Sushi Train and Tokyo Visit

For dinner on 7/7, Yoshi took us to a so called sushi train restaurant, which means that you sit down in a normal setting but there is a conveyor belt that circles by every table with various sushi dishes you are welcome to grab.  You pay for each item you get with most plates costing $1 or $2 (100 or 200 yen).  There is also an ipad like tablet at each table that allows you to browse the menu and select any item you want.  When you order an item from the tablet (almost the only thing we ever did) then a Shinkansen like train drives to your table, on these train rails above the conveyor belt, and stops at your table.  You then take the dish and push a button to let the train know it can return.  It was fun to have all this variety and customization available to you.  I did try some sushi but also had French fries and a cooked fish.  All of it was good.  

 Here's a few of the dishes I had.  Raw shrimp sushi, tempura, California rolls, and mackerel fish.   The ice cream was a banana flavor and was in a cute dish.

 Here's me about to eat the mackerel fish.  Eating all this food with just chop sticks has been a bit of a challenge, but I'm used to it now (you do get a spoon for ice cream though).

 On 7/9 we did a long, 1-day trip to Tokyo for a workshop.  Sylvain and I were the special guest, invited speakers and then Yoshi and two others gave talks.  It was a workshop of Japanese researchers studying nonlinear acoustics and noncontact sources, so it was perfect for me with the current projects I’m working on.  The people didn’t speak that great of English so I hope they understood the presentation.  I didn’t get many questions from the Japanese people I didn’t know, and it made me wonder if they didn’t understand my presentation, were bored by it, or maybe I just gave a great presentation leaving nobody with questions (not likely).  One of Yoshi’s former students was there and he said I gave a wonderful presentation and that it inspired him very much and may have changed his career path.  I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant but it was nice compliment.  There was a small party afterwards and it was awkward since there was a lot of Japanese spoken and it was hard to communicate with those who tried to talk to me in English.  By the end of the day I had a fair amount of motion sickness from the many elevator rides and a total of 3 hours on the bullet train to and from Sendai.  We also found a geocache near the workshop building which was fun to introduce Yoshi and Sylvain to.  We did get to ride on the fastest Shinkansen in Japan, the Hayabusa train.  Here's two Shinkansen trains with both connected (they separate during transit at some point to two two different tracks).

 Before the seminar in Tokyo, we had some okanomi-yaki food which was quite good.  They cook it and bring it to your table and place it on a hot plate to keep it warm while you get pieces of it to eat.  Mine had potatoes and cheese and other stuff.

 Here's me during my talk.

 Here's a night view of Tokyo.

Here's a fun video from the sushi train restaurant.  They apparently have these types of restaurants in the U.S.  I might recommend trying one sometime.  It's a fun experience.