Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls; let me tell you about the “greatest day in the history of life!” My glorious day of reporting was 05/25/2010. I woke up in my cement mattress and began the “greatest day in the history of life” by getting a quick breakfast in the hotel restaurant. This breakfast was actually one of the more Americanized breakfasts on the trip with eggs, sausage, toast, onion rings, etc. It did offer soup and I cannot recall if they had rice. Rice is a staple for mainly every meal in Asia. After breakfast, it was time to begin the “greatest tour ever.” The excitement and anticipation I had for this awesome day was utterly incomprehensible. We got on the bus and were lead by our great tour guide, Kyoko. I can actually argue that my tour guide throughout the entire trip was none other than Ji-Chul Jang. Although he may tell you otherwise, this picture provides validation of my previous statement.

Ji-Chul guided us to the Tokyo tower. He said this was “the greatest tower on earth;” he wasn’t kidding. The tower, or as I call it the “eighth wonder of the world,” opened in 1958, has a height of 333 meters, and weighs 4,000 tons.

The pictures below show views from the Tokyo and the Shanghai tower. The reason is to compare the clarity of the view. Even though it was cloudy in Shanghai, the lack of visibility was also attributed to the immense pollution the city experiences.

There is currently a new Tokyo tower under construction. It is expected to be over 600 meters tall. There have been rumors that they may decide to build it over 1,000,000 meters. I was able to create my own image based on the description Kyoko gave me. You can see this picture below.

Next, it was time to move onto the Sensoji temple. There were many different gates, worship areas, shrines and statues. The first to mention is the Asakusa Shrine, which is below.

Before explaining its significance, it is important to explain the cleansing ritual Buddhists take part in before entering for worship of any shrine. First you put water over your left hand, followed by water over your right hand, and then you pour water in your left hand and rinse your mouth, and last empty the rest of the water out of the drinking pole. Mr. Wirick is doing an exemplary job of portraying the ritual. The next picture shows Mr. Wirick partaking in the ritual of bowing twice, followed by two claps and ending with a bow. Please notice that Jason is wearing the pants that zipper into shorts (a classic in my book).

The Asakusa shrine had a joint enshrinement of Hinokuma of Hamanari and Hinokuma of Takenari. The building was reconstructed in 1649. It is rated as one of the most representative buildings of the Gongen structure of the early Edo Era. It has been denoted as an important asset to the country.
The next cool thing to talk about is the Bell of Time. It was a bell that informed people during the Edo Era. This bell is still the original. It was recasted in 1692 under the instructions of Tokugawa Tunayoshi. As a result of the Edo expansion, nine bells were built like the Bell of Time. The bell is shown below.

The third part of this amazing day took us to Panasonic’s corporate headquarters. Since pictures were prohibited, I will have to explain everything in words. The area we all walked through was the AVC Network ideas. This area the Viera TV section, the Blu-ray Theater, FUTURE life wall, and Nintendo Game Front. The Viera TV section displayed all of Panasonic’s best televisions. For instance, they had a 3D television station, which was pretty awesome I may add. If anyone surprisingly has a few grand to spare I would highly recommend buying one. The FUTURE life wall was really cool. An entire wall becomes a television, a media center to view pictures, a learning center for the family, and a ridiculously large camera phone. Mainly it is the next thing since sliced bread.

The second floor of the building is rather applicable to all of us. The two areas to mention are the Ecology ideas and the eco ideas HOUSE. The Ecology ideas area contains the ‘eco ideas’ for Lifestyles and “eco ideas’ for Business-styles. These both promote lifestyles with virtually zero CO2 emissions and make the best use of resources and energy. The Eco ideas House displays methods of potentially being able to achieve zero CO2 emissions over time. Using 1990 levels, the home will reach 35% of those levels by 2013-2015. Eliminating the rest of the CO2 emission levels will be achieved by using the applications explained below. The first product for a better lifestyle utilizes natural wind in the ventilation system. This hybrid air conditioning system uses a tower that takes air from both the summer and winter and stores it under the floor then uses it when needed (at least that’s how I understand it). The next aspect uses proper lighting design and LED lighting. The third strategy is using less water. This is accomplished by water-saving performance washer-dryers and toilets, and a stain-resistant material that makes cleaning more infrequent. Using vacuum insulation panels and a heat pump technology is another advancement Panasonic is making. Incorporating the solar panel generator, fuel cell, and accumulator battery in addition to all the other things explained above will make the Home Management Energy System the best on the market.

We left Panasonic and took the train back to the hotel. Since Tokyo is the largest city in the world, it took us an hour and a half to get back to the hotel. We missed the rush hour train traffic, thankfully so because it gets extremely packed. I would say from what I observed, 90 % of the professionals in Tokyo wear suits. One difference to also note is that the Chinese wear pants and no shorts; contrary to the Japanese women who specifically wear short skirts. The last observation I noticed was that overall the Chinese were more friendly than the Japanese. This can be attributed to the loyalty the Japanese have for their culture as well as them not being as accepting of outside cultures. This explains why they are in debt to themselves and do not owe money to other countries. The evening found us at a Japanese Applebees, as I like to call it. It was very greasy but surprisingly good. It had Salisbury steak on a stick, Caesar salad and pizza just to name a few of the dishes. I forgot to mention it was all you can drink. After dinner found mostly everyone packing and getting ready for the long flight the next day. Thus, it was a good end to the “greatest day in the history of life.”


I’ll end this blog with a poem:

Roses are red,
Violets are blue.
Japan and Asia was pretty awesome,
I plan on heading back rather soon.