adventures on a synthetic island
The Onsen and capsule hotel are on a synthetic island made o
f 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.
