Harbin: Conference

A university funded trip to Harbin for the International Geotechnical Symposium, starting off with a dinner in the revolving restaurant of Dragon Tower.

Conference and more importantly: conference cakes...

Fancy dinner in the evening to follow the days fun-filled presentations which invloved the Japanese contingent going up on stage to sing a song in Japanese, which was then followed by being forced onto stage by my very enthusiastic professor insisting (on account that he did pay for our registration fee) that Aziz and I sing songs from our respective countries in some lame attempt to entertain the conference attendees (some primative form of torture I believe).

University canteen food


Getting on and off the boat for the conference organised boat trip to SunIsland Park was rather precarious. At least the ducks had some thing amusing to watch...

Despite the river being rather murky and full of river traffic, it didnt stop a mass of people from swimming in it, infact there were crowds of people (mainly men in speedos) lining the banks ready for a dip in the river. There was even one guy in a little yellow pedalo happily paddling away while being buffeted by the wake of the huge boats zipping past.

Sunsetting over the river as we at our dinner...

Oooooh! a prize!?

MMmmmmmmmmm, apparently my Professor laughed out loud at the presentation ceremony in GeoKanto, because I had won the prize for Best Presentation. One of the reasons for winning was cited as: Good English. mwhahaha. Anyway I think its cheating slightly. Looking asian but being British threw them off track slightly.

strange things

There is a strange creature living in the shaking table experiment area (and its not the mice who find it hilarious to use the control board of the shaking table machine as a toilet facility). It attacks my recording equipment and seems to have a particular fondness for the camcorder and displacement sensors. It weaves a sticky web, which looks suspiciously like gaffer tape... I call it the gaffer-spider.

GeoKanto 2008

It's GeoKanto time again! Last year, the Kanto [関東] regional gathering of geotechnical engineers was in Maebashi [前橋], my first Japanese [err... well, first ever] conference. This year, the conference was held at Nihondaigaku [日本大学], one of the largest Universities in Kanto, possibly Japan. They have a multitude of campuses across the Kanto region, one of which is not too far from Todai [東大] north of the Imperial Palace in Ochanomizu [御茶ノ水]. The one we were at was way out East on the Tozai line [東西線] near Funabashi [船橋].

Despite all the proceedings and 99% of the presentations being in Japanese, I and the other foreign students were presenting in English. So that was fun. I didn't understand any of the other presentations and mine was the only English one in my session, so I'm not sure anybody apart from the chairman (who was actually Yamada-san, our assistant professor), actually understood the presentation anyway.



I did notice that there were some undergraduates from other universities (Chuo uni [中央大学] I think) who were busy sniggering at any glitch in their fellow students presentation, which didn't seem particularly nice/helpful, but nevermind.

The campus seemed HUGE! and there was this, rather trendy looking building on the way to the venue. The weird tube shaped structure seemed to hold a oblong lounge. Nice design, but seemed like a bit of waste of space. On the other hand, It must be quite nice to design an interesting building outside of the confines of Tokyo.

Also, there were some very pretty Chrysanthemums just at the entrance to the campus. Again with the HUGE.

Japan's Largest Shield Tunnel

It's 1400hrs on Thursday the 3rd of July and we are waiting in front of the Hachiko statue, ready to be taken to see Japan's largest shield tunnel. Whilst waiting for everyone to arrive, we noticed a small white cat had been placed under Hachiko...

Cat-chiko (hahaha...*ahem*)

We walked to Shimizu's offices nearby for a quick slide show about the whole project - mainly about why the tunnels had to be built one on top of another (lack of space) and the issues involved in turning the huge machine around to dig the second tunnel after it had finished the first one.

(left) Shaft 2, where we exited from, you'll notice the whole construction area is covered so that noise and dust does not disturb people near by. (right) down shaft 1, note how close the tunnels are! only 1.5m seperates them and each tunnel is nearly 13m in diameter.

me on the way down shaft 1

(left) the back of the shield tunnel, very clean....(right) the machinery that follows to control the flow of slurry to the face and take away the muck which is dug out. It is currently digging the bottom tunnel.

(left) the tunnel lining - black is ductile cast iron, and white is stiffer steel (right) a complicated s-bend in the tunnel, it is also sloping upwards. - the shield tunnel is programmed to dig this shape and CAD is used to design the individual lining segments...
We emerged at Shaft2. The tunnels only had about 20 or so people working in them (very small work force for such a complex project) it was very clean and well organised - but also very expensive. I am told that the shield tunnelling machine was designed for this project and this project only. After it has finished here, it will be disassembled and then melted for scrap.

