tokyo

Goodbye Tokyo!

2007-12-06T19:05:00.000-08:00

It's Friday lunchtime, and I will go back to Germany on Tuesday. My last weekend in Tokyo is about to start! 2 days ago, I had my goodbye party - it was great fun! See the flyer below :-)

My future is still unclear... I do not know where and what I will be working 2 months later...

Sayonara Tokyo - it was complicated/interesting/rewarding/frustrating/challenging to stay here!

2 months before leaving japan

2007-10-12T22:03:00.000-07:00

i have decided to leave japan. the reasons for that are quite complicated...

anyways, i have 2 months left before i return to germany.
of these 2 months, i will spend 2 weeks in australia, and 1 week i will attend ISMAR in Nara, Japan.

Currently, my main activity is still job hunting.

My main side activity is enjoying Japan while I am still here...
Today, there is a huge beach party near my house. fortunately, the weather is great today (it was a little rainy recently).
The party has started already!! However, I have to wait for the post (they come to my home to pick up boxes that I ship to germany..). I can't wait to go to the beach now!

Australia

2007-09-26T01:26:00.000-07:00

I will go to Australia: 10/18 - 11/1. I am looking very forward to it!! First, the university seems to be really cool: they get me flight tickets, free accommodation. Furthermore, I get picked up from the airport with a limo!! Wow... Second, the lab that I am applying for is doing really fun stuff. I can't wait to try their demos: Hand of god and AR Quake.

Third: Australia seems to be a fantastic country! I have gotten myself a Lonely Planet. The more I read about Australia, the more interesting it gets for me :-) I hope that I find time to climb Ayers Rock while I am there...

Web discoveries

2007-09-26T01:12:00.000-07:00

Recently, I have quite a lot of free time. Also, the weather was rainy; thus, I had plenty of time to browse the net. Here are two cute things that I have found:

A sad robot's love story:

read the full cartoon here.

A graphical comparison of China and Germany:

The above image shows the the German (blue) and the Chinese (red) perception of opinions. The Chinese designer Liu Yang has created lots of these comparisons. Please enjoy them here: 1, 2, 3. Interesting for me was that in almost all of his comparisons, the Chinese view and the Japanese view are identical! However, in one of them, the Japanese act exactly like the Germans!! It's the one about queuing up:

job search & iconograph

2007-09-10T02:42:00.000-07:00

currently, my main focus is my job search. maybe, i have found a good option! it is in australia ... :-) very soon, i will go there for 2 weeks to check out the location! i am sure that i will blog from there - stay tuned!

apart from that, i am catching up on some things that i wanted to do for a long time. for example, i am learning a little computer vision now. One very surprising thing is (at least for me) that a 3D model can be reconstructed from a single photo or painting. check out this example, which shows a fly-through of vermeer's music lesson - impressive!

This research was even used to refute the hockney-falco hypothesis. Briefly, this hypothesis states that renaissance painters had used optical aids to achieve photorealistic paintings. Very similar to the way an iconograph works in discworld (see image below).
The wikipedia article about this dispute is very interesting! (also check out the external links at the bottom of that page).

interesting japan blogs

2007-08-16T15:19:00.001-07:00

recently, i have found a couple of interesting blogs by guys who live in japan:

A real jewel is Pachipro's blog . The author seems to be a really clever and nice guy. For example, his description of Japanese women is really well done.

Firefly's blog is also real fun to read. I don't know why, but reading his blog makes me immediately like him. A great thread on his blog is his "Japan Saga" (14 parts! better start at the bottom, hehe)

12 hours until I leave Germany

2007-08-16T15:11:00.001-07:00

My 2.5 week vaccation in Germany is about to end. My flight back to Narita takes off in 12 hours.

It was great to meet my family and friends! I had lots of fun :-)

Here are a few things that I'll do when I am back in Japan:
- Order internet access for my new house in kamakura
- Write a project proposal for a junior research group in germany
- Learn surfing
- Sweat (Tokyo's temperature is currently 35 degrees; also, it's very humid...)

Currently, I have no internet access in my house in kamakura. If you send me an email, it might take some time before you get an answer (please be patient!)

Internet Disconnect

2007-07-20T19:02:00.001-07:00

In 15 minutes my friend K will come with a rental car. We will take all my belongings to Kamakura.
I am almost done packing. The only things that are not packed, yet: my speakers , and my laptop. (right now, I am listening to Subfocus)

I have moved about 10 times in my life... I am beginning to feel like a moving professional :-) Still, every time, I am very surprised. Knowing that I am about to move is one thing. But, the feeling of starting something new only fully kicks in on moving day... The human mind is an interesting thing!

Anyways, I will disconnect from the internet now.

moving

2007-07-18T01:01:00.000-07:00

on saturday, i am moving to kamakura. i am looking very forward to exploring this old town:

the great buddha is the second biggest buddha in japan:

also, the beach is good for windsurfing - maybe i should learn it?

i should better stop procrastinating - my boxes for moving are waiting to be packed...

Situation not critical

2007-06-28T01:31:00.000-07:00

The recent events have been quite frustrating for me. However, I am not too worried about my current situation:

- I got 3 more weeks to stay in my current apartment.
- After that, a co-worker has offered me to stay in his (currently empty) house (!!) in Kamakura - for free!
- In 2 weeks, I will have a job interview at a very nice laboratory.

Something is seriously wrong with this country

2007-06-25T22:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, I had another great experience of Japanese hospitality. The background of the story is a little complex. A simplified version is: I might have to move to a new apartment within 5 days. This is logistically almost impossible. The only instance that can change this bad situation is the rental agency of my current apartment. Yesterday, I have asked a co-worker to call the rental agency for me. here is the dialog:

my co-worker: ... explaining the situation for about 3 minutes ....
my co-worker: Chris would like to come to your agency and speak with you about it.
agency: sorry, we do not talk to foreigners.
my co-worker: well, he would come with a japanese friend who could translate.
agency: that doesn't matter. we do not negotiate with foreigners.

I am still totally shocked about this. I will report this incident to the german embassy. however, i have little hope that i can change anything about my situation. there are no laws against racial discrimination in japan.

Japanese Cellphones

2007-06-21T04:08:00.000-07:00

Unique features of japanese cellphones:
1. Electronic money
2. Watch anime
3. Easy check-in at the airport
4. House key
5. Employee ID
6. Public transportation access
7. Biometrics
8. Face recognition
9. Discount coupons
10. Olfactory function
11. Fashion coordinator
12. Broadcast TV
13. Motion sensor
14. Bookmark restaurants and points of interests
15. Privacy screen
16. Purchase movie ticket
17. 1D and 2D barcodes (QRWindow)
18. GPS navigation
19. Access poster ads with RFiD
20. Waterproof feature

Leaving work

2007-06-21T02:51:00.000-07:00

Monday is my last day of work! Today, my bosses have allowed me to announce this to my co-workers. (I was anxiously waiting for this permission)

Of course, there is a rule in the company how parting employees have to conduct themselves. The amount of rules in the company is unbelievable. Being German, I was always convinced that no country has more rules than we do. Wrong! Japan is an order of magnitude worse... My traditional japanese company is no exception. I think that I could easily write a Kafka-style book about those things: "The company"

Example 1:
Chris: What do I have to do to get promoted? What are the criteria that determine that?
Boss: I cannot tell you - it's secret.
( I got promoted anyways, hehe)

Example 2:
Yesterday, I had to pay some cash in the human ressource (=HR) department - I had to pay 4000 Yen (32 $). I only had a 5000 Yen bill.
Chris: Hmmmm, what do we do now? Could you split up this bill? Do you have change?
Cute, but stupid HR girl: No.
Chris: Maybe we can ask somebody to exchange the bill? (about 100 HR people working in 20 meters distance)
Cute, but stupid HR girl: You don't seem to understand. There is a rule that we cannot exchange money.
Chris: ....
Cute, but stupid HR girl: but you can walk to the next supermarket and exchange your bill there.
It took me 20 minutes to split the bill....

Anyways, I am diverting. A co-worker has written me a very nice good-bye email. I was very affected by his email:

Hi, Chris

Thank you very much for having taught me the XYZ library.
It gave my life big influence.
I study and develop the XYZ technology to a base from now on.

[my comment: In case you wonder about XYZ: of course, there is a rule that I cannot speak publicly about it!]

New York Quotes

2007-06-21T02:46:00.000-07:00

I have discovered an extremely funny web page with quotes from the streets of new york city.
i think that this page is especially funny if you know new york - these quotes are so typical for new york.... totally!
franz: please enjoy and ttyl

example from this page:

I Meant Nowhere White People Would Want to Go

Blond Tourist Bimbo: I've never even heard of the G Train.
Blond Local Bimbo: Yeah, it's a ghetto train.
Blond Tourist Bimbo: Where does it go?
Blond Local Bimbo: Nowhere.
Black eight-year-old boy: Except my home, bitch.

