Here is a photo of Sundar Pichai, Google's CEO, making a bamboo fan at the Google offices in Japan. At least that is what it looks like? Or maybe he was just gifted the fan?
Sundar Pichai posted this on LinkedIn and wrote:
This week my travels took me back to Japan, where we opened our first international office in 2001. I always find Japan to be a place willing to adopt new technologies, and I could clearly see the big shift in the progress happening with AI, from the cutting edge research to the vibrant startup AI ecosystem to an incredible developer community.The main reason for my visit was for a gathering of Google's top customers in Japan, including government and business leaders. While there, I watched rakugo, a traditional form of Japanese comedy, for the first time. Bunshi Katsura, a legendary rakugo artist, showed me how he used Gemini to enhance his set. It was incredibly moving to see such an honored tradition transformed by AI, while keeping humanity at the heart.
I also spent time with students and developers. I met with researchers from the Matsuo Lab at the University of Tokyo to hear more about how they are tackling hard challenges in AI, and middle school students taking part in Mind the Gap, our grassroots program designed to address the underrepresentation of women in technology. And I dropped by to say thank you to our Japanese and South Korean developer community and help unveil our Japanese-tuned Gemma 2 2B.
Of course, my favorite part of traveling is seeing Googlers around the world. I joined Googlers at our Tokyo office and around the region to talk about the deep investments happening there and the incredible opportunities ahead. We also welcomed a very special celebrity guest to the Tokyo office — Pikachu — to celebrate an amazing milestone for Pokémon Kids TV Japan (in addition to the millions of subscribers on their global channel). Couldn’t resist a quick selfie with such a big superstar :)
Thanks to everyone for the very warm welcome. ありがとうございました!
This post is part of our daily Search Photo of the Day column, where we find fun and interesting photos related to the search industry and share them with our readers..
