The last day of Fpi7 dawned bright and sunny. I made my way to the Grand Cube Osaka for the final time and sat through some very thorough OLED talks. By the coffee break the sun was beating down and there were proper, distinguishable clouds in the sky replacing the overcast curtain of white that had lasted all week. The last 2 talks were from two well-known materials chemists and were very enjoyable as they actually contained some chemistry and not just device studies.
After the conference was closed I went with Kara and Yvonne to the Tempura restauant across the river and then headed back to the hotel to wait for Angharad. Kara reurned to Namba in search of wax food keychains for o-miyage (souveneers). After a long wait, Angharad arrived at 6pm. Kara decided to pack and get an early night for her 7.30am trip back to Kansai Airport the following morning so Angharad and I walked down to the rose gardens whilst catching up and then back to catch the free bus to Umeda. Here we ate at a restaurant inside a small arcade. Afterwards we headed back to the hotel.
Friday 19th May
Once again we set off to lectures. The keynote talk was given by our head of department, David Parker. It seemed to confuse a lot of people because it wasn't based around devices of any sort. By this point, the lectures were dragging really badly - chemistry seemed to appear less and less. However, before lunch we had a couple of very good talks including one including the actual demonstration of a solar cell from Peter Baurle from Ulm. At lunchtime I went with Kara and Yvonne across the river once more in search of food, finding a small, out-of-the-way place where we got a mix of fried fish and crab cakes. I couldn't take more unrelated lectures so I attended a total of 4 in the afternoon. Afterwards Kara presented her poster drawing a lot of questions about its potential use in devices. As most delegates sloped off to the conference banquet that we hadn't been told we could apply to (£50 each seemed a litle steep), Kara decided she was still full from lunch and didn't want to return to the rainstorm that was raging outside. At 8pm I set off alone to explore the Umeda district. Taking advantage of the free Rihga Royal bus to JR Osaka I straight away got lost around the station. Nearby, the behemouth that is the Umeda Sky Building looms over a district of warehoues. Combined with the weather and darkness the imagery from Blade Runner and Bullfrog's Syndicate games rushed back into my mind. Ridley Scott's epic, although set in LA was based on Japanese cities. Businessmen and women milled around on their way home from work (9pm) and the advertising hoardings provided a seedy faux-lighting. Eventually I managed to orient myself with the post office and navigated to the Hankyu Grand Building on the 29th floor of which, WikiTravel ensured me was a very good and cheap restaurant.
The 29 floor indeed had a number of resturants and some great views over the city. I eventually found the resaurant in question and joined the entry queue. More young couples passed by; perhaps all the talk of a declining birth rate is premature. A glance at my watch showed me it's 9.30 and these couples are still in work clothes - so maybe the problem does has some validity. Eventually I was shown to a fantastic window seat and given a menu in English. The view extends over Umeda all the way out to Osaka Castle in the distance. I plump for the Kansai speciality, okonomiyaki, a cabbage and meat pancake bound with egg and smothered with mayonaise and other sauces. The table contains a hot skillet and soon the ingredients arrive in a bowl and are upturned onto the hot cooking surface right in front of me. It's at this point I decide talking off my jumper maybe a good idea. After a while, my waiter returns to flip my cabbagecake and then inform me it was ready to eat.
To most people, the idea of a cabbage pancake seems odd, however I am a cabbage fan(!) and sure enough it tasted great. After finishing I hurried back to the station to try and catch the last Bus back to the convetion centre but was just too late. I decided to take the subway - an easy journey. Even at this late hour though (10.30) the tube was rammed with businessmen returning home from work - I guess there's no such thing as a rush hour in the evenings here.
Thursday 18th May
The first three lectures this morning were excruciating. The first one was about using OLEDs as LASERs which went over my head, the 2nd and 3rd ones said absolutely nothing - I have no idea why they were plenary talks. The third one was so dull that I managed to get through another chapter of my Japanese language learning book. David Parker confirmed my suspicions that they had been crap. Thankfully the second session was a lot more interesting.
