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May 08, 2005

Off to Japan

On Tuesday morning I am off to Japan for nearly a week for WWW2005, in Chiba, near Tokyo.

Tantek Çelik and Eric Meyer have organised a DevDay focussed on Microformats, an emerging standard for adding semantics to XHTML. Keep an eye on this subject it is going to be huge.

I feel privileged to have been invited to speak on the subject, and in fact I will be speaking twice - once on link microformats (like XHTML Friends Network, and VoteLinks) and later in the day on "Microformatting SGML". I'll publish my presentations here shortly.

On Saturday night, Kazuhito Kidachi, from Mitsue Links, and a great supporter of Web Standards in Japan has organized a dinner with Japanese developers and Eric, Molly Holzschlag, Tantek, and me. I'm really looking forward to that. If you are in Japan and would like to come along, drop me a line, and I'll forward your email onto Kazuhito.

I'm really excited to be going to Japan too, even though I'll have little time to see the sights. If you have any "must see" suggestions for Tokyo, please let me know,

John

May 8, 2005 | Permalink

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Comments

John

While there is plenty to see in the city, there are a ton of cool day trips that you can do from Tokyo. My favourite is probably Nikko (it's about a 2 hour train ride that heads north to Gunma prefecture from memory). It might take a bit of planning/advice from a local, but it is a terrific combination of amazing shrines/temples, golden buddhas and stunning gardens set in rich forest.

Another good trip is to Kamakura which is close to Chiba on the east coast. A large buddha to see, some quaint shrines and a wonderfully ricketty old train ride. You could also go to the 5 lakes district for some close up views of Mount Fuji.

My wife kept a pretty comprehensive blog/gallery of our time in Tokyo, have a peruse through some of her photos - http://35degrees.com/gallery - and search the blog archives for details of our adventures. Have a great trip!

Posted by: mattymcg | May 10, 2005 10:39:18 PM

Oh one more thing - make sure you get someone local to take you to a traditional no-frills izakaya (Japanese style bar). There are plenty of up-market versions but the best can be identified by the simple red lantern out the front, the waitresses are generally grumpy old women, the menu consists of hastily scribbled calligraphy plastered over the walls, and the food is a wide variety of snack food. Open late and the beer is cheap. Have fun.

Posted by: mattymcg | May 10, 2005 10:42:02 PM