Collin Condray’s Blog

The first part of our morning was taken up by the trip to Tamano City near Okayama. We were seen off my E-Chan and made several train and bus exchanges to get to our destination. I discovered many wireless hotspots during our trip there but again, the bullet train moves to fast to use them. Okayama must be one of the poorer places in Japan. Everything seems to be run down and there was relatively more graffiti painted everywhere. Along one street, there were even swastikas painted over certain posters, but since the swastika is also a religious symbol here I couldn’t decide if I should be worried about it or not.

We met our homestay family along with our Mitsui Engineering and Shipbuilding’s (MES) contact Kajihara-san at the hotel we will be staying after the homestay. Everybody was quickly picked up by their families. The lady of the house that I was staying at, Hiromi-san picked me up as well. She was accompanied by the very retiring Naho-chan who upon seeing Dr. Stapp, started crying in terror.

Hiromi-san brought me to her house and without much time to drop my stuff off, I was engaged in a video game for my life with the two sons of the house, Kohei and Tatuya and apparently every other little boy in the neighborhood. I think I was playing the game Kirby and I think we were fighting each other or just flying around seeing who could do the coolest aerial tricks or maybe we were just running around seeing who could find the most loot, any way I just ran around the screen running into things and they, with their finely honed twitch muscles, kicked my butt.

Before I could understand the current game I was whisked outside to participate in another bizarre game that I didn’t know how to play, dodge ball. I think the rules go something like this: there are two teams that play on a large rectangle with one half belonging to each side. The object of the game is hit all the members of the other team in the body (not the head) and put them in the out zone on the far side of the playing field where they can still pick up the ball and throw it at members of the opposite team. There is a rule that lets you get out of the out zone and back into the game but I never figured out what it is. I got all these rules from just watching them play, a bit of interpretation from Hiromi-san, and a lot of jabbering and pointing from the boys.

We had a blast! I was a relatively big target (the other players being small Japanese boys) but I had the advantage of surprise over them. I think they didn’t believe that I would take their game seriously and play hard, well they were wrong. I have plenty of experience playing games against kids 20+ years younger than me and I needed every bit of it. I was quickly regulated to the out zone but somehow worked my way back in until finally it was an epic showdown between Kohei and me.

Now by this time, it seemed like all the adults in the neighborhood had turned out to see how the match was going on with the strange foreigner adding an extra element of pressure. I also got a lot of finger pointing and “oohhing” and “ahhing” from the kids when I put on my sunglasses. Apparantly, Japanese people are less sensitive to bright light than Westerners and only rock stars and the like wear them.

After hard fought exchange of vicious throws I was ultimately victorious when Kohei zigged when he should have zagged. Well, he did beat me at Kirby and every other video game we played after all. There were no hard feelings, we shook hands and high fived everybody and had a good time.

Then we played the game that we both understood no matter our language, baseball. We divided into teams and scraped out some bases in the ground and brought out the whiffle ball bat and squishy orange ball. This game was good for our team at the beginning but Kohei and Kano-chan’s team fought back hard. Some of the kids dropped out of the game making defense all but impossible turning the game into a home run derby of sorts. I didn’t keep score but I thought it was about even at the end. One of the funniest things I that happened during the game was the kids were trying to give me their gloves but I had to keep trying to explain that I’m a lefty (very unusual in Japan) and my hand wouldn’t fit their gloves.

Then we had a dinner teppanyaki which was delicious! An after dinner dinner was served by the young lady of the house and probably the cutest little girl in the world, Naho-chan. She served me a lovely stew of apples, tomatoes, grapes, and melons which I accepted gratefully. As you may have guessed she quickly overcame her sense of shyness especially when I pulled out my camera. She was quite possible the cutest, most adorable little girl I have ever met. She was two so our Japanese skills were the closest of anyone I have me here so far.

Tomorrow, a good night’s rest for the since we’re going to be very outnumbered at Hibi Elementary.

Today’s tour was at Sanyo in one of their cell phone plants. They start with a circuit board and all the tiny components. A machine then adds 95% of the circuits to the board, a precision task that requires the same movement at the same place every time. It does so much work that on the first level of the plant, people don’t do much of the work on the boards, they just watch the machines and fix them when they’re done. and solder it with a silicon paste with low lead content for environmental reasons. A mold is then put on top so that the other people on the line can put in the main chip set.

