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.