Day 2 (7 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

As expected today's sleeping conditions was not right. Since I was so exhausted, last night I went bed quite early and unfortunately woken up at 1:00am and couldn't be able to go back to asleep.

Manila observatory

Anyway, after having breakfast I went to the observatory to meet my point of contact. Since I arrived there a few minutes earlier I did walk around the beautiful campas. The 150 years old observatory, which was established by Jesuit, is a separate institute that is not supported by the government. Ateneo de Manila university, also Jesuit university, is located in the same compound. Scientists at the observatory teach at this university.

This is us (left to right James, me and Pope whom I met at ICTP) at the top of the buildings, surveying for GPS antenna location!

Finally I met Dr James Simpus and two other staffs (Pope and Clint), whom I met at ICTP and Indonesia when they came to attend summer schools where I also participated as lecturers. We did not waste time to start navigate a possible home for AMBER sensor. I picked very quite place, at least from external visible magnetic stuff. I requested if we can start testing if the site is really magnetically quite place.
Unfortunately it is not. For the reason we do not know the sensor detected a very big noise that quickly saturate the measurments. It reads way more than 65000nT (maximum range for our magnetometers). We tried different options, such as moving the sensor to different locations, but still big interface that keeps saturate our measurments. We spent more three hours looking into different options but no change. Finally we gave up that this area is not a good site for our sensor, and packed everything back into its box and called it off for the day.
What is next? That was the question I asked to my self. James gave me hope to put it either at the Jesuit residence or at the high school, both of them are away from the observatory. The bad news is, today is Sunday and tomorrow is also a holiday  (Chinese new year), and those offices are closed. However, James will try to contact people from those two facilities if they can allow us in tomorrow at least to test the site if it magnetically quite place. Pray for me to get a nice home of my sensor quickly so that I accomplish my mission ontime/as planned.
Now I'm back to my hotel straggling not to go bed early so that my sleeping conditions behave normal.
Around 10:00pm I got update from James, it seems there are positive sign from both facilities. We may be able to test the site at the Jesuit residence tomorrow afternoon the earliest. However, due to the holiday, we can't do anything at high school site tomorrow. Keep crossing your fingers for the best of luck.

Day 1 (6 February 2016) in Manila, Philippines

Guess what takes long to get out of Manila airport? Well if you said immigration, you're absolutely wrong. Immigration process is actually very quick and efficient. It is the taxi line that takes century to get taxi ride to your hotel. 
When you step out of the buildings, you will hear mixed voice 'taxi' 'taxi'. If you follow  them without asking the price, they will rip you off. Because they do not have meter on their taxi, thus they just tell you crazy price. The good news is there are few taxis, they called them yellow taxi, that have meter on it. However, it has a long waiting line that takes about excess of an hour. What surprised me most was the price the other taxi offered me. It was four times higher the price I paid for metered taxi. Good to know!

Part of Manila city as viewed from my hotel window

Another new thing, at least for me, is how badly Philippines atmosphere is polluted. I remember when I went to China for the first time back in 2006, I had a hard time to see a blue sky. Well it is the same here in Manila. I thought here there are less industries or factories that emit polluted gas into the atmosphere; that may be true but at least I witnessed amazingly crowded traffics, with many of the cars are very old which may not pass smock check control if there is any.
Let's step aside the global warming issue and explore something else. How about some uniquely fun stuff. Take a look the vedio shown below. This is how the Philippinos attract customers into their ice cream shop; unfortunately they do not have that much customers inside but they got a lot of spectators watching them dancing just from outside. 

Anyway today, I'm so exhausted and will crash down soon. My scientific mission will be kicked off tomorrow.

Day 5 (15 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

Today is my last day in Japan for this trip. My flight from Nagoya departs at 2:50pm, which means I've a free half a day to look around Nagoya. Since I'm in Nagoya, I would very embarrassed if I leave Nagoya without visiting the Toyota Automobile museum facility. BTW, Toyota company's headquarter is located at Toyota, Aichi Prefecture, around 30km from Nagoya. Just a few history about Toyota automobile production company, the 11th-largest company in the world by revenue; it was founded in 1937 by Kiichiro Toyoda as spinoff from his dad's company (Toyoda industries) to create automobiles. Three years earlier, in 1934, the Toyota Industries created its first product, the Type A engine, and, in 1936, its first passenger car, the Toyota AA. Now the world renown car company, Toyota Motor Corporation, produces vehicles under 5 brands, including the Toyota brand, Hino, Lexus, Ranz, and Scion.

