Riken - 18/2/'14
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