The plan for today was to first visit the company Shimadzu and then travel to our next hotel in Nagoya.
At 6:30, one hour before gathering most people got up and had some breakfast. As we were leaving this hotel everybody brought their luggage with them and handed in their key. At 7:30, the time of departure, we were still missing our chairman.. Luckely for him he showed up just a moment before we were about to Darwin him.
At around 10 we arrived at Shimadzu, perfectly on time, after having dropped our luggage in lockers at Kyoto station. During our visit we first received an short introduction of the company afterwhich the group was split into two groups which each visited the following:
- Analytical & Measurement Instruments Application Development Center
- Analytical & Measurement Instruments Factory
- Medical Instruments Show Center
An interesting fact by the way is that shimadzu orginally made buddhist alter articals; something totally different than the precision Instruments they now make.
After some coffee we travelled to Kyoto station to get our luggage and had some lunch before departing to Nagoya.
After a succesful trip we arrived at the hotel at roughly 15:00. After checking in, the people went upstairs to drop of their luggage and check their room. Most were quite shocked after seeing their room.. Not everyone knew that they needed to share a 120cm wilde bed with their buddy.. People however calmed down after a while and several people also determined this was a great time to check out a capsule hotel.
Around 16:00 we left the hotel for a walk through the city. We visited the closed Nagoya castle and a pottery store. At 18:00 we arrived at a ferris wheel afterwhich we had an luxerous barbeque style dinner together. After the dinner the people were free to go where they wanted. Some decided to visit a karaoke bar while others got drunk before they visited a capsule hotel late in the night.
By: Jasper Scholten
Tuesday morning, horribly early in the morning we left for a day trip to Hiroshima. After a short night due to a evening of good food and karaoke in the Chinatown district of Kobe we left for the Shinkansen station. Shinkansen is really a fascinating way of transportation, it's like an airplane on rails, but without the hassle of customs and checking in.
In Hiroshima we visited the peace memorial and the museum. Both where very impressive. Visiting the museum and the memorial park gave a good impression of the magnitude of the effects of 'Little Boy'. Also the timeline of all the events before and after the bomb was dropped are fascinating to observe; research, letters to and from Einstein and Oppenheimer, all the Project Manhattan and it's secret 'eyes only' documents. Only visiting this museum and walking right beneath the point where the bomb was detonated gives some insight in the impact on life and consequences on society. Not only the truly cruel results of this hastily conducted first time use of the atomic bomb but also the efforts of Japanese society and the remaining inhabitants of Hiroshima to get the situation under control were part of this exposition.
After walking through the museum we made a quick tour to see all the sights such as the t-shaped bridge the bomber pilots used as one of the main landmarks to recognize the drop point and the most remarkable remaining building, nowadays known as the A-bomb dome. This dome was very close to the actual point of detonation, but still was one of the few remaining buildings for kilometers. Now it is conserved and serves as a silent reminder of what happened at 8:15 on that August 6th 1945.
In the afternoon we were supposed to visit the Elpida DRAM foundry, just outside of Hiroshima. To get here we needed to take a train that appeared to be a local Shinkansen for less than 10 minutes. Unfortunately two persons accidentally boarded the wrong Shinkansen and missed the taxis arranged by Elpida. They missed one of the most spectacular company visits up until now.
At first we were brought to the main gate of the plant, but after all decompressing from the made-to-fit-Asians taxi we needed to get back in because the drivers insisted on bringing us right up to the front door of the facility, a whopping 50 meters further.
In the first presentation we learned that Elpida is now under the Micron flag since last March. Elpida was originally founded by Nec, Hitachi and Mitsubishi and in this facility called FAB15. The state of the art 580 meter long E300 line is capabele of producing 1 TB NAND cell. In this magical cleanroom we saw the wonderful choreography of little robots dancing over the ceiling, transporting the containers with wafers to their next destination. The tour was, just as the morning, filled with mind boggling numbers. Running costs of a facility like this is no joke, especially in Japan, where price of energy is higher than anywhere in the world. With a throughput of 100000 wafers and it's own gas powered power plant the site kept amazing us. The tour guides where very thorough and did their utmost best to answer our questions, even calling colleagues to find them.
After arriving back in Osaka a group of people including me decide to go to the "Oude Kaas" restaurant to eat Boerenkool met worst. Sadly the restaurant closed just a couple of weeks earlier, but after a short sightseeing tour through the more dubious nightlife area of Osaka we found a place to eat.
