From Monday to Friday I went to the International Semantic Web Conference in Kobe. I met many new people, followed two tutorials, listened to many talks, gave two talks (one for the machine-creativity project of my supervisor) and demonstrated a creativity tool (also for the project).
In this week I went to a bar with other people from the conference (to drink the most expensive beer so far), where I also met talked in Japanese to the manager of a Whiskey import company. (In case my supervisor reads this: I went to the bar only after giving the talks.) On the next evening I enjoyed the conference dinner. I found the food luxurious (small portions, probably expensive), but - except for one dish - the taste didn’t impress me. Afterwards a large group from the conference went to sing karaoke. We had a nice evening/night, singing and drinking. I would have just reduced the volume a little bit, as my ears started to hurt from the loud music.
On Friday evening I took the train to Kyoto. The trains confused me, because they didn’t match the schedule. A guy who offered help, and confirmed that the trains had delays. Due to the dense schedule I only had to wait some minutes. In the hostel in Kyoto I met a young couple from Israel, and we had a beer together along the river. They told me about a sake festival, where you just need to buy a cup to try a lot of different kinds of sake all day long.