23rd September

TEPIA
This morning, we were going to spend about 1 hour and a half at TEPIA, Advanced Technology Exhibition Hall.

After entering the hall, we waited at the lobby for a few minutes. There was placed a super small lithium-ion battery-powered electric vehicle, non-polluting and energy-saving. The assistant at TEPIA took a picture of our group together. There were 2 lovely guides. Then we were divided into 2 groups, like the group of workshop in Akita, to follow our guide. My group had sister Danich as the translator. Following is the description of what I have seen:

Earthquake-proof structure
First, we found out about the earthquake-proof structure. Our guide explained to us that most buildings in Japan were built with special earthquake-proof features, one of which was the adjustable frame. Personally, I would like to explain that when the ground shocks, the frame of the building also shock with the ground, but the building itself doesn’t shock as strongly as the frame. Another one was anti-elasticity rubber. The guide showed us a little experiment. She held 2 little balls in her hands. One ball was made of ordinary rubber, and the other was made of anti-elasticity rubber. She dropped 2 balls freely at the same time to the floor. Consequently, the ordinary rubber ball jumped higher that the anti-elasticity rubber ball. It meant the anti-elasticity rubber received the force of reaction from the floor less than the ordinary one, by the method of physics. Therefore, it could reduce the force created by earthquake.

Gesture Remote Control TV
Second, we experienced the Gesture Remote Control TV. Maybe this was the latest technology which hadn’t been released widely outside yet. The guide stood 3 meters far from the wide screen of the TV and pushed her palm straightly toward the screen as sending the command. When the TV received the signal from her palm, it reacted and changed to channel scrolling mode. The guide moved he palm round and round, and channels were scrolled round and round following the movement of the palm. The guide pushed her palm again toward the screen and the channel was selected. There were other functions with using the palm like adjusting the volume and the light. It seemed like a magic which everyone could do.

Pop-up books
Third, we enjoyed the electronic Pop-up books at the space behind the Gesture Remote Control TV. The tools were quite simple: a book, a monitor and a webcam. The book had several pages of pictures, and every page contains a small black square mark, working as barcode. When the webcam received the picture of the book and the information from the square mark, the monitor displayed not only the original picture but also 3D effect ascending from the book. We only saw the picture of fish in the book, but we cold se fish swimming in the monitor.

Hydrotect tile
Forth, we learned about “Hydrotect Color Paint and Hydrotect Tile”, which was a special material automatically and naturally cleaned by sun rays. With this material, a building always looks new without any stain. Our guide also made a little experiment. She stained 2 pieces of tile, one was the simple tile and the other was the Hydrotect tile. Then, she put the artificial sun rays emitted by a device over those 2 pieces of tile. As a result, the stain on the Hydrotect tile miraculously disappeared, while the other was not changed.

PaPeRo and Smile Evaluation
Fifth, we communicated with PaPeRo, a talking robot. It could only understand a few Japanese words. Then, we witness the Simile Evaluation Technology. Standing in front of a big screen, we saw our face being detected and our smile being evaluated. It depended on eyes and mouth to evaluate the percentage of our smile. If we were wearing a doctor mask, the value would be 0%.

There were other leading technology items I did not mention above such as Ultra-Thin LCD-TV and Care Robot Yurina.
After the end of guiding, we had about 10 minutes free for self-seeing and self-experience inside the hall. I tried the Gesture Remote Control TV, so cool! Then I spent all the time at robot play ground. Electrical dog, cat, dinosaur, cars, and Wall-e were all controlled by wireless joystick, which we could play freely.

When we finished our visit at TEPIA, we got the group photo taken earlier, but it was not very clear. The Hokkaido group arrived at TEPIA after us, and we traveled on bus to see the Royal Palace from outside.

Outside the Royal Palace
The bus stopped far from the Palace, so we had to take a long walk. The view along the side walk was pretty good. Green trees were everywhere. We saw the statue of Ancient Japanese Emperor riding on his horse. The path to the Palace was paved with little rocks. The sky looked wide and clear. The Royal Palace seemed to be hidden by trees and separated by a stream. From the stream, it was the nearest place where could see the Palace. We took photos as much as we could because it was the last destination we had to visit in Japan.

