Gearing Up For Nagasaki

Beauty. 

After what has been a frantic three months of going to the lab every single day to prepare for the satellite's Critical Design Review [HERE] and then a very eventful Lab Summer Camp [HERE] where I launched a volleyball straight at my unsuspecting advising Le Professori's face, I will be out with the team for a "MT" in Nagasaki which is about worse-case four hour drive from my current city. I have selected a very, very good looking (at least on the site) Airbnb but with all the complaints I listen from my friends about the service, I have my hopes seriously down; down to the very core of the earth. 

Nagasaki will be fun, sightseeing wise. Apparently, it was the only city that was open to the west (the dutch specifically) when the country was closed and there seems to be an early foreign influence in the architecture, food and lifestyle. The big, huge, not-so-magnificent white elephant in the room obviously being the small issue of a dropping an atomic bomb by the Americans that practically broke the Japanese into submission ending a prolonged WWII. It will be interesting to see how they bounced back. Bounced back they really did. 

Beer-wise, it's a disappointment. No breweries to visit, handful of pubs and a team that has a "meh" attitude to a glass of delicious beer. Last time we ended at a local craft brewery, I was the only one ordering. Yeah. Anyways, as for Japan, I thought it was the craft beer nation of Asia. Or I am probably just at the wrong place at right time.  

My bags are still half way packed. I need my essential hair gel, of course. A nice, portable deodorant because I don't want to smell and sweat like a pig (pigs don't sweat, I hear) in [horribly] hot, humid japanese summer. The toothbrush and a bag of cumin spice. All set.

Till tomorrow.