Kanji Issues

I forgot to mention that yesterday's seminar was an hour and a half with no cookies. It's hard core here.

Atsuko helped me with the laborious task of getting a pre-pay phone here, and it involved a lot of writing of my address (in Kanji) so when we got back to the lab she showed me how to write it. I wrote my own address on the envelope to send in to Vodaphone and when Atsuko checked it and promptly busted up laughing. The spacing is very important, it seems, and rather than write "Gun" as part of "Gunma" I wrote that I live with the sheep and horses. I then changed a Kanji on the self-addressed front of the envelope as many people do to make it a more polite letter, but wrote the Kanji in the wrong direction as I hadn't noticed the entire envelope was oriented vertically and the address was also vertical. It's good to entertain the locals!

Another Kanji-related story: There is a fascinating system here that the bosses use to know where everybody is. It's a magnetic dry-erase board with everyone's name on the left and 9-10 different categories to slide your little magnet into if you are in the lab, at a seminar, home, out, on a trip, in a meeting, at the animal center, giving a lecture or at the library. As everyone's name is in Kanji, it became a lab project to figure what the Kanji for my name would be. Naturally, my name means evil (Ja). For those who always thought so, there you have it. My Japanese teacher at Sokendai had written that on top of my little name card at the end of class and kept apologizing but I didn't know why until I showed it to Dr. Kuromi and he said "Ah! Bad. We change." Dr. Ueno took the name card for a while and it came back with a meaning like a merciful person in the night with the sound of a moving river, and Funk meant rich, stability and a castle. Atsuko borrowed the name card the next day and it came back meaning sleeping snake and breeze of a blush apricot, but Homma-san the secretary made a name tag a couple of days later and put it up. It has breeze of a blush apricot and then something like smell of a deer that noone understands. It seems I am doomed to either smell or be evil.

Today I had the shakes and dissections were frustrating. I got one Lat A done but then the next 3 died before I could finish the analysis. The Lat A may be frying them a bit as well and tomorrow I will try a lower concentration and shorter incubation time. I found a burger and fries for dinner, but I am still experiencing the culture because I practiced my Japanese when I ordered it.

I'm going to crunch a few numbers tonight and try and convice myself I have good data. Dr. Kuromi seemed excited when he was looking at my pictures, but I think I need to do the experiments again. Why does my foot hurt?

Smelly Deer in a Windy Apricot Orchard