Back in the Netherlands - 10/2/'14
Monday morning we went to the Dutch embassy in Japan. In order to be there in time we left our hostel a bit early. The subway system didn't pose much trouble. We all got into the metro in one go, however we did have to apply some serious compression techniques(SakuraZensen.zip).
The embassy is situated at the top of a hill in a nice neighborhood close to the Tokyo Tower. Apparently it used to be possible to see the harbor from there. This is no longer the case due to the expansion of the city. At the embassy we got a presentation about Japan, the business and innovation. One of the great tips we got was, not just to be amused by how different things are in Japan, but to figure out why they are different.
The next stop on the tour was Jamstec. To get there we used the bus. However finding the right bus stop was a bit of a problem at first. After some running about we managed to find the right one and drive towards our destination.
Jamstec does marine research and we got presentations about Jamstec in general, different measurement instruments, machines and robots in the sea. Two researchers presented and also gave us a first taste of the Japanese English. Both were understandable and resided to join us on the tour of the facilities. It was really nice to walk over the docs, learn about submarines and just look around. Some of the things we saw were an autonomous robot submarine, sensors looking like torpedo's and a pressure test facility. The next day a small group of students would get up at 4 o'clock to go to the fish market so I went to bed early.
By: Rowan de Vries