Tag: standards

We got up with the alarm at 07:00. After breakfast at the hotel, we packed our bags for checkout. I had to attend the closing plenary session of my ISO Photography Standards meeting, which was scheduled to end at 13:00. Checkout time for the hotel was midday, so I left my wife to spend the morning as she wanted and then to check out and look after our bags until my meeting was done.

The closing plenary meeting session was just a run through of administrative issues, summarising all of the work done during the week by the various working groups and ad hoc technical groups, future actions, future meetings, adopting formal resolutions, and so on. We also had a tribute for Mr Hitoshi Urabe, a working member of TC 42 for almost 30 years, who retired a couple of years ago, and who passed away recently on 18 May. Urabe-san worked on the set of standard photographic test images published by the Japanese Industrial Standards Committee, known as the ISO/JIS-SCID N series images, including the famous ISO/JIS-SCID N2 test image of the Cathedral Cafe (in some city in Belgium, I think).

Our meeting ended very early, by 10:30. They said lunch would be supplied and would arrive at 11:00, so most people stayed for that before leaving. After eating a couple of sandwiches, I said my farewells to the remaining meeting attendees and departed for the hotel. While walking back to the hotel, when I was almost there, I heard my wife calling me from behind. She was returning from some time at a shopping mall where she was sitting and doing some of her sketching.

We grabbed our luggage from our room and checked out of the hotel. Then walked over to Zoologischer Garten station and caught an S-bahn three stops to the Hauptbahnhof. Because my meeting finished early, we were in plenty of time for our train to Prague. In fact, we could easily have made the previous train, leaving two hours earlier – which I hadn’t booked when looking at the trains back home because I wanted to ensure us enough time to avoid being late. But since we were here early, I tried going into the Deutche Bahn ticket office to see if we could change our seat booking to the earlier train. But when I asked the woman at the reception desk, she just shook her head and said the train was fully booked, without looking at anything. So I don’t know how she knew, but anyway.

The station was crowded with travellers and there were precious few seats anywhere to sit down. So we found a bakery with some tables at the back and bought a pretzel to eat so we could sit there, and then a bit later a bottle of water and my wife had a sandwich for her lunch. A couple of times one of us sat and minded the bags while the other went for a bit of a walk. I went outside the station to the plaza on the southern side, where there were several food stalls and a view of the Reichstag across the river. Finally we moved from the bakery to a Vapiano cafe restaurant where my wife got a cappuccino.

Eventually it came time for us to head to the platform for our train. We were sick of sitting so we walked down early. Which was good because the train pulled in almost 15 minutes before departure time, so we had plenty of time to get on board and settle in. The carriage we were in had a corridor down one side and compartments of six seats, just like the Hogwarts Express. Ours had two men sitting by the windows, and we had the seats next to the corridor. Nobody else entered out compartment, so we had empty seats next to us, at least initially. One man was in a German military uniform, and the other was an older man whose daughter joined the train at the next stop in southern Berlin. They were friendly and suggested later we could swap seats to get views of the mountains as we entered Czechia. They left the train halfway there, at Dresden, and we had the compartment to ourselves for about half an hour, until a young man came in at one of the stations across the Czech border – by which time we’d moved to get window views. The ride was pleasant, with some interesting and scenic countryside – mostly in Czechia as the German landscape was very flat and mostly farmland, while across the border we followed the Elbe river valley as it twisted and turned through rocky hills.

We arrived at Prague about 10 minutes later than scheduled. We walked to our accommodation, which is a lovely small studio apartment in a building just off the main town square. We accessed the key and let ourselves in. It has a terrace balcony with a view of the St Nicholas Church on the Old Town Square. We couldn’t be in a better location!

Because we’d arrived late, we had to hurry straight out to our dinner booking, a good 18 minutes walk away. We got there right on time, at Restaurace Střecha, a fully vegan place that employs homeless people and ex-prisoners. It was quite big inside with plenty of tables, and we got a quiet table around the back away from the more crowded front. We tried the dumplings stuffed with soy meat, served on red cabbage:

And the not-ribs in plum sauce with onion jam and mustard dip:

Both items were really delicious and the serving sizes were very hearty. We were too full to think about dessert, despite a fantastic looking blueberry crumble cake and several other items in the dessert cabinet.

