A salted king salmon

The 60 cm-long salted king salmon (chinook salmon, Oncorhynchus tshawytscha) is an annual gift from one of my best friend. This year, fortunately, he stopped by my house just after it arrived, so I could taste the fish with him. Though the fish was much salted, the meat inside is not so salty, but quite well fatty with much flavor and taste. As the last night dinner, a hot pot with blocks of the salmon meat, head, and fins, in soy paste soup, was quite delicious and warming for us in this season. This morning, we enjoyed salmon steak too; very nice.

Lab Party

We had a farewell party for Dr. Val Smith in our seminar room. It was also to welcome Mr. Yin (Visiting Fellow from Chinese Academy of Fisheries Science, Wuxi) and Ms. Charlene Fon (undergraduate visiting student from National Univ. Singapore). Students cooked several dishes, including a hot-pot (Nabe) with much vegetables and meat balls, spicy fried meat and vegetables, and Chinese-style dumplings. I served fried octopus dumplings, which are ball-shaped dumplings containing a piece of octopus and small pieces of green onions, red pickled ginger, and small pink shrimps, with source flavored with powder of dried bonito and green sea weed (Ulva).
We also enjoyed several kinds of drinks such as Japanese sake (rice wine), plum-flavored liquor, and beer.
Finally, some sets of cakes were served with a name tag (edible one written with chocolate) of the above people.
I hope their enjoyable trip back and the stay in Fukuoka.

Visiting Kyoto (pitty) and Osaka (great!)

With Val, we visited Kyoto, the most famous historic city in Japan with much temples and shrines. Moreover, this season is the best for Kyoto, because of beautiful Japanese maple leaves turning in red in many streets and hills. However, in turn, this season may be worst in a sense of being congested by tourists like us. We made a 40 min line of waiting a cloakroom in Kyoto station. We had a much traffic congestions making our bus tour behind time, resulting in a very short stay in each temple/shrine. And it was raining....
Next day, on Monday (a national holiday), we got a beautiful sunny day and visited Osaka castle. It was very nice with nice view of yellow ginkgo tree leaves and magnificent castle. In addition, we came across a outdoor concert of Japanese taiko drums played by two high school teams. Their plays were quite nice and vibration of taiko sound stroke us pleasantly.
When we considered social events after the 12th ISDCI congress (in Fukuoka), Osaka and Kyoto may be a candidate for some after-conference tour, though it'll be in hot and humid summer.


The Japanese garden in Hei-An Jingu


Ginkgo trees in Osaka Castle Park


Osaka Castle Museum


Taiko Drum by a high school players in Osaka Castle Park

Lab Excursion to Nagasaki

As a lab excursion, we visited Nagasaki Biopark (a zoo) and Iou-jima (a resort island) in Kyushu. It was 22 years ago when I visited Biopark with my wife as a honeymoon. Most of the animals there were fun to see. The funniest one was a kangaroo looking like being hangover.
Iou-jima was also fine with nice hotel and beautiful view of sea and other natures.

Hiking to Mt. Tateishi

After visit to Ito campus (a new campus of Kyushu Univ), I went to Keya district at the west coast of Itoshima Peninsula and walked up to the peak of Mt. Tateishi (210 m altitude) from Keya beach, which is popular for swimming, fishing, and surfing. Though it is a small mountain, I enjoyed a beautiful view of the sea, Keya beach, and Himeshima Island.

An old-fashioned local hot spring (public spa)

This public spa, Teraono Onsen, was extremely nice. Though the bath is separated into men's and lady's space only by a thin wooden partition, equipped with no soap, shampoo, or shower, this is well maintained by local people in Oguni Town, Kumamoto Prefecture and made me relaxed with a slight sulpher (perhaps H2S) smell, at a minimum fee (only 100 JPY).

A camping site

Last weekend I stayed at a camping site in the Kuju highland, Oita Prefecture. The weather was fine, showing beautiful blue sky in the day time, and wonderful starlit sky in the night. As I do not have a tent, I rented a small cottage that fit two persons at maximum. The small cottage is like a doghouse, but OK for staying in a sleeping bag.
In the next morning, the landscape around the camping site was quite refreshing, especially the beautiful shape of Mt. Waita-san.

