Morioka welcomes next LC workshop

Morioka in Iwate will host the LCWS in December. The little purple bar is the ILC.

View of Mount Iwate

The 2016 international linear collider workshop LCWS2016 will be held in Morioka, Japan from 5 to 9 December. Since around 2010, two linear collider workshops are held per year – one in spring and another in autumn. Recent tradition is that the one in spring is hosted regionally, and the one in autumn is hosted globally, and the one in December is indeed organised by Linear Collider Collaboration.

Morioka is the capital of Iwate prefecture where the most part of the candidate site for the International Linear Collider is located. The meetings will take place in two modern buildings near Morioka station that is reachable from Tokyo in about two hours by bullet train. Even though it is expected to take one or two years for the Japanese government to decide whether or not to make a serious commitment to the ILC, it is accelerating its efforts regarding the ILC both domestically and internationally, and we may have some positive news by the time of the workshop.

The local governments support the ILC with enthusiasm, and are willing to offer substantial human and financial help for this workshop including an excursion to the candidate site. Local people also are very much hopeful that the ILC be realised in this region, and in fact are quite knowledgeable about the ILC from children to grandparents. When a group of experts on conventional facilities visited the region looking around a farm land that seemed private, an old man and a girl of about five years old came up to them. Some members of the group thought that the old man might tell them to go away. The old man, however, asked a Japanese member of the group about the work, and when he knew it was about the ILC, he said “please try your best to build the ILC – for this child.”

This region is full of attractions. There are many excellent hot springs in the mountains to the west of Morioka and they are also locations with exquisite scenery as well as ski resorts. By the way, there are no hot springs to the east of Morioka where the candidate site is located since the area is geologically stable and hot spring are usually associated with volcanic activities . On the cultural side, there are many historical spots including a town called Hiraizumi about 30 kilometres to the east of the would-be interaction region. This is an UNESCO world heritage site where there was a beautiful cultural center rivalling that of Kyoto nearly one thousand years ago. Later, Morioka became the capital of a powerful Nambu clan, and that tradition is still alive today including the practice of tea ceremony. In fact, local organization of tea ceremony is offering to show the attendants of the workshop some piece of that tradition at the banquet. So, looking forward to see you in Morioka!