March 2020 OES Beacon

Member Highlights (March 2020)

Contact the editors if you have items of interest for the society  

Doraemon Statue at the museum

Doraemon Museum with a new OES member’s family in Japan

Harumi Sugimatsu, BEACON newsletter Editor in Chief

Do you know “Doraemon,” a Japanese manga series by Fujiko F Fujio (Hiroshi Fujimoto)?  The series started in 1969 and still continued until today, even though the author had passed away in 1996.

In the story, Doraemon, a cat type home robot travels back from the 22nd century to support the boy “Nobita Nobi” (Doraemon lives with his descendant family in a future world).

Doraemon has a four-dimensional pocket on his tummy, in which are unexpected tools developed by future technology that can save Nobita from his crisis, such as an escape from a bully or so.  Bamboo-Copter, a small piece of headgear that can make us fly into the sky, and Anywhere Door, a pink-colored door that can make us travel anywhere we want to visit, are the well-known tools.

Fujiko F. Fujio Museum, so called Doraemon Museum, was established in commemoration of the author in his living area on outskirts of Tokyo in 2011 (http://fujiko-museum.com/english/).

With a new OES member Zonghua Liu of IIS, U-Tokyo, and his wife Faye and their baby boy James, we visited the museum on 8 February 2020.

We can learn how the Doraemon series and his unique tools are created there.

When you have a chance to visit Japan, please visit the museum where you can meet the seeds and needs of future technologies like “Back to the Future.”

Anywhere Door (Dokodemo-Door) at the Museum
Having fun with a new OES member’s family.
Zonghua Liu, his wife Faye and James and Harumi (L to R).
Nobita and Doraemon are in our back.