Networld + Interop and something strange...

I went to Chiba today with Uchida Sensei for the Networld + Interop 2004 Tokyo, an IT exhibition. For those who don't know, Chiba is another prefecture located directly beside Tokyo (this is where NARITA Int'l. Airport is), but on the opposite side of Yokohama. It took us almost 2 hours to get to Makuhari, the venue. Makuhari is near the sea, and is full of tall buildings with hotels and offices, and is teeming with suit-clad salary men. The exhibition itself was held at the Makuhari Messe and was totally... erm, remarkable. Apparently, over 300 companies had booths there to display enterprise solutions. It was definitely very well prepared. Almost all the exhibitions were about networking, I think the most popular being Security and VoIP. Big companies like Microsoft, Cisco Systems, Intel, Netmarks, NTT, Nokia, among others, had stuff on display and were giving seminars. Because of my meager Japanese skills and networking knowledge, though, I kept on wishing I could understand better. Anyhow, it was a great experience and I did get a lot of give-away stuff. Heheh. So I'm ureshii.

On another hand, while I was on the way to the exhibition today, a weird thing happened on the train I took to Yokohama (same one I use to school). It came to an abrupt halt at the middle of Mitsukyo station (one of the stations near our dorm, and one station away from Seya, where I got on the train) and we just stopped there for about 10 minutes. I wondered what happened, and it was kinda spooky, and I thought that maybe it was just normal train trouble, but it did cross my mind that someone might have jumped off the platform to commit suicide (don't be shocked, it's a normal thing here and happens often). I didn't hear any sirens or see any ambulance, so the thought just left my mind. When we left the station 10 minutes later, the train driver said something about being sorry for the delay, and even if I didn't get what he said very well, I did hear him say "jishin" which means earthquake, and "taihen" which means difficult. And every once in a while until two stations after that, a sound would go "beep beep beep" inside the train, and it would slow down. So, I really believed that it was an earthquake. However, Annie just got home and asked me if I "knew what happened at Mitsukyo this morning" to which I asked why she's asking, and she said someone told her "that someone jumped off the platform", to which I replied "I was on the train when it suddenly stopped and we got delayed". It was also the right time, about 9:45 am, and she was just leaving the dorm when she heard loud sirens. Now I really don't know what happened. What do you think? Maybe we'll hear about it on the news. Hmmm. Definitely spooky.