Robotics Lab Barbecue

Posted by Daniel Gray (NAIST, Japan)

This past Wednesday night, my lab had a “BBQ Party” (yes, they used that much English in the emails about it) out by the pond on NAIST‘s campus. I wasn’t really sure what to expect; certainly not anything like “actual” barbecues that I’m used to in America.

It was, however, for the most part just like an American barbecue.

Sure, they had four rice cookers sitting on a table, and the primary nonalcoholic drink that was available was green tea, rather than soda or juice.* But I had my fill of quite tasty chicken while hanging around and talking to my labmates.

Talking to ones labmates is dangerous. They interrogated me about what anime I’ve seen, and tried to come up with more places for me to visit during my last few weekends in Japan. I did my best to speak only in Japanese while they did their best to speak only in English, and it mostly worked out. I’ve seen some pretty old anime, and they’ve never heard of a lot of it. They’ve also never heard of a lot of the newer stuff I’ve seen, which felt weird. We all agreed on our favorite characters from a couple of shows, and a couple of guys decided that they need to make sure I see a メード喫茶 before I leave Japan. At one point, though, we hit a subject that ultimately led to my demise.

“Do you have a Nintendo Roku Yon? Ah, chigau… Nintendo… sixty four?”
“Ee, aru.”
“Do you play, umm, Super Smash Brothers?”
“Ah, hai!”

The two people I was talking to made loud surprised noises that I can’t accurately reproduce in text, attracting the attention of almost everyone else at the barbecue. There was then a flurry of very loud, very fast Japanese being spoken over my head (well, not literally, as I’m taller than everyone else in the lab). It started with “どうしたの？” (“what’s wrong?” or “what happened?”) and included several instances of スマブラ (an abbreviation of Smash Brothers), but other than that I didn’t catch much of it. A few more people came over to join our conversation, and I was asked what character I use and invited to play with them after we were all done eating.

And so, I was brought up to the robotics experiment room across from our primary lab space, where there was an N64 that I hadn’t noticed when I got my first tour of the lab two months ago. I haven’t played the N64 version of スマブラ in a while, but when using my best character I came in second after a very close one-on-one on the last life, an achievement of which I am somewhat proud. I suspect I wouldn’t have done as well if they weren’t all drunk.

I then came in dead last in all of the following matches.

After four or five games we were summoned back to the pond for スイカ (suika, watermelon). Specifically, for a “watermelon break.” This is the first English pun I have ever heard a Japanese person make; they did not expect me to understand it, but I did, and was then rather amused by their explanation, which involved a lot of drunk gesticulating. For those not in the know, Japan has a summer tradition of watermelon smashing, which is done much in the style of piñatas in that anyone who wants to take a whack at the watermelon is blindfolded and made dizzy.

Unlike any piñata I’ve seen, though, this was attacked with a wooden sword instead of a stick. After several failed attempts on the watermelon’s life (including my own), Kuwahara-kun sliced it (relatively) cleanly in half with a single swing.

It was actually a very nice watermelon. I got a slice when people gave up digging through it with their hands and someone brought it up to the lab kitchen to cut it properly.

At that point, it was getting rather late, so I headed back to the guest house for some sleep.**

*For reference, the minimum legal drinking age in Japan is 20, so I could have had beer if I wanted. But why would I want that?
**And then failed to get much of it because I stayed up helping Kim (another MIT intern working at NAIST) prepare for a presentation the next day.

Cross-posted at my personal blog.