It's raining again, so today, I'll post about my raining day topics. Having lived here for a few weeks, there's not really anything surprising anymore, so it took quite a while to collect the contents for the Miscellaneous series.
Robot Zone
Throughout the Koen Dori (lit. "Park Road"), there are signs saying "Robot Zone". If my Japanese is not wrong, it basically says "Two meters around here will be used for robot experiments. If a robot approach you, please be careful. If you don't like being near robots, please walk on the other side." I have never seen an experiment though.
Closed on Monday
Here, many public facilities and exhibits, such as the Tsukuba Science Square or the public library, which are open on weekends are instead closed on Monday.
Supermarket Checkout Pipelining
At supermarkets here, the checkout machine is separated into a barcode scanning machine and a payment machine. So while the credit card payment is being processed or the customer is searching for change, the clerk can start scanning the next customer's product.
Slow Television
I'm not sure if it's because the television in my room has a slow CPU or due to technical limitation of having to wait for a keyframe, but changing channels is very slow and that can be quite annoying when channel-surfing.
Semi-automatic door
Automatic doors are quite popular here, but not all doors are fully automatic. Some automatic sliding doors don't use sensors, instead, you have to push the button for it to open. Talking about doors, Lawson is the only convenience store I've been to that uses a swinging door instead of an automatic sliding door. (Which left me standing waiting for the door in front of Lawson before realizing that I have to open it myself!)
Let's continue with the restaurant reviews! Today, I went to Hamazushi, a 100-yen conveyor sushi restaurant located near the LaLa Garden shopping center. (It's right next to Coco's.)
With only a few exceptions, all sushi dishes are ¥100 (¥105 with tax) and on weekdays, they are only ¥90 each (¥94 with tax). When you go in, a staff will assign you a seat and give you a card mentioning your seat number.
I got seat number 10
The dishes arrives on a conveyor belt and you simply pick what you what to eat off the belt. Additionally, you may also use the touchscreen to make orders or order side dishes such as udon.
Touch screen for making orders
Sushi arriving on the conveyor belt
Many sauces, but I have no idea which is what!
Free tea, which you have to brew by yourself
These are the sushi and side dishes available at this restaurant.
Deserts are also available at prices ranging from ¥100 to ¥200. I finished off today's dinner with a cake.
This cake costs ¥200 (¥210 with tax)
So here's the total damage.
Before you leave your table, your supposed to ask a staff to come and count how many dishes you've eaten and they'll give you a slip which you will use to pay at the counter in the front of the restaurant. However, I wasn't sure how to call the staff, so I just went to the front counter and the staff there came and count for me.
And that was today's dinner. However, for some reason, eating only sushi doesn't really make me feel full. Or rather, I'm so full that I don't want to eat any more, but my stomach feels somewhat empty.
Today is time for another restaurant review! This time, it's Nakau, which is located south of AIST near the local shopping center.
Nakau is a chain of restaurant which specializes in Gyudon and Udon. If my Japanese is not wrong, it also opens for 24 hours. Let's take a look inside.
As far as I can see, to maximize efficiency, only one person runs the restaurant. To place an order, you have to buy a meal ticket from the vending machine, then sit at a table and the staff will come and get your ticket (and serves free green tea). The food here is very cheap, and a reasonable meal can be had for ¥500 - ¥600.
The touch-screen vending machine. It has no English, but the pictures help a lot!
The meal ticket from the vending machine
After a short while, the meal arrives. The left side is Udon and the right side is Gyudon. I must say that the Gyudon here is very delicious!
Today, Sugita-san took me and others to look at AIST's "Next Generation Data Center", which is a container-based data center optimized for power efficiency. The container in the middle of the picture below is the next generation container-based data center while the building to the left is a traditional data center, but with improved cooling efficiency.
Let's take a look inside the traditional data center first.
The black rack is the cooling unit, located inside the data center for maximum efficiency.
A closer look at the server rack
and the cooling rack
and finally the UPS rack, composed of standard batteries good for 10 minutes.
Now, let us enter the next generation data center. For some reason, it's 40°C inside! I was told that it has never been this hot before, so maybe there's some problem. (EDIT: I was informed that the servers have high thermal tolerance. The high room temperature does not matter, but it is the airflow, which keeps the server cool, that is important.)
All computers here uses water cooling
The water cooling united connected inside the blade server
High voltage DC power is used for efficient power supply
This is the air exchange unit connected to the next generation data center
Anyone can probably tell that this is the air conditioning pipe!
