Day 7: Commuter activities

Wednesday March 2nd, 2011 by Giel Op 't Veld

The second day of technical excursions was again reason for the committee to set the alarm clock earlier than planned. Despite the lack of sleep, we left at 7.30 for quite a journey to the outskirts of Tokyo. We visited the companies Toshiba and Fujitsu, which were both situated far out of Tokyo, but unfortunately not close to each other. We expected packed trains, but rush hour in Tokyo is not as frightful as you might expect. On the contrary, public transport here is actually a joy!

The Toshiba complex at Fuchu is huge. The most obvious difference between Japanese and Western companies is that the Japanese have a much wider range of products and divisions. Toshiba is no exception. The Fuchu complex offers both R&D and manufacturing in various subjects. We were invited to see photovoltaic systems, smart grids and MV switchgear technology. All subjects had some link to our theme ‘sustainability and innovation’ and the part on smart grids even overlapped with one of the case studies the participants worked on.

Dr. Hideo Kuwahara, a good friend of our prof. Khoe, invited us to the Fujitsu company. We were immediately impressed by the huge conference room which had a table that required yelling to reach the person sitting opposite of you. After an introduction to the company, we visited two lab rooms on optical telecommunication and the showroom of Fujitsu’s history and vision on the future. Fujitsu Laboratories strives to be on the frontier of telecommunication, but also its past left us in shock. We saw an old relay computer that was still working! Also dancing robots, new technologies on security and safety were some of the topics that were discussed.

Now that I am writing this news post, it’s almost midnight and I am having difficulty to concentrate. We are sitting in the lounge of the hostel and there is a hefty discussion going on what excursion was better. The table is filled with empty beer cans, while the participants are still talking about optical amplification networks, submarine repeaters and the hierarchies in Japanese businesses. There is still no grand conclusion whether Fujitsu or Toshiba was more interesting. I guess that means this was a day to remember.