In April 2016 I visited Japan to attend a Bureau meeting of the International Association of Meteorology and Atmospheric Sciences (IAMAS). The Bureau consists of the senior officers of the association who keep in touch via a monthly Zoom session, but also meet in person every couple of years to review progress and develop future plans for the organisation. The 2016 meeting of the Bureau was held in Kyoto, Japan since the Secretary General of the association was based there at the time.
We flew from Heathrow to Tokyo Haneda airport with British Airways on 11 April and then traveled down to Kyoto via the Bullet Train (Shinkansen) the following day. The Bullet Train leaves from Tokyo Station and takes just 2 hr 15 mins to reach the futuristic Kyoto rail station. From there we took a taxi to our hotel where we had a rather compact room, but at least it was close to the location of the IAMAS meeting.
April was a very good month to be in Japan as the cherry blossom was still on the trees making the parks and other open spaces look beautiful.
We had two very busy days at the IAMAS meeting on 13-14 April before enjoying the beautiful city of Kyoto and its surrounding area. We followed this with a few days in Tokyo before returning to the UK. These two parts of the trip are described in the two pages linked below.
Our 10 days in Japan were very special and we really enjoyed our time in Kyoto and Tokyo. The weather was consistently good throughout the trip, enhancing the beauty of the country during the cherry blossom season. We are very grateful to Prof. Terry Nakajima, the Secretary General of IAMAS in 2016, for arranging the Kyoto section of the trip, which all went smoothly and was very enjoyable.