Larva poop, etc.

I wonder if anyone else in the world has a title like that. Maybe I am the first. But today I saw a Japanese larva poop, and when you see something like that, it needs to be told. So I went and told Atsuko, but alas she did not know the word "poop." I wonder what others would resort to in this situation, but first I tried "used the bathroom," which of course makes no sense whatsoever because larva do not use the bathroom and I don't think that is the expression used around here anyway. Next I tried "left a spot," because Atsuko has used this expression before when refering to a horse. She remained confused, and I began to die in painful spasms of laughter (which confused her more I think) as I tried to draw a diagram of a larva pooping. She still thought I meant that guts were coming out, which is normal and people don't die laughing about it, so I had to continue with "you know how food comes in this end and waste comes out this end..." as my own handle on the English language was lost in hypoxic brain damage from laughing too hard. Finally, after emphasizing the waste end of the diagram and saying that I saw him do that, she understood and laughed, but still looked confused in that she obviously thought I was crazy. It is possible that Japanese culture is refined enough to not even contain correlates to my story in Japanese. When Atsuko finally understood my mangled description of an idiotic event, she said "Ooooh, you disturbed his private time! Maybe you will have to kill him now because you saw!" Atsuko has a very good sense of humor which enables her to put up with me.

I can't tell all of my Yokohama stories tonight because I need sleep and still need to pack up my apartment for moving out tomorrow. I have to tell one though. Yesterday, my last day in Yokohama, I grabbed MacDonald's lunch-to-go and went to the grassy hill by the river to eat it. Yes, I did deserve a MacDonald's lunch, I ate jellyfish the previous night like a good girl. Anyway, I was enjoying staring fixedly at the giant Cosmo-clock Ferris wheel when a cute little boy, maybe 3 yrs old, appeared in front of me. I smiled at him, but he did not smile back and proceeded to walk very slowly around me, staring intently at my face without a blink as he walked. When he finished his circle he ran up the hill and disappeared. I finished my lunch about 15 minutes later and started heading back to the conference center when I heard "Bye-bye! Bye-bye!" being yelled from somewhere up on the hill. I turned around and there was my little boy, waving frantically and yelling "Bye-bye" to me! I yelled "Bye-bye" back and waved. A true highlight of being a foreigner, hehe.

I'm off to Niigata to see the races tomorrow. Must leave by 6:30 a.m. Must pack first. Sleep is so over-rated! Best dream in Yokohama: I had a pet pink octopus that was trained to jump into his container every time I tapped the table (similar to how I tap the rig table to get the electrode to go into the muscle). Unfortunately I dropped him and he turned into a pile of noodles. I wrapped up the noodles and took them to Farida's house for dinner. What does this mean? I am obsessed with octopi, I eat too many noodles, and I need to send Farida a postcard.

Gone 'till Monday...

Back in Maebashi, where is brain...

I'm back from Yokohama. My brain is mush and lying in a puddle under a chair in Room G of the conference center, the remaining space between my ears hurts, and I will blog tomorrow when I will not have to ask my fish how to spell conference and believe that he is answering me. I had a lot of fun, and I think Timothy Ryan might be a genious. Dr. Kidokoro is nice, and the trains are fast. The towers are tall and the roller-coaster was exciting. The Cosmo-clock was a little boring to ride but mesmorizing to stare at. My fish doesn't know how to spell mesmorizing. He says he didn't finish high-school before he was flushed down a toilet and lost in the ocean only to be trapped by a Japanese pet store and locked in a bag for a week. He also says he is starving, how can I just sit here and not feed him?

Jellyfish taste good but Wendy's tastes better, I am the boss of the chopsticks, and I was kissed by three Golden Retrievers. I still do not know what actin is doing in the presynaptic nerve terminal. I prefer western toilets over squat toilets. My fish and I are going out to dinner now, I will write tomorrow...

Braindead in Maebashi

Me and the clock

Or maybe the clock and I. Many humming machines and a ticking clock are keeping me company tonight, and I think I will run home soon for the company of a book. I'm reading "A Brief History of Time" by Stephen Hawking. Alas I am a compilation of quarks, and ultimately a being composed of energy. The FORCE, wah-ah-ah-ahhhh. I'm on the chapter about black holes, and I really want to throw things into them and see what happens. I'd like to throw these maggots into a black hole. My FM-staining was pathetic this weekend, I am defeated by the straight scissors. They can also go to the black hole.

Last Thursday I had an American identity crisis. I went to the store and bought corndogs, Pringle-chips, ketchup, chocolate-chip cookies and more Pepsi with the stormtrooper toy. It was a great dinner, and I can now return to rice and salt for a while. Next time I come to Japan I will bring my own Pringle-chips -- they are 315 yen per can here.

