Japan Day 6

Day 6

Today we took a trip to Nara, which I’m told was the original capital of Japan.  As usual, the trip started at the Kyoto Train Station, but instead of bus or Shinkansen, we took a slower EMU to Nara, which took around 45 minutes. Nara is a quiet and serene place with a large park.  In this park, are a number of sights, but the greatest attraction must be the hundreds of little deer which roam freely.  We’re not talking Marineland or African Lion Safari freely here–we’re talking ‘Doh, a deer, a female deer…’ freely, over an expanse of a few square KM at least.

The very friendly older Japanese lady at the train station helped us with a map.  It’s pretty obvious she’s helped other people before, as she highlighted all the places Nadine had researched ahead of time and drew us a route in red pencil over the photocopied sheet.

We turned up the train street and began walking the roads of Nara, part deer preserve, part modern city, part historic monument.

Siobhan has already termed this trip journal ‘Meats and Cheeses 3’ in reference to the previous 2001, 2003 and 2004 trips to Europe: Paris, London, Hamburg, Berlin, and Copenhagen.  It may be better to call it ‘Fish and Rice 2005′ as there haven’t been the aforementioned meats nor cheeses yet.

Every trip I take, I try stuff that’s local to where I’m traveling, avoiding the McDonalds (save one very desperate hamburger in Copenhagen in 2004) or other global brands.

I’ve noticed vending machines are everywhere.  Japan is a vending machine utopia, with machines vending beverages, cigarettes, hot food (including fries, warm rice bowls), cold food, and snacks.  I’m still on the lookout for the other ones.

Most often, Nadine and I are buying beverages.  First night we were here, I grabbed a huge 500 ml Coke if only for the fact I needed the sugar and was incredibly thirsty.  After that, I’ve been trying different products, mostly fruit juices.  Nadine has been mostly opting for water and for  cold tea.  It appears the beverage market is cornered by a few key vendors: Coke, the Asahi Brewing Company, Suntory, and my favourite, Kirin.  I think they make liquors.

Each vendor has a line of machines which only sell their products, including water, pop, juice and coffee-drinks.  One I like is called Qoo.  It features a cartoon cat which does different things depending on the flavour and the size of the bottle.  On our trip to Nara today, I bought a mother of a 1000ml bottle of Qoo at the convenience store, in orange flavour.  The cat was crying because his glass of Qoo was nearly finished.  Qoo comes in Apple, Orange and a not very often found Lemon.  I’ve tried the former two.  Apple is not bad, orange is serviceable, a less strong version of the orange drink at McDonalds.

Another one I’ve tried is called CC Lemon, likely named by the same people at Lotus who named CC Mail.  CC Lemon, by the label, boasts the Vitamin C of fifty, count’em fifty, lemons.  Why you’d need that much vitamin C, I’m not sure, but it’s certainly reassuring to know that I’m covered for this nutrient.  Come to think of it, a lot of the drinks seem to suggest they carry nutrients beyond sugar and water.  One of the more popular, is amino acids.

Personally, I try to avoid any beverage which has ingredients I might have studied for on my Grade 11 Biology class in high school. The one I’m trying tonight is called…crap…it has no  English name.  Nichirei Acerola Drink.    It has vivid paintings of what I think are either cranberries or cherries on it.   Either way, based on callouts and graphics, I suspect it’s supposed to be good for me.  I can’t believe these words in Japanese are saying ‘Will Kill You in a Month!’

My absolute favourite, though, is hard to find, in quantity.  It’s made by Kirin, and it’s called Koiwai Brand Apple Juice.  Frankly, and I’m being 100% serious here, it’s the best tasting apple juice in terms of experience, not necessarily quality.  I can’t really describe it other than it seems to give the impression you’re eating a very grainy, meaty apple. the kind I like.  I like apples like Golden Delicious and Gala, table ones, not the kind Canadians like, like McIntosh or Granny Smith.  Why anyone would deliberately eat for a snack, a sour, crunchy apple, I have no idea.  Either way, the Koiwai Kirin apple juice is fantastic.  Problem is, Coke, and by extension, Qoo,  outnumber Kirin machines by about 10 to 1, and at that, Kirin only seems to offer the small, 280ml bottle and after several visits to convenience stores, I haven’t found a 1L bottle anywhere.

