she seems to be handling everything and recovering very well. I told her that I needed proof to show people that she’s doing ok, which led to this…

I trust that will suffice to be appropriate visual evidence of her road to recovery. She still has some pain when moving in some directions, particularly sitting up from a laying position, which is logical. The doctors say that the incision seems to be healing well, so hopefully that trend will continue. Right now, Sara’s biggest concern is trying to get the food supply going for Emi, because it’s a slow start, as is to be expected. Right now, Emi-chan is being supplemented by small amounts of sugar water when she gets inconsolably hungry, but luckily she spends a good deal of time sleeping her cares away as well. The upside is she looks really cute while she does it.

    

The downside is that’s all I got to see her do today. I went to hospital for about a half hour this morning, but then went to work from 945 am to 715 pm. I spent most of the day wishing I was at the hospital, and the rest of the day telling people about Emiko. I got back to the hospital at 730 pm, and got to spend a little time talking to Sara, but Emi was sleeping again. I had missed her being awake by about 20 minutes. I managed to snap off a couple of pictures, but she never roused enough for me to really interact with her. Then, to top it off, I had to leave at 830 pm to make sure I could make it to the grocery store before it closed.

So, in total, I got to spend an hour and a half with my girls today, all of which my baby girl spent sleeping. I didn’t get a chance to talk to her, interact with her or hold her at all today. I’ve had this unshakable “Deadbeat Dad” feeling all day, that has only gotten worse as the night here has drawn on. Luckily, I did have a little heart-melting moment when Sara had to get up from the bed for a bit and I got to watch the little one. She started to fidget a bit while she was sleeping so I reached out to her and she grabbed a hold of my finger and wouldn’t let go.

I was thinking a lot on the walk to the grocery store and then home about little Emi, and I was remembering her first couple of hours in this world. When they first called me into the nursery area as they were cleaning her off, she was crying up a little storm. She’s got a set of lungs on her, that’s for sure. I remember being very scared at first because her hands were a little blue, and her feet were very purple. Luckily, her color normalized as she warmed up some. They had her under the heat lamp and were trying to clean her a bit as she cried inconsolably. It nearly broke my heart to see, so I went over to her and started talking to her. When I started talking, she started to calm down. I reached out to her and she grabbed a hold of my finger, just like she did in the picture above. (The picture of that is in the post announcing her birth.)

When I had to step back for a moment to let the nurses work, she started crying again until I came back and started to talk to her and let her hold my finger. If that wasn’t the strongest argument for her remembering my voice from in her Mommy’s belly, than I don’t know what could be. She responded to me very well, and it was the sweetest feeling I had ever had.

I started to get really down tonight after thinking of all this. I started to feel afraid that after a day without any interaction with me that she might not respond so well tomorrow; like maybe she would start to forget me. It stands to reason, considering she’s only been alive for about 56 hours and she hasn’t seen me for the last almost half of that. Thankfully, my mom made me feel a little bit better when I told her how I was feeling. Momz told me to remember that she recognized me as soon as she was born, and she had 9 months to get to know me before we actually met. That was exactly the right thing to say.

Honestly, I know it’s a silly feeling, and I’m sure it will be all good when I get to see her in the morning, but missing my two girls today really took its toll, I think. I was feeling down to begin with because of that, and the more I thought about it, the worse I got. It may seem cheesy, but here I am living on the other side of the world with a family of my own, and still my Momz managed to make me feel better. I’m really thankful for that.

After talking to Momz for a few minutes, I started sorting and resizing the pictures from today, and I ran across this last one. When I saw it, I knew she was right.

It’s the closest we’ve got to a family portrait right now. It’ll do for now. I’ll be working on remedying that situation this weekend, hopefully.

Tomorrow, Daddy gets a lesson in bathing the baby. I’m already getting nervous. I’ll try to leave this one on a lighter note, since it got a little depressing earlier.

“Just being with Baby Pooh makes me smile.” You know what? It really does.

Sometimes I love Japan.

Sweet Dreams, Emi. I’ll see you in a few hours.

M

P.S. — Ceebs, I don’t know if you’re reading this, but if you are, thanks for the dare, brother.