Geotechnical Visit to China [Day 1]

Having been lucky enough to join the JGS team on their collaborative trip to China I had the privilege of being taken to some sites which had been heavily damaged by the earthquake. As the mini bus headed out of Chengdu [成都]and got steadily closer to the fault which ruptured on the 12th of May, the damage to buildings got more and more severe, and the sight of rows upon row of blue tents could be seen at shorter intervals.

A view from the road of some lovely earthquake damage...

The following photos are of a huge landslide which instantaneously buried 60 people (as we were told by our guides).

(left)looking at the Toe of the slide and (right) up to the source of the slide (from the halfway point)

Looking down to the toe of the slide from the halfway point.

Some of the rocks were absolutely massive, the largest I saw was around 5m by 3m by 2m...which suggests an awesome amount of energy. The debris that we stood on was a good 10m in thickness at the very least.

The roads we travelled on were still quite make-shift in places, where only a narrow path had been cleared through slide debris, so that the van travelled with loose rock on one side and a shear drop on the other and was only wide enough for one car. Thus the horn was used alot, to warn other motorists of our impending presence.

The following photos are of a collapsed concrete bridge, we were also able to see some evidence of a surface fault rupture on one of the abutments.

Your Mission, should you choose to accept it...

I've been invited, by my Professor, to join a JGS (Japanese Geological Society) collaborative mission to China, following the SiChuan Earthquake in May.

The dates of travel have now been set, although we are still unsure of where precisely we will be allowed to visit (due to safety issues and other less official factors). The visa applications are on their way and details of our journey to ChengDu are being finalised via a volley of emails. I am starting to feel like I should be more important than I actually am. Having glimpsed the list of the Geotechnical Team Members, I am the only female and possibly the least qualified person on the entire team.

I am starting to feel very small.

my first conference...

Was last Thursday, the 1st of November, at a place called Maebashi [前橋]. It was a JGS conference for all the geotechnical engineers in the Kanto province [関東], where the idea was to show everyone else what kind of research is going on in each field.

The conference started on the 31st of Oct, and ended on the 1st of November. There were 3 different presentation rooms, with each presentation + questions lasting 10mins... so, it was quick. I put myself down for a 5min presentation, just so that I could get out of there quicker...

Anyhoo, I'd written the paper whilst in Malaysia, which was fun. And I still hadn't gotten around to writing the presentation... nor was I entirely sure that what I wrote made any sense now. Obviously, it made *some* sense at the time, just that now it made less sense. Which was bad.

SO. There I was dressed up in IRONED trousers and a SHIRT [god forbid] looking like a pillock, and I headed with my laptop to somewhere outside of Tokyo...starting from Shinbashi station [新橋] I then went to Tokyo station [東京] and got on the Shinkansen [新幹線] to Takasaki [高崎] THEN on to a local train to Shinmaebashi [新前橋]. I got to the station and took the first sensible exit out of the station (with a vague recollection of the map - which looked very easy to get to the hall - you know, walk straight for two blocks and it's on your left....that kind of thing]. Anyway, I walked long enough to find out that it didn't look anything like the map. So I wondered in to what looked like a reception for a small University...and asked the people at the reception if they knew where the place was; showing them a very badly written name of the place I was trying to get to, which I copied off the internet. Worryingly, they had never heard of the place, and as this looked like a very small town, it was NOT a good sign. I was relieved to hear that I was at least a vaguely the right address. Just on the wrong side of the station. SO. I tottered back over from whence I came, made my way over the bridge over the train tracks... and now I was on the right side of the railway, the place was much easier to find.

So, I've managed to get to the right building, and following the signs in kanji, I go upstairs to register, which is a bit of a linguistic trauma, as they don't speak English... This resulted in a lot of giggling, which then descended (much to my concern that I had done something wrong) into laughter from the ladies that were trying to 'help' me. So, I do with pointing at my name on the list. I then get a goody bag containing the papers of the conference and a name tag holder thing... and only after seeing a couple of people, do I realise that I'm meant to write my name and University on it...

I loiter until the session before my session finishes, and then sneak into the hall. I see my Lab mates, who blank me... probably busy...