Back to our day in Nara.  We started with two pagodas, which Nadine told me are the tallest ones except for the one in Kyoto.  At this point, we began to see deer walking around, which made for fantastic photo opportunities.  Nadine bought a stack of wafers to feed them, which cost 150 yen.  Before she cold begin to feed the deer, they started to nudge at her and eat our map.

Another tourist, who happened to be carrying a 350D with a IS/USM lens, fought with a deer who ate a paper flyer she was holding.  At least it wasn’t her ticket home.  The deer, I suspect, had seen the episode of MASH where Hawkeye’s salary payroll was eaten by a village goat.

We proceeded to Todaiji Temple which was built around 1300 years ago and is apparently the largest wooden structure ever made.  I’m not sure how they’re counting that, having rode the Beast at Paramount Kings Island, the world’s longest and largest wooden roller coaster, but the temple certainly has the history to back it up.

Inside is a giant Buddha, whose eyes can see out the front when certain door openings are cleared on special occasions.  In the past, there were two hundred foot Pagodas on either side of the temple, but they’ve since been destroyed.

We continued along the deer path to a shrine which featured 3000 lanterns.  As strains of Kim Mitchell entered my head, I noticed all the lanterns are carved of stone and covered during festivals with paper scrolls, presumably written with offerings and praises.

Many of the streets of Nara were lined with small shops, selling trinkets, souvenirs, and crafts.  We stopped in one for lunch, and I had soba noodles with mushrooms and pork.  I can’t say I like soba noodles in comparison to the udon noodles we had before, but the cold tea served was certainly cooling.  Nadine’s meal came with a small plate of pickled objects, which I tried.  One was daikon radish, a common ingredient in Iron Chef episodes, which sounds exotic but in fact is white carrot for us Chinese-Canadians.  Another was pickled vegetable of some other kind, purple.  Not as good.

We finished off our trip in Nara at the Isuien Garden, a neatly situated which threw us off with a relatively high entrance fee of 650 yen.  However, it was well worth the price, as the serene landscaping summed up what I wanted out of this trip:  A rest from the regular and to see (and photograph) some fantastic sights.  The Garden also has an attached museum with vessels from various ages:  Cast metals from thousands of years ago to more recent objects, only a 1300 hundred years old or so.  Japan’s influence from Korea and China are very evident in this museum, as objects here were mostly from Chinese styles, as was many of the architecture, landscaping style and poetry seen along the trip.

We had dinner back in Kyoto tonight, at another rotating sushi-track establishment.  Nothing of note, and poor selection, except for a novel use of technology.  We’ve been used to the waitstaff tallying our plates manually at the end of a meal.  Nadine looked up the word for check, which I think is ‘o-kanjo’, so we say that to get things tallied.  I noticed both of us were neatly stacking and ordering the plates based on colour.  Tonight, the waiter hovered a strange handheld machine to the stack of plates, pressed a button, then brought this wand to the printer on his belt, and printed out a thermal tape receipt, with a barcode on it.  I immediately grabbed a plate and flipped it upside down:  Crazy glued on the bottom was a small round disc, most likely an RFID tag.  The waiter confirmed by saying ‘IC Chip!’ and laughing.  We must have looked like country bumpkins, even though I have been playing with an RFID reader for months now at home.

With renewed interest in working on my MEng thesis, we left, a full day in Nara amongst the deer.

Japan Day 4-5

Day 4

Yesterday was a rough day with the heat beating down on us and the long lengthy line ups.  Today was much better with relatively cool weather.  Again, we took the Hikari Shinkansen to Nagoya.

This time, we avoided the Linimo maglev railway and the short EMU ride to the Expo site, instead opting to take the cushy bus from Nagoya directly.  The Shinkansen is honestly the most amazing thing I have seen here.  Frequent readers will know that I loved Germany and the rest of Europe with it’s regular and extensive train service.  Japan is the same:  Very fast central lines across the backbone of the country, so reliable you can set your watch to it.  There is, apparently, a movie whose mystery plot is based on train timetables.

Our plan of attack was to enter through the East Gate, where the buses stopped and the corporate pavilions were located.  Alas, this was foiled because even at 9AM, all the corporate pavilion shows were booked solid.  We did however secure a spot in the ‘Open Your Mind’ show, a presentation under the Mt Fuji-esque Mountain of Dreams corporate pavilion.