Anyway, I went to the museum this morning. I had to catch two train. If you love to see how car technology changed from time to time, this is the best place to be. It was so amazing. See some pictures from my visit.

This was the first engine the then Toyoda industries now Toyota Motor Corporation produced. They called it Type A engine.

Toyota Motor Corporation's first passenger car, named as Toyota AA

This was Franklin D. Roosevelt's (32nd US president) limousine!

From this Benz Velo in late 1886 in Germany

To this Toyota FCV-R in 2011

Toyota i-REAL in 2009

I'm now sitting at Nagoya airport, waiting for my flight to Narita airport then to home. My first time visit to Japan in general was so interesting and lovely. Hope science will bring me back again. Thank you Science.
I'm now back home safely.

Day 4 (14 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

No good sleep today. I woke up around 3:00AM and couldn't be able to fall asleep again. Well! it was unfortunate but I had to make myself ready for business as usual. My invited presentation is today, early in the morning (the third speaker of the morning session).
I got good breakfast and drank a cap of coffee. The presentation went out very well, attracted a lot of attentions. A few of us (two from US and two Japanese) went to a french restaurant inside Nagoya University campus for lunch. I had chicken with french-fries and it was so delicious.
In general the conference was a success, and the meeting was adjourned at about 5:00pm, said goodbye to colleagues from around the world.

Figure shown is the group picture of the participants 

Day 3 (13 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

I had a good sleep today, and looks bright for the start of my prime mission of my trip to Nagoya; i.e., to attend the International Symposium Project for Solar-Terrestrial Environment Prediction (PSTEP) and present an invited presentation at the conference. The symposium started yesterday night with an icebreaker reception. The conference being held inside Engineering and Science fancy building of Nagoya University. The meeting place is not that far from my hotel by train. That means today I won't have any site seeing to share. 

Day 2 (12 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

Bright day! I had a so so sleep, which is not bad for the first night. Today is my free day, meaning I'll have time to go around Nagoya. First thing I do, I'll search top tourist attractive place to see in Nagoya. Well! I found many but not sure if I can see them all in one day. Since I've been driving Toyota car for the last 15 years, I'm so much interested to visit Toyota Automobile Museum and factory tour. Bad luck, the museum is closed today, according to the information posted on their website. The other place that I'm interested to visit was Railway Park, which is also closed today. Ok! how about Nagoya City Science Museum and Nagoya Castle, their website doesn't say it is closed today.
I had my breakfast and headed on to Science Museum first. Guess what? It was closed too. How unlucky I'm today. Well! at least I glanced it from outside and its surrounding very marvelous area.

Figure 1. Nagoya city Science Museum from outside

Then I went to Nagoya Castle. Nagoya Castle was constructed more than 400 years ago. It was constructed on the orders of Ieyasu TOKUGAWA, who was the founder and first shogun of the Tokugawa shogunate of Japan which virtually ruled Japan from the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600 until the Meiji Restoration in 1868. The Construction was completed in 1612. Sadly enough, in May 1945, during WWII the air raids on Nagoya destroyed most of the buildings including the main and small donjons, and the Hommaru Palace. The main castle was then reconstructed in 1957-1959. However, the Hommaru Palace, which is next to the main castle, is under reconstruction. The reconstruction began in January 2009 and expected to be fully completed in 2018.

 Nagoya Castle

 This dolphin was the one who kept the evil away from the Castle!

Not sure what this symbol is doing inside the Castle!

Pic with Castle

Day 1 (11 January 2016) in Nagoya, Japan

After a long hours direct flight from Boston, I safely landed at Narita international airport in Tokyo. The flight was so smooth and the services of Japan Airline is actually not bad. The security/immigration process was very friendly. My next flight to Nagoya was just after 2hrs layover in Tokyo, and arrived in Nagoya around 8:00pm. Since it was late in the evening, I decided to take a taxi instead of Metro. I arrived in my hotel and checked in without any problem, but the restaurant was closed and no food, meaning no dinner. Hummm! really? It was about 9:30pm and I went out if I can find any fast food store. I found 7-eleven store where I got a chicken sandwich which was quite enough for the night. Anyway, good night and hope I'll have more to say tomorrow.

Narita International Airport while I was waiting for my next flight.