We walked back more slowly to our room, along a different route. We passed a Tesco’s supermarket and stopped to buy some muesli, milk, and yoghurt for our breakfasts here. My wife popped into a shop and bought a small notebook with a decorative Czech poster on the cover. Despite it being after 22:00, the streets were full of people, walking around, eating at restaurants, seeing sights. It seems like there are lots of tourists here!

Finally we reached our room again and had showers before doing some writing, drawing, and reading before bed.

Today was sunny. At breakfast we sat outside again, choosing a nice shady spot. But I noticed that everyone else sitting outside had chosen seats in direct sunlight. And what’s more, they were all facing the same direction, into the sun, with the sun shining straight into their face and eyes. And none of them had hats on. Europeans are very weird…

I checked for some local markets within walking distance and found that there was a market at Wittenbergplatz on Thursdays, just a block from our hotel. This gave my wife her plan for the day, although she also had the option of walking half an hour to the art museums in the Kulturforum museum district.

The ISO meeting today began with a technical session on machine vision, a relatively new project to standardise industry methods for applications in robotic vision applications. After that we began the winding-down administrative sections of the Working Group, going over action items, future work, future meetings, and so on. I had a break of a couple of hours in the afternoon, before the Chair Advisory Group meeting in the evening from 17:00-18:30.

The break began just after 14:30 and I went back to the hotel to meet up with M. It was very warm outside, but we used the time to go on a walk to explore more of the surrounding areas of Berlin. We walked east along Kleiststraße to Nollendorfplatz, then southwest through the Nollendorfkiez district of Schöneberg to Viktoria-Luise-Platz. Nollendorfkiez was clearly a gay neighbourhood, with plenty of colourful establishments and eye-catching sights. Viktoria-Luise-Platz was a nice plaza with a fountain and grassy areas cut by paths. A group of people were filming something in one corner. As we left to cosine a helpful man asked us if we needed any help navigating, but we said we were fine, happy to explore at random. From here we continued west through a very nice looking neighbourhood, with well-kept old apartment buildings with nice gardens. We eventually turned north to head back to our hotel.

Once near the hotel, we stopped in at a cafe for my wife to get an iced latte. It had been a very warm walk. After this we went back to the hotel, where I picked up my meeting bag and headed back to the DIN office for the Chair Advisory Group meeting. My wife waited in the hotel until I was done. During the meeting, Dietmar warned everyone that there would be a thunderstorm hitting Berlin soon. I kept an eye on the weather radar on my laptop and thought it might interrupt our walk to our dinner booking tonight, and possibly my walk back from the meeting to the hotel.

The meeting ended a bit early, with the storm bearing down on Berlin and the skies going pitch black. I rushed out and ran the two blocks back to the hotel, with skaters of rain beginning. Partway there the wind picked up tremendously and I had to lean right into it to make headway. I managed to get back to the hotel with only a few fat drops of rain on my clothes. By the time I got upstairs to our room and looked out the window, it was raining heavily. So I was very lucky to have made it.

And then within ten or fifteen minutes it was over. I knew it wouldn’t last long and suggested we wait it out before walking out to dinner. Fortunately we had some extra time because of the early finish to the meeting. We headed out with a very light sprinkle still in effect, but it stopped after a few minutes and the clouds blew away as fast as they arrived. The storm had cooled down the temperature considerably, which was good as it was a hot day.

We walked east back towards Nollendorfplatz and then turned south down a different street until we found Bonvivant Cocktail Bistro. This is a high end vegan restaurant and bar, which does a five or six course tasting menu, with optional cocktail pairings for each course. We chose the five course meal, but added the extra chef’s specialty dish, and just had separate drinks rather than the full pairing set.

The meal was amazing. Each course had incredible flavours and textures combined in unusual ways to make something that was a delight to the senses. And our waiter was extremely friendly and gave us just the right amount of attention, and was very patient with our questions about the food, the drinks, the restaurant in general.