We went over to the Japanese Auto Manufacturers Association Wonder Wheel, which is a large ferris wheel coming out of a large metal silo.  A strange theme across Expo was the fact that the ecology focus seemed to vary depending on who was doing the talking.  For example, while  many buildings were made of renewed materials or ecologically correct structures, the JAMA pavilion was made of sheet metal and steel girders.  No pretense of environmental friendliness.

Regardless, the JAMA Wheel offered a fantastic view of the park and we were rewarded with an inspirational presentation as the wheel rotated through animations and paintings.  On our exit, we enjoyed a few student design projects of future automotive concepts.

Right next door was the Hitachi @earth showcase.  By now, we had spend two hours in line for the JAMA Wheel, so we headed right into another two hours of waiting for the Hitachi show.  We were greeted by two Japanese speaking ‘reception’ robots, who entertained visitors, Epcot center style, before a preshow involving the Earth and Moon introducing the concept of what would happen if the Moon didn’t exist.  The pavilion offered translation through wireless receiver/earpieces, which had been cabletied to a large metal hoop.  I figured the hoop was to go over your neck, so I stood there like a idiot with this metal hoop around my head.  Nadine was smart enough to hold the hoop in her hand.  The actual show was a wide panoramic affair, showing an earth with low tides and fast winds.  Pretty motivational.

We split up afterwards:  I found another conveyor belt sushi restaurant while Nadine went to check out the giant kaleidoscope.  I took a quiet stroll along the walkways and looked out at the giant bio-wall, a living structure with active plants and grasses embedded in it.  Only in Japan though would the bio-wall feature a hundred foot wide television stuck on one side though.

A few minutes before Nadine arrived, I snuck into the Brother ‘Output Fantasy’ booth.  I’m not making this up…output fantasy.  A brightly coloured play center for kids, featuring jugglers, a magician, and several clown shaped computers which printed out your picture on some serious bad-ass PTouch hardware.  I made a sticker with the Kiccoro and Mizoro mascots and a second later, I was gifted with an inch wide PTouch label with a coloured background.  I must note that the label came out of a clown shaped printer.

I’m not really sure what the point of the Brother booth was, except that it was fun and cute.  While other companies were trying to be inspirational or highlight their environmental contributions and initiatives, it seemed Output Fantasy’s underlying statement was: Let’s print out stuff!  I’m not complaining, I got a mascot sticker.

We next went onto the Open Your Mind theatre.  I have to say that was the strangest thing I have ever seen, and I own the Blue Man Group DVD too.  It was directed by the guy who did Ghost in the Shell and included the following Anime staples:

• Gynoid creature made of man and machine limbs
• Chanting tribal torch music laid over techno beats
• Matrix-like charactergram scrolls set to drums

All in all, pretty cool, or confusing.  I didn’t get the point of that one either.  What I did get out of the entire area was the fact the building was shaped like Mt. Fuji.

Afterwards we went along to see some of the other national pavilions including some of the lesser known ‘Stans, Australia, Thailand and Cambodia.  The Australian one was pretty cool, with some nice use of multimedia effects.  I’d love to be a designer for one of these pavilions, it’s the perfect blend of art and commercial interests.

The national pavilions are mostly tourist ads:  Some amount to ‘Hey, we exist!’ while others are like ‘Come visit!’.  A few actually seemed to fit the theme, but only enough to pass muster for the ad copy.

We had dinner in Nagoya again at the sushi-turntable again.  I suspect Nadine is getting sick of it, but I still haven’t lost interest in the joys of this phenomenon.

Expo, in conclusion was a whimsical display of technology and good will.  will it do anything?  Probably not outright.  But maybe it’s enough just to get people thinking.  Who knows?

Day 5

Nadine has planned out to today to see the city of Kyoto itself, which we’ve only really been staying at to see expo in Nagoya.  We started by taking the city bus to the train station, where we used our full day five hundred yen bus pass to get onto a dedicated bus called the Raku line, which goes directly to all the monuments, of which Kyoto is famous for.

I can’t say I really know any of them, so I was really along for the ride.  We started at Nijo Castle, which, like the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, was a fortified affair situated on a moat, which happened to be in the middle of contemporary Kyoto.

