Trip to Ariake

I took a few images along the way from Saga City to the small town of Ariake.

Japanese Minute 02

Japanese Minute 02

Shots of the Saga Prefecture countryside taken from the train in slow motion.

Presented without sound.

Hakata Station

No time to make a map today. Here is a link to my photostream:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/54178213@N00/sets/72157626768666574/

Japanese Minute 01

Presented without a soundtrack.

What I'll share with the Japanese kids

During my week here I will be visiting two middle schools and I now have an interesting video about life at Saline High School I will share with them.



I will write more on the questions the kids in Mr. Fox's Approaching Asia class generated in a later post.

QR Codes on the Bus Stops

The bus stops around Japan have the typical bus schedule posted but with a QR code (below) printed in an easily accessible area.

You snap a photo of the code with your camera phone and it takes you to a web page with details of the bus route. This one resolved to the following web address:

http://jik.nnr.co.jp/cgi-bin/Tschedule/bn?cd=51005001

This includes the navigation code for the bus. If you follow the link you will need to change the encoding of the page to Japanese.

If you translate the page you will find information such as:

[12] office line Hinohara Schedule: from 17:18 (it was quarter after five when I checked) 
Via: Tenzin Monzen Taisyou Akasaka Fukuoka gate Ropponmatsu
Currently: Before the first train 1F Hakata Bus

Very cool. It tells you where it is coming from and where it is now.

Fukuoka

I arrived in Japan after a very long flight and long waits in Chicago and Seoul but despite being numbingly dull, they were quite interesting. Incheon airport has all sorts of amenities and tourist-friendly supports. It is a modern airport for a modern traveler.

In Fukuoka I took a number of photos with no particular theme to test out the map features of Flickr.