Tokyo Dairy #8

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

The raining season has started. Temperature has dropped and it is wet.
This week I attended the annual NEC Research Seminar  held in alternate
years in the US and Japan. This year the subject was multimedia and the
major ity of the speakers were US. The talks were OK. The conference was
held with style. I gather seems to be  research ideas from the US (bought
at US salaries).


Today I saw a washing machine labeled as having Neural and fuzzy logic!!


The trade war is getting play in the papers. Mickey Canter looking like the
Aum Guru. Papers are loaded with articles from US papers criticizing the US
position and MIT faculty reports doing the same. TV still has US dealers
complaining about their business and Toyota Execs saying how hard it will
be on those dealers. Good PR. Today's Tokyo Times had an article saying how
good MITI was as the PR firm for the Japanese position.


The press in Japan in general seems to give the official line  a lot more
than US papers . I am told their access to information depends on that.


One gets a real strange feeling seeing comments on high unemployment and a
poor economy and the crowds in stores and on the street. One just does not
see any street people or for that matter people who look down and out.
Maybe they are where I don't see them but this country looks prosperous.
Makes many US cities look third world.


Dave


Ps in my final Diary I will give a hard nosed evaluation of my view of the
US/Japan future and their comparative technologies etc.


PPS. at the NEC Seminar they mentioned the offer of free NTT 155 megabit
facilities and the fact that over 200 companies had applied and also how
campuses would be hooked together in Japan using AT&T ATM switches and NTT
lines.