Life in general

Egg Decorating

2007-04-08T11:02:00.000-07:00

The Egg-team of SJC (below) did a great job decorating the Easter eggs!!!

Pillow Fight at Robson Square

2007-03-25T01:07:00.000-07:00

Japan has dog fights, Spain has bull fights, Canada has ....pillow fights.
It all started like in an old fashion western movie, all of the sudden what it seemed to be a peaceful crowd took the pillows from their hoisters (and some from their purses) and started hitting each other erratically. The fight did not comply at all with the rules established at the Geneva convention: the press was beaten to feathers, I took several hits while taking these pictures and they used kids as human shields as you can see below. In the process of getting beaten I noticed that the JCPenney line of pillows is much more efficient and more endurant than that of Martha Stuart which quite frankly blowed into a thousand feathers at the first serious hit. The queen of the pillow fight was by far the duckishnikov, the finest in Russian weaponery since the end of the cold war, proving once and for all that foie-gras is not the only useful thing that can be made from ducks.

A group from the Royal Canadian Mountain Police was at the scene in a mission to learn the lost art of pillow combat. They end-up arresting a few members of a small group of animal-rights activists that were interfeering with the pillow fight.

CBC announced during their 6 o'clock news cast that many community centers around Vancouver added to their Yoga and Pilates classes, a self defense agains pillow attack class. Lululemon already announced their new line of recyclable, bio-degradable and naturally compostable pillows that come with a child safety mechanism and, naturally, ergonomically designed to fit in any size purse.

Also many are afraid that the abundance of pillows in the market will increase the domestic violence so the government is puting a motion to limit the number of pillows in the houshold to one regular size pillow per adult and a small size pillow for all children under 18. Before going to bed the owner has to make sure that the pillow is locked in a safe place and that the feathers are separated from the cover.

(well, it should be pretty obvious that all this was a joke, but since I am flattering myself that I am not the only one reading my blog, consider this the official disclaimer)

new years

2007-03-11T16:48:00.000-07:00

A few of months ago we entered a new year. If you missed the opportunity to straighten your life and make resolutions, a few weeks ago you had another chance when we entered a new lunar year - Tomorrow Paula is celebrating her new year and in a few weeks we are entering the Persian new year. But than that's it for a while so all the new various years resolutions had to be done by now.
Here I am negotiating my fortune with my Chinese sign ... hopefully it will be a good year - no matter which one. If you missed all the abundence of those new years, lucky for you there is still a chance coming for you on St. Patrick's day.

Crepes et Fondue

2006-11-24T19:35:00.000-08:00

As my blog is turning more and more into a journal, I start recollecting some fun events that are worthy of recognition. To start: I joined a cooking club. I mean what is living in an international community without a proper cooking club? We have met three times already, and at my turned to be the chef I made cheese fondue and sweet crepes. I really like all types of fondues (cheese, hot pot, chocolate, etc.) and thus I have a nice fondue pot, but I am not using it nearly as much as I’d like. As for the crepes, the student life made me become an expert :) I can flip them, I can flambé them, anything you want.

Another ski season

2006-11-19T00:45:00.000-08:00

This year the snow came early in this part of the world. Both Whistler and Cypress opened ahead of schedule. We inaugurated the season at cypress (reduced ticket price :)

I went up with Katie, Margit and Tom. Petri ditched us at the last minute. Was a pretty nice day, cloudy in the morning, but bright with a very little touch of sun in the afternoon. At least we had no rain (or practically no rain).On the down-side most of the good runs were closed. Bossy took us up (2 snowboards, 2 pairs of skies and 4 people) very impressive for a normal size sedan without an auxiliary ski rack :) I wished Paula was here – hopefully she will make it in time for a good ski season.

Body Worlds

2006-11-18T02:14:00.000-08:00

Time to get back to my blog … otherwise I will miss a lot of interesting things that happens.

Today I went to see the famous Gunther von Hagens very famous “Body Worlds” exhibition at the Science World in Vancouver.

