Hiroshima

So we went down to Hiroshima [広島] by shinkansen 9th July, I was meant to be presenting at a conference for the JGS and Greg had taken some holiday to join me....OoooOooh! it's expensive, 37,100yen EACH for a return ticket on the fastest train there (Nozomi) and that takes just over 4 hours! But it's alright, the lab paid my train fare for the trip and 3 nights accommodation! (Taking the an internal flight is similar in cost and saves you about 1hour, if you are efficient at getting to and from the airport at both ends; in Tokyo Haneda airport [羽田空港] is not too far from the city centre, but the airport at Hiroshima [広島] is over 1.5 hrs away from the city centre. Anyway, we were lucky enough to wangle a Gakuwari [学割] officially known as a gakusei waribiki[学生割引-がくせいわりびき] (a student discount which you can get on JR journeys over 101km long - I only get 10 of these coupons a year, so I guess I should use them wisely). ALL that aside, this was the first photo that we took coming out into the(significantly less humid) summer heat of Hiroshima; Trams of Hiroshima. There is no metro system (unlike Nagano [長野] or Kyoto [京都]), and we managed to snap both the new and old style trams in one shot.



After dropping off our bags at the 'Comfort hotel Otemachi' [コンフォルトホテル大手町］ we took a walk in the blazing sun to Hiroshima castle [left]. It had all been reduced to dust due to the the A-bomb, but had been reconstructed to show what it should have been like. Apparently, it was more of an administration office/HQ than that of a defence structure...more typical of the late Edo (I think). The inside of the castle (free for students! - and about 300yen, possibly less if you are a normal human) it was more of a After the castle we wondered Eastwards towards a very nice looking garden. I liked the red umbrella in the entrance.

the garden

There were some strange fish in the gardens pond, who swam around hoovering the water surface, and they seemed to be doing it in formation.

We found quite a lot of crabs too, the first one was by some bamboo (far far away from water), which was odd, then later we found a stream teeming with them...

We also spent some time to go to the Peace Memorial Museum, just 10mins walk from our hotel (and also where my conference was going on in an adjacent building). Only 50yen to get in, and audio guides were 300yen, available in a variety of languages. The museum itself has lots of english guidance, so there was not much need for the audio guide unless your eyes or brain got tired of reading. Basically, the museum describes the situation leading up to the Pacific War...the general atmosphere at the time, politically speaking and the wars that Japan was involved in, in Russia and China. It also detailed the harsh living conditions in Japan while at war; the constant hunger and the forced labour of Chinese and Koreans. Then it moved on to the Americans, and their development of the bomb. Worst of all, they described why they used it - which I am still disgusted at: they didn't want to have to explain spending soo much money on the A-bomb project and not have any fruits at the end of it. Tactically, speaking they also didn't want to give Japan over to the Russians (another option to ending the war but they feared giving Russia too much power) which would have saved alot of lives. Scientifically, some people wanted to test the effectiveness of the bomb, which is also why they chose such a high population place and gave NO WARNING - just so that they could see the power of the bomb. nice.

A model of Hiroshima before and after the A-bomb

tears

There were many moving stories of the scenes of suffering just after the bombing, as well as descriptions of the after effects.

On a completely different note; after my presentation at the conference, we managed to get hold of the free rental bikes from our hotel. So we cycled to the East side of town to a large park; where we found a nice little temple, an art museum and a lot of very hungry mosquitos.

After feeding some mosquitos we thought we'd better drink something and so we popped into a cool cafe that we saw on the way; it apparently sold 'CRAPES' - great. and had a huge spray painting of Ultraman on the wall.

That night we had a very delicious dinner at a fresh fish restaurant. They had many fishes in tanks which could be fished out and cooked to order, and we also saw some small octopii which were in lidded tanks to stop them from escaping. I saw at least one fish pulled from a tank, only to be filleted alive. It looked painful - but I bet it was tasty.

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.

update...

