The Bjørner Japan Diary
Trivia &
Photos: "Blow-by-Blow"
Late July to Mid August 2006
Kari & Dines Bjørner
December 22, 2006
- If you want to see enlargements of photos
- click
- directly on the photo and view image!
My colleague, Prof. Kokichi Futatsugi, an associate prof. of his,
Dr. Kazuhiro Ogata, and I had a meeting all afternoon, Friday 21 July
at IBM's Tokyo Research Laboratory. Very fruitful.
The Lab. Mgr., Dr. Hiroshi Maruyama really spoke a lot of very
good sense - and it seems that we, JAIST, will have a very interesting
and rather deep research-oriented project together.
Being old, and both enjoying and taking full advantage of it, I stayed
at my favourite academic club hotel, the
International House of Japan
for the night. On my way back
from IBM TRL, located some 40 minutes ``east/south'' of Shibuya
station, I had two glasses of French wine and a Chinese light dinner
(a delightful kidney and chili dish) and respective restaurants within
8 minutes walking distance of IHJ.
Saturday morning I worked my laptop, 6:00-9:45 am, packed, checked
out, left the carry-on ``stroller'' at IHJ and went to buy books at my
favourite book store in Tokyo over the last 25+ years:
Maruzen.
at
Marunouchi, next to Tokyo Station. I bought some 15 books, mostly
detective stories! Looked at Sony's new SLR digital camera,
100 at Sony's
main showroom in Ginza, and had Sushi lunch at
my favourite Sushi restaurant in Tokyo, along the rail lines, behind
the Imperial hotel, in Ginza, near the Shimbashi station, Japan's oldest.
Kari is to give three "Japanese Folding Technique" P&Q seminars at the
annual gathering of The Danish Patchwork
Society
Sunday
August 27, Roskilde, Denmark. So mid-spring, and now again, she was,
now is, preparing (each time) some 20 sets of materials, directions,
etc. for each of the max. 12 participants per seminar to follow at
seminar and, later, at home in order for themselves to make a nice
small or large shopping bag is P&Q according to "Japanese Folding
Techniques".
The "Japanese Folding Technique" P&Q Bag: Preparations
Photos to come!
On Tuesday 25 between 9:50 and 12:20 Kari had five Japanese ladies
taking a two+ hour class on "Japanese Folding Techniques".
P&Q Class at Satomicho, 25 July 2006
Tuesday July 25 and Saturday July 29 we had two exquisite Sushi
lunches:
Sushi Lunch, 25 July 2006
Above is in Kanazawa, North-East of Kenrokuen Garden, near Univ. Hospital
Sushi Lunch, 29 July 2006
Above is at Ono Port, part of Kanazawa Harbour
Dines reads a lot of books. In quiet periods he reads so-called
"serious" fiction. In periods of hyper-activity, and that is mostly so
in the last 3-4 months, also, mostly detective stories.
Here is are two list of books read, and to be read while in Japan this year:
- Orhan Pamuk
- Snow, 5 stars
- My Name is Red, 5 stars
- The Black Book, 4 stars
- Kazuo Ishiguro: Never Let Me Go, 4 stars
- Karuki Murakami
- The Wind-Up Burd Chronicle, 5 stars
- Norwegian Woods (still to be completed)
- Knut Hamsun: Mysterier (Mysteries), 5 stars
- Raymond Chandler
- Trouble is My Business, 3 stars
- The High Window, 3 stars
- The Simple Art of Murder (short stories), 4 stars
- Ross MacDonald
- Sleeping Beauty, 3 stars
- The Zebra-striped Hearse, 3 stars
- The Chill, 3 stars
- Boris Akunin: The Death of Achilles, 2 stars
- Michael Conelly: The Lincoln Lawyer, 4 stars
- Alexander McCall Smith
- The No.1 Ladies' Detective Agency, 5 stars
- Tears of the Giraffe, 5 stars
- Morality for Beautiful Girls, 5 stars
- The Kalahari Typing School for Men, 5 stars
- The Full Cupboard of Life, 5 stars
- The Sunday Philosophy Club, 4 stars
- Portuguese Irregular Verbs, 4 stars
- The Finer Points of Sausage Dogs, 4 stars
- At the Villa of Reduced Circumstances, 4 stars
- Walter Mosley
- Little Scarlet, 4 stars
- RL's Dream, 3 stars
- A Little Yellow Dog, 4 stars
- Agatha Christie:
- 1930s Omnibus, 4 stars
- The Sittaford Mystery
- Why did'nt they ask Evans?
- And Then There Were None
- Murder is Easy
- M or N?
- Mette Winge: Skår, trash, no stars
- Elmore Leonard
- Be Cool, 4 stars
- Mr. Paradise, 4 stars
- The Hot Kid, 3 stars
- Jose Carlos Somoza: The Athenian Murders, 3 stars
- John Sandford:
- Rules of Prey, 4 stars
- Easy Prey - being read
- Japanese authors:
- Edogawa Rampo ("Edgar Allan Poe"): Japanese Tales of Mystery &
Imagination
- Takashi Atoda: The Square Persimmon
- Ryunosuke Akutagawa: Rashomon
- The Gossamer Years, trl. by Edward Seidensticker
- Yasunari Kawabata: Snow Country
- Ryu Murakami: The Mison Soup
- Karuki Murakami: Kafka on the Shore
- Other authors:
- Alice Munro (present from Gerit Sonntag, DFG)
- Peter Høeg: Den Stille Pige (2006, The Quiet Girl (?))
