Last Thursday I had the pleasure to attend the Tokyo R user group meeting. And what a fun meeting it was! Over 40 R users had come together in central Tokyo. Yohei Sato, who organises the meetings, allowed me to talk a little about the recent developments of the googleVis package.


Thankfully all talks were given in English:

• Takashi J. Ozaki presented on Visualisation of Supervised Learning with arules and arulesViz.
• Shinichi Takayanagi showed how rMaps can be used to visualise geographical data of trading bitcoins.
• Shota Yasui used a motion chart to visualise the demand and supply cycles of salmons in Norway.
• Daisuke Ichikawa demonstrated that R can also be used to keep us motivated by saying ‘yeah’, or better use data to produce music that sounds like a 25 year old Gameboy.

Following the meeting the user group had booked a pub around the corner for a few drinks and some food. Brilliant!

Delicious chicken steaks and rice porridge

The next morning, as I woke up in on the 23rd floor of hotel in Shinjuku I felt that my bed was moving. I am sure it was the earthquake, but what a weird feeling it was with a little hangover.