It takes 30 seconds to paste a board together. The card is soldered on each side to make sure pieces stay on the board. Then, important parts are glued down and dried at over 110 C for 35 minutes. A final melting process secures the chip to the outside, a step that Sanyo has moved in house to reduce costs.

The final step the board goes through is inspection. A machine tests to see if there is something wrong with a part and then alerts a human to inspect it if there is a problem. This insures that only 1/100,000 shipped phones are defective.

The entire factory requires a certain humidity level (between 45% and 50%) to reduce static electricity but having too much moisture causes corrosion. There was a hilarious English sign to explain humidity effect. It didn’t make any sense at all.

During the tour, we were showed an historical display of phones, each one smaller than the next. We were also shown the world’s thinnest phone which Sanyo makes of course.

On the second floor, the cards manufactured on the bottom floor were attached to the rest of the phone, screen, keyboard, etc. Unlike the first floor, everything but turning screws is done by humans.

During our question and answer session we got to ask the following questions:

What kind of training do line workers have?
The R&D people are engineers by training. Some of the workers are college grads but most have a high school education. The training of line workers is outsourced.

What are some of the outsourcing issues you have in the US?
In Sanyo, 65% workers are outsourced. This is done to reduced fixed costs. Sanyo has some if its own workers and outsourced workers working in same factory. However, they work in different places to avoid worker resentment.

Why will Sanyo’s LCD be sold in Wal-Mart first?
When Sanyo first sold color TVs in the US, they sold in them in Sears, which not a high price store. When Clinton was governor, he introduce some of Sanyo’s executives to some Wal-Mart executive. Sanyo has even located a plant near Forrest City. Because of these historical ties, Sanyo will give Wal-Mart first priority.

Why has Sanyo developed CDs made of corn ?
They are used as an environmental awareness tool since these CDs don’t last long under normal use. Advertisement can also be imprinted on the CD since they are relatively disposable.

How does Sanyo’s sensitivity to the environment affect costs?
Sanyo believes there is a market need for environmentally friendly products. In the short run, this costly but it will be profitable in the long-run since its ultimately what people want.

Are Sanyo employees worried about outsourcing?
Sanyo wants to keep its employees. If an employee’s job is eliminated, it will shift that employee around to a different part of the corporation.

Has the Solar Ark been successful? Will Sanyo make more of them?
The Solar Ark is a symbol of Sanyo’s technical ability. No more are planned.

How do cell phone features differ between the US and Japan?
Consumers in both countries want the same features, however Japan usually is ahead in technology based features. In America, Sprint is Sanyo’s biggest sales segment.

The evening event was a professional baseball game, the Hanshin Tigers vs. the Yokohama Base Stars (insert your Battlestar Galactica joke here). I haven’t been to a professional baseball game in America in a while but in Japan they do it quite differently than in America. There is no national anthem played but there is a ceremony at the beginning of the game. It was all in Japanese so I didn’t get what was going on. All the player lined up along their respective baselines and it looked like some presentation was made at home plate.

After that the players took to the field, the outfielders threw out balls to the crowd. We were sitting in the 39th row of right field so we didn’t get close to any of the balls they threw.

Then the cheering really began. Since the right field is made up of the cheap seats you really have the rabid fans out here. Before heading into the stadium we equipped ourselves with noisemakers, short hollow plastic bats with Hanshin Tigers logos imprinted on them. There were a few standard songs that where we learned how to keep time with our beaters. Every batter had their own cheer which of course was in Japanese but they did have similar refrains at the end, “Kata mase Kanemoto!” or “Kata mase Akahoshi!” This meant “Go (the name of the player)!” One of the players on the Hanshin Tigers was an American who had a couple of special cheers in English “Ret’s go Georgie! Ret’s go! Georgie!” and “Homu runu Georgie!” (these cheers are exact translations from the Japanese katakana). Since we were rooting for the home team we got some funny looks but we were soon accepted and taught a couple of cheers by neighboring fans.

