Asia Trip: Japanese Navy

Since I'm trying to get caught up on work I figured I would make a bunch of short entries about my trip. Todays entry is focused on my visit to the Japanese Naval Systems Research Center, which is located in Tokyo, Japan. I visited this place on my first full day in Japan. We arrived the evening before and since the 14 hour flight had nothing to interesting to share I'll just jump to this visit. It was neat seeing their research facility since I am quite familar with the US Naval research facilities, which look pretty much the same. Below is a picture of the area and the main things I saw there: their headquarters, their towing tank, and the "junior" LCC. I'm dubbed it the "Junior" LCC because its smaller then the LCC (not by much), and we already have the mini-LCC here at Michigan. The towing tank was cool and there are two interesting stories about it; (1) this is the towing tank where the Japanese secretly designed Yamato before WWII, the largest and most heavily-armed battleship in history. (2) It was taken over by Australia and they drained it and used it for tennis courts, so to this day there are lines below the water for tennis courts. Then the headquarters is a very historical building. I've had a hard time finding out exactly what happened in there, but it was formerly the Imperial Japanese Navy Institute of Technology. I heard that this was the building where a lot of the Japanese planning for WWII was done. It was very weird to be having meetings in that building, but everyone we met were super friendly and welcoming.

Japanese Naval Systems Research Center - Tokyo, Japan