Tokyo

212’2021 (2021-07-31) – Saturday

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned about:

We are half-way through the Summer Olympics and if you thought that Beijing would be the first city to host games of both the Summer and Winter Olympics, when they will take on the Winter games in 2022, then you are WRONG!

The fact is that the Northern Japanese city of Sapporo already held the Winter games in 1972, only eight years after Tokyo had arranged the memorable Summer games in 1964, and now Sapporo is back again. As everone knows, Tokyo is the main city of the games, but some sports are organized in different cities around the Japanese islands. In fact, Sapporo organized an olympic football match already two days ahead of the official opening ceremony this year. On July 21, 2021, Great Britain beat Chile by 2-0 in a female football match in the Sapporo dome, and other examples of events to be held in Sapporo involve the marathon road races and the race walk events. The reason is that these time-consuming events should be kept away from the normally hot Tokyo streets in summer and permit better conditions for the athletes further north in Japan.

If you are interested in more about the Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972, see reference #1 below.

As I mentioned above, Tokyo was already the host of the Summer Olympic games in 1964 and the plans were to come back with the games in July and August of 2020. But as everyone knows, the on-going pandemic postponed the games one year. Tokyo had been awarded the organization of the 1940 Summer Olympics, but that honor was subsequently passed on to Helsinki due to Japan’s invasion of China, before ultimately being cancelled due to World War II.

More about the Tokyo Summer Olympics of 1964 can be found in reference #2 below.

As always, watching the Olympic Games on TV is a fantastic show. I particularly like the Augmented Reality, which permits e.g. to show how far the leader in a race is from breaking the current world record. The top picture shows the final in the men’s 50 m freestyle swimming, where the leader Caeleb Dressel is chasing not only the gold medal, but also the almost 12-year old world record. However, the two lower pictures show examples of how ancient technology is still used in the games. In the left photo, the holder of the current world record of 400 m hurdles, Karsten Warholm is struggling to fix his number sign with old-style security pins. In the right photo can be seen how bad it can look, besides probably being a nuisance for the athletes, in this case Warholm’s competitor, Alison dos Santos. The French are known to invent crazy things, how about a novel number sign for the Summer Olympics in Paris in 2024?

I had the pleasure of visiting my sister-in-law and her family in Tokyo in April of 2005 and I must admit it was one of the busiest cities I have ever known. More about that visit can be found in my post of 108’2016 (2016-04-17).

That’s what I learned in school today!

Ref.:

1: Sapporo Winter Olympics 1972

2: Tokyo Summer Olympics 1964

*: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-04-19 (Tuesday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

There is a classical truce of 100 days given to a new government, administration or similar to be able to get into its role. In the same way, today I communicate that this is my 100th blog post since I started writing daily posts on 2016-01-09. Had I not suffered an accident on 2016-02-22, that day would have been last Sunday instead.

I would like to thank all my faithful readers for your support, suggestions and encouragement, sure that there is a public interested in knowing about my findings in this ever so complicated world. At the same time, I must admit that the blog posting is sometimes taking too much of my available time, so I have decided to continue in a somewhat reduced format. The content will continue the same, but I cannot promise a new post every single day. Depending upon availability and what happens in the world, I expect to publish 2 or 3 posts per week. Thank you very much for your understanding!

Dateline

A photo of the inflight monitor showing the moment when we crossed the International Date Line. Sorry about the resolution, unfortunately the screens in 2005 were at most of VGA quality.

Continuing my around-the-globe-journey 11 years ago, today it is time to say Sayonara, Nippon ! And 2005-04-19 proved to be the longest day of my life so far, 37 hours from midnight in Tokyo till the next midnight in Montreal, since the latter one was 13 hours behind the former. And of course, we crossed the International Date Line, as you can see in the photo above, and of which you can read more about in reference #1 below.

19AC

On my last day in Japan, 2005-04-19, I found yet another example of how densely populated the Japanese islands are. In order to permit that a person buys a car, s/he has to prove that there is already allocated parking space for the car. And what do you do if you need two cars? The solution is a private elevator in your parking space to administer two cars in one horizontal space! The other two photos show a double-decker bridge on the way to the airport and also a proof that Japan is not only the land of the rising sun, but also the setting sun. さよならにっぽん !

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: International Date Line

+: What did you learn in school today ?

2016-04-14 (Thursday)

Posted on by What did you learn in School today ?

Today, I learned that:

As you know, the Summer Olympic Games are scheduled to be held in Rio de Janeiro in August this year. And in 2020, the host city will be Tokyo, the capital of Japan.

Thinking about facilities for all the expected tourists during the games, the Japanese authorities have developed an identification system based upon the person’s fingerprints, that is planned to be used when making payments, checking in at the hotel, etc. Trial will start already this month. See the figure below and reference #1 for further information.

Fingercurrency

A brief description of how the ‘Finger currency’ system is supposed to function.

On my last day in Shanghai, 2005-04-14, I spent some hours visting the Shanghai Museum, located in People’s square. Below are some photos from there.

14AD

Of the many fine collections of ancient Chinese art in the Shanghai museum, let me just appoint one here. In the upper right photo are shown the Bells of Marquis Su of Jin, from the ninth century BC. I have a sound recording of the bells. If I can find that file, I will update this post so that you may hear it. See also reference #2 below for information about this impressive museum.

… That’s what I learned in school !

Refs.:

1: Fingerprints to be tested as ‘currency’

2: Shanghai Museum

+: What did you learn in school today ?