A Weekend in Tokyo

Last weekend I got to go to Tokyo. I traveled down to the city Friday night, I spent nearly all of Saturday at Odaiba, an artificial island in the center of the city, and then on Sunday I saw a variety of things including the Meiji Shrine, before I headed back to Aizu-Wakamatsu for school on Monday. In the first picture is a very bright street at night. The second picture is from Odaiba looking at the Rainbow Bridge connecting Odaiba to the rest of the city.

Being in Tokyo, I felt sort of like the person in this subway ad below:

The biggest thing I during the trip was going to an event called Digital Content Expo.

In the first photograph above you can see some people trying out a device that uses ultrasonic transducer arrays to allow you to feel in one box the contents of the other. When two people put their hands in at the same time the computers would make you feel a gentle poke where the hands would have collided. In the second photo you can see me riding a sort of electric chariot.

Another fun thing I got to do at the Expo was to put on some springy stilts and a big bubble and jump around. In the photo above you can see that the combination looks strange. The stilts allow you to jump higher and run faster, and the big bubble makes falling down a little safer.

In the top photo above you can see a sunset from Odaiba, and the bottom is a big plate of Kanazawa Curry.

There were many things to do, see, and eat. I think I would be disappointed with my time in Japan if I didn't go back to Tokyo a few more times.

Koi at the Five Colored Lakes

The 5 Colored lakes, 五色沼 , are a popular place to go and look at the autumn leaves. There are 5 lakes, and different colored algae give each of the lakes a different color. During my trips here I didn't make it far enough to see more then the first, blue, colored lake.

In the second photograph, you can see a group of people looking at Koi in the lake.

In the photo above you can see an all-white Koi with a heart on its side. I heard that this Koi was purchased by the park for a large amount of money. More money than I would personally spend on a fish, but it is pretty. There is some information about this fish (in Japanese) Here .

This last photo was borrowed from Facebook. It shows me and another student trying to touch the Koi. When we did touch them we found that they didn't seem to mind being touched, and that they were slimy.

Used Electronics

There is a store here called Hard-Off. They have a large selection of used electronics, clothing, housewares, and more. This picture is of some used Nintendo products. Not pictured are the bins of game cartridges.

In this photo is a stack of Sega Dreamcasts

2. Arrival at The University of Aizu

This is a photograph of the dormitory I will be staying in at Aizu. My room is barely visible as the room in the right wing, second floor, far left.
In front of the dormitory there are three large bike racks. Bicycles are very popular for transportation here, and the Autumn is a very nice time for biking. I bought a bicycle from a recycle shop for about 5,000 yen. When I leave the school I can leave it behind for other students from Rose-Hulman who come here.

1. Departure

This photo was taken at O'Hare airport on September 27th at 5:00am. I stayed up all of the night before packing and so I look pretty tired. I backdated this photo a little bit, because at the time when I am posting this I have already been in Japan for about three weeks.

I took two flights to Japan. The first leg was from Chicago to Dallas and the second was from Dallas to Narita airport in Tokyo. From Tokyo I took three trains to get to Aizuwakamatsu city, the school that I am exchanging to for the next year.