JetPlane

Strange after spending two weeks in Japan chasing cherry blossom (and being always a week too early), that there is a great display in Cambridge now that I’m home. I haven’t really noticed the cherry blossom as anything special before, but I’m seeing it with a new eye now.

A test for Michael: what’s missing from the photo below?

“Cambridge Cherry Blossom” by GrahamMcCannCAM

Technorati Tags: Cambridge, Cherry Blossom

Up for flight and on the transfer bus at 8am, out to Kansai Airport. The runway is in the sea, which made for an interesting take-off. The flight was only half-full and we were lucky enough to get extra leg room seats at the start of the economy section + an empty seat between Rob and I, so it was very luxurious and almost felt like being in premium economy. Unusually, I managed to do some work on the flight on my laptop because it was so comfortable and because it was a daytime flight.

Sarah and I watched a film recommended by Rob: The Usual Suspects. Kevin Spacey was very good. Managed a two hour snooze early in the flight. More work then another film. It was actually a very good flight.

We were half an hour late arriving at Heathrow and it took three hours to get home to Cambridge, across country becasue the M25 was at a standstill.

Professor Shirota met Robert, Sarah, Richard, Alejandra and John and I at 8.15 at the hotel and we went out to the Suita Campus of Osaka University to visit Applied Chemistry in the Faculty of Engineering. Rob, Sarah and I met with Professor Fukuzumi for the morning and gave our presentation, whilst the others went to discuss different things with different people. We all met up together for lunch at La Sensa Italian/French restaurant on the 12th Floor of the Chemistry building: run by one of the hotel chains and also open to the public, although it would be a strange place to visit for lunch. We had a western-style fish lunch, which was very good (and smothered in garlic).

After lunch Prof Fukuzumi drove us to the Toyonaka Campus where we had two sets of labs to visit and we gave our second presentation of the day and had some other meetings and a quick lab tour.

Professor Shirota took us back into town and we visited the old-style Osaka, in I think Namba, with lots of narrow streets, low-rise buildings and bright lights. It was a completely different atmosphere and was very busy and frenzied, with lots of noise. There was an amazingly long covered shopping street, crammed with lots of shops (mostly looking empty). We also stopped at a shrine, where passers by prayed and sprinckled rocks with water from a bucket, keeping lush moss on the stones and statues wet. We all had a quick go at this.

Headed back to a hotel restaurant close to the Granvia and Yas and Nobuka bought us an amazing meal, accompanied by Hiro.

We started with a selection of little dishes, including octopus and a green plant that looked like fern tips. This was followed by some lovely soup and then the best sashimi we’d eaten: tuna, squid and sea bass all of excellent quality. We followed this with a little pot of vegetable stew and a shared a selection of vegetable tempura. We also had a baked sea bream course. Rob, Sarah, Ale and I were in stitches over this because while three of us had decent servings Ale’s was mainly a pile of bones and a huge fish eye! She’s complained about this rather plaintively and held a bit of bony carcass up for effect: we couldn’t stop laughing. This was accompanied with beer and three flavours of sake: clear (dry and not dry) and a beautiful cloudy sake, that was wonderful. We had a great night.

After dinner we headed up to the top floor of the building (35) where Professir Shirota had booked a private room and we had more drinks there, with an amazing view. Richard fell asleep (jet lag) and by 10.30 we headed off and Yas showed us how to catch buses to the airports from various spots around hotel. His hospitality was amazing.

Richard, Rob and I went to the top floor of the Hilton across the road from our hotel to the tacky Window on the Sky (or something) bar for a nightcap. The place was decorated with etched glass brightly lit by garish spotlights in yellow and pink, and accompanied by other twinkling and lit decorations, such as a stand of glasses lit internally to illustrate various cocktails. There was a Swedish singer and we ate some powerful wasabi-coated nuts.

Packed my bags and finally made it to bed about 2am

In the late afternoon we popped out to the Daimaru and Yodobashi Camera Department stores. The first is located in the first 13 floors of the same building as our Granvia hotel and the second was about 10 floors of mostly electronics. These are mega shopping centres. We bought a few gifts, including lucky cats for our desks at work. Sarah has so many that she’ll need to give up working soon to concentrate on spending all her new fortune. In the evening we met up with Richard, Alejandra, John and two of the delegates in a tonkatsu restaurant which was very good. This was on the 13th floor of the hotel, and we had to use a special elevator to reach it as it was outside of the ‘hotel restaurant collection’ and a lot cheaper too!. We learned that one of the UK delegation had eaten a dodgy prawn last night and had to make an emergency trip to the loo in a temple. Only to discover there was no toilet paper. So they had to unwrap a present they had bought for their partner and use the wrapping paper (ouch). When this ran out all that was left was 30 of their business cards, which made very useful scrappers. Being quite made of stiff card they blocked the toilet and also identified the culprit! They should expect an e-mail from the cleaner shortly!

Feling a bit jaded after last night’s karaoke session, and it’s just as well that today is a quiet day. We had originally planned to visit Osaka City university in the morning and Osaka Prefecture in the afternoon. However, most professors take today off after the Chemical Society of Japan Spring meeting, so there would be few people there to visit and Professor Shirota had found it very difficult to find anyone who would be around.

After breakfast with Sarah, I worked in my room sorting out paperwork from the meeting and my e-mail box: still clearing messages received while I was in Argentina. I’ve just cleared the inbox, and know what I need to do next, so that’s a good start. Lunch was a bit gruesome: we wandered to the mall under the hotel and had pasta. My carabonara had a cheap cheesy sauce with lots of garlic.

Going to continue with e-mail and sort out expenses until about 4 or 5, when I’ll meet up with Robert and Sarah.

Raining a little today and had a slow start. Met Harutoshi at the stand and spent all day there, which was very useful, including meeting the Editor of the Chemical Society of Japan’s equivalent to Chemistry World. Sarah and Rob spent the day between an International Asian Sympoium (in English) and the Green Chemistry Symposium that Alejandra organised. Both seem to have gone very well.

In the evening we attended a reception for this event, that followed the same format at the reception last night. The band played supercalafrgulisticxbalidocious (which is a favourite in Japan) and the theme from Beauty and the Beast. They opened the beer earlier tonight but this meant that the RSC award giving was competing with chat from the delegates. The PCCP Award winners were very pleased with their prizes and I got some good photographs for RSC News.

We met up with the UK Green Chemistry delegates after the reception and 12 of us went back to the same Big Echo karaoke bar that went to on Sunday night. We spent about 4 hours there and made a lot of noise! We were party crashed by some local youths (about three times).