Vietnamese Dinner

Ms. Tam, a Vietnamese PhD student who will receive the degree tomorrow and leave here to go back to Vietnam next Monday, served Vietnamese Dish for us. All the dishes are very nice. We may miss her and her cooking.

An easy hiking with my daughter

Yesterday, we visited Mt. Tachibana-yama near Fukuoka City. It was perfectly sunny, but it was bit pitty that my favorite bakery near the mountain had been closed down.


One the way to the peak, we found a pomegranate tree with many red fruits, which looked almost matured.

Hou-Jou-Ya Festa of Hakozaki Shrine

The Hakozaki Shrine, next to my home, is holding a festival called "Hou-Jou-Ya", celebrating all living creatures.
In addition to several religious activities to release and thank spirits of animals and plants, the festival contains many attractions and shows such as traditional Japanese drums play, pop music concerts, as well as hundreds of stalls selling snacks, drinks, toys.








During the festival, a bakery near the shrine holds street juzz music by several bands at the front of the shop.

Hiking to Mt. Kayasan

This morning I went hiking to Mt. Kayasan (altitude of 365 m) with a student. I could not resist my desire to go out and hike. The sky was not so clear, even misty, but the peak we got was nice. Today, to get the peak, we took the Kofuji route, which starts from a seashore and contains steep and poorly maintained trail. But this rout was fun with much nature such as river crabs in a small stream, various colorful mushrooms (perhaps all poisonous), various kinds of cicadas shrilling, tiny snakes, frogs and others. Though we finished the hiking in the morning before it become too hot and humid, I enjoyed the walks and talks with him a lot. Good, refreshing day!

46th Complement Symposium in Fukuoka

My laboratory hosted the symposium during 21-22th August, using Kyushu Univ. Nishijin Plaza as a congress venue. The first day was extremely hot, and the second day was rainy in the morning. Even in such weather, more than 50 people have got together and exchanged very active discussions.
As a chairman of the symposium, I was extremely happy to have a overseas guest speaker, Dr. Claudia Kemper, who gave a special lecture on novel and important functions of properdin and CD46. Also we had a very interesting and inspiring lecture by Dr. Shunichiro Kurata on pathogen recognition by Drosophila immune system. A mini-symposium in the symposium on evolution of the complement system was also fun. In addition, regular oral presentations are all accompanied by very active discussions, making the original time table almost nothing!
Post-conference activities, so-called excursion, are also fantastic with Claudia. Only a hard luck was that access to the volcano mouth of Aso mountain was prohibited because of high level of sulfur oxide, volcanic gas.

I would like to thank all the people who supported the symposium and other activities duing the week: my lab people, all the delegates of the symposium, managers of Nishijin Plaza, secretary of Food Science course, and many others.

21st Annual Meeting of JADCI

During 3-5 August, the 21st Annual Meeting of Japanese Association for Developmental and Comparative Immunology was held in Nihon University, Fujisawa Campus, chaired by Dr. Teruyuki Nakanishi. We had 36 oral presentations of original researches, a special lecture by Dr. Nakayama on T-cell differentiation and maintenance, and six talks in a symposium on lymphocyte evolution, with about 100 attendants. As I was serving as a secretary general and treasurer, I spent busy times during the meeting to prepare executive and general meetings, but at the same time, really enjoyed the activity. I met many researchers working on quite interesting topics, having sound discussions. Also we gained a number of new members of this association, especially youths. I hope that JADCI grows further and the field of comparative immunology attracts more scientists.
I believe we are now on the right track.
Personally, I enjoyed to drink and talk with Oriol from UPENN and Drs. Jung, Hikima, and Otani, who are all young leading scientists working hard and sincerely on fish immunology.
As in the previous symposium in Gyeongsang National University, students and other stuff were devotedly working for the meeting. It was quite impressive. Thank you for those services, to all.

BBQ party

In the last Wednesday, many of my lab members got together and had a barbecue party in the campus yard. The sky was cloudy but it was comfortable evening. Ms. Tanaka, the secretary of my lab, also joined with her daughter, Himari. Himari behaved quite shy at the beginning, but she became fine in several minutes.
Next week, I will travel to Fujisawa to attend the 21th meeting of JADCI, with Dr. Somamoto and two graduate students. Undergraduates in my lab will start their preparatory study (learning) for the entrance exam for Master course. August is one of the busiest month for us; we do not have so-called summer vacation unfortunately.

