Thoughts from Kyoto

Hiroshima was amazing. It was unreal and incredibly sad, and I really wanted to sit on a bench in Peace Park and contemplate for a few hours. I have a million things to contemplate after this trip in Japan. Christyanne has gone on to Tokyo and will tour Hokkaido for the rest of the week, so I`m a lonely gajin in Kyoto with a sunburned head that is too tired to be very lonely. Somehow I magically switched the language on my little Toyoko-Inn T.V. (first time I`ve figured out how to do that since being in Japan and I don`t know what I did), and I can drift into sleepy land while watching the complimentary movie "The Terminal." It is incredible how movies about lost foreigners keep finding me.

Rather than contemplate in Peace Park, I moved on from the A-bomb museum to the world of weird streetcars that take you to the ferry that takes you to a magical island where the deer roam freely and let you hug them and even try to eat your maps.
I saw the famous Torii and a pretty neat red pagoda, but I missed out on the monkies. I will find them tomorrow in Nagoya.

There were many gajins from many countries to meet in transit today -- Hiroshima is a magnet for foreigners it seems. That`s a good thing though. I saw a group of cute little Japanese school kids trooping to the museum, all holding eachother`s hands and wearing matching hats... maybe the madness of the past can be unrepeatable if we never forget it. I hope the plans to make a 9/11 museum are realized... I just saw the announcement in the Japan Times today and can`t think of a better way to heal the past and prepare for the future than see what I saw today. I`m glad I went to the Peace Park museum first, because the haunting feeling stuck with me as I toured the city and remembered that it was completely wiped out only 60 years ago. How do people carry on after going through that? How do they?

Gotta hit the hay, I have crazy plans of arising with the sun tomorrow to see pagodas before throngs of people get there. I hope it is possible. I am a sleep-deprived zombie wearing dirty clothes and my voice is turning into a strange croak that is confusing because I`m not sick... but there is only two more days to go and I will be on a long flight home. Home to my Max-boy, home to stay for a while. I don`t mind the plane rides and the train rides. There are so many things to contemplate....

Hiroshima, mainland at last

It is very good to be back on the mainland. I`m just not a big fan of trying to get around on buses. But we were rescued yesterday by the Air Force, represented by two angels named Cassey and Jason who also were snorkeling on Minna-jima. There really are bases in Okinawa, and there really are nice people in the world. We headed back to Naha last night, and this morning took a ferry out to the southern island Zamami-jima, and from there we "rented a sea captain" who took us to a tiny island where there was a bee-yoo-tiful coral reef, lots and lots of pretty fish, and a sea snake which Christyanne saw but I did not therefore I am alive to write this blog. Dude we saw flying fish! They fly far! After a few random hoppers we saw a flock of fish. It`s a weird weird thing. Back in Naha I bought a couple of the Okinawan lion monsters that are very cute, we found our airplane, and we left the island to return to the big normal island with trains. We just had a great pizza that the Toyoko-inn lady ordered for us, and I am ready to crash.

I will be home with my Max-boy in two regular days plus one long day. It`s a good thing.

Nago, Mars

We rode a bus for 2.5 hours to get to Nago today. The sight of the ocean cheered us, as did the A&W we found for lunch, but our hotel was actually quite a walk from the ocean. Finally around 4pm we found the beach, jumped in and swam until a lifeguard came over seemed to be suggesting we move down to the netted beach area (we found out later that it was jellyfish season), swam some more in the netted beach area, then sat in the park and watched the most amazing sun I have ever seen set over the East China Sea. We met an English speaking guy named Fabrizio and his dog Max from El Salvador, but he seemed to get bored with us after a while (maybe because we wouldn`t ride in his car with him?) and after parting ways we just added him to the long list of things that just seem weird here. The "highly westernized island crawling with Americans" must be some other island, the sparkling resort beach has an awful lot of garbage floating in it, and people either don`t speak English or they don`t want to. Maybe the mysterious island everyone was talking about is Minna-jima. We will look for it tomorrow. Anyway, I enjoyed the sunset and floating in the ocean. The dead pufferfish was interesting, and Max was adorable. It could be worse, we could have been waiting to "go to the island," then found out there was no island and we were really being grown as a source of spare organs for rich people that want to live forever, and then be hunted down by gunmen and evil scientists trying to protect their evil island secret.

I will go to sleep now. One other different thing about Okinawa -- the mosquitos like me here. There were only a few mosquitos in Maebashi that liked American food, but they think I`m great here.

Naha, Okinawa

Today...
-- I waited in the Osaka airport for 3 hours while the plane with pokemons on it was having its engine repaired and was finally switched for a different one without pokemons on it,
-- I walked around Naha for a long time finding out whether to go north or south for good snorkeling,
-- I walked around Naha for a long time finding a place to stay,
-- I pet a nice gold cat with a long tail -- the only creature I encountered in Naha that seemed to understand what I wanted,
-- I met a very cute blind date at Starbucks and pulled more than 15 giant blood-engorged ticks off of him while he stared at me with his cute brown eyes. The magic lasted until he dumped me for someone with food,
-- I saw two magnificent Golden Retrievers,
-- I ate curry rice with a snoopy fork because the stuff on the kid`s menu was all that looked good,
-- I drank a beer and ate caramel corn while watching a movie (The Island),
-- I fell asleep contemplating the correlations between clones and Janels released into foreign worlds.

Off to Nago tomorrow to find some fish.

Osaka and the 2000 yen man

I`m in Osaka. Today I saw the extremely beautiful Osaka castle, originally constructed in the 1580s during the rule of Hideyoshi Toyotomi as he tried to unite the country. Then it was burned down in the 1615 Summer War of Osaka, then they rebuilt it in the 1620s.

Image source and for more info: http://www.japan-guide.com/e/e4000.html

Toyotomi was pretty interesting. I believe he was a very skilled warrior, but during one battle he decided to practice some Noh plays instead of fight. One time he had a nice tea party for 1000s of people. He had a nice wife named O-ne for many years, also many concubines, but when he was 57 and actually had a son of his own, he had the rest of his family killed...

(...pausing to listen to the guy on the next computer speaking French to his friend. What a pretty sounding language... very interesting after hearing only Japanese for so long...)