I know I haven't written for a while but I just got back from China last night, and am in the midst of writing up about the trip; annotated photos and all. I have to say I am very impressed with the response of both the Chinese people and the Chinese Government to the situation. I also have to say, I saw nearly as many People's Liberation Army tents as emergency shelter tents for the thousands of displaced people. I am also quite glad that the university insured me for my trip as we ended up going places where I'm sure no one would let you any where near if it were a site in the UK.

more soon...

Birthday stuff...

Having already taken me on a bead shopping-spree in Asakusa Bashi [浅草橋] last saturday, Greg took me to a very nice French restaurant in Hiroo [広尾] called Chez Tomo.

We entered past the open kitchen and the signatures of the Troigros Brothers (two very famous French Chefs whose restaurant Tomo used to work in when he was in France) and then turned the corner to a very peaceful, white-dressed dining area. Tomo apparently cooks for the love of food and only just covers costs on lunches, and as the majority of his customers are regulars, he changes the menu often.

I had a very nice foie gras fish terrine (very nice foie gras!) and Greg went for a form of black pudding (which looked more like a chocolate brownie. I have to say I prefered the look of mine, the idea of a slab of blood didn't really appeal. on the other hand the slab of blood didn't look or taste anything like what I expected and it had a surprisingly soft texture. Moving on, we both took the hot and cold veges which arrived on a square plate neatly laid out in a grid. There each of the 30 or so little veges were all different, and we spent most of the time working out what they were before eliminating them one by one. For the main course I took white fish in a tomato soup which came with a prawn sitting on a bed of finely diced vegetables. Dessert, which is usually the most difficult to avoid dairy products, they offered me several non-cow related options involving fruit and sugar. I took the cherries, which then reappeared in a very tasty red wine sauce. In addition to the tastiness, the sauce also tried to make me more drunk.

The food at Chez Tomo was excellent, and I was particularly impressed with their ease at dealing with my anti-cow product allergys. The atmosphere was more cosy, and the service more personal than L'Atelier, and we hope to go again...

The second-half of the afternoon involved heading to Shibuya and buying tickets for Indiana Jones, which was out on general release the very same day.

After the movie, we went to Tight to wait for people joining us for dinner...which was at ISM (our favourite hard-to-find restaurant)...a lovely lunch and a great night with friends all arranged by my Greg. Merci Buckets.

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.

Wiiiiiiiiii

WE got ourselves a Wii. My first console ever. We consider it a technological 'investment' and considering we had 20 000yen worth of gift voucher for Bic Camera and the other bits and pieces you inevitably have to buy in addition to the Wii are that bit cheaper here in Japan, we couldn't not buy one...Actually, we would have bought one of those super-duper massage chairs, but it was definitely out of our price range - more like one months rent or maybe two.

After spending most part of the day checking out the prices in several different shops in Akihabara [秋葉原] we ended up paying 5000yen in cash for the Wii (comes with one Wiimote, nunchuck, console, but no game). Then, using the store points from buying the Wii, we bought a second nunchuck (it turned out that BicCamera was the cheapest place to buy a nunchuck at 1600yen. Bic Camera also sold a rechargable battery pack (and charging station seperately) for the Wiimote...

Heading off to BookOff we bought a second Wiimote (again the cheapest we found - including our scouting of the second-hand exchange shops), Mario kart (new) and Rayman's Raving Rabbids Returns (new) - both a tiny bit cheaper than the RRP in the main shops. We also splashed out on Tetris for the DSlite which brought the total spent at BookOff to 15000yen.

When we finally got home we unpacked everything and plugged it all in and did all the setup in Japanese...which wasn't too bad. However, the news being in Japanese is a bit of a bummer (supplied by Goo). And after vigorous checking of the setup, there is definitely no option on the Japanese market console to change the language (unsurprisingly). On the brightside the english menu is exactly the same setup as the Japanese one, so if there were any big issue with understanding what the Kanji says in the options, we just need to pop on the internet to see what the english manual says...Anyway, it's turned out that the Wii also has the added function of making us improve our Japanese. Just as long as we need to tell people that they need to shake their nunchuck up and down or round and round it's fine.

Oooooooh unpacking!