Tokyo

This was our first extended weekend in Tokyo. Though it was exceptionally hot, we were able to enjoy many different events.

First was the Youssou N'Dour concert. Who would have thought that we would finally get to see him in Tokyo.















We also got to a Japanese baseball game. Though baseball is the same in Japan, the fans are not. Fans from both teams were at the dome and did choreographed cheers for the whole time.












Doug thought it was very amusing to see sushi venders rather than the hotdog stands at US baseball games.











We planned on spending an afternoon in the Imperial Palace grounds but had to cut our time short due to the fact that were running late to our brunch. We plan to return to actually see the palace



















Tokyo has many great museums. We decided to go to ____ Museum since we were told it had many hands on exhibits. Any architect would have loved the museum for its many beutiful models of the Edo period.
















Lastly we enjoyed having tea at the Park Hyatt Hotel. The view was superb, though it was too cloudy to see Mt. Fuji. You can also see the Hotel by watching the movie Lost in Translation. I do think Morri tower in Tokyo does rival the Hotel. Especially with their bullet speed elevators.

Research in Tsukuba

This summer isn't actually all about traveling. We each got a fellowship to study with a professor/researcher of our choice in Japan. Doug is working on musical analysis with machine learning at the National institute of Advance Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) through the National Science Foundation. Megan is studying Epidemiology at the University of Tsukuba through the National Institute of Health.




Megan's office is at the University of Tsukuba's Medical school where she works under Dr. Wagatsuma, MD, PhD, MPH, one of two female professors at the Univerity. They are working on analyzing all of Zimbabwe's Schistosomiasis data from the 1996-2002. It has been tougher than expected, mainly due to thousands of missing data entries.

Doug advisor is Masataka Goto, a world expert in Music Information Retrieval. Doug is also working with Elias Pampalk, another world expert, who is a post-doc working with Masataka for the year. (See Elias' Blog about Tsukuba.) Both have filled Doug's head with great ideas throughout the summer.



The lab has been a very inspiring place due to the fact that Masataka has had many students working at AIST during their summer semester. In the photo, we have Masataka-sensei and his hachi merry students: Katsu, Elias, Tommi, Hiro, Masataka, Doug, Nishio, Ohishi, and Ito.

One project that other members of our group work on involves a dancing robot.

Koya-san

Mount Koya (Koyasan) is the center of Shingon Buddhism. There are over one hundred temples in the small town a few hours south of Kyoto. It was much cooler on top of the wooded mountain than it was in the urban jungles of Kyoto and Osaka.



















We spent two nights at a temple. We woke up early to participate in the morning prayers and were able to eat a lot of great vegetarian cuisine.














The old cedar trees were enormous. Doug became one with nature.

Kyoto

Arriving in Kyoto after our train ride from Mt. Fuji we found ourselves in a sauna. Kyoto is surrounded by mountains and the heat from the ocean gets trapped in the town. Luckily after visiting the beautiful sites when quickly forgot how much we were sweating.

Our favorite spot in Kyoto was Ryoan-ji Temple. A pan of Ryoan-ji

We arrived early in the morning before the crowds arrived to sit in front of the zen garden, consisting of 15 rocks of various sizes stating in a seas of raked white gravel.


Glenn, Sandy, and Megan spent a long time sitting between the rock garden and the adjacent moss garden.




















Afterward, we walked around the lake where we found a small tea house that served us a vegetarian snack overlooking a secluded Japanese garden.





The lily pad lake in Ryoan-ji was perfect. There was even a small island in the middle that you could get to by a small bridge. Unfortunately they did not allow us to take the boat out.








In every temple you will find the water spouts that are used for tea ceremonies or for washing your hands before entering a sacred area.















Before my parents left for Japan, Sarah told them to keep an eye out for the rainbells that hang down from the gutters. We took many pictures of these and hope to add them to our Ithaca cottage.















Another favorite spot was Fushimi Inari in the southeastern side of Kyoto. We took a long hike at dusk through hundreds of red torii up and down the mountain. The mountain was very spooky with the cicadas screeching all around us.

Mount Fuji

Luckily we started our Mt. Fuji ascent in the sunshine at the usual 5th station. The first day we did about 4 hours of hiking on the Kawagushi-ko track, finally stopping at the "not real" 8th station mountain hut. Deciding that we would prefer to hike during the day rather than at night we hunkered down to sleep along side hundreds of other climbers.




Unfortunately when we woke up for the 4:45 am sunrise the rain clouds had covered our view. With mom feeling a little sick, we left her at the "real" 8th station, and summited the mountain in fierce
winds.








Our hike back down was more of a fun slide down the volcanic ash. We choose the ash covered trail, Subashiri track, which allowed us to return to the bottom of the mountain without destroying our knees.