Japan Part II

The JR line is one among scores of different lines, but it seems to be the most prominent. (click on the photo for a larger view)


As I mentioned in my last post, the way to get around Japan is by train. And their are lots of choices. Unless your travels take you far outside one of the larger cities, there is very little reason to ever step into a car. It's one thing to appreciate the trains. It's another thing altogether to figure out where they go.



Oh. Now it's clear!



Standing room only.


No one who travels to Japan should miss the Shinkonsen - Japan's bullet train. Besides being a beautiful sight to behold and an engineering marvel, it is sqeaky clean, always on time, and will whisk you the length of Japan at well over 100 miles an hour. We took the Shinkonsen from Tokyo north about an hour to visit with Honda Motor Corp., and then down to Nagoya to visit Toyota and Denso before heading back to Tokyo.



The Shinkonsen at Tokyo Station.



A cold tea anyone?



Or how abou a snack?



Mount Fuji as seen from the Shinkonsen on the way to Nagoya.



Mobile Professionals.


When people ask me, "what's Tokyo like?", I ask them if they remember the planet Corosant from the movie "Star Wars". The whole planet is one big city, and endless horizon of skyscrapers, gleaming metal, and lights. That's Tokyo. And Nagoya, shown below, is not much different.



A view of Nagoya from the Marriot Hotel elevator.


Another great thing about Japan is the food. What strikes you first is the variety. Japanese meals, espescially if you're on a business dinner, tend to be elaborate affairs, and it really helps if you're open to a little experimentation. For unless you speak the language sometimes it's difficult to avoid eating foods you cannot identify. A stable of the Japanese diet, however, comes out of the ocean, and not nessarily fish. Eel, squid, and octopus are common fare on Japanese dinner plates, or lunch plates, or breakfast plates.



"Help Mr. Bill!".



Sashemi anyone? If you visit Japan often you really do develop a taste for it. Squid, however, presents more of a challenge. I eat it politely, but that's about all.


By Thursday the gang from the States was pretty worn out. Here we are with Koseki-san, a senoir Director for HP in Japan and our host during our visit there.



From the left, Tetsuya Koseki, Dr. Dustin Blair, Me, Mitch Abrams.

Return from the Land of the Rising Sun

Mount Fuji from Bill's room on the 28th floor of the Century Hyatt in Tokyo.


I know it's been awhile since this blog has been updated. Apologies. Life has been, if anything these past months, frantic. Between holidays, kid's events, birthdays, illness (nothing life threatening, thank God) and overwork we have been buried of late.

And then there is the occassional overseas business trip, like the one I returned from on Saturday from Japan. I was there to talk about, what else, patents! Doesn't sound exciting? OK, it's not for everyone. But when patents mean a trip to Japan you can't complain. I always look forward to visiting Japan. You definately know you're not in Kansas anymore Toto. This was my fourteenth or fifteenth trip there but I'm always amazed by the same things: the spoken language, hatacana alphabet, and the blizzard of kanji characters. Grade schoolers memorize a thousand of them. Then there's the dizzying number of people, their politness, professionalism, and winnowy beauty. I'm always amazed by the variegated and exotic foods you find, the immense scale and density of Japan's cities, like Tokyo and Nagoya, and of course the trains. I love the trains. They are ubiquitous with their swiss watch punctuality and network of tracks the cover the land like a spiders web. Japan would not be what it is without the trains. They are to Japan what cars are to LA (I'll take the trains anyday).

Incredibly, I forgot my camera this trip. Not to worry, becuase it forced my colleague, Dr. Bill Wagner, to shoulder the burden of capturing our trip on film. This is to all our advantage as Bill not only owns a nicer camera than mine he is a much more talented photographer, as the pictures below will attest.

This will be the first batch of a series of blogs I'll include over the next week. The shots are that good. And Bill took a lot of them - over 200.

I hope you enjoy these. To see a bigger and better view simply click on the picture. Doing so will take you to Flickr where you can view them in all sorts of sizes that will fill your entire monitor.

So enjoy the Land of Rising Sun!



Our home away from home.



A view of the Hyatt from the Governent square in Shinjuku.



The chandelier in Phantom of the Opera had to be stolen from the lobby of our hotel.



The government buildings in Shinjuku are awesome. Our hosts referred to them as "taxeaters" ;-)




The Park Hyatt down the street. For those of you who saw "Lost in Translation", this is where it was filmed. The "Park" is arguably the best hotel in Tokyo with room rates to match. And no, I've never stayed there.



The government buildings from Shinjuku train station. Takashiyama, one of Japan's biggest department stores, is right behind us.



We didn't ride the taxis much, but it's always an adventure in Tokyo.



A typical side street in Shinjuku.



From left to right: Dr. Bill Wagner. Dr. Dustin Blair, Mitch Abrams, and yours truly on the Shinkonsen, Japan's beautifull bullet train.