Alexander Enoch

As I write this I’ve been back in Scotland for just over one week. It’s quite nice to be home, although obviously it feels quite cold here! I find myself missing Japanese food already, but I’m sure I’ll adapt back the student diet of pasta and pizza pretty soon.

I will write a closing blog shortly, and try to sum up my experiences in Japan as a whole as best as I can, but in this post I’m just going to tell you all about my last week in Japan.

For the last week it was back to the 23rd floor of the Shiodome Centre to continue the market research I had started in before I spent a week in labs. I was exploring the European market for Fujitsu’s range of high-definition TV encoders and decoders. Researching the broadcasting markets was quite interesting, and I learned some things about the CCTV market in the UK (which is a very large market!), but the most fun part of the week work-wise was on Wednesday when I was asked to make a poster/flyer for a conference/trade-show Fujitsu will be attending in Amsterdam. I spent pretty much all of Wednesday making the flyer, but it was a nice break from the world of market research, and hopefully it will help Fujitsu sell some units!

On Monday night I had my leaving party, and so a lot of us went down to a restaurant in Ginza. There was live jazz music, which was very nice, and something I don’t think I’ve ever had at a restaurant before. I had to give another short speech, as one always does at these occasions, but I don’t think it went too badly. The social lubrication provided by the sake and shochu probably didn’t hurt either. After the meal the big, big boss of the department, who had come along for the night, announced that he would take us to a Scottish pub he knew. The pub was in actuality Irish, but that’s pretty much close enough when you’re in Japan. After a few pints of Guinness what must have been literally close to one hundred ‘kampai!’s (‘kampai’ is the Japanese word for ‘cheers’, or what you say when you toast something), we stumbled off to catch the last train home.

On Wednesday morning Colin, Leonore and I decided to get up super early to go to see Tsukiji fish market in action. I had been to Tsukiji market twice before, but both times had been for lunch, when the market is not really trading. This time we arrived there at about 7am, not incredibly early, but still early enough to catch the tail end of the interesting stuff. The whole place was packed, and the people working there were driving round these rather strange looking, but very functional motorised carts. We witnessed more than one traffic incident while we were there, but no one really seemed to mind too much! It was quite fun to walk around and be able to point at things like octopus or sea snails going ‘eaten that…’, ‘eaten that…’, and the occasional ‘ooh, I’ll need to eat that later…’

There’s no doubt about it, my culinary horizons have certainly been widened since I came to Japan. A week before I left for Japan I was in France and was served gizzards at a restaurant, and they seemed horrible at the time. Now I would welcome a plate of gizzards; they could quite possibly be the most palatable thing on the menu in some places. Anyway, my greatest challenge yet came on Thursday night, when we were invited by SDI to a restaurant on the 42nd floor of the Shiodome Centre (very convenient for Colin and me) for a leaving party and interview with a reporter from the well known publication Immigration News. The interview itself went quite well, although it was a very strange experience being presented with an old oversized tape Dictaphone (surely this should be digital in Japan?) and asked questions. I must admit I felt a little bit of stage fright! After the reporter had left we continued on with the meal, and at one point we were served a giant fish head, complete with two giant fish eyeballs. I still can’t work out whether someone ordered the fish head on purpose, or whether it was a mistake, but either way we got it.

Stephen Baker at this point suggested that the interns should eat the eyeballs, as of course he and Frank had tried them before. After Zach and Euan refused it fell on to the Fujitsu interns to step up to the plate, and so on a count of three Colin and I each ate a fish eyeball the size of a large marble. It was actually a lot more pleasant than I was expecting, although that’s not really saying much! I am not sure I would order them again, but at least I tried them once.

After the meal we managed to drag Mr Baker along to what would be the last karaoke night of the Japan trip (sob!). One of the highlights of my trip has got to be doing a duet with Zach on ‘I believe in miracles (you sexy thing)’ by Hot Chocolate. We thought we did it rather well actually, and were thinking about forming a Hot Chocolate cover band. It would probably be called White Chocolate.

Friday was the last day at work, and it was quite sad to be leaving the people we had worked beside over the past eight weeks. Colin and I both had to do our final presentations, and both finished off work on them less than five minutes before we had to present them – it was a fairly stressful day! They went pretty well though, I had found out quite a lot of information during the course of the research, and so I had plenty to talk about. After the presentations we tidied up our work, tidied up our desks, and bid farewell to our workmates in the Shiodome Centre.

Probably the biggest downside to working in Tokyo was that it was sometimes difficult to immerse ourselves in the more traditional cultural experiences. With time to travel in Japan you can visit places like Kyoto, Osaka, Hokkaido and Hiroshima, but when you only have the weekends it can be quite difficult to travel far out of the city. Luckily there are some traditional things that you can experience right in the middle of the big city, and on Friday night Colin and I went to see a traditional Japanese form of theatre known as Kabuki. The Kabuki theatre building itself was very old, and our seats were situated on the fourth level. For 500 yen I bought myself some opera glasses.

The plays in kabuki theatre are set in traditional Japanese times, and the actors themselves often become quite famous in Japan. The hallmark of the style seems to be the almost comic delivery of the lines from the actors, where a single syllable will often be elongated to last several seconds. When a great master of the craft enters or exits a scene it is common for people in the audience to shout out the actors name as a show of appreciation, thus adding another truly unique element to the experience! The play we saw was about a thief who masquerades as a high priest in order to rescue a girl who is being held against her will be a corrupt samurai lord. Whilst it was sometimes difficult to understand exactly what was going on, it was very enjoyable nonetheless.