... in reading some more history in the castle it was interesting to note the many warriors who committed suicide from shame. Several were listed as having been "late to a battle" and therefore they committed suicide. It puts real depth into the very noticeable practice of always being on time in this society. I had so much fun reading stuff in that castle!

And now for the 2000 yen man. What a weird weird thing. I had to activate my rail pass at Tokyo station was apparently wearing my lost gajin look, because when I entered the rail office and looked around to finally figure out it was a take-a-number-and-wait type place, this pretty-good-English-speaking 60-something-year-old man in a nice business suit changed his seat to make sure I understood where the number machine was and if there was anything else I needed to know...

(...pausing as the French guy is now singing to himself...)

... and as there were many numbers to go we had a nice conversation. He said he learned English 15 years ago from a lady in some situation that I couldn`t quite get, he lived in Tokyo his whole life, he worked in an embassy somewhere, or maybe his friend did, his last name was Koizumi and it was printed on his suit, and he seemed to enjoy pointing out various kanji characters and explaining what they were to me. He also said he could practice English sometimes at a baptist church he went to in Tokyo, so I asked if he was a Christian and he said that he was. Then he wanted to know if there were only Catholics and Protestents in the United States so I tried to fill him in a little bit... overall it was an interesting conversation that lasted for at least 30 minutes until my number was called and I found out I was at the wrong rail office and had to go to a different one. The man offered to show me where it was, and he also did some nice translating for me as I activated my pass. Then I needed to go so I thanked him and gave him one of my cards and told him to go ahead and send an email sometime as that is a Japanese kind of thing to do... but but but but then he asked me for money! I said what? You want some money? Mass confusion in the brain. I asked how much, he said 2000 yen, and I gave it to him. He gave some explanation about needing it for something and thanked me very much as I ran to catch my train and didn`t understand his explanation and was really confused... and I have been confused all day. Christyanne, my travel buddy, said that there is a sort of similar thing that you can encounter in Mexico as people like to help foreigners and then demand money for it and you just ignore them completely because they are easy to identify, but with his nice suit and my recount of our long conversation she was also very confused and we don`t know what was up. My wild midnight imagination wonders if I have just been gullibilized by the expert Japanese mafia.

Anyway, I am smarter now, a little worried about the mafia, and very tired and going to bed. Off to Okinawa in the morning. Sigh. I have just discovered that my puppy boy has an ear infection and I want to go home and hug him. I am such a bad puppy mommy. I abandoned him for so long, what is he thinking?

One last note: the JSPS farewell party was interesting and deserves a blog, but for tonight I will just mention the tactics used to clear the cocktail room at the very punctual end of the party:
1) "The party is over, and we need to close this room."
2) "Please leave the room as soon as possible."
3) "Please scatter like cherry blossoms in the wind."

Off to see the world

Gotta go
Got pain in the toe
Smacked it 4 times last night
If I quit doing that it should be all right
Going to Tokyo to see the science crew
Then off to Osaka, Okinawa and the ocean blue
Finally Hiroshima and monkies in Inuyama
Then home to Max-boy and the end of the drama

Sayonara!

Strange snails, cow intestines

I'm sitting here in the pleasant company of my fish, and also the 5 snails I bought yesterday to keep the tank clean. 3 snails just crawled on top of eachother and they are slowly sliding down the wall of the tank. I remember something strange from zoology about snails... it may be that the one on the top is curretly undergoing a dramatic change from female to male. This is an interesting topic for a Japan blog because it is happening in Japan. While I'm on the subject... I don't know if I mentioned the drama of Atsuko's bettas or not, but it is worth mentioning today as the story has taken a deeply sad turn. Atsuko had a beautiful blueish-purple male that lived alone for a while, then had a wife for a while, then moved in with 5 women and seemed to be having a wonderful life for a couple of weeks. He was a very gentle man and seemed to enjoy the female company. Then one day one of the women turned on him and left him with fin damage and severe emotional damage -- Atsuko moved him to his own bowl but he was depressed and would not eat for several days. Slowly he seemed to be recuperating, eating food but still spending most of his time in deep thought at the bottom of his bowl. I stared at him many times and wondered what sad state his fishy mind was in and tried to convince him not to take it too hard, but alas today he is dead in his tank. Killed from the pain of his broken heart.

Subject switch time. I had some cow intestines today. It turns out that I had them yesterday too. When I went out to dinner with Edgar and Mitoko I picked some "hormone" from the menu, not knowing what it really was and just asking if it was "beef," and they said that yes it was, so I felt pretty safe. It had the rubbery consistency of squid, which confused me, but I have learned not to chew such things and just ate it as the sauce wasn't too bad. I even said it was pretty good. Well when I told Jiamei what I ate she was very surprised and said that Americans don't usually like "hormone." Why not, I wondered? Oooooh. She pointed to her stomach area and with a sinking nasty feeling I realized what part of the "beef" I had eaten. Unfortunately when I went to the church BBQ this evening they were frying up a bunch of it, and since Edgar and Mitoko knew that I liked it they gave me some more. The tears came back but I ate it. It's all about mind control. It did result in an emergency trip to 7/11 for some ice cream afterwards, however. I'm going to miss my church people here! They've been really good friends. We had cow intestines together, that is a bonding experience.

My toe looks really gross today. I had a vision of being eaten by a shark in Okinawa, attracted to my toe. That would be such an unusual set of circumstances leading to the time and place of my death, wouldn't it? I think I will go home. I can meditate on my lab notebooks as I drift off to sleep. I don't know what I will present tomorrow, I have tons of data but no real conclusions. Hopefully I can come up with some in meditation.

Absalom is trying to eat my snails. At least it keeps him from abusing his wife. Maybe this is the secret to ending spouse abuse in the U.S. Give the guy an endless supply of twinkies or something. I really need to go get some sleep.