The whole meal took almost three hours, and we left just after 22:00 for the walk back to our hotel. The weather had cooled down and was a bit breezy, but I found it pleasant and refreshing after the heat of the day. We got back to our hotel and had showers to freshen up before bed. (No photos today because I don’t want to stay up even later uploading and labelling them…)

We got up with the alarm at 07:00 today, although I was awake before it went off. M. slept through the whole night, but I haven’t quite got there yet. The day began rainy and we had to have breakfast inside rather than out on the patio. Showers were intermittent during the morning. I managed to walk to the DIN office without any rain, but it began again as the meeting got started.

Today we had a full program of technical ad hoc group discussions. Topics included measuring angle-dependent lens flare, low light performance with image stabilisation, depth measurement, and image resolution. In the first topic we had a guest from ISO TC 172 Optics and Photonics to talk to us about their standard for measuring veiling glare, which is a similar technical issue, and we planned to align our standards to be consistent with one another.

During a mid-morning break in the meeting I sketched the Brandenburg Gate, using a photo I took last night as a reference.

I went for another walk during the lunch break, exploring some of the neighbourhood nearby. It was mostly residential areas with blocks of flats, but I walked along a canal for a bit as well, which was nice as it was lined with large, leafy chestnut trees. I only identified them because of all of the fallen chestnuts on the ground!

After the meeting this evening was the social function. This was held on the 10th floor roof terrace of the DIN building, which had a decent view across Berlin. We could see the expanse of the Tiergarten and the surrounding buildings, though I think the Reichstag and Brandenburg Gate were hidden from view. The food was a cold buffet of dishes including a pasta with chicken, a quinoa salad with mini strips of schnitzel, falafels, and some cheese and vegetable pastries, with stewed rhubarb with yoghurt as a sweet. Not fancy, but pretty good. We chatted with some of the other meeting participants who had brought their wives as well, then did a big group photo, which the partners sat out of, and M ended up taking the photos so that all the meeting attendees could be in it.

We didn’t stay too long, leaving to take advantage of the long twilight and go for a bit of a walk down Kurfürstendamm, Berlin’s famous shopping boulevarde. We went as far as the Hard Rock Cafe, which we went into to look at the music memorabilia. Then we returned back to our hotel, stopping along the way to get a salted caramel cinnamon roll from a fancy cinnamon roll shop. They looked so god I couldn’t resist. I ate it in our room, and it was delicious.

Also at the hotel we got help from a guy at reception to print out some tickets for Prague Castle which I bought online today. I thought we should go see the castle when we’re in Prague on Saturday, and not waste any time queueing up to buy tickets there. They online tickets had to be physically printed though, so I had to find a way and thankfully the hotel could do it for us. The backup was getting someone at the DIN offices to print it, but now I won’t have to do that.

We woke up about 05:00 today, slowly adjusting to the time zone, but feeling less tired than yesterday. The weather had changed to become overcast and chilly, which was a welcome change compared to the heat of the past two days. We went down to have breakfast and sat outside in the cool morning air again, this time with jackets against the chill. I’d downloaded a German bird pack for eBird after seeing several birds at breakfast yesterday, and this time I did a bird count, recording dozens of common swifts, some house sparrows, hooded crows, common ravens, a herring gull, and what I think (based on Merlin ID and a recording of the calls) a Eurasian blackcap. Oh and some pigeons.

Just before 09:00 we left the hotel; me for my ISO meeting and my wife for the Berlin Zoo and Aquarium, where she was planning to spend the day. It was good to have a cooler day for that.

At my meeting we got stuck into the technical sessions. We looked at image stabilisation, which finished early because there were not many comments on the current draft. In the free time people brought up proposals to revise two old standards, for updating methods for measuring camera lens distortion and modifying the test chart for measuring onto-electronic conversion functions to reduce problems with lens flare. After a break we got stuck into several new standards regarding various aspects of HDR images: best practices for file handling, editing, display, etc.; extensions to the recent HDR image file format standard; and new work on live photos (photos with short video clips embedded).

On a break I went out the back door of the DIN building and saw that one of the plane trees lining the street had its upper half torn off by yesterday’s wind. About half the tree had fallen off and was lying on the footpath adjacent to the road. The wind continued today, but not as strong as yesterday.

