Archive for Nagoya
岡崎の矢作橋 [ISBA 2026]
Posted in Mountains, pictures, Travel with tags Hiroshige, Japan, Mount Hongū, Nagoya, Okazaki, Tōkaidō, Utagawa Hiroshige, Yahagi river on August 11, 2026 by xi'an
back from Japan [flotsam, jetsam, lagan, and derelict]
Posted in Books, Mountains, pictures, Running, Travel with tags Ainu, Air France, airport food, black bear, deep vein thrombosis, EU compensation rules, Haida Gwaii, Haneda, hiking, Hokkaido, hospital, ISBA 2026, Japan, Japan Airlines, Japanese Alps, jetlag, Krasheninnikov, Mont Bell, Mont-Saint-Michel, Nagano, Nagoya, North, outdoor, ronin, samurai, Sapporo, Tachikawa, TNF, Tokyo, volcano on August 8, 2026 by xi'an
Our last day in Japan was wrecked by Japan Airlines, as our JAL flight from Sapporo to Tokyo Haneda got delayed by five hours… The worst part was being kept in the dark about the delay till the initial departure time and then more as the actual departure time was only given hours later. An opportunity to find out that EU rules about flight compensations and passenger rights do not have a Japanese equivalent..! The only plus side of spending the day at the airport was enjoying a sashimi meal at the Sapporo airport. The next day, the erupting Krasheninnikov volcano in Kamtchatka caused a slight change of flight on the way (North!) back to Paris but Air France still managed a 45mn gain on the planned arrival time. And hardly any jetlag in the following days, as opposed to the unusually long accustomisation through the nights in Nagoya and Tachikawa.
This was the only major hitch of our trip, besides a rental car delay for missing the official translation of our driving licences. Visiting both the Japanese Alps and the island of Hokkaido was a fantastic opportunity, thanks to ISBA 2026. Along enjoying the views and hikes in both locations, I could not refrain from making a connection between the geographies and histories of the Ainus on Hokkaido and of the Haidas in the Pacific Northwest, as they both got colonised and forcibly integrated at about the same epoch, with salmon canning companies enslaving them. The settlers were demoted Union soldiers in one case and former samurais (tondenhei) in the other. Small towns on Hokkaido had some similarities with those of the American and Canadian West, with one-street layout and plenty of space between houses, except for these spaces being intensely cultivated as all of the valleys I saw during that trip. (But very little wildlife, with a single sorry-looking fox, two fleeing monkeys, a single, inquisitive, squirrel, a few deers and no bear.)
On the mountains (and volcanoes) trails, I was impressed by the involvement and preparedness of most Japanese hikers, often quite senior, in climbing volcanoes and facing bear encounters, which also made me discover a very nice local outdoor brand, Mont Bell. (Also finding out that TNF Japan© is a separate franchise with its own products.) And adopt the hiking uniform of wearing shorts and tights, which proved surprisingly comfortable!
Due to a thrombosis scare, I further had the opportunity to visit (again!) the local hospital in Omachi, Nagoya Prefecture, if getting there by bike rather than by water-ambulance. With hugely efficient processing despite the language barrier (except for the doctor with whom I briefly spoke of Mont-Saint-Michel!). And the conclusion of no thrombosis, phew!
la vie (bayésienne), mode d’emploi
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags Bayesian foundations, conference, foundation lectures, France, free jazz, ISBA, ISBA 2026, Japan, Nagoya, slides, Sylvia Richardson, WINC AICHI on August 1, 2026 by xi'an
ISBA⁴
Posted in Books, pictures, Running, Statistics, Travel, University life with tags AI, BayesComp 2025, Bruno de Finetti, hitsumabushi, Japanese history, jatp, jISBA, Kouign-Aman, Lisieux, Magna Carta, morning run, Nagoya, Nagoya Castle, repulsive mixtures, shinto shrine, sustainability, urban trail on July 3, 2026 by xi'an
After a 5am run in emptied and very humid Nagano, to tour the castle grounds, if not the castle itself, with a rather unpleasant urban route, and a recovery matcha scone at the local French (-inspired) bakery, resisting the kouign aman!, I attended the highly diverse Bayesian non-parametric session (with mentions of Lisieux, near my childhood grounds, if in relation with English history, since the bishop of Lisieux appeared in Geoff Nicholls’ graph analysis. And Gregor Katzner’s repulsive mixtures.)
Then skipped Peter Muller’s de Finetti talk [sorry Peter!] with a few friends to get to nearby Atsuta-jingū (Shinto shrine) and the nearby Bunka-den, with a famous hitsumabushi (eel) restaurant that was alas fully booked. But a slightly less fancy one delivered well enough. This was a nice place, with a large park, full of worshippers clapping and touring the shrines. We even X’ed a group of salarymen in their company uniform welcomed by a Shinto priest.
And I was back in time for the junior Bayesian (jISBA) session. With Deborah Sulem talking on statistical fairness, which I could not fully distinguish from the general issue of missing covariates (corresponding to discriminated categories) or from unbalanced sampling. Jack Jewson (also coauthor of the paper with Deborah) argued about using quasi-likelihoods for consistent model selection, presumably most convincingly but jetlag hit during his talk and I had a fit of micro-naps… And Noirrit Chandra discussed a privacy-preserving Bayesian nonparametric approach through clusters and the release of MCMC outputs, close enough to my own research to fight the naps. The day closed with Emtiyaz Khan talking as at BayesComp last year on acceleration techniques as sustainable AI (although I am afraid this does not tackle the unsustainability of AI as a whole).
A hundred mirrors shine together, a hundred hubs resonate together!
Posted in Books, pictures, Travel, University life with tags calligraphy, ChatGPT, Chinese Communist Party, committee on the future of ISBA conferences, dictature, ISBA, ISBA 2026, Mao Zedong, Maoist posters, mirror workshop, multi-hub conference, Nagoya, survey, The Hundred Flowers Campaign, traditional Chinese calligraphy on July 2, 2026 by xi'an