Janel's toenail stays in Japan

Yup. On the way back from watching Cosmo's moon shine over the Tone river Friday night I managed to veer the orange bike a little too close to a brick wall and there I left my fourth right toenail. I had not been separated from any of my toenails before and thought of you, Melissa. It was actually a pretty disgusting affair. When I took my bloody shoe off I heard the birds singing "there's blood in the shoe, the foot is too small, not the right bride at all," but to understand that you would need to have read the freaky version of Cinderella that I read growing up. Upon hobbling to my doorway I saw Ray and Keiko (American neighbor and his nice Japanese wife) returning from a walk and asked for a couple of bandaids, but that wonderful lady fixed the whole thing for me with a lovely arrangement of bandaids coated with Japanese goo, and provided I pick up my feet when I walk I feel nothing from the naked toe. Maebashi inherits one American toenail.

I went to the handbell concert at church Saturday night and was blown away by the nicest Japanese voice I have heard in Japan. The group was from a church in Tokyo and the pastor's son, maybe 15 or 16 years old, sang a song called "I love you," in Japanese and it was beautiful. He sang it again in church this morning. Very nice. Saturday night I went out for dinner with Edgar-the-translator and his friend Mitoko (I think). I'm going to miss Edgar, he has a huge brain and loves God so much! He's a scientist at heart, and I could listen to him talk for hours. Actually I think I did listen to him talk for hours, he likes to talk! Mitoko did not speak very much English, but he plays the tuba, has watched Little House on the Prairie, and seems like a super nice guy. He would like to be a missionary in Thailand and would also like a wife that can speak English. I didn't get that situation completely figured out, hehe, but I hope he finds one. I think it would be best if she could also speak Japanese.

Today after church every member of the church introduced themselves for the benefit of the handbell group, and I was very interested to hear that the pastor did sumo wrestling when he was younger. I guess that's the first pastor I've met who used to be a sumo wrestler. Only in Japan.

I have a million things to do. I don't know how to get all of this data home. It's a matter of getting computers to talk to eachother and with some I have to run back and forth with a tiny little floppy disk, with others I have to email it to people and have them save it to a memory stick, and some of it I think I'll just have to scan. And I have to pack all of my stuff into a magic Mary Poppins suitcase as I bought too many weird things to take home to people. I'm going to Okinawa Thursday - Sunday. Atsuko told me there are poisenous snakes in Okinawa so I may not get off the plane. I'm coming home soon! I don't believe I will be able to leave my Max-boy anymore so we will need to make a spot for him in the lab.

Ahh yes I almost forgot. There was another jishin in the middle of the sermon today. It was only a 5.1 but the center was just 55 miles from here so it felt about as strong as the rest I've felt here. We all rattled back and forth in out seats for a few seconds but the pastor never broke his pace. So the earth moves around and the buildings wobble, big deal!

Thunder grabs bellybuttons

Saito-san told me. I didn't know! My grandmother never told me that, and I had three grandmothers.

Taco day was way fun -- went very well and I gave the hospital police guys something to wonder about as I rode my bike back and forth from home to the lab with bags and pans. I'm braindead now. Brain is "no." So I guess we should say "just say brain." I will stop blogging now. Cosmo's moon is out and I'm going to go stare at it. I'm coming Max!

For the love of tacos

More fun times in Japan! I'm going to make tacos for everybody tomorrow and headed home around 8pm to pick up my Maebashi map in hopes of finding the foreign store that sells taco sauce. On the way out I stopped by my American neighbor's house to get some guidance on using Japanese taco seasoning. His wife was home, thank goodness, and she read a very long story on the back of the package (including warnings not to let your meat get soggy or burn yourself with the hot grease) that amounted to "120cc of water + 500 grams of beef + 1 package of seasoning." Then it started raining pretty hard and she gave me one of their extra umbrellas that was a little funky but useful as I forgot my umbrella in the lab. So! Onward to the store I went on my little orange bike, stopping at Saty (the main food store in my neighborhood) first in hopes that there would be taco sauce there and I wouldn't have to wander around downtown in the rain trying to find a store Atsuko took me to once but I didn't really know where it was. Lo and behold, Saty was closed (WHY?), lightning began to flash, and as there was nobody around I launched into a minor vocal fit about being in Japan in a lightning storm at night looking for taco sauce and the store being closed and my unbrella being bent and my pants soaked. When I finished yelling at the door I turned and saw an old guy staring at me from the corner and I smiled nicely. So much for that sterling representation of America. The only nice thing about being in a small town where most people do not know English is that thay never assume I am from America. I could be French or German and yelling at the door. But anyway, I hopped back on my bike and raced for the foreign store as that was probably as close as my house at that point, but then a giant thunder crack scared the tar out of me and I zipped under the closest awning and separated myself as far as possible from my umbrella. I'd rather not attract the lighting if possible. The lighting hit ground about 1 street away and I jumped inside the partially open door of an empty bar. I stood there for a good 15 minutes and nobody noticed me, but I figured somebody would eventually and when I didn't see any more lightning I went back outside the door to sit under the awning and wait for the rain to quit. I was sure the lightning was still out there somewhere waiting for me to emerge with my funky umbrella.

Time passed, and I was lost in thought watching the Japanese rain hit the Japanese pavement when the bar door suddenly opened up and whacked me. A little Japanese woman peeked around the door and went "Daijoboo! Daijoboo!" (Okay!? Okay!?) and I said yes, yes, but dangerous lighting scared me. She invited me in, but I said I would just wait outside. About 10 minutes later an older guy went into the bar for a drink and after they had a talk session the lady came back out and asked me to please come in and have a coffee. Well what the heck, it was going to rain forever (rainy season over my foot!). I went in and had a coffee, and spent the next hour having a fun time trying to communicate with two people who spoke no English, without the aid of my dictionary. Topics were limited. They figured out that I was studying here this summer, that I live close by, and that I would be leaving in a couple of weeks. Yes, I saw the Maebashi fireworks, I think I managed to tell them that fireworks are bigger and longer here than in the U.S. (primative sign language to the rescue) and I also told them that I tried the tako-yaki and it was good. The Japanese are always happy to hear that foreigners like their tako-yaki! The guy works at the forestry office and has been to Hokkaido but not Okinawa. Either that or he was from Hokkaido. They wanted to know what I was studying, so I tried to call up pieces of my Japanese introduction, but thought it out after they looked confused... what did I say? Ooooh. I had tried to tell them that I studied the brains of fruit flies, but instead I told them that I received the brain of a fruit fly. I had a really good laugh then and told them I was sorry, not received! But they just continued to look confused so I'm not sure I ever made any sense to them. Really, I shouldn't have tried.