The Hanshin Tiger’s 7th inning stretch was unusual. Everybody in the stadium was given 4 foot long balloons to blow up. After the visiting team batted, everyone released their balloons which made a loud whistling sound because of the plastic cap at the mouth of each balloon. It was quite a site to see.

Even with our enthusiastic cheering the Tigers lost 8-2 which fortunately, made our trip home easier. The trains and terminals leaving the stadium were jammed packed and we were very in friendly spaces with the people returning home. I can only imagine what it would have been like during a win.

Tomorrow, Tamano City and another homestay.

Today was our much awaited first free day during the program. After a quick meeting, with a diminishing few of our conspirators from last night we decided to head to the so-called romantic train that goes between Kameoka and Saga Arashiyama that we have seen so many times from the main train line that goes between Kameoka and Kyoto and then head back to Osaka. So we stopped off at the second Kameoka train station with a big sign at the terminal that says “Romantic Train” to find tickets. We ask the ticket taker where the train is and he says, “No.” So after a brief discussion among ourselves, we assume that that train is closed and so, wait for the next train to Kyoto.

After hopping the train, we look out at the next stop, Saga Arashiyama, we see the romantic train on a separate track next to the station. So, we sprint out of the regular train to the romantic train and just miss it. We decided to stay around for the next one which runs in about 50 minutes. During that time I wander around and don’t find much (except some green tea ice cream). When I return, I notice a great big map that shows a lot of really interesting things in this area which I walked right past on my way out.

So next, we get on the romantic train and it was gorgeous. There is a natural gorge that a river runs through with very steep, heavily forested slopes. The sun was shining and everything was beautiful. In the river we saw several boats filled with tourists braving the whitewater in the river. We briefly considered taking one of the boats but at ¥3900 we couldn’t really afford it. Maybe we’ll hop it later in the trip.

After that, we went to Kyoto to talk to the people in the National Tourist Office to find out if there are any soccer games in Osaka or Kyoto today. Again we were out of luck on the soccer, but we did find out there is one in both Osaka and Kyoto on Saturday so we made plans see soccer that day. For lunch we wandered around outside the Kyoto station and stumbled on this great little restaurant with a great lunch special, soup, rice, salad, and Japanese fried chicken for ¥750. Delicious.

Since our outing to Osaka was cut short and Rebecca had a dinner appointment, we headed back to Saga Arashiyama to see all the things we had missed earlier in the day. It was a very happy accident, because we had a really good time that day. There was a lovely river that we all just sat down and watched for a while. We then headed up this huge mountain on the far side of the river to see the monkeys. They were very cute and fun loving. We also had an excellent view of the valley below us and got some spectacular shots.

I went with Rebecca to dinner with a new friend she met, Ayumi. Ayumi is a high school student that she met earlier in the trip. She is currently a swimming teacher for children and will soon be going to the University of Kyoto. She was very sweet and took us to another Japanese restaurant where I had a tempura dish. All of it was very good except for the sweet tofu.

The rest of the day was spent doing administrative stuff like laundry, packing for Tamano City, and going to bed early.

Tomorrow, Sanyo and a Hanshin Tigers professional baseball game.

Today our group visited the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. A few of us took a walk to see where the bomb hit. It turns out, our hotel was only a few hundred yards away from hypercenter, the place where the bomb would have hit the ground if it wasn’t an air burst. Of course you couldn’t tell any effects of the bomb now. There was an apartment building just behind the plate that designates the hypercenter and only a block away was a baseball stadium. We also visited the nearby Peace Dome which you will probably recognize from the pictures of the aftermath of the attack.

After that we went to the Peace Museum which gave the history of Hiroshima before the bomb and showed before and after effects on the city. There were several displays showing the history and function of nuclear weapons and Hiroshima’s commitment to peace. The final exhibit followed several personal stories of some of the citizens in the aftermath of the attack. After leaving the museum proper, we rang the Peace Bell and dropped off a string of folded cranes at a special memorial outside of the museum.

