kenleewrites in 日本

Just a few days ago, I was in Sendai attending a seminar on Spintronics research. It was there that I met Nobel Laureate Peter Grünberg. He was among the keynote speakers we had at the seminar.

What do we know about Peter Grünberg?

He is a German physicist and shares the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of giant magnetoresistance (GMR) with Albert Fert. This discovery brought about a major breakthrough in gigabyte hard disk drives. If you’re using a computer right now, there’s a high probability that the hard disk you have there has a GMR read head.

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On the Shinkansen heading back for Tokyo! To reward ourselves for a hard day’s work, I bought the beer and my junior bought the gyutan stick. A win-win combo!

Shinkansen’s moving right now so I’ll see y’all in Tokyo real soon!

Left rainy Tokyo and am now in sunny Sendai again for a 2 day seminar. Sendai is a very popular city for holding conferences and seminars. It’s not my first time here because of work. I always enjoy being in Sendai though. Located just under 2 hours by Shinkansen north of Tokyo, she’s ranked quite high on my list of favorite cities in Japan. The weather is great, the girls are cute and gyutan yummy. ^^.

Have you been to Sendai?

I wrote about 男前豆腐 (otokomae tofu) a while back. Am such a big fan that I even have their T-shirt and cap, which I proudly don on tofu days.

When these showed up in the supermarket, naturally I could not resist. 一本気豆腐. How cool a name is that?!

Are you having enough tofu? ^^.

Had a chance to drive Toyota’s Prius recently when Nippon Rent-a-Car didn’t have what I wanted. So I though, meh, why not give the “eco car” section a try. There were only 2 cars, Honda Insight and Toyota Prius. Being a frequent customer of Nippon Rent-a-Car, I had in my possession, a ¥4000 discount voucher.

What the heck, I’ll just go with the slightly more expensive Prius.

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