Saturday was the last full day in Japan, and Colin and I met up with Zach and his girlfriend Tamami to visit the Studio Ghibli museum. Studio Ghibli is the animation studio responsible for a great many films, including the incredible Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. The museum was very well done, even if it was a little small. The highlight of the visit was seeing a 20 minute short film. Even though it was entirely in Japanese it was still mesmerising due to the enchanting nature of the animation and the subject matter covered. After the museum we walked around for a bit to find somewhere to grab lunch, and we happened upon a restaurant/café called ‘Pancake Days’. Here, as well as getting things like cream and strawberries on your pancakes, you could also get full burgers sandwiched between two scotch pancakes instead of a bun.

This seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up, and so we ordered ourselves a round of teriyaki chicken pancake burgers. They were actually really nice, although we didn’t then feel the need to have pancakes for pudding. Colin and I had been toying with the idea of visiting Fuji-Q, a giant theme park, after the museum, but unfortunately by the time we got back to Shinjuku the bus was sold out, and there was no other sensible way to get there. Instead we decided to go to Tokyo Bay and ride the Thunder Dolphin, quite a big roller coaster which actually passes through the corner of a building. It was fantastic fun, and left us right in the middle of Tokyo ready for my last night in Japan.

We decided to head to Shibuya to have a look around, and eventually found ourselves a nice looking izakaya restaurant to eat at. Now normally we get by in restaurants by pointing at a picture in the menu and saying ‘kore o kudusai’ (‘I’ll have this please’) to the waiter, so when the Maitre d’ informed us that they didn’t have an English menu we weren’t too bothered, and insisted that we’d like to come in anyway. So we sat down and ordered some drinks, and then after they arrived we started thinking about what we’d like to order. Once we’d made up our minds we started to look for the call button for the waiter, but we couldn’t find it. Instead sitting in front of us was a small touch-screen filled with Japanese writing. Japanese writing which we could most definitely not read.

Using our best Scottish Engineering ingenuity, we slowly picked our way through the ordering system, and began the slow, although quite entertaining, task of attempting to match up the items on the screen to the writing in the menu in front of us. We actually managed very well, and got everything we wanted, even if some of it wasn’t quite what we expected. Another funny thing about this restaurant was that everything in it was 380 yen. 380 yen is quite cheap for food, and 380 yen is very cheap for alcohol. We therefore did the only sensible thing for students in our position.

In my entire eight weeks in the country, I had yet to make it to a nightclub, and so we decided that if I was ever going to go, tonight was the night. We hopped on the last train to Shinjuku and set about finding ourselves a place to go. After visiting a couple of pubs we started talking to some random Japanese people, including one very energetic (and seemingly slightly insane) girl. Our first introduction to her was when she came over and offered Colin and me some of her takoyaki. Now I’m not normally one to accept octopus balls from strangers, but this was my last night in Tokyo, and I was up for almost anything. After a little while we headed to a club and danced the night away until the trains started running again at 5am. It was a panicked rush but eventually I made it back to Scotland somehow.

And now university has started again and it’s back to ‘normal’ life, or as close to normal as my life gets these days. Working in Japan was a fantastic experience, and one which I’m very glad I was lucky enough to be given. I will post a closing blog shortly and try to conclude as accurately as possible what I have learned over the course of this summer. For now though, I have classes to go to, people to see, societies to organise and plays to audition for (although sadly no Kabuki theatre).

Thanks for reading!

A Bumper Blog Bonanza

So, a lot's been happening again! The weekend after I last updated this blog (so two weekends ago now) Colin and I went sightseeing once more. On Saturday we did the very cultural thing of visiting the Tokyo National Museum. We saw a lot of pottery, a lot of scrolls documenting poetry competitions, and a few interesting (and sometimes quite disturbing) masks. With the required learning out of the way for the weekend, on Sunday we got up early and after a hearty breakfast of Pudding Shakes we headed off to Disneyland Tokyo. It was good fun, even if most of the rides were designed for people a little younger than Colin and I! The day was going very well indeed until around 5ish, when the heaven's opened and we were caught it a truly horrific downpouring. After braving the rain for a couple of hours sans umbrellas, we jumped on the train and headed back home to get ready for week 6 at Fujitsu.

For that week at work it was back to the Shiodome centre in Shimbashi, where I worked for the first three weeks of the placement. It was nice to be back on the 23rd floor with the fully functional air conditioning, and it was nice to be working with the Shiodome folks again. My project is again research into the European market, this time for high definition video compression technology, it's quite interesting as it means I get to look into TV broadcasters in Europe. Unfortunately it means I also have to read market reports written in French and sometimes German - and I'm a bit rusty at the old Central European languages, so it's taking me a while!

On Wednesday after work Bahariah, Colin, Zhanar and I met up in Roppongi to go to the Mori Modern Art Museum. It featured an exhibition by a French artist called Anette Messager, as well as a temporary exhibit called the Sky Aquarium. We weren't allowed to take pictures of Messager's art, so that's why I haven't got any! I wasn't too impressed with her earlier work (One piece featured a dozen dead sparrows strapped onto children's toy cars), but her later work was very good, especially some of the gigantic moving pieces she created. On Friday I went to a meeting in Fujitsu's office in Mushasi Kosugi, to do with the market research I am doing. It was entirely in Japanese - but I did pick up the odd word or two! After the meeting Chow-san, one of the Shiodome crew, took Matsunaga-san and myself out to a Hokkaido-style 'barbeque' restaurant in Kosugi. It was fantastic - in the middle of your table they put a big stone vessel containing burning coals, and then you cook strips of high quality meat, and various vegetables yourself. It's kinda like a really high-class barbeque, but with much better food!

That weekend was a big one - we took on Mount Fuji, and we very nearly won. Saturday started out as any other day, Colin and I travelled to Kawasaki to meet up with Bahariah, Euan and Zach before setting out on an incredibly complicated and overly long train journey to Kawaguchi-ko, one of the famous 'five lakes' around Mount Fuji. At that point we weren't too sure what our plans for the day were, so we set off sightseeing. Shortly after embarking we happened upon a map showing too many sights to see in one day! There was the Ice Cave and the Wind Cave (Which of reminded the current and former computer scientists - Euan and Zach -  of Pokemon...), and then there was the Bat Cave (Bruce Wayne's secret hideout). But the sight we opted for was the Musical Forest; an attraction with a name that attractive just had to be visited.

