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Mark R. Cutkosky
(for the official report on the business part of the trip, seeJapan Report.html) |
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Shinjuku Gyoen Ueno Park |
Nagoya and Yamadas Kiyomizu temple and Nijo Palace Dinner with the Kurokawas Okayama/Kurashiki Dinner with Hanadas Autosoap
Banquet at Fukudas Dinner boat on the harbor Pam & kids at Shinjuku park Tokyo imperial palace Shinjuku Chuo playground |
March 15: After a couple of days I'm starting to remember a few more
Japanese words and settling into a routine: Wake up around 6:30am, have
breakfast around 7:30 at the coffee shop (Doutor chain - sorta Japanese
Starbucks). Breakfast is typically something like an egg salad sandwich
on a roll, orange juice and a cup of strong coffee. Spend the day taking
trains and meeting people...
Have a good dinner with people at a restaurant. Straggle back to my
hotel around 9pm and collapse.
I've been walking through a park near the hotel each morning trying to reset my biological clock. The park has a nice playground for kids. There's also a beautiful old shrine in one corner of the park... and a encampment of homeless people huddled under blue plasic tarps in the opposite corner.
Shinkjuku Station is a zoo. Possibly the busiest and most crowded place in Tokyo. Leaving my hotel at 8:00am and walking toward the station I feel like a salmon struggling upstream against the torrent of workers heading to their offices. It doesn't help that people aren't looking where they are going because they're talking away on their tiny cell phones.
March 16 - Met with Prof. Hatamura and others at U. Tokyo (see Japan Report for tech. details) and talked about engineering design education at some length. The conversation became sufficiently engrossing that Hatamura took us all out to dinner at a Nabemono place near the university for continued discussions about design. Delicious!
March 17 - Met with Prof. Hirose and talked about robots and design. On the way back I saw I saw the profile of Fujiyama for the first time. No dinner plans so I took myself to an Indian restaurant. As soon as I started I realized that Japanese food, while good and exquisitely prepared, does not have rich spice flavors the way Italian, Indian, or Spanish food does.
March 18 - Prof. Kimura at University of Electrocommunications to me
and a couple of visitors to a temple in Chofu and a snack of soba noodles
with egg and miso.
[me on bridge near temple]
[Kimura & visitors at temple]
[with Kimura's visitors at temple gate]
March 19 - Went sight-seeing with Prof. N. Iwatsuki of Tokyo Inst. of Technology and his wife, son and daughter. We saw the Edo Tokyo Museum (great architecture and displays) and went to the Toyland 2000 Expo. This was in the new exposition area of Tokyo on the harbor. We took the new rubber tired metro line over the Rainbow bridge and wound among the spage-age buildings that looked ready for a starship landings. Toyland 2000 was a zoo, but it was interesting to see a couple of new robot toys from Tomy and others. Watch for Aquanoids: solar powered floating jellyfish, lobsters and fish that slowly float around the inside of an aquarium. Also several lower-princed rip-offs of the expensive Sony robot dog.
March 20 - Visited the Shinjuku Gyoen before heading out to Narita to pick up Pam and kids. Beautiful big park in the middle of Tokyo. The grass is still brown, but the plum trees are blooming.
We had a nap and then went to the Fukudas' house
for a lovely dinner with Prof. Fukuda, his wife and their two grown-up
children. The house is brand new, elegant and in a mostly western style.
Fukuda's
son and daughter made our kids feel very much at home, playing with
traditional games and origami.
[Fukudas, Pam and kids] [Fukudas
Pam, kids and me].
We arrived at the spage-age Kyoto station and hailed a cab. We soon discovered that taxi drivers have no idea where Ryokan Yuhara is and need directions or a map. "Takase Kawa to Shomen Dori" (at Takase Canal & Shomen street) seems to work. Takase Kawa is an ancient canal that runs parallel to the much larger Kawa River on the eastern side of Kyoto.
We have the largest room in the inn, huge by Japanese
standards at 30x40 feet with a
little sun porch that overlooks a tiny courtyard full of bonsai trees,
tended by Mr. Yuhara. It is a traditional room with futons, tatami mats
on the floor, sliding wood and paper doors and a cedar panelled ceiling.
