Thank you for the audio log, I had a good time listening to it. Similarly to what Brandon was talking about, I guess I find it interesting to hear the travel impressions of another foreigner who also knows Japan as a real place, but is here on a trip. I can imagine myself in that situation 10 years from now, if I have moved back home in the mean-time.
In a bit of a coincidence, I was also in Tokyo last week (Sunday to Thursday). Not for TGS, but the JPS (Japanese Physical Society) autumn meeting. Haven’t been in Tokyo since moving to Osaka. It is somewhat less exciting to go there than when I lived in Okinawa as the contrast is smaller, but overall it was fun. The JPS meeting was exhausting, I ended up having the quintessential Japanese experience of going for nomikai until relatively late 3 days in a row, while also getting up to go to the conference at 9 in the morning. To be clear, it was my own choice and I had a good time at those nomikais, so not complaining. I am impressed by the ability of some of my Japanese colleagues to get very drunk in the evening and yet participate with sharp and well-thought out questions at the conference the next day…
The majority of the talks at the JPS are in Japanese and the effort required to understand both the Japanese and the physics burned out my concentration quite quickly to be honest. So work-wise it was not the most efficient use of my time, but I did get to meet a bunch of people.
One thing I thought about while listening to Brandon talk about the vegetarian woes and remembering Tim and him talking about it at some other point is that it is difficult for me to imagine how I would relate to Japan if I didn’t also love the food here. Delicious food is such a big part of the way I think about Japan and what I like here that I feel I would like the place a lot less if I didn’t like the food. I do know some vegetarians and vegans in Japan (mostly Indians), so it is not completely outside my frame of reference, but still. Things have gotten somewhat better over time I think, with vegetarian options becoming slightly more common in recent years, but it is still difficult. I still vividly remember someone asking a vegetarian acquaintance if chicken was vegetarian…