Aomori
Maria and her friend/fellow scholar Jen had the first presentation on Saturday morning. Their paper concerns the Japanese postal savings system, which is, in effect, the largest bank in the world. It also serves as a giant slush fund for the Japanese government. It provides better banking services than most private banks in Japan. It has a complicated love/hate relationship with the private banks. The postmaster positions are hereditary. This is about as juicy as scholarly research gets. I’ve been telling Maria the “60 Minutes” folks could do a great piece on their research. Since I was taking care of Kai, I wasn’t able to attend the presentation, but Maria said it went well.
Saturday was mainly a day of rest for Kai and I. We made one outing, to a nearby onsen (hot spring bath). While there I was in charge of two other, 9 year old boys, whose parents were also attending the conference (one boy was Canadian, and the other was Japanese). The onsen had signs proclaiming the minerals in their water provided excellent treatment for a variety of ailments, so the baths were mostly filled with derelict old men. One of them was very curious about me and the boys, but we couldn’t get past the language barrier. I think he was perplexed about who we all were, especially since I had a Japanese boy with me who couldn’t help translate, as he spoke no English either.
We were treated to another fabulous dinner on Saturday night, and on Sunday, me and the other hangers-on went on a bus tour of the nearby Hakkoda mountain area. Apparently it’s a popular ski spot, as they’ll often get 8-12 ft of snow in a single snowfall during the winter (there are 20 ft. tall posts along treacherous edges of the roadway, so the snowplows will know where the road is). It was a very foggy day, so it was kind of silly to go on a driving tour when we could barely see 50 ft in front of us most of the time. But we made some interesting stops, and there were some occasional breaks in the fog that allowed us to catch a glimpse of the scenery. The captions in the photos below describe some of the sights (the photos include pictures from Friday night too). If you want to see more about Aomori, here’s a nice online brochure. Overall, I’d say it was the most relaxing weekend I’ve had in a long, long time.
June 30th, 2004 at 11:16 am
It’s the bridge over the river, Kai.
Sorry!