After Hiroshima, we went to Osaka to visit Himeji Castle. The castle was built in the early 1600s to control western Japan by Tokugawa’s son-in-law. The castle covers only a fraction of its original space. There were two other moat and wall fortifications around the surviving keep and the entire castle could house up to 25,000 samurai for 2 years. The castle was designed to be impregnable and was never attacked. As several of us nearly tumbled to our death in the castle just walking up it, I can only imagine what it would be like to try to ascend it when people a shooting at you through the arrow and gun slits located all along our path. The stairs within the main complex were quite tall and it was march to make it to the top. However, the view from the top was worth it allowing you and impressive site of Osaka.

We remained in Osaka to have dinner at a fancy place called the Entec Group. The food was on the Italian side, lots of pastas and garlic, but unfortunately I forgot to snap any pictures of it. We all split a lot of different dishes and I got to taste, among other things, beef cubes, spicy chicken, Japanese fried chicken, carbonara, and caramel mousse. It was all delicious especially since Dr. Stapp picked up the bill. Thanks Dr. Stapp! You’re the best.

Returning to Kameoka we retreated to a late night place called The Food Spread to plan for our next day’s outing. We made our orders and planned a little bit for our free day until our waiter decided to show us a card trick. The card he was looking for was the six of clubs, after a couple of tries he decided our card was the nine of hearts. Oh well. As a consolation prize he gave us a deck of cards and in return Tim suggested we show him how to play Texas Hold ‘Em. Rebecca, wound up winning the most chips and we didn’t get any planning done.

One administrative note before I leave. I have postcards for several of the people who are reading this journal but no snail mail address. If you would like a post card from Japan (and I know you do) could you email me your snail mail address so I can get those out? Thanks everybody!

Tomorrow, make something up!

Sorry for no posts in a while. I’ve got a lot of stuff ready to go up but no usable internet connection. I am alive and doing well (if a little footsore). Keep watching the site for a ton of new updates. Take care!

Today I have decided to take up the challenge of packing lightly, with my laptop of course. For this trip I’m just taking only just what I’m going to wear the entire trip. If it works out then I’ll take less and less and just wash what I need. I eventually just want to get down to carrying around a single sock.

Today’s train ride to Hiroshima was a nice, long one so finally I got a chance to sit down for once and got to get caught up in my journal. Our first destination in Hiroshima was Miyajima island a beautifully rugged island with a temple on in. The temple has a very famous gate on it called the O-Torii gate, something that you probably have seen before. When we arrived, the tide was in and the base of the gate was covered. However, by the end of the day the tide had rolled out and we were able to walk right up to the gate. Tradition has it, that if you can throw a stone onto each level of the gate, your wish will come true. Several members of the group tried to do it but no one could get above the second. I almost got hit in the head from everyone trying to make their wish come true however.

We took a trail up into the hills to a series of waterfalls that were quite lovely. I took a lot of pretty good pictures of the falls. Most of us took off our shoes and waded up the river. I tried to stay out of the ensuing water fight. In light of this, I’d like to take this opportunity to give everyone fair warning about getting me into a water fight when I’m carrying around my electronic gear. Don’t. You have been warned.

Our Japanese language lesson of the day was the word shimahebi or snake. Rebecca our resident animal lover saw a long snake slithering through a patch of bushes. Between the two of us we got several nice pictures of it. When pointed the snake out to a couple of nearby Japanese people, everybody seemed pretty nonchalant about it. I guess that there are no poisonous snakes on the island. The birds nesting in the area were not happy about their reptile neighbor and were chirping and squawking at it. I think the snake was not happy with us as well since we were really cramping his hunting style.

We returned at the end of the day to watch the sun go down behind O-torii and again got a lot of good pictures. I think that I shot the more pictures today than any other day.

After watching the sun go down, we checked into a hotel and each one of us had our our own room, a welcome change of pace. After cleaning up a bit, it was about 9:30 PM, our first chance to find some dinner. A lot of the local shops had either closed or we simply didn’t understand what they were offering. A few of us decided to head to a known quantity in dining, McDonald’s. I ordered a double cheeseburger meal which I though was lavish but my companions ate a lot more than me, even Alisa, a tiny slip of a girl compared to me. Tim ate 4 hamburgers by himself, a very impressive feat.

At McDonald’s, there were some high school Japanese girls lurking in our conversation. Unfortunately for them, Alisa speaks Japanese. She would translate tidbits of information from their conversation for our amusement. It was nothing too mean but they were talking about us. At the end of our dinner, Tim asked one of the girls in English where we can find karaoke. They of course they couldn’t answer. Then Alisa asked them in Japanese where it was. You should have seen the look of horror in their faces, it was priceless.