I manage to load up my presentation to the laptop, and then we head for lunch. Which was traumatic....well, traumatic for Ivan, who was displeased with the service at the canteen on the ground floor...and then even more agitated when they finally did serve him and told him there was no more of what he wanted.

When lunch was over, I went back to the presentation room to dissolve slowly in a chair... waiting for my turn. I tried to listen to the other presentations, but it was a bit hard, as they were in Japanese. So, I just looked at the pictures and guessed.. occasionally, opening my electronic dictionary to translate the odd word. Then, 'OOoooOooooh' my turn... So, I attempt to saunter up to the podium...well, laptop. Click on the right document (it's the only one in English) and then START....errrrr....well I would have done IF I could find the start presentation button, which definitely wasn't in the usual place... and everything else was in Japanese!!! I then, stood there like a lemon, waving the mouse about hoping that something would happen...nothing. Then one of the ladies sitting near the front popped up to save me.

I waffled on for 5mins. Everyone looked very confused...probably the same look that I had on my face during the Japanese presentations. Then, questions. From one person (better than none - which usually happens for English presentations)...which I answered with NO skill... again reiterating my 'lemon' status.

After attempting to listen to the rest of the presentations, I then promptly left to try and escape back to Tokyo. Not before bumping into my Professor; who didn't seem too dissapointed at my performance... in fact he seemed very happy. But pointed out 2 things:
1. I had apparently said that I was a 'Assistant Researcher' on my title page; on account of copy and pasting some kanji...OOooops
2. Gals stands for Galileo and hence demands a capital G. I never knew that.

Anyway, I'm still alive. Which is good for me and bad for you.

Kurobe Dam - Day 2

...That night there was another bug... this time it was one I actually recognised... a nice yellow centipede. Which was pretty damned fast, and really wanted to go to my bedroom (BAD!). We spent a while trying to bat it to go downstairs and hopefully outside, but it managed to squirrel itself into the stairs and refused to go outdoors.... Anyhow, it was better than being in my room....

Mr. Centipede

We were reasonably free in the morning, so we had a little wonder around looking at more engineering stuff (or if you were Greg...the pretty scenery, while laughing at the engineers taking photos of very dull looking things)

A heavily engineered river bank...

A waterfall, also highly engineered; ie. it was so constrained the river was in a pipe....

A steel-arch type bridge thingy....

Then we grabbed a quick lunch in town and met up with the rest of our group at the train station to make our way up to the main dam...We took a special little train up the valley, it was tiny and powered by a orange diesel engine at the front.

A cunningly disguised water control tower...looking suspiciously like a western castle...

Our little train making it's way up the single track...

The final stop ended up in a tunnel, and then a big metal door and no more train tracks....We got off the train and the train headed back to the main station back at the bottom of the valley. The big doors turned out to be some huge industrial lift...which took us up a good few hurndred meters. Getting out of the lift there was a second train waiting...we could fit about 6 of us in a carriage and we sat in it for a good while no seeing anything out of the windows but concrete...

inside the lift

Just outside of the lift....and Yamada-san 山田さん (assistant technician) looking particularly unimpressed...

Inside the tunnel train...taking us further up the valley...

the train eventually emerged from the tunnels onto a chunky looking steel bridge, to the right was a small concrete dam...but it was mainly nice to see the sun again....We definitely weren't taking the normal tourist route...it was the workers entrance.


We then got into a shoddy looking counter-weight cable car...which went up some vicious gradient...

View up the shaft which the counter-weight cable car was trying to get us up...

We had a bit of a walk through some tunnels before we reached a gated entrance to the control center of the dam. We were eventually let in and led to a huge board room with a scale model of the Kurobe Valley and the dam catchment area. It was an awesome model with also opened out to show you a cross-section of the dam too :D

We were also taken down to the turbine rooms, which was noisy (much the same as the dam I saw in Greece), but still cool, have a video of it somewhere....

The Turbine hall...the turbines with lights on are working....obviously, the number of turbines they operate depends on consumer demand...

sexy photo of the turbine blades...

At some point we must have emerged into daylight again....after wandering around in dark and cool tunnels for a while, and we ended up at the top of the dam. And it was drizzling...

mmmmmm.....concrete....

I have to say that Greg has more photos of the trip than I do....but I think you've seen enough concrete for now...