At lunch I went for a walk over to the Tiergarten. There is a path that runs along a canal and passes a tall fence. I saw two people who had gotten off their bicycles, standing close to the fence and looking through, and then taking photos. I realised this was part of the zoo and they must have been seeing some animals inside. I went over to get a look… and saw kangaroos. The two people seemed really excited, but of course for me this was possibly the dullest possible animal in the entire zoo, so I quickly resumed walking. A bit later on I did manage to see some scimitar oryxes as well. I didn’t get too far before having to turn back for the afternoon meeting session. It rained a bit on the way back.

Or meeting finished early this afternoon, before 16:00. I met up with my wife at the hotel after her day at the zoo and we left soon after to go walking through the Tiergarten before dinner. We entered this amazing park and walked east towards the Brandenburg Gate. The Tiergarten is amazing, with some parts like walking through a forest, with dense trees all around.

We stopped off at the Siegessäule victory column in the middle of the park to have a look at this, but we didn’t bother paying to climb it.

We continued east to the rose garden, which was very nice with a lot of flowers out, although the central area was fallow with a barrier around it.

Continuing on, we arrived at the Brandenburg Gate, where we stopped for some photos and then a drink at the bar of the Hotel Adlon Kempinski, just east of Pariser Platz. This is a very fancy hotel with lots of marble everywhere and plush stuffed chairs in the bar area where we sampled a German Riesling while we rested our feet a bit before heading back to the far side of the Tiergarten for dinner.

A long walk later we arrived at the Tiergarten-Quelle, a German restaurant with a beer garden. We initially went inside, but they told us to go out and sit in the beer garden, presumably because the inside tables were all booked. We found a table in the beer garden, which was across the street, and ordered some food: semmelknödel with mushroom sauce for my wife and a schweinshaxe with sauerkraut and pumpernickel bread for me. The food took a while to arrive as a lot of people were ordering, so I took the time to draw a sketch of the beer garden.

The schweinshaxe was very good, and my wife said she liked the dumplings too.

After this we had a bit of a walk back to our hotel again, which we needed to walk off some of the dinner! We got back and retired for the evening.

I slept solidly for a few hours but then woke up and was dozing lightly. But I was pleasantly surprised when it turned out to be almost 06:00. We got up and went down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast when it opened at 06:30. The buffet was well stocked with plenty of hot food choices, cold meats and cheeses, different types of bread and pastries, cereals, yoghurt, fruit, and so on. I had a couple of bowls of muesli with yoghurt and some small pastries and a bread roll. We ate outside in the fresh cool air of the morning on a pleasant patio area bordered by shrubs and facing an interesting old building which I looked up and found to be a high school.

After breakfast I had time to do some stretches and exercises before showering and getting ready to head to the DIN office for the ISO meeting. It’s only a few minutes walk away. We had a nice meeting room with modern equipment, but it seemed the room didn’t have air conditioning. The windows were wide open with a warm wind blowing in. The wind grew stronger over the day, and when I checked Berlin weather it said there was a gale warning current for this area of Germany. It got really strong by the late afternoon, with wind whistling through the ajar windows we had in the meeting room.

The morning was a plenary session devoted to the entire Technical Committee 42 Photography, which is a lot of administrative stuff. Then we got into the Working Group 18 meetings on Digital Photography, while the print photography experts split off for their own working group discussions. We also had administrative work to begin, before the first technical session in the afternoon, on image information capacity.

Lunch was supplied in the foyer right outside our meeting room, with a selection of sandwiches, small bites such as meatballs and some sort of cheesy nuggets, a selection of German cakes, and also churros for some reason. Also on food, I searched for some places for eat dinners this week, looking for German restaurants with vegetarian options, and also good places for vegetarian food. The vegetarian options at German style restaurants tend to be a bit underwhelming, so I wanted to also find something with good vegetarian food. I found a very nice looking place and made a booking for Thursday night as a surprise for my wife.

After the technical session I had to attend the Chair Advisory Group meeting as the head of delegation for Australia. This is an administrative group dealing with overall matters for the entire technical committee. We had a report on work done since the last plenary meeting two years ago on defining more diverse skin tones for photographic testing, discussion of the next plenary meeting in two years to be held in the USA, and some other topics.

