Yesterday we had our APCAUCE regional updates session in the afternoon. Despite getting off to a rocky start, we had a good turnout, good presentations and a lot of good discussions afterward. China had the biggest contingent, which is nice to see. They are making a lot of progress on their huge spam problem, but a lot more still needs to be done. We also had updates for Japan and Singapore, and I did updates for “Chinese Taipei” and USA. There were also folks from New Zealand, Korea and India in attendance, if I’m not leaving anyone out.
Had some trouble with my conference badge though. Out of political considerations our organizational policy is to use the title “Chinese Taipei” and my badge had a different word on it. I had put in the registration comments to request they used “Chinese Taipei” but somehow that slipped through. Fortunately the registration desk was able to make up a new badge right away.
hserus and Dave Crocker were staying on for an organizational meeting into the evening and I wasn’t willing to wait around that late for dinner, so I set off on my own. There’s very little around the hotel and convention center, but hserus mentioned that one stop down the subway line there were a bunch of restaurants. Unfortunately I think he meant two stops down. I got out one stop down and there was hardly anything, except a Chinese restaurant and a Korean restaurant. I kept walking down towards the next station down (北山, or Kitayama though I want to pronounce it beishan) and as I got closer I saw a McDonald’s, but fortunately there were a lot of other restaurants nearby.
I settled for a Japanese restaurant under the Royal Host restaurant. The menu didn’t have many pictures so it was hard to order and Japanese menus tend to have too much hiragana and katakana so I can’t use my meager Chinese skills to read them. They had one of those “plastic model food” displays in the front window, so I went outside and pointed at what I wanted. I got a marinated pork with rice dish and a bowl of what I think was soba noodle soup, plus tea and a bottle of Kirin Ichiban. I’ve at least learned how to read the katakana for “beer”.
There was also a sporting goods shop nearby, so I popped in and picked up a nice knit cap and also a headband to replace the one hserus lent me and I lost. Oops. At first I wast getting shocked by the prices (2800 yen for a knit cap, about $28), but I found some cheaper “Made In China” stuff that was perfectly good enough and 1/10th the price. With the scarf I bought the first night, and the gloves I brought with me, I was fine except my ears were freezing and about to fall off. Once I had the cap though, I was quite comfortably warm all over.
There was also a SunPlus convenience store nearby so I popped in there to get some snacks and beverages, since there’s nothing like that around the hotel except a soda vending machine in the subway station. After getting all stocked up, I returned to the hotel.