Seven people from the lab attended the First S-Ramp Conference, held in early autumn Sapporo city, Hokkaido, Japan. The "S-Ramp" stands for "STEP - Results, Applications and Modeling Phase". If you want to know more (or are still confused) you should visit the official site.

The conference was held in Sapporo Royton Hotel (oral presentations, opening ceremony, banquet, etc) and in Sapporo media park building (posters). Shown here is a snapshot from the eventful opening ceremony, which also included Sumo wrestling exhibition (bouts by space plasma physicists!) and tasting of the official S-ramp sake.

A bird's-eye view of poster presentations. The Sapporo media park building had an interesting dome-like structure with computer controlled mobile glass ceilings. Naturally we were all reminded of Fukuoka dome, the host of Daiei Hawks (professional baseball team in Fukuoka). Greenhouse effect provided an ideal atmosphere for hot discussions.

The diligent lab members ... S.M. is chatting with a friend Y.K. is putting his posters one hour after the session has started F.O. is in discussion seemingly T.H. is gone B.L. is chatting with wasabi-loving Thierry and just-married Arnold (congratulations!!) D.K. is collecting pins (not seen)

We made a half-day excursion to 'Hokkaido Kaitaku-mura', a theme park exhibiting old buildings and tools used in the cultivation period of Hokkaido region some hundred years ago.

After the excursion was an official banquet with all-you-can-eat seafood and BBQ, arguably the central event in the whole conference. Shown is the famous king crab legs, a specialty in the Hokkaido region. Crab meat is quite tasty as boiled, baked, and also as sashimi (raw).

Two patients suffering from the crab-overeating syndrome (typical initial symptoms include a characteristic finger pattern and a tendency to dicuss crab nebula astronomy). In reality, we were introducing to our foreign guests a traditional Japanese game of stone, scissors, and paper.

A snapshot from the banquet. Front row from left, Fumi, Volodya, Daiki, back row from left, Tohru, Bertrand, and Shu.

Excellent conference with many interesting talks, posters, discussions. We got to make reunion with lots of our foreign friends. Hokkaido in autumn is full of fresh seafood... What can we complain?