Final Note

I would like to thank everyone who visits this site to read the stories about my trip to Japan.  I also want to thank everyone for their patience as it has taken me almost a month upon my return to fully document my travels.  It has been busy since I have been back.  While I managed to avoid getting sick during the trip like a handful of my classmates, I became ill the day of my return after finally being rundown enough, which lasted for at least two weeks after coming back to the states.  I also am now engaged to my girlfriend of 7 years.  So it has been a very eventful past few weeks.  Later this week, I am off to Los Angelos to intern at FlashFactory in Burbank, California for the rest of the summer.  I hope to learn a lot.

Make sure you check out the video that Jordan and I created for this course at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ExTkg94mpAk and go to www.tcinjapan09.wordpress.com to read the rest of my classmate’s blogs (I may eventually get them linked up to my page directly). 

Until next time,

Chris Cornish

Technology Review: NTT Docomo Research Projects

 

Technology is a funny thing.  The latest and the greatest is old news, outdated and boring within sometimes less than a year.  It changes so rapidly that sometimes it brings around a paradigm shift that completely alters the way we function in our day to day lives.  The world gets smaller and smaller every day thanks to new technology, and in large due to our communications research.  Enter NTT Docomo Research Park in Yokohama Japan. 

I was priviledged enough to see some of the giant communcations company’s newest research.  Surprisingly, its not touch screens and futuristic interfaces like some might think.  In fact, some of their research seems to have little to do with cell phones or networks.  One of these surprising innovations was a futurist version of “The Clapper”.  Think of it as a remote control in the form of a wristwatch attached to the back of your wrist.  The device receives signals from the muscle twitches in the person’s arm when they tap their thumb to one of their fingers.  The user then can program different patterns to say activate the lights within a room, or deactivate, or maybe even be the password to a safe.  Why not all three?  In fact, many devices can be programmed with the wireless device at their control.  The only thing needed to be remembered was little finger tapping to the jingle of your choice.

Some of the more expected technology from a mobile carrier’s research was in the line of hands free sets.  A particularly neat device not only functioned as a bluetooth type hands-free set, but it also gave out no sound.  How can that be?  Well, actually instead of carrying the vibrations through the air that we hear and call sound, they travel from the device and through the user’s finger.  A good use for this would be to prevent the sound from being too loud and to keep other people from listening in.  Another great use for this would be for those hard of hearing because the vibrations will carry to their inner ears.  To use this, the user puts the device on their finger like a ring.  They then put a finger (I used my index finger) and put the tip of their finger into their ear.  The vibrations carry through to the eardrum and so it can be heard.  Incredible!

 

   Along the same lines, NTT is working on wireless devices that don’t use bluetooth or any other types of wireless standards to transmit the data from the handset to the earpiece.  Instead, they are experimenting with using the human body as the conductor.  Our bodies are fairly good electrical conductors and the devices takes full advantage of this.  The user can hold their phone in their hand and the current will travel through their body to their head where the earpiece receives the signal from the body and translates it into whatever sounds are needed to carry out the message.  This also functions in the reverse so that the user can communicate back to the phone.  It works so well that another person can actually be holding the phone and as long as the person with the earpiece is holding their hand, they will still hear it.  This technology has a lot of potential as it gets more advanced because it could eliminate the need to hold the phone at all.  As long as it were in your pocket against the body, it could work. 

Along with practical research, comes the more ambitious and ultimately unmarketable ideas.  This actually seemed to be the norm with most research facility visits.  A lot of technologies never make it past the prototype.  Some of these more impractical uses that were created by NTT included attachments for the phones.  I do not mean key rings or cases.  One of these crazy attachments was a flute that attaches to the phone.  The microphone and speaker in the phone allow the user to blow into and hear back the sound, while the rest of the attachment holds the notes that the user can press down to play melodies.  Of course this would never replace a musical instrument and is much more of a gimmick than usable item.  But still, creation is one of the things humans do best and not every imaginative idea has to sell to be worth creating.  Sometimes it is just as important to see if it can be done.  More importantly, many times ideas and inventions created to help produce one project turn into new developments of their own.