I pulled out my Maebashi map when I was trying to figure out which government office he said he worked for, but after I figured it out the lady took the map and looked over every inch of it with a magnifying glass, exclaiming many things to the guy but I do not know what all that was about. I was ready to go, but the lady then brought out some watermelon and insisted that I eat it, so I did, but at last told them I had to go. The taco sauce place was only open until midnight! Hooray the rain stopped and it was a lovely full moon, which the lady told me was "suki" in Japanese. A different accent then the "suki" that means "favorite," which she explained by saying "suki" and hugging my arm (demonstrating suki-favorite) and then pointing at the moon and saying the other suki pronounciation. With a teacher like that I'd have Japanese down in no time!

So now I'm back at the lab, I have all taco ingredients at home crammed into my little fridge, I had a hot dog with broccoli on it for dinner, and I have to turn in my JSPS report tomorrow as well as finish getting my journal club presentation put together. It appears that Dr. Yanagawa and Kakizaki-san have just finished an after-midnight meeting and Dr. Yanagawa is back at work. Saito-san is down the hall still working. I really don't know when they sleep, or where, or if.

Later!

Handa-be-ru

Just got back from watching a group of Japanese + Americans play handa-berus (handbells) at church. Very pretty! I guess I haven't heard people play those since I was about 8 years old. They will be here for a year, visiting various churches and universities as part of the Campus Crusade for Christ. Please pray for them all you praying folks -- Jesus' life story should not be shelved with the 808 gods!

I guess I'll visit Okinawa, Hiroshima, Nagano, and maybe a Tokyo Island. I'd love to go back to Niigata but it's just too darn far away. I can't believe I'll be back with my Max in 2 weeks. Japan will soon be a very strange and long dream.

Hmmm whad-do-I-do

I'm trying to work up a travel plan for next week. There are a lot of things to see, but I don't want to be a blistered pulp of flesh half-way through. I'm zoning in on an Okinawa-Hiroshima-Kyoto loop. I want to swim, I want to see many fishies, I want to pretend I never dissected a larva in my life. I've seen lots of buddhas and temples and shrines, so I think if I miss Kyoto I will survive it.

Today I was happy to see many lovely pictures of the ECP in succession as I whipped through SSH and LIMK mutants. All of them load and unload just like they are supposed to. One should not be doomed to study small differences. I would like to discover the mutation that causes calcium-activated ADF-dependent spontaneous larval combustion. That would be far more exciting than what I am doing now. I'm so bummed with the ability of fluorescence to tell me anything that I want to start over and E.M. everything. Speaking of which, the mitochondria-reserve pool paper is unimpressive without any E.M. pictures. There, I said it.

It was very rainy today. I met the French dude for lunch and found out he was actually from New Zealand. He didn't seem terribly obsessed with hobbits.

I'm tired and full of earthquake spooks. That last one knocked the picture off my computer. Tamura-san gave me a new husband for Mrs. Beetle. He's a very buff beetle, he's been lifting his jelly container up and down all day. I wish he did not come with mites, but I'm pretty desensitized to them now. I will wash all of my mites off in the ocean before I come home.

A nice 7.2

Well that was a shaker. A few people even came out of the office. Hope everybody in the north is okay. The base was in the Miyagi prefecture, quite a ways "up" from here. I am looking forward to being back on a nice Colorado microscope that only drifts and does not shake.

Fun in Tokyo

Very fun, I walked my feet off but saw a piece of Tokyo! The kabuki was extremely interesting. For 400 yen I was able to hear the tragic stories on an English headset, which was very good as I'm sure I wouldn't have had a clue otherwise. The first play was the story of two lovers from different warring families. When the guy's family attacked the girl's family, they demanded the head of the princess, but the head of his girlfriend was taken instead. He was devastated and killed himself. Their great love then allowed them to meet for a while in the dreamland of the flowers and butterflies, but ulitmately they were both dragged away and burned in hell. Set two was a bit lighter, with a man who made a doll in the shape of a woman he admired. The doll came to life but moved like a man because he had put his own soul into creating her. When he gave her a mirror, however, she began to move and dance like a woman. The story then took a left turn that I missed and suddenly a bunch of samurai showed up and demanded the head of a princess that the doll-maker was apparently hiding in the house. The princess escaped and the man fought off about 12 carpenters that did flips as he attacked them with various carpentry tools. It was about 1.5 hours total, standing room only at the top of the theater, and I think it was the highlight of my Tokyo trip.

After the kabuki we (two other people from the EAPSI program and I) headed for the river in Odaiba to watch the fireworks along with thousands of other people with the same idea, and two hours of spectacular fireworks commenced. There were smiley faces, hearts, cat shapes, UFOs, incredible color combinations, and multiple rapid-fire sequences that we only see as the grand finale in the U.S. We had seen enough after an hour however and tried to head back onto the mainland early to beat the crowds. No such luck, we waited in line for around 40 minutes before getting crammed onto the train like a bunch of sardines. Eventually we met up with another EAPSI person and her Japanese friend and we all rented a karaoke room for an hour. Tooooooo much fun! When everyone has had a drink, it sounds pretty good. Noooooo I didn't get drunk mom!