- Walter Mosley: Cinnamon Kiss
- Alexander McCall Smith:
- In the Company of Cheerful Ladies (The #1 Ladies ... Series)
- Friends, Lovers, Chocolate (The Edingburgh Series)
- Agatha Christie: N or M?
- John Sandford:
- Jose Carlos Somoza: The Art of Murder
Dines is writing several papers:
- The Triptych Process
Model: Process Assessment and Process Improvement
29 page paper
and
125 slide
presentation.
Invited keynote for JASPIC
conference, 11-13 October, Tsukuba, Japan.
- Documents: A Domain
Analysis:
paper version
and
slide
presentation.
Perhaps intended for publication?
- Domain
Engineering
Invited paper for EATCS Textbook series (Springer) collecting BCS FACS
evening seminars (Eds.: Paul Boca and Jonathan P. Bowen).
- Verified Software for Ubiquitous
Computing
Invited talk for First Asian Working Conference on Verified
Software, Macau
29-31 October, 2006
- A Family of License
languages
Perhaps intended for publication? Three co-authors.
- Public Government: A Domain
Analysis
Before the Hokkaido/Obon Festival trip Dines was two nights in Tokyo.
Stayed at IHJ as usual. Wednesday 9 August 11am - 9pm spent with IBM
TRL people and two JAIST colleagues, from 6pm on we went for a fine
tofu dinner halfway between the town where IBM TRL is located and
Shibuya.
Dines arrived the day before and, after checking in at IHJ, went to
the Sony Building in Ginza and finally bought the Alpha 100 Sony SLR
digital camera. After returning from Hokkaido 940 pictures (photos)
had been taken. We are very satisfied with this great camera. It's
almost like Dines' Nikon F4, but digital. Afterwards Dines went, as is
also usual, to Maruzen, near Tokyo Station, in the Marunouchi building
and bought several books!
We refer to:
for a colourful (i.e., many photo) account of our weeklong vacation.
But here some concluding observations may be in order:
- The Hokkaido trip was an eye-opener:
- Japan is not that beautiful as travel books, tourist propaganda,
and, perhaps the Japanese themselves would like you to think.
- Still Hokkaido was worth the one travel.
- We enjoyed
- the seaport, Otaru, of Sapporo,
- the Historical Village near Sapporo, and
- Hakkodate.
- We are greatly surprised by the "building code" of Japan -
actually its seeming absence:
- And this applies to all of Japan.
- There seems not to be a building code, or land zoning regulations.
- At least they are not there, or their effect is not for the
benefit of the beauty of the cultural landscape: that which man has
to cultivate and build in order to survive.
- The building codes and land zoning regulations of most countries
in Europe also serve to preserve the beauty of the cultural
landscape: It is a delight to motor from village to village in for
example Germany: You can see where one ends, the farming or forest
or wild nature land stretches in-between, and the next village or
town or city begins.
- Not so on Hokkaido, and certainly not in the rest of Japan.
- One ought to expect it on Hokkaido: vast island, sparse population,
- yet ramshackle, rusty, derelict, abandoned buildings everywhere,
- a coastline that has no beauty,
- well, a few lakes here and there, and then they are inundated
with zillions of tourists, they even got us lured to Akan-ko, Akan
lake and its 20 mammoth hotels, approximately 100 times more beds
than this tiny lakeside village deserves.
- But the Japanese tourists seem only to travel, to take shots at
the "selected Fuji Color spots" and then rush on: one night in
hotels, on-on-on.
- One wonders.
- Yes, one wonders: There are indeed spots of great beauty in
Japan:
- in Kanazawa ("little Kyoto"), in Kyoto, in Kamakura, in Niko, in
Hikone, on the island of Kyushu, etc.
- Beautiful temples and shrines, beautiful (samurai) houses,
beautiful castles,
- but why not everywhere that it is possible - without
interfering too much with production and profitability ?
- It seems to us that ordinary people do not count: their desire
for simple beauty-preserving building code and land zoning
restrictions must seemingly yield for the greater, billion Yen
interests of business and industry.
- It can be done, in as competitive and successful countries as
Denmark and Germany.
- Japan's cities do not have the character, even Japanese, of
great avenues, fine vistas, etc., such as
- Vienna has its "Ring" and its palaces, museum, shaded avenues
and parks.
- Paris its boulevards and the Seine, the great vistas from
Montparnasse and Monmartre.
- Copenhagen its canals and harbour, its quaint quarters around
the city shopping street, etc.
- Peking its Tian An-Men and East/West Boulevard, Imperial City,
Temple of Heavenly Peace, etc.
- Buenos Aires its Diagonal, Ave. 25 Mayo, Calle Florida and the
great June Boulevard, La Recoleta, Palermo, San Telmo, etc.
- Prague, Zurich, Rome, Stockholm, London, Amsterdam, Madrid,
Sevilla, Barcelona, Florence, Athens, Budapest, Moscow,
St.Petersburg, Sofia, ...
- All of these and many other cities have building codes, have
homogeneous yet not monotonous, but exciting architecture - think
of Bilbao, the Guggenheim, etc.
- Do not misunderstand me: I, Dines, have dozens of books, and I
still treasure and buy them, on Japanese gardens, architecture,
timbercraft, etc.
Please take a look at the more beautiful side of Hokkaido:
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The Bjørner Japan Diary
Trivia &
Photos: "Blow-by-Blow"
Late July to Mid August 2006
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The translation was initiated by Dines Bjorner on 2006-12-22
Dines Bjorner
2006-12-22