Funny Chanko
Today the lunch was all the same for 3 groups. We had lunch at the same restaurant, specially serving food for Sumu athletes. The food was called Chanko, a big pot of soup of noodle, mushroom and other vegetable. Personally, I thought it was simple. What made this meal interesting was the funny speech from Sopheak about the soup. He said the soup water in the pot were about to run out, but it seemed to be increased again after we talked. Sopheak had another funny story about sister Yamada and Mr. Ros Keng, which made Sunmeng and I bursted out laughing! I couldn’t stop with that.

Last shopping in Tokyo
We returned to hotel. In fact, next, we were planned to visit Harajuku, a popular area for youth, but the plan was changed due to too much crowd as today was a special day. Therefore, we could only go to a 100 yen shop nearby as substitution. It was the last place we could spend our money. I couldn’t find anything interesting to buy because I had seen similar items at 100 yen shop in Noshiro. However, I would like to say the shop was much bigger than the two I had entered in Noshiro. I bought about 20 items, so I had much money left, especially coins.

Farewell Party in Tokyo
It’s nearly over! This evening, the farewell party started at 5:00pm. It’s similar to the farewell party in Akita, but we didn’t have our host families this time. Two tables sere for each group. Each group was having cultural performance. We were not worried at all because of our experience once in Akita. We could see the performance of the 2 university groups were not well prepared, while ours was perfect. Each of us obtained a certificate of JENESYS and a big group photo. My group’s photo was the photo at Mt. Kanpu. Finally, 55 participants had the last picture taken together.

Noodle Party
We finished all the missions. Tonight, we held a “noodle party” for celebration. 14 of us and sister Danich gathered in a room and ate the noodle we had brought from Cambodia. I ate a cup of my noodle. Then we played a game, called question of heart. We had a lot of fun that night, really. At 11:00pm, we went back to our room respectively, packed our luggage, and slept.

22nd September

Workshop
This whole morning, we were going to have the workshop. 14 participants were divided into 2 groups of 7 people. Sunmeng and Bellin were group leader respectively. I was in Bellin’s group and took the role as note-taker. First, we started with giving some ideas and perspective for what we had seen in Akita and Japan. Then, we sorted those ideas into 4 different categories: education, culture, people, and environment. After a long time of organization, we compared our outline with Sunmeng group’s and started a little debate. Frankly, until now I still don’t know what the purpose of our workshop was, but from this workshop, all positive points of Japan engraved deeply on my mind.

At the end of the workshop, Mr. Hideaki, our coordinator, handed us a package of present for our visit to Akita. Inside the package, there was a sheet of newspaper with the news of our courtesy meeting with Nakano, deputy governor of Akita prefecture, a photo of farewell party, a photo at Mt. Kanpu, an album of photos of our group in Akita, a CD of photos, a DVD of AkiSho, and @ peace dolls from Chidas, my host family. We went back to our room and packed our baggage. Then we walked to a restaurant nearby to have our last meal in Akita. The food I remembered was a big dish of spaghetti.

Farewell Akita
We left Akita View Hotel and arrived at the Akita Airport at 2:00pm. Some host families came to see their son and daughter off. They burst into tear. The scene was touching. Bellin represented us to thank Mr. Hideaki for the stay in Akita. Then, we waved our hand goodbye and got on the plane. This time I sat at window seat and I could see the view outside very well from taking off at Akita Airport to landing at Tokyo Haneda Airport.

Tokyo Tower
We didn’t go to Asakusa Hotel yet because we had to see thje Tokyo Tower, but only from distance. Today I hadn’t taken any good photos yet, so I took as much as I could this evening. From a park nearby, Tokyo Tower appeared perfectly under our eyesight. It’s about 5pm, the time for walking in garden. We could see Japanese people relaxing and enjoying the evening breeze. Some kids were playing baseball. It’s also a flower garden, as beautiful as the one in Noshiro. Time’s up. We got on the bus and headed to Asakusa Hotel, where we had left for 5 days.