Nothing I saw demonstrates this truth more than the first technology we were shown within the R&D building- a computer communication system of the future.  This system NTT created provided so many intuitive and new ways to interact with people from long distances away, it truely is amazing.  The user sits at the computer station and can interact with the computer through almost every sense.  Audibly, the computer speaks to the user in the demo, but this could easily be another person, and the user can talk back, giving audio commands.  Images can be scanned and sent, but when received are much more than just images.  They are 3D hologram images which the user can wave their hands around in front to turn the image any way they please.  Even smells can be transmitted, the example being the scent of a flower after handling it virtually.  The demonstration then showed how this could be used practically as the user virtually bought clothing for their daughter.  Image purchasing perfume without having to go to the store to sample it first, simply the smell gets transmitted through the network.  Then the user can take an image of the customer, choose the clothing they want and the computer will virtually “try” on the clothes, showing a hologram image of what it would all look like being worn.  The sizes could be calculated and everything.  All without ever having to get up or try on a piece of clothes.  This is real and it is all being done together.  Any one of these features is impressive in its own right and could be a marketable product on its own.  Together, they are something of amazment and wonder.  I eagerly await to see what comes of this research in the coming years.  This quick review of their technology and research will hopefully inspire the inventor in all of us. 

NTT Docomo, like other companies visited in Japan, spread their research in a variety of directions.  This technology is real and for the most part has real uses out in the world.

Sayonara

May 28th.  Downstairs at 10am.  Breakfast and one last meeting.  Dr. C tells us all how great the trip has been and thanks us for assisting in the research (not that we had a lot of choice).  It was a sad moment as we all realized together and at once that this really was it. 

My flight is scheduled to depart at 3.  I am on the same flight as Dr. C and Jason. 

We all packed and met back downstairs at 11. 

Will and Rob were staying another few days in Japan and then Will was heading for Korea while Rob was going South Pacific to Okinawa.  Chen was leaving a day or two behind us as well.  Everybody else was heading home today.

Let me say that running through the subways with a duffel bag filled with dirty clothes from 3 weeks, a large suitcase, a backpack and a messenger bag, was not the easiest trick.  Especially when it required several train changes to finally get on the train heading towards Narita.  Oh yea, and we were running late!

So late in fact, that we literally had to run through the stations.  Even with all our effort, we still missed the train to the airport. 

We waited for the next one, all along knowing that once we got to the airport, we had 6 minutes to get off the train and run up 4 floors to the ticketing before we would be locked out from checking in.  I also forgot to mention it was raining.

When the train arrived, it came in two parts which connected to each other at the station to form one.  Once on, it was a nice break to sit down and relax while watching my last views of Tokyo slip into the distance.

Upon arriving we sprinted off the train, flinging our bags on wheels behind us on every turn.  Round and round we went, going up set after set of escalators to reach the floor for ticketing.  I have never been so relieved upon reaching the counter. 

The flight back was relatively uneventful.  It was on time and there was no swine flu scan.  The only time I really looked out the window, I watched us flying over the snow-capped mountains of Alaska, and I knew I was heading back home.

I arrived in Detroit 2 hours before I left at 1pm on May 28th.

~fin~

Will

Goodnight and Goodluck

May 27th.  After visiting companies, it was time for dinner.  We all went to this restaurant in the area that had a multi-course meal.  The mistake that most of us made, myself included, was that we did not buy the unlimited drinks, mostly because we didn’t have enough money.  This was unfortunate because there were long periods of time in between courses and each course was pretty small.  The food was also quite a bit different than anything we had had before.  We ate steamed bamboo, salmon cooked in rice, some skewered meat, takoyaki, and the most daring food of them all, chicken intestines.

