Technology, Tempura, Tokyo!

Published 08/22/2023 in Scholar Travel Stipend

Written by Jessica Luna | 08/22/2023

Recently, I had the chance to go to Japan for two weeks under a program offered by USC called Fall Lead. This program allows us to study in the specified country for the last two weeks of summer and complete the rest of the class at our home university.

The class I took was only offered to the Viterbi School of Engineering and it was a general education course. We began WRIT 340 in Japan; the specific name of the course was Disciplinary Grand Challenges in Tokyo and Los Angeles: Cities, Citizens, and Engineering. I got to see how engineering played a role in Japan by visiting many engineering museums and companies. I got to visit companies like Kawasaki Robostage, Jaxa, Forum 8, and more. In addition, I got to visit museums like the Tokyo National Museum and the National Museum of Nature and Science.

Throughout this trip, I noticed how much technology is incorporated into Tokyo’s society. I say Tokyo specifically because when I visited Kyoto and Osaka, they seemed a bit more traditional. Tokyo seemed to be more open towards technology and more modernized methods of thinking. Tokyo incorporates engineering into many aspects of their daily life.

Tokyo's transportation system involves a lot of software engineering behind the scenes. When you first get into the station, you have to tap in with your Suica card. Once you have arrived at your destination, you have to tap out. The system will then calculate the distance behind the scenes. This is done by engineering within the Suica card itself. It contains a radio frequency identification (RFID) that communicates radio waves between a reader and a tag attached to the card which contains an integrated circuit used to store information as well as transmit and receive data to the reader. This allows for the distance to be calculated when tapped against the machine. In addition, trains like the Shinkansen (bullet train) use engineering in their building as well with the Shinkansen using magnetic levitation and magnetically guided steering.

I got to see several different fields of engineering, such as the two I just spoke on: software engineering and electrical engineering. In addition, at JAXA I saw a lot of astronautical and aerospace engineering at hand. JAXA is the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. It incorporates a lot of engineering into their aerospace exploration gear. It incorporates software engineering into their programs and a lot of aerospace, astronautical, and mechanical engineering towards their spaceships, rovers, suits, and more. It was interesting to see how these different fields of engineering overlap so easily.

In addition, in Kawasaki Robostage, we saw a lot of machine learning related objects. We saw a robotic arm that was making chemical samples on display. This machine could be involved in fields like biomedical and chemical engineering. We also saw a robot that drew portraits, even though our portraits looked a bit odd as shown by the image I attached. I tried finding a picture for reference of how my friends and I look so you can see a comparison.

We also got a company visit to Forum 8, which was one of my favorite companies to visit on this trip. This company created a virtual simulation map of places in Tokyo such as Shibuya crossing. These simulations actually functioned extremely quickly and hardly had any delay to them. You could walk on the streets, drive in a car, look at an overview of the street, create maps of any city you’d like, and also see buildings in different countries. During the pandemic, they also made office rooms for people to gather during meetings remotely. In addition, they create a lot of virtual reality technology for other companies. They created driving simulations that were used to get your license. They also made a snow plowing simulation to train workers on how to clean up the snow. They also made an earthquake simulator to see what can and can’t withhold earthquakes as that is a recurring issue in Japan. These company visits were extremely helpful for everyone on this trip despite being in different fields of engineering. We got to see all of our fields represented in one form or another.

In addition, one thing that stuck out to me was when we had a guest speaker who said we should try to get hired in the United States and then ask for a transfer to Japan as Japan is in need/wants foreign engineers. He told us we should learn some Japanese when we first ask for a transfer. From there, we should move to Japan and get a job, work in it for a couple years and hopefully gain fluency in the language, then move back to the United States. Having acquired this job will give you a skill in your resume that would stand out as many others in your field probably haven’t done the same thing so your resume will be unique.

Another interesting way in which engineering was incorporated into Japan was the robot cafes. One of the robot cafes that my friends and I went to was called Nova and it included robots that served you your food/drinks, as well as had conversations with you. The incredible thing about these robots was that the voices behind them were actual people. These robots were being voiced by people with disabilities working from home. It was amazing to see this as this allowed for people with disabilities to work remotely from far away places like Osaka. Not to mention that the robots were extremely adorable!

All in all, my trip to Japan was extremely incredible and there aren’t any words I could say that would do it justice. For this essay, I wanted to talk specifically about engineering in Japan due to the fact that that’s my major and I would like to encourage more people, especially women, to get involved in the field as well. As can be seen in countries like Japan, engineering is everywhere and it can be used in different fields of study. It is versatile and a transferable skill anywhere so if you’d like to travel or live elsewhere in the future, I would encourage getting into engineering!