Inside, we got to see several rooms of the Palace, which had a really pretty architectural style inside:  Very clean, angular, primarily on horizontals and verticals only.  Each room was very sparse in presentation, with nothing like furniture or random objects.  Only the key rooms featured shelves, for example.  Maybe this is because before mass manufacturing, people didn’t have as much ‘stuff’.  I would assume the rich, powerful elite of feudal Japan would have stuff, but maybe this was the prestige of being powerful, to have someone else deal with it?

We also got to see the Honmaru Palace which, as a special treat, was only open during the fall.  Both buildings were elegant in their simplicity and their construction was interesting to see in real life.  After exiting these two World Heritage sites, we found a group of people watching a humorous sword battle by local street performers.

We continued on to the Kinakuji Temple, or Golden Temple, which featured a gilded exterior set on a beautiful pond.   This made for a great photo opportunity.  By now, it was time for lunch, and as a result, we had Udon noodles, at a small cafe nearby.

After eating, we took a different Raku bus to the Silver temple, or Ginkakuji temple.  Unlike the Golden one, the Silver one was neither silver, nor tranquil: It was considerably weathered and there were throngs of people around, clamoring for photos.  However, the Ginakuji site had a serene hillside path which gave stepped, terraced views down from the trees, framing the temple, and onwards to the city and mountains beyond in the distance.

We took a stroll down the Path of Philosophy, a small road behind houses, parallel to a small stream.  It was there where I decided to find out what these small flat sticks were: Earlier in the afternoon, I had seen a woman at a shop near the temple force little pieces of dough underneath large heavy wood blocks over a hot surface.  She would systematically shuffle them to ensure consistent baking.  I finally decided to gamble the 300 yen and buy a bag.  They must be some sort of candy–I think the dough is made of almond paste.  They’d be awesome if it weren’t for the fact they are very hard.  Hard enough to take out Nortel health plan coverage dental work.

By now, Nadine was an expert at figuring out the bus system, but we found a bus we couldn’t find on the tourist map, route 57.  It’s sign said Kyoto Station as its terminus, so we hopped on.  It was good in that the bus brought us along several market streets, but it also took nearly an hour to get back to the Station.  The goal was to find the tourist information center to get more information on other locations in Japan.

We went out on back on the 57 to see the the market area:  A vibrant throng of people, and hundreds if not a thousand little stores, selling everything from baked goods to sneakers to DVDs.  We went into a computer store called Sofmap so I could see electronic goods, but we ended up starting on the fifth floor, apparently dedicated to ‘adult anime’.  The fourth floor seemed to be entitled ‘PlayStation Games No One Wants to Play’, selling for one to two hundred yen a piece.  Some things are uniquely Japanese:  A USB vibrating attachment for playing some sort of trance-beat dance DJ game.  And of course, some stuff which you could get at home for cheaper, a 512MB CF card for 7500 yen.

Japan Day 2-3

Japan Day 2

I’m writing this while on the Shinkansen, or Japanese bullet train.  We’re speeding out of Tokyo on our way to Kyoto, home of environmental accords and the like.  Today has been a busy day.

I woke up around 3AM after collapsing around 9PM the night before.  I found the toilet down the hall, which had the curious knob on the side and a hand washing basin on the top.  The knob was labelled in characters that I could recognize:  Big and small.  These characters I knew from Chinese.  When you twisted the knob towards Big, the toilet would flush.  I think they deliberately disabled Small.

We made our way out back into Taito City and it’s markets around 6;30AM, finding shopkeepers arriving at their posts.

On our way to find something to eat, we went into the senso-ji, a temple in Asakusa, the neighbourhood we were walking around.  The faithful brought inscriptions and gifts as offerings, bowing and tossing them to what appeared to be monks.  we watched silently from the sidelines,hands clapsed in solemn respect.  It seemed like the appropriate action.

We found a local convenience store and attempted to buy something to eat for breakfast:  I found a curry and egg bun which looked and ended up tasting much like something from a Chinese bakery in Toronto.  I really like going to supermarkets and convenience stores when I travel, it gives me an unusual insight into what people buy.  It appears the Japanese are very big on packaged items. Their ice cream freezer includes cones with the soft serve swirl already
premade and encased in a protective sleeve.  There are also packages of instant coffee, but not in the way you’d expect:  The deal comes with two cups, bundled with coffee mixture, creamer, sugar and two stir sticks, all wrapped together.