So, with no real idea of what we were going to see, we headed off in search of the mythical, and quite possibly magical, Musical Forest. It was a fair walk away, so we got to see a bit of the lake and surrounding countryside while we walked, although everything more than a couple of hundred metres away was shrouded in fog. Eventually we found the musical forest, and found that it was in fact a rather odd looking building. Nevertheless, spurred on by our rapidly peaking curiosity, we stumped up the entry fee and walked forth into the unknown. What we saw was stranger than any of us could have imagined, but also far far better - it was as if they had tried to recreate Switzerland (with a bit of Venice thrown in for good measure), and had then filled the entire complex with old automatic music machines from hundreds of years hence. What was really interesting for me was that they had old wind up 'dolls', for example a gymnast who would perform a handstand on two chairs. These were incredibly complex mechanisms - the forerunners to the robots we are started to see emerging today! Euan and Zach noted that some of Toshiba's founders began their careers by making such dolls.

After the musical forest we headed back to Kawaguchi-ko station, where we bid farewell to Colin and Euan. Bahariah, Zach and I had decided to do the brave (some would say foolish) thing and climb Mount Fuji. The idea is that you climb overnight, and then when the sun rises at around 5 in the morning you have the once in a lifetime chance to experience it from high atop a mountain. To put things into contrast, Mt Fuji is 3,776 metres high, dwarfing Ben Nevis' rather paltry 1,344m. We started climbing at about 9pm, from the fifth station at a height of 2,000 metres. The mountain was incredibly busy, and we walked along in a parade of people, most of whom had powerful LED headlamps. We had a torch I had bought for 498 yen from the local supermarket between the three of us. It all went rather well until we got past the eighth station, Baha and Zach got progressively more tired, but that was to be expected. I kept myself awake by eating large quantities of Calorie Mate Balanced Food Block. Zach and I even had a nice dinner consisting of Cup Noodles which cost 600 yen (!) each.

After the eighth station the mountain suddenly became stupidly busy; we would just stand in line. In about half an hour we would move maybe 100m. The mountain also suddenly became considerably wetter, and considerably windier. This was coupled with the fact that at 3,500m at 4 in the morning, it is considerably colder than the Tokyo average. So - we got a bit cold and very wet. When the sun came up we were at a height of around 3,600m - maybe 3,650, but as is par for the course on my sightseeing expeditions, it was too foggy to see anything! All that happened was that the ambient light level rose - it was like being under a very wet white bedsheet while someone slowly turns up the dimmer switch on the 100W bulb in the ceiling light. We made it to within seeing distance of the top, but then since we completely stopped moving, we were forced to stop just before the top, otherwise we were afraid we would miss the bus we had booked back into Tokyo, and then we would be stuck on Mount Fuji forever!

Or until much later that day. You know, whichever came first. On the way back down we came upon a rather sad conclusion; Mount Fuji is a volcano, and volcanoes are not that pretty when you're up close and personal. On the ascent we had the darkness, and you could look behind you to see the tiny firefly glows of the other climbers' torches snaking off into the distance, which was really quite beautiful sometimes. The photos here show the progress of the team as we ascended - after about 3,400m, where the last photo is taken, it became far too wet to take photos - the camera would have filled with water immediately!

Despite the rain and the wind and the cold and the crowds, it was still a fantastic experience. Although after a solid 12 hours climbing up and down, after 7 hours of sightseeing, I could barely walk I was so sore!

Monday was very exciting for me, because last week I got to work in Fujitsu Automation Laboratories. That's the place where they make the robots! The only problem with the arrangement was that the labs are in Atsugi, and getting to them involves the standard 15 minute walk, two trains, and then a 30 minute bus drive. The quickest I every managed the journey was 2 hours, average time was 2 and a half, and the worst case was three and half hours, when I got a bit muddled and caught the wrong train! Nevertheless, I would gladly have travelled even further if I had to, as the week was truly fantastic. My supervisors had planned the visit out really well, and each day I was treated to a couple of demonstrations from researchers about what they were working on. I even got to meet the man responsible for the motion control of HOAP-3 - Fujitsu's humanoid robot. I think this man may possibly have the best job in the world! HOAP-3 itself is a fantastic little robot, and is definitely my favourite out of all the humanoid robots around right now.

While I was there I also did a bit of research into the market for service robots, since Fujitsu is spending a considerable amount of time developing service robots, and I tried to come up with a new application for a service robot. On Wednesday after work Colin and I met up in Yokohama and went to the Raumen museum, something we have been intending to do since we arrived in Japan! The raumen museum is a themed 'park' showcasing eight different types of raumen (a very nice japanese noodly soup dish) in the setting of Tokyo in the 19xx's. It was very fun. But all too soon the week was over, and after work on Friday the FJ Labs employees had a bit of a party, to which I was invited. We had Mexican food, which to be honest was a very nice chance to the sashimi (or sea snails) I've become accustomed to on such occasions. They got me to give a short speech, and then my supervisor Hada-san gave a short speech after - It was awesome! After that a few of us headed on to a karaoke place, and we sung the night away!

So, that brings me up to this weekend - and this has turned into rather a long blog! Ah well, that's what happens when your internet connection is so bad it takes you over an hour to check your e-mails sometimes and therefore you don't blog that often. This blog is however brought to you by Philip Carmichael's phone, which I finally figured out how to connect to my laptop and use as a modem. Mr Carmichael was nice enough to lend Colin and I his internet enabled phone after discovering that we didn't have internet in dorms (we have been stealng Wi-Fi. don't tell anyone).

