The end of Science Summer Camp

Well, as can be imagined, I didn’t exactly spring out of bed on Friday morning! Since Stefan and I were in the same boat, we met up for a late breakfast on the way to the conference. We were a bit late though, so we opted to skip food, grab coffees, and make it in time for a couple talks and the lunch break. We rolled in just in time to sign in and catch the last two talks :P

When the lunch break finally arrived and a few of us gathered to decide on something to eat, I discovered I wasn’t the only one dragging a bit, haha! Some of the girls wanted McDonald’s, so I caved and went with them. I’m not going to lie, it was delicious. I would be more ashamed, but I’ll just pretend that I was drug there against my will ;)

On the Ferris wheel!

It was a gorgeous sunny day, and we sat outside in the sun and ate. It had been so grey and dreary the past few days, and we finished lunch with about 45 minutes left in our break, so a bunch of us decided to go ride the giant ferris wheel!! We grabbed a cabin with a glass floor, and started the slow ascent and descent. According to the occasional English narration, it would take us 16 minutes to go around the wheel, so we settled in and enjoyed the view of Yokohama and the bay.

It was pretty cool! We could see all the rooftops, and most of them had something fun on them – pools, mini-golf courses, and helicopter landing pads to name a few. But seeing the whole town made me realized I hadn’t explored anything in Yokohama, so when we got back to solid ground, Stefan and decided to “miss” one of the repeat talks and check out some more of the town.

We wandered the waterfront, found a park by the bay, and napped in the shady grass. Refueled with Mickey D’s and refreshed by the nap, we walked around Chinatown which was apparently the largest in Japan! We took the long way back to the conference center and arrived for the last session.

Chinatown

We were all pretty psyched to hear the “closing remarks” and be freed! It was the last day of the program, but most people were still pretty dead from the previous night’s festivities, so we said our goodbyes and people headed off to do whatever they they chose for their last evening in Japan…me and five other people decided to grab dinner. Fernanda still wanted to try to find conveyor belt sushi, so we set our through Yokohama to find a place.

Each plate and its cost

It took us a few minutes of interrogating strangers on the street, but we found a spot! I had never been, to belt sushi before, but it always looked like so much fun! The sushi chef stand in the middle of the restaurant behind the bar/counter, and as they make the sushi, they load it on the belt and it goes around and around! If you want something specific, you yell it out and they make it for you, and the plates are all color coded by price, so you know how much each costs. It WAS fun to watch the little plates dance around on their conveyor belt, and it was more fun to sample whatever sushi I wanted!

It was a delicious meal, and so cheap! There was only one that I tried that I wasn’t in love with….the squid still had something hard inside of it, and after eating one of them, I couldn’t bring myself to eat the second piece even though it tasted ok.

Mmmm squid

Anyway, we all called it an early night after dinner. I packed and got ready for the next week – Stefan hadn’t stopped talking about how much he liked the city of Kamakura, and he was staying after the program for a few days and was headed there, so I decided to join him for a beach day before Kyoto!