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!