A festival of Hakozaki Shrine

This festival, named Nagoshi-Matsuri, is a relatively small one compared with other two major festivals of this shrine with long and distinguished history. The term 'Nagoshi' means 'living well and safely during summer', so this festival is to celebrate and pray our good health during hot and humid season of Fukuoka.
Unfortunately, we have had heavy rain during the last a few days. So some ceremony and their accompanying activity might be canceled. Today, we finaly had a sunny hours, and the festival became bit active and shops opend along with the approach path to the shrine seem busier, gathering kids and families.

Two travels in a week.

The last weekend, I flew to Tokyo to attend a seminar on HAE (Hereditary Angioedema, caused by genetic deficiency of C1INH, a complement regulatory protein also controlling many kinds of endogenous proteases). The main purpose of mine was to introduce the Complement Symposium to the attendee, but the contents of the seminar themselves were also very interesting to me. I was invited by the sponsor, being provided with air tickets and accommodation.


Mt. Fuji seen from the plane to Tokyo

Three days later (on Wednesday), I visited Jinju city in South Korea to give a lecture in a syposium entitled “Fish Defense Mechanisms against Invading Pathogens” held in Gyeongsang National University, and just came back to Fukuoka today (4 days trip). Almost all the speaker were from Japan, but their lectures were still interesting and informative for me. Mine was on the functional diversity of carp C3 isotypes mainly in biochemical aspects. Professors Tae Sung Jung and Takashi Aoki, the organizers, and their posdocs and PhD students showed maximum efforts in the symposium and also genuine hospitality for us. Their passion and consideration were impressive. Also impressive was an encounter with Ms. Rhoda Mae Cerbo, a secretary of the symposium. She turned out to be a graduate of Univ. Philippines School of Visayas, in which she had supervisors, Drs. Jp and Lani, my friends. I was realized again what a small world is it.


In a banquet, with Rhoda

In their lab on Vet. School, PhD students behaved politely, and they all were sufficiently good in communication with us in English (and also drank a lot!). I expect that the laboratories will develop to a COE for fish immunoogy/pathology, with much effort of those stuffs.
Jinju city is a medium sized calm city, as long as I felt, having the National University. We also visited College of Marine Science of the University and found beautiful new lab on fish pathology and marine life science. I hope we can develop fruitful collaboration on fish immune system in near future.

12th ISDCI congress is coming to Fukuoka

Finally it was decided. It'll be the first congress held in Asia, in 2012 July. I'll do my best, with collaboration with Japanese and international colleagues, for successful congress here.

Leaving for Prague

This is to attend ISDCI congress, an official congress of the International Society of Developmental and Comparative Immunology, held every three years. This time is quite special to me, because (1) I was elected as President Elect from 2009, which mean I will be the President from 2012 for three years, (2) I am going to offer to chair the conference held in Fukuoka in 2012, (3) I will have a 20 min talk about history of JADCI, Japanese DCI association, in the History session, in addition to my scientific oral presentation on carp complement C1 complex in a 'Complement and Complemen-like Factors' session, which I will co-chair with Oriol. Hoping everything goes fine.
Tomorrow morning, I will have a flight to Incheon (Korea) to change plane to Prague, and be back Fukuoka at 5th July. See you again then.

June 23 and Okinawa

Sixty-four years ago, today was the day of ending of Okinawa battle in the World War II. Not many Japanese people, including me, have known this day, much less than the day of World War II end (Aug. 15) or start (Dec. 8).
About 100 thousand people were killed during the Okinawa battle, not only by US army but also Japanese army and indirectly by Japanese education at that time. The Okinawa people have been taught (or mind-controlled) to kill themselves rather than to become a captive of US army.
It is difficult for our age to understand with reality how horrible or nasty the battle was, but we have to keep the record, learn what happened and why that happened, in oder to prevent repeating any stupid war again, no matter win or loose.
According to a recent publication and a TV documentary, a song called "Shimauta", a big hit about 10 years ago, was written by a singer-song writer Mr. Miyazawa, who was inspired by the tragedy record of the Okinawa battle. So the "ShimaUta" is a story of the Okinawa batte. I have not imagined such a background of that song, but from now on, I will probably feel differently when I listen to that song or sing it in Karaoke.