I went to Japanese church again today and had fun singing Japanese songs. I doubt those nearby enjoyed it as much as I did. Last week I borrowed a hymnal and translated a couple of songs into romanji, and that was just enough to make me dangerous. I now attempt to read and sing hiragana under cover of my translator who sings good and loud, hehe. Today's message: death is not the end. I suppose we'll all find out sooner or later if that's true, and either a bunch of us will be surprised or noone will because death is the end. It is a bummer to encounter untestable hypotheses, because we are then relegated to argue about the truth of historical events which seems to torture the typical scientific mind. It seems like an important enough truth to ponder, right fish? My fish always agree with me.

We're all going to Yokohama tomorrow. I will seek out Timothy Ryan. My own brain is most tortured by his use of Hill equations to claim actin has a definite role in endocytosis, but does not affect the cooperativiy of clathrin assembly. Kinetics has haunted me from the beginning of science, and it is a well known truth that one cannot truly believe in what they do not truly understand. Maybe if I meet him I can believe without understanding.

YAWN, it is bedtime. This clock is really getting on my nerves, I had better leave.

Earthquake research

Here is what I believe to be the correct info about the earthquake I felt in June:

Magnitude 4.6 NEAR THE EAST COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN


Friday, June 24, 2005 at 13:08:27 UTC
Friday, June 24, 2005 at 10:08:27 PM local time at epicenter
Depth 40 kilometers
Felt at Misawa. Recorded (3 JMA) in Ibaraki; (2 JMA) in Chiba and Tochigi; (1 JMA) in Fukushima, Gumma, Saitama and Tokyo Prefectures

And today's earthquake...

Magnitude 6.1 NEAR S. COAST OF HONSHU, JAPAN

Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 07:34:58 (UTC) - Coordinated Universal Time
Saturday, July 23, 2005 at 04:34:58 PM local time at epicenter
130 km (80 miles) SE of Maebashi, Honshu, Japan
Depth 75.0 kilometers
Definitely felt in Gumma!


Info from http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_zsas.html
http://neic.usgs.gov/neis/bulletin/neic_awas.html
(Ironic that this earthquake research center is in Denver...)

Mama mia, earthquake #2

Hoo, breath in, Haa, breath out. That was a long earthquake. Dr. Kakizaki did not think it was necessary to go anywhere, Dr. Yanagawa did not even come out of his office, so maybe it was small. But dude the building was shaking and I have some spiked adrenaline levels. Ohhh dang it's shaking again. CO! CO is better!

Kendo, I saw

Last night, Kendo, I saw, when convenience store to I went. They wear scary looking masks which are especially scary when they are looking out the window at the foreigner looking in the window.

http://kendo.greywolves.org/images/kendo-kansi-front.png

http://hcs.harvard.edu/~kendo/details.php?id=kendohist

Also from the Harvard wesite:

kendo is composed of the two kanji characters ken, which means "sword", and do, which translates into "way". Literally, kendo means "the way of the sword." It is a traditional Japanese sword art that was originally developed and practised by bushi, or samurai. Modern kendo originates from the various schools of sword fighting techniques developed over hundreds of years of combat and study. The goal of kendo is not only to develop the physical ability for fighting, but also the moral and spiritual aspects of rigorous and disciplined training.

"The concept of kendo is to discipline the human character
through the application of the principles of the katana.

The purpose of practising kendo is:
To mold the mind and body,
To cultivate a vigorous spirit,
And through correct and rigid training,
To strive for improvement in the art of kendo;
To hold in esteem human courtesy and honor,
To treat others with sincerity,
And to forever pursue the cultivation of oneself.

Thus, one will be able
To love his country and society,
To contribute to the development of culture,
And to promote peace and prosperity among all people."

From the All-Japan Kendo Federation


Other news... hmm. My scientific experiences are very normal these days and that leaves me with little to talk about. Watashi no hasami ga kowareta. Ima, Kuromi-sensei no hasami o tsukau, demo hasami ga chigau. Meaning, "I my scissors I damaged. Now, Dr. Kuromi's scissors I use, but scissors are different." Hence I've been doing dissection practice for a while but I believe I can control them now and can tear into some more experiments. Many larvae died to give you this information.

Also, beware the reality of the Matrix. This computer has suddenly learned to speak English on my blog site.

Oh how I miss my puppy-dog. I will not leave him for this long again, science or no science!

Odds and ends

I'm having a crazy labrat night, early afternoon success spurred me into an energetic night of failures. Not all is lost, I have two hypotheses to explain the failures. This beats random failure by a long shot.

I wanted to comment before I forget about how strange it is to see so many doctors smoking over here! The university is next to a big hospital, so every day when I'm coming and going I see people outside with their doctor garb on a-puffing away. Of course they can if they want to, it's just unusual to see when you KNOW they know what it's doing to their lungs. Smoking is very common here, come to think of it I can't remember seeing cigarette commercials back in the states....

Maebashi is the city of water and poetry, therefore I'm going to work on a set of larval poems. They come to my mind so naturally after 10pm, little larva so mean and cruel, how long must I be bound to school, so carefully I remove your guts, but you only reward me by being a putz, I stretched you perfectly you darn little worm,
you will have no mercy, go ahead and squirm...
a new pathway to fame.

