Hana no Mai: Ryogoku Sumo Izakaya

On Wednesday night I was able to visit a great Japanese style bar (Izakaya) in Ryogoku right in front of the Kokugikan or National Sumo Stadium. When you first walk into Hana no Mai, You are immediatly struck by the wide and long hallway that leads to a real Sumo Dohyo or ring. The tables for the place are all around the Dohyo.

My co-workers Shiina-san and Hirata-san sat on the corner of the ring and immediately ordered some real cold beers along with brazed Katsuo (Bonito) with ground garlic and dipped in soy sauce. That was my favorite. We also ordered the traditional Sumo meal of Chanko Nabe. Ours was Miso flavored and packed with crab, oysters, and other goodies boiling right on our table.

The evening's entertainment was a group of four Dohyo singers who sang for the crowd. As a present to take home, you could hand the singers you liked a 1000 yen bill pinched in between some chopsticks and they would give you the Banzuke or sheet showing the wrestlers playing in the current tournament at the National Stadium across the street.

The place was just plain fun. Anyone coming to visit Japan needs to see this place for themselves and walk up into the Dohyo!

Cyberdyne Systems, Tsukuba

This past Sunday we went to a new Mall in Tsukuba called Iias. It was kind of a long drive but, we did not have much else to do so we thought, let's hit the road. Inside Iias Mall we found the Robot Museum run by Cyberdyne Systems. The name is borrowed from the Terminator movies, yes but these folks are making the unreal, real. The picture above is of me in front of their thermal camera. With the thermal viewer, you could touch your hand to something cold and leave an imprint of heat that the camera would see. It was very Predator vision-like.

In the second part we were able to see a demonstration of the HAL suit. This suit combines robotic servo motors with direct nerve impulse control. Basically, when the entire suit is worn, those who could not walk before can now walk unassisted with this suit. I volunteered to have an arm portion hooked up to my arm for the demo. They placed sensors on my wrist, bicep, and tricep. When I moved, the robot arm moved. When the researchers held my arm down, the robot moved. It was really freaky. When you think of the other things they could do with this technology, it blows your mind. Just think, 80 meter high robots! Japan is on it's way to creating a real Gundam robot!