by ·Comments Off on 1913-2009

Following a sharp and steady decline of her health over the past two years, my grandmother finally passed away yesterday.

I briefly mentioned her on this blog, four years ago…

Back then, she was such a spry and quick-witted little lady that it was hard imagining her otherwise. But her years finally caught up with her all at once, with a vengeance. It was obvious when I last saw her that she felt she had her time and was ready to go. Rather than mournful I am relieved knowing she left without too much suffering.

I am basically writing this as a reminder to myself of what an exceptional woman she was and that I should be lucky to ever live a life half as extraordinary as hers was.

by ·Comments Off on Had to be that day…

To my left: Official University Anniversary International Reception, free food, free drinks.
To my right: Thunderstorm, lightning, pouring rain and… wait for it… hail (yes, it is the 16th of June and it is hailing in Kansai).

Only a dozen kilometers on bike, walk and train between the two.

by ·Comments Off on Half-statistician, half-subversive…

Today, at a lecture centered on SNPs, the wonderful world of statistical genetics and the myriad holy wars waged amongst its main proponents, the lecturer brought up the work of Karl Pearson (of eponymous correlation coefficient’s fame).

Under all the math formulae, the slide featured a small box with Pearson’s full name, photography, dates and, in an even smaller font, this sole additional comment:

He was a marxist.

Only in Japan.

by ·Comments Off on When I finally rule Earth…

… I will ensure that any artist who describes their work as “exploring the relationship between art and time/space/etc.” (or some insipid variation thereof) is put to a slow and painful death.

by ·Comments Off on 東京物語 – Subtitles…

So, after spending a whole five days back in my exciting Kansai countryside, I was on my way to Tokyo again on Friday night, this time to fulfill a very specific (and lovely) calendar imperative.

This 48 hour stint in Tokyo was much more compact than last week’s but we still managed to fit a couple funandhappythings.

Saturday, Ken and Shizu drove us to Design Festa where we spent the afternoon looking for those elusive two or three pearls of awesome/weird/crazy, usually lost in a sea of homemade flea-market t-shirts and Tokyu Hands-style jewelry (hey, starving art students need to eat too). To be honest, nothing mind-blowing (and not even that much of the usual WTF shock stock that people tend to expect from Design Festa)… but some entertaining live shows:
Dora video played drums while random bits of video samples (including at some point, a strident Japanese CM for toilet air freshener) played in the back. The result sounded at times not quite unlike a Death Metal band, from which you’d remove everyone save for the drummer: loud, energetic and quite funny.
Somewhere on the main stage, three butt-naked guys covered in gold paint and sporting massive fully-erect fake penises (also covered in gold) were executing some sort of butoh-like contemporary dance involving a chain and the music from William Tell overture. Somehow, Design Festa always seem to feature a few naked guys doing strange contemporary dances. Never twice the same guys.
The last act we caught before leaving, Crazy Angel Company wasn’t breaking new grounds, comparatively, but did a nice job of livening the venue a bit with their energetic Japanese-style brass band music and accompanying choreography. They closed with their own rendition of the Soran Bushi, a famous Japanese folk classic with an infectious back-and-forth chorus, of which H. eventually grew very tired, after a weekend of constant humming from my part.

On the way back and after running a couple errands for the following day, we lucked out in grabbing a table at Chacha Yufudachi on a saturday night with no reservation (strange, I know, to be going to a Kyoto-cuisine place while on a trip to Tokyo, but both Chacha branches are among my favourite restaurants in Shinjuku, both for the food and the atmosphere). We capped the night with a few drinks at Albatross’ brand new extension in Golden Gai: in fact, merely the first floor of their previous location, which has been added as a semi-independent branch to the second-floor’s bar. Same familiar faces and friendly crowd as usual, although we unfortunately had to make it home for last train in order to be fresh and rested for the next day.

And next day was awesome, indeed: lovely people, gorgeous groom and bride, delicious food, excellent wine (of course) and charming surroundings… But I won’t bore you with the details of my gorgeous friends’ happiness: after all, if you are of those who care, you were probably there (and if you weren’t, you know where to find much better reports than my own very incomplete remembrances of that wonderful day).