After that I returned to the hotel and met up with my wife, who had been busy sketching things while exploring the neighbourhood today. We went out for dinner to a nearby place called Faustus Schnitzelhaus, which I’d found while searching during the meeting. On the way we stopped briefly to loo at the bakery right next door to the hotel, which my wife had told me I needed to see. They had a big range of delicious looking breads and cakes, and I bought a streuselschnecke for dessert later. My wife had a vegetarian flammkuchen, while I tried a veal schnitzel with fried potatoes and mushroom sauce.

The food was really good and the atmosphere was nicely wood-panelled and traditionally German. The place was also busy with customers, both tourists and locals, which was a good sign. The schnitzel was excellent and very filling.

We returned again to our hotel for the night. Hopefully to sleep a little better and get fully adjusted to the time zone.

This morning I worked on my report for Standards Australia on the recent ISO Photography Standards meeting I attended in Japan. I have to summarise all of the relevant technical and administrative discussions and resolutions of the meeting, which means going through my own notes, the official minutes, and about 50 separate reports on all of the work that was done at the meeting and since the last meeting (in Sydney back in October last year). It takes a good three hours or so to work through all of that and complete the document, and then submit it to SA.

I’d thought about taking a long drive with Scully for lunch, to get out of the house a bit since I don’t have any ethics classes today. But I still had some rye sourdough loaf at home and decided to use that up for my lunch instead.

I took Scully for a walk instead, around the harbour shore and past Bay Brew where I tried another of their sweet treats, this time a coconut rough slice. It was okay, but not as good as the caramel slice I had last week.

After we got home I worked on a new Darths & Droids comic, and then started preparing for our trip to New Zealand on Friday. I checked out the NZ Traveller Declaration site online, which is a form we need to fill out prior to arrival. But it says you are only allowed to start filling it out within 24 hours of your departure, so we couldn’t do it today and will have to do it tomorrow. We need the address of our accommodation in NZ, but I don’t know where we’re staying. My wife’s sister booked accommodation for the whole family, so I actually have no idea where it is. But my wife got the info so we can fill in the form tomorrow.

I also prepared my bird-watching apps, Merlin ID and eBird, by downloading and installing bird data packs for New Zealand. I neglected to do this before leaving for Japan, which meant they defaulted to generic common birds, making some IDs difficult when we were over there.

Lastly, I formatted my Japan travel diary into web pages on my site. These are essentially the same text as the daily posts I posted here while in Japan, but I’ve added a lot of extra photos for the first two days so far, and will add more as I get through processing them. Id hoped to have this completed by the time we leave for NZ, but I’ve run out of time!

(I missed posting an update yesterday as I was away from WiFi. So this is Saturday’s and Sunday’s events combined. Also, I haven’t had time to upload any photos yet, so this post doesn’t have any photos.)

Saturday 1 March

We set an alarm for 07:30 this morning. We planned to message my in-laws to arrange a breakfast time, but we were ready to go well before them, so my wife and I headed over to the City Bakery by ourselves. I had the granola this time, which was good, but a very small serve. I’d normally have three times that much at home for breakfast. We were finished pretty much as the in-laws arrived, so we just said hi in passing and went back to our room to finish packing and check out of the hotel. We arranged to meet after checking out at 10:30. Everyone dropped their luggage at the hotel luggage room, to be picked up in the evening.

We caught a Yamanote Line train north to Nishi-Nippori, where we changed for a Chiyoda Line train to take us two stops to Nezu. This is further north than I’ve ever been before in Tokyo, seeing new sights and neighbourhoods. Right near Nezu Station is Nezu Jinja, a Shinto shrine. This one is smaller and less well known that some others, but notable for having hundreds of red torii gates, which are rarer in Tokyo than at the famous temples in Kyoto. I thought this would be a great finish to our time in Tokyo for my in-laws.

When we got to the temple, there were a handful of market stalls just inside the entrance, selling mostly foodstuffs: rice crackers, mochi, cakes, and one selling fresh vegetables.Beyond this was a small pond with dozens of tortoises sunning themselves on a rock. People were tossing food, and dozens of pigeons were flocking around for it, plus another couple of birds which I couldn’t identify until I looked them up on eBird: brown-eared bulbuls. I’m not sure if I’ve ever seen this species before. A bit later I got a decent photo of one, so that’s good too.

