Kanda, Tokyo

This time we had a meeting in the Belle Salle building in Kanda, Tokyo. The meeting went on for many hours, in which various project members gave long and detailed explanations of what each group in our project has done. I already knew most of that, and my Japanese is not that good when it comes to administrative or technical stuff (since I learned Japanese by talking to my friends, who rarely strike up conversations about project budgets in their free time) so it was not that exciting. Also, the meeting room did not have any electrical outlets for me to recharge my phone or laptop. My laptop can go for many hours without recharging, even when heavily using the WiFi, so that was still OK, though.

I did run into a Canadian professor I did not know was in Japan. Last time I saw him we were eating crepes together in southern France. I also ran into a Japanese girl who graduated from our lab about a year ago. Another fun point was running into a Finnish guy who had lived in Tokyo for 18 years and who talked to me for about an hour or so about snow removal (Finland gets a lot of snow, just like Sweden and Sapporo).

There was also a dinner, which was quite nice (though expensive for me).