Japan 2015 Journal Entry 5

The blur of the Global Innovation Summit

Tuesday - Day 1 of Summit

So I was off to a rough start.  Monday night after I got back from rehearsal, I was so tired I somehow botched setting my alarm.  Instead of waking up at around 5:45 for the 6:30 breakfast, I woke up thinking "wow, I feel like I slept quite a bit more since the last time I woke up at 4am.  Hey, it seems brighter than I would expect..." sinking feeling, grabbing for watch, seeing that it is 6:46am  "Oh !@#$%!"

I blazed at super speed, thinking that the bus was leaving at 7am, taking a shower, getting dressed and grabbing all my stuff in 9 minutes.  Before I blasted through the door at full sprint, at this point I took a glance at the schedule.  Luckily, the buses were not leaving until 7:45 am, so my heart rate was able to return to normal.

Tuesday was a very long day.  We bounced back and forth between the Terumo Shonin center where our booths were on display - think "science fair" and you'll have a good mental picture, and the nearby Medical Pranex - short for "Medical Practicing Annex".  Pranex is a beautiful, spacious building that inlcudes a museum for the Terumo line of products, a simulated Japanese house, hospital, surgical suite and several actual surgery rooms where doctors and medical professionals can come and practice or train on Terumo products.  The tour was really cool, the highlight for me being the cardiac stent simulator.

The Software Applications booth

The lecture hall

My sketch of the keynote speaker, Dr. Ueda

After a full day of tours, booth sessions, lectures, presentations and discussions, we went straight into the dinner hall.  I wolfed down a protein bar and helped set up the P.A. and instruments.  The gig went well - I was distracted for the first half of the set with intermittent amp drop-outs, but after we got that resolved, I played much better.  The last half of the set were the more fun tunes to play anyway.  I am humbled and appreciative of the opportunity to have a jam with people from 3 different continents.  Nori-san and Jenki-san were fantastic ambassadors and did a great job.  The crowd was into it, and by the last few songs a bunch of people were dancing.  We ended up adding a few more impromptu jams since everyone was having a good time, including Blister in the Sun - brought back some old memories of gigging with my old band Soul Conspiracy where Josh Rosenbaum would jam on that song.

Wednesday - Day 2 of summit

Wednesday brought more of the same work-wise.  One thing that was funny was the "american style" options for lunch.  They were tasty enough, but not really much like what we eat here in the states.

Japanese style breakfast at the hotel

American style breakfast.  Eggs were typically served cold. Salad, some weird tofu and peach pudding, and chicken-stock soup along the top

Convention lunch. Kind of a fried pork server on wonder bread with a lot of pickled veggies on the side

Day 2 lunch, a sort of chicken(?) filet sandwich - all served cold

 Thursday - a 40 hour day, with about 19 hours of travel

Thursday was a long day.  Literally the longest day of my life so far, with the crossing of the international dateline, it was actually 40 hours long for me.  I got up early in the morning and went for a run.  I think the exercise really helped the rest of the day.  We took the trains back through Tokyo to Narita airport, but unfortunately I was only able to experience Tokyo through the train window.  

We transferred at Shinjuku station, purportedly the busiest train station in the world.

 We arrived at the airport with plenty of time, and I was able to get some souvenir shopping done, getting some linens, headbands, nano blocks (tiny versions of legos) and of course green tea kitkats!
One of my last images before departing Tokyo on this first visit - watching a bit of Sumo wrestling on the big screen tv:

It was a great trip, and amazingly I slept decently on the plane ride back, so the jet lag/time change has been pretty manageable.  Work situations pulled me into the office on Friday, but hey, that's the way it goes sometimes.  All in all, I'm glad I had the opportunity to visit the country and get a little sense for the culture, and make some new friends.  I feel very fortunate.

Sayonara!

Japan 2015 Journal Entry 4

Main Entry

So the rest of Monday ended up being quite full.  Around noon we headed to the Shonin center via a short bus ride and set up the booths for the Summit.

View of Hadano from the Shonin Center

Picture of a picture of a picture of a picture of the network settings needed for our booth. (note, it worked great on setup day and not at all during the actual session.)

 Back at the room in the evening, I had a few minutes to snap some pics of things one is not likely to see in a U.S. hotel.

Bidet built into the toilet.  And a seat warmer!

My favorites are the Air conditioner entry and the massage entry.

I had a couple of hours to explore around Hadano on foot.  It is a city about an hour and a half from Tokyo by train.  My route:

And a few pictures from the walk...

 I found Aeon, a Japanese department store/mall.  It had a grocery, clothing, household, toy section, but my favorite was the arcade.  Talk about sensory overload.

Not just for kids...the mom's were playing right along with the kids

Pokemon video game

How about a "guitar hero" version with Koto drums instead?

Seven weeks until the new movie comes out.  You NEED your star wars chopsticks.

Dinner Time 

I beat the dinner rush and grabbed a quick bite before meeting up with some colleagues for rehearsal.

