Monthly Archives: December 2013

Sunday night – barking deer

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SPent the day inside in meetings, so not too much to report.  I did manage to get a short run in in the cool mountain air. As I was running up the hill i hear these sharp loud barks. I looked around expecting to see a big (and maybe angry) dog.. instead, I saw these guys. These are Japanese deer..boxier than ours..  and they are not shy.  Instead of running away, these  guys stood their ground as if daring for me to pass..

The only other outside time of any length we got today was a brief and chilly picture outside. it was at least nice to see the sky !

I keep running into cool japonesey things here.. like this ultrasonic glass washer.. and the heated, jet spray toilets.. these guys have thought of everything  !

We gott to take  ashort dinenr break around 7.. food here is great.. as is the company..

then back into meetings until about 9:30 or 10.    took a short dip n the hot pool (and left a samstone)  then went back out to blog.. I met tw of my client friends there.

. and we talked about Japanese cartoons.. their favorite ? Bakabon !

 

ok.. i’m falling asleep in my chair.. more tomorrow !

nite all, nite sam

-me

 

Saturday night – three kinds of squid

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Just  woke up realizing I was alone in the lobby of the IBM Amagi hotel.. Everyone else has gone to bed.. but I needed to blog.. and hte internet in the room is not very good. I came out here to blog and managed to fall asleep on the couch…

Peaceful day here.. Woke late, met Jim for breakfast then went for a scenic city run through tokyo

Museum of what ?!?!?!

My hotel

around noon we all took the shunkasen to ITO.. anhour and a half.. when last time it took three hours to drive.. it’s nice going 200 mph !

Aro

we got to ito and went and got food at 711.. my second 711 meal since landing here..   then we got on the IBM bus.. the low budget equivalent of the corporate jet .. 🙂

last time I took this trip i got mightily car sick.. so this time I ate… here’s rotten soybeans (nato) .. good for your stomach if you don’t gag eating it 🙂

it was warm and pretty clear when we got to amagi.. here’s the view of Mt. Fuji… look carefully .. it’s sticking out of the clouds..

here, maybe this helps

we discovered a foot massager and have been fighting over it … . here’s Jim in its spell

Dinner witht he client was really fun. they’re lovely folks.. Here’s me trying to explain Vermont.

My freind Sakai san takes good care of me to make sure there’s a fish or vegi option .. the food here is really, really good

After dinner several of us went to the spa.. first you get dressed in this crazy robe,.

then you go down three floors to the spa

then you take off all your clothees and shower while brushing your skin with a pant scrapper like thing.. yow !

then you sit in boiling hot water and talk to other naked strangers.. it’s wierd but its fun and relaxing.. and only then do you go upstairs and drink

even though we were already stuffed, they kept brininging us food.. including 3 kinds of squid !

then you struggle to stay awake through jet lag,, the poor guy next to me fell asleep and everyone took pictures of him.. here’s Nakai-san doing just that !

ok.. I really can’t keep my eyes open another second..

gotta get soem sleep, more tomorrow

nite all, nite sam

-me

here

Friday-ish night – Like Mars

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Greetings from Mars.. well.. not really, but I always think that landing in Tokyo is a bit like landing on Mars.. It’s like our planet, but different in huge ways.   I’m here over the weekend for some work business that i’m really looking forward to. I am hoping it will be good, having spent 17 hours on planes to get here. As i’ve said before.. I don’t really mind long plane rides.. it gave me time to catch up on work.. and peace out…

Some trips I talk the whole flight.. and others i just peace out.. this was a mix. I ran into our friend Krista in the airport on the way out which was fun… 

 

Then on the flight to DC I met this really awesome guy, Steve who’s from Richmond.. He works at Dealer.. and is a really hardcore astronomer. He showed me some AMAZING . Check out some of  his astrophotography here.

His card says star stuff.. but so does his arm.. I saw his ink and realized it was Carbon, Hydrogen, Oxygen, Nitrogen… the four most common element sin the known universe.. and an anagram of our name COHN  !  How cool is that !!!!??

!

 

 

The flight to Tokyo was quieter.. about 15 hours.. and I had only 6 hours of battery on my laptop.. even though the plane had plug in power, my monster retro machine pulled too much power and kept turning off the outlet in my eat.. sigh.. That was ok.. between that and my ipad I was able to get through my entire email backlog… (it’ll be back tomorrow but it still felt like progress.

I also slept a little and watched a little TV.. mostly with no sound. I did watch ‘Blades of Glory’ without sound… just to see the set.. it was filmed in the building we lived in for the Colony. It was wild seeing it with different decorations. My friend Bob built the ice rink for the movie..   Here are some scenes where you can see our building .. 615 Anderson in LA’ s toy district.

 

Here’s a really freaky thing.. As I was watching this incredibly dumb movie… i also noticed that the guy in the seat ahead of me was watching a different dumb scifi movie.. and I’m 99% sure it too was filmed in that same abandoned warehouse.. Check out these columns

 

very strange !

I slep a bit and woke to found us over the Bering straights

 

 

We got to Narita about 4:30, I got on the train to Shinagawa and was in my hotel by 6:30.. I was oo sleepy to do much other than walk around in the cool tokyo evening. Christmas is everywhere here.. decorations, music, fake snow..

 

Nothing says Christmas like fried octopus chunks !

there’s my hotel complete with Christmas lights.

Even the pachinko addicts looked in the spirit  ehhhhhh maybe not.

 

As always.. i don’t like eating ot alone, so I wen tbyy the 7-11 an picked up some onigirm sushi and some sake,,

..

and made myelf a feast.. yum!

…

 

OK.. really need to sleep now..

more tomorrow from the surface of mars.. Hasta mata -neh !

nite all, nite sam

-jc

 

Wednesday night – CS Day

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Super busy day at work.. seems like the rest of year is going to be even more busy than usual.. I did have one really fun break today. I helped judge at the UVM Computer Science Project Day.. there were about 100 entries this year and they only expected 30.. We saw an amazing range of innovation from first year web site designers to complex mathematical optimization programs. There was one project that used Matlab to create harmonies. Onether that used matlab to recreate a vintage video game.. this guy below did that project .. including the the design of the case, it’s retro guts and the very cool but improbably implementation in Matlab. he’s my new hero !

Our neighbor(ish) Roger was there witht he website he’d co-designed for his wifes business up the street.  it was cool running into him.

these guys were approcimating the mona lisa using the fewest number of polygons.. very cool

in the end, we had to pick our top 3…that was pretty hard after doing 100 1-2 min interviews.. The winners included an IoS app for post tramatic stress tracking, the Matlab video game above , an app for doing sports scouting and a very cool app for lockign your tablet/laptop when you walked away..

As always, i came away inspired and restored from talking to fresh young minds…

now back to my soemwhat stale old mind 🙂

more tomorrow..

nte all, nite sam

-me