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.

A joint party with the next lab

The 4th floor of our No. 3 building harbors two laboratories, Lab of Marine Biochemistry (mine) and Lab of Fisheries Biology. Though we share the same floor, people in both laboratory, especially students, are have been rather stranger each other, partly because the two labs belong to different departments of the graduate school and the students have less chance to share classrooms.
So we held a mixer last night. Staffs and students donated snacks and cooked out several meals to enjoy cans of beer and some other drinks. In addition, a student in another lab kindly donated several pieces of fresh mackerel, which had donated their pituitary glands for his PhD research and then were served as sashimi for us.
We enjoyed the party very much with many interesting talks, chatting, and much lough, almost until 2 o'clock. I hope this kind of informal interaction promote further good interactions in academic and social activities between the two lab.

Visiting my hometown, Anjo city

We had a 33-years Buddhist memorial service for my grandmother in my parents' house. It was almost 10 to 15 years ago since a majority of my relatives got together last; some of them are quite old now, late 70's and 80's. On the other hand, it should be nice for my kids to meet their cousins after a long time.
In the service, after sutra recitation by a priest for 1 hr, we had a lunch party together. Then we all visited our grave by 10 min' walk. Though I'm just a part-time Buddhist, the holy feeling was nice to recall memories on my grandfather, grandmother, and two uncles, who had passed away until several years ago.

Then my sisters kindly prepared a BBQ party. It was much fun!