IPP42 (Part 3)

 On Friday morning Jan suggests we head off to a pop-up embroidery workshop hosted by a local artist whose work she and Gill both admire - Dave navigates us there and the girls manage to get copies of her new books and some accoutrements before getting their books signed and getting some proper-fan-girl pics taken with Tomomi Mimura.

Gill and I hightail it back to the Sky Tree to find Marc and the Monkeys, arriving just in time. We head up a couple of high-speed lifts and we’re admiring the views and taking pics when Ali realises he’s left his phone somewhere… Ali and his brother duly head downstairs and Gill heads off to search where Ali thinks he may have put it down… Gill gets the details of the lost property office and by the time Ali gets to it, his phone is there safe and sound waiting for him.

We finish up and head into the mall for a quick spot of lunch before Gill heads off for some more shopping (serious stamina!) and the boys head downtown for our sumo experience - a presentation on the sport and some demonstrations by a couple of wrestlers with a great sense of humour hamming it up for the crowds - it’s brilliantly entertaining and we end up spending an hour and a half well-entertained at the antics. 

 

I load up on some snacks for the exchange day and source the obligatory uniform for the exchange from Steve’s room where Ali gives me a mini BM2 - their latest experiment.

On exchange morning I leave Gill sleeping in the room and grab breakfast with Frank who’s also flying solo - not because Jo’s sleeping in as well, but because she’s off doing a park run in Ueno - they’re playing Park Run Bingo and a U-Park Run is a great find! After brekkie I give Louis his shirt so we can do the usual feigned embarrassment that someone else is wearing the same outfit when we meet downstairs… although Frank’s got an even better story since Brian’s dressed him as a Japanese postman (complete with cap and white gloves!) in keeping with the theme of his exchange puzzle.

Louis and I set up our stall and offload about 85 exchange puzzles onto our table and then have a bit of a wander around having a gander at the goodies we’re about to be gifted…

In the end a couple of the guys have to pull out of the exchange at the last minute so we’re down to about 75 exchangers - and after the traditional welcome we’re off and running.

My exchange this year is Sly Burr 2 - Frank’s reprise of Sly Burr, in a box, with a bit of a twist added by the Two Brass Monkeys. I get into the groove of telling folks to take it apart, and then keep puzzling until the puzzle tells them to stop… most look a little quizzical but they’re prepared to go with it…

William Waite exchanges what he happily describes as a simple entry-level tray-packer with pattern matching constraints, Rich Williams has a Baker’s Dozen Burr - supposedly a standard 6-piece burr requiring 13 moves… which is interesting if you know anything about burr-analysis... from there we hit up Andreas for a four-piece cube dissection that looks diabolical and then we begin heading further and further afield…

There’s a few surreal exchanges where I’m giving Ali a copy of my puzzle that he and his daughters have assembled for me… and then something similar with Steve who’s been instrumental in the design and tweakage - including adding a layer that I’m not even aware of… makes mental note to solve one of his own puzzles when he gets home.

Steve Canfield has another exceptional puzzle in the form of a Japanese train carriage with pieces for the stuffing thereof… albeit along the way there will be some sequential discovery jiggery pokery - Louis establishes there ought to be a couple of spare copies for sale the next morning…

We make pretty good time and by about lunch time Louis’ efficiency means I only need another three exchanges, so we break for lunch, me for my 7Eleven snacks and Louis for his packed lunch, before we resume a suitable amount of time later. The final couple of exchangers duly appear and I can fill a couple of plastic crates with puzzles and zip up the case that doubled as puzzle luggage for the day.

We’ve finished fairly early so I take the time to chill and chat with a few of my fellow exchangers - it’s always interesting to hear the different strategies - I like the idea of a one-on-one exchange and the chance to catch up and see how people are keeping while others prefer a more efficient approach handling several exchanges all at the same time…

I dump the puzzles on the bed for the obligatory haul shot before hitting up Tye for a bunch of puzzles he’s brought over to Tokyo for me (and a few other UK puzzlers).

From there I head to Prof Sugimoto’s lecture workshop on ambiguous objects and learn about the development of his ideas from the early gravity-defying roof, to the objects that don’t behave well in the mirror (the always right arrow?), through things that appear to be totally different objects in their reflection and finally origami ambiguous objects, before we have a go at making a few of them ourselves with some brave souls heading up front to test out their illusions in the mirror… Nick, Frank and I manage passable attempts, albeit my lion needs a bit of a re-fold as Nick points out I’ve missed a key step.

