I recently spent a week in Japan and while there had the opportunity to visit the national gallery in Ueno park, in Tokyo. The visit was wonderful and I had the chance to see amazing 500-year-old pottery from all over Asia, including this Ming bowl. That, of course, was one of the younger pieces...
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I recently chaired a session and spoke at the Asian Conference on Education (ACE 2009) in Osaka, Japan. I could hardly have enjoyed the experience more – thanks to UBC and the Master of Educational Technology program for making it possible! More details on that later. But first, I promised during the talk that...
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This is my experience of Japan so far, in pictures and video: Note: you can click the little small/big box control to view full-screen. Also, click through to Flickr to see all picture titles and information.
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I’m sitting in my hotel room on the 30th floor of the Ritz-Carlton in Osaka at 5:35 AM, Sunday morning, reflecting on my Japan experience so far. First impressions are only first, and I have 5 days in Tokyo to add to them, but they tend to last. My first impression is that Japan...
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I’m in Osaka to speak at ACE 2009 on Google and intelligence in the modern age (I’ll upload some assets from the presentation sometime next week). But I had a free afternoon today, and here’s a few things I saw: Sonezaki Markeplace: Robo-concierge in the HAL building: Yodobashi Umeda (electronics store):
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I’m looking for hotels in Tokyo for an upcoming speaking trip to Japan, and ran across the Sumisho. It looks like it could be OK, but it’s hard to tell given the Japanese/English fusion (Engrish) it’s written in. The Nihombashi which stops the vestiges of Edo. As a hotel of peacefulness, Sumisho is nochalant,...
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I just bought the tickets and confirmed: I’m heading to Japan in October. So far, I know 3 things: I’m going to land in Tokyo I’m going to be in Osaka on the 24th and 25th speaking at ACE 2009 I’m going to fly out of Tokyo The question is: what else should I...
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There’s been a very interesting little “discussion” going around what we used to call the blogosphere. TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington spent the previous week at LeWeb, in Paris, where in response to some questions, he said that Europeans love life too much to generate the biggest technology success stories. They have too many 2-hour lunches...
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Welcome to Sparkplug 9, John Koetsier's blog on technology, social media, education, innovation ... and anything else that catches my fancy.