Kobe

After a great day with my friend Tetsuji and his family I left Nara and went to Kobe for the next conference. More sweating when I had to carry my luggage and look for shuttle busses etc. I am really used to the temperature by now but as soon as there's a little more movement required I sweat like a pig again. But now I have this very Japanese little towel around my neck that I use to dry my sweat. In Kobe I met my friend Nico who did a postdoc in our lab at the hotel. We haven't seen each other for more than one year and spent all evening chatting and eating Yakitori. Our room was fantastic with a view of Kobe and the ocean. Huge breakfast buffet.


From Monday to Friday we attended the 14th International Conference in Immunology. 6000 participants! That was a new experience for me. It's a total scientific overkill but of course offers something for everyone and you just have to carefully choose what you want to see. There were 1000 poster presentations per day! It was great to meet old friends and make new ones. Met all the people from the first conference in Nara again.


We had some good parties at night with the Highlight on Thursday where we started at the official party of the meeting with traditional dance, band and fireworks and ended with Karaoke until 7am. It is a weird feeling to step out on the street into daylight. After 3 hours of sleep we got up to welcome Lucile, Nico's fiance. We celebrated our reunion with a beautiful sushi diner. Now I need some sleep...