Sorry there hasn’t been an update post Indonesia as of yet! Japan (and now England) has kept me so busy  but I figure I should get this out there before a month has gone by!  Please excuse the length – although Japan was only 10 days, it was jammed packed and such an interesting place that I probably could just keep writing and writing. But I’m trying to keep it to the point…

We arrived 8 hours late in Kyoto – for some reason our plane decided not to come to pick us up from Kuala Lumpur, and I didn’t look at the schedule until just before the flight was meant to board, so I could’ve known this about 3 hours earlier, but nonetheless, Malaysian Airlines provided transportation and a room at a hotel for everyone on the flight. But if I would’ve checked the silly schedule I would’ve gotten more than 2 hours sleep. Boo! 

So we missed the welcoming banquet on the first night due to this delay, but just got right into it the following morning bright and early! I’ll just do a brief re-cap of the conference, since otherwise it would be way to much (and boring to read/write!). The days basically consisted of being so jammed packed that you barely got a chance to chat with the people you were running into and meeting. Talks were about 15-20 minutes long, and symposiums lasted for about 2 hours straight, then a 15 minute break, then another 2 hour symposium! On 2 of the mornings, in place of talks, there was poster presentations. Half the people were to stand by theirs on one day, and half on the second day. There were such a huge variety of topics being presented and personally knowing quite a number of people who were presenting meant that the days were so busy that it unfortunately didn’t leave much chance for me to see the city. But it was great to hear about everything going on all over the world in primatology and learn more about certain species and topics that I wasn’t too familiar in! Also, gave me ideas for future endeavours and how to improve in what I have already been doing. And it was also great to catch up with old friends, meet people I’ve only ever been in email contact with and to make new friends and future colleagues.

For the first week, we stayed in a hostel which was traditional Japanese in style and set up. It consisted on tatami mats (which I think are the most wonderful things ever), and futon mattresses which fold open – so during the day, the mattresses are folded up along the wall, and at night there were 5 mattresses folded alongside each other on the floor. It was a nice place, with sake to serve in the evenings! They also had a kimono to try on, but unfortunately we forgot about it until it was too late :( During this week, we normally just went out for dinner following the conference, which I don’t know how we would have done without Richard. Finding a restaurant alone would be difficult enough, let alone choosing something to eat – ESPECIALLY for a vegetarian. I’m pretty sure I would’ve just eaten the same thing every day, at the same place, and would’ve missed out on so much of the experience. But the food was amazing...even the raw egg stirred into rice.

We had a couple of days after the conference that we could go visit a few sites for free or reduced rates with our conference passes – I decided to go to the Kyoto Zoo (which ended up being by myself, nooone else wanted to go), and I’m glad I did. I’ve never been to an Asian Zoo (which I know is a huge generalisation already) but wanted to see for myself what a zoo outside of North America or even the UK was like. Kyoto Univerisity has a major role in primatology, and I could definitely tell by looking at their zoo that there is more of a focus on the primate enclosures than any other ones. But even those were lacking. A few primate cages had interesting enrichment, but they were still all cement ground and wire box cage around. Except the African Great Apes (Chimps and Gorillas) which had relatively “large” natural outdoor enclosures. But then again, the Japanese primatologists study a lot on chimps and gorillas. However, once you moved away from the Primate enclosures (excluding the orang-utan), there were some pretty sad cages – the small cats and wild dogs, and elephants and bears and giraffes. Actually, I should clarify, I am saying elephants and bears and giraffes, but there was just one of each. So not only were they in extremely poor cages with hardly any enrichment or room to move, they were alone as well. I could go on and on about it, but I do want to say one good thing about this zoo – their education bit. It was VERY Japanese, and I loved it (even though I couldn’t read it). They had outside most cages/enclosures, signs teaching about the animals but they were all done in the typical Japanese animation style, which I think made it much easier and entertaining for the children to learn. I especially liked the ring-tailed lemur one which was showing cartoons of the tail stink wars by the  males! 

We also went to Arishiyama, a monkey park outside the centre of Kyoto. It was wonderful up there – it was on the top huge hill (small mountain? I have no idea) which overlooked the entire city. On this mountain, they have over 100 Japanese macaques which are free roaming. They feed them at the very top in a cleared area with an amazing view. And I have to admit that I love this type of macaque. Their faces are just soaked in character. The lines and wrinkles and different pigmentation on each of their faces seems to tell a story of a life time of experience. We spent a couple hours at this site and then wandered around the town for a bit and found a beautiful bamboo forest. I love bamboo too! It is such an amazing plant – the strength of them don’t seem to match their size and beauty. I need to learn more about them though (besides their super strength ability for being wonderful building materials), because there didn’t seem to be any undergrowth in the bamboo forest and I wonder if it has been naturally cleared for appearances, or if bamboo has a similar effect pine needles and many other trees have which kill everything around them to eliminate competition. Hmm.

The following day we did a quick visit to a buddist temple, which is the (or one of the) largest wooden structure in the world, then headed over to the Imperial Palace for a tour. However, being a national holiday (Day of the Aged I believe), it was closed and we couldn’t see anything L The palace yard is lovely though, so we wandered around there for a bit.

Next it was off to Osaka, as we were both flying out the next day. We met up with one of my old flat mates, Kengo and he showed us a bit around. It was very nice to catch up with him and see him in his home turf! Richard left early the following morning, but I had the whole day still, so I managed to get lost numerous times, in the true Danica fashion where I have no idea what I am looking at and probably think it is something that it really isn’t, but got to see a lot of the city. There is definitely a huge difference between Osaka and Kyoto – Kyoto being the traditional capital, and Osaka is a booming metropolitan. But I managed to stumble across some gems in the city which made it wonderful!  I headed over to a huge temple that the tourist information lady told me I probably wouldn’t want to go to if I had already been to Kyoto but since I really didn’t get a chance to see much in Kyoto because of the busy-ness of the conference, I decided to head there anyways and it was fabulous. It seemed to be quite a mish-mash of Buddhism and Shinto-ism (?) that I was having trouble telling them apart. I first stumbled into a cemetery which led me to a wonderful little market area full of stalls and hardly any tourists. I thought I had taken the wrong turn but just decided to go with it since I usually find pretty wonderful areas that way. There was one area in a particular (which I believe was Shinto) which had a bunch of statues that people were dropping coins in front of and saying little prayers. These areas were outdoors, right in the middle of the hustle and bustle of the market, but they were so calm and serene that you almost forgot where you were, like there were invisible sound-proof walls around them. What a difference between here and Indonesia/Malaysia, where the religion is loud, and at all hours of the day (and night). But in Japan it is so serene and no matter where you are in the city, there are areas you can go to and just be.

I’m so happy I made the (pricey) decision to go to Japan. Not sure if I’ll get another chance, but it is one of the weirdest and most unique places I have been too…and I don’t think I’ll find another place like it.