Day Two started off early with our meeting with Mr Kinoshima from  the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport at 9am.  The early morning marked the start of what was to be a day filled with transport demonstrations and presentations, which wasn’t surprising, considering the fact that we were on a transportation field trip.

Mr Kinoshima tried his best to keep us (all twenty six of us, mostly sleepy or nursing a hangover) interested in MLIT’s Smartway Project but we were soon nodding off or doodling on the hand-outs given to us. There’s only so much technical information about cars and safety that one can take before boredom kicks in.

What we were all waiting for, was the Smartway Demonstration Drive, which was supposed to take place after the presentation.

After the obligatory group photo session, we separated into two groups and further separated ourselves to three different cars.

As seen in the photo above, the Smartway Project involves outfitting cars with intelligent navigational systems which help to increase safety on the road, and decrease highway congestion and accidents. Other than informing the driver of upcoming road congestion (green is all clear, yellow is slight congestion, and expect some delays with red marked roads), the intelligent GPS system installed also alerts the driver when approaching dangerous points in the highway, such as merging lanes or highspeed curves.

It was an extremely informational drive, and I was definitely able to look at Tokyo through another lens (this time, the front windscreen of a car) and noticed things like the huge ‘walls’ that blocked sound from the highways from the near by apartments.

I was forced to take on the role of interpreter for my group because our guide’s English wasn’t good enough to understand and answer the questions my classmates wanted to ask. So with my rusty Japanese, I had to ask our guide odd questions like “How do colorblind people see the different colors on the GPS screen?” I think I nearly died while trying to think of how to say “color blind people”. But somehow I managed to do it, and translate the answer fairly accurately.

My group also  made a special request to our driver to drive us to a gasoline stand (we call them ‘petrol stations’ in Singapore) so that we could have a look at unique way the gasoline pipes were routed to the roofs of the stands.

Lunch was delicious bentous at the lounge while the second group when off for their ride. We had a gift presentation to our wonderful Smartway Project guides and then headed off to the Tokyo Institute of Technology (TITECH) for another meeting.

Being a humanities major, I never took note of TITECH until this visit but their Tamachi campus is worth a visit if you like sprawling old university buildings. Our ‘interaction meeting’, which consisted of a presentation by us, a presentation by a few of their students and a quick Q&A session, was helmed by Prof Fukuda, who also kick offed the meeting with his own presentation on current transportations in Japan. The TITECH students present, mainly graduate students studying transportation systems, took turns to give us interesting presentations on urban traffic congestion and other transport policy measures. Then it was our turn to take the stage. (Un)fortunately enough, it was my group’s turn to conduct the NUS-USP side of presentations, and we launched into a fairly well-received talk about Singapore’s Vehicle Quota System and COE scheme. The Q&A session spiralled into a semi-heated debate about Singapore’s government, and we had to tactfully respond as best as we could. Hey, my Expensive Education is being subsidized by the government, so cut them some slack.

While waiting for the tour bus to arrive, we had another photo-op session in front of TITECH’s clocktower. Here, I got more time to explore the front-end of TITECH’s campus.

I have to say, I wish Singapore’s university campuses were a little like this. The large sprawling fields, surrounded by shady trees, clocktowers and old brick buildings with ivy all over them. It’s very much influenced by the Enid Blyton books I read when I was a kid, but it’s hard to get rid of those ingrained images of tall towers and cool alcoves for students to seek solitude in.

Dinner was in bustling Shibuya, one of my favourite places to go to when I visit Japan, even if it’s only to people watch. The sheer amount of people never seems to daunt me, even though I hate crowds of any kind. I suppose it’s the inbuilt courteous way people walk at the right pace, so you never feel like yelling at them to ‘walk faster’ or ‘pick up the pace’. It’s crowded, but never stagnant.

You’re never far away from the shimmering lights in Tokyo, be it on the side streets with seedy looking joints, only illuminated by dim flourescent lightbulbs or the large main strets with neon signage accosting you from all four sides. Finding our way to the restaurant where we were going to have our dinner, and back from it was easy thanks to the landmark neon signs that were every where. Forget where you are? Remember Matsuyama Ken’ichi’s lovely mug and use it as your beacon of light.

Dinner was at an all-you-can-eat yakiniku (that’s ‘grilled meat’) place in a questionable building near the Seibu department store. There’s no such thing as ‘excess’ in the Japanese gastronomic dictionary and everything has its portions for a good reason.

We dug into plate after plate of meat: beef, pork, chicken, squid. My table tried to cut down our carnivorous advances on beef because we had a non Beef-eater in our midst.

Deserts were plentiful too, with delectable sponge cakes and sweet jellies ready for our stomachs.

Shibuya at night is different from Shibuya in the day. It’s not exactly two sides of the same coin, because the atmosphere is so utterly different by simply turning on the lights and casting everyone and everythign in an neon-wattage. I still prefer the calmer neighbourhoods of Asakusa and Ueno (which is still, rather crowded).

NOTE: The alignment for the images and the words arey, can anyone help me with this? O:

It’s solved! Hurrah!

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