(for the award-winning poster, scroll down a bit!)
Remember how I wrote they do things big and with lots of people? Well, that certainly went for the past weekend’s company outing (or, to put it in RIKEN terms, “retreat”). Though it was not really an outing as much as an excuse to have people work on Saturday morning as well.
Concretely, “retreat” meant going to a hotel in Chiba prefecture by bus to have meetings, do poster presentations and then have some more meetings. For those who are still unaware, meetings are not my thing, particularly ones with many people – and these had many, many people…
The hotel was nice; staff of course took politeness to the extreme (bowingly seeing the bus off at the end 
); food quantities were, well, Japanese (i.e. snack-size). Rooms were very nicely not decorated. Seriously, no sarcasm here, I’m totally digging the Japanese style of decorating: tatami-covered floors (did I mention you’re required to take your shoes off everywhere? This is why…), like-colored walls and ceilings, low tables and cute legless chairs. Maybe one or two small table-like thingies against a wall, and that’s it. Did I mention the cool shouji (rice-paper sliding doors) yet? When I get a large place back in the Netherlands, at least one of the rooms has to be like this!
The hotel also had an “onsen” (Japanese hot spring bath; actually this one was actually not a real onsen but let’s not bitch about that, shall we? 
), a first for me. If you’ve ever read or heard about Japanese manners, you’ve probably come across their bathing habits. One’s supposed to undress, sit down and wash, wash, wash and then wash some more. Only if you’re absolutely triple-cleaned are you allowed to enter the main bath. A really fun experience, and I can tell you, they don’t call them hot springs for nothing! As an added bonus you get to wear a yukata (cotton kimono-like garb) which made me feel really Japanese
Enough about the hotel, let’s talk retreat. Some of the meetings literally involved putting the whole Omics Science Center into the hotel’s gym to listen to people read their powerpoint slides aloud. Beside this, every group, individual and task force had to take turns and tell everyone what they were working on. Guess it’s the Japanese way of doing things… It goes without saying that in most cases it would have been less boring and more clear if everyone had just written it down somewhere – they may be scientists, but that’s by no means a guarantee of being able to communicate properly…
Poster presentation, or how to make fun of it
The poster presentation was great fun though! Not because people’s posters were so cool (*cough* I mean, science can be fun but let’s not overdo it, shall we? ) but because we had prepared a nice poster surprise for our colleagues. Remember the cool picture from the cafeteria about the “tearing vegetables”? Well, at the same cafeteria we have an unofficial competition of getting the best calories-per-yen ratio on the daily chow. They print the amount of calories in your meal on the receipt for convenient comparing, and for some reason everyone’s caloric intake is structurally too low (well, at least according to the receipt). Click here for a pdf-version of the poster.
Charles has kept track of his cafeteria receipts for quite a while now, so we thankfully combined his “data” with our collective sense of humor to produce a scientific-looking joke poster about the RIKEN chow.
Apparently, the Japanese still have their sense-of-humor gene, because not only was the poster well-received, it also won first prize in the best poster vote We also got to present our “work” at one of the mass meetings, just like the “real” researchers did, which made for hilarious speeches and comments (Eivind: “we’re aiming for Nature”).
I also made an attempt at learning Mah-Jongh (or whatever the correct spelling is in Japan) but the combination of serious amounts of sake (the word sake is used in Japan to denote any kind of alcohol, not just sake (that’s called nihonshuu here)) and the English ability of my tutors resulted in me not learning much.
Example conversation:
Me > “Can I do this move now?”
Them < “No, you can’t, see, because *insert vague reasoning*”
> “You didn’t tell me about that before!”
< “Yeah, it’s a special exception rule *or some other lame excuse*
> “Okay, so how does it work?”
< “Well, it means that you can’t do this move now, because *insert same vague reasoning as before*
Repeat from “Okay, how does it work?” four times.
Guess I’ll look up the details on the web… Had fun though.
Being a radio star (sorry, Dutch only, if you can’t read Dutch listening to the show’s no good anyway…)
Wist je al dat ik op de radio ben geweest? Als je op het dingetje hierboven klikt hoor je het stukje radio als het goed is. In het begin klink ik misschien een beetje suf, er zat een echo op die telefoonlijn en het is behoorlijk lastig geïnterviewd worden als je jezelf halverwege je zin begint terug te horen :S Als ik het zo terughoor hebben ze het er nog aardig uit geëdit volgens mij 
Okee, mocht je antwoord op de eerste vraag nee zijn geweest, hier de uitleg. BNN heeft op radio 1 ’s avonds BNN Today, en daarin hebben ze een rubriek Exit Holland. Dan bellen ze een Nederlander op die in het buitenland zit voor een itempje dat denk ik het best te classificeren valt als “opmerkelijk nieuws”. Dat wil zeggen, actueel of apart in het land waar die persoon zit, maar niet in de media in Nederland. Dus ik heb donderdag uitleg gegeven over de paraplucultuur
October 18th, 2008 at 22:29
ik herkende jouw voet op het strand meteen!
October 18th, 2008 at 22:55
Ah, dammit Joost!I wanted to wait to post my version of the story before publishing my photo of our feet in my blog…..you photoshoots stealer!!!!
thanks for providing the English version. Stay tuned, I’ll post my story asap!!
October 18th, 2008 at 23:58
ik wil eigelijk ook wel mahjong leren. Er zijn er een paar in mijn fam. die het spelen moet ik maar eens vragen dan.
ik kreeg trouwens honger van die poster :S
October 19th, 2008 at 0:23
Briljant die poster! Heb je ook een high-res foto, of een PPT, zodat we ook kunnen lezen wat er op staat? “Tearing vegetables entered soup on more than one occasion”
October 19th, 2008 at 0:44
Je kunt inzoomen op het pdf-bestand: klikkie