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Gunther von Hagens, a political dissident in east Germany (he was imprisoned and released after a $20,000 payment by the West German government) discovered in the early ‘80s Plastination: a technique that “makes it possible to preserve individual tissues and organs that have been removed from the body” (http://www.bodyworlds.com/en/plastination/plastination_process.html)

This allows him to use real bodies as educational tools to showcase and to intuitively understand the complex mechanism that is our bodies. The result is breathtaking. The exhibition has hundreds of items from real bodies showcasing various muscle groups or nervous system to plasticized organs. There is a wide range of messages being delivered to the view. The first one is purely educational. He uses the technique as a very powerful visual tool of the most hidden places in our body. The meticulosity of the models is amazing. There is also a strong message of self-awareness. On the one hand it is intimidating to see the immense complexity of our bodies; it makes you want to take better care of this very nice piece of machinery. On the other hand, it provides very graphic images of; let’s say a lung of a smoker or a liver of a drinker which will make even the most avid smoker and drinker to think twice before the next cigarette or bottle of beer. It also shows visually effects of fat and diet, although not nearly enough, especially for a north American audience.

Last but not least, this is indirectly the ultimate artistic expression of God’s creation. The color, the texture, the poses, the millions of pieces of tissue, bone and muscles that come together to make us what we are, is beautiful and very powerful on many levels.

To wrap up, I give very enthusiastic thumbs up. I spent 2.5 hours and I will probably go to see it again until it leaves Vancouver in January.

plane, trains and automobiles

2006-07-16T00:18:00.000-07:00

The end is near - I am at the Narita Airport in a little corner trying to wrap up my final impressions while still fresh while people are boarding the plane. Yes, people are already boarding, I arrived late, trying to squize every second left in viewing something new. That is why I planned my schedule with zero margin for error. If any of the several means of transportation will be late I will miss my plane. But we are in japan: everything will be on-time. I was not nervous for a second, I felt for the first time in my life like Phileas Phogg: cool watching my new watch and plan everything by the second. I knew that the subway will come exactly as I walk on the platform, that I will be arriving at the station at the exact right time , grabbing my last Japanese snack, that the train to the airport will be on time and will not have any delays, the shuttle to the terminal , everything will work perfectly - noone makes any mistakes or else this entire universe that we are so unaware of will colapse and like a black hole will suck the entire world in it.

The funny thing is that there was a screw up, but not a japanese one: Air Canada changed terminals, it now operates from a different terminal at Narita and obviously, noone cared to share this insignificant piece of information with me so I found myself shortly before the plane was supposed to leave in the wrong terminal. But the japanese efficiency was once again up to the challenge.

I literally found a new world - a certain point of reference for my future trips and an unforgatable one at that. I was very excited to go, and now as I am back and memories are starting to blur, I still get up sometimes in the morning thinking: "Oh My God, I was in Japan..."

contemporary art museums in Tokyo

2006-07-16T00:15:00.000-07:00

Hmmm, I really want to get done with my Japan posts so I can move on and maintain the blog as it should... with frequent and time sensitive posts. Before concluding the Japanese experience, I have to make a summary of my "artsy" experience in Japan.

I have seen a number of ineresting exhibitions, unfortunately, only one with Japanese thematic.

The first one I saw was the Watari museum, or Watarium (fig 1). The exhibition, entitled "Bye Bye, Nam June Paik" is , as you can imagine, an homage due to the recent passing of the artist.
I am not an expert of [contemporary] art so I will not embarass myself trying to give smart comments on the exhibition - I am sure that if you google the title you will find better references.

The second exhibition that I've seen, and in fact enjoy the most, was the Metropolitan Musem of Photography in Tokyo. I have seen two exhibitions: Michael Kenna's "In Japan - Conversation with the land" and the latest "World Press Photo". I enjoyed the former quite a lot, although it became repetitive after a while, perhaps because the Japanese landscape in some sense does not vary very much. But the exclusive beauty of Japanese landscape is in its trees and Michael Kenna does a very good job of simplifying the scenery to focus on the geometrical patterns of his trees.