The song, Shimauta (Island Song) is here.

Here is another Okinawa song of my favorite.

A tiny shrine

A few days ago, on the way to a funeral service of our professor emeritus, I found a very tiny shrine near Kashii station, Fukuoka City. The shrine, named Hamao Shrine, only has a small shrine gate, Torii in Japanese, and a tiny cottage-like main body, which should harbor a god of this shrine. In the shrine garden, however, it has a nice pasania tree full of green leaves, providing a peaceful shade in the garden and looking as if this tree might be a real main body representing a god in this shrine.
Although small and equipped only with minimum elements of a shrine, Hamao Shrine is neatly decolated with holy white paper ribbons and maintained well, indicating that some Japanese spirits are still alive among the residents there.

Welcoming new students

Yesterday, we had a softball competition among laboratory teams to welcome new undergraduate students (3rd grade) of the department of fisheries science. My laboratory team has had training twice in the last three weeks to prepare the games. As a result, although we lost the first game, won the second game. I think this result is not bad. I myself played as a first-baseman, and batting was also fine.
In the evening, we had a welcome party, with beer and snacks. I wish we could show more hospitality to the new students who might want to have more conversation and discussion with more experienced students and professors. Nevertheless, I drank a lot, talked a lot with a few students, and finally got hangover this morning.

The rainy season (month) is coming.

In most region of Japan, we have a month (mid June to mid July) of rainy season, pronounced as Tsuyu or ToYou in Japanese. This is bit depressing weather, but should be important to keep normal climate and plant growth in Japan. This weekend has been cloudy with occasional rain, looking as a sign of rainy season. I hope the season this year is calm without any flood damage.
A few things good for this season are 1) my birthday is coming (June 8) and 2) one of my of favorite flowers, hydrangea, will bloom. In the Hakozaki Shrine near my house, a beautiful hydrangea garden is now opened for visitors with a small entrance fee, 300 JPY (~$3).

Economic depression and holding a scientific meeting

The current global economic depression is also affecting budget situation of holding a scientific meeting. I will chair a domestic symposium on the complement system in Aug 2009, and now trying to collect funding from several companies related to the complement research and to my laboratory. Currently, the trials have been in vein. They have very good or crying excuse about the toughness of the economic situation in these years. The worse is that I have failed to get a good research grant in this year, so they do not expect a good order or purchase from me, perhaps as a real reason. But if someone offer a good donation especially under such condition this year, I will treat such dealer/company with much better privilege upon my grant success next year ^^;

Symposium of Japanese Society for Marine Biotechnology

Yesterday I gave a short lecture in a symposium of Japanese Society for Marine Biotechnology, held in Waseda University, Tokyo. The symposium topics was "Current status and perspectives of Immunological Study on Aquatic Organisms". For me, molecular and cellular analyses of bivalve defense system were interesting. Also a lecture on genomic research of aquatic organisms by Dr. Nobuyoshi Shimizu, Keio University, was impressive, because of that's contents but also partly because of knowing his good recovery from brain attack that happened two years ago just in front of us. He still has right limbs partially paralyzed, but can walk, use hands, speak and lough with sharp intelligence unchanged. It was a great pleasure for me to see him keeping active research.
My lecture was not so good, simply because I put so many things in 20 min. My topic was identification and functional characterization of complement components (C1, C4, C2) involved in the classical activation pathway in carp. Since I had put all the relevant findings to my abstract before I knew how many minutes are given to me, I was trying to touch all the things mentioned in the abstract; this was totally failure. Spoken too fast (completely against typical my manner), my intention to introduce what's interesting and important in studying the classical complement pathway in bony fish became much less persuasive.