If you're interested in more detail about AIST's next generation data center, please see the YouTube video (prepared by AIST) below.
Today, nothing eventful happened at work, but for dinner, I've decided to start eating out at restaurants instead of just using the cafeteria at AIST. Today, I went to a branch of Coco's, a chain of family restaurants in the Ibaraki prefecture.
A family restaurant (ファミレス) is a type of restaurant in Japan with a relaxed environment and a variety of menus ranging from around ¥500 to ¥2000.
So I browsed the menu (with pictures and even a bit of English) and decided to have Beef Curry. I was sitting and waiting, wondering why hasn't the waiter came yet... until I realize...
You have to press this button!
I've ordered it very spicy, but the waiter then came and said that only normal spicy is available (I think they're using pre-cooked frozen food). Anyway, here's the food. The taste was so-so, I guess.
When I payed for the food, I was given some kind of promotional coupon for a chocolate cake during the end of this month. Unfortunately, my Japanese is not good enough to understand the conditions.
Let's finish off the meal with ice cream from a nearby vending machine!
Today, I've planned to go to Tokyo, but it was canceled because the forecast says that the weather will be bad all day. So instead, I'll write a bit about my experience using the ATM in Japan.
Two ATMs known to be friendly to foreign cards are Japan Post ATM (found at post offices and also elsewhere) and Seven Bank ATM (found in Seven Elevens). However, unlike Thailand and elsewhere in the world where ATMs can be used at anytime, many ATMs in Japan have opening hours and holidays!
Japan Post ATM inside AIST. This one opens from 09.00 - 18.00 and closes on Sunday.
Seven Bank's ATM inside 7-11
This time, I've decided to withdraw money from Seven Bank's ATM. The machine is touch-screen, has an English menu and is very easy to use. You simply insert your card and follow the on-screen instructions. You can withdraw money in units of 10,000 yens with the minimum of 10,000 yens and a maximum of 200,000 yens. But please be aware that your originating bank may charge a fee for foreign transactions, so it may be more wise to withdraw a large amount at a time.
Tsukuba is not really a tourist destination, but if there's something Tsukuba is famous for, it is the fact that it is a "science city". Tsukuba is home to many research organizations such as AIST (where I'm interning), JAXA (space exploration), NIMS, the University of Tsukuba and many more. So today, I have visited various science displays.
The first exhibition I've went to is inside AIST, right beside the cafeteria — The Science Square Tsukuba.
Here, they have a "tape" guide service available, which has an interesting internal. The way it works it that sound is transmitted via line-of-sight light, and the machine will pick up the sound when you stand on the designated spot.
Let's look at some of the interesting exhibits. First is a video conference system which uses chroma keying (green/blue screen) to put everyone in the same virtual space. Unfortunately, I'm wearing a blue shirt today, so I became transparent!
Next is a system which grades English pronunciation. However, maybe it's designed for Japanese and doesn't work so well for other nationals. The system gave me a "100" even when using a "Thai" pronunciation or even when I said a different word!
The inarguably most interesting exhibition is Paro, a therapeutic or "healing" robot. Please enjoy the video below. If you'd like to play with Paro yourself, you can come to Science Square Tsukuba inside AIST. There is no entrance fee.
There are 2 giant rockets in Tsukuba, one standing and one lying down. The standing rocket is a model belong to the Tsukuba Expo Center. The one lying down, however, is a real rocket which belongs to Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), which is located right next to AIST. Unfortunately, a tour of the facilities require a reservation, so I could only view the exhibits.
The rocket failed testing, so it wasn't used for launch.
For lunch, I went to TonQ, "the best katsudon restaurant in Tsukuba", according to a co-worker at AIST.
While I don't know if the restaurant is the best or not, I can safely say that it is very popular. When I went in, I had to wait for a table. The restaurant has a self-queue system where we enter our name, the number of people and our table preference. However, the queueing system does not have English. No problem, I thought, I can type my name in katakana. But the system does not have katakana either! (My kana-ized name uses the sound "ウィ" which is not present in hiragana.) Finally, when I asked the staff if the system has katakana or not, he typed "ぱうい" for me based on how I've pronounced my name — close enough, I guess.
And finally, here's the food
In the evening, I toured around Tsukuba University and also viewed the University's gallery (similar to Mahidol's hall of fame, but much smaller). Tsukuba University has a very large campus and a bicycle is a must. Interestingly, they're going to implement a new bicycle registration system using IC (RFID) stickers attached to the bikes.
To finish the day off, let's have some ice cream! (Unfortunately, they don't have Cornetto here.)
