After an early start we started walking to NII which was supposed to be located at a thirty minute walk but for some reason we standing in front of the NII building after 5 minutes. Great. And ofcourse because we were way too early they weren’t ready to have us yet so we stood waiting in front of the building for 20 minutes or so.
The positive thing about this was that the sun was shining which is helping if you are still feeling a bit shaky and are carrying fever suppressing pain killers around.
One inside we were guided to pretty much the highest floor in the building to get some presentations about NII. After the necessary pictures out of the many windows in the building we were seated in a conference chamber.
Besides the Japanese staff, they had some researchers from other countries attending the meeting. Most of them got their Master degree or PhD at NII and then stayed to work there.
Even though NII had some interesting stuff to tell us, the break was awesome as the smoking room at NII has a view of the surroundings from a large glass room. Even the toilet has a view of Tokyo making even the restroom an interesting place to visit.
Even though the afternoon was scheduled to be free we went to lunch in some sushi restaurant where we got some fancy plate of sushi. The waitress was shocked to find out that we expected her to ask each of the group what they wanted to drink and just decided to act like she didn’t understand what we meant. Being the pricks that we are we ofcourse ordered drinks afterwards anyway making every appearance of her next to a table a round trip back into the kitchen. Because I was still not feeling well and having almost zero taste, the sushi was not really a success by my account but I ate some of it and gratefully offered the rest to others who seemed to enjoy it a lot more than I did. I also drank some of my misu soup until I found a floating head of a giant shrimp in it. That was the straw that made me decide I had eaten enough and I ordered an orange juice to wash down the taste of it.
Because everyone started ordering drinks and tried to explain to the waitress that they would pay for them separate (as the sushi was paid for) she concluded that everyone wanted to pay for his own food and so they started gathering clip boards to provide everyone with his/her own bill. Because she was still attempting to ignore everyone to make sure she didn’t have to bring around more refills, I decided to let them do their thing instead of warning them that it was not what we wanted. So after 15 minutes they started reverting bills at the counter to make one bill for the whole group – that’s what you get for being lazy ^-^.
After the smashing success of the sushi bar we headed out for the stadium where we would attend a JBL match (basketball). After everyone received instructions to return in front of the entrance at the specified time, we headed back into Shibuya to find the Apple Store in that district. After we gazed around for a while and saw a stack of computers being left alone on the street (Mac Book Air, 1500 euro a piece, unattended – back home those would be gone within seconds but in Japan nobody cares) we found a Star Bucks where we got us something to drink.
After the Star Bucks we walked back to the stadium where we got our tickets and walked to the entrance where we were greeted by the Toyota Alvark cheerleaders. The game was pretty cool even though the hotdogs were sold out before the game even began. Ofcourse I didn’t bring my camera as I had my phone with me – which crapped out 10 seconds into the game. Luckely other people had their camera with them and after the match we went on some pictures with the cheerleaders who thought it was pretty cool we visited a JBL game. Another interesting fact: Luuk and me are taller than the entire Toyota Alvark team except for one American guy – figures.
Note to self: ask Sebastiaan for the pictures ^-^.