Near here was the beginning of the path under the torii. I was surprised how small they were, each one with an opening basically the size of a door, not much bigger than would allow a person through. I had been expecting them to be much larger, like the ones at Fushimi Inari Taisha in Kyoto. Still, it was fun and very scenic to walk through the corridor created by the gates, and there weren’t nearly as many people as in Kyoto. There was one Spanish couple who took forever taking photos of each other at multiple scenic spots, causing us to have to wait interminably for a photo without them in it, but for the most part it was pretty quiet and easy to get good photos.

After finishing the torii walk, we explored the rest of the shrine, with one large courtyard and building, and a few smaller outbuildings and features. It wasn’t a large shrine, so we finished without taking too long and then began walking towards the Yanaka Ginza shopping street for our next sight of the day.

On the way we stopped at the Art Cafe Polypus for lunch and drinks. My wife decided to go explore around the area on her own while the rest of us ate. I got a chicken curry donburi and it came with a drink as a lunch set, so I chose the house-made ginger lemonade. Both the food and drink were pretty good. We sat up in a room on the third floor which just had three tables in it, while the counter and a few other tables were on the second floor. We thought we were the only customers until we left, when we saw that the second floor was full of people.

Rejoining my wife, we walked towards Yanaka Ginza. This is an old shopping street that survived the war, with many older buildings crowding a narrow street lined with shops. As we got near, the tourist density grew, showing that this place was more well-known that Nezu Jinja. The shopping street itself was picturesque, but somewhat crowded, with hundreds of people walking in both directions. There were street food stalls, restaurants, and various shops, many with interesting things to look at. My wife bought us a ceramic bowl, like a slightly small rice bowl, in the wabi-sabi style with some asymmetry to the shape.

After reaching the end of the street we were at Nippori Station, where we boarded a train back to Shinagawa. We arrived there about 15:30. My in-laws went into the hotel to rest up a bit, while my wife and I ventured out again to walk around and keep moving, rather than sit and for a couple of hours. We walked back over to Gotanda to look around some of the shops there. On the way we passed two embassies, the embassy of Iceland, and one with the plaque on the door written in Cyrillic script that I couldn’t read but later searched and found it to be the Embassy of Serbia.

When we reached Gotanda, there was a small shopping mall, but it didn’t have a lot in it. After walking around a few of the streets M. decided she could do with a coffee and I searched cafes in the area, finding Café au Lait Tokyo. This was also up an unassuming old staircase on the second floor of a building. When we arrived they said they only had room at the bar for us, so we sat there. There was another room up the front with a window facing the street where there were a few tables with very plush lounge chairs and sofas. They only served café au lait coffee, but you could customise it in various ways with amounts of milk, amounts of sugar, different toppings, flavours, types of milk, etc. They guy behind the bar gave us each a small slip of paper and highlighter pens to mark our customisations. I was worried they’d ask me to order a coffee in order to sit there, but they were okay when we only ordered one drink. My wife also got a grilled cheese sandwich, asking for no ham on the ham and cheese menu item, and then having to say no mustard or ketchup either when the guy asked if she wanted those. I chose a mini dessert of a caramel mouse cake, which was a smallish serving, but enough to satisfy a sweet tooth. The coffee came in a small wide bowl without any handle, and she said it was good.

From here we decided to take a further walk down towards Osaki, along the Meguro River. I thought we might see some more birds, but the river was very canal-like and we didn’t see any. We found the Osaki New City shopping mall and looked around. It was larger and better than the one at Gotanda, but not very big, with only two moderate sized floors of shops.

Once done with that we headed back to the hotel, via another route. At first we passed mainly office buildings, but we turned into a residential neighbourhood and this was much more interesting, with a mix of old houses and some very new and expensive looking apartment buildings. We arrived back at the hotel at 18:00.

We met up with my in-laws, collected our luggage, and left for Haneda Airport about 18:20. We caught the Keikyu Line Haneda Express and arrived at the airport just before 19:00. We passed through security and customs, which were a little busy so it took some time, and then had a couple of hours to wait for our flight. My wife and I did some stretching exercises to help ensure we didn’t get stiff or cramped during the long hours of sitting on the flight. We boarded and departed just a few minutes behind schedule.