Entertaining myself

It's been a great day in science. After several runs in low calcium and perplexed acceptance of a heck of a lot of nerve failures, it appeared that the strange Japanese suction electrode was missing a buffer connection way back up in the tubing. No fear, super Janel is on task. I managed to break a very expensive looking glass syringe and therefore have a great morning confession to look forward to. I have already gone through two microscope lightbulbs, one my fault for turning the intensity up too high, the other one died due to unknown cause. But with that great finale I went home for dinner and had to force-feed myself some sushi as it was getting old. I lost patience and pulled the raw fish out of the last two and then had a chopsticks malfunction and splattered soy sauce all over myself. Seriously everywhere, it was dripping from my hair. Last pair of pants destroyed, I then had to do laundry and remembered that there is no laundry soap at this apartment, so I had to go buy some. Unfortunately in my mad escape from the lab I left my purse and the building key in the lab. Sigh. There was still a light on in the lab, so I sat outside in the rain and watched Japanese lightning for an hour until Jiamei came out and let me in. So here I am, laughing that I am over here in a foreign country to study maggots and I'm having a crummy day but I am left to my own devices because there is nobody here and I can't go anywhere and I can't talk to anybody and I can't read and I can't understand what's on television and I will not do any more recordings tonight because that would be dangerous. I suppose at home I would buy a beer and hug an adorable and understanding dog named Max, but in Japan I can buy a beer and hug a beetle and that has comical merit. Science builds character. Or maybe crazy people. How exactly do crazy people get crazy? Does it start with talking to yourself?

Anyway, lunch was a HIGHLIGHT! Sloppy-joes and popcorn... thanks Jim and Laurie!

Attack of the rubber maggots

What is the deal with these Japanese maggots? They're like sumo maggots, pulling out their pins and trying to jump off the dish and kill us all.

It's Ocean Day today, the lab population is very low.

I need to graduate.

How is that ever going to happen?

Sunday adventures

Wow I am a tired American in Japan. I came back to the lab to do a couple more recordings but I think I may need to finish that line of thought tomorrow morning. I was blazing awake at 4:30 am this morning, I don't know why. I can't figure out my circadian rhythms over here, they're very random.

I made it to church today and had so much fun! First I stood in the entrance next to a big basket of green slippers and wondered what the best way was to try and get someone's attention so I could figure out exactly what the protocol was there... but eventually a little old man came out and started asking me questions in Japanese. Hmmm. I asked if he could understand English and he asked me to wait a moment and ran into the church somewhere to return with a lady who spoke some English. She gave me a pair of slippers and lead me to a little room for English Bible study! A Japanese guy was the study leader, a Gunma University graduate who now teaches English somewhere near here and has been to CA. There was also a nice American girl there who has lived in Japan with her husband for 3 years, but she didn't stay long as she will be having a baby in a week or less and went home early. She looked a little uncomfortable! I was late as things actually started at 9:30, so barely finished introductions before heading upstairs for the Japanese church service. Ha! So cool! An older fellow with great English and a great voice to match sat next to me and updated me on the happenings throughout the service. It was a mental workout trying to pick out words, but they were in the book of John and the pastor said "ai" a lot which means "love," so I think I got the general idea. My homework will be to figure out the Lord's prayer in Japanese. Usually with my dictionary I can get one verse translated in about an hour. Slow-going, hehe. The hymns were fun as at least I can read music and follow the hiragana. Somewhere near the end my translator told me they were asking about first-time visitors and he told me to stand up and please introduce myself. Ha! The Japanese intro comes in handy once again. The really interesting thing is that at least 4 of the people who came up to me afterwards have been to Michigan (the total church size was maybe...40?)! It seems that the reaction to my line of work is a world-wide thing. It is weird to be studying fruit flies, I know. I had lunch with them afterwards (curry rice! Love it!) and had to laugh when they told me they thought many Americans today do not believe in God, and I said it is true that there are many who do not, or who believe there is no God... to which the response was "Hmmmm...foolishness!" I do love my scientist friends, but I must concur!

After church I did some more exploring in Maebashi and found some amazing waterfalls and equally amazing lizards that I was afraid to try to pick up because they look way too much like snakes. There were at least 100 people hanging around the waterfalls and lots of cute little kids playing in them -- I took lots of pictures but can't upload them yet. Somehow I need to get this camera unloaded onto a CD, hopefully next week I can borrow a new computer for a while. I talked to a very nice old man who was out for a walk and came over to practice his English. He told me all about the Lake of Happiness that is shaped like Gunma prefecture (which is shaped like a crane), and then showed me a WWII monument up on top of a hill. He told me I need to visit some large monument in Takasaki can be climbed for a great view of Mount Konnen (I think), so I will have to check that out. Takasaki is pretty close to here, maybe 25 minutes by train. My explorations today took me pretty far from home so I was glad for roadsigns with "ma" and "big school" kanji on them so I could find my way back. I found some more shrines and temples en route and wondered again about the religions here that everyone seems to know about but noone really knows what they mean. The man in the park said that people pray sometimes at these places, but religion is not a part of their everyday life. I guess that is true for many people no matter the religion or lack thereof -- God is indeed a distant entity unless the entirety of the story can be grasped. Why is this not the goal of every person?

