Oh boy…I almost thought I couldn’t walk back from the station. My legs are dead. I did a lot of walking today and my shoes aren’t really suited for that. Somehow, I made back to my hotel in one piece.
My first appointment is 10am at Hotel New Otani. I reached Nagata-cho station at 9:50am with (supposingly) enough time to walk across the road to the hotel. But I went to the wrong exit and got lost :P. After wandering around for 15mins, I panic and jump into a cab. The cab driver asked me twice to confirm where I am going, make two quick turns and happily collect my 660 yen. *sigh*Although I am only late by 5mins, it is considered rude in Japan. Luckily, Tommy Matsumoto is an good friend so if he is unhappy, he didn’t show it. By the way, Tommy was the chairman of AT&T Japan and just retired last month. However, he is still very active doing “public work” in JPNIC and APNG among other things. He looks much happier now and I am glad for him.
After the meeting, I walked from Hotel New Otani to Akasaka to have lunch with Joi Ito and Andrew Leung. This is my second meeting with Joi and like the last time, we discussed a lot of stuff. We learned a lot from each another and I have to digest some of what was discussed. At the very least, he changed my view on vertial integration somewhat…
After lunch, I went to the National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation (MeSci). Oh yea, I saw a video clip of Prof. Jun Murai titled “the Internet Samurai’. :-) Yes, I know it sound funny but seriously, Murai-sensei definately deserved the title. Almost everything you see in Japan Internet can be trace back to Murai-sensei one way or another.
Next stop is Akihabara. Actually by the time I am here, my legs are already toasted but for the sakes of the gadgets, I struggled on. There are some new stuff but nothing revolutionary. Other then the PSX, I didn’t see any new stuff. What was surprising though is the disappearance of all the cheap PVR from the stores, which I saw last year. The pretty girls who used to scattered around Akihabara pushing you brouchures of broadband subscriptions also disappeared. I suppose this is a quiet season with the exams and everything.
Oh, I finally bought the Sharp Zaurus, the cool little Linux PDA. :-) I was in Japan 2 years back when they launch the product and have been drooling over it since then. I kept resisting buying it all this time. While looking for a Japanese-English dictionary, I realized it is more cost efficient to just buy the Zaurus. Good excuse huh? :-)
I am going to have fun hacking this. (Just hope this wouldn’t go the same way as my Linksys WRT54g :-)
