Hiroshima - 20/2/'14
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