Konnichiwa from sunny Tokyo!

As Neil wrote here last week I just moved to Tokyo at the week-end, pretty much at the same time as our first issue going live. Exciting times! This week has been really busy, mainly with flat-hunting, and I’m now looking forward to applying for my official alien card. Actually I was expecting lots of immigration-related forms but so far I’ve been so well looked after that I haven’t had much bureaucracy to deal with (which can only be a good thing seeing as I can only just write my name in Japanese).

I had intended to spend my first week-end here attending the Annual Meeting of the Chemical Society of Japan, but it turns out the vast majority of the talks are in Japanese (I had thought the plenary lectures, or perhaps the CSJ award lectures, would be in English). I know nearly all the attendees are Japanese, and so it is understandable — but on the other hand would the conference not benefit from being accessible to everyone (including those few non-Japanese invited speakers)?

I will be at the English-speaking events: the Asian International Symposium on Sunday afternoon, and the conference dinner… and I shall now also spend some of the week-end looking for these cherry blossoms everyone is talking about!

Anne

Anne Pichon (Associate Editor, Nature Chemistry)