Science and sushi

Cafeteria lunch

Well – our first full day of science was quite long! We had 7 student presentations (10 minutes each, which really adds up to a 90 minute session), then a 30 minute break, then 7 more student presentations, then lunch. The “break” was not exactly what most of us are used to….there were no snacks or coffee to be found, and most of us westerners were a bit whiney without any caffeine or sugar to help us through 3 hours of rapid fire science! :P

That's a lot of rice...

But we all survived, and had an hour for lunch. Afterwards, there were 2 hour-long talks from PIs (Principal Investigators – otherwise know as our bosses :) then another 30 min break, then 2 more talks. Overall, that’s kind of a LONG time for me to sit still anymore, and  I found it a bit challenging to make it through some of the long talks that weren’t exactly interesting to me. But since I was forced to sign a contract saying I would attend all sessions, I had to!

After all the talks, we had a poster session. This is where all the students print a poster, and like a middle school science fair, you stand next to your poster and explain your experiments. But after such a long day, not many people were super excited to talk more science. Luckily, the organizers provider a ton of food and beer for the poster session, so for most of the 90 minutes, the majority of us snacked and drank.

Fancy toilets at the institute

At 7:30pm on the dot, we were urged to leave, and the organizer begged us to finish the food or take it with us. I was a little tired of tempura and sushi, but we assumed that they also wanted us to help make the beer “disappear” too, so most of us grabbed one for the road and we left RIKEN to head back to the hotel.

There were about 16 of us who didn’t want to go straight to bed but didn’t want to do anything too ridiculous, so we ended up at a little bar near the train station. I still find it funny when you walk into a bar and you have to take your shoes off, put them in a cubby, and wander around in public barefoot :)

The place was fun, and we got a little corner of a private room – the table were actually set into the sunken floor, so when you walk into the “room,” you are actually standing on the bench-style seats. We all crowded around one big table and tried to order beer. There was a touch screen ordering system on every table, but apparently we did something wrong, because when one of the guys hit “Order” our bill skyrocketed and we accidentally ordered 30 or something!

Thankfully, one of the people with us had lived in Japan for 3 years and is practically fluent in conversational Japanese, and he rescued us and successfully ordered us 16 drinks.

We had a good time, eat some edamame, and closed the place down! They kicked us out somewhere around midnight, but a couple of us were craving ice cream, so we wandered to the store and strolled the streets with our snacks. All together it was a long day, but it was fun to get out afterwards and keep getting to know the other students from all over the world!