After the workshop there’s a chance to get a bit refreshed before heading down for the banquet. We’re a bit surprised when we get funnelled off to a fairly small room where there are already long queues for the food even though we’ve arrived 10 minutes before the official start time expecting to find a long queue outside the banquet room. We find out from Steve that we’re in the overflow room and we’ll be moved into the main room for the entertainment… we try and make hay, joining the food queue only for most of the food to run out a few people ahead of us. We totally miss out on dessert as well although some folks didn’t quite manage to finish all the desserts they’d loaded up on… ah well, good thing we had snacks in the room.

At one point Nick poked his head in and asked us what we were doing in there… then disappeared and returned with a plate of sushi and hot food from the other buffet, where the food was still most definitely available… we were ushered back across to the main room where we joined Nick and Anne at their half-empty table and settled in for the entertainment which consisted of a delightful young lady performing some tricks she’d recently purchased and a juggler with a brilliantly entertaining streak - he really played up the language barrier and had us all in-stitches while performing some quite pretty decent juggling.

After the show we were duly ejected and made our way down to the Design Competition Room where we puzzled and chatted until closing time…

IPP42 (Part 2)

 

On Tuesday Gill and Sue head off to Shinjuku and Brian and I head off to Torito. Brian does an ace job of navigating and we pretty much just went straight there - no detours like we normally have when I’m navigating! We find Tim and Carol already at Torito (we’ve arrived shortly AFTER opening after all and I get in a little bout of laundry, topping up on my Hanayamas (minis and disentanglements), a couple of new puzzles from Teddy and Kofuh, and some Japanese number puzzles. The Luxembourg contingent arrived in full force and proceeded to shop seriously. Brian and I settled down and embarrassed ourselves trying to reassemble a bunch of random Hanayama puzzles scattered around the play table… between us we manage to reassemble two or three…but we’re suitably embarrassed.

From there we headed across town to Shinjuku where the girls had found a spot in Memory Lane for lunch - Google got us more or less to the right place and Gill found us and took us upstairs into a tiny little hole-in-the-wall that did some really nice meat and veg skewers. After lunch we headed off to a wonderfully swanky department store where we window-shopped a while before heading across the road - devoid of cars due to the public holiday - to grab an airplane adapter for Brian’s noise-cancelling headphones - success when a wonderfully helpful sales assistant worked out precisely what was needed and found one for us.

Back at the hotel we meet Shoko, Esa and Iwahiro for a final planning meeting for the Fabric & Fibre tour the next morning - they really don’t need us as Shoko’s done a brilliant job of organising it all already… final details agreed we find Louis and Patrick fresh off a plane and they join us and several others on a trip out to Asakusa for some gluten-free (and well-glutenated!) pizzas and pastas. Iwahiro is sporting his 2BM IPP41 shirt – making a serious fashion statement.

Next morning we grab our usual breakfast before getting the F&F gang sorted and onto the bus before a few of us head upstairs to help Nick set up the Puzzle Design Competition entries… Brian and I sort out the solution sheets while Chinny and Nick unpack the puzzles and then we distribute them around the room before sitting down to test things. We manage to get a couple of hours playing in before we all feel the need to head off and find some lunch. After a couple of false starts we end up sitting on the floor in a traditional restaurant - the creaking and complaints getting down onto the floor are nothing compared to the noises when we have to get back up about an hour later - we hobbled back to the hotel…

Frank needed to try and find a charger and we decided we needed to go in search of some puzzles at a toy store in Ueno - we’re joined by Chinny and Benny and the Monkeys (a new J-Pop band?) and at the toy store Ali gives Steve some money and Steve gives him crabs.

Our attempt to source a charger for Frank fails abysmally and we end up wandering back to the hotel via the underground. 

There's heaps of hilarity when Steve brings out a box of surprises for the SOAPs in the form of customised deely boppers (I think that's what they're called!) that he's christened SOAP-finders - making it easier for the SOAPs to find one another in a crowded room... inital tests in the lobby are promising. 

The guys decide to head off to a nearby Tiki Bar and when another 9 of us follow on later we’re met by some patrons leaving in a huff remarking about the stressed-out bartender… up the stairs we find said-bartender who works himself into a bit of a froth at the fact that another bunch of rowdy puzzlers has just rolled into his bar and want another 9 seats… we decided it wasn’t worth trying to convince him we’ll be fine just grabbing chairs and end up deciding to head off in search of dinner - we duly end up back at the local Chinese who happily accommodate 9 of us in one go (it’s a tiny joint!), and then another 9 when the boys follow on a few minutes later… we’ve virtually filled the place in one foul swoop and they handle it superbly… right up until one of our friends insists he hasn’t received the rice he ordered… we order him some and he’s happy, we think, but it’s hard to tell…

I grab an ice cream on the way back to the hotel and we crash early ahead of a long trip to Hakone in the morning.