This weekend has been filled with more sights, and yes, more robots. Come on, I've spent four years studying robotics, and now I'm Tokyo - you'll have to forgive my little indulgences. I know secretly you're all really interested in robots too. Especially when they can play the trumpet. Yep, on Saturday Colin and I went to Tokyo Bay and visited the Toyota centre there. Amongst all the incredibly nice cars they also showcase some of their R&D technology, and they have created a special version of their partner robot who's chief function is to play the trumpet. Very cool - definitely; commercially viable - probably not. We also visited a games arcade, the first time we've been to one for quite a few weeks. I should stress that in Japan they have video games for literally everything. Colin played a table tennis simulator, which fires ping pong balls at you, and we even saw a virtual dog walking arcade game!

Today (Sunday) was my last full Sunday in Tokyo. Which is rather a strange thought. The weeks have been going by very quickly, but at the same time it feels as if I've been in Tokyo for a long time. Since I'm going to be very busy all week, and then I have things planned for next Saturday, i thought I better spend today on a souvenir hunt. So I headed of to Ueno market, where I didn't find many souvenirs, but did get a couple of cool T-shirts, and then I went to Asakusa market, where eventually I did find some presents for people back home, and even bought myself a cheap jimbei (only 2,000 yen!). Tomorrow it's back to Shiodome to complete the project I was working on there, and complete the eight weeks of the summer internship!

This weekend Colin and I discovered something that the residents of Tokyo try very hard to keep secret from the outside world. There's a reason there's so little traffic in Tokyo, despite the fact that it's the largest city in the world; In Tokyo people can Teleport

(Teleport is the name of a train station near the Telecoms building in Tokyo Bay. But it's a pretty funny name)

"Here's one you might remember"

Yet again it's been a while since I updated this. This time the problem has been my awful internet connection as well the total lack of time!

It's pretty late already so I'm gonna keep this blog fairly short, plus i've been told my blog posts are too long for some people - and I need to make them more punchy!

I've spent the last two weeks working in Export Operations, in the kawasaki offices of Fujitsu. It's been pretty good fun, and the shorter commute (20 minutes as opposed to 1 hour 20 minutes) was awesome! My project was to research some supply chain management ideas, and I did a case study into Fujitsu's previous sales to ascertain the success of various strategies. Again it was all completely new to me, but I learned quite a lot in the short time I had! I spent a lot of time reading up on the Toyota Production System, which is a fascinating way to run a company. On Friday I gave a half hour presentation to an audience of about 30 employees, which was a slightly nerve wracking experience! It went pretty well though. On monday it's back the Shiodome office where I spent the first three weeks - the commute may be longer but i'm looking forward to the better air conditioning - in the afternoons at kawasaki the temperature in the office easily hits 30 degrees!

Last weekend Colin, Bahariah and I went off to Kamakura, visited some temples (I've lost count of how many temples I've seen in Japan now - if i had to guess I'd say it was well over a million...), and spent an hour and a half walking through the forest on the trail of the Daibutsu - The Great Buddha. There's a reason they call it the great Buddha - it's huge! you can actually go inside it, but unfortunately we arrived a bit late and it was closed for the day, so we could only admire it from the outside.

On the way back from kamakura we stopped by yokohama and went up the tallest tower in japan - it has an observatory on the 69th floor, and japan's fastest lift, which reaches 45 kph! This is a photo of the view from the top of the tower. I would like to state that I definitely did take this photo myself, and I most definitely did not just take a photo of a poster.

On Sunday Colin and I went to the Miraikan - which is basically the "museum of emerging science and technology". We saw a lot of cool stuff - and even saw Asimo doing a demo! I got a video of that, which you can watch below. In the evening there were fireworks in Tokyo-bay, and Abe-san had invited us to an office owned by one of his friends, where we could have beer, pizza, and get a good view of the fireworks - awesome!

After work on Monday Colin and I high tailed it into town to catch a gig by two amazing bands - The Polysics (a modern japanese band) and Devo (an ancient american electro band!) It was an incredible show - unfortunately we weren't allowed to take pictures, so here are a couple of videos from The Polysics and Devo to show you what we saw :-) I've only ever seen Devo in their videos from the 80's before - it was funny to see them 20 years later as a group of slightly overweight 50 year old guys! They still put on a really good show though - and Polysics lived up to their live reputation of being amazing.

Okay... so it's been a week since i last updated this - i was going to start doing it more often but a little under a week ago my laptop keyboard decided to break - and typing without a keyboard is quite difficult! Yesterday I bought myself an external one to plug in - so now my laptop is effectively a desktop, but at least I can type again!

So, what's been happening... Well, on Friday it was time for me to give the presentation I've been working on for the past three weeks, and tell the wonderful people of the Infrastructure Business Division about all the wonderful things I've discovered through my market research. Spent the morning getting ready for the presentation, and tidying up the 30 page report I was also to submit. For lunch Matsunaga-san (my supervisor) and Matsumoto-san took me out to Tsukiji market for some fresh fish, which was great! Back at the office at half three we journeyed up to a meeting room on the 25th floor for me to give my presentation. It went really well actually - only one person almost fell asleep, and everybody else looked positively interested! Had a nice 20 minute discussion after the 30 or so minutes of presenting, and talked about the recommendations i had made for Fujitsu. After I had finished presenting I had a chance to relax while Leonore gave her presentation, and then that was the first assignment over!

That evening was the department's inaugral party (the Infrastructure Business Division was only just created a month ago) as well as Leonore's and my welcome party. About 16 of us filled up a large booth in a nice restaurant, and there was bountiful sashimi, and bountiful sake. It was a really nice night, and I got to speak to a lot of the people in the office who I hadn't spoken to before. After the restaurant a few of us went on to an Irish pub - which turned out to be a fake Irish pub as it didn't sell Guinness! Tried the Suntory (Japanese drinks company) equivalent of Guinness though, it was quite nice! I don't have any pictures from the night out, so here are a couple of random ones from around the Shiodome center...