While Michael Kenna's exhibition can be considered dull by some, the "world press photo" is in contrast quite shocking. You see everything from dead children, to cancer operated breasts with crystal visual quality and it is very traumatic, but in the same time very educational for the common person to become aware of the life outside his/her little infinetesimal sphere. Although one can see this exhibition anywhere in the world (I am guessing that from Tokyo will travel to oter cities, in fact I think it will even come to Toronto at some point), the unique relationship between Tokyo and its citizens is harmonic to the relationship between the viewer and the exhibition: the same huge contrasts, the same feeling of dominance of the city towards it people.

The last major exhibition I've seen was entitled "Africa Remix" in the Ropongy tower, the center of American culture in Tokyo. While I liked many of the pieces shown and while I liked the political statement and criticism of many western colonists, most artists no longer live in Africa - in fact most of them live in one of these 3 cities: New York, London, Paris. Kind of poor representation of African Art.

All these venues only host temporary exhibitions so in fact if you go, you will not see the same thing. But, these are,to the best of my knowledge, some of the main venues for contemporary art and browsing through their programs it seems they generally host very nice exhibitions so if you find yourself in Tokyo, give them a visit.

casual Tokyo

2006-07-06T23:48:00.000-07:00

An entire chapter of my trip was dedicated to the study of the Tokyo youths: what do they do, what do they like, how are they managing to keep themselves sane in a world that spins faster than anywhere else on the planet (fig 1, 2)

Wether they are street artists (fig 3,4), sipping an asahi beer (fig 5) or watching in tears how Japan lost a big game at the world cup (fig 6) on the large screens of the electronic stores they are part of a cultural lattice that reflects little of their past.

The last two pictures shows a Japanese kid looking at his very rich inheritance. Will he be able to play his hand as well as his parents did ? Will he be dragged in the pop-american-culture-clone that dominates Japan at the moment ?

That is why I like that picture very much... the child and his father they were walking around the 53th floor of the Mori tower and he was glued to every single window, fascinated by the outside world.

the physics of air flow and a pot of cold noodles

2006-07-06T22:42:00.000-07:00

This is the problem with the off-line blogs, I lost my trail of thoughts, but I will get back to it with a little story and once again a pictureless post.

With one exceptions, my days in Tokyo were pretty long. I would hit the road around 9am and come back around 10-11pm or even later. In the morning I would visit mueseums, galleries or showrooms that would otherwise close by 5-6 usually and in the evening I would hang out where most Tokyo youth would hang out: everywhere. So it is understandable that I would be rather tired at the end of the day.

My hotel was located in Asakusa, a pretty honorable middle-class Tokyo neighborhood, equipped with its share of temples and rather quiet compared with the rest of the city and also quite affordable in terms of hotels.

As I was coming home one evening, I was tempted to have a late supper at one of the local restaurants who looked exactly like what I always imagined an opium den from the Sherlock Holmes stories would look like: hidden behind several curtains there were several small rooms filled with smoke and odors from the shoes gathered at the entrance after a full day of work. Naturally I gathered all my confidence and walked in.

Since I was alone I was directed to the bar - where another Japanese just arrived as well.
Like any respectable local place, the menu was only in Japanese and contained no pictures or explicit graphics. But, lucky me, I pointed suggestively to my neighbor and since Japanese are very quick fellows the order was taken without further incidents. While we waited for the food to arrive, the waiter brought some beer and after a few sips I had to admit that my fellow dinner buddy had good taste in beer so I was hopeful that his taste in food was as good.

Finally the food arrived, it turns out that I had ordered a cold noddle dish which looked very casual, but nevertheless tasted quite good. You dip the noodles in the hot soup that accompanied the noddles and all in all it makes quite a good combination.