I crashed when I got home and missed a great sumo tournament on T.V. I had a weird dream that I went to Niigata and Atsuko showed me a pool into which she periodically dumped mattresses to honor her brother. I woke up trying to help her throw a large mattress in the water. Goooooo figure. This is why I study neuroscience.

Better hit the hay. I have medium-high hopes for success with drug experiments tomorrow. I had no trouble with recordings this weekend, just a couple of floating preparations again. EJPs look odd in 0.5 mM calcium, but as usual Dr. Kuromi said "maybe it's okay!" so therefore maybe it's okay, hehe.

Happy birthday to my mom! -- And apologies for a midnight phone-call to my sister. I am terrible at time conversion.

Silkworms 101

Cute little worms

http://www.life.uiuc.edu/plantbio/digitalflowers/Moraceae/12.htm

The Empress was holding a giant tub of thingies and I didn't know what she was doing, then they zoomed in on thousands of little squirming wormies... eeee. She dumped them into a multi-compartmented cardboard-looking tray with hundreds of little teepees of leaves on it.

Wormies in silk cocoons

http://beifan.com/006wux/6wuxi.html

They picked up the cocoons with a giant lint-roller looking thing and then scraped them off into pans of... water?

Eventually the silk was spun off of the cocoons. It was a bum deal for the worms.

Other news from this neck of the woods... I had an international meal last night -- sushi and doritos. I like the tuna sushi, but have limited tolerance for the rest of them. 5 is the limit. It's a good price here -- 500 yen for 15 sushi rolls. I caught some more late-night sumo, I like the little purple guy and he won a round. Some guys in the lab have been helping me along in my sumo education, and I have learned that the little procedure at the end where the winner squats in the corner and moves his arm around before taking a little white package is where he draws the Kanji for "mind" in the air and then takes his winnings. The flag ceremony before the match tells how much money the match is worth. It's a lot!

When I went grocery shopping yesterday I was entertained again at all of the fervent stares I get, especially from little kids. I don't blame them, when I was riding in the car with Atsuko the other day I saw a blonde girl crossing the street and was just as amazed. I also stare in wonderment at foreigners.

Well I'm determined to go to church this morning and will set out for attempt number three. I thought I had figured out the times, but when I headed there at 8am with my dictionary I discovered that it was actually 8pm and 9am (they write right to left here as well, rather confusing for a gajin)... but at 9am it still looked pretty quiet so I used my babytalk Japanese to ask the nice guy cutting weeds across the road, "Today? Church? What time? 9am?" But alas he pointed to another sign that I had no hope of reading and said church starts at 10am. Well I think that's what he said. Hehe. Off for another adventure!

A royal silkworm experience

This morning on the telebe wa I saw the Empress of Japan "planting" silkworms (if that's what you call it) and then harvesting the silk! Very very interesting. It seemed to be a documentary of various royal adventures. Thus I've been reading about the royal family and will share pictures and links. Seems like a Cinderella story!


His Imperial Majesty AKIHITO, the 125th Emperor of Japan, Grand Cordon of the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum, Order of the Rising Sun, Order of the Sacred Treasure, KG (Great Britain), Grand Cross of the Order of. St. Olav (Norway), and Her Imperial Majesty MICHIKO, Empress of Japan, (Michiko Kogo), Order of the Precious Crown, Order of the Sacred Treasure.
http://www.mofa.go.jp/j_info/japan/video/emperor.html

All about the royal family:
http://www.geocities.com/jtaliaferro.geo/imphous.html

Bird's eye view of Mt. Fuji

Here's a cool shot from another American in Japan. Can I climb that thing?

A busy cannibal

Hooray hooray I can collect data at last. All other possibilities excluded and a laboratory full of confused people later, I discovered the incalculable importance of the intracellular electrode angle. Once again I reject the rubber chicken.

Long lab meeting today as four people practiced for the upcoming Japanese neuroscience meeting. Four hours of rearranging sentences and listening to poster presentations and subsequent discussion in Japanese. The posters are written in English but presented in Japanese, nevertheless my brain stayed plenty busy trying to figure out strontium vs. calcium transmission. Strange syt oligomerization theories being resurrected from the cobwebs of my mind... it gives me severe brain pain. My knowledge of the English language is being taxed over here -- I don't know why we use "the" sometimes and not others, and keeping present and past tenses consistent in research presentations has never been my strong point. I don't know how to pronouce La on the periodic table. I do wonder sometimes what kind of American impression I am leaving.

