Hello from Tokyo !
I have begun the Japan Tour 2009 full steam ahead- one thing I have to mention about the tour is .. man I am working hard! I actually wake up at 6 most mornings and lecture all day and into the evening. We barely have the time to eat, never mind breath and sleep ;)
The highlight so far was the 350 plus audience at Keissen University, where students skipped their classes to come to the lecture. Not only were they very attentive, they asked the most thought provoking questions afterwards, questions that reflected a great holistic understanding of development, our climate and our progression. I extent my gratitude to Dr. Sanae Sawanobori who not only teaches holistic green perspectives to the students but who was also influential in installing solar panels, rain water collection barrels, bio-diesel buses and an organic farm at the women’s university.
The RH2 Network, Renewable Hydrogen Network hosted a meeting and reception this evening. My interest and curiosity about renewable hydrogen was re-enforced. I asked the question about H2O (g), which is the only by-product, being a greenhouse gas and we have yet to get a factual answer on that. Other than that, RH2 seems like a great energy de-centralization tool based on renewable energies and it is certainly something I am going to continue to dive into. They spook about airplanes being fueled by hydrogen and about the research station in Prince Edward Island and Hawaii. I would love to generate discussion on this issue and welcome all comments.
Dear Melanie,
sorry we bothered you so much for the first two weekdays, when we had to accept three lectures in a day !
This is because you were requested to come by many university Professors and students in reality.
However, their class schedule is tightly fixed (e.x.every Friday, the 2nd term in the morning etc.) and concentrates on weekdays only (because on weekend most Univ.in Japan is closed), so we could not but accept their requests based on the fixed term on weekdays only.
(Although I had rejected some of their requests from the other universities, we had four lectures to accept as a result.)
Another problem is that most Japanese Univ. are located in the suburbs,
far from downtown. Therefore we had to take trains for a long time,
exchanging them many times, charging up fees, especially in the Big City Tokyo.
Also I was exhausted in the first two days without sleeping well at night….The next time I never accept such a tight schedule for the important guests like you, so please forgive me anyway!!