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Pack up your bags coz we are heading to the city of Godzilla himself,
yes ladies and gentlemen-we are off to Tokyo !
So I was really excited about my 5 day trip to Tokyo where we were to
Visit some labs where we were invited and then spend the weekends
At Tokyo Game Show 2008 !
The highlight of the trip for me was the Shinkansen ride(Bullet train).
And the best part, we were riding on the latest and the fastest of the bullet
train series-Nozomi N700 series.Here are some of photos of the train-
We travelled from Osaka to Tokyo in just 2 and half hours. And the trip was awesome.The train of course arrived 5 minutes before departure and exactly at 7 am we were off. The ride was so smooth given we were travelling at the speed of 300 km/h (186 mph).
We got great view of the country including Kyoto and of course the beautiful Mt.Fuji. Btw, when we enquired when we could look at Mt.Fuji, the uniformed trained attendant said -“Between 8:45 to 8:47 am” – now that’s the kind of precision Japanese have.
Artifical Island of Tokyo
When we arrived at Tokyo, we went off to visit Odaiba where the
Digital Human Research Center conducts its work.
Now Odaiba is basically an artificial Island built up of garbage
and debris and left over to settle for years(50 years I think)
after which The government sold it to corporations at a huge profit.
The island is also famous for some of the strange building design there,
Like the Fuji Television building –
There we received a tour by Dr. Kagami who heads the Digital Human
Interaction Team and he and Dr. Joel Chestnutt demonstrated their work.
At the lab we got the latest look at the upcoming technologies and
I got to try out some awesome Virtual real-time 3D sketching.
Here is my team with the robot at the lab :
Then it was on to the Miraikan – the National Museum of Emerging Science and
Innovation to meet with Dr. Akihiko Shirai, who gave us a tour of all the interactive
exhibits and a demonstration of Asimo !
Here we spotted the awesome global with multiple screens :
After that we headed off to our hotel. Unfortunately(fortunately) we were
staying at the grand New Otani hotel rather than one of the capsule hotels of
Tokyo(The stay at New Otani was sponsored of course, I couldn’t afford that room myself).
And that was just Day one in Tokyo.