Japan Blog 1

Well this will be an interesting adventure in use of the foreign computer. I can sound out ta-i-to-ru which I believe is title, and I'm feeling pretty smart. It's 11:20pm and I'm waiting for Atsuko, the very friendly tubulin postdoc, to finish working and then she'll take me back to my castle. It's a great place, beautiful wood floors, western toilet, bedroom, bathroom, diningroom and kitchen. There is even a T.V. for watching Japanese soaps, Japanese C-SPAN or the shopping channel. I turn it on when I'm running around in the morning and can catch a sentance to ask Atsuko what it means. It's darn hot in the lab already which makes the aerobics of using the very low lab bench a bit exhausting after a while, but there is great air conditioning in the microscope room where I imagine I will be most of the time. Today Dr.Kuromi showed me how to do high potassium staining and take before and after pictures and analyze them. Finding the same boutons again after stimulation is a bit tricky, but I'm finding the trachea to be useful landmarks. The fly room is awesome here! It would make Laurie cry tears of joy. They have their own fly-mother (Wakai-san) and you must wash your hands before entering. The Japanese larvae look the same as U.S. larvae, I looked closely.
I'm going to attempt to upload a couple of pictures here, however it's slow-going on this computer so I can't do much without crashing it!