DAY 26

Today was our last "class".
Our group still meets for school on Monday, and Monday will be the last day of the program, the following day being checkout day.

We were only in class for like 2 hours, doing presentations on the city.
The last half of the class we went a little past Shinjuku to go see the Intercommunication Center.

I didn't really know what to expect.

The Intercommunication Center was in the middle of a building set in, what Professor Hall called, "the Silicon Valley of Japan".

 

I forgot to adjust my whitebalance here...

This place was pretty damn cool.

First of all they had this thing where you stand in a place and then you become the hands of a clock.

Unfortunately that was the only picture I took because people then told us that no photography was allowed.

The museum was nothing you'd expect.

I mean, what would you expect with a name like Intercommunication Center?

To sum it all up, the exhibits were all about data.

What made it fun was most of them were interactive, rather than just looking at information and displays.

I really can't explain some of this stuff to you.

It's just really out of the ordinary.

Some of the stuff I can describe include an entire room with iPads that have apps that can mix cool music and a room with no sound.

Now, lemme tell you about that room.

That room was probably the coolest thing in the museum (there were a lot of other really cool things there too, but that was probably the coolest).

It was a soundless room, that is, it was designed to immediately muffle any sounds made inside it.

You might've seen something like that in Mythbusters (the myth with the quacking duck).

Any sound we made was stopped as soon as we stopped making it.

Although we weren't allowed to close the door to the room, Prof. Hall told us that if we could, and if we stayed silent, we would be able to hear the sounds of our own body (heartbeats and such).

It was really crazy being in there, I felt deaf.

And I felt like I was going crazy.

After about 30-40 min of exploring this museum, we decided to find a place around to eat.

We walked around the giant building that the museum was a part of and ended up at an udon place.

You pick your udon type, size, then pick up some tempura if you want.

I got curry udon with tempura shrimp and 2 tempura chicken.

The tempura chicken was GOOOOD.

The group split off after that.

Some people went to a baseball game, some went elsewhere, and some went back to the hotel.

I was part of the group that went to the hotel.

Since I had no other plans, I was going to go with Lauren and Cheryl to Asakusa to shop for some souvenirs. 

Josh tagged along.

While we were here, we wanted to find a specific store we passed by last time we were here.

There was a sick T-shirt I wanted to buy.

At first we went up and down the stalls looking at things we wanted to buy.

I found a Krauser mask.

Soon we tried looking for that one store again.

Eventually we did find it.

Now imagine that picture on a T-shirt.

Sick, right?

Though, the price was 3100 yen.

I wasn't down to spend that much, since I have to budget the rest of my money carefully.

It was a sick shirt, though.

I went back after that, and the rest of them went to Ueno for further shopping.

Nothing much after that.
Got a konbini bento and studied Japanese.
We have a 3 day weekend.
Friday is ours.
It is also slightly possible that I MAY get to see Miyu and/or Kengo tomorrow.
But it's a stretch.
I shouldn't get my hopes up, but I want to.
We also have some projects due.
Everything is crammed into this final stretch.
Goin' hard in Japan everyday.