Hazy sky caused by yellow sands

Even after brief rain in this early morning, here in Fukuoka, we now have a hazy sky. This is believed to be because of yellow sands conveyed by strong winds from China. The busiest season of yellow sands should be spring, but in these years, they frequently come flying to Japan in all seasons.
In such hazy atmosphere, hiking, one of my favorite,  is not so fun because of limited view from mountain peaks. My concern is that the fine sand particles might adsorb various toxic materials from Chinese environment and fall onto Japan, possibly causing allergic reaction or chronic toxicity.

On a fine clear day.

 Today in the yellow sand.

 Today's yellow sand forecast.

Hiking under the beautiful sky

I enjoyed a brief hiking with G30 staffs and their families. The weather was perfect, with fine sky and beautifully transparent air. We climbed Mt. Koshidake (254 m) near Ito campus of Kyushu Univ. Though relatively low peak, the view from the top was amazingly beautiful. Because of the clear atmosphere, we could see several far islands: Iki, Oronoshima, Ainoshima, and Oshima.

Autumn color

Autum is my favorite season. Especially I love trees turning colors. Yellow of gingko and red of maple are typical in Japanese autumn.

 gingko in Osaka Castle

 Koushidake Mt in Fukuoka

 Gingkos in Hakozaki Campus

 Osaka castle garden

 wax trees in Hakozaki campus

 Taiwan maples in Hakozaki campus

 Taiwan maple in Hakozaki campus

 Kuju highland

 Kuju highland

 Hakozaki campus

One of my favorite music.

This is a Bulgarian folk music "Polegnala e Tudora". The voice and chorus are amazingly beautiful.



This song has some healing power for my mind.

Renewing a fax

Fax may now be a fossil way of communication, but still indispensable even in this 'heyday' of internet. As a fax machine in my lab has got old and sometimes does not work fine, I am replacing it with new one, still looking for an old fashioned type with a roll of thermal paper. Many of the current models use sheets of normal paper and themal transfer ribbon/ink/toner cartridge, but I do not like it. Because, we have to take care of two or more things, the papers and the ribbon/ink/toner, to keep it right. We do not have enough time to take care of this kind of machine experted to work in a meintenance-free manner. So I prefer the one using thermal paper roll, which is the only thing we cannot run out. A pitfall of this type of paper is to set it right side. Otherwise you will see only blank pages. I did this stupid mistake yesterday. Who sent me the fax?

Taipei and Hong-Kong with Dim Sum

We visited Taipei and Hong-Kong to have interviews of applicants for our new undergraduate degree program for foreign students. The tasks were quite tough but completed with no trouble, because of warm and careful support by G30 office staff and our new director, Dr. Lin, of Kyushu University Taipei Office, opened in a Law School building, National Taiwan University.

After each interview mission, we enjoyed dim sum in both cities. Those were artistically delicious. (Only an exception was a lunch in a small restaurant in Hong-Kong.)

Sampling of carp blood at a aquaculture pond

For functional assay and protein purification/characterization of fish complement system, we regularly visit a culture pond of the common carp located at just outside of Fukuoka City for bleeding. The carp are big enough to get 30-50 ml of total blood, yielding 10-25 ml serum. This day, we processed 40 carp, weighing about 1.5 kg each. For new students of my laboratory, this sampling activity is an important practice and introduction to our laboratory research. They'll be realized how laborious is this fundamental procedure for our study.

After bit painful labor, the students enjoyed a good lunch, grilled eel on the rice and sashimi (raw meat) and soup of fresh carp, in a restaurant next to the culture pond.