On our way to find a good restaurant we met Momo. Momo was cute Japanese girl who invited us to a bar she was standing in herself. Unfortunately no dinner there, so we decided to go back after finishing out meal.
The whole bar was about 9 square meters and totally crowded. With a little bit of elbow grease we managed to obtain a spot and ordered some beer only to find out it was last round already. After paying the bill we were happy we didn't have more drinks there. Not the cheapest beer ever, but truly one of the best days since a long time!
By: Ivo Schoenmaker
Today was, very surprisingly, again a very busy day. The alarm rang at 7:00 after which I had to get in my suit. The program for today consisted of two companies, Panasonic before lunch and CiNet in the afternoon. When I went down into the hotel lobby there was no one to be found. This was a little bit weird because we only had 15 minutes left before we had to go to the metro station. Luckily soon after this surprise everyone began coming in for breakfast.
At the moment we had to assemble we were missing two persons. This was a little bit of a problem because everyone was staying in a separate room. As a group we did not precisely know in which room these persons where staying so we could not wake them. The train does not wait so we had to go without them, hoping they would find their way to the companies by themselves. But before we went to the train we had to sing a song for our birthday boy Jelmer. Erik handed over his present to him, a 4 l pet bottle of Nikka whisky. With all the formalities completed we could finally start our journey.
A short trip by train and metro and we arrived at Panasonic. The visit started with a short introduction about the founder and foundation of panasonic, followed by a museum tour. The museum featured products by panasonic throughout the history of the company. It was also very appealing to see the company's mission; good products for the masses at affordable prices. This is very typical for Japanese companies, we saw the same motto at a lot of other companies we visited. After the museum we got a showroom tour which displayed newly developed products by panasonic. All these products were from the specific branch of Panasonic we visited, the automotive & industrial division. But this was not all, after we visited the showroom we got two presentations by engineers. The first was about GaN devices and the second one showed a new type of non-volatile memory, resistive ram aka ReRAM.
The visit to panasonic had come to an end, we had a fast lunch and got on the Osaka monorail to the second company. I have never been on a monorail train before so this was a nice new experience, it was very smooth and quiet. It took a mere 15 minutes before we arrived at our destination.
It was time to visit CiNet, a Osaka university institute specialized in neural networks and brain research. We had an introduction to the institute and their groups, they are researching in the field of human machine interaction, neuroscience and MRI & MEG measurement and analysis technologies. Then we got a tour throughout the institute, first we went to see their medical measurement equipment, an 7T and 3T MRI and a state of the art MEG. Very impressive to see. Thereafter we got to see a brain probe setup, here research was done to the optical nerve and the response to stimuli.
Quite a macabre ending but no time to think about it a lot because it was time for dinner. We went to a nice restaurant with a small group. The cart was in Japanese so we just ordered some random things and something by pointing at pictures. This resulted in a nice seafood hot-pot and the opportunity for diy soup. A very pleasant dinner. After a 2nd dinner for some at Mc Donalds it was time to go back to the hotel. A good nights rest for another busy day.
By: Peter Oostewechel
At the beginning of the day the afternoon program was not known yet, but what was certain was that we would be visiting the Riken institute today.
After about an hour of travel we arrived at the station in Kobe, where we were awaited by some Riken employees and our study mate Freddy. Freddy is in Japan for his internship at Riken, we have met him previously already in Japan for some drinks and culture.
At Riken an extensive program awaited us, which started with giving us a rather untechnical presentation about the K computer, which is the world’s fourth fastest computer.
The presentation screen was in front of curtains which seemed to be in front of a wall, however at the end of the presentation we were surprised by the ingenious building planning of the Japanese, because behind the curtains was the actual super computer. So at the end of the presentation, the curtains opened, and we could see the super computer.
Then, we continued into another Riken building, a small walk away from the super computer building. Here, Riken had prepared a bento box (lunch) for us, which we could enjoy after a presentation about a biological topic and introduction of this division of Riken. After this presentation we moved to yet another location where we got another three presentations from different biologists/electrical engineers and some coffee. The group’s main research focus was about electronically reading neuron signals from a brain.
Riken definitely had prepared the day well, because they had one final presentation in store for us. This was a presentation which was mainly about stem cell research, in which Riken institute excels.
After a long day of Riken, we took the train to China town, Kobe, where we could choose how to spend the rest of our day.
