Fukuoka and the IAP.

We made our way up from Beppu to Fukuoka on Friday. Initially a slow train and then a fast train. Cheryl unfortunately only had one day in Fukuoka as she was heading home to Edmonton on Saturday. Peach airline required a paper boarding pass so we found a Kinkos and printed it off. We are staying in Air Bnb so we don't have the luxury of a concerige service to look after us. Cheryl was flying out at 9 in the morning to Tokyo and would walk in the morning to the subway station and take it to the airport. I have started checking out important transfers like this the day before so in the morning things are much less stressful. I learnt the importance of being prepared like this from reading Chris Hatfield's book, An astronaut's guide to earth. It has certainly reduced the stress on a travel day. After we had checked Cheryl's route we visited the Modern museum of modern art. Modern art isn't really my thing but it was right by the train station. We walked back to our Air BnB and Cheryl chilled out while I went to register for the conference. For supper we headed off to a Ramon noodle food court in Canal City. The one thing I can't get over here in Japan is how strong their consumer is. There are shopping and clothing stores everywhere. People talk about Americans as being very consumer oriented but Japanese consumers seem even stronger. Surprising given the reports of Japan's stagnating economy. It doesn't look overly stagnating to me.

Cheryl got off early the next morning and I started attending courses at the International Association of Pathologists. Pathologists from all over the world have travelled to Fukuoka for the conference. I met pathologists from all over the world. I attended 7 hours on Sunday, 8 hours on Saturday and 4 hours as well as the final banquet on Monday night. Three days was the perfect amount of time at the conference. My favorite talks were on adrenal pathology. The conference was only attended by several Japanese and Korean pathologists who were all members of the Japanese and Korean endocrine society. They were very accommodating with the questions that I asked and even asked me to pose in their photo. Japanese and Korean people are so king. Any longer and one's brain turns to mush. I learnt some new things that will help me in my practice. I remember one of my colleagues in Regina saying that if you are learning too many new things that can sometimes be a bad sign. I was able to slip away one afternoon to visit some shrines in downtown Fukuoka. My favorite was the Tochoji shrine dedicated to the Japanese monk who in 1241 after visiting China introduced the noodle to Japan. Before 1241 there were no noodle bowls in Japan. My last afternoon in Fukuoka, I headed off to the botanical garden and zoo. A combined ticket. The garden was pleasant but not as good as the Kyoto Botanical garden. I wandered around the zoo. Lots of young families with children. The zoo looked pretty modern and habitable for the animals. I finally came across some Japanese monkeys. Earlier on the trip when we were in Kamikochi Ntl park we met a park ranger who gave a post card with a picture of Japanese monkeys so if we came across them in the park we would recognize them as monkeys. I guess she thought we would mistake them for another animal such as a bear. Anyhow I have held onto the car until now and I was able to correctly ident them as Japanese monkeys. I heard a lion roar which was a first. I met a sun bear who was in a very nice enclosure. He spoke very good English. I told the bear about the bear ranch that we had visited earlier in the trip. He thought it could be fun to have some friends, lots of friends. I told him about the begging for treats. He also thought that would be fun. No one is allowed to feed him at the zoo. I guess life is all relative.

I went to the closing banquet at a very swank Fukuoka hotel. I sat with a quiet Norwegian pathologist and his wife and a very gregarious Dutch couple, she was a pathologist and he was an ENT doctor.They had a little orchestra play for us before the meal. The conductor's English was poor however I talked to one of the musicians afterwards and they were pretty well all pathologists who typically come together every year for the annual meeting of Japanese pathologists.

Today I am off to Osaka on the train.Read more