Tokyo business trip

Rain

On Sunday I had to get up really early to catch the first flight to Tokyo. That means taking the 06:00 train to the airport. There was a typhoon passing relatively close to Tokyo, so there were very strong winds and extremely heavy rain from time to time. Our pilot had to try a few times before he managed to land the airplane too.

Cheese "crème brûlée". A strange but pretty good starter.

Beef Stroganoff, extremely good

No chairs

I was going to Tokyo for my university job. Normally I do not work on Sundays, but sometimes I am asked to do so for situations out of the ordinary. This time, a world leading child oncologist was visiting Tokyo and had time to meet us on Sunday. Since I am not contracted to work on Sundays, the university cannot actually pay me for the time I work on Sundays (my contract has a very strict "no pay for overtime" clause), and I am not allowed to take some time off on some other day in return either, so I am usually not too thrilled about being asked to work weekends or public holidays.

Sushi set

The meeting itself was quite good, and we learned some interesting things. It is always nice to meet people from completely different research domains and get inspiration from them.

Lightly grilled salmon sushi

We also had lunch at a restaurant in a chain of restaurants that is recently popular and famous. They are famous for not having chairs, for serving really fancy food at reasonable prices, and for always being completely packed so you have to wait for hours to get in. The food was great.

Tuna on sushi rice

For dinner we also had great food. Sushi. Sapporo also has great sushi, but I normally do not go to very expensive restaurants. This time, my boss was paying so we ended up in a nice place (not so much for my sake as for the European guests, but still, good for me).

"Kansai style" sushi