I have found a Star Wars kindred spirit in Dr. Kakizaki. He made his own lightsaber when he was a kid! I had lunch with him and Atsuko today, and even through a language barrier we could share amazement that the Japanese version of Return of the Jedi has the new Anakin in the last scene of the dead Jedi! Who did that? When? My state-side Star Wars geek friends must comment on this. It is interesting to hear Vader say "Kare wa lightsaber desu." Return of the Jedi is a useful language learning tool because I do have that one pretty well memorized. Language-learning has been fun lately -- my conversational CDs have now enabled me to ask people out for drinks, beer or sake, set up dinner dates, and ask people why they won't have a drink with me and when would be a better time? 8 pm? 9 pm? Hehe. Dr. Kuromi finds it entertaining that this is considered some of the most useful conversations to learn according to the study guide. Today's great accomplishment was constructing my own sentences proclaiming that I did not bring lunch to work today, therefore may I go with you (Atsuko) for lunch? Did okay on the first part, but Atsuko had a good laugh on the second part as I apparently asked if I could eat her for lunch.

I have to move tomorrow, hence I need to go home and pack up. I have eaten many frosted mini-wheats, there should be ample room in the suitcases. Hopefully I will still be up for the midnight sumo tournaments on T.V. I don't get to see that at home...

Electrophysiology 23:1-6

Science is my occupation;
I shall always want more.
It makes me to circle millions of green boutons;
It leads me into dangerous mental waters.
It tortures my soul;
It leads me in the paths of utter frustration
For the sake of science.

Yea though I walk through the valley of hyperpolarization,
I will fear no evil,
For the larvae are with me;
My scissors and my number 5 forceps, they comfort me.

I prepare maggots before me in the presence of my
mortal enemy the rig;
I annoint my pants with saline;
My buffer never runs over.

Surely stable potentials and success will come to me
one of the days of my life;
And I will not dwell in graduate school forever.

Sumo in Nagoya

Pictures from Charles! (Another American in Japan who went to the tournament)
Check out his link for some more amazing photos...


http://homepage.mac.com/doublefrogs/sumo/sumo.html

Lunatic in Japan

The theory here is that recordings go better at night, so I gave it a whirl. I had 3 really great ones, ten minutes at 10 Hz (unheard of at home!), then a good one that I lost because I messed up the dial on the recording range control, and the last one was just strange. I think he died. It would be nice to get more results. It would be nice to be tired at night like normal people.

I cooked some awesome food for dinner. I don't know what it was, but it contained rice with some kind of sauce, beef (I think) with some kind of sauce, and then some noodle pouch things mixed in. I'm breaking out of pizza-sandwich mode, watch out.

Had lots of fun catching a couple of crayfish with Ueno-san (postdoc) and Kenzi (grad student) in a little stream running through campus today. We tied a piece of squid to string and then pulled the crayfish out of the water (if they hung on tight enough) and put them in a bucket. Ueno-san said they were descendents of American crayfish that came over 100 years ago with blue frogs (the frogs ate them) as the Japanese were running low on another food source and needed to import frogs. I believe they ate the crayfish for dinner.

Best news of the day: Atsuko will take me to see horse racing in Narita July 30. There's no wiping the smile off this face! Something nice to dream about besides larvae breaking out of my skin or my landlords moving and forgetting where they put my horse. No wonder I don't want to sleep, good grief. I found a couple of new neighborhood cats on my little run today, but both were shy. Katie needs to come over here and spay some cats!

Yawn. Yawn. And there is still one other person left in the lab! Impressive.

Short weekend, over and done

Another quiet weekend in Maebashi-woe-be-gone. The weekend was darn short because I slept through half of it. Saturday seems to be the official zombie recuperation day. I electrocuted a few maggots this weekend, but the dumb things are floating up on me after one muscle fiber. Hmm... maybe there is something funky about the sylgard in these dishes. It is rather perplexing. My recordings started good today despite the floating problem, but there is another weirdness that I cannot explain. Why after recording at high frequency do the potentials shoot to -90, then upon withdrawing from the muscle fiber I have gained -30 in the bath potential? This is a consistent problem, I hope I can get some answers tomorrow.

I have taken up jogging. Hopeful cure for weekday insomnia. Today it was well worth the sweat as I found two very interesting looking shrines, the river-side pathway with a stunning view of the mountains, and a very nice mom-cat in the park with two shy kittens. The mother walked over and plopped on my lap for ten minutes of petting, then hopped up, said thank you in Japanese, then collected her kittens and strolled off down the sidewalk. It was very good medicine to have some quality cat-petting time. She has a half-tail with a kink in it. Very interesting.

