After a great week back home with Cristi and Claudia, it was finally time to embark for Japan where we will be based out of for the next 2.5 months. We had a good time back home with the family and catching up with friends in Atlanta, but were very excited to get back on the ‘road’ and head out to Japan – it’s Rachel’s first time back in nearly 10 years, and it will be the first time visiting many of the destinations that we have on the agenda for the next few months… but I digress and in due time those will be updated anyway!

Our first week here we mostly spent exploring Ota City, the very residential area that we will be calling home for the next few months. Making sure we know where the nearest Uniqlo is, which convenience store has the best meals, etc. was a top priority… Once that was done, it was time to turn on tourist mode – first stop, Teamlab. TeamLab is an art collective with installations that apparently all over the world, but started in Tokyo and so many of their most famous exhibitions are here as well. Their most recent installation ‘Borderless’ is in Roppongi and has been all over social media recently, so we decided to channel our inner gaijin and go to see it. Lucky we did, because it was truly a very unique experience – the interactive shows they have created here is quite a sight and very hard to describe with either words or pictures, making it a very successful installation in my mind. I won’t try to do it justice any further than to just say it’s definitely one to check out – and it’s now a permanent installation, so that should be very doable! I’d also recommend coming either early morning or only after you’ve completely gotten over jet-lag since we were struggling pretty hard at 7pm on the night after we arrived… oops.

During our first weekend in Japan, we also took a trip to Tsukuba – the science city of Japan, hosting the space agency JAXA, as well as national institutes like AIST and NIMS. The goal was to show Rachel where I spent my summer doing research before I started my PhD, but also to get in a nice hike at the quite steep Mt. Tsukuba. After a 3 hour train and bus trip from Ota City, we started our hike up the mountain and quickly realized how out of shape we are… but still pressed on and got in a great workout with torii gates, shrines and corgis along the way. As a reward for this admittedly minor feat, we had some grilled dango at the top of the mountain and wow, it was just as if grandma made them… if grandma knew how to make dango.

The rest of the time in Tsukuba was spent just wandering around for some lunch and to show Rachel the ‘old haunts’ me and the 10 or so other American researchers used to frequent while we lived in the town. It was supremely nostalgic to walk around the city and see both how little has changed in some areas – Ninomiya House where we lived is practically a snapshot of 12 yrs ago! – and how developed the city center has become. It’s truly an international city full of researchers and I have to say their fermentation biologists are pretty good. We lunched at Twin Peaks Brewpub and had some of the best beers I’ve had in months!

Later in the week we went for an even more touristy tour of Tokyo and hit up two main attractions – the Cup Noodle Museum and the Unicorn Gundam. The first of the two stops is pretty awesome… I’ve been here before, but it was Rachel’s first time and the pictures show the pure joy of seeing the history of cup ramen in person. We started the tour with a very high production value movie about the history of how Momofuku Ando started the mass-produced instant food craze that ultimately resulted in what we now know as cup ramen. Next up was cup ramen ice-cream, which I thought was going to be an interesting culinary design challenge that makes ice cream ingredients just look like cup ramen… nope, it was just soft serve with carrots, ginger, and other actual cup ramen ingredients. Weird. Anyway, we wrapped up the tour by making our own cup ramen which is the best part of the experience in my opinion – I made a great curry cheese ramen, and Rachel designed a great blog-inspired tomato-based serving!

The Unicorn Gundam was not really a major attraction unless you grew up idolizing mecha anime, which neither of us really did… Instead it’s a nice excuse to go over to Tokyo Bay, an area I’ve not really spent much time while traveling to Japan for work. This area had lots of weird shops, but our favorite impromptu visit to the National Science Museum. While it is geared toward a bit younger audience, the interactive exhibits they have here spanning aerospace, civil engineering and robotics are quite interesting. I will say that their exhibit on the effects of aging… could use some further thought. If you want to see some true Japanese horror, look no further than the last image below which depicts ‘how old people see anger’.

P.S. – We can’t come to Japan without indulging in some of the otaku highlights… here’s Rachel enjoying Gear 5 Luffy in a One Piece store. We’re home 🙂