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…