By: Jens Oosterkamp
The program for today is visiting ATR: Advanced Telecommunications Research institute and Sharp (known for the pocket calculators and more recently: Televisions). Furthermore, the plan was to visit the Nara-koen park, but it was already dark when we arrived there so we did not go.
After a nice Family Mart breakfast, we left for the JR line to go to ATR. Sander joined us already and Wilfred joins us later on at Sharp.
When we arrived at the JR line close to the hostel, it turned out that two of us forgot their JR passes. Luckily, Tim was the day manager and he planned everything very loose with lots of fail-saves. While we waited for the forgetful people to return we could listen to the beautifully annoyingly constant repeating of the JR line tune.
After the JR line we took the bus to the ATR complex. We where three quarters of an hour early, so we waited. This because it is impolite to arrive early in Japan. Luckily, it was sunny! After receiving the general ATR talk we went to all the cool demonstrations! First there was a presentation about their exoskeleton and brain-interfacing. The first demonstration was the exoskeleton arm, very cool. Some of us could even try the futuristic looking body enhancement. Unfortunately, it was made for Japanese people and it was a little undersized. There was also a little robot who detected people in the room with lots of Kinect sensors and approached them to hand over a little card. Finally, we had a lot of fun with an unsettling little robot (called Telenoid) who mimicked the movement of a real person in another room.
At Sharp we listened to presentations about air ionizers and microbe killer machines. There was also a tour in the Sharp museum that showed us that the founder of Sharp was incredibly awesome and magnificent. Also, there was a talking automatic vacuum cleaner, that exclaimed loudly while we had a peaceful museum tour: "Fully charged!".
We finalized the day with some Italian food and quickly went to bed in Hotel Mikado, safe and sound in our Japanese style beds.
By: Frits Kuipers
An early morning sun rises in Japan as our alarm clocks ring around 7:30. Today is the last day in the old capital: Kyoto. The program for today: Traveling to Kinkakuji Temple in the morning, and after lunch visit Toei Kyoto Studio Park. In the evening, we will have dinner all together to celebrate our first period in Japan with Jan Broenink and Hugo Westerveld, as they are leaving tomorrow. After the party, we still need to go to Osaka by train at night.
We finish our breakfast as usual, but rush to get all our luggage downstairs, check out and take the bus to Kinkakuji Temple. As we are driving down the road, it appears there is a marathon taking place. A more detailed examination learns us that today the big Kyoto marathon is taking place, luckily we didn't get stuck in traffic! We arrive at the temple sight. An english guide book then tells us it is actually not a temple, but a vacation home and pavilion built for shogun Ashikaga Yoshimitsu! It has been burned down many times, but the sight was exteremely pretty. The weather, for the first time since our visit, was nice and sunny. This made the beautiful gardens even more attractive. At the Kinkakuji sight, there was also the posibility to join a tea ceremony, which some of us did. Others went out to see some more sights along the way walking to our next destination of the day.
Kyoto really harbours so many beautiful, interesting and curious places, it could have taken us weeks without boredom.
By chance, we found a restaurant that had the capacity of over 20 people, and we all enjoyed a nice Japanese lunch. A little stroll lead us to Toei Kyoto Studio Park.
Toei Studio Park was quite expensive, but really cheesy attraction park. It showed buildings and people of 'old kyoto', and the park was used by film and movie companies for shooting their scenes. However, it was really tailored for children. There were some unattractive small museums, boring attractions, a very funny live action show with great special effects, but just walking around was quite interesting.
After a couple of hours, it was time to take the train back to the city center.
There, we had a great party dinner: Traditional japanese low tables, sashimi dishes (raw fish) and lots of beer! After speeches from Jan and Hugo, we decided to get wasted quickly, because we still needed to take the train to Osaka. We had to run hard, but it was worth it!
The train ride was not very hectic, as mostly people were really tired.
We checked into the hotel in Osaka, and even the manager really didn't want to see all of our passports anymore. The rooms are mostly traditional style Japanese rooms. Ouch, no mattres. Well, we are too tired to complain anyway.
By: Jelmer Kosters
The day started dry with the sun shining. To ensure that some people do not get homesick today we went to visit their relatives in Arashiyama in Kyoto. There we visited the Iwatatyama Monkey Park. On the way to the park we saw a stray monkey in the city. His name was Freddy Grunneweg and he came also from Enschede. He is doing his internship here in Japan. But today he joins us.