On Saturday Colin and I met up with Euan and Bahariah and after a brief stay in Kawasaki and a cold stone ice cream (i will devote an entire blog to cold stone later i am sure...) we travelled out to Yokohama. Yokohama is a really nice town on the 'outskirts' of greater Tokyo, very different to the rest of Tokyo architecturally because of the American influence in its construction. We went round the outside of the baseball stadium and had a walk round the park (where Euan found Nessie! - see pic below). While we were wandering round we found a small theme park! So Colin, Bahariah, Euan and I bought tickets for the biggest rollercoaster they had (which was not very scary and did not go upside down). Colin, Bahariah and I went on the rollercoaster.

The theme park had many amazing sights to see. Colin found Pikachu, and discovered that he's a lot taller than he looks on TV. Bahariah and Euan found incredible matching hats. Colin and I played a computer game where the controllers were tambourines, and I even saw a genuine London Bus.

After the theme park we went into Chinatown in search of a restaurant to eat dinner. We found a nice restaurant, but were taken in by a cunning marketing scheme which advertised a meal for three for 4,000 yen, but failed to mention that the price was per person until you were seated at your table. Instead I had a nice bowl of ramen. We had been intending to travel up the tallest tower in Yokohama, which has an observatory platform on the 69th floor, and has a lift which travels at 45 kph! Unfortunately by the time we got there it was 9:35, and their last admission was at 9:30 - we were a bit gutted. Luckily Yokohama isn't that far away so I have no doubt we will visit again

On Sunday Colin and I visited Harajuko, taking a walk around the famous streets frequented by the most stylishly overdressed Tokyo youth before visiting the park formerly enjoyed by the emperors of Japan. Rather randomly we ran into Romain, a friend of Colin's from his time in Singapore! The three of us met up with Zach in Ebisu where we visited the Yebisu beer museum.

On Monday Leonore and I began work in the Export Operations Centre, at the Kawasaki plant of Fujitsu. The building is a 20 minute walk from my dorms, and means I can cut an hour on the trains (each way) off my daily commute! Work is going very well so far, everyone is very nice again, and we've been made to feel right at home. Every morning a staff member walks us through part of what they do at the EOC, and then in the afternoons we work on our research projects. Going to get a tour of Fujitsu labs on Friday morning too - which is very exciting!

Arriving back at dorms yesterday I found I had a parcel waiting for me. I think most people reading this will know, but before I came to Japan I was at an AUV competition in France for a week and a half, and I was only back in Edinburgh for 9 hours (overnight) before setting off for Japan. So i packed for this trip in a bit of a hurry and forgot many things, including any kind of entertainment products - books or dvds (except for one series of Red Dwarf). I've also had a craving for a mars bar for the past three weeks, and you don't get them anywhere in Japan it seems!

So, the contents of this mystery package?- DVDs, the book I've been waiting to read, cookies, sweets and Mars Bars! Thanks Mum!

Oh, and I almost forgot, here are a couple of videos. One is from a festival in Shimbashi, and the other is of the Sumidagawa fireworks - sorry about the bad quality!

Well, been here for over two and half weeks now - which is pretty crazy. The time has gone fairly quickly, although at the same time it does feel like i've been here for ages!

Work's going fairly well, I have to do a big presentation and hand in my 30+ page report on friday, which doesn't seem like much time to get all the work finished!

This is actually gonna be a very quick blog today, as i have some home work to get done tonight when i finish writing this!

Last weekend was pretty cool. On Friday evening Colin, Leonore and I went to a meeting for something called 'integr8', which is an international community some people at fujitsu are setting up. It was very interesting to see the kind of things they're going to be doing, and hear the experiences of the non-japanese workers of fujitsu who are living in Japan. This weekend has been a big festival period, so after the integr8 meeting Colin and I went out into Shimbashi (where we work) to see some of the festivities. There was a big stage with people singing and dancing, and hundreds of people were dancing round the stage. I guess this must be like the japanese version of Scottish country dancing - the kind of thing we all get taught in school and then half forget until we go to a ceilidh and stumble our way through the dances. From the way the average person was stumbling through the dances, i'd say it was exactly the same in fact!

It was great to see though, and the lanterns hung throughout the town made the whole place look very festive indeed. On Saturday there was a big fireworks display - the biggest in tokyo (if not all of japan) i'm led to believe. Colin, Euan, Leonore and I met up in the afternoon in Asakusa to have another look around and then try and find a good spot to watch the fireworks. We had another look at the big temple, and we all paid 100 yen and got our fortunes - the other three all got really bad ones, but mine wasn't too bad... It wasn't perfect, so i couldn't decide whether to keep it or not (if you get a bad fortune you're supposed to fold it up and tie it to a special bar in order to try and negate it). In the end i decided to keep it; amongst other things it did say that travelling was not going to be a problem, so i guess that's a good thing - won't be needing that travel insurance after all!

We then set about trying to find a spot to watch the fireworks, it was insanely busy, with every open space covered in people already. The parts that weren't covered had meticulously laid out tape marking a border and the name of the family who had got there earlier and reserved that spot. What was really nice was that absolutely no one was attempting to steal the places which had already been reserved - you wouldn't get that in britain! We spoke to some british and american expats while we were wondering around, apparently they'd had their spot marked out since Tuesday! Eventually, after much wandering around, we walked past some people who just started to take up the tape they had reserving their spot - they didn't want it any more so we got a great place to watch the fireworks - just about 50m away from one of the many TV cameras covering the event!

The fireworks themselves were truly spectacular, and lasted for an hour and a half! Amongst my favourites were the fireworks that exploded out in the shape of a smiley face - that was pretty cool to see! I got some good videos, but not too many good photos - will post the videos later if i get time! After the fireworks were finished we wandered our way back through the well mannered crowds, across bridges and roads closed to traffic, it was a very surreal experience. We were invited out to a club by the people we'd met earlier, but since that would mean missing the last train (again...) and we were all pretty tired, we decided to just head home.