I stayed with a girl in Tokyo and arose the next morning for a day of endless walking that included visiting some huge shrines and a 5-story pagoda, taking a long ferry ride on the river that was still too hot, finding out we weren't wearing nice enough clothes to eat at the New York Grill, eating lunch at an Indian restaurant that played 80's American songs, and finally heading back to Ueno station. Everybody went separate ways around 4pm, but after a good Starbucks kick I headed over to Ueno Park to see what I could see before the long trainride back to Maebashi. I climbed the hill to the park to find a concert of some sort going on -- lots of different groups singing Acapella. Nice! I guess they were singing about love. "Ai." It's a good guess anyway. When that was over I was adopted by an older man from Greece who was speed-walking the park in an attempt to see absolutely everything before dark. He could barely speak English and was glad I could at least help find the shrines that had an English label on the map. At each one he would stop and take a video, reading from his Greek tour-guide, then quick pack up and race to the next one. He wore me out, but it's not every day I get to hang out with a guy from Greece so I stuck with it until dark and then headed back to Ueno station for some MacDs dinner and 1.5 hours of standing on the train that was jam-packed until we got to Takasaki, at which point all but about 6 people remained for three more stops to Maebashi. Just before getting on the train a guy from Peru came over and asked me if I could speak Spanish. "Hai, sukoshi," I said, in Japanese. The next half hour was then a painfully confusing work-out for my poor tired brain that twisted Japanese and Spanish around in a sad mangled way that eventually turned into assuring him that the train to Maebashi would stop at Honjo, where he wanted to get off. Mid train-ride I heard him speak some Japanese to another person, so then was confused as to why he tried to ask me about the trains... and then he asked if he could take my picture and I moved into creep analysis mode. "Porque?" Ahh. Because I was very pretty. I appreciate the compliment, but was glad he got off at Honjo. If not I would have had about 8 stops to figure out how to say "there is a creepy guy following me" in Japanese.

At long last I found a bus to take me home, confused the bus driver again in my attempts to put the money in the right place, finally resorting to holding out my had and letting him pick up the money and put it in the right slot. I stopped at Saty for some food, took a very long cold shower, and died for a good 11 hours. It is exhausting being a tourist.

So today was Monday, back to work for everyone even though it is officially a holiday. At 7pm everyone but Dr. Kuromi headed up to the roof with beer and watermelon to watch the Maebashi fireworks display. Amazing, once again. There were two hours of them, so after about 45 minutes Atsuko, Tamura-san, Jiamei and I headed for the Tone River to watch them up close and see the lighting of the bridge. Most of the ladies were all dressed up in their Yukatas, so I had as much fun watching them as the fireworks. At last I tried the tako-yaki (octopus cake), and it wasn't bad. I think it could be better without the octopus. The guys making the tako-yaki like to hold up boiled octopi and yell at people. It's a new experience for me, I've never had anyone yell at me while waving a boiled octopus.

On the way back Tamura-san spotted a snake crawling up a tree by the sidewalk, grabbed it by the tail, then walked it around the sidewalk until he could catch its head. Ooooooooh that was not nice. It was the biggest snake I've seen in a long time. But I've never seen Tamura-san that excited about anything. The guy just loves snakes. He had Atsuko take his picture with it and then he let it go and we found Jiamei hiding up ahead. From there we went and visited Tamura-san's family of magnificent bugs and fish. Beetle larvae are pretty cool. They are fat and they have many legs.

Gotta scram, I'm going to make tacos for the lab and will get ingrediants tonight. Tomorrow I will have lunch with a guy from France. We call it the "Gajin connection." When you meet a foreigner in Maebashi, you bond.

Free the mice!

Life in the lab took an interesting turn of events today. This lab has an add out for help in mouse work, and an old sounding Japanese man called demanding to know where the mice are. He said he would be visiting the laboratory soon! Hence there are a bunch of security guys out in the hallway and no-one will stay late tonight. My office is next to the elevator, so I have my collection of Japanese fans poised for battle, and a few Japanese fighting fish. I think Ueno-san knows kendo, and Tamura-san likes Arnold and Sylvestor Stalone so he might have some big muscles. Ooh! The Japanese policeman is brandishing a big stick!
Anyway, it's just as well. The preps were wiggly today and pulling out pins again. I'm going to escape to Tokyo this weekend and watch a kabuki if I can get a ticket.

Gotta go!

Larval mysteries, etc.

Do adult flies remember being larvae?
What happens to muscles 6 and 7 during pupation?
What does it feel like to pupate?
Can I poke a hole in a larva, shoot him up with FM1-43, and let him crawl around and label himself at 125 Hz? What would it look like?
Are boutons squishy?
What are minis for?
Is it possible that the elusive, mysterious, mind-warping reserve pool is naturally for minis?
Is my data all crap or is it trying to tell me something?
Have you ever seen a load of clothes that have been washed with an entire roll of toilet paper? I have.
Have you ever dumped hot meso soup on pants that have microscopic toilet paper fragments all over them?
Have you ever had shrimp and seaweed crackers for dessert?
Have you ever asked someone where it might be possible to find chocolate sauce in their country?
Have you ever stayed at work until midnight because you were afraid of getting hit by Japanese lightning?

A few Mt. Fuji pics!

These are pictures taken by Rebecca Briggs, one of our brave group (yellow coat)...

One of many breathtaking views at the top.



I left 1 yen stuck in the log at the top. I am cheap.



Satisfied people who climbed the volcano.



This is where the care bears live.



Done for. This was a nice parking-lot photo that amused the buses full of kindergarden kids greatly.

Another day in Japan

CSU webmail is back up, ya'll.

I was raring to go at 4:30 a.m. again after an interesting dream in which I spoke Japanese. The fuzzy kitty at home also had a bunch of fluffy kittens, and I was the proud owner of Atsuko's car. Having a dream in Japanese was a landmark, I suppose I could live here now.

Today I searched for a better reserve pool, and found it in shibire. Prep number one pulled out a record 3 pins, but number two was nice and had a few nice bright boutons. Not as many as I expected, but Atsuko believes I should change from the fancy incubation hot-plate to the 34 degree incubator and at last I will see the reserve pools. Just in time for me to decide that actin must be involved in endocytosis. Ah well. I have to keep reminding myself that it does not matter where research takes me as long as it is publishable truth.

I was lucky to get such a clear morning a-top Mt. Fuji. I had lunch with "the guys" today and Saito-san has climbed it twice in the cold and rain. Ueno-san and Tamura-san have not climbed it because they have Ph.D.s and they are smart. Only today could I walk without pain, stairs excluded.
I visited my fun Japanese Bible study again tonight and enjoyed finding more life/science parallels. When one can focus on the facts and turn off the imagination for a while, one can creep closer to the truth. As unbelievable as it may seem from the context of our clogged minds. If only I could be paid a dime for every philosophical thought. The pastor's wife gave me some eggplants and cucumbers last week and I've enjoyed experimenting with eggplant spaghetti sauce. Very good, I am proud of myself. Not sure what to do with the cucumbers. It seems that cucumber plants just make too many cucumbers, even in Japan. There was an entertaining moment at the end of our study when Timiko-san (I think) leapt up from the table and tore into the next room hopping on one foot while pulling off her other green house slipper, yelling something in Japanese, and chased a cockroach without a chance across the room to a very stomped and smushed death. Atsuko was right, they just don't like them over here. I think the major horror of the cockroach is that they eat garbage, and garbage is thought of as very gross here. Many Japanese think the wild cats are just as gross as the cockroaches because they dig in the garbage. If they knew I dig around in it sometimes looking for my driver's license or lost phonecards I think I might share the fate of the cockroach. To me, it's just a bug.

