Tokyo express – a global nomad experiment*
*Experiment conducted and recorded for the purpose of my Doctor of Design thesis.

Travel averages: 12 hours travel time from London Heathrow to Tokyo Narita… Travel time from city centers to airports: one hour and a half… 72 hours in Tokyo!

Travel purpose? The 2 day “Metapolis and Urban Life” workshop at the UbiComp2005 conference, and aside… site-peeping and a global nomad experiment!

I pack everything I need in a cabin baggage—what if I loose it? I can carry one bag of 23 x 35 x 55 cm weighting 6 Kg maximum… I may also bring a hand bag weighting 1 Kg maximum, and a small camera. But I choose not. I put the camera in the unique carry-on item. In business class, I can carry 9 kg more: a bag of 23 x 35 x 55 cm or a garment bag 20cm thick when folded, this not exceeding 8 Kg, and a briefcase or laptop computer of 8 Kg maximum!

I leave Heathrow with a cabin luggage weighting 4.9 Kg. I have packed 4 sets of clothes (the weather is clement) for the 3 days in Tokyo and travel back, this adding up to the set I wear for traveling; I won’t carry any other pair of shoes but the one I put on … so these have to be multipurpose! I bring also a guide book, my Moleskine, my USB key—loaded with “heavy” information, and pens. On my way back, 0.5 ml of perfume, paste, and few grams of beauty cream less, maps and guides dispensed by the office of tourism and left at the hotel, my cabin luggage weights 5.1 Kg… because of the printed workshop proceedings graciously handed day 1 of the workshop, and the two toys in egg-shaped plastic shells that I have got from Tokyo vending machines.

During the flight, I could work had I carried my computer. But I did not want to, also because of the weight of my “dinosaur” machine… I also knew I could find a computer on the conference site or at the hotel “business center.” I can play games, “battleship” or “trivia” with fellow passengers. I choose a solitary activity, to catch up watching movies I have otherwise no time to see in my busy life, 9 in 24 hours—a cine-marathon!

After all, I could have brought my computer if I had packed my beauty case properly. I did not need to bring all the heavily packaged creams, perfumes and the newly bought 125 ml toothpaste. I did even bring 50 ml shower gels and shampoo bottles. They will be of better quality—I am convinced—than those offered at the Hotel. The airline provides you on each way with a toothbrush, a mini tube of toothpaste, and a pen, small bloc-notes and tissue paper on the way to Tokyo... The hotel supplies daily tea bags, newspaper, tooth brush, shampoo, soap, and shower gel... I could have packed less and in a better way! Next time I will have my travel beauty case ready, with my favorite creams and shampoo… poured out in smaller and lighter containers. For a global nomad, packing for traveling light requires practice. It even influences what kind of clothing—not prone to shrinking and of high performance, light material—you get.

The 2 day “Metapolis and Urban Life” workshop at the UbiComp2005 brings together practitioners and researchers from various part of the world, and various fields (social, technical…). Among participants, the exchange of ideas is fructuous! Though well organized, many of us would have appreciated some feedback from the present organizers themselves, also experts in their own field, and working at Intel Research…

Obviously, three days in Tokyo is not enough to get impregnated with the culture! If the workshop did not require some field study in the city, I would not even have been able to see and experience as much. If you do no get lost in translation (Tokyo has three different train systems, each with its own ticketing), the use of ticket distributors can puzzle. I am amazed however by the cleverness and pragmatism of Japanese solutions, from packaging to vending machines, and to the economy of space. In short, I went to Japan for work purpose, as a global nomad. Still I have experienced, seen, heard, used…: Ginza, Shibuya and the Electric Town (So Akira-like!), vending machines at every corner, the cash economy (is that paradoxical?), restaurant menus written exclusively in Japanese, a football field on top of a building, a “RanKing RanQueen” store selling items ranked according to the best selling, special toilet seats with “flushing” noise option to cover for other inconvenient noises, rush hour, an I-pod-like elevator with inside an LCD screen showing videos of Japanese landscape, schoolgirls in short plaid skirts and high socks, sushi, strange shell fish, a sake bar where I have tasted a 23 year-old sake!... ingeniously packaged rice balls, fake cricket sounds in trees (apparently all over Tokyo), old building typology with the absolute right proportions, the cleanliness of streets, umbrella storage spaces outside buildings… During the 3 days I was in Japan, Miyazaki, director of the Japanese Anime “Spirited Away” received a Golden Lion, and a newly formed Democratic Party took over 300 seats on 400 at the parliament.

Tokyo? I will visit again, for longer, and as another nomad—a tourist.