adventures on a synthetic island
The Onsen and capsule hotel are on a synthetic island made of landfill
in the Tokyo harbour. Upon emerging from the capsule hotel in the
morning, we wandered around the island for a bit until the museum of
science and technology opened at 10am. I was struck by the number of
Japanese teens who wander around without the parental supervision that
seems necessary in North America. Maybe the Japanese are less paranoid
because their society is safer.

Once the museum opened, we went in and ate lunch before checking out
the exhibits. I was amused to see that there was a man whose job
appeared to consist of pushing buttons for people using the
ticket-dispensing machine! Honda's Asimo robot is a huge hit with the
kids and I noted the contrast between the Japanese idea of a robot as
cute and the American idea of a robot as fierce. O thought the
mechanical router was a great way to illustrate the concepts of
network data transfer to kids in an interactive and visual manner.
Disappointingly, the special pterosaur exhibit was almost entirely in
Japanese.

See and download the full gallery on posterous

Posted by email from quikchange's posterous