Category Archives: Travel

Thoughts on design in Japan

Analysis, Photos, Travel

As many of you may know, we recently spent a few weeks in Japan on our honeymoon. Amongst many other things, we were struck by the attention to detail in design of many otherwise quotidian objects.

Sewer covering, 04:51:2F:09
Sewer covering 03:51:2F:09
Walking to the subway, it tells you how far you have to go.
Inside the subway station, they number the stations to tell you where you are, where you’re going, and in what direction that is.
Turning around, you can check which car you should get into to disembark at the optimal place at your destination.
They also show you which lines are delayed…
And even the difference between trains that are late and those that are stopped!
Disembarking at your station, you see a side-view map of where the station layout can take you, along with a list of attractions at each of the (many) station exits.
You can also see the exits in overhead view.
A close up, complete with “You are here.”
It was difficult to capture in pictures, but outside the elevators, they chimed once to tell you which one was going to pick you up, and then chimed twice to say the elevator was arriving.
This particular elevator animated the direction of travel on the inside.
This was one of the cooler exhibits at the science museum.
It rotates! You can see all the skeleton form (almost) all angles.
Near and dear to my heart, can you guess what this one is? (Note that it’s in 3-D for extra intuitiveness on the topic.)
This is also a topic that is difficult to convey, and where 3-D helps a lot.
It’s the whole family! (That we know of, so far.)
Yes, they did have a live, working spectrographic demo.

Day 1, November 1-2: No Kamchatka, after all…

Photos, Travel

Some initial scattered thoughts:

After a mid-flight diversion starting in Alaska, we ended up not flying over Russian airspace. Hope it has nothing to do with Sakhalin.

For some reason, I didn`t see the Bond flick in the movie listings. Also, it`s difficult to watch things when the headphone jack only half works. But kudos to Air Canada. Food was good (we even got cup noodles as a snack!), and people were pleasant.

Finally got down to starting to really plan my part of the trip about 1/3rd of the way into our flight. i5 seems to hold a charge much better in airplane mode (esp. compared to the 3G). Looking forward to exploring neighbourhoods, especially Ikebukuro (いけふ゛くろ).

Looking forward to relaxing.

Question：Is there anythingleft unanthropomorphized in Japan? (I might not be usefully able to anthropomorphize anything…)

Things I learned on the express train from Narita to Shinjuku:　I can recognize Japanes, Mandarin, and Korean independantly. (In this particular case, -ida is a giveaway for Korean, and there was a “Ni hao”.)

Japan is pleasant. North America is not. More lazily constructed functional. So many people ready to help at Narita -> train station. Trains exactly on time…like an iPhone, but everywhere.

-Nayrb 😀

Ant, elope, antelope, cantelope

Administrivia, Puns, Travel

So, we went out to Nuit Blanche last night, and I have to say, it was the best we’re ever been to. Probably the most important part was that S and I treated it like a night out, with no specific places to get to (except for one rogue artist friend of ours), and we didn’t book any specific times to meet anyone specific.

Pics soon!

P.S. This is also a re-test of Simple Facebook Connect, which fb broke silently sometime over the past few months. Hooray.