Sunday was a much quiter afair - Colin and I were both absolutely knackered, so we decided to pretty much take the day off and have a well earned rest! We caught the train through to kawasaki, and went into the big shopping mall they have there. We had thought maybe we'd go to the cinema, but couldn't see a movie that took our fancy - moreover we couldn't really know whether the films would be in english or not, and we didn't really want to waste 1800 yen! So instead we invested our money wisely in ice creams from the Cold Stone ice cream place. It's actually the worlds best ice cream; you can order something off the extensive menu, and right in front of you they'll weigh out exactly the right amount of ice cream, then mix it up with all these different kinds of sauces and cakes, and then serve it to you in a home made waffle bowl which has been dipped in chocolate - and this time they even sang while they made up the ice cream! It was like being in Willy Wonka's chocolate factory's ice cream department!

After work today Colin and I decided to get haircuts, in a tactical move to deal with the extreme amounts of heat here. We went to the 10 minute barber, paid our 1,000 yen, and tried to explain as best as we could what we wanted! I went for 'trim, please'... then said 'one third' when he asked how much i wanted off, then just agreed with everything he said after that. it went okay actually, could've gone a lot worse!

Well i better get to bed... got to get up at 6am tomorrow...

A quick blog... maybe...

Right-o, this is gonna be a very quick blog, as seemingly time moves faster in Tokyo, and I'm sure before I know it it'll be midnight! Starting to get into the routine of Tokyo life: up at six, leave dorms at 7, arrive at work at 8, lunch at 11:30, leave work sometime after 5:10, get dinner somewhere and get back to dorms sometime after 7pm. Well, no, 7:15 is the absolute earliest i've made it back so far, normally it's more like 9 or 10...

So, it's been a very hectic week since i last wrote a blog; i'll try my best to remember everything that happened!

Last wednesday night Colin and I were invited out by one of our workmates who was going to a restaurant with a couple of his friends. It was a nice wee restaurant, and we finally got to try some sake! Unforunately we also got to try a Natto omelete - Natto being described by our host as "kind of like decomposing soy beans". I think he actually bought it on purpose just to see if we would eat it! Apart from that the food was very nice though, and then afterwards we were treated to a glimpse into the world of Pachinko. Pachinko is a Japanese obsession - the way it works is that you swap your money for a number of ball bearings, which you then put into the pachinko machines. The machines themselves are kind of like vertical pinball games, and if you get a ball bearing into a tiny wee hole then what basically amounts to a slot machine starts up, and if the symbols line up just right then you win a whole load more ball bearings. Sound confusing? Well it is, kind of. It's really simple to get started, but you can (and we did) lose a thousand yen (about a fiver) in a couple of minutes! The shear amount of noise inside a Pachinko parlour is enough to disorient you though, the decibel level of a thousand people firing ball bearings into machines which are producing a million seemingly random sound effects a second i'm sure exceeds EU health and safety guidelines.

Thursday was another day at the office, and then we stopped off in Kawasaki for a look round on our commute home. While we were there we grabbed dinner in the food court. Going to a random Korean place and asking what they would recommend was perhaps not the best option, as we were served something which amounted to noodles, chillied vegetables, cucumber, half a boiled egg, a bit of roast beef and a slice of grapefruit, all in a nice cold soup wihch tasted rather strange.

On Friday night the six of us interns were lucky enough to be invited out to a restaurant called Gonpachi by our kind friends at SDI. Now Gonpachi is where they filmed some of the fighting scenes in 'Kill Bill', and it's a very awesome place. It's sort of a themed restaurant, but done very well, and will very enthusiastic staff! It was really good to meet some more people from SDI as well, and everyone was really friendly so it made for a nice night. After the parents had gone home us kids headed out to a karaoke bar for our first real taste of the Japanese nightlife. After some effort we checked ourselves into a karaoke room on the eighth floor of a place in Roppongi, and got settled in for an hour of top quality tunes. The room was about the size of my room in dorms, or maybe a little bit smaller. There was a TV in the corner hooked up to a fantastic karoke system which included two wireless mics and a lighting system that turned on the retro disco lights whenever someone started singing. There was also a phone in the corner from which you could (and we did) order up refreshments. So it turns out that one hour is in no way long enough for six highly trained world class internship students to half drunkely sing songs by Boston and The Darkness, and Zac got on the phone to extend our stay for another hour.

After the karaoke we thought about heading to a bar, but they all charge about 1000 yen for a drink. Being Scottish and being students, we of course went for the cheaper option, and each of the four guys bought ourselves jumbo jars of sake from the seven eleven for only 220 yen each. The girls headed home at this point, which was probably a better idea. Luckily for them they stay in Roppongi, and unforunately for Colin and I, we stay over an hour away. We'd missed the last train by a decent amount, so the only thing to do was to wait around until the trains began service again at around five in the morning. We did a bit of sightseeing ("hey, there's the tokyo tower! lets walk towards that!"), and then trudged down to the subway to catch the first train home. Euan and Zac made it home fairly simply, but Colin and I live much further away, and we both fell asleep on the train to Nakahara... After returning from our detour we finally made it home at around 7am - the same time we would normally be leaving dorms to go to work. But boy, was that a good night.

