International Geographic Union – IGU
This year the IGU regional conference was held in Kyoto at the Kyoto International Conference Centre (ICC). The conference ran from August 5th-August 9th.The day before the conference began there was a public lecture at Kyoto University in Japanese in order to both introduce and welcome Kyoto to geography and the conference.
The opening ceremony for the conference was held on Monday morning. Before attending the conference we were told that there would be a security check before entering the opening ceremonies. The program said that in addition to the many welcoming speeches that a message from the Prime Minister, due to the security there was speculation that the Prime Minister might actually be in attendance. However, this was not the case. Instead to our delight the Imperial Prince and Princess Akihito were in attendance. It turns out that Prince Akihito has a PhD in Molecular Biology and specialized in chicken domestication in East-Asia.
Near the end of the opening ceremonies the gold metals were given out to the International Geography Olympiad (iGeo, http://japan-igeo.com/english/) winners. The iGeo Olympiad is a competition for aspiring high school geographers. The top 10 winners were from an interesting group of countries: Romania, Slovakia, Mexico, Singapore, Croatia, Australia and Latvia. The top winner was a young man from Singapore.
At the end of the opening ceremonies there was a high school drumming group (KUSW Konko Toin High School Drum Troop), Helena and I had seen a similar drum group in Matsumoto a few weeks ago. However, this group at the opening ceremony was amazing. They were so in sync and animated that they really did an amazing job.
Geographers in the garden of Kyoto ICC
After the opening ceremony there was a group lunch where I met up with my friend Tim Reiffenstein from Mount Allison University. It was great seeing him and meeting new geographers. After lunch there was time to relax before the first sessions began. I presented in the second of the sessions that ran that day. I took some of the break to sit in the gardens of the Kyoto ICC to go over my talk and mentally prepare for my presentation.
Tim Reiffenstein and me in the gardens at the Kyoto ICCC
My session was titled “Landscape Analysis and Landscape Planning”, there were two talks in the session. The first talk was by Dr. Victor Ermoshin, a Russian professor from the Pacific Geographical Institute whose talk was on “Functional zoning of the Amur River basin landscapes”. Then I gave my talk on “Structural variation between an angiosperm timberline and gymnosperm subalpine dominated forest, Hida Mountains, Japan”. The audience was primarily Russian colleagues of Dr. Ermoshin, however, there were also a few Japanese professors there too. They asked some good questions, understanding that the work I presented was a pilot study that I am using as a platform for my dissertation research.
After my presentation was a cocktail party hosted by IGU. They had a large buffet as well as an open Sake Bar. I met lots of interesting new professors and students from all over the world during the party. Post party I went out with a group of Urban and Rural Geographers, interestingly they were primarily Spanish speaking from both Europe and Japan. It was a great time and I really enjoyed meeting these geographers from different countries and disciplines.
Toast made by the President of the IGU Vladimir Kolossov at the Cocktail Party
Sake Bar
Milling about and socializing