 Band Rehearsal

As an extension of the "Scope Creep and the Rev Rollers" band we did in Denver, several of us have been coordinating a Japanese version of the band.  Having never played with any of the other musicians we established the setlist and one of the Japanese colleagues, Nori-san, arranged for a rehearsal at a nearby studio in Atsugi, which we traveled to by train. It was a really cool set up.  Rehearsal started out rough, but quickly came together after a few run throughs.  It was a basic strummy set-list with a couple of classic rockers.

• Rocky Mountain High
• Take me Home, Country Roads
• I Just Saw a Face (Beatles)
• I Saw Her Standing There
• All My Loving
• Folsom Prison Blues
• Secret Agent Man
• Smoke on the Water

On the way to rehearsal, I snapped a couple of pics of the Christmas themed lighting already out in Atsugi.

Entering the Cloud City Studio.  Note the ubiquitous surgical mask.

Junki-san and Nori-san getting ready to rock!

Japan 2015 Journal Entry 3

Monday morning.  With flying over the International Date Line, I pretty much missed all of Sunday.  The flight from San Fran to Tokyo took about 11 hours.  I got a couple of naps in, maybe 2-3 hours total.  I'm enjoying the Witcher book "The Blood of Elves" and that helped pass a lot of the time as well.  Best of all, I got through about 300 emails, which had been weighing heavily on me.  I'm now down to a reasonable 75 or so in my inbox, at least for the moment.
Once we landed and got through customs, it was on to the trains.  We had a two train journey to get to the hotel in Hadano.  Thanks to a couple of travelers that had been here before, the purchasing of tickets was not too difficult of a mystery for our travel-weary minds.  The first train was the NEX that was very fast and smooth, with reserved seats.

On the NEX

The Express.  Stop 39: Hadano...

  The second train, however was different.  In hindsight we probably didn't get on the ideal train - we apparently could have paid a bit more for a "super express" which would have gotten us there in about an hour.  Instead we were on the "express" that added an extra 30 minutes due to more frequent stops.  Also, it was quite crowded; we got to stand the whole time.

Pretty big smile for traveling for 20+hours!

You can see why it wasn't obvious which train was best

Finally, after 23 hours door-to-door travel, we made it to the Grand Hotel Kanachu. My hotel room was actually a bit bigger than expected, with two twin beds.  Note: The bed was not the most plush I've ever been on - pretty firm to say the least, but I am not complaining!

  The check-in was extremely efficient.  The hotel had all of the Terumo BCT guests pre-checked in and a table with our names and keys ready to go.  Ten minutes later a group of us walked to a nearby restaurant where I experienced my first official Japanese meal.  It was pretty nice - just a bowl of udon noodles with a little pork.  We didn't daudle at dinner; both Rich Gonzales and I sat at the bar, and as soon as we were finished eating we called it a night.  Our colleagues were just getting served some sort of humongous seafood platter by the time we were leaving.  I'm glad I wasn't at that table!  I needed sleep!
    After a good night's sleep (thank goodness!), I had the included "American" breakfast.  I didn't opt for the more adventurous Japanese traditional breakfast, but it looked pretty good too.

Japanese style breakfast

The real work doesn't start until mid-day today, so I took advantage and went for a couple-mile stroll around the area surrounding the hotel with a couple of colleagues, Isabel McGann and Mike Santalucia.  The weather was a comfortable low 70's.  Starting around noon today it will get very busy - I'm guessing my next journal entries will not be nearly the novel that this one is turning out to be.

Hotel view 1

Hotel view 2

These vending machines are out on the street, all over the place

Check out this parking garage!

One other thing.  How did I not know until now that in Japan they travel on the left side of the street, a la England?  That was a surprise to me!

japan 2015 journal entry 2

No video screens mounted in the plane. We are getting so spoiled as world travelers. I guess I won't have too much trouble deciding which movies to watch for the next 11 hours. Thanks again to Carson for letting me borrow the PS Vita! And of course there are those 500 emails to get through.
The flight to San Fran was smooth. I sboozed a bit and ate a breakfast burrito, so I'm feeling pretty good so far. Coming in low over the bday into the landing strip was cool. We were getting lower and lower a and the only thing I could see out the window below us was water, until about five seconds before we touched down.

japan 2015 journal entry 1

So, this is my first trip to Japan. Woke up at 4:30am Denver time. Outta the house a couple of minutes past 5. Left with plenty of time thanks to Catherine's suggestion, and that was a good thing since the shuttle out of Pikes Peak parking decided to do an extra lap of people picking up. Running log of transportation so far: Car, parking shuttle, airport gate train, and now getting ready to board the flight to San Fran. Nothing too out of the normal so far. I've already run into three fellow bct "associates". Two random things to note: Our Japanese company prefers the term associates to employees. We are not employees, we are associates. Secondly, over decided to adopt the British convention for user of double quotes; it just makes more s sense than the Yankee way.