Nakajima Park

My flight home today is a late evening one, so I had most of the day to kill first.  I had a look at a map, and decided to visit Nakajima Park, a few stops south on the metro from my hotel.

One reason I chose the park is the map showed it contains Sapporo City Observatory.

Aha! I spied an open door!  I walked up to it, and yes, it was open for viewing.  Not only that, but the telescope was configured to see the sun.  A Japanese gentleman welcomed me in, and indicated I should take a look.  It was a great view of a quite spotty sun.  Then he pointed to another eyepiece.  This had another filter enabling me to see several prominences.  Once he realised I knew what I was looking at, we had a nice little conversation about the telescope and some pictures on the wall taken with it.

After that pleasant interlude I continued my walk around the park.  There were many good views across the lake.

And there were more formal garden arrangements.

this must look magnificent when the wisteria is in bloom

It was very hot, so I found an ice cream place, and sat enjoying it, while being regaled with 1970s pop music.  Then, of course, I needed to find a public convenience.  I had discovered there are two styles: the over-the-top luxurious loos with heated seats and built in everything, and the holes in the ground.  The park had only the more primitive option.

the romance of travel

Then it was time for lunch, then back to the hotel to talk about neuromorphic computing with another colleague over iced coffee.

Ready to fly home tonight.

Sapporo Art Park

The ALife conference is great!  I'm really enjoying the workshops, the presentations, and catching up with colleagues who I haven't seen in person since 2019.  (I'm not enjoying the heat so much, though.)

Today we got a break from the hard work, with an excursion to the Sapporo Art Park.  There were lots of things to view, but I (and many of my colleagues) spent quite a while in the interactive "Animals of Flowers" room.

Here, wriggling lizards and geckos and flowers and snakes and more were projected on to the walls and floor.  If you stamped on one, it emitted a load of flowers.

a projected critter

What I didn't realise at first, until I saw some surprising creatures, was that this was truly interactive: there were pieces of paper with outlines of the critters that you could colour in, give to a staff member to be scanned in, then watch your design come to life!

seems I'm not the only one who went to GECCO and ALife back to back!

It was surprisingly engaging: I found myself grinning widely at all the critters moving around and the exploding flowers.

They had closed the ice cream stall just before we left the installation.  Oh well.

Then it was off to the conference dinner and awards ceremony.

view from a hotel window

Another day, another hotel in another country.  I barely had 36 hours at home after getting back from the GECCO conference in Lisbon, before leaving to travel to the Artificial Life conference in Sapporo, Japan.  I thought long and hard about whether this was a sensible thing to do, but I really really wanted to go to ALife: it's one of my favourites, and it hasn't been held in person since 2019.  So here I am, having arrived late last night, with a day off to recover from the 17 hours of flight (having to fly the long way keeping south to avoid flying over Russia; and with a change in Tokyo).

the hotel room, while about the same price as the one in Lisbon, is about a quarter the size

A colleague and I decided to find where the conference venue was, ready for the start tomorrow.  (This conference does not run over a weekend!)  It's a short walk form the hotel to the campus, which has a museum and cafe.  So we visited the museum too (and, obviously, the cafe).

This large mural tells the stories of some field trips to gather specimens.  These people were clearly bonkers.

The mural had an English translation, as did several of the exhibits, but not all.  So it wasn't often clear what the significance of some exhibits was.  That just added to the interest.

only just fits!

I'm looking forward to the conference starting tomorrow.