So for those who don’t follow me on Twitter, I have spent this last week in Japan visiting one of the collaborators on my VADR project with two colleagues from the UK. So far my week has been a fun adventure in food and looking puzzled.
Where I am in Japan is not exactly a common tourist destination – it’s very rare to find a Japanese person who will speak English, so I am entirely reliant on my Japanese-speaking colleagues. This arrangement has two down-sides. Firstly, being the only non-Japanese speaking person in the group does mean I’ve spent a large percentage of my time looking awkwardly at my shoes while everyone laughs at what sounds like an amazing Japanese joke. Secondly, my colleagues get used like walking translator/tourist guide apps and have to endure me constantly looking at them quizzically or saying “ooo, what’s that?!” every 30 seconds wherever we walk around.
I will be coming back to Japan next year and if there is one thing I’ve learnt it’s that I really need learn some basic Japanese if I want to be able to eat without translators. Especially because my actual Japanese translator app is… a bit crap.
Even with my struggles with linguistics I am absolutely loving Japan. I’ve eaten way too much food and see some amazing sights. But this is not a travel blog so I’m not going to bore you too much with re-telling all the exciting things from my working holiday. This week you’ll have to make do with a short update and if you are particularly interested, then some holiday snaps are in an album below.
I would have written a much longer, snappier blog post but it turns out Jet Lag and a lot of drinking have not been very conducive to creative writing.
- My view for my entire 11 hour flight
- Nom plane breakfast
- I would have used a banana for scale but It’s really hard to buy fruit here
- Each plate was 70p
- This is not water
- The Japanese don’t mess about with thatching
- Small hut up a path… I have not idea why
- Lake + island, exciting stuff
- Not gonna lie one of the best parts of this trip is seeing my boss cringe at spiders
- There were loads of these drippy shrine things. Apart from being an inefficient way of distributing water I’m not sure what they are for.
- Little ornate weights hanging of a tree because free tress are not allowed
- This is the mascot of the Japanese customs force o.O
- Japanese building regulations are lax and random
- FUGU and octopus
- Japanese sushi market is very popular
- Bushy red temple
- A small monument to the Terror Dogs from Ghosbusters
- No idea why this pile of rocks gets it’s own sign
- Very impressive central station with walkways and a monorail
- Entrance to a Japanese castle. My colleagues for scale
- TIL that it’s quite common to spend your sunday in japan being photographed in cos-play
- Shortly after this photo was taken the small child was thrown to the fish
- Apparently in Japan you can get married on a walkway of lilies
- I love table BBQs
- Lab i’m visting, part cell culture lab, office and kitchen.
- Post meetings the students threw us a cool BBQ, much meat was eaten
- How to cook 101 fire=good
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