After a nice sleep on Saturday we met up with Euan and Zhanar in town to get some food and discuss what we could do with our long weekend. Monday is a national holiday, so we had time to actually travel somewhere. We decided to travel to Nikko, a small mountain town about a two and a half hour train journey from Tokyo. We set off bright and early on Sunday, after having a quick look round the Asakusa market. Two and a half hours of train travel later we were up in the mountains. We were very lucky and managed to book ourselves into a tradional japanese style hotel in Nikko for the night, and so with that done we set about exploring the town. We visited the buddhist temples, where (amongst other things) the "see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" monkeys come from. The temples were all truly spectactular, complete with intricate carvings adorning every possible surface. It started to rain profusely while we were looking round - the first rain since we've been in japan! We made our way back down into the town, and found ourselves a restaurant to duck into to get out of the rain. At 8pm our pick up arrived and the owners of our hotel drove us off into the wilderness to where we would be spending the night. The hotel was fantastic, and the owners were incredibly friendly. Our room was set out with tatemi mats and all the traditional japanese mod cons such as cushions and sliding paper doors. We put on the supplied yukata (which are like kimono, but not quite kimono...) and headed down for a traditional japanese style bath.

 

One bath and some subsequent plum wine later we set out the beds and tried to catch some shut eye. On Monday morning we were served a full japanese breakfast by our hosts, which included miso soup, salmon, bacon, fried egg, some kind of pickles and, naturally, natto. We were given a lift back into town, and then found our way to the bus stop to catch the bus up into the mountains for a proper look around. It was unbelievably foggy, but we caught the bus anyway, and pretty soon we were winding our way up the steep mountain path. It was slightly disconcerting to hear a recorded voice come over the tannoy to announce that we would soon be ascending some very steep roads, and could all passengers please ensure that they are strapped in and that all bags are fully secured. When we arrived at Chuzenji-ko up in the mountains the fog was even worse - affording us spectacular views over Kegon falls. The guide book assures us that the waterfalls are actually quite stunning. Without much else to do we hired a couple of rowing boats and set out onto lake Chuzenji for a relaxing sail through the fog.

We made our way back down the mountain on another bus, and caught the train back into Tokyo. Somehow I had managed to get incredibly sunburnt in the fog, and halfway through the train journey home started to take on the appearance of a roast tomato - i hate being ginger! Made it back to dorms around eventually, and then we hit the hey to try and get some rest before another week of early mornings at Fujitsu.

Yesterday at lunchtime we chanced upon a boyband performing on a stage in the centre of town. In the evening the boss, Otani san, and our supervisor, Abe san, took Leonore and I out for a meal. The restaurant was again fantastic, and I finally tried sashimi - raw fish... I managed it, just! I'm planning to maybe try it again in about a weeks time, and see if next time i can maybe manage to eat two pieces of raw fish... Other culinary highlights included croquettes of rice marinated in squid ink. These were really nice but unfortunately turned your mouth bright black - not a very attractive look!

Left work at 5:20 today, grabbed some dinner in nakahara, and actually made it home at around 7:15 - it was still light outside!

I'm kind of looking forward to work tomorrow, made a small breakthrough today, so I have something to get stuck into tomorrow - should be fun!

ja mata!

Well, I made it to Japan!

Arrived on Friday morning, went in to meet the folks at Fujitsu, spent the weekend sightseeing, and then went in for the first proper day at work today - it's been a hectic few days! would've posted a blog sooner, but i've been incredibly busy since I got here, and we don't have internet in our dorms! :-( So.. this is probably gonna be quite a long post!

-- day 1 (a very long day!) Thursday & Friday--

I got back in Scotland from France at 8pm on Wednesday night, and I didn't really get any sleep that night. Left to get the train to glasgow at half five on thursday, met Colin at the airport and we flew out to Heathrow where transferred to our 12 hour flight to Japan. Didn't really get any sleep on the flight, and then we arrived at Narita airport at 8:35 local time, feeling slightly worse for wear!

Tokyo is boiling hot, and very humid! But then of course I was expecting that. We changed into suits at the airport and then bought tickets for the limousine bus into Tokyo. About an hour or so later we arrived at the very swish Pacific hotel, where we met Ms Tomoda from SDI. Much to my surpise and delight she gave us the key for a hotel room where we could grab showers and freshen up. We got to stay in a four star hotel! (even if it was for only an hour)

 

Once we'd freshened up, and added ties and suit jackets to our outfits we went off to lunch. My first meal in Japan? TGI Fridays of course! As Tomodo-San pointed out (correctly) there will be plenty of time for eating real japanese food over the course of the next eight weeks! After lunch it was straight off in a taxi to the Fujistu offices in the Shiodome centre - it's a 40-something story building, and the office I'll be working in is on the 23rd floor. You can actually feel the change in air pressure as you go up and down the lift! At the offices Colin and I met a french girl called Leonor who is also doing an internship. We met the big boss of the department, as well as our supervisor, Abe-san, and got shown the office. Everyone seems really friendly, and it looks like a nice office to work in. I'm going to be working in the same division as Leonor, and Colin is working just across the office. Got a basic plan of the work I'll be doing, it focuses mainly on market research, but luckily not the kind that involves making lots of telephone calls!

After much talking, at around half 5, by which time all three of us were really showing signs of sleep deprivation, Abe-san took us out of the office and we started making our way to the dorms. We need to get two trains on the JR line and then walk for about 15mins; total journey seems to take about an hour or so. We also found out that we'd be working from 8:20 till 5:10 - gonna have to wake up early to get to work on time! Dorms are pretty cool, rooms are a decent size, we have air con, there's a cool japanese style bathroom and (luckily) a few western style toilets!

Grabbed dinner with Colin and Leonor at a little place just by the train station. Food here is amazingly cheap, and it's fantastic! got dinner for about 600 yen (~£3)!

-- day 2 - Saturday --

Got up at 10am and Colin and I ventured into downtown Tokyo for our first solo trip! First stop: the local 7/11 (which is open 24 hrs...) for some brekkie. What else could I get but some kind of cakey type thing from the Smile Oven?! It was quite nice actually. Colin had a similar thing which was an interesting white/beige colour. it wasn't so nice...