--G train Hoyt/Schermerhorn station

Overheard by: Ian Robertson

from Overheard in New York, Oct 24, 2006

Shocking Japanese Magazine

2007-06-17T02:11:00.000-07:00

Recently, a disgusting magazine has been sold in Japan: see it here . It is clearly discriminating foreigners very agressively. Sick.... One quote:
Oi Nigger!! Get your fuckin’ hands off that Japanese lady’s ass!!

For publishing such an evil magazine in Germany: how many years would be the jail sentence?
10 years? 20 years?
I am not even sure, that this is being brought to court in Japan. This is just not right.

Unfortunately, Japan has not learned its lessons from World War 2....

Unemployed

2007-06-12T05:15:00.000-07:00

I have decided to quit my job.
After July 1 I will be unemployed.

Recent events

2007-04-03T06:23:00.000-07:00

Wow! Busy as ever... At work, I am currently programming the most advanced thing I have ever done.

Raini had visited me for 4 days. I think that it was very interesting for Raini!

After he left, I attended WorldHaptics and gave a presentation there. It went quite well! I saw several interesting things there:

How to use a Japanese bathroom:

A sign in a Japanese bar (this is totally insane):

(no! we did not do it!!!)

Right now, my mum and my aunt are visiting me. We are having a great time! On Sunday, we went to Yoyogi-koen to watch the Cherry Blossoms (and the drunk Japanese people who pretend to watch them, haha) - see also my last year's posting about Hanami. It was very beautiful! It was a little windy, so the cherry blossoms were raining down like snow. It felt very hakanai!

On Thursday evening, we will go to Kyoto and Hakkone. I am looking forward to having a little break!

Funny Spider Movie

2007-03-17T21:30:00.000-07:00

Effects Of Drugs And Alcohol On Spider Webs

IEEE VR - 2

2007-03-14T05:41:00.001-07:00

I forgot: yesterday, I was introduced to Fred Brooks .

Computer Science Rap

2007-03-13T11:38:00.000-07:00

Check out this song: here .

To understand it, you probably need a PhD in computer science (alternatively you can look up the keywords at wikipedia...). My favourite lines: "Your mom circulates like a public key, Servicing more requests than HTTP；She keeps all her ports open like Windows ME" :-)

Photos from IEEE VR

2007-03-13T08:32:00.000-07:00

I have visited an NBA game with a big group of Japanese conference attendants (I already look like a Japanese tourist, haha)

At the conference, I have tried this demo:

Tactile Feedback at the Finger Tips for Improved Direct Interaction in Immersive Environments
- Volkswagen AG, Group Research, Bauhaus-University Weimar

We present a new tactile feedback system for finger-based interactions in immersive virtual reality applications that consists of shape memory alloy wires wrapped around tracked finger thimbles. The wires touch the inside of the fingertips and provide an impression when they are shortened. We use this system to communicate finger contacts with virtual objects in a demonstration application.

The feeling of the contraction of the shape memory alloy wires on my fingers was quite interesting. See the picture below - I look like thinking very deeply about it :-)

IEEE VR

2007-03-12T11:35:00.000-07:00

I am currently at IEEE VR. Yesterday, I had tried the Sensics head-mounted display. I have worn that head-mounted display for about 3 minutes - playing some game similar to Quake. After that, something very strange happened: I was motion-sick for about 20 minutes! It was a very strange feeling. My sense of balance did not work correctly anymore and I felt like throwing up. I have worn a lot of head-mounted displays in my life. But with this one, there is definitely some fundamental problem. Several other researchers had similar experiences to me....

A few presentations at this conference have been really good! But, some have also been Cargo Cult Science... (a term coined in this article by Richard Feynman).

NWA

2007-03-06T03:48:00.000-08:00

Back in the days, I was a huge fan of NWA. Especially their song F*** the Police had made a deep impression on me (it was the first music video that MTV refused to play!).

Today, I have found this gem of comedy: Help the Police!.

Traveling soon!

2007-03-05T03:33:00.000-08:00

Not much special these days...
Having lots of fun on the weekends and working hard during the week.

On Saturday, I experienced (once again) something really surreal: a traditional japanese bar that was playing extremely modern music. On Sunday afternoon, the weather was fantastic! I was in Yoyogi park - wearing only a Tshirt :-) (of course I was also wearing pants). I bumped into a huge techno party outdoors. Tokyo is really one of a kind!

Recently, my god-like co-worker (Uchiyama-san) has surprised me once again. I was trying to implement a simple ray casting Algorithm. Essentially, what I wanted to do was to create a function Vector3float shoot_ray (int x, int y) that would give me 3d coordinates for an object that lies under the window coordinates (x,y). Having a cigarette in the smoking area (enjoying the beautiful view of Mt. Fuji), I wondered about the most elegant way to do it. Then, Uchiyama-san appeared.
Chris: "how can i get the 3d coordinates of an object from pixel coordinates?"
Uchiyama-san: "very easy - just read from the depth-buffer, multiply with the inverse projection matrix, and multiply with the inverse camera's pose matrix".
Chris (being astonished for a moment): "suge!"

Explanation of suge (taken from here):
Amazing, wonderful, great, awful, dreadful. Expresses amazement about someone's accomplishment or talent.

Next Friday, I will go for a business trip to a research conference in the US. I am already scared of the horrible American food... On the other hand, I always wanted to hear about things like "Rapid Animation of Laser-scanned Humans" :-)

How big is Tokyo?

2007-02-20T05:41:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow, I have to do a business trip. For this, I had to look up my way. Wow, this was tricky!

It is still hard for me to grasp how big Tokyo really is... Have a look at this image:

The upper map is a map of Tokyo's trains (full-size map is here). The lower map is the subway map (full image: here).

For easier understanding, I have added 2 pieces of information to the map:
1) The black circles in both images refer to the Yamanote line. A full loop takes about 1 hour. Interesting fact:"An estimated 3.5 million passengers ride every day on Tokyo's Yamanote Line, with its 29 stations. For comparison, the New York City Subway carries 4.8 million passengers per day on 26 lines serving 468 stations." (not to mention that the NYC subway operates 24 hours, whereas the Yamanote line does not operate between 1:30 and 5:00)
2) However, the maps do not represent the sizes correctly. My daily commute is highlighted as a red line. It takes about 20 minutes.

It would be interesting to overlay this map over Munich (which I cannot do now, because I have to wake up for my business trip, soon :-) Any volunteers?

Fun Stuff

2007-02-16T04:33:00.000-08:00

This is probably the weirdest picture that I have ever seen:

It's hard to believe that this is authentic. However, it seems to be! Probably taken in Cañon City, Colorado, circa 1926.

This is quite amusing. Many people around me follow that advice.

A really cool user interface is here.

Life is beautiful

2007-02-10T22:12:00.000-08:00

The weather in Tokyo is gorgeous now!! It is 12 degrees centigrade and clear blue sky!! After this blog entry, I will take a walk by the ocean.

Because of my recent promotion, I have some money to waste :-) I went shopping to Akihabara a couple of times. Now, I am Mr. Gadget!! I am totally impressed by the ipod shuffle that I had bought.
The interaction design of this device is amazing. I could not find any point that needs improvement.

I found another funny webpage: Fun ways to f*** with Japanese people's heads. I have recently developed some similar strategies :-)

For example:

1) At work, everybody is sooooooooooooo serious... It is almost surreal.... However, I try to make fun almost every day: I post funny cartoons at the walls of the lab; I talk in very rude Japanese to some very high guys (somehting like: hey dude, my throat is freaking dry; let's get f**** drunk after work); ... it's great fun! Basically, I can do anything, since I am already classified as a crazy outsider :-)

2) I have a new boss since December last year. My new team went drinking recently. There, he told that he likes Cabakura very much. Cabakura is a kind of hostess club, but there is no sex involved. Just flirting. The girls working there are very young (18-25). Very popular with older, married, Japanese guys (my guess is that what's not happening is more interesting to them then what happens - why is everything Zen-style here?). I said: "I have never experienced Cabakura." He said: "let's go someday!" Me: "sure!!"

Japanese ettiquette clearly separates topics from drinking parties and company life. So, the above topic is totally off-limit at the company (see point 1 from above). In our last team-meeting at the company, I was responsible for making the meeting agenda. I put as first point on the agenda: "when to go to Cabakura?". My boss was totally shocked: "Why do we talk about this at work?". I pretended not to know the etiquette: "But you had invited the team to go with you!". He was totally frozen. Hahahahahahahah. I will report about the Cabakura trip soon.

Spam protection

2007-02-08T03:46:00.000-08:00

Unfortunately, the SPAM bots keep posting comments on my blog. So, I had decided to not allow anonymous comments anymore. If you want to comment, please register. It only takes 1-2 minutes...

If there are any problems, please let me know (by posting a comment, haha).

Black belt in crazy

2007-02-08T03:39:00.000-08:00

Nick, a friend from new york, has sent me a cool t-shirt yesterday. It has printed on it: "I got a Black Belt in Crazy".

