Random Pictures

I recently tried out Karate. Some of the Katas they showed us didn’t seem to have many fighting elements; instead they were all about balance, precision, and focus of energy. I really like it and I think I’ll start taking Karate lessons :-)



This picture shows the entrance to my cubicle. On the left side is Masataka’s cubicle, on the right side is mine.



This picture was taken at Akihabara station (in Tokyo). Somehow I find those ticket machines fascinating. (Especially when there are crowds of people and there is always some beeping going on.)



Here is a sketch I made thinking about a metaphor I could use in my invited talk in Osaka... at the end I decided not to. The idea was that there is lots of music out there, but we can only access a small part easily (the pieces which are hanging very low). Even if we had a ladder (like the Internet) to reach all of the music, it would still be difficult to make choices. In addition I wanted to add many more "music trees" to create a forest of music. If every tree could fit 1000 pieces I would have needed a forest with many thousands of trees (only to reflect the more than 3.5 million pieces available on iTunes) :-)

Victoria

Last week I was at a conference on music information retrieval in Victoria (Canada). It's an annual conference which takes place in a different country every year. I've been attending it since 2002 and it's by far my favorite conference (and the only one I'm attending this year). Next year the conference will be held in Vienna! :-)

I got to see lots of interesting demonstrations, heard interesting talks on the newest developments, and had a chance to talk to many people working on similar topics as I am. I learned a lot. It was a great week!

Unfortunately, I didn't have much time to do sightseeing. But anyway, here are two pictures I took of the sea. The water was actually quite warm! :-)
(Special thanks to Michael who recommended me to rent a bike and cycle to the beach!)





At the conference one of the things I was presenting was work I did together with Masataka. Here is an excerpt of the screenshot from the MusicRainbow. (I plan to put a demonstration online soon.)



MusicRainbow is a very simple interface to help find interesting artists in large music collections. I got lots of helpful feedback on the interface. Overall it seems that it is usable. (Special thanks to David for the advice on how to make it more obvious in which direction the rainbow is turning.)

Most of the time at the conference we spent listening to talks.



One night, some researchers spontaneously turned the conference room into a concert room :-)



Personally I enjoyed the poster presentations and demonstrations even more than the talks. This demonstration by Ajay was particularly unusual :-)
(Picture taken by Paul.)



And this is one of the "unofficial" demonstrations I really enjoyed. Here Paul is demonstrating his "search inside the music" system to Oscar (who also had some nice demonstrations to show). Another really nice demonstration was the work Peter and his colleagues have been working on (an enhanced 3-dimensional version of Islands of Music with a number of very cool features).



And most important of all were the discussions we had in the restaurants and bars every night :-)
(Picture taken by Paul.)



A strange thing I noticed (after coming back to Tsukuba) is that I was missing the Japanese food! Especially natto :-)

Almost 6 Months

I just got back from my first honeymoon. Gwen and I spent two wonderful weeks mainly in Tokyo and Kyoto area. Back in the office my todo list seems long enough to keep me occupied for the rest of the year, but my head is still full of wonderful memories.

Those memories include many friendly Japanese we met on our trip. A number of times when we were studying our maps, people approached us and asked if they could help. Once when we got lost in Kyoto we asked a lady in front of her home for directions. Although she hardly spoke English she understood which temple we were looking for and told us that we would need to hurry as the temple was about to close. She then decided to show us the way... and started running with her slippers. We were almost shocked. However, with our bicycles it wasn’t hard to follow her. She ran 2 blocks just to show us where we would need to make a turn! On other occasions people approached us to ask where we are from. Sometimes this resulted in interesting conversations, and once (in Tokyo) a friendly lady who had approached us even invited us to a wonderful Sushi dinner. (It was the best Sushi we ever had! Each piece was different and more delicious than the previous. The fish was so fresh that it was almost scary. We had our own cook and were sitting right in front of him!) Twice we also spent a day with volunteer guides. I wonder if Japan is the only place on earth where volunteer guides are happy to guide foreigners through their cities. And each time we forgot something, someone was so nice to run after us to bring it to us. In general we always felt very save.

Of course not all Japanese are so friendly. In particular we noticed some rather unfriendly shop keepers in very touristy areas, maybe because we didn’t look like people with lots of money. But overall, the friendliness we encountered was amazing.

From all the wonderful gardens, temples, castles, old streets and everything else we saw here is a list of some of my favorites (not sorted):

* I really enjoyed the stone gardens (maybe also known as Zen gardens). One of the more famous gardens we saw is the one in Ryoanji (Kyoto). In one of the guide books it says that stone gardens are not for viewing but for thinking. The gardens are very tidy (raked gravel), very simple, very different to European style gardens, and very inspiring.