  The group of us that did not purchase the alcohol were pretty bored throughout the meal and also because the servings were small and we only had water to drink, we stayed pretty hungry.  It didn’t help that the other group, Dr. C, a few colleagues from Japanese universities, and a couple of the students were having a great time with their beer, sake, and plum wine.  Oh well, lesson learned.

The non-drinking group left early and we went back to the hotel where most of us used the time to finish our research data collection. 

After we began pre-gaming (drinking) for our last night in Japan.  We started with going out onto the roof to sit, talk, and enjoy the view of the Tokyo skyline.  Afterwords, we began rallying troops over the radio to go out.  Dr. Coursaris was the last to make it down and then we were off to explore the nightlife in Roppongi once more. 

 

Our first stop was a heavily international bar on the first floor of the Konami building.  They had a pretty good happy hour deal, so we stayed for a couple of drinks there.  We also managed to talk to some interesting guys from NYC who were going to go backpacking in Thailand but were stopping to visit Tokyo on the way.  It sounded like it would be an amazing trip. 

After our drinks, we left Midtown to our final destination in Roppongi.  Here we had a difficult time trying to find a good bar/club to party at since it was a Wednesday night.  For the first time, we had one of the annoying Nigerian guys lead us around from club to club, trying to find one we liked.  After our third or fourth try, we landed on one downstairs which had a large group of girls in it.  This turned out to be a humorous event because the Russian group of girls while extremely flirty, kept pushing away every attempt made by our group to talk or dance with them.  In the mean time, Dr. C just stood in the corner, striking poses, looking like his cool Greek self.

  It was him and Jordan who began talking to a guy and a girl from Singapore, who spoke fluent English. 

After a while of talking and dancing with these two people, they led us to a bar called the Wall Street Pub (or something like that).  This bar was a tourist bar so it was much more crowded and had a lot of English speaking people within it.  We were able to let loose here a lot more and danced, drank and partied the night away. 

 

Around 3am Dr. Coursaris and a few others decided they were heading to bed.  On our way out we talked to this cool, foul mouthed bouncer who used to be in the Marines which was how he ended up living in Japan.  He had some interesting stories.

  It was at this time that a small group of us decided we were not going to head back to bed just yet and instead go over to the Tokyo tower and admire it glowing in the night.

 

  I am glad I chose to do this because it instantly brought back memories of my trip to Paris and how me and a group of the girls slipped out in the middle of the night and walked down to the Eiffel tower and relaxed in the park in front of it.  The cool thing about that was that hundreds of Parisian teens and college kids were out partying and relaxing in the park too at 2am with us.  Here in Tokyo, it was just us.  But that was okay, because it really was just a moment to stop time for a second and take in all that we had experienced in this beautiful country.  It was also a chance for the small group of us to start the goodbyes which would go into the next morning.

  After reminiscing and enjoying the view for awhile, we went back, making sure to stop at the Aston Martin dealership on the way.

  I got back into my hotel room as the sun was rising at 4:30am.

Game and Sound

May 27th.  This was sadly the last full day in Japan for most of us.  And it was a busy one.

  Starting with a company visit iNiS, the game designer behind Elite Beat Agents for the DS and Lips for the Xbox 360, this music game company is a small version of one of my personal favorite developers, Harmonix.  They were really cool to meet especially because the CEO and the two designers, Rob and Eric, who talked to us and gave us a presentation were all Americans.

 

  It made the language barrier nonexistent.  After showing us their history, they pulled out their game Lips for us to play (or should I say sing). 

 It was pretty funny to watch people try to sing the Police.

  The cool thing about Lips is their high quality microphones that are wireless and change color to the beat of the music.  I was actually surprised to learn that their hardware costs are similar to the cost of one of the Rock Band guitar controllers, which is crazy because they sell the mics with the game for the price of just the game.  It was cool too because I actually own this game so it was neat to talk to the people who created it. 