This cause a little email exchange:

Hi Nick!
I just got your Tshirt. Thanks a lot! Nice present!
However, I do not fully understand the Print on the Tshirt.
(my awezome Gzerman Engliz Zkillz)
Shouldn't it rather read:
"I got a black belt in craziness"
than
"i got a black belt in crazy)?

His answer:

!! You astound me with your perception of English grammar. I think we
Americans would be like, "oh, okay".

But the real question is: what would a true "black belt in crazy" prefer?

But it's legit! At least in popular culture with songs like "Halfway
to Crazy". OK, rock musicians might not have the best English either.
Maybe it's a bit poetic(?).

My theory: English is a bit like a PC C++ compiler from the 90's! If
it compiles on at least *one* compiler, it is a "valid enough" feature
and okay!

Well, with the C++ analogy, it kind of makes sense to me now :-)

Analysis of Japan

2007-02-01T05:10:00.000-08:00

I still get surprised by the Japanese world around me every day!

How come?

My co-worker (Brazilian, who is living for 20 years in Japan now) told me:
"I understand you. You get surprised every day. I only get surprised every other day". The real funny thing about this statement is: it is most probably true!

To understand Japan better, I had recently read a lot about Japan:
- Blogs about Gaijin (foreigner) superpowers: 1, 2 (I fully agree on both articles)
- "The Blue-Eyed Salaryman" (describing my general situation at work almost 100%)
- a German book about a guy's life in Japan (I fully agree with the facts in the book. However it is written in such a smart-ass way that it's not so much fun to read)

It is very interesting to see how much I can relate to these stories. Why are our experiences in Japan so similar?

A reason might be that Japanese people are extremely similar to each other ("Gleichschaltung").
Almost 1 year ago, my company had sent me to a seminar for "inter-cultural communication". One thing that we had learned there: assume that you take 2 random citizens of a country. In which country is the similarity between them the highest? I do not remember the exact statistics, but Asian countries were on top and Japan one of the leaders.

But to return to my initial question: The only thing that I have understood so far is that
it is impossible to understand the thinking processes of Japanese people.
I mean: of course, some high-level things always hold true (like the Gaijin Smash).
But the small details will always stay a mystery for me!

Anyways, I like surprises. It seems that Japan is the best place in the world for me :-)

Alive (again)

2007-01-31T14:19:00.001-08:00

Again, one of my "I am still alive" postings. Since I have returned from my vaccation in Germany on January 13th, I am very busy. Currently, I take 4 hours Japanese per week. It's getting better! However, progress is so slow.... Right now, I am learning adverbs - the spice of every language...

At work, I still haven't finished my plan for this year. It is totally overdue. However, there had been several complications...
But, it seems that I have found a strong vision to follow this year---I "only" have to plan the details....
A good thing happened: I was promoted! This was a very long and complicated process. But, everything turned out well!
Just yesterday, I got to know my new task. It will be quite different from what I had done before. Still, it seems to be very interesting!!

Regarding private life, I was very busy celebrating my promotion, haha. Last weekend I was cooking with 4 Japanese friends in my apartment (for those who know me well: yes, the usual style - they have been cooking and I have supervised, haha). At about 2AM, we went for some bars in Shibuya. However, one guy has already fallen asleep (too much alcohol...). We decided to let him sleep... When I returned home at about 5AM, he was still there---sleeping. This moment was quite funny :-)

Happy new year

2007-01-01T04:45:00.000-08:00

Happy new year to everyone!!

My first year in Japan is over. The highlights for me this year have been (in no particular order):
- Creating the deepest research results of my life
- Making Japanese friends and communicating in Japanese with them
- Starting a side-project besides work: Learning Scheme. Improving a lot in OpenGL.
- Going out 2-3 times a week :-)

My plan for next year is (again, in no particular order):
- Improve my Japanese a lot (Compared to now, my lessons will go up 300%)
- Getting engaged :-)
- Create 2 ground-breaking prototypes (slashdot, I am coming!!)
- Create an art installation (side project from above)

In 2 days, I will return to Germany. I am so excited about it!
Sometimes, I miss my family and friends a lot!!

Now, some recent fun pictures:

At the last day of work, I went to a drinking party with my co-workers. Out of the blue, our summer-intern (Alex: Greek, studying at MIT in the US) materialized among us. He is the most surreal guy ever. He lives in the United States and studies Japanese there. His level is above 50% of the Japanese population in Japan. I wonder how he achieves this????

Near my apartment: a Christmas decoration (looks like a 1980's CG demo to me :-)

My friends arranged a drum and bass party recently. This is the most important guy: Kokoro G (=Gangster of the Heart?).
He is responsible for the sound system. He has built a rack of speakers. Size: 5m * 2m. Noiselevel: incredible. His statement: "this is my girl".

At this party, a poor guy fell asleep (totally drunk). Some guys seized this opportunity to decorate him by painting on his body. (I thought Japanese were polite? :-) I took a picture of my favourite decoration: "may the force be with you". I talked to the guy who has written this (mind the mis-spelling of force). He has watched the Star Wars movies 500 times (nick name: Jedi Masta)

At yesterday's new year's party, I have met many interesting people. On the left, you can see an uprising Tokyo-artist. He has drawn pictures of many people at the party in about 1 minute! That was incredible. See my painting below - probably I look better on it than in real life, haha.

The guy on the right (Ben) is also very remarkable. He is British and studied Mathematics there. When he turned 20, he moved to a small town in Okinawa (2000 citiziens, in the middle of nowhere). His purpose: learning Karate. This reminded me very strangely of Kill Bill's plot :-)
We have chatted a little about mathematics. Sometimes, there are coincidents in life which are hard to explain. We are both extremely fascinated by Galois. To sum Galois up: extreme influential Genius; died at the age of 20 at a duel (because of a woman). We were musing about how different the current would be if Galois would have won that duel... I wonder: what is the propability of 2 random people meeting, and both are fascinated by Galois?

Book chapter published

2006-12-17T03:12:00.000-08:00

Together with my Ph.D. adivsor, I had written a chapter for a book about Augmented Reality. Please buy it here :-)

Topology

2006-12-17T03:00:00.000-08:00

My main problem for the demo on Thursday is related to Topology... I must decompose a non-convex polyhedron into several convex polyhedra... I am using a (very expensive) library for that. However, something goes wrong... Argh...

Non-convex polyedron above. Decomposition should result in something like:

Party time

2006-12-17T02:32:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I have attended a very cool event. Probably the best event in a long time... Goldie and MC Lowqui were playing in Tokyo. Their sound was (to speak in AliG's words) "eviler than Sceletor" :-) It was a great party!!
Before the main event, DJ Baku was playing. His style is very unique: scratching and beat-juggling Drum and Bass! He is from the same crew as DJ Kentaro (DMC world champion 2002). Check out DJ Kentaro's world- championship set here. I especially like the part starting at about 4:30. That was how it sounded like yesterday!

Wow, the coming week will be very tough for me. I must finish the demo in 3 working days. In addition, I have to attend 3 boonenkais...

Pictures!

2006-12-12T04:00:00.000-08:00

Finally, I have found some time to put some pictures online!

Currently, I am sooo busy at work... For the first time, I will give a speech at a Japanese conference! Fortunately, I am allowed to present in English. Check the program here. My presentation is at Fri, Jan 19 PM 13:00 - 15:00.
(the English program is here, hehe).

Also, I am currently programming a demo for the year-end demo of our lab. I have less than 7 days to complete it. I was told about it yesterday. Wow, guess I should not waste my time blogging ;-)

Ok, here are the pictures:

Onsen Trip

Ubiquitous computing is already very common in Japan...
Below, a hillarious advertisement:

Recently Visited Art Exhibits

Party Pictures

Botnet

2006-11-27T05:13:00.000-08:00

This article is really amazing: how to control 70.000 machines to send spam emails. the OS statistics for the controlled machines are quite amusing (updating considered harmful!):

For the first time, I have installed Ubuntu now. Ok, it is not as performant as my current favourite Gentoo. But, it is so simple to use, that I will recommend it to my mother when I return to Germany in January :-)

My SLI graphics setup (using 2 graphics card in parallel) was working properly in less than 2 hours and giving me the desired 90% speedup :-) :-) Under Gentoo, X was crashing undeterministically (I guess that the current gentoo 2.6. kernel does not like this crappy (believe me!) motherboard).

Random cool fact: here

Coding

2006-11-20T04:21:00.000-08:00

Recently, I am doing more and more programming. Getting results fast can be very enjoyable. Today, I want to report about my recent coding adventures.

Scheme
Currently, I am learning a new language: Scheme. It is over 30 years old and basically a weird Lisp dialect!

I am sure you think: Why the heck does anyone on earth want to learn such a language??? Let alone somebody doing "leading-edge research"??? Shouldn't he rather be learning some cool new web-framework like Ruby on Rails???

Good question.

