Yokohama

At the start of the month I had the opportunity to go to Yokohama. The Japanesepharamceutical company that I work for has this year moved from Osaka to a wonderful purpose-built facility in Shonan, not far from the city of Yokohama (and indeed Tokyo). It was my first visit there and was requested because the project I am leading is going well at an advanced stage. I flew out overnight on the saturday, arriving at my hotel late afternoon sunday and stayed until Thursday. Ob Monday i presented the project to a large auditorium of managers and young researchers. I'd had a bout 10 hours sleep in the last 72 and so scheduled to present at 3:30 in the afternoon, my performance was good, if not sparkling. Then I had two days of samller breakout meetings regarding various projects and initives between the departments in Cambridge, Japan and California. It was really great up to meet up with old friends from both sites and the Japanese guys were so hospitable as usual. A few weeks before leaving I received an email from a guy I met at a conference at the start of the year (we are friends on fb too) and he invited me out with a group of chemists to the local craft beer restaurant. Nice. The following evening I was out with a different gropu including one of the funniest Japanese guys I've ever meet. Derek, from California, had a flight to catch straight after dinner and after "a few" could not be convinced that more sake was the right thing to do. Enter Kawamoto-san ..... "But Derek, it's a-w-e-s-o-m-e dude"!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The pictures were mostly taken from my hotel window, on the 57th floor. The square building contains the hotel (from floors 52 to 70, I think). Not my favourite place to be in an earth-quake torn area. I'd wake up in the mornings (actually, I'd been awake for hours more like!) when I'd wander over to the wall of my room that was all glass, carelessly through open the curtains and see that I was a mile up in the sky. Back away from the window David, back away from the window!!!!!