The plan, once back at the hostel, was to pack up, arrange for return in a week or so, and go towards Tokyo Station.  There we could drop off our bags, exchange our voucher for a Japan Rail Pass, key to our whole trip, then explore a bit of Tokyo before heading out to Kyoto where we could also commute to Expo in Aichi.

Getting to Tokyo Station, was not easy.  For one, it required us to get onto the Ginza line, then figure out how to transfer to the Marunouchi line, somewhat backtracking.  This of course, was during a weekday rush hour.  Escaping unscathed from the subway, we managed to find our way into the station, but not to the exchange office, which was on the other side of the building through fare control.  After much ado, we did find the office where a fantastically helpful young man got us our passes, booked us on the 17:06 to Kyoto and even directed us to the baggage storage desk with a handy map.

The baggage desk was really amusing:  It was hidden on a corner of the terminal behind several loading docks, but at least now we were free of our luggage.

We headed out towards the Imperial Palace, which was behind a tranquil moat and manicured gardens.  The lawns were being cut by grounds staff and their riding lawn mowers and each tree seemed individually positioned and trimmed.  A few were being adjusted with wood braces, which led me to believe they were being sculpted somehow to grow in certain forms.

We walked to the far end of the grounds, but only got to see tourists lining up in front of the gatehouses:  The palace was closed to visitors due to imperial functions today.  Instead, we decided to head towards the Ginza.

The Ginza is the high street of Tokyo, known for fancy shopping.  On our way, we found ourselves looking at various little restaurants and eateries tucked underneath the main train line, which rides elevated like in Berlin, cutting through the center of the city.

We wanted to get something to eat, but couldn’t decide.  Each restaurant seemed to either have pictures or elaborate plastic models of their offerings in front.  But nothing seemed appropriate until we happened upon small door in the wall of a building.  When we got inside, we found a sushi bar with a snaking conveyor belt that ran across a square of bar seating.

We were welcomed loudly and ushered into a pair of seats at the end.  Deciphering the menu, we figured that the prices were based on dish colour and that at the end, the dishes were counted and your bill tallied. I picked a few common items: Egg, salmon, clam and that rice wrapped in sweet dried tofu skin.  It was pretty good.

After the sushi bar, we proceeded to the Ginza area, where we found the Sony building.  Inside, was unfortunately only a display of existing products: Very shiny but nothing beyond what could be termed a giant Sony store.  They did have the Qualia display of inordinately high end electronics, but it was hard to tell what you really got with Qualia, especially with the $2500 headphones, which sounded honestly no better than the Sennheiser pair I grabbed from the junk bin at Tormac.  There was the concierge desk, and demonstrations of the really expensive
Qualia 004 video projector (25200 yen, about $25K).  The Qualia 016 digital camera was there too:  It’s ridiculously small, overpriced and only 2MP.  But the optics look really fantastic.

Another place we visited was the Bic Camera store, a sort of Future Shop on steroids.  The best way to describe it would be a cross between Best Buy and Honest Eds:  Not an inch of the walls was left without an ad, yet it was very bright, clean and there were hundreds of different models to choose from.  Outside was the white PlayStation Portable, recently released in Japan, while inside was everything from wall mounted air conditioners to the 17-85mm EF-S lens I wanted.

One of the most interesting things was the fact that Japanese cell phone buyers have a very large variety to choose from, which makes for fantastic customer choice.  The Bic Camera store first floor was dedicated to cellphones of various kinds.  Some items we hadn’t seen yet: Blue-ray DVD recorders, for example.  Others surprisingly trailed:  The only regular iPod on sale was a lonely 20GB model.

With a few hours before going back to Tokyo Station, we turned to the Shinjuku area which features skyscrapers and busy shopping with large department stores.  We visited the equivalent of City Hall for Tokyo, which featured a 45 story pair of towers, bristling with microwave antennas at the very top.  You could go up the very top of the tower, which we did, and peer out, seeing the sprawl of Tokyo below us.  This made for a impressive sight.

Shinjuku Station is Japan’s busiest, with 2 million riders going through every day.  We took the Metro back to Tokyo Station, and retrieved our bags from the lonely baggage desk.