There’s a massive throng of excited puzzlers in the lobby waiting for the four buses to Hakone in the morning. I hook up with Nick and Anne as Gill and Sue are heading off to a traditional tea ceremony and some shopping. Nick and I end up on the number three bus between Matt, John, Yacine and Clive… there’s a chunk of puzzling and a lot of banter… probably more than planned given we end up in a bit of a traffic jam on the highway due to an accident that seems to come neatly between our four buses… Nick spends a long time working on a new design from Andreas and I toil on Minima Bi-cubes - it takes me ages to get the pieces out of the frame before I can even start… in the end it literally takes me several hours before I finally manage to push everything into the little 2*2*3 box… another goodie from that man Boucher!

The excitement builds on the bus as we climb up the hills heading into Hakone and there’s a rapid exit as the bus empties and Izumiya fills up. I stop for a chat with Mine who’s recovering from surgery and when I have a look through his boxes of wares he politely informs me that I already have everything he’s brought along to sell today… it turns out he’s right - he promises to have new things in Tokyo…

We head up the road to the closed Karakuri museum and the largely-emptied Maruyama before heading back to fetch Anne from her somewhat productive shopping trip to Izumiya. We pull up a couple of tables of puzzlers at a tempura joint which feeds us well in plenty of time for our bus onwards. We head through the scenic countryside to Gora where the puzzles have largely already been purchased. We enjoy the scenery that only gets better and better as we ride the funicular up the hills - on the Honeymoon train - I try not to think too hard about that name.

The bus collects us at the top and we wend our way down the mountain and onto the motorway back to Tokyo - the traffic isn’t as bad this time and we have a short break at a rest stop where Otis and Nick grab a selfie at the same Starbucks they took a selfie at exactly 6 years earlier. Somewhere around here Nick finally manages to solve Andreas’ project and declares it worthy…

Matt brings out a Giiker Super Slider and demonstrates it and then lets Nick have a go on it… we’re all a bit surprised when the machine gives up on Nick and turns itself off, presumably because it’s gotten bored waiting for him to solve the puzzle.

We eventually get back to the hotel and Gill tells me about the tea ceremony she and Sue have been at (and the shopping side trip) - a bunch of us head out for ice creams rather than dinner and the Monkeys join us having completed their trains, planes and automobile rally around Hakone under their own steam - they’ve had a fantastic day and Steve’s managed to find an absolute treasure of a puzzle along the way.

Back at the hotel Gill heads off to bed and I spend a few hours in the design comp room not solving much but enjoying catching up with a few folks - Stefan gives me a copy of his gift puzzle: a micro-scale four-piece rhombic dodecahedron that requires assembly - the fact that I have a full-size copy at home to crib off might make assembly almost possible… I witness a lovely moment when Stefan introduces himself to Iwahiro and gives him a copy too, at which point Iwahiro exclaims “Ah, you’re are THE GUY!” - I think Stefan’s already made a massive positive impression at his first IPP!

Soon after that I head off and crash. 

 

IPP42 (Part 1)

[Dear reader - please excuse the hiatus - I've been off enjoying myself - normal service may resume.] 

We start travelling down to London the night before our flight and meet Chris & Ken for dinner at a sublime Italian near Chris’ place where we’re crashing for the night. The rude early alarm gets us off in the direction of Heathrow where we ditch the bags and grab some brekkie in the terminal. We get onboard at about the right time but find ourselves delayed quite a bit firstly due to a weight and balance issue and then due to traffic restrictions over Germany, which is weird because last time we flew over the pole and didn’t go anywhere near Germany… this time the flight takes us east and lasts several hours longer… long enough to watch a couple of movies and start a new book - don’t judge me, it’s the new Dan Brown - escapist holiday reading!