It was after 10 PM and getting very late but we still wanted to do something fun like karaoke. I was pretty run down at this time and had to find some coffee to rejuvenate me. I stopped in a few Japanese coffee houses but they were all closing down but there was a Starbucks. I have had Starbucks 3 or 4 times since I’ve been here, more than I think I have ever been to in America.

At this late point, we couldn’t find any karaoke so we stopped in one of the many arcades. I played a weird typing game. It looked like Resident Evil, but instead of aiming a gun at the zombies, words would pop up and if you typed it in correctly, it would kill the monster. I didn’t do so well even though I’m a pretty extensive vi user. The hit of the night was air hockey though. We played boys against girls and it was not a good day for boys. Tim and I did a lot of scoring, unfortunately, for everyone of our points we knocked in, it seem like we knocked one of the pucks into our own lock. We lost every single game. Then the girls took on Nhan and Alisa and the girls got killed. We did have a lot of fun because there was a lot of squealing while the game was being played. I might have squealed a few times myself actually.

After a short stroll through Hiroshima Peace Park we returned to our very own rooms at the hotel. I did a little sink laundry, hung up my clothes and made it to bed around 1AM

Tomorrow, Hiroshima Peace Park in the daytime and Himeji Castle.

Toji flea market located in the courtyard of a Buddhist temple was today’s destination. It has been held the 21st day of every month for over 600 years. They have over a thousand stalls there selling everything from food to clothes to antiques to just plain junk. At first, I didn’t buy a lot of stuff. Dr. Stapp says that in Japan, things speak to you wanting to be bought, and since nothing called out to me, I bided my time. At the end a few things did speak to me. I spent about $90 on presents my biggest spending spree of the trip (until Akihabara). I got a few gifts for some of you who are reading this so, I’m not going to tell you what I bought and spoil the surprise.

After the flea market we were off to Osaka, the second biggest city in Japan. Out attempt to find a sporting event was a no-go, according to the Osaka Information Office, there was no soccer tonight and baseball game was sold out. The helpful lady at the office really helped to overcome our poor planning. She suggested that we go to the Umeda Sky Building which we did and it was a lot of fun. There is an observation deck on top of the 35 story building that lets you see all of Osaka. The gallery has some very spectacular shots and I encourage you to check them out.

Our next stop was to the HEP 5 (Hankyu Entertainment Plaza) a shopping mall. At the doorway, we met Wayne W. from Ohio, who was acting as a type greeter who at very helpful. He encouraged us to pick up the magazine he works for, japanzine. Its in English an covers things happening in all of Japan. Wayne, we forgot to get a picture from you. If you’re reading this send me a picture of you so I can add you to my journal. My grade depends on it!

The HEP5 is basically a 5 story mall with a Ferris Wheel mounted on the top if it. We noticed immediately that we, in our sweat stained travel wear, we were the most underdressed people there. We spent ¥500 on the Ferris Wheel ride but I didn’t get any good pictures because my camera couldn’t compensate for the continuous movement of the wheel. The view was spectacular so I hope Rebecca’s camera did better than mine.

The HEP5 also had a two level arcade as well called Joypolis. Naturally, the arcade had a ton of games all in Japanese. They also had several cool looking rides/games of various sorts with names such as Wild River, Air Car, Terminator 3, and Biozone Contamination 4-D. The last looked pretty cool but it was in all in Japanese and after spending so much money earlier that day, I didn’t feel rich enough to take a chance.

We began our return trip to Kameoka during the Osaka rush hour at 9:30 PM. We were packed in pretty tightly, reminding me of the Dilbert cartoon where Dilbert is sent to another country that has a different take on personal space. The punch line is from one of the natives Dilbert meets, “The pockets in your pants, these are for you, yes?” If it’s this crowded in Osaka, I’m a little worried what we’re going to see in Tokyo.

I retired to my room to do my pre-pre-preparation for tomorrow, storing my loot from today and getting ready to go to our next destination for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, Hiroshima and catching up on my journal.