JAMSTEC open day

Yesterday was the open day at JAMSTEC, and they were lucky enough to get the only hot and sunny day all week. Mona and I went there at 8:30 to help Takako-san set up her presentation. As she was just doing a small puppet play of her children's book, 5 people was a bit much to carry 5 bits of cardboard and styrofoam. But we then got the chance to wander around JAMSTEC a bit before the people started comming.

Takako, right, and her 2 assistants (the second is holding up the backdrop, and that's his only job)

The event officially opened at 9:30, and they had counted 2100 people by 11 o'clock. The exibits were all really great, with lots of stuff to see and do, and many animals our for show. We said hello to the PICASSO team, and several other groups of people we see on the bus every morning but didn't really know what they did.

Baby Nemopilema nomurai, the giant japanese jellyfish.

A japanese fellow and his possibly australian friend, that we have been seeing every morning lately, had told us they do "security". This was not much help, and as they always wear nice suits, we had assumed they had office jobs. Well yesterday, the japanese fellow was in a swimsuit and coastguard T-shirt, while his friend was the dummy in the pool in a yellow worksuit. We only spent a litte time in our team's exibit, as it was super crowded, but it seemed to be going well.

Mr. Brine Shrimp, and the stand where you could get your one brine shrimp to take home.

In the afternoon, Mai came to join us. She is a school nurse at Yokosuka, also living at Soleil-Oppama. So we got to do the tour again, but this time showing her only the most interesting bits. These included a wonderful cola-menthos volcano, with the final presentation going all the way to the 2nd story of the building. We also took the tour of the Karei which was fun, as Mai started fiddling with the ship controls and had to be shown out of the wheel house.

And at noon I ate what was possibly whale meat. I didn't know it at the time of course, but apparently that's what was in the burgers. It was very good, I must say, but if it was whale meat, you can save the whales by eating cow, because that's pretty much what it tastes like.

JAMSTEC open day finished at 4pm, and we stayed pretty much to the end. And now it had gone back to being rainy. It was a perfect day in all respects.

Tokyo

Mona is a german girl who just arrived in Japan on Wednesday and who will be working at JAMSTEC for 5 months on plastic-degrading bacteria in the same group as mine. As she's just as eager to visit stuff as I am, we decided to go to Tokyo, as it was a wonderful day, and that it's much more fun with 2.

So off we went. Her superviser had not bought her a train card, but we managed to get one from the automatic vendor really easily and never even had to ask for help. I then got the wonderful opportunity of showing her how the trains work here: we got on a local bound for Shinagawa. We got off at Kanazawa-bunko to change to a green express train, only to find that the train on the other track was (also) a black local to Shinagawa, but that the one we were on had turned green!

We decided on central Tokyo, where there's the emperor's palace, as well as high tech buildings and stuff.

First off, we visited the emperor's palace. We had actually planned to do it last, but kind of got going the wrong way in the train station. You can't visit the palace itself, but the outside and the park it's in are very nice. They also are very much on the "you are outside, we are inside" line, but done with style, and grace. If you need to have big basalt walls, then you can at least trim the pine trees so they look nice. Although probably not in the original design, the weeping willows and swans make it look a bit like a fairy castle, right in the heart of Tokyo.

Next, we saw the buildings of the japanese government. The main building is "bed brick building N°6" (next best in the "red brick warehouse" naming sheme). The photo is not of that building, however, as we only saw it from the other side of a crowded street, but of a museum.

Next, we immerged ourselves in Ginza, the fashion quartier of Tokyo. It was really quite empty, it being a holiday. There was obviously some sort of parade or something going on, as there were lots of groups of people dressed up in traditional costumes. We never did find it, though, as the groups didn't seem to be going in any specific direction, but just wandering around killing time before whatever they were doing.

From Ginza, you arrive almost dirrectly onto the fish market. Most of the stalls were closed, and it's really just as well. The place was packed full of people, with queues outside every little restaurant place, and tuna and salmon for sale everywhere. At 6am it must be quite a sight! We also visited one of the warehouse complexes, where they were slowly finishing off the day's fish deliveries.