On the other hand, utilizing this chance to travel to Tokyo, it was nice to visit my favorite coffee bar, Yoshida-ya (Nogizaka, Tokyo), to enjoy a cup of nice blended coffee named Mild Sour Blend and calm/warm atmosphere there. A master of Yoshida-ya, Mr. Akira Yoshida, was a bassist of my top favorite pop-music band, Tulip, until about 25 years ago. So anytime I visit and order some coffee there, I am shy and feel a nostalgia.
In Japan, that kind of authentic coffee bar with calm and relaxing mood is not so popular now a days, instead, full of Starbucks-like fashionable ones. This is little bit pity situation for me.
Photo from Yoshida-ya web page( in Japanese only.) -->

So-called swine flu

It became clear that the swine flu was not a new flu from swine. It was not new at all but a revival.
Ignoring recommendations from WHO and CDC, Japan and China have done useless and nasty treatment on the patients and people who came with the patients or from countries in which this flu happened. The screening at the airport was all rubbish with no meaning to do so. The bio-terrorism-fighter-like officials examining the plain passengers have frighten and made people almost in panic. Schools were closed in some places with no reasonable merit. High performance face masks were sellout and disappeared from any pharmacy to be worn with no preventing effect.
These are what happened in Japan, done by majority of Japanese people. So stupid and shame.
A few weeks ago, the Minister of health shouted about the flu, now the Prime Minister is asking in TV to keep calm, looking so frustrated. Japan as a whole got a flu with fever.

Smoking and being fat have become a kind of crime; now, getting flu too.

Side Effects of H1N1 Flu in Japan

In Japan, as the H1N1 (so called Swine) flu become popular (expanded), we easily see its side effects in terms of social and behavioral matter.
-Masks are now very popular with much demand and shortage of stocks, because they are recommended to be put and changed daily. I read that WHO does not any preventional effect of masks against flu infection.
-Many social activities (meeting, concerts, group tour of school students, sports competitions and so on) are now suddenly canceled, to avoid gathering people.
-In Osaka area, many primary, jonior high and high schools are closed. It was bit funny to read a small news reporting that Karaoke room became popular in the students to kill time.
-Travels are recommended to be cancelled if not essential.

It is even interesting who made a large profit by this flu incidence.

Kyushu Univ. Philharmonic Orchestra

One of the undergraduate students in my department sent me an announcement e-mail for a concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Kyushu University, in which she is playing a bass trombone. The concert is a 100th anniversary one held in June. Unfortunately I can not attend it because of my travel to Prague for the ISDCI congress, but I distributed this information to my family and other people. The ticket is just 1000 JPY. According to the past several concert I attended, their performance was fairly nice, enough enjoyable, with occasional good guest players. So the ticket fare is really cheap, I think, even considering that the orchestra is a kind of student activity, with some alumni members.

I'm not so familiar with classic music, but real sound of orchestra is always nice to listen, much better than the same music from small audio speakers in my room.

Ken's seminar

The day before yesterday (May 12), we had a chance to attend a seminar by Dr. Kenneth Soderhall (University of Uppsala) held in Dr. Kawabata's Lab. The topic was crustacean immune system, with many interesting findings on ProPO system and hematopoietic cytokines.
I was also invited to have a dinner with them in a Japanese restaurant in Tenjin (the city center of Fukuoka). Actually the Japanese dishes were very nice and Kenn looked very satisfied about that.
We had fun hours with beer and rice wine, resulting in heavy hangover at least on me.

*Ken is the President of International Society of Developmental and Comparative Immunology; I will start a service as the President Elect of the society from July 2009.

Hypersensitivity against the new flu in Japan

In spite of WHO recommendation not to restrict human immigrations between countries so strictly, Japanese society is responding too much, I think, against the expansion of the flu. The first Japanese patients of the flu was found to be high school students and teachers came back from Canada. Not only them, but also 30-40 flight passengers sitting around them are now caged in a hotel to see what happens for a week or so.
Many universities including mine recommend not to visit countries where the flu patients are recognized, though I'm not quite sure what will happen if we neglect it; we may have obvious or undocumented penalty.
Some Japanese companies commanded their employees who took their holidays overseas last week to stay at their home for a week or two, to prevent any possible expansion of the flu from anyone of the employee. This is an extreme too-much hypersensitivity, on my feeling. Even it could happens, who think that's the company's responsibility? Stupid attitude. It should be even true that the companies are quite insensitive to the human rights of their employee.
Perhaps, this kind of sensitiveness towards wrong direction is a typical to Japan society?

