Halloween Party

In our institute, many foreign researchers are working, and like me, many researchers were working at US before. So Halloween party was one of big events here.

My lab members, Kobori-san, Karen, Tomo and me.

I did good job in early morning, and brought my new-laid eggs.

Carlos is performing.

And then, go back to work.

More matured, more modest

There are many rice-fields around my apartment. When I came here, these were covered by green sprouts. But now, it’s getting like gold carpet. Ears of rice is getting heavier and hanging down gradually. This appearance looks like a person is bowing down. In Japanese well-known haiku poetry, someone compared this appearance to the exemplary behavior of person. That is, we’ll sometimes become arrogant when we got power. But, he suggested that the truly excellent person should be more modest as a status become high. I’ll keep this in mind.

Madonna

These three months, I’d been traveling everywhere and was not in my office mostly. I'll have one month stay in Kyoto before next long field trip, though I have several domestic trips for chemical analyses. I’ll upload some pics taken during 3 months.
At the end of last week, I’ve just come back from Jakarta via Bali. At the gate in Kansai International Airport, I was surrounded a lot of camera crew and people. What? What I did in Jakarta? No wonder. Madonna and her team member were behind us. She is on the world tour(http://www.confessionstour.com/), and moved to Japan from Moscow by her private jet. Compared with her popularity, the fans gathered in the gate were not so much, just about 200. But today’s newspaper said totally 200 thousands tickets through 4 stages in Japan have already sold out.

Can you see her side view in the center? Japanese SP do not look tough...

Enjoy the area where we live

The area where I grew up is located on the hill, and was land even in 5000 years ago when sea level was 0 or 3.0 m higher than now. In that era, therefore, there were many villages around current my parents’ home town. So once we dug the backyard of elementary school, we could easily found earthenware and shells dumped in over 2500 or 3000 years ago. We used to go down the hill by bike to go to swimming pool in next town. It meant that we went down into “ancient ocean” by bike. What a romantic events we had there. Even in Tokyo city, there are many vestige; landform made through Holocene, slopes and bridges depicted in popular novels published in 150 or 200 years ago, and a part of buildings constructed over 300 years ago. So knowledge about the history of hometown makes us more enjoyable.
The 400-page reference book with many photos, which depicted history, culture and nature of my town, Moiliili, was published in last February (http://the.honoluluadvertiser.com/article/2006/Feb/17/il/FP602170318.html). I purchased this book soon. This book really encourages me to walk around this area thinking about the people’s life of 100 years ago. But I’m sorry that I have another 2 weeks to stay here.

EMS

Finally I came back to Honlulu. I’ve been so sleepy somehow, so I had been sleeping many hours as if I were cat or baby.
Yesterday, some police men were around my apartment and an ambulance car was also there. In Japan, “EMS” is so popular as Express Mail Service (http://www.ems-post.jp/index.php) organized in the framework of the Universal Postal Union. So at first time when I came here, I was wondering why they need to rush here just for the purpose to deliver the letters and parcels. It’s funny to think about my letters which are delivered stopping other cars. “VIP letters”.

St. Patrick’s Day

I’m posting this diary after field work at Waikiki area on Saturday (and also after watching JPN’s win at world baseball classics! The third time was charm!). It was really concentrated day, today. I went to the sea 7:00 am, and deployed data logger and clod cards. After Thomas joined me, we conducted spatial sampling of several chemical and physical parameters. Though I mainly took charge of processing of the samples on kayak, it was fun to handle kayak against intermittent big waves. If I missed it, kayak would be easily turned over by big waves and samples and stuffs would be spoiled.
By the way, it was St. Patrick’s Day, yesterday. It was first time for me to hear about this holiday. When I saw the flyer of small party celebrating St. Patrick’s Day at our courtyard, and read through it, I could not understand what they were saying.

Is St. Patrick former Irish faculty in Botany Dept.? What’s green pupu? Carrot is not allowed? What does “be greener” mean? To become vegetarian? With some anxieties, I joined the party with “Wasabi taste green pea” and “green shirts”. It was really enjoyable event. It’s good chance to talk with many people-.