* I was also very impressed by the garden hosted by the Entsuji temple. The garden is designed to be the frame for the view of the nearby mountain. This concept is called “borrowed view” (shakkei). The emperor who originally had the garden built searched 12 years for the perfect site. The mountain itself is not so special; it reminded me of Kahlenberg in Vienna. But it was the first time I saw a garden designed merely as a frame for something bigger far away. I guess it is kind of related to the stone gardens which are somehow a frame for one’s own thoughts.

* We went to a sumo tournament in Ryogoku (Tokyo). I usually don’t like watching sports too much but the sumo culture is very interesting. The sport is very closely linked to the Shinto religion (I think that’s the oldest religion in the world still practiced today). Shinto symbols and rituals dominate the tournament. I also realized that sumo is much more of a sport than I had originally thought. And it can be very brutal. And I was surprised to see that a number of very good sumo wrestlers do not have Japanese origins.

* Calligraphy is something I never really understood. Masataka was so nice to show Gwen and me a museum which contains the works of Mitsuo Aida. I’ve never seen so simple, yet powerful brush strokes. With only few brush strokes Mitsuo Aida expressed thoughts which can deeply touch one’s soul.

* There were also countless small things which I really enjoyed such as cycling through the narrow streets of Kyoto, taking a Japanese style bath, eating many things I’ve never seen before (most of which were very tasty), traveling in a Shinkansen train (bullet train), watching people, a wonderful sunset on the last evening in Tsukuba, cooling my feet in a cold river, bamboo forests, walking barefoot on beautiful wooden floors, new and shiny red bibs tied around ancient stone statues covered in moss, all those very old trees which Gwen pointed out, walking barefoot on moss, ...

Here are some pictures (the nicest ones were taken by Gwen):

This is an insect we have never seen before. Gwen thought it was very cute.



This plant was also new to us.



In this picture you can clearly see the mosquito cultivation ponds each temple’s garden has. Some say that mosquitos are messengers of the gods. Most temple gardens had plenty of them.



Most gardens also had huge spider webs. However, some say that spider webs are a symbol of the evil forces which try to prevent the gods from communicating with the humans. Thus, most temple gardeners remove spider webs when they see them.



And this is a picture of me fighting a swarm of god's messengers.



This picture shows a typical Japanese style bath (“sento”). The bathwater is never changed. Everyone uses the same water.



In this picture you can see the Tokyo statue of liberty.



This picture shows one of the famous capsule hotels. This capsule is located in Miraikan (Tokyo) and once the door is closed it is water proof for several thousand meters. The manual says you can fit up to three people in it, but I couldn’t see how.



This is the cheapest option of getting a good rest in Tokyo. Each wagon (subway and trains) has seats specially reserved for those who need them.



This is Tokyo’s skyline:



A tree covered in moss:



A bamboo forest (in the background):



A Japanese kindergarten transportation device:



Walking barefoot on moss:



Riding on the back of a big turtle:



Statues and bibs:



Sitting on a red carpet:



A Waldfee sitting on a tree in Nara:



Some of the places we visited were crowded with Japanese tourists. In the background of this picture you can see the doors of the temple which hosts the largest bronze statue of the world.

Recently

On Friday we had a farewell karaoke party for Douglas who is returning home after working with us at AIST for two months. It was lots of fun. And the Japanese are great at karaoke. And we were able to detect many “interest points” in the pieces. Here are some pictures.

Drinking...



And singing...



And that’s me, singing the Beatles “Yesterday”, probably with my mic turned off. Hiro was so nice to help me out with that difficult song.



And this is what is what we were looking at ... random videos with subtitles.



Afterwards we went to an Australian bar. In a dramatic game of pool the Europeans defeated the Japanese :-)



This is the view from my window at work. A sight I enjoy almost everyday.



I learned to say: “Chotto hen desu ne?” (Bisserl verrueck, oder?) This friendly Brazilian capoerista is driving while the picture is taken.



I noticed that there are only very few trash bins. Recently I found some instructions on how to deal with this problem:
“After the corner was turned, the trash was tossed away. It was a blind spot in the city.” In the lower right it says “meet your delight”. (Picture taken at a train station)



By the way, the Sockenpabst has moved to a new address. In her most recent blog entry she explains (in German) why they always give us so much plastic junk at the supermarket. Actually, the first phrase I learned to say and most frequently use is: “Spoon wa keko desu.” (Thanks, but I don’t need a plastic spoon with that yoghurt.)