The next company we visited was D3, a publishing company for many different games across all of the consoles, PC, and mobile.  Just their mobile infrastructure alone makes a ton of money.  It is pretty amazing.  We were shown one of their third person shooter style games for mobile phones that had the graphics and sound of a Playstation 2 game.  That’s incredible.  Even more incredible that it is two player over the wireless network. 

The final company visit we went to was to Dolby Japan.

 

  Inside, it was like walking into a movie studio with all sorts of awards and movie posters along the wall.  Once in the conference room, they showed us their LED LCD technology that creates extremely high contrast ratios and deep colors all while using very little power compared to traditional LCD tvs.

  We were also shown a video-conference feature available on Japanese phones.

They also showed us an awe-inspiring 7.1 surround sound system playing the Dark Knight on Blu-Ray.  It was like watching it at the theater.  Another cool technology they were working on for games was voice chat that was interactive with the environment of the game.  This means that if you are talking with another player in the game, if he looks away from you the sound will respond accordingly.  Also if he walks away, is above or below you, behind you or if he walks behind a wall, the sound will weaken, come from the correct direction in the surround sound or maybe you won’t hear it at all.  It was pretty interesting.  Finally, the coolest demo I thought, was a surround encoding technology being developed for phones and the ipod, which allows surround sound through the headphones which sounded so amazing, I could have sworn I was in a movie theater.  The session ended with the ritual group photo, in which we were all wearing masks since Dolby requested this of us, and us receiving a bunch of gifts from Dolby, such as a hat, a nice notepad and a folder with the presentation within it.

Waseda University

May 26th.  Today we headed out to meet with an American professor teaching at Waseda University in Tokyo.  It was a long train ride to get there (about 2 hours) and a very intersting one at that. 

 

 While riding on the train, a Japanese man with an obvious mental illness, was jumping from seat to seat along the train and touching other passengers and especially some of the women, in most inappropriate ways.  It was a very difficult language barrier since he spoke Japanese and was mentally impaired.  We called him salmon shirt due to the color of this clothing.  This was the first and only trouble we ever had with anyone on a Japanese subway or train. 

When we arrived we were greated by the professor and grabbed some refreshments before meeting the first class. 

 The first class interestingly spoke very little English even though out of the two classes we met, they were supposed to have had the most English classes.   I had a lot of fun with the first group though because unlike the rest of my classmates, Thomas and I were paired with a group of Japanese students who were big into games and anime.  Two of their names were Max and Yoshi but I forget the third’s.  It made it easy for us to find common ground to talk about and we eventually started showing pictures from home even.  The most fun though was when we were talking about the Nintendo DS and I just happened to have both of mine in my bag at the time and one of the Japanese students, had their DS on them, so we ended up playing Mario Kart matches against each other.  It was great.  Then Max started talking about his Magic Cards which neither me nor Thomas play but Jordan loves it so I called him over saying Magic the Gathering and Jordan practically leaped over a table to get to us.  It was pretty funny.  Max even gave Jordan a card as a gift.   But then class ended so we had to say our goodbyes.

The next class was almost entirely girls and their English was much better so we all had a much easier time talking with them.  We also rotated who we talked with more which was cool but also made it hard to really establish a connection with any of the students. 

Both classes were handed a survey about Facebook and location based advertising which we had to collect the data from later that day and the next. 

The rest of the day was a free day which I used to finish the interviews for Jordan and I’s project and do the data collection for the surveys.

Lectures, shopping, and Giants: Happy Memorial Day

May 24th.  This day was nothing big so I am lumping it with the next day.  Basically, I went off on my own for this rainy Sunday afternoon with my clear umbrella to do some shopping in Asakusa and Akihabara.  I finished my gift shopping and the shopping for myself on this day because it really is the last time we had to go out on our own.  Jordan and I also used this time to get the last of the video for our project. 

May 25th:  Happy Memorial Day for fellow Americans

Today started with Dr. C telling us about a lecture he was going to give us since one of the universities we were going to visit turned us away.  Because the hotel would not let us stay in the cafeteria and it costs money to use their meeting room, we decided to go to a local cafe (one with wifi) that could hold us all.  This was actually pretty nice.  We were out on the patio and all had some coffees or drinks to hold us over the hour or so we were there.

