New Beginnings

I have been living here for nearly two weeks now, and so much has been going on. After travelling for what felt like a year, I finally made it to Tokyo. I decided to send my big suitcase home for about £20 and only travel through the big city with my hand luggage — good decision! Navigating the train system to get to Wako (about 1.5 hours on three different trains) was surprisingly straightforward. Google Maps is an absolute lifesaver: the fact that it shows the colour of the line, the name, the destination, the platform, and even which carriage to get on makes life a million times easier. With that, it is not more complicated to travel in Tokyo than, say, in London… except everything is a liiiittle bit bigger.

After arriving at RIKEN, I checked into my cute little flat and then spent the past week and a bit exploring some of Tokyo, getting settled into work, doing all of the paperwork required to live here, attending my first karate training, and getting my bearings in Wako.

View from my desk

My first day at work was mostly spent setting up accounts: email, Slack, server access, and all the usual systems. That also meant a full day of e-learning courses — thrilling, obviously. My office is on the 6th floor of the Centre for Brain Science, and the view is actually quite nice. Even better: the whole office is petrol blue/teal, which happens to be my favourite colour, so I feel right at home. My colleagues have been incredibly kind, and my boss is great too. The project itself is quite different from what I’ve done before, so at the moment I’m mainly focused on finding my footing.

The second day at work brought a proper bureaucratic challenge. I had to go to city hall and the post office to register my address on my Resident Card, sign up for health insurance, apply for a pension exemption, register for a MyNumber Card, and open a bank account — plus get a hanko (a personal name stamp used as a signature). All in one day.

There is absolutely no way I could have done any of this without my lovely colleague Emiko. Everything was in Japanese, and nobody could speak English. It was exhausting, but by the end of the day everything was sorted, and I am now officially registered as a resident in Japan. I even signed up for the local library that weekend — very domestic of me. 😁

Imperial Palace from afar

One of the nicest daily routines so far is lunch. My colleagues and I go to the cafeteria almost every day. You walk along and pick up dishes as you go, then place your tray at the checkout, where — through some magic (magnets?!) — the system automatically detects what you’ve taken and you just tap your card to pay. It’s efficient, cheap, and surprisingly good. We usually go at 11:45 to avoid the rush, which initially felt absurdly early to me. I was convinced I’d abandon it within days… but it took exactly one week for me to fully accept that I am now an early-lunch person. 

Getting into central Tokyo from here takes about an hour, including a 15–20 minute walk to Wako-shi Station. On my first day, I didn’t even try to rest — I went straight to Ikebukuro and spent hours in Sunshine City, a maaassive shopping complex. It’s also home to the Pokémon Mega Center, for which I queued behind what must have been a couple of hundred people. The shop itself was very cute (and full of plushies), but… possibly not worth the wait. 😅 Still, between Pokémon, Ghibli, Disney, Snoopy, and countless other stores, I had no trouble filling the day — and picking up a few things for my flat.

Itoya (middle)

Tiny Godzilla

My second Tokyo trip, on the Spring Equinox public holiday, took me to Ginza. The famous 12-floor stationery store Itoya was impressive, though very crowded by foreigners and Japanese alike. (I am aware that I, too, am a tourist — I just prefer fewer of us at once. 😉) The weather was terrible, but I still made it to the Imperial Palace grounds. Even from the outside, it was worth seeing. I also visited the Godzilla statue — much smaller than expected — and walked at least 10 km that day. I’ve started collecting eki stamps as well, and now carry a little book for them. 

Shitchitokudo Dojo at U Tokyo

Saturday was a highlight: my first karate training in Japan. Jack (Masao Watanabe) picked me up near where the University of Tokyo’s famous red gate (Akamon) should be — currently under construction — and we went to the Shichitokudo, the oldest and very impressive dojo. The young students were still finishing up their kumite training when I arrived and got changed. I was introduced to everyone in Japanese and then introduced myself in English, and later joined the black belt seminar partially led by a 7th dan Wado-ryu sensei.

