IP: Tokyo Diary Sept 1996

[Dave Farber <farber () central cis upenn edu>]

Last week I went to Tokyo to attend the 2nd Keio International Executive
Programme (KIEP) on September 20 - 22, 1996  held at Keio University,
Shonan Fujisawa Campus  and the Kamakura Prince Hotel. The Chair of the
meeting was Prof. Hide Tokuda who was formally at CMU. 


The KIEP was focused at senior corporate management and was invitational
only. There were a small set of invited visitors from abroad. The
conference has simultaneous translation but much of it was held in English.


I arrived in Tokyo two days early to both recover from jet lag (I did not
accomplish that) and to have a chance to visit the Akihabara -- the
Electric City. Hiro HASHIZUME, a faculty member at NACSIS and a friend,
picked me up at Narita. After transferring some Kona Coffee I has brought
for him, we drove into Tokyo for a Korean dinner and an early sleep. 


I visiting the Akihabara and found nothing very new. The main thing I
picked up was a lot of Nickel Hydride AA and AAA batteries for my
electronic things. They have very high power density and no memory. I took
a look at the computer shops and saw lots of neat PDAs but all Japanese
oriented. 


I then visiting Glocom, where I am a Fellow,  and saw their new multimedia
area and met with the director and staff. Real good (look at my home page
for pointers to Glocom).


Then off to Kamakura by a short JR ride. The first day included a tour of
the Shonan Fujisawa campus where I had been many times
(http://www.sfc.keio.ac.jp/index.en.html). However each time I go I keep
getting more impressed by what they have set up there. It is an information
sciences campus where the computer is the central focus and students learn
and live in a highly computerized world. I have seen NO US campus which
comes close to them in infrastructure and in the attitude and spirit of the
students. I keep wondering how their graduates fit into Japanese industry.
I suspect it will have a major impact of the future of Japan as these kids
change the high tech world in Japan.


Much of the infrastructure of Keio SFC was motivated and planned by Jun
Muri, the father of Japanese networking. Jun commented in his talk at KIEP
that I am the Grandfather of Japanese networking and I commented that my
grandchild is doing very well and growing up tall and successful.


Jun gave me a Toshiba Libretto 20 computer. It is 4 1/2 x 8 x 1 1/4 inches
and runs Win95 (and Linix). The current model has 16 meg of ram, a DX4 CPU
and a 250 megabyte hard disk. The next version will go to a 100 mh Pentium
and expandable memory to 32 megs and a 800 megabyte disk. I am now using it
a lot. While the keyboard is obviously small, for a one finger typist like
me it is fine. The screen is TFT and bright and good. Battery life is about
2 hours with the standard battery and I am told 4 hours with the larger
battery. Real winner. Toshiba should export it (I told the President of
Toshiba that when I met him at KIEP).


The KIEP was a fine meeting and in a latter note I will try to summarize it. 


The high point of the trip was the typhoon. I had a room facing the ocean
and the wave were impressive, it rained sheets of water and the wind was
wild. Trains stopped, airports closed etc. The Surfers even stopped
surfing. It blew away after about 6 hours and we could leave for a great
last night dinner in Kamakura with Hide and Andy Hopper from the UK. 


Every time I go to japan I get a little more understanding of it and a
little more beief I will never really understand it but I like it a lot.


Dave