There is a little table for tea and a small red television that requires
a 100Yen coin to play. The toilets are down the hall (with special toilet
slippers) and a shower downstairs that shares a room with a Japanese bath
for all nine of the inn's rooms. Evening is for shower+bathing, morning
is for showers only. Each morning, Mrs. Yuhara makes the rounds, rearranging
all the slippers and opening all the windows so that it's as brisk in the
hallways as it is outside.
[Our tatami no heya at Ryokan Yuhara, looking
out toward the tiny courtyard garden.]
[Packing up, amidst the futons, etc. (Laura is
hidden inside the red futon)]
On our first night we ate at a tiny restaurant just a couple of doors down from the hotel. We had okonomiyaki - sort of Japanese pancakes, or maybe egg foo yong, prepared by an jolly stout fellow who showed us his fishing mementos from various trips to the U.S. and Guam. He starts with a pancake foundation and adds eggs, noodles, shrimp, and chopped scallions. Tasty and very filling.
'Round the corner I saw some interesting construction of an new/old house using a nice mix of old craftsmanship and new technology.
March 24, I went to Toyota in Nagoya while
Pam and the kids visited the Yamadas, including their daughter Hanna and
son, Shuji. They went to the Meiji Mura
- a sort of park on the outskirts of town, with a large collection of Meiji
Restoration period Victorian style buildings. The saw a church,
a
stream train, a lighthouse (the Shinagawa
lighthouse) and
played on a steep carpeted
ramp that cannot be climbed without a running start. The Yamadas took
us to dinner at a fancy restaurant with a view of the famous Nagoya Castle
and dropped us off at the train station.
[Left to right: Yoji and Shuji,
Kyoko, Laura and Pam, Hanna (6) and Charlotte].
March 25, a sightseeing day. We walked up to
the Kiyomizu temple, passing through a small
temple with the
traditional orange arches
on
the way. There was also a gate with what looked
like bales of something...
Kiyomizu temple is actually a large complex of temples and shrines
above a large cemetery on a hillside east
of Kyoto. The most prominent feature is a brightly
painted three-story pagoda and orange shrine
with a huge bell. After walking
up a path, one approaches an imposing set of
steps leading to the main gate. The temple is full of ancient Buddhist
figures and paintings. The veranda affords
a terrific view of Kyoto.
We had lunch at a McDonald's (kids choice) and then caught a subway
(taxi would have been better) to Nijojo Palace.
Nijo Palace is a large and impressive set of buildings
built at the height of Kyoto's power, circa 1600. The inner castle
was occupied on and off for hundreds of years and shows interior construction
details that are, frankly, not too different from those of the Ryokan Yuhara
(though much larger and grander).
The outer palace, where the Shogun met visitors and feudal daimyo,
and housed his large staff of guards, is the more exciting one to visit.
The first few rooms are decorated with extensive gold paint and depict
scenes of tigers, dragons, and other intimidating creatures. The inner
rooms are decorated with gentler themes (cranes, gardens, cherries in bloom).
But all rooms have a pair of red-tassled doors out of which the Shogun's
guards could spring at a moment's notice.
The palace is also famous for its Nightingale Floors, floorboards that
are designed to squeak, foiling any would-be Ninja assassins in the night.
And to our kids' delight, they still do squeak very well.
[Pam and Laura on bridge to inner palace - a
mixed sunny/rainy day]
[Garden by the inner palace (still waiting for
Spring)]
[Moat and bridge near inner palace]
[Charlotte and Felix outside the ornate palace
gate]
[In a courtyard, looking toward the outer (Guards)
palace].
For dinner we meet an old friend from my student
days in Pittsburgh, Eiki Kurokawa, and his son (now grown and heading off
to Tokyo University in April.) Eiki continues to work at Mitsubishi Heavy
Industries. Unfortunately, his wife and daughter could not come due to
their daughter's medical condition.
[Group photo at a Chinese restaurant, opposite
side of Kyoto station.]
Okubo's students are also developing avatars that
follow the motion (head and arms) of a person engaged in a teleconference
with
one or more partners. The avatar images can be made to be facing each other,
sitting side-to-side, etc. An interesting idea for design collaboration,
where gesture is known to be important.
