caadria

Today was the second full day CAADRIA tour around Kumamoto. We boarded the buses at 8:30am and did not get back to the hotels until 7:00pm. During this time we travelled up to Mount Aso and took in a number of landmarks and prominent buildings. It was very tiring, there was lots of busing about and many things to take in. The most interesting thing to see was the quantity of Japanese tourists, I think, but in actual fact there are more Japanese tourists touring Japan than anywhere else.

The CAADRIA conference has come to a successful close and we are now into the touring side of things. Today after lunch we boarded buses and headed south to Yatsushiro to checkout some Toyo Ito architecture. Afterwards we headed north-east into the hills to visit a very pretty lumber town and then went to a Japanese puppet theatre for a small show and dinner. Fortunately our table was lucky enough to have the english translator sitting with us so she was able to tell us what everything was along with a tonne of background to each of the foods. It was a very good tour and tomorrow we head north to visit Mt Aso, an active volcano and then some more architectural spots. Click on the photos below to enlarge.

I left for the CAADRIA conference in Japan on Monday 27th March. It was a 3:30am start to get the 6am flight to Sydney before jumping on a Japan Airlines flight to the very cool Kansai Airport near Osaka. The flight into Kansai was late and consequently it took an hour to get through customs as a number of other planes landed at the same time. I got through customs at 10pm and found that the bus I would be getting to Itami Airport where my hotel was near would not leave until 10:30pm and wouldn't get there till 12am. Rather than spend more time waiting in the airport I got a room in the hotel inside Kansai airport, cancelled my other hotel and got to bed at a reasonable hour. The coolest thing about the hotel (apart from it being inside the airport) was the crazy super-toilet which resembled an ejector seat and had just as many options (spray, clean, water pressure).