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.) -->