One (short) night and a nozomi ride later, I am back at plotting world domination, one DNA strand at a time… Which reminds me I might finally get to that piece about the why’s and how’s of Bioinformatics this week, if I can escape the tempting embrace of procrastination long enough…

by ·4 Comments

Last week was Golden Week: a string of bank holidays eagerly awaited by every last Japanese salaryman. Four or five days usually spent busy sitting in massive traffic jams in order to reach one of Japan’s perennial vacationing spots, presumably amidst a few million other people intent on same.

Yes, it doesn’t take a genius to realise that you are better off staying at home during Golden Week and wait until pretty much any of the remaining 51 weeks in the year to take your vacation at half the price and half the crowds.

Unfortunately, things being what they are (and my days off being what they are), Golden Week vacation or no vacation, were my only options.

After securing two extra days to make it an actual week (Golden it may be, but that “week” ends on a Wednesday night), I took a rest from the deadly boring lovely Kansai countryside and headed back for my hometown: Tokyo.

Although I would have been just happy sharing my time between sitting on the grass in Yoyogi and drinking under the bar in Shinjuku, relationship diplomacy dictated that a compromise be found with the traditional holiday activities and a 2-day trip to nearby Choshi was on the program. Considering its proximity to Tokyo (about 2h by train from Tokyo station), Choshi peninsula is a pleasant enough destination for a weekend, provided you do not stay anywhere close to the main city (your usual ugly mix of generic concrete jungle and urban decay that make 99.9% of all Japanese cities in rural areas) and head out for the smaller villages along the coast. Although the sea still wasn’t warm enough for bathing, we kept busy with a couple walks around the coast (cue obligatory lighthouse, seaside temples etc.) as well as inland crossing through countless patches of cabbage (a local specialty, apparently). Among the locales accessed through the picturesque Choshi Dentetsu railway line, Choshi boasts of Inubō, a station whose name literrally means “Woof” (or, in a less vivid translation, “Dog’s Bark”).

Continue reading

by ·Comments Off on Slightly Heavy

In case you were also wondering, I confirm: whip cream does not make an adequate substitute for milk in your breakfast cereals. No matter how desperate and in a hurry you are.

by ·Comments Off on The Laundry Chronicles Vol. 2

Large load of laundry + Forgotten pack of tissues = EPIC FAIL

My shirts look like they’ve been gang-raped by a pack of fluffy teddy bears.

by ·2 Comments

Tidbits of daily life in my very own secret underground volcano lair, otherwise known as Kyoto University’s Bioinformatics Center…

  • Our lab building is one of the more modern on campus (remind me one day to capture some of the cool derelict buildings that sit on the edge of the campus: I swear, on sunny days they look straight from some Dr Moreau’s Island movie). The architecture is somewhat reminiscent of California-style 60’s: think John Lautner’s Desert Modern with more wood or Lloyd Wright with more glass… At any rate, it’s considerably nicer (and in better shape) than my last place of work.
  • I spend my days at work barefoot (and I love it). Like most Japanese research labs, ours is a shoe-free zone: you are required to leave your outside-shoes in a locker by the door.
  • Another typical Japanese tradition: food omiyage. Mix this with the fact that, out of a dozen researchers, there will always be one or two freshly returning from a trip abroad and you have a kitchen corner that looks like an international food court, all year round.
  • We have, I kid you not, twelve different recycling bins in our lab. That’s not counting special items like batteries, pens, electronic parts etc., which all have their specific recycling deposit box in another building. Every friday afternoon, all the lab’s researchers have a giant round of Jan-ken-pon to pick who has to bring it all out to the campus’ recycling center.
  • My morning commute from Kyodai’s international residence to the lab is approximately 10 minutes by foot (on a leisurely stroll). I believe this is the closest I’ve ever lived from work to date. Also: since the residence is all the way to the top of a small hill, while Kyodai’s campus is at the very bottom, I could ride my bike the entire way and not have to hit the pedals once (and possibly end up smashed by the Kyoto-Nara express train while crossing the tracks, but beside that). The hike back is way less fun.
  • Beside the ever-impressive Entrance Ceremony and half a dozen redundant mandatory lectures on miscellaneous research-related topics, I am finally getting to the good part of huge layer-cake bureaucratic administrations: welcoming parties! Five of them, to be exact: one for each level of subdivision of each faculty or research institute I officially depend on. Free food (and booze): yay!