So far so good, I was rather happy and ready to enjoy my surprise dinner when it happened.
My neighbor started to eat. To start, his jaws never fully closed while eating resulting in the most noisy chewing that I had ever experienced, more powerful than a sledge-hammer working at full speed and more annoying than the squeak of a door that opens and close 20 times per second. As if this was not enough, his technique of eating the noodles was based entirely on the high-speed airflow from outside of his mouth to the inside resulting also in a symphony that could be easily heard by the emperor in his sound prrof room from his palace 10 miles away;

After only a few seconds I feel the urge to run away and for the first (and last) time in Japan I would have eaten at McDonald's if only to get rid of the sound that unfortunately remained imprinted somewhere in my brain as in stormy nights I can still hear it.

Well, I had to find a compromising solution and one presented itself - bathroom. I went there and flushed the toilet (which almost covered the sounds) until my dinner buddy finished his dinner which fortunately I must say it happened pretty quickly.

He payed and left in a rush and I came back and finish my noddles in silence. It was the perfect ending to a beautiful day.

universal design

2006-07-01T02:07:00.000-07:00

The concept, which apperently was introduced by americans is outlined in the first two pictures.
A further simplification of the problems is to say "how can we make a one size fits all thing in every dimension from economics to ergonomics.".

The irony, if you can see it, comes from the fact that the universal design motto seems to be: "universal design values each and every individual" when in fact it boldly tries to create a common denominator for everybody, smoothing to the extreme any individual traits that each of us has. Perhaps is a subtle point... I will not tread on this issue anymore.

Anyways, it was there that I found out that I am quite a bit taller than the average Japanese (see fig) and this may explain why I bumped my head several times of various things, most likely from the pre-universal-design era.

The universal design wall (fig) shows many items, but the foldable piano was my favourite.

evolution

2006-07-01T01:45:00.000-07:00

To a different Toyota site, a much larger place in the Tokyo bay area, they found a neat way to show the evolution of technology once again in the context of cars; and not just any cars, but Toyota cars.

Not showd here in pictures, they had a gallery where they show chronologically different car cockpits and they explained the incremental modifications and design and ergonomic decisions that converged to the modern cockpit.

Speaking of which, the state of the art in terms of displays and controls are shown in the top pictures - from the latest Toyota hybrid mini-van: Toyota Estima.
The cockpit contains the truly ubiquitous GPS, which in Japan, due to their completely incoherent street numbering system, is a necessity rather than a luxury.

in which Leonardo do Caprio and a crash test dummy are trying to explain the world that Toyota has answers for all world's biggest questions

2006-07-01T01:18:00.000-07:00

I must admit that as far as sites go, I enjoyed a lot the hi-tech related ones, and in Tokyo there are plenty. They are divided into the museums type experience (to be addressed in a later post), and browsing around in huge showrooms - museums in their own rights, with the only diference that, to some extent, they show only one side of the coin.

I started to Toyoto amlux building, a Toyota museum/showcase gallery.

It became apparent that the reason why Lonardo di Caprio did not do any movies recently must be that he is driving his hybrid vehicle up and down Holywood blvd trying to explain his new best friend (see pic) why hybrid technology is the answer to all world's problems.

Moving along, there is a testimony from a test dummy (see fig) that, despite having crash multiple times is pretty much still intact, at east physically. You can also experience what it had been through in the simulator (see fig) and understand why the new inovative driving system control from Toyota saves you from all sorts of car trouble.

Although the general tone of his post is a little sarcastic due to the one-sideness that I was talking about earlier, I found the explanations and simulator pretty cool and the feeling pretty real. You go on a road with a "regular" system and you have a small accident, which I must say it feels pretty bad.And the second time on the same course you see how the system helps maintain the control of the car. And you do that a few times on varying road conditions.

A first glimpse at Tokyo

2006-06-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

Osaka was a nice transition between the old Japan (Kyoto) and the real modern Japan Tokyo.
The fact that words cannot describe Tokyo is somewhat understandable, but the problem that even pictures does not make it justice: you have to live it.