I stopped at a gigantic store called "Yamada" today to buy a little CD player for the rig room. I found a Matrix soundtrack too, and can now triumph over the confines of my mind and residual self-image. Fear, doubt, disbelief, these will all be left behind as I learn to live beyond the rules....
Finding the CD player was not trivial. I walked into that store and thought I'd entered an alternate universe. I don't spend much time in electronics stores anyway, but this place was huge, full of weird looking computers, cameras and televisions I've never seen before, people were yelling in Japanese and handing out free toiletpaper, and every time I asked where the CD players were somebody would give me a long speech and point, and so I walked in that direction. After 6-7 of these speeches I finally found the OTHER gigantic store down the street. On the way down the escalator I looked over the edge to see 5-6 people laying flat out in strange big black chairs, completely motionless and expressionless. I was staring at them trying to figure out what the deal was and a Japanese guy standing next to them started motioning frantically to me yelling "Dozo! Dozo!" and pointing at an empty chair. Ahhhhhh. Chair demo. I'll have to try that next time. Wandering around the T.V. area I caught some of the sumo match I was supposed to be watching in Nagoya. Hehe. That might have traumatized me, maybe good that I didn't go.

I'm oughtta here, it's your turn with the sun, enjoy!

Of mites and men

I don't have a lot to say about men, other than my very strange dream that I married one that worked at a gas station just because he said "Hello there!" in English... but mites! I mean MITES! I was picking out some larvae to electrocute yesterday, under the scope as that is the Kuromi way, and by george if the embryos didn't have legs and were crawling around. Upon closer inspection of the little white blobs, I saw at last the mites I looked for to no avail in the Reist lab. Evil white mite creatures zipping all over the place. It was a new discovery for everyone, and the problem has been confined to one incubator in a room separate from the stocks room. Annihilation procedures have begun. I wonder if Noreen will let me back in the lab when I get home or if I will have to shave off all of my hair and marinate in bleach for two weeks before I can go back to work.

I can do ephys in Japan and I am glad. My electrophysiological self-esteem was very low when I left the Reist lab, but I am again inclined to blame electrodes for most of my problems. It's fun to be here and see the checklist people go through when they are having ephys problems. The order of go is a little different then ours back home, and somehow before the end of time I am sure I will discover the hidden truths of electrophysiology. I do not believe in the rubber chicken. That said, I do have a Yoda clip on the rig here. I got it with a diet Pepsi, and now have to drink diet Pepsi all summer until I collect them all. I don't like diet Pepsi, I wish the deal came with Coke.
Star Wars episode II was on last night and I caught the last half. It really is a bad movie with extremely bad acting. It's easier to notice when everyone is speaking Japanese and you pay attention to the facial expressions.

I cleaned my apartment today, top to bottom. It was pretty gross, who knows when it last had a good cleaning. I didn't find a wife for my cockroach, and now it is too late. He died of a broken heart. My beetles are hard at work this weekend though, I soaked their log in water and now Heidi is digging holes like a mad woman. It's inspiring to watch, she's relentless! Maybe I will have a million beetles before I leave and can contribute to environmental protection efforts in Japan. According to some old news articles, it seems that beetle smuggling is a problem here - foreign ones coming in and native ones going out.

I need to do some grocery shopping. I was down to rice today so had to try cooking it, and it turned out horribly slimey. This is indeed a good time in my life to become a better cook, but difficult when I can't read the instructions. I mixed it in with some pudding and now have invented Japanese rice pudding which is probably equally gross.

Journal club last night was a great Current Biology paper about Drosophila spectrin. I like the work ethic here! It's hard core all week, there are at least 2 postdocs and 2 graduate students who work 10am until about midnight every night. I have no idea when Dr. Yanagawa sleeps. Maybe in his office. It feels kind of like boot camp -- I have no car, no T.V. (at least that is any use to watch unless Star Wars happens to be on), no animals, no movies, no friends to call on the phone... hehe. I'm 16 and grounded again. I'm glad I brought a few books, that was advice well given by previous program participants. I bought a great Japanese phrase book/dictionary for learning some more Japanese. I can say useful things like "even a monkey can fall from a tree." Hehe.

I'm going to go commune with Yoda on the rig. It's fun here, the potentials always jump straight to -65. Those of you tortured by rig demons know what I mean when I say that is REALLY fun to watch!

Janel

Wow, London.

There are so many other things a person can do with their time besides bomb trains full of completely innocent and unsuspecting people! I had a good day here in my own little world, wouldn't it be great if everyone could get up and go to work in the morning without fearing the worst. There is no honor in terrorism, it's the most cowardly thing I ever heard of.