First of all, I decided to follow my own recommendations (see my posting on enlightenment). I have already had my first enlightenment today: Blaine, you'd better stop trying to patent DP. DP and Scheme are isomorphic.

Second, learning one language at a time (Japanese) is boring ;-)

More importantly, I have realized that knowing Scheme is incredibly powerful. So many applications can be scripted by Scheme. For example, GIMP. Recently, I had to edit many pictures. My task was: cut a 640x480 rectangle starting at the bottom left corner of a larger image. The naive approach was to use the mouse for that. However, like this, this is totally painful .... Writing a 1-line Scheme script to do this was enjoyable in the end (although, it took me 30 minutes to figure this line out, haha).

Finally: I love rapid prototyping (time is money!). It seems to me that the highest expressiveness per lines of code can be achieved in functional programming languages (proof omitted, hehe).

bazar
As I have blogged recently, I am playing with Bazar. After finding and reporting a couple of bugs to the developers, we finally got it running:

A virtual teapot is augmented on a playing card. (mind the irony: the card is called Maessigkeit).
The lighting conditions in my room are reflected correctly on the teapot!

openGL
A couple of small experiments

The famous teapot. The greyscale represents the values of the depth buffer. This must be how a bat sees the world.
Or maybe not?

Stress test for my new laptop: rendering a 160MB model (33 million vertices) at 1440x900 at 100FPS :-)

3D Kanjis (tribute to 風の人, see earlier post).

Relax

As I was told in Jamaica many times: "you gotta relax man". To follow this advice, I am going to a famous Onsen in Izu's mountains (The next weekend will be 4 days for me :-) Gosh, I haven't been to a high-class Onsen for almost 1 year now :-( Some pictures

Long time no see :-)

2006-11-09T04:57:00.000-08:00

Hehe, my life is just tooo busy. I find no time to write my blog. I hope that some people are still reading it...
Some random things that happened (the frequency of life in tokyo is amazingly high...)

Today, I had a Japanese lesson. At some point I was totally confused about a grammar construct. Then, my teacher said: "Or, to put it more complicated: here, the Japanese grammar is left recursive." After that, I had no problems anymore! My teacher was totally astonished ("nobody has ever gotten that so fast"). What I did not tell her: the reason for my sudden enlightenment was that (at age 23) I had implemented a parser for left recursive grammars ;-)
I was partying a lot recently. One of the best event's was Kazenohitos' (people of the wind) party in Ebisu. Some pictures can be found here. Another great act at this event was MC Leo and DJ Kom. I was drinking with those guys until the sun rose...
I have bought a new laptop: MacBook Pro 15". I cannot believe it: it is 8 times faster in number crunching than my old laptop. Impressive! I am currently coding some funky stuff with it using bazar.
A German friend of mine got inspired by my entry about children , and got engaged. I did not know blogging could make a difference for some other people's life :-)
My brother gets his 4th child! Wow, I gotta catch up...
Politics can be fair! (very geeky joke): here
I WANT TO SEE THE BORAT MOVIE!!!! it's screening is delayed for undetermined time in Japan :-(
Beautiful nature (a sandstorm): here
I got some hits on my blog from MIT, Boston, USA. I am sure, this is Johnny-boy (click here, then see visiting scientists)! Hey Johnny, please post a nice comment sometimes! (nicer than the one you wrote for my japanese blog, hehe)
Final point for today: I have started a Japanese blog :-) My co-workers convinced me that this makes totally sense for me: this way, I can improve my Japanese a lot! However, it is sooooo hard to use the blog without fully understanding it ...
In any case: here is my profile. Since almost no reader of this blog here will understand it, I will translate a little: my nick name is: furyo kenkyusha (不良研究者: my co-workers think this is appropriate for me). kenkyusha means reseacher and furyo means (something like): crazy, party-maniac, not-sensible, etc.
I have tried to express this chasm by my logo...

Returned from USA

2006-11-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

2 weeks ago, I went on a business trip to the US to visit ISMAR. There, I saw some very interesting research projects. Also, I had the chance to see (and drink with) many people I know. It was great!
The most insane thing was the Parasitic Humanoid. This project's vision is to equip user's with a mobile computer. This computer learns about the user's behaviour. Ok, this has been done by several research projects. However, the cool point of this project is: the computer then starts to control the user unconciously. The implication is a symbiosis between human and computer. Scary? Probably. Thought-provoking: most problably!
An example is shown here: The computer control's the human to avoid a car.

This is done by "hacking" the human sense of balance. Weak electric signals are sent to the user's vestibular system.
I have spoken with people what have tried this: it really works...

Today (Friday), is a public holiday in Japan. That's sweet! I have time to do some housework... めんどくさい!!!

Nicest: tomorrow, Grooverider will play in Tokyo! I am excited to go there!!

Laci!

2006-10-18T06:40:00.000-07:00

Laci has left Tokyo 2 days ago :-(
We had a really good time! While he was here, the world chess championship was running. We were watching several games live on the internet. Fortunately, our idol (Vladimir Kramnik) won.

Some pictures!

Laci eating Sushi (with a fork ;-)

Laci with some Shibuya girls.

Funny: Laci was totally craving for red bull (which is not that easy to get in Japan). 1 hour later, we met some red bull advertising girls. They gave us free red bull + a nice chat. Life can be remarkably coincidential!

The first time since I am in Japan, I have spoken with Yakuzas. How this happened is a long story.... (stay tuned for my upcoming memoirs in bookform). It all started, because I have lost my way (as usual in Japan, haha)... At some point it was a little scary. But, finally it turned out nicely. We were led to some back-room of a Japanese bar. There, this picture was taken.

Little dude can dance

2006-10-18T06:28:00.000-07:00

Can anyone translate this?

awesome movie

Cheers,
Chris

My child is born

2006-10-13T16:01:00.000-07:00

Currently, my old friend Laszlo is visiting me. Like me, he is half Hungarian and half German. We had met playing chess. At some point we were training together very closely (I guess around the time when we both were among the strongest youth players in Germany). I would spend weeks in Berlin (his home-town), and he would spend weeks at Munich (my home-town). We looked at games from the 18th century :-) Also, he introduced me to live in a big city. Berlin is soooo much bigger than Munich! Now the roles are reversed: I live in one of the world's biggest cities, and he lives in a small village in England.
Life's strange :-) I am very glad to show him Tokyo. Now, he thinks about coming here to do an intership at C. :-)

Wow! Today, I have finished to write a research paper. The last 5 months, I have been working on it. I feel good now! I had worked so hard... But, after submitting my paper, I went out with Laci to the infamous Roppongi. Partying was insane! It is 8:00 in the morning, now!

Some thoughts about research papers:
Two years ago, an interesting theory about researchers and their papers was presented to me by research homie Alex (thanks Alex for enlighting me!!). Also, I had some discussion with my mother about this topic. She totally agrees on the point....

"Normal people" get married and have children, when they approach 30. This is totally understandable. They (typically) have a safe job and their life is not changing that much. One way to think about their urge to get children (I know this is an extreme opinion!!) is that they want some change in their lives. For many researchers life is very exciting, but very unsettled.

For example, 2 years ago, I had lived in New York. For one year now, I am living in Japan. Next year, I might live somewhere else (my current favourties: Shanghai, Brazil, or Hawaii). In any case, I cannot imagine to have children now.... My life is just too unsettled. Many reserachers have the same life. As Kant said: "The foremost goal of any reseracher must be to disemminate his knowledge on the world". Living according to this maxime requires sacrifices....

So what is the equivalent to children in a researcher's life? (now, I am getting to my point :-)

The answer is: research papers! Typically, you work 1/2 year like crazy (especially the last month) to complete a project.
Then, you summarize your results in a paper, and send it to some conference. If everything goes well, your paper is accepted and you can present it at the conference (which is a noble act towards mankind, according to Kant). So we can see one commonality to gettting children: you carry something inside you, and when it is ready, it gets born....

Another analogy is how exhausted you get. I will never bear a child. However, I imagine that how exhausted you get, is similar to completing a research paper. The last week, I was sleeping only around 4 hours per night. Today, I have been 24 hours awake. With all this effort, I managed to finish my paper 5 minutes before the deadline. You can imagine how stressful this is!

Now, I am totally exhausted. I feel, that I cannot think about anything serious for 1-2 weeks. The last thing I did before falling into a deep and dreamless sleep (I estimate 24 hours will be necessary): write this blog entry.

Partying (DJ Zinc)

2006-10-04T05:00:00.000-07:00

The crazy gaijins (ふりょ外人ですよね）

The sound system

Funky interior:

The American Way of Life

2006-10-04T04:41:00.000-07:00

Philosophy

2006-09-18T07:28:00.000-07:00

There is no sense to life. Or is there?
Dj Zinc's sound on Saturday hinted that amusement does exist whatsoever ;-)

To find out more details, I am now improving my knowledge about philosophy.
Mind, Machines and Godel
Smullyan (I cannot believe that I find out about Tarski's theorem that late...)

