こんばんわ みんな！This time i will tell you about my trip to 富山市(Toyama City) with my laboratory mates last week! 🙂
welcome to Toyama City!
I went there for the 16th Japanese Symposium on Biocatalysis (it’s an annual event of biocatalysis and biochemistry world. Cool speakers at biocatalysis and biochemistry field from Japan and outside Japan are invited, some sharings can be conducted, and also students can apply abstract for their research and later on can do short speeches and poster presentation).
THE conference!
I went there with Masuda-san, Kawaguchi-san, Sugiyama-san, Tanabe-san, and Yamamoto-san. All of them were doing short speeches and poster presentation. But since my research is still at the very preliminary level, i only went there to watch them and see invited speakers speeches.
Of course, i learned so many new things, let’s just say some super rocking cutting edge biocatalysis reaction, some advances development of biocatalysis world, really good researches conducted by another student, etc. Not forget to mention that one of the other purpose is to know the atmosphere of formal academic conference with a national scope.
But, the main point, as a part time student and full time fun seeker, is to have fun and do sight seeing! ^^
富山市
Geographically, it is located northwest of Tokyo. There is some plane routes to go there, and also you can ride Japanese famous bullet train, Shinkansen. But the most economic way for a student is night bus only 2000 Yen! (can you believe that?)
At first i thought that the idea of this night bus is not very promising. Especially the knowledge of night bus that i have is only from Indonesian night bus (which is quite unsafe and uncomfortable)
But this is Japan! I even passed the ride without any single complain! I think that it was quite comfortable and spacious (but please note that my body size is below normal human’s body standard, i am a living 21st century hobbit! xD)
The first day of the symposium was really nice and eyes opening. I really learnt so many things from advance speakers (especially the key note speakers : Sense Hak-Sung Kim from KAIST and Sensei Frank Hollman from Delft). The poster short presentations was also fabulous. It gave me the idea and spirit because their age is mostly just the same as me and they’ve already managed to do such amazing research!Of course my laboratory mates short poster presentation was very good! You all have done a very great job guys! *grouphugs*
Kawaguchi-san and Masuda-san, awesome work, witty girls!
with my super nice laboratory mate (we work with same enzyme) in front of his poster!
Tanabe-san doing his short speech 🙂
We had such a great party afterwards. First it was formal banquet, with all of its good foods with high quality and of course various selections of free flowing alcoholic drink (from beer, sake until another japanese traditional alcohol beverages that i forget the name).
Banquet!
But since i am now trying to be a good moslem and quit drinking alcohol, i stick myself to orange juice, even for the kampai (toast) 😀
The party at first was all serious and formal. I’ve just known that this kind of party is a melting pot from senior researcher, sensei, student, and some people from companies. They chatted business thing and even some master student use this opportunity to find job! but then, after 30 minutes or so, the party went really fun (because in fact, everyone started to get drunk!)
Second party was a fun party at izakaya nearby. All 6 person from my lab went there together with another friend from Toyama Prefectural University, Tokyo University of Science and another university. It was really fun talking with all of the people. It seems like Japanese people can open up themselves more when they are drunk! (LOL) And here again i only drinked glasses of coca cola and water 😀
The second day was quite fun but i really could not understand the presentations well. All of the session was conducted in… Japanese. But for the lunch time we had a good time eating in a shop at the station, i ate wonderful てんぷら ていしょく 🙂
The city itself was quite old but very nicely assembled. They don’t have famous brand like Tokyo ( i mean there’s no Zara, H&M, Forever 21 or even Muji and Uniqlo in the city center). I think we can go around by bus and they also have Toyama Light Rail (which is something like tram) that stop by major spots at the city. Toyama successfully conserved its old heritage. Toyama Castle is located just in the city center very near to the conference building, so unlucky that i did not have the chance to visit that due to the busy schedule of the conference.
Toyama Light Rail!
Me and my lab member visit Toyama observatory deck (which we thought it would be some kind of tower but actually it was only three stories building). But the view is still, spectacular, plus it has very good and romantic lightworks.
wonderful yet romantic illuminations 🙂
Toyama City’s View from Observation Deck
another city view, really amazing illuminations!
And after that we went to restaurant to eat. I think that the カキフライ (fried oyster) is very nice. And not very pleased with only dinner, we had another second round of meal at another izakaya nearby. What is amazingly good is peach milk at izakaya and シャカシャカポタト with shoyu sauce (Japanese soy sauce). I really like it because i felt like i was getting much closer to my laboratory mate. We talked about everyone’s family and also some other interesting things. I was trying to use Japanese and they tried to use English :’) And we were correcting each other, so touching!
Izakaya izakaya izakaya!
カキフライ、
とても おいしい！
And what else that i can say? Food is indeed very good especially the seafood (although i don’t eat raw fish but all the fried is good!)
富山市 へ ぜひ いちど きって ください！
Loads of love,
Afifa Ayu Koesoema