Electrophysiology in Japan

Wowza! Sensory overload! What a fun day. Electrophysiology is crazy crazy over here, but I think it's good. First of all, the prep is oriented 90 to the left. Innnnnteresting.... Then it is an upright scope rather than inverted and that makes everything look completely different, then I had to learn how to use that awful box with the square divisions, then I had to learn how to use the chart recorder (and I thought Dr. Bolby was crazy to teach us that stuff in Biochem lab), and the suction and recording electrodes are all different models with of course 6 crazy dials for positioning that all go the opposite way you think they should go. The suction syringe is absolutely awesome, I'm going to be begging for one when I get back. Dr. Kuromi spent all morning tweaking the rig with me, then all afternoon as a wire was broken and then the stimulater suddenly wasn't working. Good to know the demons are in Japan too. It was really fun troubleshooting with him though, I learned heaps about how the rig really works and how to test each circuit... man it was fun. We never completed a successful stimulation as the prep was dead by the time everything was working.(Interesting side-note about why it's so fun to work with Dr. Kuromi: when something breaks, Dr. Kuromi laughs. When something else breaks, he laughs. When he stabs the prep, he laughs, when the electrode tip is broken, he laughs... makes ephys really fun! When the prep was near death and giving crappy membrane potentials, he said that "the preparation is tired," and when we had been fixing things for hours and the prep was dead again, he said we would continue tomorrow "because maybe researcher is tired too." So fun!) Anyway, I can poke preps over here, they zipped to -65 faster than they do at home. FYI Carin, the electrodes are in the "long family" over here, like the ones we would get when we only pulled through 1 cycle. None of them are creepers, and they are apparently 20M Ohm resistance but I don't quite have a feel for balancing the bridge here. It's a very different set up, holy cow. I fried my last prep trying to figure out the stimulator, but I have high hopes for the next one. Oh, and the intracellular solution is just 4M K-acetate. I wonder how that changes things.

So it was a fun day for science. Checking out techniques in other labs is extremely fun, I should do it more often.

I'm eating pizza with potatos on it. I couldn't see the potatos in the picture. Sometimes after a day on the rig with no successful recordings you just have to have pizza. Sometimes you have to have pizza on other days too. I successfully made the Japanese laundry maching do my laundry last night. First I was spinning before it washed, then I think I washed everything twice, but the objective was accomplished. I don't really know what worked in the end so I'll be pushing buttons at random next time too.

Pizza is gone, maggots for dessert. Later!

Janel

Learning American culture in Japan

Well I was really tired, but Ueno-san just popped in the door to lend me a Queen's c.d. HA! He asked if I listened to them, and I actually didn't know who they were. I'm listening to Radio Ga-Ga right now and I love it. I have heard some of these songs I guess, but I didn't know who was singing them

I drove myself crazy today with staining, trying to figure out why there was so much variability. I think I have it narrowed down to larval age and stretch, and have just finally had a good series of fibers. With staining it is very important not to pick guys that are too old as their boutons can be too enveloped by muscle to get good staining. I think the idea to destain with 60mM KCl confused the issue as well as that doesn't seem to be powerful enough to unload all of the boutons equally. We're trying to magnify a difference between Lat A and control unloading, but I'm excited about throwing it into an ephys experiment tomorrow to see what happens. I want to get at that 10 Hz pool, whatever it is.

Last night I confirmed to myself that I have no sense of direction. Sometimes in CO I fool myself into thinking I'm good (cheating with mountains). I was pedaling all over town last night looking for the 24-hr conveniance store. It's very close to my house with only two major turns, but I sampled all possibilities, in the rain, before finally getting there. Sigh.

I'm going to fall out of my chair despite the rock 'n roll, must head out.

Blog of thoughts

This is my blog of thoughts.



Bedtime!
Janel

Ame mame uma umi nama ude ane

Rain, beans, horse, ocean, raw, arm, older sister... for a person who likes to forget the right pronounciation of things, there are a lot of options for entertaining and confusing people when you try to tell them you ride a horse.

Fun in the fly room today with my flies. The gas pressure is a bit lower here so I have to sort faster, and I will soon be tutored in the fly-sucking technique. I had similar concerns about this that I have for people who steal gasoline, but there are filters in place to prevent accidental consumption of nama no fruit fly. I might as well eat them though, I've been eating everything else!

I'm going home, my brains were fried by tubulin today. How to work that into my universe with actin at its center...? More green flies to make tomorrow.

Happy 4th, happy post-presentation!

Happy Birthday United States, God bless our country and this one too!


A memorable 4th it was, as I delivered my speech in Japanese with partial success, knees knocking ferociously with increasing frequency and amplitude as I reached the description of the two laboratories I work in (a stretch with particularly long words like "kenkyushtayroo"). I had the entire thing memorized, but managed to royally freak out beforehand anyway. Just before going to give my talk, Dr. Yanagawa gave me a stack of about 20 papers to look over, and as I flipped through them, all with his name on them and published mostly in the last year, I realized that this professor who I had been confused about what his position was here was actually a reknown mastermind of knockout mice. It didn't help that he was sitting in the front row. I stumbled at the part about actin (sorry) and had to refer to my notes to prevent butchering the language and probably causing an earthquake at the same time. Thankfully the first slide I did in English was the slide of actin dynamics and I could calm down and deliver the easiest presentation of my life when compared to the agony of the introduction, hehe. It was worth it though -- they really appreciated the effort and they SAID it was understandable, hence a good thing for the two people who do not speak English. Whew.