Programming can also lead to englightenment:
"Lisp is worth learning for the profound enlightenment experience you will have when you finally get it; that experience will make you a better programmer for the rest of your days, even if you never actually use Lisp itself a lot." — Eric Raymond, "How to Become a Hacker"
Eric Raymond seems to be a wicked guy. His koans about Unix are .... (fill in your sentiments):
Koans

Not shutting down blog :-)

2006-09-16T03:02:00.000-07:00

Okokokok,
I was positively surprised by the amount of people who actually read my blog!

So, I decided to continue it! Still, I will keep the update rate on low frequency...

Cause my job is right now on extremely high frequency! Currently I am doing 3 things deeply at once. This combination is hillarious ( I wonder if any researcher in the world is doing the same thing, haha):
- hardcore coding (opengl, python, collision detection ...)
- studying statistics (ANOVA ...)
- reading papers about hand-eye coordination. Especially the brain researchers have done extremely cool experiments! In one paper, they have presented mixed reality systems to monkeys. Unbelievable!!

Today, I hope to relax by something completely different: DJ ZINC and MC DYNAMITE are in Tokyo!!
Check out the party's webpage---better turn up your volume!

Taking a shower now, then PAAARTY!!

Final post

2006-09-04T04:55:00.000-07:00

Dear readers,
I have decided to shut down this blog. I think that I just do not have enough time for this blog (besides learning Japanese, working, and exploring Tokyo...). I regret this step, but I am just running out of energy...

Anyways, if you are interested to hear some funny Tokyo stories, then just drop me an email!

Christian

Mount Fuji

2006-09-04T04:27:00.000-07:00

Last weekend, I have climbed Mt. Fuji, together with our smart intern: Ozan. At some points it was very tough (ascent was 7 hours in continuous rain, at night, with low oxygen), but the views from the summit were rewarding! A funny incident was that when we lost our way (cause all the signs are written in Japanese...), we have met Yukiko, who has also lost her way. After that, the 3 of us were climbing together. This was very good for us, since her equipment was much better than ours: vitamins, oxygene, self-heating patches ...
Another funny thing was that during the decent, we have met friends from Ozan (I think the chances for this are 1:1000000000): they were quite friendly! Only thing I could criticize is that Himani has made a patent for the root of all evil ;-)

Now for the pictures!

Ozan with his head-mounted (of course!) lamp.

Ozan and Yukiko, still happy, after 3 hours of hiking.

I was already a little beaten at that time.

Or maybe I was very beaten?!

Fortunately, I was not the only one ;-)

Self-heating patches (thanks to Yukiko!!). Typically used as traps for cockroaches, because they love the heat.
The image on the front of the patch is so lovely---typically Japanese ...

We have made it to the summit!

Above the clouds...

Miracles of the internet :-)

2006-07-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

The internet can lead to funny things! For example, Chinese researchers reading your publication and not understanding a word ;-)

I got this email today:
---------------------------
Hi Dr. Chris,

After reading your conference paper, 'Herding sheep: live system development for distributed augmented reality', I really interested to know whether this system is also meant for Compaq iPaq running on Linux?

From the conference paper, it is very obvious that the 3D world is developed mainly for Window CE and it was developed using VRML. Yet, this may not perform well on Linux iPaq, because the only 3D viewier for VRML for PocketPC, PocketCortona doesn't support Linux iPaq (for the current version). So, If the system be able to run on Linux iPaq, I would like to know how.

Hope you would reply me. Thanks in advance.

Have a nice day.

Regards,
Chi (the lastname has been ommited to protect the innocent)
---------------------------
My answer:

Hi!
Please re-read the paper :-)
It contains answers to all your question...
Especially Section 2.4.
.... some more explanations ....
Hope this helps!
Dr. Chris

Chris Road

2006-07-27T05:23:00.000-07:00

A co-worker has sent me this picture. It shows a sign reading: Chris Road ;-)

Dan certificate

2006-07-27T05:21:00.000-07:00

My brand-new dan certificate! The only 3 things I can read are:
- my name
- shodan (my title)
- the name of the issuer (japanese igo association (nihonkiin)

anyways---I am proud :-)

Update: two Chinese interns (big thanks to Mitra and Beibei!) have translated it for me! Since the document is written in traditional Chinese characters, many Japanese have a hard time undestanding it
:-)

"You finally move forth in the Way of Go after a devoted and patient training, and hereby earn the rank of 1st Dan. You shall henceforth need redoubled efforts in your dedication."

Another game of go

2006-07-20T07:46:00.000-07:00

Again, we had to postpone a game at lunchbreak... (see earlier posting tokyo: Go at luchbreak). I am white in this game; black has sealed his next move.

I think it does not look to good for me. Currently I am totally changing my style of play: thickness is everything.

In this position, I have a huge ammount of thickness. However, I failed to utilize my thickness ... My only hope is to kill the group in the bottom left corner. If his sealed move is the 3-3 point in the bottom left, I probably resign the game immediately. Otherwise, an invasion there might give me some hope...

Nintendo Amusement Park

2006-07-12T15:23:00.000-07:00

Physical Computing!

Parties

2006-07-12T04:52:00.000-07:00

Friday, I will go to this party (arranged by some friends of mine):

I hope it will more be like a Swedish-style party. What do I mean by this? Check out this presentation about cultural differences between England and Sweden (warning: not serious and semi-explicit content): England vs. Sweden (after downloading the file, you might have to rename it to have the suffix .pps).

That reminds me: in October 2003 I was at a party at the Swedish embassy in Tokyo (thanks Alex for taking me there!!). It was pretty enjoyable (smoking a cigar with the ambassador ;-)

It goddesses

2006-07-11T07:38:00.000-07:00

An Australian woman doing IT had a clever idea: she wanted to make a calendar to show that women in computer science can be beautiful, too! Basically, this is an admirable idea. However, I find the result quite amusing :-)

Calendar
(especially Liisa makes me want to scream)

Things I enjoy

2006-07-04T06:47:00.000-07:00

Since I have returned from the US, I am totally flooded with work... Apart from that, I still find time to enjoy life! For example:

Becoming Shodan in Go. Finally, I understood that killing is worthless :-) Better to make the opponent live small!

Watching art exhibitions like the Pixar exhibit in Tokyo. The "making of" of my favourite Pixar movie was especially interesting: For The Birds. I you haven't seen this short movie: do it now!

I have found some nice Drum and Bass locations in Tokyo! The next couple of weeks, there will be some awesome artists in Tokyo: Photek and Congo Natty!

Currently, we have an intern at work who is cool as shit! His name is Ozan and he is from University of Florida. We watched the last two games of the German national team together. He teaches me things like microcontroller programming, 3D scanning and printing + much more... Wait---isn't he supposed to be just an intern? :-)

I have found the most hillarious website ever. Check out these articles: A True History of Linux, Linux and Windows Compared: The Facts, Linux: A European threat to our computers and much more insanity.

About Linux: I am using XGL now. When will Windows be at this level for a Graphical User Interface? Maybe Windows 2010? Check out this video, it will make you wanna switch to Linux immediately!

Finally, the most enjoyable thing: in 1 month, I will visit Germany!! I cannot wait for the things that are awaiting me: my family, my good old friends, the Dachauer Volksfest, Dangercrew parties and much more!

USA pictures

2006-06-04T00:49:00.000-07:00

I am still in the USA. Some pictures!

NYC: in the VIP lounge

NYC: at the roots concert

Boston: playing chess :-)

Boston-MIT: Inside the Bill Gates tower

Boston-MIT: it feels strange to be a cyborg...

Boston-MIT: playing with Pico

Boston-MIT: playing with Audiopad

Boston: Live visualizations at a party...

The plane to California ;-)

to be continued

USA Trip - Boston

2006-05-22T20:50:00.000-07:00

Since yesterday I am in Boston. This town totally sucks. I wanna go back to New York!! It is sooooo boring here. It feels like Karlsfeld, haha. Anyways... Today, I attended the Digital Life sponsor meeting .

Some presentations were cool! The project "One laptop per child" was extremely inspiring. The vision is to provide every child (especially in third-world-countries) with a laptop, so they can educate themselves. The technical tricks used in this laptop are incredible... Its price (100$) is even more amazing. I wanna get one! :-)

Tomorrow, there will be demos to see.

USA Trip - New York - Roots concert

2006-05-22T20:46:00.000-07:00

Last Thursday, I have attended one of the best events ever. In New York's famous Radio City Hall, The Roots were playing.
One of my favourite songs by them is this one.

It was unbelievable: apart from their new songs, they played several hip hop songs from the 80s, all with real instruments!
2 piano players, 2 trumpets, one sax, 2 drummers, erikah badu singing (the lady from the video above) and several special guests. they were improvising together... i have never seen anything like this!

They also had Rahzel on stage: this guy is insane: he can imitate 2 instruments and perform vocals at the same time...

