Hello room 666. 

Goodbye view of Mt. Hakodate from the Harbor View Hotel. 

Goodbye Hakodate Station. Goodbye weird sculpture that I will not begin to comment on. 

Considering joining the Uyoku

Well we got up early-ish and went over to buy train tickets at Hakodate Station (across the street), but we could only buy them for part of the way (to Hachinohe). But by the time I took a shower and packed my bag, we had to jet for the station. After all, we have to allow for some getting confused time on the way to the train.

We made it okay and then bought Shinkansen (bullet train) tickets in Hachinohe. The train was nice and relaxing. For some reason, I can always fall asleep on trains :) During the ride, Jon found the missing piece to a weird puzzle. When we were in Hakodate on the weekend, we saw these big busses driving through the city... correction we HEARD these busses blaring marching music. The primary one there was all black with a flag of Japan. With all of the chanting and marching coming from them, it was quite Orwellian. Unfortunately, I was so flabbergasted by the sight of them, that I didn't have time to take a picture. Well, I had bugged Makoto (a senior researcher from Japan) about it and he said that it was right wing wackos with connections to the Yakuza. And Jon while reading the guide book finally found out their name: Uyoku. I don't think they like foreigners so I won't try and talk with them.

Well, we got into Tokyo and there was a light rain and the first thing we saw, I mean heard, was Uyoku again :) We checked into our hotel and went out in search of food. We found this pretty cool little corner diner that was smaller than our hotel room called Tako Hachi. It means Octopus Eight and oddly enough, their specialty is 8 balls, each stuffed with a piece of octopus.

We met up with Ranjit and went for second dinner at a pretty nice bar. Then we all gathered in our hotel room, room 666 that is, and drank some Hakodate wine.

More of the same. Hey, it's art. 

Found in the center of Future University, your guess is as good as mine. 

In the future, fire extinguishers will much more visible and accessible. No need to break glass, just pick it up. 

The view from inside the AAMAS bus with service from your hotel to Future University. I want you take note of 1. The chandeliers dangling from above and 2. The heads in the bottom of photo that are of people sitting aisles on pull-out benches. 

Conference is done dude!

Yesterday was a great finish to a good conference ;) I got up in wee hours of the morning to attend the annual Teamcore breakfast! There were about 20 of us and we took over the hotel buffet.

I then meandered into the conference and couldn't find any interesting talks. What I did find was more people to play soccer with! Then I went around and bugged people with posters. I have to say that I really liked that about this year's conference. Now, all papers (even full ones) have a poaster that people will stand by and be able to answer any questions you have about their work. It is a good way to peruse through work and make more personal contacts. They followed this up with the closing remarks and letting us know that they want us to come back next year when the conference is in Hawaii! Then they capped it all off with a great farewell party with a good amount of food. This was the only time that the food didn't run out because a lot of folks leave the conference before the last day.

We then had to go on a trek to get some cash. I would like to pause here and point out the oddity that a country, which is considered to be so technologically advanced, would have no places that accept credit cards. On top of that, there are almost no ATM machines, and the few that are there, do not usually speak english. Even in the rare case that you have found an ATM and it speaks english, it will usually reject your card. The only sure fire way that you can get some cash it to find a post office and use their ATM.

This makes me think of another oddity about this country's advertising: small cute cartoon animals. They are everywhere. In the US, they might be used to promote the occasional product that is geared toward the knee-high demographic. However, these litle guys are everywhere here. Promoting everything from gas to a hair cut. They are always there, having fun, trying to entice you to come on in. After all the anthropomorphized bottle of mushrooms likes it. The reason that this oddity came to my mind was that this cute dog-cat thing is there at the ATM helping you along just sitting there. It really gives mixed messages when the little guy is jumping happy in the corner of the screen as your card is rejected.

Alright, enough of my tirade. By that time, we all went on wild goose chase becuase Milind was craving some japanese curry. We found a place, had some curry, along with some curry wine, and then went back to meet some more people in the lobby. I had really wanted to go to these hot springs that Rajiv was raving about, but it looked like there wouldn't be time, but Alessandro and Vittorio came along and they wanted to go as well. Think of it as a sort of a sauna where old guys hang out and discuss business. I was glad that I checked it out. And we finished out the night with some ramen.