It is like social and cultural electrocution, combined to motion sickness from the millions of people rushing through the city every-day. Some of the main train stations are visited on average by as many as 700,000 people daily.

no-my-car day

2006-06-25T23:58:00.000-07:00

As I started my day in Osaka, I decided that a subway pass should facilitate things a bit and as I was fighting with the machine to dispense a subway day-pass I kept getting the message: "We do not recommend this pass". Well, since they did not recommend it I was not going to rush to buy it. After spending some time playing wit theoptions and frustrating the comuters in a busy week-day morning, I found this screen. What happened was that in certain day they have discounted passes caled "no-my-car day" pass which are abou half the price of a regular price. In addition to the funny translation, it was nice of them to let you know before rushing into buyng the day pass although I could not figure out why they did not want to just give you the day pass at the lower price directly...

the web spa

2006-06-25T23:51:00.000-07:00

As I was walking along the streets of Osaka, somewhat tired, I found a very interesting establishment: the "Respa". As the name suggests, it is a spa with all the usual refinements: massage (although mechanical), bath, etc. In addition to the standard stuff, it is geek oriented and you can also use the computers to work or play vudeo games or watch TV while enjoying the wonderful services, a favourite being the "rose petal" bath (in the picture). You can also eat and drink there; in brief, a typical geek can spend his life there without feeling deprived of anything.

every-day Osaka

2006-06-25T23:42:00.000-07:00

In other aspect, Osaka is a typical modern japanese city, small streets and nice gardens.

Nintendo

2006-06-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

Who would have thought that the big Super Mario Bro. success had its roots in Kyoto.
They started out manufacturing playing cards apparently

Osaka - the city of the Kitsch

2006-06-20T08:33:00.000-07:00

Kitsch seems to be ubiquitous in contemporary Japanese culture and IMO it comes from their passion for western culture resulting in many forms without substance. Or is it ? The key observation is that Japanese managed to do something extraordinary: they changed the status quo, raising the kitsch from its a priori inferior rating to nothing short of hypnotic.

one more thing....

2006-06-20T08:25:00.000-07:00

Take a good look at this picture? Anything peculiar ?
Yes, indeed pedestrians can cross in diagonal if they so please :)
A regular traffic light has 2 or 2.5 phases:

Phase 1 -> Axis N-S (forward and right turn or left respectively )
Phase 2 -> Axis E-W (forward and left turn or left respectively )
Half of phase for left turns

One problem with this model is that if it is busy (and Japan is VERY busy :) right turn is very difficult especially if you do not have red-right hand turn (or left hand turn as it would be here).

So their solution is to have 3 phases:

1. N-S (forward and reserved left turn, no pdestrians)
2. E-W (forward and reserved left turn, no pedestrians )
3. pedestrians only

Since they have only 1/3 of the time instead of roughly 1/2 they can also cross diagonally :)

I hope that this post was not to boring, it took me a little time to figure out the logic. In fact I climbed in the tower for this explicit purpose.

local trade

2006-06-20T08:12:00.000-07:00

One more post before closing the Kyoto chapter - regarding the life of the people in the city.
One very interesting characteristic about Kyoto is that although it is a very touristic place, it still has very many craft shops whose work is sold all over the world.

Unfortunately, it is shrinking and the new people are going away from it so it is possible to dissapear in the near future so you can think of this as a set of historical documents :)

The mugs are supposd to be sold for over $100 once they are done :)

Geisha

2006-06-20T08:00:00.000-07:00

Travelling to Japan and maintaining a blog, this is a necessary post, but I am not enjoying it too much because regardless of what I show or write people are bound to be dissapointed, mostly because the expectation are so high.

I will not even try to go into the historical or cultural mambo-jumbo, you have wikipedia for that - I will just say that you still see them in Kyoto in the Gion neighbourhood (fig 1) - our guide was very vague as to what is a contemporary Geisha has to do (he only said that it is very expensive :) - but he did show us a Geisha house (fig2) and exaplain the basic beaurocracy: bottom floor is the "manager offices"; top floor is the learning quarters - mostly dance, but he pointed out that Geisha are permanently learning something new, so the learning quarters are not only reserved for new Geishas, and the middle floor is ...

where art imitates life

2006-06-20T07:52:00.000-07:00

Well, once again the blogger permutated my images... anyways, I've hunted and surely enough found many cultural, social and technological differences between Japan and the rest of the western world as I know it. After careful consideration I decided not to put them all in my blog but only a few which are proeminent and special somehow.

