Well, I am in Japan. The conference was finally over, and it was freaking long. Most of days started at 8:30am and ended at 6:30pm. And, then, of course, every night, we went out to izakaya (Japanese bar), and had waaay too much sake. I was very nervous about speaking Japanese professors and grad students, and well, I was right. It was really hard to speak to them because I had no idea who was who. In Japanese academia, you cannot really approach to professors unless they speak to you. Eh. Also, you cannot just call their name, you gotta always use “professor X.” So, during the poster session, one of guys asked me if I was available to talk to him. He was saying something in Japanese, but I had no idea if he was asking me a question or just making comments on my poster. His sentences kept ending like “ blah blah blah~, isn’t it?” So, I was just like, “oh okay.” And, he told me what he is doing for his study, but the way he described was very ambiguous, and I did not get it at all. Ugh.

Although I did not know Yokohama area, that’s because I am Japanese, I had to take “I wanna sake!” group of people to difference bars every night. It was really fun to talk to people in the casual setting, but it was not easy to take care of 6 – 10 people every night (and I was the only one who could speak Japanese). In the last day of conference, we went to the bar with more than 20 people, which was chaotic from the beginning, and when we were about to pay, we were super under. Some people left without paying, and some people did not have enough cash to pay their drinks. The tab was almost $1000, and everyone was freaking out. Grrrrr, well, someone got to pay, so some people (including myself) paid waaaay too much... Sucky...