フンドーキンは味噌と醤油を作る日本の会社です。日本に来た時から、毎朝APUのカフェテリアで味噌を食べます。おいしし、安いし（ただ３０円）、そして体にいいです。フンドーキンの醤油は特殊な味がある。私は日本に来る前に日本の醤油を使ったことはありません。ですから、フンドーキンの醤油はちょっと甘いと思いました。

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  As one of the employees at Fundokin stated, a predisposition to a certain type of flavor is acquired early on in one's life.  In order to retain loyal customers, one mustn't stray far from a specific flavor that has built the company.  It surprised me the first time I tasted Japanese (or more specifically Fundokin's) soy sauce.  It's distinctly sweeter than, say, Magi or Kikkoman soy sauces that you might be accustomed to in the States.

  Still, the factory tour of the miso and shoyu factories were just as interesting as the Texas Instruments factory visit.  You can see a lot of mechanization of the process, but there's still plenty of evidence of old-fashioned practices.  The most amazing was the use of completely wooden barrels (in the above picture) to incubate the soy sauce for up to three years!  No nails at all in these barrels; these things are gigantic.  They say it's because wooden barrels give better flavor than concrete ones.

５月２７日にテキサス・インスツルメンツ日出工場に行きました。テキサス・インスツルメンツはアメリカの有名な半導体の会社です。行く時にファクトリーの中を見ることができました。特にクレーンルームに入れました！クレーンルームの服を着なくてはいけなかった。残念ですが、館内には写真を撮るのは禁止されました。

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  So on the 27th of May, we went to visit Texas Instrument's Hiji Firm factory that is located near APU.  From the outside, it didn't really look like a semiconductor fab and packaging plant; it was also a beautiful day so that was a definite plus.

  Our tour of the factory consisted of a small introduction to the company and what they do - which is primarily develop semiconductor products for use in various electronics.  Since my major is Computer Engineering, a lot of the content covered in the briefing was neat in that it confirms what I have seen in classes at Tech - particulary ECE3040.

  Afterwards we were even able to enter their clean-rooms while wearing a complete clean-room suit!  Pictures taken by us were not allowed, but the employees did take some of us.  I'm trying to find out how to get those pictures, but it will probably be at the end of the program.  All in all it was a fun trip, and very interesting to see the machines fabricating silicon wafers and ICs being constructed.  Seeing in-person what we only saw in videos in class was a definite plus.

A link to the album of pictures from the day