Last weekend we had a capoeira event at a bonfire party. This picture was taken after our performance and shortly before the fire was lighted.



While warming up we had some difficulties getting used to the wet and slippery grass. It was lots of fun, and some of us (like me) got really dirty :-)

Bicycling: Non-Verbal Communication

Today I noticed something so extremely interesting that I decided to share it with the world (at least with that part of the world that looks at my blog) :-)

When bicycling I often use my nose and my eyes to communicate where I want to go. This helps when cycling through crowded pedestrian zones or when there is an ambiguous situation with another cyclist. It works really well, and it’s a technique I learned when working as a bicycle messenger. So basically it works like this: I point my nose and eyes to the ground about 2-3 meters in direction I intend to cycle (and continuously stare in the direction I'm heading to). Others usually understand, and either realize that I am no danger to them (even if I'm moving fast or close to them), or will move out of the way (if I have the right of way). This works in Vienna (tried at least a million times) and London (tried a few times). However, this does not seem work in Japan!

I’ve tried it about 4 times now (in Tsukuba). Every time it failed... every time the other person reacted as if they did not know where I was heading to. I’m pretty sure now that it simply does not work. Maybe because in general Japanese don’t have such big noses which can be used to point into certain directions? Or maybe it doesn’t work because the others never try to look into my eyes? It actually seems that they prefer to look at the ground themselves. I’d love to ask a bicycle messenger in Tokyo how they manage to quickly move through crowds of people without scaring everyone (and thus resulting in people jumping directly into the direction you wanted to cycle to...). Or maybe Tokyo is different from Tsukuba? I wish I could spend some more time investigating this... but today I learned on Wikipedia, that post-docs are supposed to work 80+ hours per week. That means I'm still a few hours short this week, and if I want to spend my weekend doing other things, I better start getting some work done now...

The Loudest Insect in the World

Just in front of my door an insect has decided to settle and start it’s mating call. I had no idea how loud a single insect can be. At first I thought it might even be a fire alarm. Here is the picture of this amazing Japanese individual. It’s about as big as my camera.

Goto's Lab

Masataka Goto is supervising my work at AIST. At the same time he is supervising at least 7 other students at the lab. Most of them are spending one or two months of their summer vacations at AIST (like an internship).

I've seen various styles of supervision of students, but I've never seen anyone so intensively supervising so many students at the same time. Sometimes it seems that he has meetings with students all day... one day after the other. All students have very different topics. And all of these topics are really interesting. None of the students needs to worry that another student could "steal" an idea from them, or come up with a solution to the problem they are working on before they do. Instead they identify areas where results from one project could help another one, and work together. Every student also seems to have a very clear picture of what they are working on, what the next steps could be, and how they want to evaluate progress. It's amazing!

I used to think that the best way to work together in research is to be working towards the same goal. I guess that can work really well in special cases, but it is somehow a problem when you need to write two different doctoral dissertations about the same topic, or when it comes to the order of authors on a publication. However, given this experience in Goto's lab I think the best way (in computer science) is to work on different but somehow related topics and just sit next to each other. (Most of the students' topics deal with music analysis in some way.) However, this also means that one needs to come up with many interesting topics to work on...

BTW, today I learned that in Japan the labs at universities are officially named after the professors. Instead of names such as "Intelligent Music Processing Group", "Music Technology Group", or "Centre for Digital Music", the last name of the professor is used. In general it seems that professors are very highly respected. However, it seems a bit strange to me that the name of the professor is more important than the research field the group is actually working on.

Here is a picture of Masataka at his desk. He actually did some cleaning before I was allowed to take a picture... but I didn't notice any difference :-)



These are the students Masataka supervises (including Masataka, Doug, and me).



This picture was taken a few hours later at the "all-you-can-drink" place. (Yes, alcohol!)



And this is my new business card in Japanese! :-)



Business cards are very important in the Japanese communication culture. If I would give you one of my cards, you should receive it with both hands. Look at it, marvel at its beauty (or talk about how impressive the font is) and then after 10 minutes or so of admiring it, carefully put it into the special shiny metal case in which you store all the important business cards you receive. Do not take notes on the card! And do not stick the card in your back pocket! The way you treat the card is an indication of what you think about me :-)

Here are two updates to my last posts. First, here you can see what "PreKla" looks like when experts do it. And here (2.45MB) you can find a great video of the HRP2 robot (which is partly developed by some of my colleagues at AIST) dancing the dance which I saw the old ladies dance last Sunday.



Find out more about this dancing robot here (in Japanese).