So, I have arrived in Japan, and after a few weeks here, the laboratory organized a welcome party for me. So nice 🙂 We had a huge meeting of the whole laboratory that day, and I did a short presentation about myself, my university and Germany there. After the meeting, we all walked to a restaurant in Shintanabe, where we sat down in some traditional Japanese looking room. Everone was sitting on the ground, but there was space to put the legs in under the table, so we did not had to sit on or knees all the time, like I thought at first. After we sat down, I talked to a lot of people. When we ordered drinks, Ideya, Mao and Akane helped me to order, because it was difficult for me to read the menu in Kanji. Before we started eating, Hanawa said a few words to everyone, and then they told me I had to do a speech too. It was really sursprising for me, so everything I could say with my poor Japanese was something like “It is so nice and interesting to be here”. Not the best speech in the world I suppose, but everyone looked happy. We ate and drank, and it was very delicious. I learned about some new tasty foods that day, like a kind of salted green beans you eat as a snack. I talked to a lot of people on that evening I had not talked to before, and I think we managed to understand each other in a mixture of Japanese and Englisch. There was a single German word on that evening, when we all did the 乾杯 and said “Prost”. After we left the party, there was a smaller group of people who continued to a second bar, which was really nice too. I must say, the Japanese beer ist quite good. It was a really interesting and nice evening, and on top of that, I got a present from my labmates: A tea ceremony set. ありがとうございます！！