We land at Haneda, grab our baggage and find a taxi in what feels like seconds. Our driver checks out the traffic and points us in the right direction and about half an hour later we’re at the hotel and asking (pretty please) if we can check in, but it’s only 9:30 and check-in only opens at 2pm… we ditch the bags and head off to Shinjuku to the mother of all fabric and fibre stores- Okadaya. Navigating the metro is fairly straight forward with Gill acting as the spotter-in-chief and we get to Shinjuku quite easily. We decide we need some sustenance and head in search of a coffee shop - totally confused by Google maps where the coffee shop appears to be on the other side of the road irrespective of which side of the road we’re on… then it tells us we’re approaching and there’s no coffee shop in sight- we try to find the building name (Subnade?) and fail, until Gill spots a subway entrance with the name Subnade over it… we head down into the subway and find the coffee shop right where it should be - we feast on pancakes to rebuild our strength so we can go shopping for fabric and goodies…

Okadaya has moved buildings since the last time we were there and we do the grand tour from the top floor downwards with Gill finding some new Snoopy / Liberty fabric she’s been after as soon as we walk in… we wander down to Tokyu Hands and repeat the tour from the top down, not buying anything here… we’re about in time for the hotel check-in to be opening so we head back to the hotel and check in…

We sleep for a couple of hours (we are knackered!) and then meet Tim & Carol for dinner where we chance across a little Chinese joint down a dark alley behind the station… great grub and we make a mental note that another visit may well be indicated…

We drop into the 7Eleven at the hotel for the obligatory IPP room snacks and drinks and then lurk in the hotel lobby where we find Brian and Sue and catch up on things. When Stefan and Beni arrived there are introductions all round - they’d found a great ramen joint off Tabelog - we made plans to meet at breakfast the next morning and then crashed.

Breakfast was a massive spread and we had fun chatting with Mr & Mrs Puzzle again. They decided they needed to do some laundry (they’d been traveling around Japan for a while already) so we headed off to Asakusa for some sightseeing - walking around the street-food stalls and the Senso-ji temple grounds. We pick a coffee shop for lunch and I really enjoy a pair of pancakes while Gill has a well-stuffed sandwich. At some point while we’re wandering back there’s a post from the Puzzles showing they’d just been to see Meiko at Torito - so much for their laundry - clearly a coded message that I missed out on! (I immediately being planning a laundry trip of my own…)

The walk back to the hotel is absolutely baking hot and we end up wilting from the heat and getting a couple of hours kip before finding Brian and Sue and heading back to the same Chinese restaurant for dinner again… while we’re there Nick pops up on messenger and says he’s at the hotel so I send him a pin and we carry on with dinner - a suitable time later we’ve eaten way more than we should so we get the bill and just after we’ve settled up Nick arrives and there’s a round of greetings and we catch up on the walk back to the hotel in the gentle rain - it’s still really warm in spite of the rain.

There’s a chunk of chatting in the lobby before we head off for the night.

Monday is Gill’s birthday and after breakfast with the usual crowd we wander up the river to Asakusa for a washi paper-making workshop with Nick, Anne, Frank and Jo. Kazu teaches us the basics of paper-making and then walks us each through all the steps of making our own set of coloured postcards. Everyone gets in on the action and there is plenty of vigorous mixing of the fibres and mucus followed by rhythmic shaking of said-fibres into trays before the ritual squeezing of the wet papers with the help of a handy car jack. We did some casual shopping in the gift shop while our papers dried then their eventual unveiling to a round of Hess-inspired oohing and aahing - we missed Dick.

From there we found a traditional lunch spot in Asakusa-proper where Jo treated us to a lovely lunch… slow walk back to the hotel along the river bank where the temperature was pleasantly a little cooler than the day before.

We meet the gang, including the Youngs who’ve returned from their sewer tour, in the lobby and head downtown for a dinner cruise. The taxis get us there in good time, but there’s a call from our concerned host ten minutes before the appointed meeting time because we aren’t there yet - gotta love this place! She sounds relieved when I tell her we’re 5 minutes away… we arrive in good time and check in and I sign everyone’s lives away, at least that’s what I think I’m signing…

Onboard we each have our own little stove and a wok full of dinner and set about cooking our own as we wend our way up river toward the Odaiba basin, complete with a view of the cutest stature of liberty in the world (it doesn’t like to be called to smallest one!) - there are plenty of photos and a rousing round of happy birthday (and presents for Gill, and even one for me from Brian and Sue) before we head back to our drop-off point serenaded by our musicians and a memorable round of “Yoi! Yoi!” - cabs back to the hotel and then a walk down to the main drag for some ice creams where we find something gluten-free for Brian, only for him to find it isn’t right at the end. He’s OK in the morning so we didn’t damage Mr Puzzle!