The Iwatayama Monkey Park is on the mountain Arashiyama. It is inhabited by a troop of over 170 Japanese macaque monkeys. The animals are living the wild here. After buying the tickets we walked up to the top of the mountain. On the way to the top we saw a lot of monkeys playing in the trees. They also walked between us on the path. It was not allowed to look the monkeys straight into their eyes because then they can become very aggressive. On the top there was a hut with wire fence covering the windows. Here you can buy food to give to the monkeys. They took the piece of food from your hand and eat it. It was very nice to see all the monkeys eating and running around the mountain. Also you had a nice view over Arashiyama on the mountain.
After lunch time we went to Fushimi-ku to visit the head shrine of Inari. The shrine sits at the base of a mountain with the name Inari. At the entry of the shrine you see two foxes with a key in their mouth. They are regarded as the messengers. On the path to the top there are a lot of wooden torii's. A torii is a traditional Japanese gate. It symbolically marks the transition from the profane to the sacred. Each of the torii at Fushimi Inari Taisha is donated by a Japanese business. It was a very nice walk.
In the evening I went with two other people to a restaurant where they have a lot have ice creams. Even though it was a cold day we eat an ice cream after dinner.
By: Karim Kok
It is six o'clock in the morning. The first alarms start to make their noises to wake everyone up. Today we are going to travel to Kyoto. Since we now have some experience with the metro in Tokyo we knew that it could be difficult to get to the Shinkansen on time, so we left early.
When we arrived at Asakusa station we had to split up to fit everyone in the metro with their luggage. We had to divide ourself over the train in small groups and force ourselves in to get on board. In the end the journey to the Shinkansen went very smooth and we were on time to start our two hour journey to Kyoto. For most of us this meant that is was time to sleep.
When we arrived in Kyoto we went directly to the hostel to leave our luggage there. The program for the afternoon was a visit to the university of Kyoto. We had to hurry to be there on time since the Shinkansen was delayed by 30 minutes because of the snow. At the university we had a small seminar with interesting presentations of the work the university did on wireless communication and digital communication. I also got the change to see a Rube Goldberg machine that had some wireless sensors in it.
After the visit at the university it was time for dinner. I bought a dish with separate specialties in it. The Japanese guy next to us explained to us what to do with all the food. Unfortunately he did not understood English so we had to communicate by small words and a lot of gestures. By the end of our dinner he bought us some beer and the bar gave us some sake as presents. I had a great dinner, great conversation and very good sake after a very long day.
By: Maikel Huiskamp
The day started early, wake up at 6:30 AM. Some of us were not really well rested, because we decided that it was a good idea to drink some beer and a bottle of whiskey the night before. The reason for waking up early was that we had planned a company visit at Fujitsu in Atsugi, which is about 100km away from our hostel. During the train ride we befriended some local Japanese people who were interested in where we come from and what we are doing in Japan. Before we got off at our final stop we gave them a “stroopwafel” to let them experience the taste of excellent Dutch candy.
After a long train ride we arrived at hon-atsugi station where we needed to walk five minutes to reach the bus station. When we arrived at the bus station we realized that we either just missed the bus or that google maps displayed the wrong time. The next bus was bound to leave in about half an hour which meant we would be too late for the company visit. The travel planning comity decided to call our contact person at Fujitsu and ask for advice on how to get there as fast as possible. Eventually it was decided to take the next train one stop closer and take a bus. This meant we have to run back to the station and gave us a direct indication of how bad the stamina was of some electrical engineers.
Eventually we reached Fujitsu an hour later than planned, but this did not seem to bother the people at Fujitsu and they just shifted the program with an hour. First we got a demonstration of a high resolution TEM(transmission electron microscope) which can display atomic structures of materials by illuminating a sample with an electron beam and focusing it with an electromagnetic lens. The energy is scattered by the sample and measured to display an image of the atomic crystal structure. After the first demonstration we headed to a technological exhibition of products and prototypes that Fujitsu makes. There was a cute robotic teddy beam which a webcam in its nose which was able to interact with people. It seemed to have trouble with waking up from his slumber when we were there so we just thought that he had a hangover. Other things in the exhibition were high mobility MOSFETs, environmental sensor networks and biometric equipment. The company visit was ended by presentations of analog electronics(Maikel was really happy afterwards) and of course our presentation of the University of Twente.