[Pam talks to Gonza and Gonza, who appear to
be paying attention (unlike Laura)]
[Laura gets fitted up for teleconferencing
with avatars]
Afterward, Prof. Okubo took us on a quick tour
of Kurashiki, which has a section of preserved old buildings along a canal.
This is where merchants used to have their warehouses and shops, storing
rice and other commodities. Now it's a popular tourist attraction.
[Pam and kids admire a swan (far left) in
the canal]
[Shops along the canal]
[A group of Japanese Alpenhorn (!) players.]
We were a bit rushed because we needed to board
the train in time to meet with the Hanadas in Kobe for dinner. (Hiroshi
Hanada had been a visitor at Stanford CDR several years ago.) Fortunately,
with the wonders of tiny Japanese cell phones, we were able to call on
Okubo's phone and let the Hanadas know we'd which train we'd be on. We
had a wonderful dinner. They have a brand new (Sekisui of course) house
after the Kobe earthquake. Their daughter, Ayumi is the same age as Charlotte,
and played very well with our kids.
[Hanadas, Pam and kids]
[Mariko Hanada & children with us]
On Monday, while Mark visited a professor at the University of Kyoto, Pam and the girls went off with the big suitcase on a laundry adventure (by Tuesday morning we would be out of clean clothes). We almost missed the door to the Coin Laundry, as the whole place was 6 feet wide by about 15 feet long. Three washing machines and a front loader, plus 4 dryers and a front loader and --only in Japan -- a special sneaker washing machine and dryer that resembled a microwave with shoe stands. 300Y for a wash, 100Y for 8 minutes on the dryer. We followed the pictograms for the workings of the washing machine, but looked in vain for the vending machine for soap. A young man who came in behind us (and therefore was forced to wait as we had commandeered the two empty washers) looked at me blankly as I said "Soap?" and guided me to the coin exchange machine. Finally, after I made bubble motions and said "powder," a lightbulb dawned and he said brightly, "Autosoap!" The soap comes into the machine automatically.
We played hangman sitting on the sole
bench. When it was Laura's turn she trotted over to the drink vending machine
in search of an American word and came up with, as it happened, "Drink
Paradise." As in Dydo Refreshments are the best in thirst quenching and
"Welcome to Drink Paradise."
Into the dry cycle the proprietor,
a stylish older woman, materialized from a door I hadn't even noticed and
gave the girls each a cookie. So we have clean clothes for another 3 days.
We checked into our tiny, very expensive rooms at the Washington Shinjuku Hotel and joined Prof. Ken Sasaki and his wife for dinner. We all decided to go to the Sumitomo Building, which is a huge skyscraper just a long block away from the hotel. We whisked up to the 50th floor and spend a bit of time finding an appropriate restaurant. After dinner, we received a bunch of "lottery tickets" which Ken explained we could enter in a raffle on the ground floor. Laura won an all-you-can-grab handful of candy, and Charlotte won 5000 Yen in "Monopoly money" (money which can only be used in participating stores and restaurants in the Sumitomo Building). Charlotte was rather non-plussed. And Laura was jealous.
On Thursday Pam and kids toured Shinjuku Gyoen
(park) near the hotel... and did laundry.
[kids beneath an early cherry tree blooming
in Shinjuku Gyoen]
[kids at pond, with Wolfie and Penny]
[Laura, stone lantern and magnolia in bloom]
[Watching the koi from a little bridge]
[kids with streamer beneath a plum tree in
bloom]
On Thursday evening, we all went on a "dinner cruise" in traditional
Japanese style, with a tatami-floored barge and a feast of sushi, tempura
and nabe soup.
["All aboard" says Vlaho Kostov - a visiting Ph.D.
student from Macedonia, working with Prof. Fukuda]
[The feast in the boat. From left to right: Jiang,
Vlaho and his fiancee, the Fukudas' daughter, Mark, Shuichi Fukuda, Steve
Raper, Mats Hanson, Pam]
[Looking out at the modern buildings on the Tokyo
waterfront at night].
We had dinner in the Sumitomo Building to use up some of the "Monopoly money" that Charlotte won a couple of days earlier. Unfortunately, most of the restaurants there were very crowded, upscale, and not happy to seat families with children. We wound up eating spaghetti at a kind of upscale coffee-shop/cafe with a 5000 Yen view.