Sunday 2 March

Despite not really sleeping on the flight, the time seemed to pass faster than I expected, and before we knew it they were turning the lights on for the breakfast service. We flew into Sydney Airport from the north, and had a good view of the city out the left side of the plane. We landed just before 09:30.

Unfortunately there were several delays getting home. First, the terminal was full when we arrived, so the plane had to wait on the tarmac until a gate became available. Then there were a few flights arriving at the same time, and there was a long queue to get through the automated passport checking gates, so that took some time. We didn’t have to wait for checked luggage, so we left my in-laws at the baggage claim since were were heading to our respective homes by different transport, so there was no point waiting for them. My wife and I headed down to the train station and boarded a train to Central where we intended to change for a train on our own line that would drop us a short walk from home.

But as we pulled into Central it was clear that something was wrong. None of the other platforms in the entire station had so much as a single person on them waiting for trains. This could mean only one thing: the trains were not running. Obviously the airport train was, but it seemed no other train line was. Checking online, I discovered that the only trains running were essentially a shuttle between the airport and Central, and the Metro lin, which was also running a reduced service, with a shuttle between Central and Martin Place, and another shuttle from Martin Place to Tallawong. We could take the Metro and walk a longer distance from the nearest station to our home. Normally this would be a single train, but today for some reason we had to change trains at Martin Place. So our trip home had an extra train change and a walk about twice as long at the home end.

My wife stopped for an iced coffee in the Sydney heat and humidity that was a shock after being in winter Tokyo. We arrived at home, for one more shock.

When the lift door opened on our floor of our apartment building, we were greeted by the sight of a large plastic bin sitting in the corridor, catching a continual stream of drips leaking from a light fitting in the ceiling. The bin was half full, and the carpet in the corridor soaking wet!

We quickly went into our apartment and checked if the ceiling was leaking water anywhere. Thankfully it was all dry, but this was a definite moment of panic, thinking maybe our bedroom or living room might have been flooded while we were away. A building management representative arrived soon afterwards with a plumber, and I asked what the story was, and the guy said the leak only happened two or three hours ago, and was a hot water pipe in the corridor, which the plumber was about to fix. Phew!

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That ends the travel diary, but we had a few others things to do today. We went grocery shopping to restock with vegetables and fruit and milk. My wife’s friend brought Scully back over to drop her off, and my wife went with them to catch up and have a coffee out while I prepared for my ethics classes. I had three tonight, and it was a bit of a struggle with tiredness, but I managed okay.

Time for an early night to bed and hopefully a good sleep before tomorrow, which will be my usual very busy Monday.

Friday 28 February

We set an alarm for 07:30, to give me time to get ready and leave at 08:00 to walk to the last day of my ISO Photography Standards meeting. I had some leftover sweet food items as a makeshift partial breakfast before heading out, and picked up an onigiri and a cup of vegetable sticks from a 7-11 near the meeting venue to fill it out with something a bit healthier.

The last technical session was about image information content, measuring camera reproduction fidelity using metrics based on Shannon information theory. Following this we had the administrative closing sessions, going over action items and planning for future meetings. The next will be in Berlin in June, which my wife and I will also be travelling to. At the start of the lunch break I had to participate in editing of resolutions, a job which falls to one representative from each country. As the only Australian attending, I always end up doing this task.

For lunch I walked over to the MSB Tamachi building, which has a couple of floors of restaurants. I looked around before choosing こびんちょ (Kobincho) a place that had a lunch special of a bowl of udon noodles with a small tempura-don bowl of tempura prawns and vegetables on rice. It was pretty good!

After lunch, the meeting concluded at 14:29, one minute earlier than listed in the agenda.

I walked back via another different route, this time taking a walkway along one of the canals running north-south through Shibaura. This was a more pleasant walk, and I took my time a bit since I saw several different birds: mallards, tufted ducks, eastern spot-billed ducks, eurasian coots, a white wagtail, and lots and lots of black-headed gulls. I also saw what looked like an eagle soaring high overhead, but couldn’t identify the species.

As I neared the hotel, walking through Shinagawa Station, I spotted a very bewildered looking young woman with a large suitcase looking around in obvious confusion. I asked her if she needed help finding anything and she answered in an American accent, saying she wanted to get tickets for the Narita Express to the airport and her phone had died and she didn’t know where to go. I knew there were multiple ticket offices in the station for different train companies, and checked which was the right one on my phone, then pointed her in the right direction. She was very grateful – I hope she made it to the airport okay!

