A bit more of Tokyo

So here are few scattered images from our stay in Tokyo.

On my first day at the meeting, the gang went out to explore Tokyo's shopping districts. The found Tokyu Hands, a huge department store with arts and crafts ware. They also bought Roy a new acoustic guitar that he was very proud of.

Yael and I went for an evening stroll outside and saw a lot of building lighted.

The next day I took a camera on the monorail ride to the conference. It was held in a science building in a new area of Tokyo. This was a huge landfill area for the last decades, that about 15 years ago was transformed into a large island with office buildings, parks, hotels, and conference centers. The monorail was a "new" line (about 12 year old) that run from downtown to serve that island.  Unfortunately the day was rainy.

Part of my assignment for the day was to get tickets for a cartoon museum. The only place to visit was with a reserved ticket that you can buy in a "ticket machine" in a line of convenience stores. My host asked one of the postdocs at the meeting to go with me for a few stations to a place there was such a store. It turned out that this building, which is a local TV station, was the site of some summer fair, and so it was full of people that queued in lines in spite of the rain and wind.

I returned early that day and we went to see a design exhibition called 21_21 Design Sight. It took place in Roppongi, a posh area of Tokyo. We managed to reach the site from the subway after going up from -50m below ground (according to the signs). Luckily this was done one in a cascade of escalators.

The exhibition was a bit strange, it dealt with what is private information about oneself and what is not. An interesting concept, and some of the "stations" were provocative to think about these issues. Others missed the point I think.