I think it's bedtime. I have to kill more maggots tomorrow. In Japan.

CSU web address down

Newsflash for my blogger friends that like to write to me at my colostate.edu address. It's not working right now, I don't know why. Please use my yahoo address and forgive me for ignoring you!

News and views

Ahh my poor fish. He was recovering so beautifully, but I came back from Mt. Fuji to find him tailless again. I'm flying high on some amazing pizza right now. I had a pizza attack and went back to Pizza Stadium for some take-out, despite the pain of riding a bike, and this time I got a wonderful meatlovers pizza without potatos on it. The guy could speak very good English and crafted my ideal pizza.

I feel my time here drawing to a close. This week I will get as much data as I can out of my mutant flies from the U.S. I want to believe in distinct pool labeling, but I'm still not convinced. Dr. Kuromi is out on summer vacation this week, but when he gets back I will show him my pictures and see what he can see. I'm still afraid that there is something I'm not doing quite right. I thought there would be more distinction between the pools! Meanwhile, I had a lot of fun watching Tamura-san patch some embryos this morning. I'll watch again tomorrow -- it's a beautiful technique and I have to be able to do that someday.

Prime Minister Koizumi is big news today! He's playing some hardball in parliament, and finally I understand why the Reps were talking so emphatically about the post office on "Japanese C-SPAN." To my great joy and satisfaction, Ueno-san was happy to talk politics for 20 minutes today, describing his views of the party systems and the trends in privitization of public services. A wee bit farther I have descended into the depths of the Japanese mentality.

The Hiroshima anniversary came and went while I was climbing Mt. Fuji. Seeing the horrors of that day replayed on Japanese television was very sad, and I wandered some thought avenues on the wisdom of strategies used in that war. I guess the real point is that to drop the bomb or not to drop the bomb were both bad decisions, yet there were only bad decisions to choose from. Maybe if people could understand that concept they would come up with something more constructive to do than just bashing those who have to make tough choices when the all of the options are bad. There was an Okinawa-stationed Marine up on top of Mt. Fuji, back from one shift in Iraq. I can say thank you to guys like these, and I do, but what I'd really like to do is sock every ******* that would sooner accuse than take a moment to see what these guys actually do for other people that they are ordered to give a darn about. Not once in an entire semester of "Responsible Conduct in Research" did I hear a suggestion that the mouse-painting, radiation-spiking, data-forging "scientists" represented the core of the scientific work force, so why the double standard for our military? I'm diatribing on my Japan blog. My wish that a nice trip to Japan would relax my U.S. based frustrations came partially true, I am free from arguing them in the flesh. But at the same time there aren't a ton of people to talk to over here and I get to do a lot of thinking. It's good though. I was able to come to the zennish conclusion that socking everybody is a strategy that uses too much energy and is not very effective. Most people won't be socked into changing their minds. Better to make the membranes less permeable and store up the potential energy to be directed through a channel that makes something more constructive.

And now, finally, before I seek refuge from the pain that is Fuji in a lovely night's sleep, DELIGHTS OF A DAY IN JAPAN:

1. Lunch with Tamura-san, wherein my explanation of the old Belding house with snakes that crawled through the livingroom was answered with, "Sounds nice." He meant it, the guy loves snakes. He rattled off about ten species of snakes that live in Japan. We have talked before about animals. He hates furr and animals that make noise. He, his father, and his grandfather have all been bitten by poisenous snakes. "It's no problem."

2. Sitting in a group around the rig with two postdocs and Dr. Kidokoro. He always wants to the see the data hot off the press, so somehow he magically appears from his office every time Tamura-san is about to patch onto a muscle. Either he is psychic, he has a video-camera installed, or there is a secret signal I haven't noticed yet.

3. Discovering that Kubo-san loves cheese.

4. Finding out that riding a bike makes sore muscles feel better in the end.

5. Reading a cool paper about actin and microtubles and then seeing that the authors are just across the road in another department at Gunma University and I can pop over there and ask them all about drugs this week.

6. Successfully asking my neighbor (the American guy's mother-in-law) if her cat was okay in Japanese, and understanding her answer that it died. I ran into the American guy last Friday as he was leaving to take the cat to the vet. It is a sad thing, but I heard it was very old. Interestingly, telling that story to some people in the lab on the way to dinner last week brought up the Terry Shiavo issue. A wee bit farther I descended into the depths of the Japanese mentality. You don't kill things in Japan unless you are going to eat them. Larvae excluded. And doggies for research (sniff sniff -- I can hear them barking in the building next door sometimes).

Gotta go to bed! Oh my oxidized muscular actin!

Ooww. I did it.

I am in pain, but I am triumphant. There were 7 in our group: 5 from the NSF program, 1 from the British Council, and one graduate student from a lab at Tokyo University. We starting climbing at about 8:30 p.m. Saturday and reached the summit at 4:30 a.m. It was awesome to pause and look up at the stars, planets and meteors, brighter than I've ever seen before. The big dipper appeared and slowly traveled across the night sky, and halfway through the night Orion's belt appeared, again seeming so big! The climb changed from a little exhausting to torturous to pure torture where it was only possible for me to stare at the feet in front of me and focus on where to put my feet, but about 10 minutes from the top something kicked on and I ran to the highest point just in time to catch the start of the sunrise. It was awe-inspiring. Unforgettable. I stayed for an hour in my spot above the clouds, very quiet and feeling very small in a very big universe.

