Tokyo, Japan
Sunday, May 19th, 1991
We finally land at Narita International Airport. From touchdown to customs took about 1.5 hours. We had to wait for a spot to clear so we could pull up to the terminal. We landed at 4:00 PM Tokyo time and finally got to the hotel at 7:00 PM. To get to the hotel we had to sprint (again) through the terminal to catch a shuttle bus. The bus fare one way is 2700 Yen. I exchanged $80.00 US at the airport and received a little over 10,000 yen so I am using the rough rate of $8.00 per 1000 Yen. After 10 hours on a plane the bus ride is just a blur. I do remember that the man sitting in front of me felt compelled to lean his seat back pinning my legs. At least the ride was only for one and a half hours.
Jerry and I took a short walk from the hotel to another hotel complex across the street and ate a light dinner. We had, you won’t believe this, Japanese style spaghetti in an Italian restaurant that played American music. For those of you who haven’t experienced Japanese style spaghetti, it is Italian noodles with soy sauce and mushrooms. Dinner only cost about 900 Yen apiece which is quite a bargain for the Tokyo area.
We were back at the hotel by 9:00 and I turned in. I slept fairly well only waking up at 3:00 and then dozing pretty well until 5:30. I then got up, dressed causally and took a walk from 6:00 until 7:00. I got cleaned up, read for a while and then met Jerry for breakfast at 8:00. Jerry has stayed at this hotel before and recommended the Japanese style breakfast. It consisted of a bowl of rice with a poached egg in it, along with various condiments (salmon, vegetables) and of course miso soup and tea. Yamada-San is picking us up at 9:30 to take us to the office.
We arrive at the office at 10:00. The weather in Tokyo was pretty nice, but a little warm. KBK’s new offices are very nice and professional looking. The building is in the middle of a semi-residential area. You walk from the train station down narrow roads and suddenly round a corner to see a large new office building in the middle of everything.
The first morning at KBK from 10:00 till 12:00 was spent giving additional training to KBK personnel on the IOC-U and Fileserver products.
The greatest difficulty KBK is having trying to sell new products is the lack of information they have received. They have had other informal training sessions such as the one I gave, and have also received the “standard” slide set. But they need practice using the information and need to see how it is used. In the U.S. it is easy for our Application Engineers to sit in on engineering presentations etc. to get a feel for the raw information contained in the slides. KBK doesn’t have that ability. KBK plans on sending an engineer to Portland in the July or Sept. time frame for additional training.
Aptec sent the IEEE documents on Mass Storage Models and on HIPPI to KBK and received a FAX indicating that this background information was very useful in aiding their understanding of the Fileserver.
Tanaka-San has been trying to teach himself VxWorks, using old Engineering copies of the VxWorks manuals. I promised to send newer VxWorks manuals along with the Release 1.0 IOC-U manuals as soon as possible.
KBK, along with everyone else, desperately needs marketing literature on new products.
We left about 1:00 for lunch and to visit a super computer customer. Lunch was at a casual sushi restaurant where we sat at the counter.
We arrived by train and foot at the Institute for Computational Fluid Dynamics facility. This is a privately held supercomputer center. They have several supercomputers at this facility including a Fuji VP2600, two Hitachi $820s, a NEC SX-3, a Connection Machine and an Ultranet.
We met with Koichi Masuda, a chief scientist for the company who seemed very interested in the IOC and in the Fileserver. He is a technical leader however and only makes recommendations. He introduced us to the head of the company, Kunio Kuwahara, Associate Professor, Dr. Sci., Institute of Space Sciences.
We mentioned one of our customers, Dr. Jay Boris of NRL. Dr. Boris uses an I/O Computer in his lab for computational fluid dynamics. They know Dr. Boris and mention that he will be attending a conference in Tokyo soon.
Masuda-San showed us their facilities, which consisted of separate labs containing each of the supercomputers. I asked about the support for the Hitachi. The Hitachi engineers come to the site about three times a week to monitor the system and they do preventive maintenance about once a month. Preventive maintenance requires taking the machine down. Masuda-San said that the systems run about 90% of the time.
My impression is that this would make a very good beta site or first customer site. They seemed capable of working with us, are privately funded and seem to have money, and we have a technically competent distributor there.
We returned to the office after visiting CFD. I checked voicemail and then prepared for our trip to Sony on Tuesday. This involved going through the slide sets, selecting the slides to use. I gave the hard copies to Ida-San and he is making up handouts. While waiting, I entertain the troops with my card magic. Three years ago, while visiting KBK, I was introduced to their resident magician. He is still working for KBK so we traded effects for a while. The most memorable trick he performed for me was an effect where four coins jumped invisibly from hand to hand. His method was very good.
Afterwards a group of us (Yamada, Tanaka, Nisajima, Honda, and Ida) went out for dinner. We went to Oasaki New City and ate in a small restaurant. It was typical Japanese fare, meat on skewers, fried vegetables, etc., and too much Sapporo beer and frozen Saki. For those of you who don’t know this already, etiquette in Japan requires that your host keeps your glass full of whatever you are drinking. This creates an interesting dilemma for westerners whose etiquette requires emptying your glass… Needless to say, the following morning I awoke with the impression that someone had spent the night stuffing cotton balls into my mouth. For those who have never had frozen Saki, I can wholeheartedly recommend it in moderation. It has the same potent effects as hot Saki (don’t try standing up too suddenly, etc.) and since it is cold you tend to drink it faster.