Very short walk from ICPR2012

Tour Info

Below is the agenda of the tour.

Nov.12 Very Short Walk Tour
Official link

Thank you for joining the Nov.12 Very Short Walk Tour at ICPR2012.
We hope your stay in Tsukuba, Japan will be fun and memorable.

Starting Place: Conference site (1st floor)
Date and Time: Nov.12, 10:00 JST ? 15:00 (estimated)
Number of Participants: 14 (as of Nov.11, 08:40)

[What you need]
about 1,400 JPY

• Lunch / approx. 1,000 JPY
• TX line / 160 JPY per one way x 2 = 360 JPY

[Notice]
Although the tour is within a short range from Central Tsukuba, you will walk around for long hours.
Please come with easy-walking fashion.
According to the forecast, we may have rain on Monday. So do not forget to bring rain-ware.
If you feel tired, you can quit the tour anytime you want by telling the guide to do so.
You have to go back to the hotel by yourself in that case.

The tour plan will be changed by the conditions of the day (weather, etc).
As the half day tour is not a rigidly planned tour, if all the
participants may have same request, the guide may change the tour accordingly.

==Survival Info: (If you get lost somehow ...)==
(It is a good idea to keep 2,000 JPY or so for taking a taxi as a last resort.)

[Around Conference site and Tsukuba Station]
Find the Tsukuba Station. As it is the only station here, it should be very easy.
Then you can find the way to the conference site "Epocal".

[Around IIAS Tsukuba, or wherever]
Ask guys around you to the way to "TX Station (Kenkyu-Gakuen Eki)".
It is about 5min walk between IIAS and the Station.
Then 1-stop ride of TX line will bring you to Tsukuba Station.

We hope you enjoy the tour!

Visiting Tsukuba

As you may aware, honestly speaking, there are not so much to see except for science and research issues in Tsukuba (because there were nothing there 30 years ago ...).
People have been living here more than 1,000 years around this area (yes, even a small shrine around the town may have a history more than 1,000 years!), however, unfortunately it is a bit too far from the governmental/cultural centers (Nara, Kyoto from 1000 years ago, then Edo/Tokyo, for about 400 years).

So, if you want to see world-famous cultural heritages, you have to go up to Tokyo (by Tsukuba Express line , just 45 min from Tsukuba to Akihabara ) or some where like Nikko to which we oragnize a social excursion tour on 2012/11/16.

Well, you may find that kind of information on en.wikipedia.org or any guidebooks.

So, I have decided to provide a very very local information by which I hope you can feel this moment of Japan at our daily-life scenes.

Very Short Range Walk-out from the Conference Site

Some of the sites listed below will be visited by one of the half day excursions of the ICPR2012.
We welcome you to join the tour.

• Epocal Tsukuba (Tsukuba Convention Center) (map)
  ICPR2012 conference site.

• Convenience store : "Mini-Stop" (map)
  Similar convenience stores could be found all over Japan (Seven-Eleven, Lawson, Family-Mart, ...). Open 24 hours.

• Bookstore: "Book-Ace Tsukuba / TSUTAYA" (map)
  Books are basically cheap and colorful. You may find Manga there too. Open 24 hours(!).

• drag store "Terashima" (map)
  

• Dayz town (map)
  A shopping structure that has a supermarket store, drag store, amusement/game corner, restaurants (so called "izakaya" ), and Karaoke.
  • Daiso
    at B1F, there is a Daiso (amazingly) everything 100 JPY!), which might be a choice of buying cheap souveniours. (Most of them are made in China, but my Chinese student in U-Tsukuba says you cannot find/buy that at such a low price even in China B-). Open 10:00- 21:00
  • Karaoke Rainbow
    You can see Karaoke of truly popular Japanese style there.
    Price is determined based on per person, per hour, plus food.
    That means, they do not care how many songs you sing, how many people in a room.
    For example, you can chane songs by every 30 seconds if you want. Price is same.
    B1F. Open 11:00 - 29:00 (05:00 a.m.)
  • Restaurants
    ICPR2012 committee is planing to provide some coupons (discount tickets) available at restaurants in Dayz Town.

• Kasumi (map)
  A branch ("Food-square Gakuen-ten") of a big chain of supermarkets in Ibaraki. Open 9:30 - 26:00.
  Just accross the park behind the conference site Epocal, and you will soon find it.
  Actually, I frequently stop by at this supermarket for daily stuffs.

• Tsukuba Mitsui Building (map)
  Tsukuba Mitsui Building is one of the tallest buildings in downtown Tsukuba area. You can see nice city view from the top floor. Free (but be quiet!).

• Q't (CREO square) (map)
  Q't is a building of a shopping mall at the Tsukuba station. We will have lunch at cafeteria on 1F (approx. 1,000 JPY or less?).

• Tsukuba station (map)
  The gateway station to Akihabara of Tsukuba Express line.

• IIAS Tsukuba (map)
  IIAS Tsukuba is one of the largest shopping mall in North Greater Tokyo Area, having 200 and more shops)

• Cyberdyne Studio in IIAS Tsukuba (map)
  Cyberdyne provides extra-skeleton robots to support challenging people. The company is founded by a professor of University of Tsukuba.