We hung around at the top for another hour and a half, eating a 1000 yen cup of hot curry uedon noodles that we might have paid 10000 yen for (it was chilly up there!), then climbed down by a different route, starting at about 7:00 a.m. and finally reaching the bottom around 1 p.m. There was a little energy kick after the noodles that had us zipping down the ash-slides past the lines of camo-attired guys in the Japanese self-defense force, but by 11:00 a.m. my legs were well beyond the wobbling stage and only the desire not to die kept them moving. It was a blessing not to know the trail, because we could always hope that the end was just over the next hill. We must have landed on the other side of the mountain because it took over an hour by bus and 4 hours by train to get back to Maebashi. I sort of slept on the train, sinking into a stupor where I could see hundreds of lights zig-zagging endlessly above me to the top of the mountain and then snapping awake to find it was only an endless train, not the mountain. In changing seats at one point they gave out and I landed on an unfortunate Japanese woman's lap, but she saw my Mt. Fuji walking stick and smiled very nicely. She had a good story when she got home. It's a distinct stick you get branded as you go up with the final red brand at the top, and when carrying it around you get many nods and congratulations! Hopefully also forgiveness for being dirty, smelly, slow and in obvious pain every time you have to move. I found my own door at 9:00 p.m., released my tired feet, washed off layers of volcanish ash, found many places where skin was left on Mt. Fuji, noted the tingling neck and arms to be a beautiful farmer's sunburn, and collapsed in a nice fluffy bed. This morning getting up was one of the most painful things I have done in life, but it is easing with movement and I made it to the lab to watch some embryo patching at 8:30 a.m.

Thus, it is done. I am proud.

Gone climbing Mt. Fuji

Actually I think this won't be very much fun... but climb it I must. I will venture alone into the world of buses and train stations tomorrow, if I never return please give me an honorary Ph.D.

I guess I saw the reserve pool today. I don't believe in it yet but I'm trying. I think I have mites crawling all over me. It's a creepy feeling. Bedtime! There will be no sleeping Saturday night.

Sake and pig ears

I haved morphed. Or evolved. Or devolved. Or mutated. I had some pig ear, Kirin beer and sake at dinner tonight. My brother would be so proud of my beer consumption here! If he believed me. Ha. The sake wasn't too bad either... 16% alcohol, no wonder the glasses are small. We all went out for dinner after Dr. Kidokoro and Dr. Kuromi presented their recent research. We fried our brains for two hours trying to figure out where all the calcium channels are in reference to the active zones, what the heck the T-bar is, and of course, what is the reserve pool. Dr. Kuromi thinks about things on level 9, others in the lab are maybe on levels 6-8, and I'm trying to break 4. The techniques he uses to come up with his ideas are so interesting and puzzling, drug combinations and FM-dye combinations galore and I start to wonder if I should break my head over these maggots or find a more obvious way to help the human race. I couldn't find the reserve pool today. I should have seen it for sure with the 0.2 mM calcium/veratridine treatment, but just as I was finishing staining Atsuko ran in and asked why I wasn't at Dr. Kidokoro's presentation. Hmmm, didn't know about it! Ha. This happened in Yokohama as well, when everyone discussed at dinner how they would probably be heading back to Maebashi by noon, therefore I surprised them royally back at the hotel when I mentioned that I hoped I would get a chance to meet Timothy Ryan after his 4pm talk! I speak only the English, or as Brie says, I speak only the English not so well. Hehe. I can say, "I have a problem, I cannot see fluorescence" in Japanese, and that is probably enough Japanese for my purposes this summer! I'm not exactly sure about the translation for problem. I hope it doesn't mean mental problem or something like that.

Well it is amazingly hot in this laboratory right now or perhaps the sake is roasting me from the inside. Watashi no ie ni ikimasu. I will go to my house. How do you say messy house? Ahh. Watashi no kitanai ie ni ikimasu. I still haven't unpacked. I think I will try to climb Mt. Fuji this weekend. I would be good to run from the larvae for a day. I forgot to mention that Dr. Jeckyl died and his wife ate him. Only his head was left. I found a nice cockroach replacement in the bathroom sink at home, but considering the demise of my last cockroach I thought he/she would fare better outside. My fish are doing well though, Absalom is growing a nice new tail and his wife has stopped acting like a male and changed to a beautiful reddish-purple color. I'm interested to find out who shows up in my dreams tonight. Tuesday night Jim Bamburg appeared as director of the Romeo and Juliet play I was acting in and couldn't remember my lines, and last night Noreen Reist was teaching me how to pronounce words. It could potentially be very interesting. Ueno-san told me about the 808 Shinto gods that meet every year and discuss things, so I've been thinking about old turtles with hair on their tails and white foxes with 9 tails that eat sasadango. Japan is unendingly interesting, I will miss it when I go home!

About that octopus

12:45 a.m. and everybody has gone home already! I wonder why the early night. I came back to the lab to write about the octopus. I fear it could be said that I drank and drove a bicycle. I thought I picked out a nice grape pop to go with my corndogs, but I'm feeling a leetle beet loopy.

I had a little chat with Dr. Kuromi today about my data that was making me angry. It turned into a typical boss-Janel conversation. Janel: "My data is terrible! How can I learn how this drug affects the recycling pool when it only affects some of the boutons? How am I supposed to know the truth? This is frustrating! What is wrong with my dissections?" Boss: No problem! Why is it frustrating? Boutons are different. Actin is different in the boutons, so maybe it will be variable. Try ...." Sigh. I don't know. I expected more clarity from drug experiments. My brain has to allow the story to change.

