IMC16 in Sapporo

This week I was in Sapporo for the International Microscopy Congress. I arrived on Saturday morning by plane. It was a nice plane trip and hardly any clouds, so I could see most of Japan as we went over. I was pretty tired when I arrived, from being sick all week, so that day I mostly spent in bed. The next day I used to do my sightseeing, and take my tourist pictures. I went to visit the Eiffel tour of Sapporo so I could see most of the town and the surroundings. Then I saw the clock house (not extremely interesting), the old parliament building, the botanical garden and the university. After taking soo many pictures with no people on them I started trying to get in the picture myself, which I had a lot of fun with (no…I did not loose my mind).

Yes, I am not extremely fan of cactuses.

In the evening I went to the welcome party at the conference. It wasn’t so much fun, 2000 people trying to mingle and talk to the people they had met before, and me not knowing anyone, resulted in going home early. The conference started on Monday with presentations, lectures and posters. Except from visiting some talks, not much happened on Monday and Tuesday. On Wednesday after lectures there was a conference ceremony with a classical concert. At the ceremony, which was pretty boring, the Emperor and Empress of Japan were present (..pretty cool or what?). He himself actually used to be an electron microscopist. Wasn’t aloud to take any pictures though. After that we went to a beer party (free…!!). There I met these three guys below, and we went out to get more beer and sake. Well….the sake was a bad idea, I was sooo hung-over the next day that I slept until 14.00.

Ivo (Holland/Kyoto Univ.), Francis (Scottland/Strathclyde Univ.), me and Anjan (India/Singapore/ MIT).

Thursday evening it was the conference dinner. All of these parties are the same, food and drinks on a few tables with peoples walking around and talking. Not always a good thing, often too little food and loooong queues. Afterwards we went out to drink some more at another place, but we all went home pretty early due to the hard night the day before. On Friday were the last lectures and MY poster session (put out my poster here). It was very interesting, and I got some feedback and contacts. After the sessions was the Farwell party. As before, there wasn’t that much food so Francis and I decided to get some ramen at the famous Ramen Alley. It took us some time to find it, but when we did we got our reward: 2 beers. We went through the whole street and only one served ramen (but it had a 7m long queue!). However, then we found the rest of the street (probably the old street), and there we found some ramen places. We ended up in a small place (only place for about 6 people), and it was just soooo good ramen. It was definitively worth the trip. On Saturday morning I took the plane back to Tokyo, where Georg was waiting for me. I had a lot of fun, but it was extremely nice to come home (to Tsukuba and Georg) too:)

The beer we got in ramen Alley, it was pretty funny.

I put out the rest of the pictures from my Sapporo trip here.