Not much going on today: Currently on a Shinkansen (bullet train), currently going from Tokyo (the station) to Shin-Kobe (the station). Nothing much going on save for some rreading of manga, watching the scenery and the like. It’s interesting seeing the scenery change every few minutes.  Now I’ve got mountains to my right, a suburb of small houses to the left and shortly beyond that the ocean.

One cool thing happened this AM, though. So I’ve been in Gunma for about a week now, but there’s been no sign of Mount Akagi. It’s a giant mountain in Gunma (if you’ve seen the manga/anime/movie “Initial D”, that’s the mountain they do the drift racing on). It’s the symbol of the prefecture, and just a really distinguished landmark… when cloud cover doesn’t make it simply disappear. Every day I’ve peeked northwards towards the mountain, but haven’t seen anything. But this morning, the last day, I saw the top of the mountain peeking out of the clouds.

Anyway, on the train from Isesaki to Takasaki to hit up the first shinkansen (to Tokyo), Akagi was quite visible: Lots of mist and cloud cover, but Akagi peeked out like a mini Himalaya… It was about then that I realized that my camera was stuck at the bottom of my bag, so no pictures of Akagi this time around…

I’ll be on trains from 11AM until about 6:00 or so, but luckily most of the trip will be sitting in a rather comfortable chair.

I grabbed an eki-ben, this one teriyaki chicken with rice and vegetables, and between that and some wheat tea, I’ll be dealing some serious lunch from my seat on the bullet train.

For the rest of the weekend and until I leave I’ll be staying with Okiko and Yasuaki, some friends of Orie and mine from back in America: Yasuaki has a PhD in Cellular Biology, but switched careers to… Advertising: “???” is what I thought, too, but apparently it’s advertising for science-related businesses and goods, so that kinda makes sense. It was mostly because he, like a lot of other Japanese scientists who work or have worked in America or Europe, hated the environment of science and research in Japan: Very little experimentation is done, most is blind copying of already known results with only minor variance. Folks who really want to explore new things either flock to top positions at Tokyo university, are pushed into the dirt elsewhere in return for a stable job, or flee to other positions or countries. It’s a kind of downward trend that’s been accelerating recently. Science in Japan is being affected by this trend, and people know deep down that more experimentation (and more leeway given to those who want to experiement) is needed, but no one seems to be making the move to change the culture.

Aaaanyway, Okiko’s (who also has a master’s degree in biology, but is now busy being a mom) mother’s family comes from a line of Buddhist priests, so they apparently have a big house. I can’t wait to finally meet them in Japan, on their “home turf”.


(Okiko and her son Minato)
Orie has more things to take care of in Gunma, so she’ll be coming tomorrow afternoon.