Off to Tokyo again, this time by public transport all the way, to visit JAXA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. More details here: www.jaxa.jp/index_e.html. As usual I went to Hon-Atsugi, which was also our meeting place. There was probably 12 of us from the school, both PhD students and senior researchers, and only 2 are Japanese. We went all the way to the end of the Odakyu-Odawara Line train route, to Shinjuku, probably the busiest train station in Tokyo and all of Japan. Then from there we took the Chuo line to go to Mitaka, then we took the bus to the Mitaka City Office, then a 10-minute walk to JAXA. All trains we took were Rapid Express trains which skipped a lot of stations - great! Then vice versa.
And, that's about it. Nothing so great about today... I took photos at JAXA, and hopefully I will be able to upload my photos really, really soon.
Did I say it was very cold today? Ranges from 8 to 15 degrees.
No wait, there was a "flight simulator" at JAXA and I volunteered to be a pilot. It wasn't so engaging though. We almost crashed, but we didn't. There were two of us pilots actually, so it wouldn't have been all my fault! :-D If it were real, we would've been saved by the autopilot. And we were safe, of course, because it was not real. No twists and turns and all that, no advanced controls and all that. It was... not engaging at all. It is interesting though that they have an agency such as this; they plan to have hypersonic (i.e. very fast) airplanes in the near future, and even space planes!
And that was it. Rainy. Cold. Hungry. I'm off to my favorite food place: the convenience store at the corner. :-D