The Recording Diet

I'm not sure if this type of diet (trial to reduce weight) is known even in foreign countries, but this method is famous in Japan, originally introduced by Mr. Toshio Okada, a commentator for modern Japanese culture, Otaku. This does not need any special drug, food stuff, or equipments. You need only a notebook or small memo pad and a pen.
You can start this method by recording everything (very strictly) you ate, on the notebook. Try it for two week or so. You can loose 2-3 kg easily. This is just a beginning or an approach. Then you start to sum the calories of all stuff you ate. These are bit tedious, but you can find such calorie values by google search quite easily. After a week or two, you will loose additional 1-2 kg.
Then you start your actual performance. Everyday, you calculate your sum of the calories and keep the sum around 1500 kcal, perhaps you have to restrict some foods or snacks and sweets between meals. But what you have to care is only the daily calorie value. You do not care what kind of nutritional elements you should take. Just mind calorie. Your weight will decrease by 1 kg a week. This exactly happened to me. Do not restrict the food too much. Take it easy.
I tried this method last year, from just a year before, and continued for 6 month, resulting in loss of 18 kg (86 kg to 68 kg).
The chart below is a record of that progress.
(Blue plot shows weight in Kg, left Y-axis; Red plot shows fat content in %, and the yellow indicated total fat weight in Kg. X-axsis is dates starting from May 10, 2008 to Oct 10. The gap of the plots in the middle, missing data, was because of my travel to Oxford, UK, where the scales were not available.)


This method is also mentioned in other's blog.

My research topics

It seems stupid not to have mentioned my research topics, as a scientist. (Thanks Jp, for reminding me this matter!)

I was educated in Department of Fisheries Science, Kyushu University, and started to study Fish Immunology (clarifying immune system of fish) as a PhD student. Especially my major study subject is the complement system, a multi-component humoral system in the blood, fighting against microbial invasion.
In the medical research field, or even in a general immunology, the complement system has been regarded as something complicated with many components with just numbers, such as C1, C2 ,,,, down to C9. The fact that the numbered components do not always react in the numbered order, for example C1 is followed by C4, then C2, C3.
Nevertheless, the complement system has been very interesting for me. It is a kind of harmonized system composed of diverse range of protein families, it show wide variety of biological functions, and it is very well conserved over evolution.

I spent two years of my master course period for attempts to purify C4 protein from carp serum, resulting in vain. I also spent six years to purify and clone C3, factor B, and factor D, the essential components in an antibody-independent activation pathway of the complement system, from carp, this time fortunately resulting in acquisition of PhD but far later in 2001. Furthermore I also spent several years to work on other components with students and international collaborators, using mainly carp fish.

The most interesting and exciting feature of FISH complement system is that the fish system is much more complex than that of mammals, which has been regarded as a most sophisticated and developed one. Fish complement components are present as multiple copies of isotypes/isoforms, with significant sequence and, possibly functional, divergence. We have hypothesized the diversity as an evolutionary strategy to expand innate immune ability to recognize wide range of pathogens which should be more densely present and abundant in aqueous environment around fish.

Now research on innate immunity is a big trend, but this trend is mainly driven by Toll-like receptors, lectins, and so on, but not so much by the complement (pity though). But the complement system is there and everywhere in the body, and also in almost every animal species including vertebrates and invertebrates. Why not study more! That's the one crucial to live.

My dream is to make my lab as a Mecca for the complement research for lower vertebrates, and accordingly for comparative immunology, of Japan and even worldwide.

You may find a recent review of fish complement system as follows: one from me, and another from my friend, Oriol.
If you would like to have their PDF, please let me know.

Diversified components of the bony fish complement system: more genes for robuster innate defense?
Nakao M, Kato-Unoki Y, Nakahara M, Mutsuro J, Somamoto T.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2006;586:121-38. Review.

Expansion of genes encoding complement components in bony fish: biological implications of the complement diversity.
Nakao M, Mutsuro J, Nakahara M, Kato Y, Yano T.
Dev Comp Immunol. 2003 Oct;27(9):749-62. Review.

Recent advances on the complement system of teleost fish.
Boshra H, Li J, Sunyer JO.
Fish Shellfish Immunol. 2006 Feb;20(2):239-62.

My motto (but not easy to adopt)

(I do not know its origin, but Dr. Haruhisa Wago, Saitama Med Univ. introduced me.)