Training started with a warm-up and basics. After 100 kicks on each leg during the warm-up, I was reminded quite brutally that being ill for weeks and not training for two months is not ideal preparation. I was exhausted within 20 minutes. Still, I pushed through, and the later part of the session — working through Wado kihon ippon combinations — was more manageable. As someone coming from Shotokan, it was all quite new, but I enjoyed learning new combinations and techniques and even received some praise. Afterwards, we went out for dinner, where I got to practise my Japanese and try new foods. A very good day, all in all — even weather-wise. ☀

Food has generally been excellent so far (as was to be expected). Highlights this week include a really good unagi (freshwater eel) dish at lunch and — somewhat controversially — a fish roe carbonara. It sounds questionable, but it was genuinely delicious. Also, it was served by a cat robot, which may have biased my judgement slightly.

Fish roe Carbonara

Unagi Dish - So good!

This and next week, I’m focusing on getting properly started with my project — a lot of data wrangling for now. I’m also planning to attend training at JKA Honbu Dojo, and on Friday, at the Mitsubishi Dojo with Osaka Sensei. Hopefully, my lingering allergies or cold (or whatever this is) settle down a bit soon. Living on nasal spray is not a great long-term strategy. 

Until then, 

Johanna

The day has come

Hello everyone,

Wow. Back to blogging after years of being away from this space. It feels so antiquated to write a blog instead of filming reels on Instagram, but here I am, doing what I did 12 years ago when I first went out into the world. Don’t scold me for the cringey alliteration in the title :D I just thought sushi, science, and shotokan (my karate style) describe quite well what I will be spending my time on during the next year.

After years and years of making plans, applying for scholarships, attending language courses, sorting visas, and never letting this aim out of my sight, I am off to JAPAN. 😍 Anyone who has ever spent more than ten minutes with me knows that I have been wanting to go for years, and that the pandemic ruined all the plans I had thus far. But now I am clear to go: no pandemics around the corner (fingers crossed), a finished PhD, and a fellowship in hand. I will be joining the Centre for Brain Science at the RIKEN Institute in Saitama (Tokyo) as a visiting scientist for one year.

This is a space for me to share with you what I am up to, but also for myself to create a record that I can look back on in a few years and remember these exciting times.

With the amazing help of Emiko, part of the technical staff in my RIKEN lab, I have successfully applied for a Certificate of Eligibility (CoE) and a visa for Japan, both of which I will have to show upon entering the country. There, I will receive a resident card, which is probably equivalent to my German ID card. I already have a flat in the I-House (International House) at RIKEN and will be working on a pretty cool, bioinformatics-heavy project in the Laboratory of Molecular Pathology of Psychiatric Disorders under Atsushi Takata. More about that later, though (I’ll probably make a separate post about it at some point).

After a crazy move from the UK back to Germany, I had to cancel all my insurances in Germany, get my visa, and pack. I also had to officially deregister and — something I did not expect — they actually changed my address on my passport and German ID to Japan! How crazy. It was quite fun to watch the nice lady trying to enter a Japanese address into a German computer system at the resident registration office. I’m sure that counted as an exciting day at the office for her.

Today, 12th March 2026, marks the day that I am setting off to Japan. I have two suitcases, one big and one small, and a couple of bags — all just within the limit set by Japan Airlines (JAL). I am now comfortably sitting in the first-class carriage of a DB Intercity Express, writing this blog post. It takes me about 4.5 hours to get to Frankfurt International Airport. I will then be flying out from there at around 8 pm with JAL. The flight is 15 hours. On Friday, 13th March, at 5 pm local time, I will be landing at Narita Airport in Tokyo. I have not quite figured out how to get to Wako (where I will live) from there, but I am sure it will all work out ok.

I will spend the weekend getting my bearings around Wako and maybe having a look in my lovely Lonely Planet — a birthday present from my wonderful grandparents. <3 

My new job starts on Monday morning. I am so nervous and excited, but it will be ok.

Maybe I’ll have some time next weekend to update you on what’s been going on.

Until then,

Johanna