The coolest moment of the concert was when they performed "If I ruled the world" by Nas. Erikah Baduh singing the part "We'll walk right up to the sun---hand in hand" was incredible beautiful.

10 minutes before departure

2006-05-17T15:19:00.000-07:00

hehe, i found some time to blog! in 10 minutes i am departing to the USA for 3 weeks. it will be a busy time for me, but enjoyable :-) I visit and give presentations at Columbia University, MIT's Media Lab and UCSB.

I have also arranged meetings with my old friends from the US! It starts today (I hope I will not be too jet-lagged) with a nice
concert with the incredible Blaine.

I will try to post some pictures during my trip!

Mark's Visit

2006-05-14T03:04:00.000-07:00

My brother Mark was visiting my for one week. It was his first visit to Japan. First, we have spent a few days in Kyoto to show him the classical Japan. Then, we returned to Tokyo and I showed him the funky, crazy city. It was a great time! I hope I will soon have other visitors :-)
Some pictures:

Posing in our Ryokan in Kyoto.

In the bamboo forrest.

Very interesting: Kyoto's Ryoanji temple has a miniature model of its famous stone garden. So blind people can experience the stone garden. (a UI researcher might say: a tangible world-in-minature :-)

In Tokyo, we could enjoy the crazy outfit of girls...

In Yoyogi Koen, once again we saw a techno party. The highlight of it was a 70 year old guy dancing on the stage next to the DJs. See the detail of the picture below.

Current project finished!!!

2006-04-30T04:26:00.000-07:00

Wow, I have finished my project!! The last month was so hard for me... But now, I am very proud. I feel, this is the first project I did that can have severe impact on the future of mankind :-) Unfortunately, I can post the details here only in October. Please bear with me!

The bad thing is that I am totally overworked now... To relax, I went to an Onsen today. It was great! Very relaxing. I feel I need 3-4 more weekends like this to be a normal person again...

Next week, my brother will come to Japan. It will be great fun I think!!

When I have relaxed a little, I will do more postings!

Brandon

2006-04-16T03:22:00.000-07:00

In 3 weeks, I will do a businesstrip to the united states. I will also visit new york for 3 days. i am looking forward to it :-)

I am now trying to contact my old friends from my time back in new york. to my amazement, one of them has made it: he was in a madonna/britney spears video :-) I am looking forward to seeing him! Check his webpage here: Brandon

Octopus vs. Shark

2006-04-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

I am currently working very hard on my submission to the conference ISMAR . Apart from that I, find time to watch interesting things such as this video: Octopus vs. Shark

Parks..

2006-03-27T04:54:00.000-08:00

Currently, I have to work so much... Even on the weekends :-( However, around end of April, my workload will get less. I am looking so forward to it!!! On the other hand I am very proud: my current project is the hardest (and best!) I have ever done...

To combine work and fun, I work at parks at the weekend :-) Some of you might have read the book I hold in my hands:

This picture was taken in Yoyogi koen. Not a very clean park, but lots of interesting people there, haha! At some point while reading the book, I got quite distracted, since there was some photo shooting going on really close to me. I have never experienced a photo shooting before, haha. It was insane: one cute girl and 6 (!!) guys with cameras taking pictures of her (additionally some guys taking care of the light conditions).

Later that afternoon, I found an outdoor techno party that was held in the park. It was *very* loud.

I cannot believe that this was a legal party... I really miss those nice outdoor parties that I used to attend in Munich... I hope in August (I will go back to Germany for 3 weeks), I will be able to attend some more!

Hanami season has started! In 2 days, I will attend a Hanami party with my coworkers. I will post the pictures here, hehe. As you can see, last weekend, the cheery blossoms started to bloom:

Finally, I found another robot. I need it!! It's basically the draft-beer-storage-robot (literal translation of the japanese characters):

Antal Lakner

2006-03-12T02:42:00.000-08:00

Last weekend, I went to an art exhibition with my japanese teacher. Several eastern european installation artists were shown. My favourite artist on that exhibition was the hungarian Antal Lakner.

Article about the exhibition.
More of his works: here.
Another article describes the ingenious 2G suit (unfortunately only in hungarian...).

Go at luchbreak

2006-03-12T01:51:00.000-08:00

About 4 times a week I play Go with my colleague Morita-san during lunchbreak. We usually manage to finish our games in time. Last week, we had a very complicated game that took to long. We took a picture of the position and continued on the next day.

Here is the picture (I was black and it's white's turn in the position):

Can anyone guess the outcome of the game?

Art exhibits

2006-02-26T03:39:00.000-08:00

On weekdays I am basically totally overwhelmed by working and learning Japanese. (I wonder: will this ever change? :-) At the last 2 weekends, I found some time to relax at two art exhibtions. They were great!

The first one was called: The Unbuilt Monuments. The theme of the exhibition were buildings that were planned by famous architects (e.g., Le Corbusier, Mies van der Rohe), but never built. Some great models were on display. Even more interesting, movies of fly-throughs of the buildings were shown. They were created with 3D Modelling programs. The movies were beautiful, but had most of the time below 25 frames per second. This was a big turn-off for me, I even got a slight headache... Below is a screenshot of one of the movies. It shows my favourite unbuilt monument: The Danteum.

Yesterday, I went to the Japanese media arts festival. There were lots of futuristic, interactive pieces exhibited. I thouroughly enjoyed it! Some exhibits even used Mixed Reality. I guess I will try next year to submit my current project at Canon---it would have fit perfectly! A very funny piece was called Virtual Brownies. See it here.

Surprising Japan

2006-02-26T02:45:00.000-08:00

Again, I am very surprised by the things you can buy in Japan! Let me quote an article from metropolis.japantoday.com:

Creepy cat Hardware-human interfaces made easy

Over the years, we’ve seen many odd things that plug into a PC’s USB port—from plastic models of sushi to desk fans and coffee cup warmers. Now, however, Angel Kitty has trumped them all with, um, a USB webcam that comes as part of a kinky cat cosplay outfit.

The webcam is actually stuck on the end of a detachable tail, which is in turn attached to a tacky French maid outfit—you know, the sort that creepy guys with white socks get their “girlfriends” to wear. The ¥22,575 package is supposedly intended to get folk in the mood for a little online lovin’, or whatever it’s called in Akihabara these days

The product's webpage is here.

PS: I do not wear white socks ;-)

Valentine's Day

2006-02-14T03:10:00.000-08:00

Valentine's day in Japan is just lovely (for boys)! Because the girls are supposed to give chocolate to the guys they are interested in. Guys are not supposed to give the girls anything. That's too good to be true, isn't it? Today, some colleagues told me about the drawback: 1 month later (3/14), the guys are supposed to give something to the girls---it is called "White day" in Japan. Maybe payback-day would be more appropriate, haha.

Unfortunately, I do not have time to enjoy this Valentine's day too much. I am just too busy :-(
The weekend I worked on a bookchapter, which will be printed soon. Also today I had to work a little on it ...

Yesterday, me and about 15 colleagues attended a seminar on intercultural communication. Wow, this was very interesting! I have learned many new things. Mainly about Japan, USA and Germany, but also about other Asian countries. I should have taken this seminar before I went to the US. It would have saved me quite some trouble... The most interesting thing was what I have learned about myself. We had to do several tests to find out about our character. The result was: in some things, I seem to be a typical German (Socratic way of discussing, Low-context(=direct) communication style, appreciating friendship with colleagues). In some other things (contextual thinking, polychromatic time&relationship&responsibilty perception), my character is not German at all (in fact, just the opposite!)---much like a Japanese person. This was so interesting to learn!
Now I know why I am so fascinated by Japan :-)

Just 10 minutes ago, I have finished my Japanese homework. My teacher asked me to write a funny story. I have attached it at the end of this posting. No---I will not translate it. It is too silly. My vocabulary is just sooo limited. It reminds me of the stories in my first English school book: Gosh-the cage fell on the floor and cheeky (the dog) is under the cage and pips (the bird) flew out of the cage.

クリスの囲碁

クリスは囲碁がすきです。日本の囲碁センタへいきます。
クリスはすこし日本語がわかります。でもまだじょうすじゃありません。

囲碁センタできれいなあんあのことコーヒーをのみました。あんあのこは英語あまりじゃありません。
クリスはあんあのこのはなしがぜんぜんわかりませんでした。

クリスはとてもかなしです。あとで、かなじょははなしました「フランスへ三年いきました。」それから、フランスごでたくさんはなしました。クリスのせいかつはたのしです！

Party with live art

2006-02-05T02:55:00.000-08:00

Yesterday night, I went out to some great techno party. I went with 2 friends working for Sony (German, Russian) and a freelance-designer (Swedish). We had a great time!! I could practice my Japanese a lot, since we were the only foreigners at the party!