Be a leader, not a boss.

A boss knows everything.
A learder admits mistakes.
　
A boss tells people what must be done.
A leader shows how to do things.
　
A boss criticises.
A leader gives advices.
　
A boss talks first.
A leader listens first.
　
A boss gives orders.
A leader gives directions.
　
A boss demands respect.
A leader earns and deserves respect.
　
A boss rules with law.
A leader shows human-kindness.
　
So, be a leader, not a boss.

A temporary pub

This is one of my favorite places to drink near my home. It could be called as a stall. But it's actually pub, serving grilled meat (chicken, pork, beef, and fish) on the stick (like small BBQ), soup noodle, grilled cheese, vegetables, and off course drinks including rice wine, spirits, beer and wine. It operates from 6 pm to 2 am, throughout the year. During daytime, the stall units are absent, disappearing somewhere secret. The stall units are well equipped with charcoal grill, table and refrigerator to keep stuffs for a night. It gets electricity and tap water from a building next to the place with exclusive meters. You can smoke using the ground under your seat as an ashtray.
If you order a mug of beer with a snack, several sticks of the grilled meat, and a bowl of soup noodle to spend an hour, you will pay about $20 or less. Not so cheap, but not too expensive.

Public Baths in Fukuoka City

I found public bath facilities, Sen-toe in Japanese pronunciation, one in the cenral Fukuoka City (upper photo) and one more near my University (the lower). (One of the two doors is for men, and another is for women.) They charge about 400JPY (~$4) a time, which I feel bit expensive. When I was a student here, we had several public bath places even only around the University, but now only a few survived. After taking bath, it is very relaxing and refreshing to drink a small bottle of milk or coffee-flavored milk. Now I have few chance to use public bath in the city, but sometimes enjoy public hot spring bath in particular places near the city.

What You'll Wish You'd Known

This is a manuscript of a talk by Mr. Paul Graham. I like this opinion, a kind of essay, and would like to introduce it to my children, a 16 years old son and a 20 years old daughter.

It contains some issues that I do not agree, but the essay would be a very nice stimulator for teenager to think their way to live.

The University guideline how to act against the new flu pandemic

A couple of days ago, the risk management office of my University issued an official guideline for students and other stuffs about how to act on a possible pandemic of the new flu, which is now expanding worldwide.

To make the long story short, when the flu become epidemic but still outside Fukuoka prefecture, in which my University stands, all the classes will be canceled and direct students to stay home. Stuffs in charge of minimum maintenance or doing very important experiments which cannot be paused may come to the office or lab.

After the flu become epidemic in Fukuoka prefecture, the University will be shut down, except for strictly minimum maintenance, such as security and feeding experimental animals.

All the announcements about the University acts, will be broadcasted by e-mail and web page, containing some information portal site for students.

I hope this system works fine, even on a possible worst situation. But perhaps, the A-type new flu would lead to such a situation based on its relatively weak virulency. (Is it too optimistic?)

Worst case for me would be prohibition of travel, domestic or international. I have already registered in ISDCI meeting in Prague, where we have a very important business meeting and sessions including one which I will chair.

Onion heads

This morning I drove with my daughter to Tachibana-guchi, a small village near Fukuoka city, to visit a small bakery, which serves various nice breads and sandwiches. After we enjoyed some breads with a cup of coffee, we walked around the village for half an hour listening to typical song of small birds, the bush warblers (right photo). We also found cultivated long green onions with their ball-like flowers, called Negi-bouzu in Japanese (left photo). Once it blooms, the onions become stiff, loose good taste, and are not edible anymore. But I like the flower, or onion head, because it reminds me my childhood with some nostalgia for my grandmother, who has been taken care of a small vegetable field as her hobby. She spent a lot of time, and could harvest usual onions, the long green onions, water melons, cucumbers, radish and so on there. For me, the smell of soil was nice.

According to a farming manual, one can get edible parts of onion regenerated by cutting the flower off. 

Dear my friend...

I have decided to start this blog. Writing blog in English is a challenge for me, a scientist in Japanese University, but I would like enjoy writing this diary.

The title originates from my original blog in Japanese. I still don't understand the core part (kernel) in my mind. So looking for my kernel part by watching and describing my outer shell is a kind of my life-long exploration.