Each person in the lab then gave a 5-15 minute presentation about their research projects (cool syt stuff going on here! And tubulin dynamics in the presynaptic terminal! Wow!), and 3 hours later we finished and went out to dinner at a very nice restaurant where you sit on the floor with no shoes on, and no cheating holes under the table for legs! It was really fun talking to everybody, Dr. Yanagawa is as nice as Dr. Kuromi is, who is probably as nice as they come. I really like this lab, and homesickness has ebbed to a just a dull roar. It's a great opportunity to be here and I will learn a million new things with all of this interesting work going on. In memorizing my speech I got a better idea of the Japanese sentence structures and can pick up some words now and then in conversation that give me a clue what people are talking about. It's a small step, but it helps.

My stomach must have finally desensitized, as I ate squid and raw tuna with no problem and even thought the tuna was good. Well, I did have beer with it, hehe. There was one item, however, that I had no clue what it was. It was a brownish stack of meaty looking stuff on a stick, and I just put a piece in my mouth without hesitation (surrounded by profs who have been very kind to me and are buying my dinner, I'm going to eat it!)... and I immediately knew it was liver. That was a torturous moment that will live in infamy. It's not just a texture thing for me with liver, it is the awful taste coupled with the knowledge that it is a liver that caused my two previous accidental experiences to end over a nice toilet. The mouthful was too big to swallow immediately, so I chewed it, wiped the tears away before they were noticed, and went to a happy place as I fought to keep my stomach under control. Finally it was over and washed down with beer and meso soup and a few more tears. Ugh. Even thinking about it starts stomach contrations again. I have to watch out for that, it was nearly a disaster. I didn't expect chicken liver on a stick.

I found a cool bug in my bathroom last night and brought it into the lab today for Tamura-san to identify. Turns out it's just a cockroach, and not well-respected here. Ah well, he can't help it that he's a cockroach so I stuck him in with the beetles. I think he has retractable antennae.

One thing that had me fit to be tied during the research presentations is that whenever someone asks a question and gets an answer that clarifies things for everyone, everyone goes "Oooooooooooooh" and "Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah-haaaaaaaaaaaaah" in unison for quite a while... and it reminded me of the yup-yup aliens on Sesame Street. The more I thought about it the more I wanted to pipe up with a "yup-yup-yup-yup-a-HA-a-HA" (don't worry I didn't), but thinking about it had me dying and trying to hide it as there really was no reason to be laughing. Hehe.

Must get to sleep at a reasonable time tonight, tomorrow will be drug day extraordinaire.

Kanpai!
Janel

Wrapping up the weekend

Another weekend passed in Japan. Atsuko showed me how to work the stove yesterday, so last night I ventured out and bought some rice and other strange articles of Japanese food that I don't really know what they are but they appear to go with rice judging from the pictures. I haven't had the courage to make any of it yet. I also found an "A-me-ri-ca-n-ko-n-do-ga" that was awesome, and for dinner made some pancakes and eggs. Very tasty, I was a little worried that Japanese eggs would taste like rice and soy sauce.

Saturday evening I took off on my little orange bike to do some exploring. I found Shikishima park, which is a beautiful place with many paths, ponds with cool turtles, fish, ducks and a swan. There was also a track, baseball stadium, great playground for kids and Janels, and an indoor swimming pool. From the looks of the people walking around, that's where you go for dates either with your girl or your dog. I'll take my beetles next time.

I was saying hello to some of the cats in the area when an older lady came over and gave them some deluxe catfood with whole fish on the side. She spoke very good English (had chaperoned student trips to Montana and Minnisota several times), and was on her daily round to feed the strays of Maebashi. I walked around to a couple of feeding stations with her and then back to her car that had a trunk loaded with catfood! What a wonderful woman. She reminded me of my grandma and her cat family. I want to take one of the kittens home so badly, but I would have to leave it and that wouldn't be good for either of us.

I'm still working on tomorrow's presentation. I've practiced the intro on a couple of people and they can understand it at least, hopefully I can have it memorized for recitation without notes tomorrow. I appreciate it so much when people present papers in English here for my benefit, the least I can do is a Japanese intro.

Back to work!
Janel

Greetings from Dr. Jeckyl

I'm very happy today to have an adorable pet stag beetle. Two of them actually, Dr. Jeckyl and his evil wife Heidi. Tamura-san has an amazing collection of bugs and he brought them in today and gave me some. Dr. Jeckyl is very friendly and he's sitting on my thumb right now waving his antennae around. I think he's thinking very deep thoughts. I took him to journal club today and he kept me entertained as it was in Japanese and there were a few spells where there was just nothing to do.


http://web-japan.org/kidsweb/cool/99-07-09/beetles-j.html

More staining today and conquering Japanese microsoft excel. It's not too bad actually, all of the commands are in the same place so it doesn't really matter that I can't read them.

I ate some raw octopus for dinner, with tuna eggs on it. I also tried the raw tuna and raw salmon. And crab rice. I'm afraid the octopus is currently swimming around in my stomach and I need to stop thinking about it. My horror of the food has indeed numbed, but I do not like it. Yet. I keep telling myself that I will like everything in the future. Boredom with sandwiches can drive one to extremes.

Must go home and digest octopus lest it swim again.

Janel and the Japanese tako.