When browsing any food shop you will notice that the boxes are not covered (fig 2) so anyone can take a look inside. THe funny thing is that they look really good, but if you look carefully (and only if you look carefully, fig 1) you will notice that they are all plastic.

You may ask why did I chose this particular example; maybe because it is very widespread among the street vendors to have plastic mocking of their products.

Ryokan

2006-06-20T07:43:00.000-07:00

Next day in Kyoto I had to move to a different Hotel since the Swedish familly started to suspect that my loyalties are with the Finns so my life might have been in danger.

It was the time and the place for me to try the traditional Japanese housing, the Ryokan. (fig).
The basics are that you sleep on a mat on the tatami floor , you get your shoes off at the very entrance, you change your shoes when you go to the bathroom, there is a curfew (11pm) and there is no internet. The curfew does not really mean much, as I pointed out before, Japanese people (at least where I've been) they go to bed really early, but the lack of internet was painful.

In which east meets west in more ways than one

2006-06-20T06:59:00.000-07:00

I put lots of pictures... it's time for some stories :) My first night in Kyoto I slept at a backpacker hostel, partly because it was cheaper, but also because there was nothing else available short of four stars hotels. (generally speaking, lodging in Japan was a bit of a problem, but more about that later)

At this hostel I've met two canadians and a family of 8 Swedish poeple, the youngest of which had no more than a couple of months :)

Speaking of canadians, they are everywhere. It is like an epidemic, any corner you turn, any street you walk, anything you do, anywhere you go in this big world you will find at least one canadian, usually more. It is ironic, it is not like they are crowded and searching for some privacy :) They hunt in packs, but they often travel alone, usually for very long periods of times, months at a time. Often they stop and work for a while as English teachers or other humanitarian purposes in less fortunate countries. They are interesting specimens, invariably they all look happy, optimistic and excited to be there. In general people like them because they are friendly and docile -

So when the swedish family guessed that I am from Vancouver, it was a huge compliment. I asked them what gave me away and they reply that they had their doubts, but in the end it was the cycling style that gave me away: the vancouver cycling stroke is known to be aggresive yet very athletic with a specific rythm to it; some people say that Herbert von Karajan was able to conduct the entire Mozart's Marriage of Figaro with ear plugs, just by looking at a promotional video of Stanley park.

It still remains the question of how did I end up cycling around Kyoto... Bikes here are very cheap to rent, around $6 / day; they have city bikes that are very confortable and you can store the camera in the little front storage compartment (see fig). If it does not rain I must say that this is the ideal way to see Kyoto, oppinion shared by a fellow Duch bycicle expert that I met, one may say by chance, after we collided because he was looking for traffic in the wrong dirction.

Kyoto is big enoug that you cannot traverse it easily by foot, but it is just small enough that you can go from one end to the other in about 45 min of normal pace. It is quite comfortable and you can get a taste of the less touristic sites.

Since the day I came was rainy, the first thing I did was go to a shrine and pray to stop raining. It worked, I have over 30 derees and sunny all days. I must have drinked anywhere between 10 and 20 liters of liquid a day. The lemonade presented above was my favourite :)

Standard Issue Shinto Shrine

2006-06-20T06:33:00.000-07:00

Just to give some context, Shintoism was the national Japanese religion before Buddhism. The two religions clashed at the beginning, but as someone in the group pointed out, the Japanese seem to be more spiritual than religious and hence they soon found out practical ways to combine the two. In fact the two seem to co-exist in harmony. As our guide put it: Buddhism deals with the afterlife and Shintoism deals with the everyday fortune. For instance, if you have an exam or need money you go to a Shinto Shrine and not a Temple.

