
The SNPWG 12 meeting led us all to Tokyo. It was the first trip to an Asian country for many of the team, including me. Thus it was clear that most of us would be surprised on various occasions. The surprises started with heated (and with infinitely variable temperature) toilet seats, continued with the indescribable kindness of the Japanese and did not end with the puzzling characters, letters and numbers. Each food order was a surprise because ... one couldn't read it anyway.
After our arrival on Saturday we had only two days time to recover us from the long-haul flight. I've decided to do that with a longish walk and a bicycle tour. Just the guided bicycle tour will be memorable. I have seen areas of Tokyo I would never ever explore as a tourist. Among a lot of other "must see" spots, we discovered idyllic places in the big city. We have seen areas where absolutely nothing reminds us that we were in a big city.
The evenings after the daily sessions were characterised by further technical discussions combined with the discovery of local attractions. I have collected a small selection of impressions.
The Tokyo Sky Tree is under construction and has reached a height close to 400 m, as the mark indicates. The planned height exceeds 600 m. Well, in any case, my camera was not even able to manage the 400 m tower on one picture. I employed Photoshop to merge several pictures into one.
The pictures of the menu were made when our hosts invited us to supper. For Central European taste buds every single piece of that supper was an exotic treat. Everything on the table, was mouth-watering.
It remains only to say: Aligatoh Tokyo.

Tom has made some exceptional photographs during our cycling tour through Tokyo. I should not forget to point to them too. The photographs are stored on Tom's Flickr site.