The International Carbohydrate Symposium (ICS), held in Tokyo, included topics covering new developments in the field of glycoscience research. This conference report highlights selected presentations on glycoside hydrolase 1 (GH1) substrate specificity, antibody/lectin binding to oligosaccharides, probing the enzymatic properties of oligosaccharyltransferase, galactolipid biosynthesis, galactose disaccharide binding to a Pseudomonas lectin, O-linked N-acetylglucosamine (O-GlcNAc) modification of proteins, and NMR J-coupling correlations in saccharides.