This doesn’t have much to do with Cadence or semiconductors. It has a lot to do with Japan, but Japan isn’t the force it used to be in semiconductors. They have gradually rolled a lot of their semiconductor companies up into Renasas, and their DRAM operations into Elpida, which was acquired by Micron. Renasas is the leader in automotive (2014 numbers), so there is a chance that ADAS and autonomous vehicles can make Japan great again, especially given that Japan has Toyota, Honda, Mazda, Subaru, and more. Interestingly, at CDNLive, they said that their autonomous vehicle work is actually headquartered in Germany. This is good since the biggest criticism of the Japanese semiconductor companies is that they gave up on global competitiveness and focused on winning in Japan only, especially in mobile where for a couple of decades, Japan had proprietary standards that nobody else bothered to compete over. I must have been to Japan about 30 times in my life. The first time was in 1983 to visit Rohm in Osaka, who was VLSI Technology’s foundry since our fab was not up and running. When I left on that first trip, my son was not walking. By the time I got back a week later, he was running all over the house. I missed seeing his first steps. Also in 1983, I got to experience karaoke for the first time, years before anyone in the US had ever heard of it. There was no video karaoke (or KTV as it is called in Asia), just a thick book of songs all in Japanese except for The House of the Rising Sun and I Did It My Way . Luckily they are both easy to sing since as one of the guests, and one moreover on my first trip to Japan, I had to sing each of them at least twice during the evening. One thing that I never did, although I always meant to, was to visit Tsukiji fish market. Back in that era, it wasn’t as famous as it is now, when every San Francisco sushi place with any pretention to quality flies in fish from Tsukiji every day. Tokyo wasn’t really even a tourist destination until recently. The only gaijin (foreigners) you would see were in business suits. Now Tokyo is a major tourist destination and Tsukiji is the #1 place to visit. The tuna auctions at 5.20am are so popular that since 2010, they've been limiting the number of people to 120 per day. A few years ago, in 2008 and so before the need for a ticket, I finally went. As we walked up to the area where the tuna auctions take place, a big rollup door opened and we walked in. The auction started almost immediately at 5.20am. It was only after about 10 minutes that I noticed that there was a chain about 25 yards away with all the other tourists back behind it, only a couple of dozen back then. We were walking around all the frozen tuna being auctioned and nobody bothered us, a few feet from the auctioneer standing on a little podium ringing a brass handbell. I decided to come to Japan again during the July 4 th holiday week with a friend who has never been. It is actually my first time being a tourist in Japan, I’ve only ever visited on business in the past. We didn’t make it to the tuna auctions, which effectively require you to stand in line starting at 4.30am, half an hour before public transport starts running, making it either complicated or expensive to get there. And even so you risk not making the 120 person cutoff. Plus getting up at 3am. But they no longer let you into the wholesale areas any more, until 10am when everything is pretty much over. They have plenty of police to keep you out. I guess like so many places in the world, there are now too many tourists and they have to limit them (Cinque Terre in Italy now shuts whole towns during the summer, for example, once they are “full”). This will be the last time I see Tsukiji. It is shutting down and being moved to Toyosu in preparation for the 2020 Olympics. You might have heard that the Ginza district is some of the most expensive real estate in the world. Well, Tsukiji is just next door. The Fulton fish market in Manhattan had the same issue, and moved to the Bronx in 2005. The move of Tsukiji has been much postponed but will now take place in November this year, so if you want to see the old market you need to get your act together. The market has been there since 1935 when it was relocated from Nihonbashi after the old market was destroyed in the 1923 earthquake, but in one form or another it dates back to 1590 when Tokyo was still called Edo. The move to Toyosu is controversial for many reasons. For one thing, the new site was used as a plant by Tokyo Gas and was so contaminated that it required a huge cleanup. Even if the cleanup is perfect (and that is apparently disputed), it isn’t exactly the pristine image associated with the freshest fish in the top sushi bars in the world. However, another reason is that like much in Japan (rice farming is the same), the people who run the market stalls are old and have done it for decades. But their sons and daughters went off to college and don’t want anything to do with fish (or rice), so there is nobody to take over the business. So a lot of the people say they can’t be bothered to move, they will just retire. According to Japan Times last year, at least 69 companies have decided to end their days in the old market and not move to the new. If you want to know more about the move, it just so happens Japan Times today carried a long article Emotions Run High Over Tsukiji Fish Market’s Move . If you want to visit, my recommendation is to stay in a hotel in the Ginza district. It is a 10-minute walk or a short taxi ride from there. If you want the full experience, you have to be one of those first 120 people or you won’t be allowed in until 10am. If you are working, the nice thing is that you can go there at 4.30am, see the market, have sushi for breakfast, and still make it to your 9am business meeting. Next: Power-Efficient Recognition Systems for Embedded Applications![]()
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