The last few days have been very busy. There’s been a lot of conference stuff during the day, and by the time I get back to the hotel after dinner, I’m usually too exhausted to write anything. I’m going to update more regularly over the next 5 days since the conference is over and I’ll be exploring Kyoto and Tokyo with my parents. I’m excited that they made the trip over. I haven’t had a proper vacation with them in quite some time. One perk of them traveling with me is a substantial upgrade of hotel rooms. My room at the Kyoto Dai-Ni Tower Hotel was a 9′ x 9′ (maybe closer to 8′ x 8′) room. There was a small space at the end of the bed, and another gap between the bed and “desk.” The bathroom was essentially one piece of plastic and the size of a port-a-potty.

 

 

My talk was Tuesday afternoon, and was called “M-plane InGaN / GaN Light Emitting Diodes on c-plane Substrates Fabricated by MOCVD Regrowth.” I was having trouble getting the presentation ready, and didn’t feel like it was done until about an hour before my session started. My problem was deciding what to say so people would understand the idea of the device I’m working on. Some of the work we’ve done, like using an offcut sapphire substrate to grow N-polar GaN, has only been done at UCSB. It was tricky to provide enough background information so the audience would understand, but not take up too much time to keep me from presenting our latest work. Umesh (my advisor) seemed pleased with how it went, and Jim (professor who probably will be on my PhD committee, whenever I qualify) told me I did a good job. Speaking of UCSB people, we were a serious presence at this conference. I think there were about 15 students, and 12 (13?) gave talks or posters. During the GaN optical devices session, 4 out of the 7 talks were from UCSB. During my session, 3 of the speakers were from UCSB. On top of the students presenting their research, Umesh and Bowers both gave plenary talks. And, finally, Umesh and Jim shared the Quantum Devices award for their work on GaN high electron mobility transistors. The winner of the young scientist award, Masataka Higashiwaki, is from Japan but working as a visiting researcher in our group. So, a very UCSB dominated conference.

 

After the talks on Tuesday, Umesh took some people from the group out to a yakitori place for dinner. Yakitori is basically small portions of grilled meats, most notably chicken. I remember reading about yakitori from Michael Ruhlman’s blog, so I was excited to try it. True enough, they grilled just about every part of the chicken, from the heart to the skin. Heart sounded a little weird, even for me (I had fried chicken cartilage my second night here), but I did go with the skin. I’m a fan. It tasted like bacon but with a chicken flavor. We also had some Japanese peppers stuffed with ground beef, grilled sausages, grilled shiitake mushrooms, crispy duck, and more. It was a great meal, and I think we all had a fun time.

 

Last night was the banquet. From what I’ve seen at other conferences, the banquet is usually the springboard for debauchery, usually because there are free drinks. This one was no different. It started with a Shinto ceremony and a sake barrel opening. The food was pretty forgettable, but there was free Asahi. Since we had a late lunch, I chose to drink my dinner. A major highlight from the banquet was being served by maikos, or apprentice geishas. Apparently, it takes about 2 hours to make their hair look the way it does, so they only do it once a week. They are very attentive. My glass was never empty, which is why things start to get a bit hazy. After the banquet, we decided to go to karaoke with Umesh leading the charge. There’s a great spot about a block away from the train station. Instead of singing in front of a lot of random people, we had our own private room. Umesh ordered (and kept ordering) rounds of beer for everyone. The singing started out slowly, as always. But once the beer kicked in, things got a little bit wild. One of the last things I remember is singing/screaming “Shot Through the Heart” with Nick into a microphone that may or may not have been working. It was a great way to cap off a wonderful conference.