Ah yes, the octopus. When I woke up Sunday morning in Niigata I headed for the ocean. There were hundreds of people sitting in the streets of Bandai City (area of Niigata) with crafts and paintings to sell, and many more people handing out fans and toilet paper. I stopped at Mr. Donut for breakfast because I felt it was my duty as an American, and then meandered around until I found a big road that pointed to Bandai bridge. The nice man at my hotel gave me a map in English, so I knew that was the way to the ocean. I walked across Bandai bridge and listened to the interesting Japanese music playing on the bridge, then yelled "I'm fine, how are you?" to a bunch of kids on the other side of the street who yelled "Hello! How are you?" in very passable English. I thought I would take a peek at a museum that was between my hotel and the ocean, but I had to go through some small streets to get to it and the map is not useful for small streets. I never did find the museum, but I found a weird pink house and a bunch of leaning trees that indicated the direction of the ocean. I must have learned something at girl scout camp eh? I passed a cannon and a little light-house looking thing in the woods and at last headed down a couple of flights of stone stairs to find the beautiful, beautiful Sea of Japan. The coastline was divided into several different swimming areas, and there were quite a few people smimming and snorkeling around the rocks. I stood in the water for a while, wondering what kind of idiot travels to Niigata and forgets her swimming suit. I spotted some guys doing something interesting with knives by the rocks, and after walking one way down the ocean and then back again, I saw they were frying oysters on the beach. In my baby-talk Japanese I said "This? From ocean? Today?" Yup. I was amazed. They then asked me to eat one. Well what the heck. I ate it, and it was good! The nice guys who did not speak English then offered me a big beer and I sat down and decided to massacre the language for a while with my pocket dictionary. I told them the beer was too big, but thank you, and they produced a smaller one from their cooler and proceeded to enjoy asking me questions which I could not understand and then laugh while I tried to look them up. I believe one of them was a postman originally from Hawaii, but at first I thought he said he was from Indonesia and they all enjoyed calling him an Indonesian after that. I told them where I was from and that I wanted to see an octopus. Well they just happened to have one. He was a bee-yoo-tiful octopus! There was a couple of very large sea urchins in the bucket as well, but I cared only for the octopus. He was maybe 12-15 inches long from head to tail, pinkish-purple, and he blew water at me out of his mouth tubes while I tried to figure out how to unstick him from the bucket so I could play with him. He then decided to stick to my arm instead and I was thrilled. Holding an octopus at last! I got some nice pictures of my octopus, and have no fear, if you know me you will see them. The guys thought I was funny to play with food and kept saying "your pet!" while I played with him. Eventually I gave my octopus back to the guys and had a small hope that they would put him back in the ocean, but alas they rubbed him in the sand, rinsed him, cut his legs off and ate him. Atsuko has been working with me on the issue of raw food (i.e. it's just food! Don't think about it so much. Do you think about your hamburger as a cow?), so I managed to watch the murder of my friend the octopus with a forced shallowness of feeling, but I could not eat him. They like nama no tako (raw octopus), covered in wasabi and dipped in soy sauce. How there can be taste of octopus left after that I do not know. At last, I had another fried oyster, finish my beer, thanked them and told them they should visit Colorado sometime and hopped up to continue my explorations. The Indonesian/Hawaiian guy then did a nice muscle-man pose and asked if I thought he was cute. Ha. "Okashi" means "funny" and it seemed appropriate. No sense harming the ego, I've heard it is very fragile in the XYs. So there you go, another opportunity gone as I hold out for that sumo wrestler.

I had a few more Englinese semi-conversations on the beach with people of all sorts who wanted to know where I was from, and found some Phillipino people who could speak some Spanglish with me, and all in all had a happy time learning the names of some weird bugs and finding out where I could find my own octopus to play with. I saw some kids doing flips off of a rock out in the ocean and couldn't stand it anymore, stashed my bag in between some rocks and jumped in the ocean. Sooooo fun to float in the ocean! It beat the Florida ocean because it was hazy enough to swim for a while without turning into human toast... and the wildlife! Wowza! There were hundred of little crabs skittering around on the rocks, crazy looking seaweeds and lots of little fish. I seriously needed some goggles as opening my eyes under water in search of the octopus was not a successful endeavor. It stings, and my vision isn't so good without glasses. After the fifth heart attack from getting slapped in the face by a weed I had to give up on that plan.

Twas a wet walk back through town, but I don't thinking a dripping wet American gets much more attention than a dry one. I found Atsuko and we went to a sushi restaurant where I learned what sushi really is. It's good. I had the raw tuna, I had the scorched tuna, I had the shrimp, I had the squid with wasabi in the middle... all good. Niigata is Japan's rice capital, maybe that helped as well. People in Japan distinguish between Niigata rice and ordinary rice similar to how I would distinguish home-made bread from Walmart 88-cent sandwich bread. It sounds like Niigata gets a wicked winter, but all the water is great for rice.

Must go home. I didn't even get to the horses! I spent most of the day Saturday at the Niigata racecourse, reveling in the sight and smell of horses. I put 300 yen on a nice-looking grey horse and another bay to get one-two, and darned if I didn't get 13050 yen! I tried 900 yen on some other horses but decided to quit while ahead. I miss my horsie. I enjoyed watching them run, but I was on the wrong side of the fence. I need to ride them. Maybe in tonight's dreams. My octopus dream came true so I will have to move on to something else.

Another Not-a-blog

I'm going to fall out of my chair. I cannot talk about the octopus today. It is so hot and sticky in the world. I moved back to the original apartment yesterday, and the air conditioner isn't quite as effective at this place. Too hot to sleep very well, and dreaming that I can't remember my lines in Romeo and Juliet doesn't help. I have a million numbers for bouton intensity that I need to run through some calculations. By eye, I'm not impressed with the effects of any drugs on the exo/endo pool. But just today I learned that I should sonicate my drug-containing buffer to be sure the DMSO gets into solution. Maybe I was told that before, but I have discovered that we really only communicate to a certain level here. The exclamations of "Yes!" do not necessarily mean that is the answer to my question, it just means that my voice registered to the hearer. It is as frustrating for them to try and answer my questions in English as it is for me to understand what they are telling me. Sigh. After a few homesick tears into the microscope I told my larva that he had served his master well and would be rewarded and then I smeared him onto a kim-wipe. I don't know why that cheered me up, but it did and I have only 29 days to go and can reap the benefits of bacteria-free preparations from here on out. I had four preparations in a row today that did not float up, so maybe my new wacky pinning technique will also ensure greater success.

Well I guess that sort of was a blog. But I really need to make some spaghetti so I will stop. I freaked a little boy out at the grocery store yesterday. He was backing his bike up and didn't know I was standing there, so when he turned around to see what he ran into I got to watch him jump out of his skin. Hehe. I will miss being a foreigner when I get home. I feel so special.

Not-a-blog

I'm back from Niigata. Niigata was a dream, these larvae are the harsh reality. Bad mood for blogging, good mood for jogging. Tomorrow -- octopus story and lunch with the beach boys.