Getting to Kyoto would involve a trip on the Shinkansen, or bullet train.  Using our rail passes, we got onto the Hikari 421 service, a high speed affair with a blunt nose, iconic of a bullet train as if drawn by a child raised on cartoons.  Without the elegant lines and grace of the TGV, the Hikari seems to mean business as you can feel it lunge towards corners, banking into curves.

The trip got us to Kyoto within three hours; departure and arrival was executed with military precision within a minute of posted times.

The rest of this evening’s adventures would be less rapid:  We spent about an hour trying to find the guesthouse, missing bus stops and walking around nameless streets in the dark.  However, two very friendly locals on bicycles helped us out, kindly finding the location and giving us directions.

Day 3
Today the plan was to go to Expo 2005 in Aichi, around the city of Nagoya.  Nagoya is pretty far away from Kyoto, yet by Shinkansen, it’s only about 45 minutes.  One of my favourite childhood memories was our family trip to Vancouver for Expo86, entitled Transportation and Communications.  That year, we saw displays from Germany, France and Japan about high speed rail and magnetic levitation, promising regular service within a decade.

Like the Americans, who promised the space station would be aloft by 1996, they were a bit off. But nonetheless, those memories stayed with me for a long time.  Expo 2005’s theme is more about harmonious coexistance with nature and humanity:  It’s a bit vague but features each
country’s interpretation of these goals.  The night before we were concerned there wouldn’t be any directions from Nagoya onwards to Expo.  When we got to Nagoya, bright green signs were all over, with people herding us towards the train.  We were packed in a local EMU, standing room only towards another station where we stood in line for the Linimo, a linear motor driven train.    It was hard to tell if the Linimo was just a regular train with linear motors, like the UTDC ICTS, or a real maglev which floated.  Either way, it was packed pretty heavily.

At the end of the Linimo ride, which was only two stops, was a huge crowd.  Huge doesn’t really begin to describe this crowd:  A hundred thousand people or more, all waiting in line for Expo to open.

The Expo site is set up as a ring, called Global Ring, which encircles a large pond and some key exhibits.  Around the ring, which features an elevated board walk, are international and corporate pavilions.  The most popular, it seems, are the corporate ones run by large Japanese
conglomerates, such as Hitachi and Toyota.  What’s inside that causes four hour lineups, is still unknown:  We couldn’t get a ticket for them.

We aimed for less crowded fare at the India pavilion, then onwards to the Canadian pavilion, featuring a large iron maple leaf structure out front.  Inside was a narrationless video about Canadian diversity, following six Canadians through their day with dramatic music.  I’m not sure what it really meant, but at least it was pretty.  At the end of the exhibit, you could go and play with a number of multimedia displays about Canada and have your picture taken with a Mountie or, strangely, one of a few Canadian tour guides.  Why no one asked to have a photo of me, is still up for debate.

The United Nations building featured photographs from around the world, as part of a competition called ‘Focus On Your World’.  All the photos were really good: National Geographic grade material, which appeared to be mostly from amateurs.

I had something to eat at the food court, which had stations clearly marked in very efficient signage reminiscent of Iron Chef’s narration:  I had Japanese noodles, Nagoya-style.  What Nagoya style means I’m not really sure but it had thick noodles in a broth with meat-flavoured shavings, deep fried shrimp in tempura batter, and some processed fish loaf.

We stood for a long time (almost two hours) to see the Japan pavilion, which featured a huge bamboo superstructure with an ecologically friendly building underneath with living walls and box truss construction.   Inside the main attraction was a spherical 3D simulator akin to a CAVE
environment, taking the crowd underwater and through a forest.  That drew the most crowd applause though I enjoyed the graphs on rail network development and power usage over the last fifty years which they showed in an exhibit before the cave.

Next door to the Japan pavilion was a stark metallic obelisk of building which was the Nagoya pavilion:  Supposedly there is the world’s largest kaleidoscope inside.  We also saw a frozen mammoth as part of Global House.

Afterwards, we went to Robot Station, which featured little robots that did various tasks.  The Japanese, it seems, feel that robotics is the Next Big Thing and are putting a lot of research effort into it.  They also believed AI would be the Next Big Thing in the 1980’s as part of their
Fifth Generation Systems initiative, but I’m not sure how that or this robot thing will work out.