We set off on the JR towards Akihabara - the electronics district. It's crazy here! So much stuff, and so many tiny alleys packed full of random stuff, and random junk! I was looking for a camera, but couldn't find one that quite took my fancy. We wandered into a Taito game arcade for our first taste of the japanese addiction to video games - it was a five story arcade, with different types of games on each level. We played a few games, but felt pretty overshadowed by how incredibly awesome everyone else was at all the games! Grabbed lunch at another small restaurant - most of the places here show the meals they have on offer with incredibly detailed plastic recreations outside the shop - makes choosing a meal incredibly easy! (especially since my japanese pretty much just stretches to "ohayo gozaimas - are-o kudusai" - which pretty much translates to "Good morning - i'll have that please". Food was again amazing - it's really filling too, normally i'm hungry again about an hour after eating a meal, but here i barely feel the need to snack - which is a shame as some of the confectionary on offer looks nothing short of amazing! I did need to freshen my breath after lunch though - so naturally I had some Super Soda Gum!

After lunch we wandered round town a bit, the size of this town is nothing short of incredible! We also found the most perfectly cuboid cakes I have ever seen in my life, of particular interest was the marble cake - i wonder how many years of training you need to be able to bake a cake like that!?

In the evening we'd been invited out to meet up with Frank from SDI and the other interns at an Irish bar in Roppongi. All six of us made it here okay, which is very cool. Had a couple of pints of guiness before moving on to the Hard Rock Cafe for dinner - felt kind of strange going back to eating food with a knife and fork instead of chopsticks! We left the hard rock cafe at around 11 ish, "okay", Colin and I think, "Lets find ourselves a pub and find out what the Tokyo night life is like". Definitely a good plan, right? wrong. Turns out the nightlife in Roppongi has turned a little bit seedy - so we didn't find a single place to go to! We gave up at around 12 and made our way down to the JR to catch a train home. What was pretty cool was that we ran into an american guy who works for NASA training astronauts! Spoke to him until we arrived in Kawasaki at about half 12. What was not so cool was that the trains stop running at about half 12! What was even less cool was that our dorms were six stops further down the Nambu line. So, we were lost in Tokyo for the first time...

We wandered round for a while thinking we might be able to walk - but then we discovered we actually had no idea which direction to go on, or where we were really, and we didn't actually have a map. In the end we had to get a taxi - but of course we only had the address of the dorms in English - not so useful! After the taxi driver got lost a couple of times we eventually made it back to dorms about 40 minutes later and 4000 yen lighter. It was all a bit stressful, but luckily I had a Fruity Paradise to calm my nerves.

-- day 3 - Sunday --

We were up at the crack of noon to make our way through the scorching mid-day sun to travel all the way to Ginza. There are a lot of very big shops here, and we went into the Sony Showroom, were we saw all manner of bountiful things, including a 70" plasma TV which would set you back a mere 4,000,000 yen. After Ginza we went to Shinjuku to meet up with Euan, another one of the placement students who will be working for Toshiba. It was in Shinjuku that we saw one of Japan's least publicised attractions - the world's smallest fully functional door!

After Euan eventually showed up, we headed off to Yodobashi Camera, where I got myself the camera I had been eyeing up in the Sony Showroom earlier. It's actually awesome. It has a smile-ometer setting, where it will focus in on people, and will only take a photo once their smiles have reached a certain preset level. No, i'm not joking, it can actually do that. You can see the smilometer moving up and down as you smile more or less broadly. Only in japan! I also saved 20,000 yen (taking the price to only 30,000 yen) by buying the japanese model. I don't need no English language menus, no sir-ee! Now, if only I could figure out how to work the damn thing...

We went up a government tower next where we could get to a viewing platform on the 45th floor. The view over Tokyo is amazing, the neon lights seem to go on forever. There's also a rather crazy gift shop where you can buy as much tat as you can fit back in the elevator with you. We found a restaurant to eat in Shinjuku. Mine and Euan's meals were fantastic, Colin was not quite so happy with his though ("can you guys smell this? It smells kind of like... urine...") and then spent a while soaking in the gaudy neon atmosphere of Shinjuku. Rather disturbingly we saw a huge temperature display which was proudly proclaiming that it was 29 degrees Celcius - not too bad, I here you say, but this was 10 o'clock at night! After that we headed back to dorms for as early a night as we could manage before our first day at work.

-- day 4 - Monday --

Well, it was up at 6 today to get ready for work. Rush hour here seems pretty bad - Was about on a par with London underground during a really bad rush hour today - just hoping tomorrow won't be worse! We saw our first double decker train too! That was a strange sight to see.

After being at work for a couple of hours and being introduced to everyone in our division, Abi-san took us off to the NetCommunity centre, where Fujitsu demo some of their coolest new stuff to visiting investors and dignitaries. Oh, and us apparently. I met a very friendly robot called Enon there, she had a very weak handshake though I must say! Spent the day preparing my first report and doing some background reading. Won't get computers til Wednesday, so had to work the old fashioned way - quite an unnerving experience!

After work we ventured out into town to try and find pre-paid mobile phones (which no longer seem to exist in Tokyo) and some food. The phone hunt proved fruitless, but we did end up at a Sushi bar near Ginza. It was a very nice place, and it wasn't too expensive, but this was still me first ever experience of Sushi, and boy was I nervous. I ordered an eel, a jumbo shrimp and some cucumber rolls, as that way I could avoid eating any actual raw fish. nevertheless I did feel slightly ill afterwards!

The commute home seems to take just over an hour - a bit longer than I was hoping for! On the way back Colin and I stopped off at the Family Mart to buy some snacks - I needed something to get rid of the aftertaste of seaweed. On the menu tonight: Pepsi Blue Hawaii and Meiji Salty Prailine Chocolate ("Salt & Baked Crepe in Almond Praline"). Both were actually really nice... surprisingly...

Well, that took a long time to write up, and I need to go do a bit more research and then get some sleep before work tomorrow. I've got the air-con set at a nice and breezy 25 degrees, and it feels arctic in here!

Oyasumi nasai!