It is now just a little over one year since the big earthquake here in Japan. It may not have caused damage for everyone in Japan, but everyone was and still are affected by it. This was marked with one minutes silence the 11. of March 2012 in Japan. Underneath here you can see that earthquakes was a part of everyday life in 2011, especially north east of Tokyo:

PVExpo

Last week PVExpo was in Tokyo. One of the great things about working in one of the biggest cities in the world (if not The biggest) is having close access to the marked and the research which is ongoing in this high tech country. PV Expo is Japans largest international exhibition for photovoltaics and Elkem was having a stand there. In addition to the expo for photovoltaics there were also other expos in the same area for Eco House, Hydrogen and Fuel Cells and Battery Technology. This is something that makes this area a place where some of the most interesting companies and new technologies are showcased. Not at least Elkem Solar! You can see the stand in the pictures below:

The expo lasted for three days where I was working on the stand, attended a seminar and tried to figure out who of the 600 stands in the different areas which had the best and most interesting technology for Elkem. The only problem is that almost everything is written in Japanese, and English is not always the preferred language spoken in Japan. I am of course trying to learn Japanese language myself, but I must admit that I am still a far cry from speaking Japanese in technical terms. As for reading, I now know how to read one of the Japanese written languages, the downside is that I have two more to go and one these languages is based on Chinese characters with between 5000 and 10000 characters used in daily life in Japan!

Just as a notice for anyone who thinks that winter/spring in Tokyo is very warm, take a look at this picture taken at the first morning of the Expo. Before I came to Japan I had heard that it was several years ago since last time it snowed in Japan, but on this day it was a real snowstorm. Together with the palm trees it adds up for a bit of a surreal view on this artificial iceland situated nearby the harbor in Tokyo city.