Space Generation Congress 2005: Fukuoka, Japan

Plane ride

Here I am, on my first commercial flight EVER! We are flying from Houston to Chicago (then from Chicago to Nagoya, and Nagoya to Fukuoka).

On the flight from Chicago to Nagoya, we rode in a gigantic Boeing 777.

The beautiful mountains of Alaska....

...and my first-ever (very cloudy) view of Japan!

Another gorgeous view of Japan.

We took the shuttle to get from one part of the airport to the airport's subway stop.

Upon arrival to Fukuoka, we found our room in the Hotel New Simple...we had 9 people in one room!

This is where I met Yasuko, one of my roomies.

After unpacking, we went to a restaurant to eat lots of Japanese food...teriyaki chicken, shrimp chips, tofu, with, of course, lots of alcohol.

A pretty wall mural down the street from Hotel New Simple.

Day One

The Hotel New Simple (hoteru nyuu shimpuru), filled up by SGC delegates! We put their front-door sandals to good use, too.

That morning I woke to find the only public restroom was Japanese-style...

Laura, Madi and I woke up at 6:30 and tried out the Japanese baths and bathrobes. They were very nice!

Akie, one of our roommates, enjoyed her futon!

The ASC building: the Space Generation Congress venue.

We immediately got to work.

Eating out with my two traveling companions, Laura Sarmiento and Madurita Sengupta.

This was a big party where just about everyone got drunk.

Walking around Fukuoka at night:

Day Two

The work at the SGC continues. My group, working on the design and construction of a lunar habitat, worked very hard during each SGC meeting. Luckily our time divided between work and interesting speakers talking about (what else?) space!

Afterwards, we went out on various excursions, all of them involving some aspect of Japanese culture. Some folks went to practice chanoyu, the Japanese tea ceremony (seen here by Yusuke, one of the SGC coordinators)....

...while others went shopping. The shopping group decided to go have sushi to give us the energy to raid the nearby stores. We ate quite a bit, especially Ryuta, who ate 14 plates of sushi (and a bowl of miso)!

I almost had a seizure when I saw two ladies dressed in GORGEOUS kimonos walk into the sushi restaurant! I wish this picture were better so you could see how pretty they looked!

Anyways, back to shoppingu:

We saw some interesting things, including an AWESOME bumper sticker!! Haha they even know it's true all the way over in Japan!

After that, we came back to the hotel for some sake.

Day Three

Lots of hard work. BUT, as they say at Gion Eki:

We had to give presentations of our project findings on the last day of SGC. (too bad you can't see the screen. our presentation was awesome.)

Back at the hotel, Yasuko let me try on her yuukata (Japanese summer dress).

After all of SGC was over, we went to a very expensive-looking hotel for our reception. Everyone wore the traditional dress of their home countries (I had a hard time finding something "traditionally American" that didn't involve a t-shirt and jeans).

In front of the hotel, we found this amazing machine that paints your nails for you! It's only 200 yen PER FINGER!