6th International Conference on Ground Penetrating Radar
September 30 - October 3, 1996
Aoba Memorial Hall, Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan
Field Demonstration
A half-day or a one-day ( October 1 or 2 :Tentative) field trip is scheduled during the conference depending on the conference program (October 1st or 2nd) . Two field demonstration sites will be prepared. All the attendees are invited to the field trip and the fee for the trip is included in the registration fee, therefore most attendees will join this trip. Two sites are located in Tagajo city, approximately 10km east of the downtown Sendai and the Aoba Memorial Hall. Buses will be charted for transportation of attendees.
The field demonstration is a good opportunity for many GPR users to understand practical GPR survey and system performance. The performance of GPR system is strongly dependent on the target condition. Therefore, the organization committee tried to provide varieties of situation. It is our hope that all the exhibitors demonstrate their equipments in this good occasion.
Location
(a) Tagajo Historical Park
One field is located inside the Tagajo provincial office, which is an archaeological site in the 8th century. The area including this site is a historical park open to public. A few types of archaeological structures such as stone base of wooden buildings and trenches will be available. Most these structures are re-buried with soil and are located less than 1m in depth from the ground surface. We think this is similar to geological / environmental survey applications.
(b) Tohoku Gakuin University (Camps of Faculty of Engineering)
The other is a site for survey of buried objects such as pipes and cables and concrete structures. Buried pipes in soil will be provided in the campus. Pavement, concrete structures will also be available.
More about Tagajo and its History
PROMINENT POLITICAL AND LITERARY FIGURES VISITED TAGAJO
The name Tagajo was first seen in 737 A.D. It is thus believed that the castle was built sometime before that year. Afterwards it began to serve both as a provincial office and as a military headquarters in the drive to conquer the indigenous rebels of the region.
Tagajo was burned down in a revolt which took place in 780, but was soon reconstructed. After the headquarters was transferred to Iwate in 802 under the orders of general Tamuramaro Sakanoue, it served only as a provincial office. Yoritomo Minamoto, the Shogun at that time , made a stop over there when he was on an expedition to conquer the Fujiwara family in Hiraizumi. Tagajo was used as a local imperial branch office in later years, but gradually fell into ruin.
In 1689, Basho Matsuo, one of Japan's best-known poets, made a walking journey to the north=eastern part of the country. After talking a long and tiring route, he arrived at Tagajo and found a monument standing in its ruins. He wrote in his travel diary entitled the Narrow Road to the Deep North that in this ever-changing world, it was nothing short of a miracle that this monument alone had survived the battering of a the living memory of the ancients.
TAGAJO,A PLACE OF HISTORICAL AND LITERARY INTEREST
A provincial office was located at Tagajo about 1,260 years ago. Since then Tagajo served as the political center of the Tohoku region for about 600 years.
A number of people came to Tagajo from Nara and Kyoto to work in the provincial office, and they wrote waka, a 31-syllable poem, on scenic spots in the neighborhood during their leisure hours. As a result, people of the capital region at that time familiarized themselves with the natural beauty of Tagajo and yearned for it.
Such scenic or historical places that became famous through poetry are called "Utamakura" in Japanese. Basho Matsuo, one of Japan's best-known haiku poets, was among those who longed to visit utamakuras and made a long arduous journeys to see and write about them.
As an utamakura, Tagajo offers visitors a variety of historical and literary associations.
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gpr96@earth.tohoku.ac.jp