After they finished there was the prospect of the excursion to Nara. We made our way down to the buses where all notions of Japan being an organised society went out of the window as the JTB rep attmpted to make the simple proceedure of checking people off a list as complex as possible. When we were finally boarded and on our way, our tour guide piped up with an unintentionally hilarious self-introduction. For some reason the bus did a slow figure of 8 aound the area and Kara and I both spotted that we'd passed certain points before. Had the bus driver got lost or was he just buying more time for our tourguide to point out more average buildings? Finally we made it onto the toll road towering above the streets of Osaka. For some reason the sides of motorway had high opaque barriers so seeing any scenery was out of the question. Perhaps this was due to the fact - as our guide happily informed us - that suicide is the 6th most common cause of death in Japan. The national speed limit is a leasurely 80km/h (50mph) so the 15 mile trip took us an hour. Nara is the kind of place that really wasn't meant for mass tourism. The narrow streets to the sights has to support 100s of coaches per day and the deer that are free to roam frequently roam into the road. "They don't understand the traffic signals - or if they do they ignore them" chirped our guide seemingly indicating that the deer were possibly deliberately flaunting the rules of the road. Our first stop was the Todai-Ji temple, home of the world's largest wooden building (now rebuilt at 3/4 the size) and the world's largest Budda - made of bronze and weighing a scale-bending 500 tons. It is said that 20 children can stand on his outstretched palm. The whole site is one giant tourist trap - hundreds of simultaneous school tours mass around the area and the number of cheap tacky souveneer stalls is mind numbing. This is partially organised chaos. Our guide instructs us to follow her flag on a pole; a good idea until we realise that every other guide and school teacher has had the exact same idea.
We amble around the temple and then gain a massive 20 minutes of free time (just enough to get back to the bus) before we are whisked off to Kasuga Taisha (shrine) - founded when Nara became the ancient capital of Japan. Once again, the peaceful surroundings have been shattered by the regular influx of oversized coaches - each of which carries a girl who's only job seems to be to count the passengers, shout irasshaimasse (welcome) as we leave the coach and stand behind the coach shouting "Hai" to the diver so he know when to stop reversing. At Kasuga Taisha, the back of the bus extends over a drop and there was no room to the sides so I had visions of this poor girl having to dive into a 5 foot drop as our bus backed ever closer. Our guide whisked us around the shrine attempting to convey to a group of material scientists the history and customs.
The place is a lot more peaceful than Todai-Ji, but the school parties were arriving as we left... Those attempting to sleep on the return journey were awakened to take part in an origami class - I've long since forgotton how to make Japanese cranes, so I was hopeful this would reteach me. In the end we made minature hats, much to the chagrin of several postgrads behind us who had been woken up to participate. Eventually we were dropped back at the Rihga Royal and Kara and I decided to follow David Parker's advice and head the opposite way along the river in search of food. As is always the case, we walked around for ages before deciding on the first place we had seen - a small tempura restaurant just off the river. The waiter immediately picked us out as gaijin (well, let's face it we sick out like a sore thumb) and took us back outside for us to duly point at the wax food replicas in the windows. The light tempura tiger prawns were excellent and again, the meal was very cheap. I'm now actually very fond of miso soup to the extent that I'm upset when it doesn't come with a meal. After we got home I decided to go out for a walk. Armed with my iPod I strolled along the riverside promenades until I reached the rose gardens at Nakanoshima Park.
Even in the darkness, the place was full of young couples walking hand in hand. After duly failing to get any decent photos (hand holding a 1sec exposure is not easy) I headed back, mildy alarmed to find the hotel entrances shuttered up - is ram raiding a problem here? Thankfully a small door next to a security desk remained open and (with absolutely no checks of who I was) I gained reentry.
Wednesday 17th May
The second day of the conference dawned and once again I hadn't gotten full night's sleep. Our head of department, David Parker, had arrived and chaired the first session. As the day wore on, the lectures seemed to get longer and more dull. After they finished the next poster session started. I chatted to Prof Parker about the conference and he seemed very underwhelmed with some of the talks branding them as being crap and containing bad science. He introduced me to several people from the journals who were trolling for business. Amusingly he also gave me a glimpse into the world behind the scenes as he revealed how he taunted just about everyone he met - whether it be about historic battles or cricket.
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