Author: スギえもん

Hello! I’m Sugiemon, a lifehacker. Together with my partner RumiCar, I’m out hacking the region again in search of seeds of the future!
This is part of my “Tokiwaji Pass” trip series.
This time we hacked the Kashima Rinkai Railway Oarai–Kashima Line, riding from Mito to Kashima-Jingu Station and back.
The most striking feature of this line is the view: most of the route runs on elevated tracks.
From the train windows you can look out over the vast plains of Ibaraki.
The transfer wait at Kashima-Jingu Station was only 30 minutes.
But “just waiting” is not an option for a lifehacker.
I dashed from the station to the great torii gate of Kashima Jingu Shrine and back,
and soaked in the solemn atmosphere in front of the shrine’s approach.

The Oarai–Kashima Line matters even more from this year

The home ground of Mito HollyHock, newly promoted to J1 this year, and Kashima Stadium — the sacred home of the ever-victorious Kashima Antlers — sit at the two ends of this line. It is truly the artery that connects the “Ibaraki Derby”.

I am very curious to see how the usually sleepy one-car trains will handle it.

March 7: “Enya — Sake Meguri Night” at Oarai

The hack spot I am watching most closely along this line is Aqua World Oarai Aquarium.
On Saturday, March 7, it hosts “Enya — Sake Meguri Night”.

A luxurious evening tasting local sake in a dreamlike nighttime aquarium. A shuttle bus runs from Oarai Station, so access is easy, too.
Arriving early to explore the area around Oarai Port is also well worth it — there is plenty to see!

This has been RumiCar, the platform that makes it easy to get started with autonomous driving. Someday I want to come back here in a self-driving car!

Hello! I’m Sugiemon, a lifehacker. Together with my partner RumiCar, I’m out hacking the region again in search of seeds of the future!

The Tokiwaji Pass, a bargain ticket for hacking Ibaraki

My companion for this trip is the Tokiwaji Pass, which gives you a full day of unlimited rides on railways across Ibaraki Prefecture — not only JR lines but also local railways such as the Kanto Railway, Moka Railway, Kashima Rinkai Railway, and Hitachinaka Seaside Railway — for 2,330 yen (seasonal).
When I did the math afterwards, two things stunned me.
First, at regular fares this trip would have cost over 8,000 yen in total. Ibaraki, you are huge!
Second, the pass saved me a good 6,000 yen. Creating this much value by hacking the travel itself — that is what being a lifehacker is all about.

A “free space” found by chance inside a station — Taiken Bijutsuba VIVA

In the middle of this “too good a deal” trip, at Toride Station, during a short wait for the transfer to the Kanto Railway Joso Line, I stumbled upon an extraordinary place on the 4th floor of the station building “Atre Toride”: Taiken Bijutsuba VIVA (Toride Art Gallery).

Step inside, and a spacious, open area unfolds that you would never expect inside a station building. It is an art center run jointly by Tokyo University of the Arts, Toride City, JR East, and Atre. True to its concept of “a place to be in the middle of town”, the air there felt free, with no boundaries.

This facility is full of clever hacks.
The first surprise is the Open Archive, where you can see precious works from the Tokyo University of the Arts collection up close — works that would normally sleep deep inside a museum, viewable through glass or as digital archives.
Next to it, seamlessly connected, is a Learning Space where anyone can concentrate on reading or work: students studying hard, adults reading books over coffee right beside them. Art existing as a “tool” to raise the quality of everyday life… this concept-rewriting arrangement really blew me away.

The Tokiwaji Pass season is the perfect chance to meet up!

Spending time here convinced me that VIVA can be the perfect meeting spot where people from Ibaraki and people from Tokyo come together.

Do the math calmly: the pass’s 2,330 yen is about the same as a regular round trip between Tomobe and Toride. For anyone living north of Tomobe (Mito, Hitachi, Daigo and beyond), the pass makes it surprisingly cheap — and flexible — to get to Toride.
Considering that Toride is only about 40 minutes from Ueno on the Tokyo side, the pass season is a golden opportunity for friends in northern Ibaraki and friends in Tokyo to meet at the halfway point of Toride.

In a space where even waiting time becomes rich with art and reading, people from many different places mix together. Someday I would love to hold a RumiCar event in a place like this and talk about a new culture of mobility. I could really see that exciting future.

There were actually more fascinating places on this trip… but there is so much to tell that I will cover them in detail in the next article! The Ibaraki hacking journey continues!

This has been RumiCar, the platform that makes it easy to get started with autonomous driving. Someday I want to come back here in a self-driving car!

#Ibaraki #Toride #AtreToride #VIVA #TokyoUniversityOfTheArts #OpenArchive #TokiwajiPass #JREast #RumiCar #AutonomousDriving #Lifehack

Hello! I’m Sugiemon, a lifehacker. Together with my partner RumiCar, I’m out hacking the region again in search of seeds of the future!
Today we came to JR Hitachi Station in Ibaraki Prefecture.
It is known as one of the most beautiful station buildings in the world. The all-glass observation deck, designed to jut out toward the sea, gives you the curious feeling of floating in mid-air.

I set my partner RumiCar down in the middle of that spectacular view.
People passing by stopped and wondered, “What on earth is this?” That moment when a beautiful landscape and a small piece of the latest technology hack people’s curiosity is simply priceless.

What is RumiCar?

When someone asks, “What is this car?”, here is my answer.
RumiCar is not just a mini car.
It is the friendliest autonomous-driving learning platform in the world, where anyone can learn how self-driving works, and actually write and run their own algorithms.

Talking about the future of autonomous driving in Hitachi, the town of manufacturing

In front of the station stands a monument of a giant turbine blade.
This is the founding place of Hitachi, Ltd., a place that has supported Japanese engineering — and running the little RumiCar here felt deeply meaningful.

Just as giant turbines once powered Japan’s industry, this small seed of technology should drive the autonomous-driving society of the next generation.
I will be delighted if meeting RumiCar here becomes the moment people realize: “I can build the future myself!”

This has been RumiCar, the platform that makes it easy to get started with autonomous driving. Someday I want to come back here in a self-driving car!