Of note was a small pet like robot which would babysit children (but only Japanese children as it only spoke Japanese).  Guides encouraged kids to come up and pet the robot, which was shaped like an unarmed mole, blinking and twirling it’s head like Stevie Wonder.  Another display was slightly more pragmatic, with a demonstration of robot wheelchairs that used a combination of laser, DGPS, RFID tags and other sensors to drive seniors around.

At this point, Nadine and I separated to look at different exhibits:  I went to the Japan Railways Group building, where they had the MLX maglev prototype out front.  You got to walk through the cabin, which sounds a little of a disappointment except that it was the actual machine that
hit the 581 km/h speed record.  They also showed an amazing 3D video presentation, which featured footage from the maglev test track.  It was, in a word, awe-inspiring.

Wait, that’s two words.  But impressive nonetheless.  They had a stirring orchestral score driving 3D visuals where it was clear the director was thinking ‘What other cool shots could we use to blatantly abuse this 3D camera rig?’.

The video presentation, followed by a live demo of a magnetic coil and a miniature model of the test track, underscored the idea that a technology, could revolutionize a society, hopefully for the better.  The railway believed that the Shinkansen had changed Japan, and that somehow, magnetic levitation would do the same.  I wish I had that idealism some days.

We eventually headed out of the Expo site, trying an adventurous new route:  Foregoing the maglev train for a comfortable, airconditioned bus, which took us direct to Nagoya with no stops, rush or lineups.  The bus operation was very efficient, herding people right onto hundreds of clean tour buses, complete with dedicated right of way on the highways to Nagoya.

At Nagoya we had some time before the Hikari departed, so we went into yet another sushi-conveyor restaurant.  Much to my delight it was even cheaper than the previous one.

Japan Day 1

Japan Day 1
Lost in Exhaustion

The thought of Sausage McGriddles were ever present as we embarked in Toronto towards a short stop over in Chicago.  On our way to Tokyo, the only thing on my mind this morning  was the sweet syrupy taste of these North American delicacies instead of Asian cuisine.

Japan, like Germany, has always intrigued me as one of the major industrial centers of the world.  This begins our 22 day trip across Japan and eventually onwards to Hong Kong.

As we got onto the 747 in Chicago O’Hare, it sunk in that we were starting a 13 hour flight and would cross the date line.  Several hours, two horrible and one interesting in flight movie later, we landed into Tokyo Narita and out into the airport’s quiet and calming corridors.  I was dead
on my feet the minute we got off the plane.

Entering Japan included a walk through the Health interview desks and into the immigration area, where, instead of the usual quick glance over and rubber stamp, we received a 2  dimensional barcode visa, thermal printed and stuck into our passport pages.

Our next task was to figure out a train into town to find  the Khaosan Tokyo hostel, a location Nadine had scoped out over the Internet.  Not usually a hostel-travelling person,  the lure
of cheap but clean accommodations made sense to me.  Especially in a place like Tokyo, with hyper accelerated growth around me, hotels would not be cheap.

After some help from a friendly local operating the ticket machine, We got onto the Keisei line and headed towards Aoto station, where we were to interchange onto a subway line to get to
Asakusa.  Unfortunately, this led to much confusion as not all the subway stops were marked!  After leaving the train and returning on the next scheduled run, we finally found the correct station, coming up several  flights of stairs into the bustling streets of Taito City.

The neon overhead was overwhelming as we consulted a street map, finding the hostel using an unusual region/block/street number addressing scheme.  Given the density and organic nature of the buildings, regular street addresses wouldn’t work here.

After we settled into the hostel, Nadine suggested we walk about for a bit into the night.  The air is around 29 degrees when we landed, and the cool breeze over the river nearby made it a bit more bearable.  We walked towards a  marketplace, with food vendors lining the walking streets  and carefully crafted plastic models of sashimi and other Japanese food in the windows of more permanent establishments.  Vendors with saluting cats and walnut shaped baked goods lined the sides of the road.

We eventually ended up at a temple and gate structure, closed at night but still with a man outside offering incense to wanderers.   In the tranquil calm of this historic display, rebuilt after the war, was the sound of pneumatic launch, as an American amusement ride thrust riders into the night sky amidst a backdrop of trees and pagoda like temples.

I think I am about to collapse, I have not slept in 24 hours and probably need the rest.  More from Tokyo later.