A Shinto Shrine is trivial to identify:

It is usually very colorful (fig 1)
It always has this sign at the entrance (fig 2)

Shinto how to:

First you wash your hands (fig 4).
You donate some money
You ring the bell (fig 5) to make sure that the respective God is around to listen to you
In addition to the bell, you clap your hands (not shown)
You bow.

The last picture is not a very nice Shrine, but it belongs to the God of learning (so even if it is actually located in Osaka, I put it here). You can also tell that it belongs to the God of learning by the amount of Sake stored nearby.

I just realized that the pictures were reorder by "logger" so try to figure out the permutation... I am too tired.

Walk in Kyoto Talk in English...

2006-06-20T06:21:00.000-07:00

The one and only guided tour that I did in Japan (so far) was this one :)
A 5 hour walk with this guy and a bunch of tourists with itchy fingers (look who's talking).

He provided us with Shintoism for dummies (nxt post). and Japanese Buddhism for dummies.
Apparently, according to him, in the Japanese version of Buddhism everybody goes to heaven.
The temple that we visited was being renovated hence only one outdoor picture with the main gate.

Btw, the rope is made out of human hair.

The picturesque Kyoto

2006-06-20T06:08:00.000-07:00

It's good to be the ... Shogun

2006-06-20T05:42:00.000-07:00

Not only you have your own up-scale real-estate, your own tea-party, your own garden, but you even get your own dock...

Next stop...Kyoto

2006-06-17T07:28:00.000-07:00

The conference is over, the vacation starts. As I was very busy during the conference I am writing all these in the bullet train bound to Tokyo that I really starting to get very fond of. The speed is so high that the pressure in my ears changes and I have to equalize every once and a while. I am hoping to be able to update the blog daily form now so I record the impressions while still fresh.

Now, close to the half way point, I have to say that I appreciate the movie much better than I did before and I can say that the mood and the atmosphere is very accurate. Also Japanese culture is very close to the stereotype; in some sense this can spoil the experiences to some extent, but on the other hand every once and a while you are very surprised by something you did not expect… usually some type of food or some building or some people and the sum of all these experiences makes traveling so great and Japan so very appealing and different.

Dine out if you can...

2006-06-17T07:26:00.000-07:00

Dining experiences in Matsushima were quite authentic, to the point that we had no common language and the restaurants had no pictures or plastic molding of their food (a lot more about this later). First time we luckyli had a japanese in our group who facilitated the conversation to some extent. I had fresh fresh water eel (by fresh I mean it was alive just minutes before being served)

The only annoying thing was that everything closes at 6 with very few exceptions. This on top of the fact that it gets dark at 7:30 (Japan doesnot observe daylight savings) it made the whole trip a little spooky.

My first temple…

2006-06-17T07:17:00.000-07:00

Part of the organized events was a visit to the local temple and a cruise on the bay.

In all honesty, I am not a big fan of temples, but in a few days I might change my mind. This temple called… is a medium size temple and we learned from an English guide who did not speak English that well the traditional structure and rituals that used to happen there. The most interesting thing was the hara-kiri room where otherwise very capable samurai were committing suicide upon losing their “lord; between 16-20 samurai per lord, depending on the context. Obviously from a modern standpoint it does not make any sense, but the defending argument was that it was a culture of honor and respect. I always thought that hara-kiri is a practice that was helping the “victim” escape being captured which was a bit of a pain before the Geneva convention not to mention that it was the ultimate shame for a samurai. It also helped the victim not to give the satisfaction to be killed by his opponent and had the practical aspect that you could not be tortured to provide sensitive information.

Another interesting features of these temples is that the gardens have carved walls with statues (see fig)

SMI 2006

2006-06-17T07:14:00.000-07:00

The conference which was the main purpose of my trip was a huge success and very entertaining. We had complimentary breakfast, lunch and dinner every day and everything was outstanding, everybody from Asians to Europeans to North Americans gave many thumbs up to the organizers.