One great joke from yesterday: What is heaven? Having an American salary, a Chinese cook, an English house and a Japanese wife. What is hell? Having a Chinese salary, an English cook, a Japanese house and an American wife.
The funny thing about that joke is that there is so much truth in it :-)

There was even some live music going on. In parallel, some guy was creating a painting! It was very interesting!
We analyzed the painting to be a cross-over between Pollock and Graffiti. See the development of the painting in the pictures below:

Research

2006-02-05T01:49:00.000-08:00

I decided to finally post some things about my current research. Of course, due to my NDA, I cannot be very specific... Some things I am doing currently:

using Eclipse in Python and C++ mode (who needs a clumsy language such as JAVA??): it totally rocks!
using Gentoo Linux: I am very impressed! This is the way Linux is supposed to be! The performance of a Gentoo system is significantly better than Windows (of course) and rpm-based Linux distributions such as SuSE or RedHat. Also the package management system is incredible. E.g., it is a piece of cake to switch (on-the fly!) the whole system from one low-level library to another one (e.g. QT vs. GTK, KDE vs. GNOME, OpenGL drivers, etc. etc.). All dependencies are automatically updated. Can you do this in Windows (an analog task would be to switch from some MFC+Visual Studio version to another one)? I guess you would need 10 reboots and some stale dependencies would screw up your system, so you have to reinstall in the end.... Some colleagues have even started to use Gentoo, when they saw my system :-)
Doing calibration. In my reasearch area, this is one of the hardest tasks (at least for me). It requires strong knowledge in maths. I was very excited to find a research paper that describes how to build systems without calibration. It's title is: "We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Calibration". Read it here.
I am currently researching lots of patents. Let me tell you: there is nothing too insignificant to be patented (at least in the United States, haha).
Asa sent me a hillarious link: there is a webpage that advertises a (fake) conference on software engineering. It mocks the bad practices of software development that lots of companies actually apply. In the past, I have experienced these anti-patterns myself :-) Check the webpage out here

Man with harem of 10

2006-01-26T04:40:00.000-08:00

Japan keeps on surprising me every day! This was in today's newspaper:

A 57-year-old man living in Tokyo with 10 women and a baby was arrested Thursday on suspicion of threatening a young woman in an attempt to force her to join the group, police said. Hirohito Shibuya of Tokyo's Higashiyamato allegedly told the woman, aged 20, on Oct. 20 last year that she might be injured or killed if she refused to live with them, the police said. He denied threatening the woman, saying, "I just told her what appeared in a dream," according to the police.

They said they are also investigating whether any of the other women were threatened by Shibuya or are being effectively confined by him, and are questioning two women in the group. Shibuya also allegedly told the 20-year-old woman, "I am a former senior officer of the Self-Defense Forces, and there are some secret agents around me," but his former wife, 59, told the police that he was never a member of the SDF.

Shibuya started living with several women in the western Tokyo city after divorcing his wife in October 1999, and has had several marriages and divorces with nine women, aged 20-49 when the marriages or divorces occurred, according to sources close to him. Most of the divorced women, however, still live with him under his
family name.

Shibuya told reporters Wednesday, "I realize that I can attract women by reciting a charm. Since starting fortune-telling at home, female clients have gathered around me, and now we lead a communal life, just like polygamy."

Funny letter to the editor

2006-01-26T00:04:00.000-08:00

I am still totally flooded by work. Also, I have caught a cold. I do not even enjoy smoking anymore---you can tell it is serious.

In all this stress, a friend from Germany (thanks Zefix!!) has sent me a hillarious letter to the editor. Check it out!
Unfortunately it is in German, so non-Germans have to find someone to translate it---I promise the trouble will be worth it!

Article

Canon Song

2006-01-14T20:16:00.000-08:00

These days, I am more exhausted than ever. I have an important deadline on 2/2. So I doubt that I will have time to do many postings until than. Sorry! Please bear with me....

On the first day of work of this year, in a big meeting, everyone was standing up and singing the Canon Song.
There was a video shown that accompanies the song. In Karaoke style, the lyrics were shown with graphical feedback of what to sing. It's typical for Japanese companies to have a song. Interesting! If you are interested, you can listen to the song here.

Friends visiting

2006-01-05T07:50:00.000-08:00

Some friends from my hometown are visiting Japan right now. Unfortunately, they do not have much time for me :-(
The picture might give you a hint why ;-)

Signs

2006-01-05T07:47:00.000-08:00

Again, some funny signs (there are sooo many in Tokyo)

A toy store for children (in Germany, this name would probably make the owner go to jail ;-)

Finally, Microsoft did something sensible! They started a campaign in Tokyo showing what happens to people using Office too much:

A wanted-poster for a Yakuza. He seemed to have disobeyed his boss once, since a part of his finger is missing:

New Year's Party

2006-01-05T07:34:00.000-08:00

My new year's parties were quite funky! First, I went to Roppongi. I usually do not like to go there... It is a weird place to be!
Anyways, I went with friends to an all-sake-you-can-drink event. It was outta control (that's why I did not take any sensible pictures...). Sound was so-so, kind of mainstream house :-(
However, I managed to take a picture of the countdown for the new year:

Later, we went to a smallish, funky club in Shibuya (that's muuuuuch nicer than Roppongi!). There, the sound was highly experimental (my cup of tee!). This trio was kicking ass: a scratching DJ (mixer around his neck), a bongo player and a live-synthy player!

Japanese Christmas

2005-12-26T06:56:00.000-08:00

My Christmas this year was very strange---but funny! Japanese guys tend to spend it with their girlfriends at home. Since I have no girlfriend, I had to find an alternative! A friend managed to get free tickets for a techno event:

(which was very good, cause they cost 60EUR)

The event was really nice, I stayed until 6AM :-) I had a great time (and lots of beer):

Finally, something Christmas-like happened: see the picture (the girl on the right is wearing a Santa Claus costume, haha)

I even took some movies at the event. Check them out! (Yes, it was that noisy---I have never heard music as crazy as this one)
movie1
movie2

Why do Japanese people love robots?

2005-12-26T06:51:00.000-08:00

The Economist knows the answer: read the article here

Super Mario

2005-12-26T06:44:00.000-08:00

On Tokyo's most important train (the Yamanote line), there are screens displaying advertisements. My current favourite shows someone playing the first level of Supermario Brothers! I have taken a small movie! Download it here.

I am still alive :-)

2005-12-21T03:58:00.000-08:00

Wow, my last posting was soooooo long ago... the reason is: I work very hard now and study Japanese for 2-3 hours every day. It's very hard, but i am making nice progress!

Recently, I have started to learn Kanji ---the Japanese writing system. A basic knowledges requires to memorize 2000 characters. I have found an awesome book that makes it possible to learn about 10 Kanji an hour. I have learned already 80 characters, if I keep up this speed, I should be done around April....

About work: there is an article about the work done in our lab. you can find it here: article

Starting December 29, I have 1 week free time. I hope to do lots of blog entries, then. Because besides working and learning Japanese, i experienced lots of noteworthy things :-) stay tuned!

By the way: i had a problem with my blog---it was not possible to post comments (thanks to Peppi for notifying Oel, who notified me). This problem is solved now!

I am so exhausted---gotta sleep now!

My business card

2005-12-12T06:38:00.000-08:00

I have a business card now! Finally, I feel like a full member of the Japanese working class :-) It is printed on both sides: one in English, the other one in Japanese.

The English side:

(I always wanted to work somewhere "Leading-edge", hehe)

Japanese side:

I am still memorizing the Kanji and the pronounciation of my affiliation...
The only thing I can read on the spot are the Japanese characters for my name :-)

Berni is still in town

2005-12-12T06:35:00.000-08:00

Berni is still here, I love his Tshirt:

(ok, it is really geeky: you must have seen Matrix and know about programming to understand it, hehe)

Sunday, we have visited a Go Club. I will do an exam there, to get a certificate of my strength, on January 8th!
The front entrance:

Entrance hall with statues of famous players:

Next to the entrance door, there is a temple. I will definitely pray there, before taking my test!

Berni is visiting...

2005-12-07T05:22:00.000-08:00

Since Friday, Bernhard (aka Berni) is visiting me. We are having a great time :-)
Some pictures (more follow soon):

We had a walk in my neighbourhood. We discovered a temple (maybe 100 meters away from my apartment):

Of course, I made him sample some great Japanese food!
Grey icecream (sorry I forgot the flavour, haha):

Breakfast at my place: Natto (fermented Soy beans---most foreigners cannot eat it):

Of course we also had Sashimi:

One night, we went to some cool bar. Berni was explaining to a girl (who could not speak English) about the mathematical notation of formal logic. I was falling off my chair, cause I could not stop laughing! He wrote it on my pack of cigarettes (I will keep it forever, haha)

For Simon

2005-12-01T14:34:00.000-08:00

Simon and me both love the Phoenix Manga. Near the Onsen, there was a hotel, which had the Phoenix as their logo!

Kinugawa Onsen

2005-12-01T06:21:00.000-08:00

Some more details about the visit to Kinugawa Onsen! We were a very mixed crowd:

Sebastien (French): See my earlier post describing his work

Ryosuke (Japanese): Researcher for Toshiba. Developing High Dynamic Range Display Technology.