A bunch of Irish beer!

Green food, green food and green food…..

Irish style drinking??
In Japan, we have “Green day” at the end of April (It was birthday of former Emperor, but after his death, it’s turned to the day celebrating bud and sprout in spring) , here “Green day” is just different day. Later, Chris told me that St. Patrick's Day is an Irish holiday. It's a very religious holiday in Ireland, celebrating an Irish missionary man, but, here in the US, it's mostly about drinking lots of beer that's been dyed green. Oh really? Was the green one beer? I thought that’s soft drinks. I should have tasted it!

I wanna naturally use this gesture someday

When I talked with Celia or Heather just after I came here, they often used this sign toning up voice. Because I was not good at hearing English (I’m still not good at though), I imagined that probably they imitated mantis, crayfish or something like that. What? Why did such a creature show up in this context? Does it mean that they are angry with something, and pretended to swing up sword or something?
After several weeks, finally I asked them why they used such a sign. I see, the meaning of this gesture was "quotation" to emphasize something. that’s interesting. It is real American gesture, my French friend said it’s also used in France, though. Since that day, I’ve tried to use this gesture, but it’s hard to use it in good timing. When I use this one effectively, it would mean my English skill stepped up to next stage!

My recent favorite

Recently I’m inclined to “Hamas”, oops, mistake, “Hummus”.
I met this taste, when I had research survey at Maui last month. Usually when I share a condo with my colleagues, I learn new food and taste. This is likely made from mainly garbanzo beans (chickpea), olive oil, garlic, lemon and so on. As soon as I feel sort of hungriness, my right hand grabs TOSTITOS chips and left hand does Hummus. I was wondering if I can get this food in Japan. If not, I would make it by myself. It looks easy to make it.

Recycle

Though we have strict rule to separately dump our wastes in Tokyo (paper, combustible one, plastic, recyclable plastic, aluminum can, steel can, glass bottle, plastic bottle, battery, and so on), here I’ve finally gotten used to damp them without separating. I’m afraid if I can live in Tokyo again. In Hawaii, government tried to start systematic recycling system before though, it seems to come to deadlock. One of problem would be the lower consciousness of the importance of recycling for ordinary people. On the other hand, Cheryl explained me that in small island with less population, the rate of operation at a recycling plant would be low, and recycled products would not be consumed completely within the small island, thus it takes much cost for establishing recycling system. Because I’ve heard that Hawaii gov. has huge surplus in their budget, I think that such a cost should be spent as the education to keep the earth and our nature healthy. The bottom line is that economics in Hawaii is based on the tourism, especially beautiful nature.
In USA, on the other hand, there are many people, who consider well about nature. I can often see the track for collecting can and bottles for the recycling at the park and parking. Good job!

Buhi Buhi

Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. Today, he is on the Google top page (http://www.google.com/). I like the sense of humor on the Google top page.
Last weekend, I was supposed to be busy. First of all, I’d have planed to go to “Waialae country club”, which is located 20 or 30 minutes by bike from my apartment, to watch SONY open. But Woods did not join this year and Wie did not pass trial heat again. So I had second thought. In addition, though it was so windy through last week, it suddenly stopped during the weekend. So we canceled to go to Kailua to enjoy wind surfing. Umm, no luck.
But I still had luck. Masaya called me that they would have Brian’s birthday party at Brenden’s backyard. Great! So I and Thomas rushed to his house with some bears and Japanese-sake.

This time, Robert H. Cowie, a faculty in Zoology also joined with his wife. It’s really nice that we can communicate with people studying in other fields. I wanna thank Masaya, Hiromi and Brenden for inviting such a BBQ party many times and their cooking delicious dinner.
One of fun topics this time was the different explanation of animal crying among countries. Mostly those are similar independently of country and language. But the crying of pig was special. In Japan, we explain it as “Buhi-Buhi” or “Bu-, Bu-“. I can’t believe that they cry “Oink Oink” in United State. Check it out!