Little town Japan

2006-06-17T07:02:00.000-07:00

After an afternoon at Tohoku University and Sendai we finally headed towards our final destination: Matsushima. Matsushima (fig) is a little resort town on the pacific coast famous for its islands(fig). Small and coquette, it also features thermal baths and some natural wonders (fig). We were staying at Tosoku Hotel, a wonderful high scale hotel nicely located on top of a hill overseeing Matsushima bay (fig).

Fairly standard item as far as hotels go, it had the whole range of services: from hot baths and massages, several restaurants from traditional Japanese to French cuisine to live music every day and some shops.

For Japanese, the thermal baths were the main local attraction. Since you go inside absolutely naked (only an optional 10cmx10cm towel to cover the private areas) pictures were not really an option, but they were not really that different than any thermal baths around the world. What was special was that the baths were used uniformly throughout the day (and not just in the evening as I would have thought) and everybody were walking around the hotel in kimonos complimentary from the hotel (fig)

Little City Japan

2006-06-17T06:56:00.000-07:00

I spent little time in Sendai, only a couple of hours before going to tohoku university to attend some conference related events. The city is very different than Tokyo and I started to notice the cultural polarization of the Japanese people. I will go on a little tangent thyat I hope is worth your time.

Just like New-York is not America or Toronto is not Canada, Tokyo is not Japan. Tokyo is an amaizing international city, vibrant and exciting, but not representative for Japan. still need to validate the theory in the following days.

2006-06-17T06:38:00.000-07:00

The first impression when you come to Japan is that everything works. That’s not a little thing. Millions of things running symbiotically as a result of good design and smart planning is a definite thumbs up for the modern japan.

Trains are an important part of Japanese life and in Tokyo there are literally hundred of subway and train lines that connect every two points in Tokyo and as an important tip for anyone visiting japan, the Japan Rail Pass is an absolute must have. Not only that it can be cheaper than paying for each trip individually, but figuring out the connections and the system of payment it is a very time consuming task. More about that later.

I had to travel a few hundred kilometers north to Matsushima, near Sendai for my conference. The trip is only a little over 90min, by the high speed bullet train.

Very comfortable and fast it makes the life of tourists very easy. It is also very convenient for Japanese, but it is quite pricy even compared to North America. For instance a ticket Tokyo-Sendai, a little longer than Toronto-Kingston (~350km) and a little shorter than Toronto –Otawa) takes about 97min and it costs about $105 one way.

Captain log – June 13th 2006

2006-06-17T06:35:00.000-07:00

I spent the night in a pretty cheap hotel, after a fairly long search for cheap accommodation in Tokyo. It was the night when Japan lost against Australia 1-3 after they were leading the game 1-0 after the first period. Since I was quite jet-lagged I watched part of the game and the first cultural discrepancy came as I saw people literally crying because of the result, being extremely frustrated by the fact that they did have the lead.

This was to be the first in a long line of what I like to call in the spirit of politically correctness “cultural discrepancies”.

It was a typical Tokyo weed-day morning at rush hour in Tokyo… I have never seen so many people walking at such speeds and I have finally seen the train pushers, but once again, this chapter will be revisited for sure later.

A picture is a thousand words

2006-06-17T06:33:00.000-07:00

… and that is why the first thing I did after arriving to Japan was to get myself a digital camera… so my first stop on June 12^th 2006 was Akihabara a.k.a the geek heaven.

Akihabara or the electronic town is the mekka of electronics, where you can find both bargain items as well as the latest models that we’ll make their way to north America in a couple of years (maybe).

I honored my kind by spending a great many hours there, but I will revisit this chapter as I will go again and this time I shall have a camera!!!

genesis

2006-04-05T12:49:00.000-07:00

I started my blog today, April 5th 2006. Why ? it seems fashionable and a few people even got rich. Also I wanted to update my web-page and a blog seem to be complementary in some sense.

Altough I have many pictures on-line, none of them has text and many of them have interesting stories - this way I am hoping to add more life to my virtual cold world.

That is all for now - let's hope that new entries will come shortly.

ciao
Tibi