Saturday 3 October 2009

Final day|lecture @ Printing Museum





The final whole day in Tokyo. Some pleasure and some business. I meet Yoshiro, his wife & son at 10am. They were my guides for the morning. It was an awful day rain but veru warm, they said its due to the two typhoons on their way. Our first stop was the tourist area of Asakusbashi. Many visitors to the area due to the stalls and temple. It was difficult dodging the umbrellas and puddles. I wanted to stop and browse the stalls but the Japanese are not ones for such things, well my great hosts weren't. We went for lunch in a soba house. My first soba experience, like any other a little apprehensive. I watched as the others carried their eating etiquette out. Soba is a buckwheat noodle, eaten cold (or hot) which you place in your soya, wasabi and relish mix then slurp (loudly). It was lovely very refreashing but eaten at great speed and then we were off again.
Post lunch we did a quick visit to Akihabara - electric city. As the title says its an electric feast.

To the business part of the day...the printing museum-Toppan. Where my lecture would take place. First we toured the show and watched the letterpress workshop in action (part of the museum and on display). Three pm Yoshiro and I set about delivering the presentation. He was so worried that i would keep to the written script as he had translated and was to read from it. This is a awful way to deliver a talk. It is so artificial and cold, unfortunately for him i just had to add some new words etc but never again without a trained interpreter as they recite what you say!
However i think it wasn't as bad as i thought as we had many questions and lots of people came up afterwards to talk to me.

A final meal followed with five of the societies members (from the typography for science of design). This was alittle trippy as 80% of the conversations was in Japanese and i just wanted to lie down.

Now i am
The experience is almost over. Am i relieved? Yes as i am so tired its untrue. But i have a great experience in Tokyo and had a wonderful host...

'The plane boss, the plane...

1 comment:

  1. I think you were definitely high on lack of sleep when you wrote that blog! So pleased for you that your lectures are done. We will miss your Talks from Toyko...won't quite be the same blogging from Elephant and Castle...!
    Come on home now! kx

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