Ulaş On The Move: Japan Security Show 2009

Last Friday, which as a day was not a very pleasant one as the amount of rain was, well, unreasonable to say the least, I had a chance to visit the Japan Security Show at Tokyo Big Sight. The show was a lot of fun though and I saw a lot of interesting stuff even though the commute there and back was painful at times. I even managed to snap a few pictures though only after did I see a sign loudly announcing “No photographs”. This is the second time something like this happens to me in Japan – the first case being at Akihabara trying to record a video of maids singing on a stage… That … was embarrassing.

First off, lets start with getting to Tokyo Big Sight. I blogged before about this since I went there before in order to see the robots exhibition last year and that time I used the Yurikamome Line (which keeps on referring to itself as the “New Yurikamome Line” but it is not so new I am told) which not only can get one much closer to Big Sight than Rinkai Line which we took this time but it also offers a really nice view including the Rainbow Bridge. Heck, it even goes ON that bridge. The catch? It takes longer to get there AND it is more expensive and since we were pressed for time we took the Rinkai Line (臨海線) from Shinjuku.

What was on display? Well, quite a few different things I guess. Not just alarm systems etc. when one thinks of security but also components for such systems such as improvements on camera technology, motion sensing, as well as research related to security such as automatic detection of suspicious activity or automatically counting people in a given area. You could see big hitters of the security world like Secom as well as more general electronics manufacturers like Sony and of course key makers – physical security is as important as ever and it shows. Actually one of the coolest things I saw at the show was a key which has a “Did I lock the door?” indicator which automatically lets you know whether or not you forgot to do just that.