After the company visit it was time to take the bus downtown and lunch in small groups. Our group decided to go to a sushi bar with an conveyor belt. When you enter the restaurant, you sit down and can choose any of the dishes that pass your chair. All the plates have a different colour which indicates the price of a dish. At the end of your meal, you hand in a stack of plates and the price gets calculated.
When everybody finished their lunch it was time to go to the hiking trail by taking the local bus. We arrived at our destination in our business suits and had a small stroll to the mountain. Unfortunately the GPS navigation brought us to the backyard of a local. She quickly pointed us to the right location. Hiking up the mountain was a tedious task because there was still snow and mud from days before, some of it frozen solid. This made some parts slippery. At the end of the hike was a temple on the top of the mountain. After hiking for a couple of hours, we took the bus back to the station and headed back to Tokyo. Once arrived in Tokyo we eat together and packed our bags to prepare for an early wake up for the trip to Kyoto.
By: Roelof Grootjans
The day started with congratulating Mattanja with his birthday. Some of the group members bought him a nice gift from a sex shop in Akihabara. After a nice breakfast on the go (salmon with egg salad) we started our trip at Tawaramachi station. after one and a half hours of public transport we arrived at the last station at 9:30, so we had 10 minutes to buy some coffee.
After that it was time to head to Hitachi. Once we arrived at the impressive Hitachi campus Roelof arranged the guest passes so we could enter the premises. It looked like a park with a couple of large buildings. The main building looked very empty. We were guided to a presentation room for a couple of presentations, after that a lab tour was planned.
The first presentation was about a new type of sensor comparable to an electrocardiogram. This sensor is called magnetocardiogram and is used for non-invasive heart measurements. The device uses 64 SQUID(afkorting) sensors. the device can be used to discover heart defects more accurately than an ECG, since an ECG is often subject to disturbances.
The second presentation was about e new type of sensor that uses a FET to sequence DNA strands. The device uses the drain current to distinguish the different nucleotides. The chip uses 4-9nm nanopores with a gate around it. The DNA is pulled through the nanopore using an electric field, that way the DNA can be sequenced.
After the presentations it was time to visit the cleanroom, where we got a short presentation of the devices that are produced. The research presented there was on ultrasonic transducers using MEMS. After the cleanroom we had a very short tour of the showroom, this contained some exhibitions that were not turned on so it wasn't really impressive.
After a quick photo the journey continued to the Tokyo Science Museum to visit a 3d display company called Burton. The travel was very long, so we had to lunch on the go. The last part of the journey was on an automated train which had no driver! Instead of the driving position there was a empty compartment with a large window from which we could see the port of Tokyo. Once we arrived at the final station, we got lost and headed deep into the industrial area. This meant that this would be the first time we got late at a company.
The company burton is a small company which is situated inside the Tokyo science museum. We arrived late, but luckily the company was flexible enough to readjust the programme. First there was a short introduction, after that the group was divided into 3 groups and seperately visit the 3d display. The other two groups were writing down questions and possible applications. Of course the first application we thought of was a musquito killing machine. But there were also some serious applications. The 3d display itself was an impressive feat of engineering. After the questions were answered the best possible way, the applications were discussed. That was the final part of the presentation from burton.
After that visit to Burton a guided tour was planned. But the tourguide got an unexpected phone call. So we returned to the lobby, and we were surprised to meet the dutch ambassador who wanted to have a little chat with us. After a group photo and a nice conversation, the museum tour continued. Funnily enough the museum had some exhibits of the places we visited. for example there was an exhibition of the shinkai 6500 which we saw 2 days ago at Jamstec. It also contained a piece of the super kamiokande detector that we will visit in the coming weeks. At five o'clock it was time to leave the museum. The plan was to take the subway to Asakusa and then meet at about eight 'o clock at the Tokyo skytree. In the meanwhile we found something to eat near the skytower and drank some beers. The restaurant containted a vendingmachine with tickets for different dishes. These tickets were handed in at the counter, and your dish was prepared.
Once everybody arrived at the skytree, we could start our acend to the top floor to enjoy the impressive sight of Tokyo. The lights of the city reached as far as the eye could see. We were able to pinpoint the exact position of our Hostel.
After the visit to the skytree we went back to Asakusa some people went to drink some beers in a bar, and some people went to the Hostel. All in all it was an nice day with some interesting companies.
By: Robert Grootjans