I got back to the hotel a bit after 15:00, and the others were waiting for me in the hotel lobby, keen to go out again! They’d spent the morning walking down to Kitashinagawa to explore the old style neighbourhood there, which we’d discovered ourselves last trip. But now, rejoining me, the plan was to head out to Sekaido, the giant art supply store in Shinjuku. My mother-in-law is a keen artist, working in pencil and watercolour, and wanted to browse and maybe buy some things that would be difficult to get at home. And my wife has recently taken up ink sketching and watercolour as well.

We took a Yamanote Line train to Shinjuku and headed across to Sekaido. The walk passed through a vibrant shopping district, and the others stopped to check out another of the shops before we got to our destination. Once in Sekaido, we explored the third floor with painting supplies, then the second with paper and drawing supplies. This took some time as there was so much to see, and everyone but me bought a few things. We briefly looked around the ground floor, which had stationery, before leaving to head back to Shinjuku Station to catch a Marunouchi Line subway train to Akasaka-Mitsuke Station.

Here we walked a short distance to Hitori Shabu Shabu Nanadaime Matsugoro, a shabu shabu restaurant which I’d booked for dinner. When we walked in the door, a woman asked if we had a reservation, and when I said yes, she knew my name instantly without having to check. She showed us to four adjacent bar seats that were part of an oval surrounding the central kitchen area, and then explained the menu to us in moderately good English. She was extremely friendly and helpful, and after our meal my wife gave her one of the Australia stickers we’d brought to give to helpful people.

We all ordered food, my wife getting the vegetable plate, while the rest of us got a meat plate, which came with vegetables as well, and we all ordered an additional bowl of rice. The meals came with ponzu sauce and sesame sauce, and additional condiments of chopped spring onion and dried garlic to mix in to taste. There was also a small bottle of chilli oil, which my wife mistook for soy sauce and poured a lot on her rice before tasting it and realising her error! My in-laws had never had shabu shabu before and were very impressed with the variety of ingredients and flavours of the sauces, and the fun of cooking everything yourself in the steaming hotpot, which was really pleasing. I was a little worried they might not like some of the new food experiences, but it’s been a positive experience for them, which is great.

After the meal, we pondered finding some place to have drinks and maybe a small dessert. I searched the area on Google Maps and located the Bar Wagokoro Akasaka, which was described in Maps as a “cocktail chocolate pairing bar”, which sounded ideal, and it was only two short blocks away. We walked there, but had trouble locating it until my wife spotted a photo outside one building which showed cocktails and chocolates. There was a logo with Japanese on it, but no other indication what sort of a place it was, and the indication that it was on the third floor.

We went up in the tiny lift and emerged in an intimate room with only 15 seats: two tables of four and seven along the bar, facing an impressive wall of whiskies. The top shelf was entirely Japanese whiskies, the second shelf entirely Scotch, and the lowest shelf had other whiskies and various other bar essentials and liqueurs.

The bartender, immaculate in a blue pinstripe suit, brought us English menus and explained the various chocolates and selection options. I chose an “oriental chocolate cocktail” with cinnamon and cardamom, my sister-in-law got a “ruby chocolate and raspberry” cocktail, my wife got a non-alcoholic version of the same, and her mother chose an apple one.

I ordered the sweets assortment, which allowed two choices from the menu of 21 different types of chocolates, plus it came with a selection of other small chocolates, bites of gateaux, and dried fruits, presented on a spectacular patterned plate, while my in-laws chose individual chocolates each. The bartender also brought us complimentary rice crackers.

The drinks and chocolates were extremely well presented and delicious. The bartender was the only staff present, and also the owner according to some online reviews, and very friendly. M. gave him another of our Australia stickers in appreciation. This was a truly delightful find and a delicious way to end our last dinner before heading to the airport tomorrow.

We walked the short distance back to Akasaka-Mitsuge Station and caught a Ginza Line train to Shimbashi, where we changed for a Tokaido Line train to Shinagawa. The Tokaido Line trains are more express and Shinagawa was only one stop away. We got off there and headed back to our hotel for our last night in Tokyo.