Works of Love
“Time is Fine.” — E and Oji of 日榮軒
Candy
Sugar is not necessarily the only thing that tastes sweet.
On this trip in Japan, I realized that happiness does not require much material. Perhaps to the extent that it affects health, but not more than that.
In Kyoto, next to the Kinkaku-Ji, the Golden Pavilion, there’s a 40-year-old sweets shop known as 日榮軒 run by a 94-year-old man and a 86-year-old woman (we call them Oji-chan and Oba-chan).
The Happiest Place on Earth
is definitely not Disney World. In fact, Disney is not even up for debate. It’s an artificial amalgamation of neural manipulation, but this sweets shop is a place where you get to witness what true happiness is in the form of love.
It’s a work of love and love of work. I asked grandma what her favorite thing to make was, and she said that it was everything, “zenbu.” I knew she wasn’t just lying because there’s no way anything she didn’t like would have survived on that shelf of treasures through 40 years.
Laughter
We weren’t communicating very well, but we could get the gist of what we were saying to each other. With the help of Google Translate and Duolingo streaks, we were able to get some humor across:
Oba: What’s your schedule for the next few days? E: Today, we are going back to Osaka. Tomorrow, we are coming back to see Kyoto. Tomorrow-morrow, we are going around Osaka. Tomorrow-morrow-morrow, we are flying back to Los Angeles. Everyone: LOL
It was totally hilarious because E knew how to say tomorrow (ashita) but not the next day (asatte), so he just said “Ashita-ashita” and “Ashita-ashita-ashita!”
Embarrassment
At the end of the day, we took two pictures with them and were about to go back to Osaka, but Oji stopped us and tried to tell us to take the bus, drawing out a map in the process.
K, A, R, R, E, T outside of 日榮軒 with Oji-chan
We tried to tell him that we can go back by ourselves and that we were going to take the subway.
I thought he kept yapping because he didn’t understand us saying we’re just gonna go to the subway because he doesn’t know how Google translate works, but when we left, it turned out that we were too far to walk to the subway and actually did need to take the bus.
However, we already walked the wrong way at that point and needed to walk to the next bus stop to avoid him seeing us walk back the wrong way LOL.
Before we left though, they gave us some free Daifukus, which are like mochis with filling. I’m not sure if this is some cosmicly unlikely event, but the mochis that she gave us were exactly the same colors as our clothes that day:
- 2 green
- 2 white
- 2 dark green
6 Daifuku, made with love.
Note that the characters for daifuku are 大福, which means Big Happiness if you do a literal translation. What an accurate translation.
Tears of Joy
The next day, I had the idea of printing the pictures we took and framing them as a present for them. I actually lost the USB for a while in my suitcase (I have no idea why I put it there) and lost my cool for a bit.
We came back the next day to get more gifts for our classmates at Caltech1 and to give them the pictures. In total, we probably spent like 200 bucks on sweets alone2.
The Persistence of Memory
When we were talking to grandpa, he decided to once again start to tell us how to get to our next destination, which was the Fushimi Inari Shrine in southeast Kyoto.
This time, I took the advice and he drew a map which I took a picture of. Apparently, he’s memorized the bus and subway lines in Kyoto because he literally does not know how to use a phone since he was born during WW2.
Map of Kyoto’s 204 bus route, drawn by Oji-chan
Bliss
By the end, even though we only spent a few moments together, everyone was crying and we hugged grandma and left to get in the bus-line. Before we got on the bus though, Oba-chan forced us to take some free sweets.
On the bus ride to the subway station, I ate the free sweets that she gave us, and even though you could tell there wasn’t much sugar in it, it’s still the sweetest thing I’ve ever tasted.
Onsen
The onsen/hot spring in Arimaonsen near Kobe is really nice. I recommend eating the amazing beef and then going for a soak in there.
Parasytic Theory
Mosquitoes may serve a symbiotic relationship with humans because one of my friends told me about how she got bitten on the neck and it looked like a MASSIVE hickey.
She was even asked by the chancellor of the house about this bite mark and it was super embarrassing.
I used to know someone from high school who would only be romantically interested in those who had a partner already, and would immediately lose interest after the target broke up with their partner.
Perhaps in the evolution of human society and mosquitoes, those who accidentally got these hickey-like marks were perceived to be of higher worth because they got marked by another person.
Anatomically, it’s interesting because the neck is a place where there is both the easiest access to blood and where a person cannot reach with their own mouths.
USB Memory
I tried buying a USB storage disk in Japan but the guy at the counter didn’t know what storage was, so he kept trying to give me a converter.
R found it and it was actually called USB memory, which is kind of interesting that the word is memory rather than storage. Perhaps it means something about the way I perceive information as something that’s stored rather than something that contains a memory.
Time is Fine
At one point in our discussion with grandpa, he and E were talking at the same time in Japanese and both of their words mixed together and ended up exactly translating to “時間は大丈夫” (jikan wa daijoubu), which means “Time is fine” or “Time to be fine” depending on your interpretation.
So it’s the same type of class…
as Math 3. Turns out, every class is just statistics. You really can’t avoid it at all these days.
I think stats should be taught in every high school and required over geometry, since all you need to know is the perimeter and area of a triangle, rectangle, and circle. Everything else in geometry is basically useless.
Flies
In CS 179, Al was talking about how convolutional neural networks get really lost. A model might think that a panda is actually a monkey just with a bit of noise on top of the image.
Similarly, flies who have simple vision systems are more likely to bite horses than zebras because zebra stripes tend to confuse the hell out of flies up close.
Just another day of learning in GPU Programming.
T-Shirt Design
I submitted a design to the annual Caltech store contest and I think I have a relatively good shot at winning.
But if I lose, I might just print the shirt for myself because it’s a great design.
Mike the T-Shirt Collector
I competed in Hacktech this weekend and I met a dude called Mike who seemed to be a recruiter for some kind of company.
He mentioned how he loves collecting t-shirts from hackathons that he’s been to and that I was apparently the “famous Caltech student” who they’ve heard about from my teammates E, E, and T.
Apparently he had not seen a Caltech student that was participating in Hacktech until he met me which is totally insane and makes sense because everyone is so busy doing sets.
Mike the CEO
On Sunday, we lost in the first round of judging but I went to the award ceremony for fun anyway and we actually won the “Best Use of Streamlit” award which was hilarious because I was the only one in my group remaining LOL.
Mike congratulated me and we added each other on Linkedin. He was criticizing the Linkedin app’s QR Code UI design, which was totally valid because the QR code feature is in the search bar.
Glory
After winning Hacktech, I decided to post about it on Linkedin and wanted to tag Mike. However, I found on his page that he was CEO and co-founder which was kind of interesting.
Turns out, he’s the CEO and co-founder of Major League Hacking! There I was thinking he was just a t-shirt lover.
The California Tech
As you know, I enjoy writing, so I started writing for The California Tech which is Caltech’s student newspaper.3 Here are links to articles that I wrote for this edition:
After math
After the articles came out in the paper, my friend J was texting me and mentioned this:
Also lol you could’ve also calculated the radius of a chicken nugget cake
This was completely insane to me that someone would read my paper and I guess it’s also still crazy that people still read this blog but thanks everyone.
ARC
Apparently, my second article caused a stir in the Academic and Research Committee because my joking comments about CS 179: GPU Programming were seen as a potential course complaint.
However, R quickly shut it down by noting that “it’s just Tom,” which I was glad to hear because I would not want to cause any trouble for Al.
Ultimately
Happiness is hard to find, but if it meets you, don’t let it slip away ever again.
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