  The lecture was pretty interesting, talking a lot about culture studies of the Japanese.  From there we went to experience some more Japanese culture: sushi.  We actually ended going back to the same sushi place that a group of us had discovered our first night back from Osaka.  When arriving to it in Roppongi, the prices were even cheaper than they were when we had gone there before.  Unfortunately, the service was just as bad and we were there for 40 minutes at least before we even got our food.  But the quality was still really good for the most part (except for their salmon which was tough) and it was extremely cheap. 

Part two of the culture theme:  Baseball!!

After the meal, we went back to the hotel and relaxed for a little bit before heading to the subway to go over to where the Tokyo Giants play.  Coming out of the subway, which was an extremely long escalator, there were massive crowds of people and a big rollercoaster that wound its way up and down skyscrapers.

  Off to the right was the stadium.  By far the best part of this was when we got to the stadium, the beers and drinks we had been carrying with us to the stadium were not only allowed in the stadium, but they supplied you with cups and drink carriers for them and even poured it for you.  That would NEVER happen in the U.S. 

To describe the atmosphere of this baseball game, the only similar experience I can think of is a big college football game.  Coordinated cheers and chants, mascots, cheerleaders, taunts.

  It was a lot of fun.  It was also really cool too because if you wanted more beer, they had girls dressed up in girl scout type brightly colored uniforms with a keg strapped to their back to fill you up on the spot.  Awesome. 

There were even a couple of home-runs.  And of course, when one of the players, Alex Remerez throws a ball right towards our group, Dr. C and most of us were inside getting some food and talking.  But it was a lot of fun.

The Mt. Fuji Adventure

May 23rd.  After lunch, we quickly hauled over to the subway, heading towards Tokyo Station.  Once there, we jumped on the Shinkansen for an hour and a half ride to Fuji Station.  Along the way, we had our traditional Mario Kart races before stopping to admire the view of all the mountains.

  As we got closer, the clouds got darker and heavier.  I started to fear that we may not be able to see the mountain beneath the thick cloud cover. 

 My fears were realized as we got off the train at the station and could not see the mountain at all.  We decided to head to the tallest building, a near-by parking garage, to see if you could get a better look.  Reaching the top, we discovered that we could see the base of the mountain but nothing awe-inspiring as the top two-thirds were covered. 

 Disappointed, we decided to head over to 7-11 and grab a few drinks and snacks to hold us over until the next train arrived.  We returned to the garage and watched the sun set (or attempt to beneath the clouds).  Just before we were ready to leave, we started to get yelled at for haning around there.  Apparently we were somehow upsetting someone.  So we headed back to the train station, boarded the shinkansen for the final time and headed back to Tokyo.  Meeting up with the others back at the hotel, we discovered that even the group that left at noon for Mt. Fuji couldn’t see the mountain because of the clouds either.  It was a wash for us all. 

Most of the other group had left without us to meet some friends of Kohl’s living in Tokyo, so once again, Jordan, Jon and the three Chris’es headed out alone on a adventure.  This time we wanted to see what a Japanese hostess/strip club was like-and really there is only one place for that…Roppongi!!  At the bar we actually met some interesting girls, most of them being from Singapore.  One of us (not saying names) even facebook friend-ed one of them.  But for most it was a disappointment because we ended up spending a lot of money for very few drinks and little entertainment.  Mostly it was paying for someone to talk to.  I guess in Japan, having someones company to talk with is something that they value much higher in the U.S.  Or maybe we just take our socially outgoing behavior for granted.  Or maybe even it dates back to the time of Geishas in Japan, where beautiful women were paid by business men to dance, talk with and entertain them.  It was fascinating, but again not what we had expected.