Return to Asakusa View Hotel
When reaching in front of the hotel, we were given a new room key and warned to wear mask on our face again. I totally forgot about H1N1 in Tokyo as it was not serious at all in Akita. We met the 2nd and 3rd group university students, who had just arrived from Hokkaido and Aichi, again at the hotel and one of them told us that there were 8 Vietnamese participants of another JENESYS group infected by H1N1. That sounded very scary.

This evening we had dinner at an Asian restaurant, actually Vietnamese. The decoration inside was Asian style, and we could see some Cambodian elements on the wall. The taste of food was rather different from what we had eaten these days. Still, it was not the same as the tasted of home. After dinner, we didn’t have chance to go shopping because there were a lot of activities tomorrow and we had to take a good rest. Anyway, our group had to prepare a speech for Virya to state at the farewell party tomorrow night. Therefore, Bellin, Virya, Sunmeng and I discussed together the outline of the speech. While discussing, I closed my eyes for several times. When we finished, I went to bed without having a bath or changing my clothes. That night, I slept like a dead.

15th September

Reaching Tokyo Narita Airport
I slept for two hours. Now it was 4:30 a.m. on my watch, but when I looked through the window, the sky was so bright with white cloud and sunshine. It was 6:30 Tokyo time, and there were two hours to go. Flight attendants delivered breakfast, which was greasy and oily. Imagine how we could have breakfast by sitting for nearly five hours without washing face, brushing teeth, or going to toilet. However, I tried to eat as much as I can. I almost couldn’t withstand that feeling and nearly threw up. Thanks goodness, I saw the territory of Japan as well as Narita airport for the first time! At 8:30, we landed on Narita airport and completed entry procedures for two hours. Our journey in Japan began…

First sight in Tokyo
We headed to Asakusa view hotel on a big bus with our coordinator as well as Japanese-Khmer translator, Ms. Duong Danich and another coordinator, Ms. Sato. Today the sky was cloudy with very light rain. The scenery of highways in Tokyo primarily came to our sight. Driving on the left, huge trucks, small vans, green plants on the sideways, high buildings, railroads, on bicycle, no motorbike, Tokyo Disneyland, etc., were the first attrations we witnessed along the highway to Asukusa view hotel. Borng Danich did a little self-introduction and informed us what we were going to do at the hotel especially the orientation at 2:30.


Reaching the hotel, we were given the room card and a Chinese food box for each participants. The bag we would take to Akita and a JICE T-shirt were kept in the room. Sun Meng and I was roommate again, and we would stay together till the end of program. The first thing I did was going to bathroom. Then I sat on the sofa and had lunch comfortably, but I could feel myself still in high temperature and absolutely worn out. Without any rest, Sun Meng and I went to other rooms to call our friends to be at the orientation quickly.

Orientation at Asakusa View Hotel

The start of the orientation was the introduction of Mr. Nagoyama, one of the staff of JICE, Ms Yamada, responsible for JENESYS program, and 6 coordinators, two of whom were Ms. Yamazaki and Ms. Duong Danich, who coordinated our Akita group. It was the lecture on Japanese society and culture by Professor Ms. Hisami. After that it was the general orientation of the program in Japan and we received a small handbook with detailed timetable and places description inside. Ms. Eang Lina, one of the coordinators, explained the activities of home-stay and workshop.

Unluckiess in the first evening
At 3:30, it was group orientation. What a pity of me that I was not allowed to participate in this evening activities because of high body temperature. I missed the chance of visiting Asakusa Sensoji and Nakamise street and was told to take a rest at the hotel. Therefore, I went back to my room, took a fever tablet, and slept for two hours. Another participant, Yuth, had the same problem like me, so he didn’t go either. At 7:00 p.m. Sun Meng brought a box of two skewers of grilled chicken and a box of tasteful rice from Nakamise restaurant. He told me that they had visited 100-yen shop and bought a lot of food and drinks. So unlucky was I!