Karaoke: International Idol!

Thursday was the start of the two-day Immunology conference/symposium the Institute was hosting. We were expected to attend every lecture, but none of us were sure how serious RCAI was going to be about that…we were less-than-surprised to discover a sign-in sheet waiting for us. I sat through the whole morning session, but it was pretty killer. Two of the speakers had actually given talks during our class, so we were practically sitting through the same talks for part of the day.

When the lunch break arrived, one of the guys was smart enough to go look at the sign in sheet: there was a column for Thursday and Friday….but not a separate  “morning” and “afternoon” column. This meant we could probably ditch a bit of the afternoon without getting caught! I grabbed lunch with some of the other students at a hilariously themed restaurant called “Garlic Jo’s.” Everything on the menu was slathered in tons of garlic, but we were a little pleased for the change in flavor, so we opted to try it out. I just thought all the posters of Gilroy, CA were funny!

Beer latte?

After the insanely garlicky pizza and pasta I split with one of the other girls, I headed back to the talks to try to recruit people for my plan to play hooky: I wanted to go to the Kirin brewery! I was sort of successful, and convinced three of the guys to skip and come with me! I felt a little delinquent sneaking out of “school” and going to drink beer, but two more of the afternoon speakers were repeats, and I just didn’t have it in me to sit through them.

So much foam!

We found the right train after a bit of confusion, and made it to the Kirin headquarters. Upon entering the huge facility, we were told there would be a free tour in 15 minutes, but it would be in Japanese. We hesitated until they told us there were 3 free tastings at the end :P


Only 3 Japanese people joined the tour, so the four of us just kind of followed behind making up our own narrations and staring at the inner workings of the Kirin factory. There were a few plaques and videos with English writing, and our tour guide tried as best as she could to tell us some of the highlights in broken English. Most interestingly, we learned they could bottle over 600 bottles per minute and fill 2000 cans per minute! And we got to see the whole place in action, with bottles and cans dancing down their conveyor belts on their way to being filled or packaged.

Traveling in packs

We made it to the end of the tour and had our first tasting, but we were surprised when they handed us what looked like a beer latte…the beer had a foamy top that quite closely resembled whipped cream. But we were anxious to try it anyway, and after an enthusiastic “kampai” we tried the beers. They were SO WEIRD! The foam on top was actually like a beer-foam-slushy! It was frozen and totally odd. You had to take a big enough sip so that you could actually get to the liquid beer underneath! We all agreed that maybe this trend could skip the US…

Next, we got a demo on how to pour the perfect beer, which apparently involves a LOT of foam. Seriously, it is the exact opposite of how we all learn to pour a beer. There is no glass tilting, and it seems like the goal is to have 50% foam, 50% liquid. Our guide even demonstrated that the perfect beer should be able to be tilted from side-to-side without spilling or losing its foam due to the “cap” of head on the beer.

Our Karaoke Kave

We drank our tastings, but were informed at the end of the second one that our time was up – I guess we were being timed! We were not aware that we only had 20 minutes to order and drink all three free tastings, so most of our third taste was confiscated and poured out! But we had fun and got to tour and taste for free, so after grabbing a sweet Kirin t-shirt, we headed back to the conference to pretend like nothing happened 0;)

We arrived in time for the reception, and were surprised to walk into a very, very nice room with an open bar and a French-themed buffet of food! The attendees were basically just the invited speakers and the 42 students, and it was pretty swanky! The food was delicious, and the desert was even better. I felt very spoiled, especially after skipping!

"You are, my fire...the one, desire"

At the end of the evening, the organizers handed out awards for the “Best Talk” – oddly enough there were 7 “best” talks, but alas, I didn’t make the cut, haha! It was a really nice event, and I even talked a little bit of science with two professors who work in San Diego!

When we were all leaving, we told one of the professors we wanted to go to karaoke…he immediately began having secretaries call around, and before we knew it, about 35 of us (including professors) were on our way to sing!

We were put into a huge private room, which had already been stocked full of pitchers of beer and shochu (shochu is kind of like sweet potato sake)! It was a little difficult to figure out how to pick songs (everything was in Japanese, and the professors were even a bit confused), but after a slow start, everyone was having a blast. We sang a bit of everything (Beatles to Backstreet Boys, Sweet Caroline to Hakuna Matata….) and it was mostly hilarious. I sang a duet of "I Want it That Way" which seemed more well-recieved than my talk the previous day....One of the students from Singapore even got up and did a Mozart song – opera singing during karaoke?!? He was amazing though! Even the professors sang a few!

Awesome Japanese moves

What we weren’t told when we arrived, is that as usual, there was a strict, Japanese time limit. When our 2 hours were up, the “party” was over according to the organizers - but nobody wanted it to end! ….What we also weren’t informed about was that the cost was 3000¥ per person!! Kind of a lot of money if you weren’t drinking or singing, and we had a lot of people that came just to be spectators! But I had a lot of fun, so I thought it was all totally worth it :)

After the Japanese limit of fun for the day had been reached, we all headed back to the hotel to avoid the midnight rush hour (like every night), but someone had heard that we found a cool temple near the hotel, and about 20 of us all bought beers on the way out of the train station and went to hang out in the fresh air.

Before the cops...

Well, it didn’t take long for us to get loud and silly, and we found a playground on one side of the temple. We were swinging and carrying on when I saw 3 motorbikes pull up – since the streets were totally deserted, I had a feeling we were about to get in trouble….sure enough, the three Japanese police officers hopped off their glorified scooters and started asking questions. We played dumb for a minute, but one of them was practically fluent in English, and he politely interrogated us before informing us that he got numerous complaints from the neighbors around the park, and that we had to go away.

At this point most people called it a night, but about 8 of us headed towards the river, and sat by the water away from the buildings where we couldn’t cause any trouble. It was about 2am, and slowly people faded and went back to the hotel. Determined to catch the sunrise, Stefan (my new German friend) and I stayed up until about 4:15. The sky got light, but it was too cloudy to see anything, so we were forced to give up and went home!