We returned the hotel and later met and talked with the rest of the main group who had gone out with Kohl’s friend.  They had a 300 dollar meal paid for them by his friend’s rich girl friend and got to experience a fun tavern in Tokyo.  We were pretty jealous after we had so many failed attempts throughout the day, especially the whole Mt. Fuji thing.  But oh well, it does make a good story.

Turning Japanese

May 23rd.  Today our some of us decided we wanted to see some of Japan’s natural beauty and by saying that, I mean the largest mountain in the country:  Mt. Fuji.

  Leaving for the subway, we met up with Dr. C and Nicole.  Some of us, me, Jordan, Chris P, Chris K, and Jon decided we would wait to go to Fuji later in the afternoon and watch Dr. C and Chris P get authentic Japanese haircuts.  Dr. C decided to play it safe and just get a trim but Pietak decided to go all out and get a mo-hawk.  His cut fit right along with a lot of the Japanese young adults. 

 It was interesting seeing the salon which looked exactly like any salon here in the U.S. including even some French style magazines.

  Once the crazy-cuts were done, we headed towards Roppongi Hills to the Hollywood Plaza to have some sushi for lunch.

 

 The sushi place we went to was one of the famous Japanese conveyor belt sushi bars- where the sushi plates are prepared and then move along the belt on color-coded for price plates.  It is like a moving, real life menu, where you pick what you want not from pictures, but rather as it moves past your seat.

 

  I had only heard about these and was very excited to try it.  And it did not disappoint.  It was some of the best sushi I had ever had and it really was well priced as well.  It was also pretty fun.  In fact, we even put a camera on the belt and videotaped a lap around the bar on it.  The chefs sure got a kick out of it.  The best part of all though was at the end of the meal, with our plates comparatively stacked to see who ate the most, the waitress came by with a reader and runs it along the plates and instantly our meal was totaled.  Apparently the plates each have their own RFID (radio frequency identification) tag which allowed the waitress to just wave a wand near the plates to tally them up.  It was even cooler when she took the wand and put it near a plastic card and clicked a button on the device to make the blank plastic card become out bill.  Now all I had to do was walk up to the register with a plastic card and hand it to them and they told me my total.  Only in Japan.

Japan Railway Company

May 22nd.  Today we woke up to head to the Japan Railway Company East Division’s Research Center. 

 This trip proved to be fateful for a couple of people on the trip as they fell to the same fate that I did the day we visited Keio University.  They were left behind.  We waited for both of them in the subway for a little while but like me before, it is like finding a needle in a haystack.  Once we could not wait any longer, we had to leave without Chen and Will and Nicole who stayed behind looking for them.  When we got there, we moved to a conference room which had cool tv monitors that rose from out of the table top at the press of a button.  So amused by this, every single one of us felt compelled to push our monitor buttons before we could begin.

  JR gave us a run down of their operations and some of their research.  Through their presentation they explained to us the history of the company and their current work.  From that, they took us into their lab, where no cameras were allowed.  We were able to see their new Suica pass cards they are working on.  These subway cards already work in a lot of places (even vending machines) as debit type cards as well as the subway/train pass.  Even Japanese phones can have the RFID tags built into the phones so they can just slide the phone over the reader.  The new cards they showed us were using electronic paper that had digital displays to show the user the time, balance and other up-to-date information.  Another cool thing we saw was a help display that once you said where you want to go, it will not only show you the map and subway routes, but it will point a flexible arrow at the top in the right direction.  From that point on, your card remembers where you are heading and any point you come across and slide the card for will show you the next direction to take.  We also were showed a tourist information display that was touch panel and had information, costs, directions to all sorts of sites in Japan. 

We moved back to the conference room for a Q/A session and just before we left, the lost students showed up.  All together, we left to head back to the hotel. 

 From there we went back to Akihabara to do some research for Jordan and I’s project.  It was also to play cool arcade games. 

That night a group of us went out to try to go to a nice club or bar, but we had trouble finding the good ones and ones that we found often turned us away for not being properly dressed.  So, we eventually turned back and that was it for the night.