After a quick lunch near the Hama detached palace garden (which is detached as in not being in the same place as the palace), we went off through Shidome. This is a sky-scraper complex with tons of glass. And aslo, for some reason, a bit metallic clock, which I find should be at least mentionned in my guide but isn't.

From there it's just a shortish walk to Tokyo tower. As we had kind of expected, it was packed full of people. So instead of going up it, we simply sat in the park and enjoyed the view of Tokyo tower through the maple leaves. Very enjoyable.

Having done most of central Tokyo, we took the train to Shibuya, to see the shopping district. Now if the rest of Tokyo had been reasonably empty, Shibuya was quite the opposite. It is big, shop-filled from the basement up to the roof, and absolutely packed full of shoppers, people distributing leaflets and stuff, and shop workers standing on chairs shouting into paper cups with the bottom cut out (they were!). But we had been warned of what to expect from the station, as this is the first glimpse you get of Shibuya....

Western Tokyo, once you get out of the relatively small Shibuya district is very nice, especially the Olympic stadium area, where there was a kind of fair going on. There is a nice park near the stadium, packed full of people also, but very quiet and relaxing. Lots of people were dancing or playing games and stuff, and we had a nice time seeing a young man being out break-danced by what must have been his 70 year old granpa. It was extremely amusing. Especially as the gandson had to keep pretending he had a phone call to make while the young sweeties were taking photos of his granpa.

Another dance which seems to be in is break-dancing, while inside a double jumping rope. There were 3 or 4 groups doing this, and some of the guys were great! I am totally impressed... Maybe I will start liking rap?

And of course, the train travel went absolutely flawlessly, with near-instant connecting trains. Mona said last night that she was now quite confident that she would be able to travel around without any problems. So I guess the moral of the story is "Dare, Pierre, dare". Or perhaps "Try it, you'll like it"?

Either way, MISSION ACCOMPLISHED.

Sagami Bay

Golden week is in full swing now, and the weather has turned out incredibly hot and sunny (unknown phenomenon during most public holidays).

Today I had a wonderful walk, from Shinzushi along the coast to Kamakura (again).

Shinzushi is the end of the second branch of the Keikyu line, that splits off from Kanazawa-hakkei. It is what people here call a small village, which simply means it is not as big as say Yokosuka. The road from the train station to the beach is very obvious (and straight) when seen on google earth, so of course I never found it. However, I did find a small little path running along a carp-filled creak. The carp were a bit bigger than what I would expect for the 30cm of water in the stream, but I guess they don't mind. There were also lots of schools of tiny little fish.

As all streams run to the sea, even in Japan, I followed it along through a nice residential area to the beach. The beach was packed full of families come to have picnicks, and who had brought along tents, grills, games, kites... A bit further along the coast was a small area of very hard clay, uncovered by the low tide. There were of course the usual clam hunters, but what I found most amazing was the unbelievable number of hermit crabs. Every single tidal pool was packed full of hermit crabs.

At this point, the road went into a tunnel, and so I went up a small valley with a very nice path meandering through the forst along a tiny stream. At the top, the path came out in a small parc with a look-out point, and some peacocks, rabbits, geese and japanese macaques in cages. And from the look-out point you could see, to the south Shinzushi and it's nice residential area, and, to the north, the japanese equivalent of Monaco and Cap Ferrat squeezed into one.

But as this is still Japan, the villas did not have any great walls or gates around them, and the big Plaza hotel complex was hosting a flea market out front. Why not....

From there it was an easy walk along the Kamakura beach. And as this is the Sagami Bay, there is a lot more wind than in Tokyo Bay. and who says wind says pleasure sailing, and ... wind surfing. Intensive wind surfing. But this is Kamakura, which is always crowded, and it's Goldan Week to boot. And the only reason the wind surfers could make it to the water is that BBQing is forbidden of the beach at Kamakura.