In Nayoro, February 7th, the first day.

I arrived at Nayoro on the afternoon of February 7th, at about 1:00. Mr.Hasegawa was kindly waiting for me and drove me to the Grand Hotel Fujika. I checked in and rested for about 3 hours. Then I left the hotel by a chartered bus with foreign participants in the competition for the Nayoro Municipal Astronomical Observatory. The bus was almost full. In the bus, a volunteer guide explained about Nayoro city, and the observatory, and I had to translate his explanation into English. According to the guide's explanation, the astronomical observatory was founded by a former senior high school teacher named Mr.Hideo Kihara in 1973,and after Mr.Kihara's death, it was donated to Nayoro city in 1992. The construction of the new astronomical observatory began to be built in 2008,and the old observatory was closed in November 2009. The new observatory opened in April 17th,2010, last year.
In the observatory building was two storied, and there were an exhibition corner, lecture rooms, and a planetarium on the first floor, and a sliding roof observation room, two research rooms, an open air astronomical observation space, and an observation room on the second floor. There were big telescopes, and one of them was the second largest in Japan. I had never imagined such wonderful observation instruments there. We saw a movie of the Japanese asteroid probe "Hayabusa"'s travel to the asteroid "Itokawa". in the planetarium. It was a very interesting movie. But I didn't have time to explain about it in English, so I was afraid how much the foreigners understood it. I hope they could enjoy it.