Alex (half German/Hungarian---like me): Artifical Intelligence researcher

Kathy (American): Ph.D. for "History of Science" (a classical book on this topic is this one---thanks Michi for giving it to me as birthday present!).

Well---maybe not that mixed, since we are all researchers ;-) You can find lots of pictures on Sebastien's webpage. Definitely check out these pictures---it was sooooooo beautiful!

I had some interesting discussions with Kathy. She wrote her Ph.D. thesis on a comparison of the methodologies used in Martial Arts and Physics. She had studied Physics first, then turned to Martial Arts (Black Belt). She showed me some stretching exercises, since it is still very painful for me to sit down the Japanese way (on the floor):

Alex is also playing 囲碁 (Igo). We had some enjoyable games:

Soon, I will go with him to a Igo center to get a certificate about my strength. I hope I can make a 5-Kyu!!

In the relax room of the Onsen, we also saw some people playing Shogi (Japanese chess):

It was awesome!

2005-12-01T06:07:00.000-08:00

Today I have started to work here:

I already did 2 hours of overtime ;-) I really enjoyed my first day. Everyone was so friendly to me. My short self-introduction in Japanese went really well. I had the impression that my new colleagues totally loved it (my japanese teacher helped me a lot to prepare the speech). I got much more applause than for my presentation when I had had my job interview, haha.

Also, finally, I got to know what I am supposed to do for them. I am totally blasted by it. Something totally unexpected for me, yet it is something very deep. It seems to me that I have not only to learn Japanese, but lots of new science stuff. I am very excited about it!!

I also talked with my boss about what I am allowed to blog about my job. The bad news is: almost nothing... However, I am allowed to make posts about social events. I will blog about my welcome party next wednesday!

Tomorrow my new job starts!

2005-11-30T00:19:00.000-08:00

Tomorrow I will have my first day of work at C. I am very excited about it!
I am also a little worred about it---I have to prepare so hard.... Currently I am preparing my self-introductory speech (in Japanese). Also I am learning the names of my co-workers by heart (not easy for me to remember Japanese names...). Finally, I still have to wrap all the presents.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

High Tech

2005-11-30T00:13:00.000-08:00

3 examples for the high-tech stuff that can be found everywhere in Tokyo:

1) Cell phone shield: this prevents other people from seing what's going on on your cell phone. How does it work? See the explanation of my shield:

2) How to make foreign friends: with the playstation mobile, it is easy to make foreign friends. Check out the lovely advertisement (especially illustration 3 is hillarious):

3) Robot shop: recently, I took a walk in my neighbourhood. To my surprise I found a robot shop. This is hard to believe, but true: housekeeping robots are sold there!

Kinugawa Onsen: Preview

2005-11-30T00:07:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I have been with 4 friends to Kinugawa Onsen (what is an Onsen? read it here). It was a realy nice trip!! We also went hiking. I will describe it in more detail, when I have all the pictures (hurry up Sebastien!!).
For now, just some preview pictures :-)

Party on Monday

2005-11-22T23:00:00.000-08:00

Wow---my 4th posting for today :-)

On Monday I was at a really cool party. There were lots of guys there who work at Sony CSL, so I was able to get some nice contacts and have interesting discussions! There were also lots of beautiful girls (design students), but I was not in the mood for them. Still, it was a delightful view :-)

One of the coolest guys I know (Ivan) was DJing at the party. It's unbelievable, he is an outstanding researcher (see e.g. his book on 3D User Interfaces), still he is a really cool guy. I am not sure whether there are that many researchers who are also DJs, haha!

Later that evening I was quite drunk (like everyone at the party...). Then, I was talking with a guy, we found out that we are doing very similar research. He had a SIGGRAPH paper last year. I knew neither him, nor his research :-(

It's very funny... Let me illustrate this by an example: let's say two sportsman are talking to each other:

A: So what do you do?
B: I play tennis.
A: Wow---this is also my sports!
B: Great!
A: You know, last year, I was Wimbledon finalist. (That's what having a SIGGRAPH paper means for a researcher...)
B: Wow---maybe I should have known you.

I felt a little stupid, but I guess it was ok :-)

Learning how to write

2005-11-22T22:53:00.000-08:00

Currently I am learning how to write in Japanese. It's very hard for me. I am now using textbooks made for pre-school children :-) See the image below for the subtle balance of the characters (I especially like the big illustration on the left showing the invisible balance-lines).

Hiroshi Sugimoto

2005-11-22T22:35:00.000-08:00

Yesterday, I have visited the most beautiful art exhibition I have ever been to. I was thinking carefully about this statement---it really was. The artist was Hiroshi Sugimoto. I would describe his work as surreal photography---every photo is beautiful, however, it feels to me something is wrong with them. A feeling I also have when looking at Edward Hopper's paintings.
Additionally, the whole exhibit seemed like one big art installation. Every room was carefully designed to match the photographs. Wow---my heart is still beating faster when I think about it.

The poster for the exhibit:

Some photos from the exhibit:

Finally, on the way to the exhibit, I saw a poster announcing a German-Japanese art festival. It even contains the mouse from "Sendung mit der Maus", haha!

Okonomiaki

2005-11-22T22:27:00.000-08:00

Recently I had Okonomiaki for dinner. Once again, I am impressed by the breadth and quality of Japanese cuisine.
Do not let the photos fool you---it tastes much better than it looks :-) A cool thing about Okonomiaki is that you prepare the food yourself. You are sitting at a hot plate and cook the food---there are even hourglasses supplied to keep the appropriate time for cooking!

Hokusai

2005-11-20T23:44:00.000-08:00

I got myself a conversation partner to support my struggles with the Japanese language. We wanted to visit an exhibition of Hokusai last weekend. It turned out that the waiting time was 1 hour, so we decided to go to a pottery exhibition instead. It was very enjoyable!

The waiting line for the Hokusai exhibit. The last time I have seen such a big line was when the MoMa in New York reopened.

Recently, I had some very interesting food!
A maron pastry (the same type is very popular in Hungary):

Sashimi:

Ice fish:

Last sunday, there was a marathon in my neighbourhood:

An interesting ad, playing with the Japanese characters for my neighbourhood (Shinagawa):

Shinjuku at night:

After I finished unpacking my things, I had a huge pile of trash.
I temporarily stored some next to my apartment door:

The biggest part of my trash I put on the streets so that it will be picked up.

I thought it might be confusing for the trash guys, since I put everything in Nissen (=IKEA) boxes, so I wrote Trash in Japanese on the boxes ;-)

Posting comments

2005-11-16T07:57:00.000-08:00

Dear readers,
you can write comments to the entries of this blog! At the end of every post, there is a line like this:
"posted by streamblogger at 7:40 AM 0 comments links to this post"

If you click on "0 comments", you can leave a short message.

Please leave a comment, it encourages me to do further postings :-)

Thanks and cheers!

Japanese Ikea

2005-11-16T07:40:00.000-08:00

Today, I have spent 13 hours (without a break!!!) assembling the furniture of my apartment. Oh no, my apartment is not that big ;-) Instead, the assembly turned out to be quite complicated since the instructions were written in Japanese :-(
Everything went fine, except for the earthquake protectors for my shelves---they do not fit in, since my apartment ceiling is too low.... I hope there will be no strong earthquake.... I guess I will only store non-fragile stuff in my shelves!

Now it is 1AM and I am finally relaxing a little. I am drinking a glass of Sake and listening to an old song: Regulate . I used to listen to this song when I was 18. Wow, time passes so fast!

Today I have asked my Japanese neighbours for help, since I could not understand the controllers in my apartment. The heating system and the water supply have very sophisticated control panels, they even have speech output! However, I have no clue what it means .... Guess I am lost in translation ;-) The explanations turned out to be quite complicated, since they do not speak English... However, I managed to understand the most important functions. Means, I have warm water and a warm, furnished and cozy apartment now!

Lots of pictures

2005-11-14T20:57:00.000-08:00

Finally, I have some time for a biiiiiig posting :-)

Saturday, I have visited a Buddhist temple, together with 2 French guys. One of them (Sebastien) does very interesting research, basically he is trying to create clothes that contain invisible computers that help with intercultural communication---very cool! Here are the pictures from the trip:

After sightseeing, we went to a Tofu restaurant, where we had incredible food.

Sunday, I had some time to take a walk in my neighbourhood (Shinagawa):

Some funny signs:

Soon, Sin City will be screened in Tokyo. Here are some ads for the movie (with my favourite character: Miho):

Can you believe this---near to a very busy station, someone has locked his backpack to a rail.
However, the backpack is not locked.... Sometimes, Japan feels like another planet to me!

Food here is most of the times fantastic! My first disgusting experience was to find a bug in my cup of tea---I left the restaurant immediately!

I am doing my laundry the Japanese way: hanging the wet clothes on a pole in front of my window. Since I am scared of heights, this feels always a little scary for me :-(