Tokyo JSPS Orientation - part 1

The last three days I went to Tokyo for an orientation from my funding organization - JSPS.  The trip was a great success and I am quite happy and thankful to JSPS for organizing it.  The three days were split between actual work (listening to talks, discussing things, and doing a short language lesson) and sight seeing of Tokyo attractions.

To get there, I took the bullet train (shinkansen) from Nagoya Station to Tokyo Station.  I bought the ticket the day before because I was a bit worried about how busy it can be.  It turned out that the trains go about every 10 minutes in the mornings and mine was roughly 70% full.  The price of the ticket is around 11,000 yen (one way) - roughly $135.  A bit expensive but it covers the around 350km in less than 1.5hr travelling at roughly 275km/h and only stopping at 2 stations right before Tokyo.  Here are some pictures from the Nagoya shinkansen platform.

 My train was the Nozomi 6 (Nozomi is the newest shinkansen train type).

 Here you can see the twin towers of the train station buildings.

 And the train came...

The ride was so smooth and quiet - much better than airplane!  The seats were also very comfortable with lots of leg room and easily accessible overhead storage.  I tried to take pictures from the window but not much was visible and things moved very quickly.  We must have gone through about 30 or so tunnels along the way!  I had a window seat on the ocean side so unfortunately I missed seeing Mt. Fuji.

 That is a cemetery on the hill side: 

 This is already Tokyo I think.

 When travelling by train in Japan, you just have to try the o-bento!  I've seen shows on TV where people go travel throughout Japan just for the sake of eating the different bento.  The one that I got (for lunch) at the shinkansen platform in Nagoya had the 400 years of Nagoya theme going.  There was a selection of about 20 different types of them.  I just chose something randomly.

 It turned out to be pretty tasty with an assortment of different little items.

From the train station, I took the subway to get to the venue/hotel.  The subway was slightly different but worked pretty much the same as in Nagoya so I didn't have any problems finding my way around.  Easy, isn't it?

One station had gates before you enter the train (I guess to prevent people from killing themselves or something).

The venue and hotel were the Hotel Hanzomon Monterey:

The room was quite standard.

After the welcoming reception ended finishing the first day of the orientation, a group of us decided to go out for drinks to Shibuya.  Shibuya is a famous night life and shopping district of Tokyo.  The place is incredible, when I left at around 11pm, it was still swarming with people!

 This is the famous huge crosswalk intersection in Shibuya - tons of people using it!

 We looked around for a place to drink.

 and finally ended up at this awesome all you can drink place on the 4th floor of a thin building.

 After 2 hours of drinking, some people were a little bit drunk :).