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Part 5

Getting Results

October 24- Results!

I attended another incomprehensible journal club and then continued working on my article. I made some headway, but took a break for lunch after a couple of hours. When I returned to my desk, I had an email from Kiyoe containing our latest ultracentrifuge results; soon after that she stopped by in person to discuss them. Exactly what we had hoped would happen had occurred! The samples with the largest amounts of H1 had condensed the chromosome, shifting it farther down the tube, rather than opening it up and shifting it in the opposite direction, as had occurred previously. This confirmed Kiyoe’s theory that the histone worked in a concentration dependent fashion and that it worked differently from B4, which had not affected the chromosome in the same way.

Now, the main thing left for me to do was to repeat the experiment a number of times to make certain that our results were not a fluke. This also meant that our gamble had paid off of submitting an abstract to the Japanese Molecular Biology Society that we weren’t sure was 100% correct at the time. With these latest results, the topic of the talk I had been chosen to give was fairly secure. Since we would have a lot more ultracentrifugation ahead of us, Kiyoe suggested that I make another large batch of chromosomes using the Hela histones, as I had done before this latest round of tests. She also expressed interest in seeing another gel of the H1 binding, since I had mis-loaded one of the samples on Monday, and we were therefore unable to detect the level of binding for that sample. I worked on getting both of these experiments running before I left for the day, as well as working on my article as much as possible. I left at 5:30, with both of my experimental goals accomplished, as well as 700 words of my article written.

I took the usual trains to meet Justin at Mikuni at 6:30. When I got to Juso, however, I ran to catch the next train- glancing at the kanji on it quickly to make sure it didn’t say Takarasuka express. As soon as the doors closed behind me, I knew I had made a terrible mistake. The train was not, indeed, an express, but neither was it the local, either. It was a special limited express which would next stop at Ishibashi, my home station. I had not choice but to ride the train to Ishibashi and then turn around and take the local train back to Mikuni. In the five and a half months that I had lived in Japan, I had never taken the wrong train- I guess there was a first time for everything!

I finally arrived in Mikuni 20 minutes late- Justin hadn’t been worried, but he was tired of waiting. We decided to have dinner at an Indian place we had heard about from Shohei. We talked ourselves out of feeling like we were betraying the staff at Cha Cha’s by going to a different Indian restaurant, since we didn’t have a choice but to eat in Mikuni that evening. We were waited on by a Japanese man- already not a good sign- but we did notice that the kitchen was full of Indians. The food was not as spicy as we were used to, but they did have a choice of three curries with your meal, instead of the usual two. The food was good, but we decided that it wasn’t quite as good as Cha Cha’s. It was definitely more expensive- we spent the same for the two of us that we usually did for the entire family!

Justin was very excited about a new family that had just moved to campus and whose kids were starting school the following week. They were from Austria, and had two boys, one that was 15 and one that was 10. Justin had met them at his school and had gone to their apartment in the International House after school to show them around the neighborhood. They had come by our house and met Trudy and Brennan, and then our family showed them the store where they needed to buy a uniform. The family, with the exception of their youngest, spoke English well. Justin was thrilled to finally have someone joining his class that he could talk to in English. Brennan was not quite as excited, however, since the boy who was coming to his school was two grades below him and could only speak German.

I had prepared a short message to share at church. I discussed Ecclesiastes, which I had been reading, and talked about how things seemed meaningless without God. The lesson was well received, especially since many of my Japanese listeners could relate to seeing their acquaintances working so hard, seemingly without purpose. Tadashi gave us a ride home afterwards, where we rejoined the others around 10:15.

October 25- Fifth Progress Report

I woke up early and got Brennan up so he could leave for school by 7:15. He had an all-school sports meet that met in the middle of Toyonaka, where he was participating in two events. After getting him out the door, I finished getting ready and headed out on the 8:10 bus. I changed my dialysis buffer when I got in, and also developed the gel. It looked a lot better; we were able to tell what we wanted to about the linker histone binding this time. I continued working on my article as I changed the dialysis buffer throughout the day; I was still absorbed in writing when Kiyoe stopped by my desk, at 3 pm. “Time for group meeting”, she said.

I had totally forgotten that we had scheduled our progress report for this date! Kiyoe said that it was fine that I hadn’t written up anything- she just wanted me to show my latest results to Kaneda-sensei when my time came around. Luckily, I had kept my notebook up to date during breaks between writing, so that my latest results were nicely organized. Everything worked out fine in the end- Kiyoe had written most of what I had been up to in her report, and I went over my data on cue. When I returned to my desk, I made sure that I wrote the date of the next meeting on Anna’s calendar, which usually sat between our desks. I went back to work on the article, finally reaching 1500 words before leaving for home at 6:55.

Trudy had Chinese noodles with vegetables waiting for me when I got home. While I ate, Brennan told me about his day. He had participated in a ball throw, as well as the 50 meter dash. He had not done particularly well in either of his events, but had an “ok” time nonetheless. Justin had gone to see Thomas (the new Austrian boy) after school. Even though Thomas wasn’t starting school until Monday, Justin stopped by to pick up money so he could go to USJ, Universal Studios Japan, the following Friday with their class trip. Justin was planning on giving Thomas an orientation to the school on Monday, since the other kids were once again taking tests that Justin wasn’t expected to partake in.

The English movie for the night was “Blood Work”, a crime “thriller” directed by and staring Clint Eastwood. Trudy soon lost interest and went to bed, but the kids and I wanted to know how it turned out. It was a terrible movie- we guessed all the plot twists before they happened and the acting, even Clint’s, left a lot to be desired. It was definitely not some of his best work. We went to bed after watching to the bitter end.

October 26- Free Ride

I woke up late, at 7:10, and hurried to get the kids up too. After seeing them off, I headed to catch the 8:40 bus. Traffic on the expressway was terrible, however, and it took almost twice as long to get in to work. I put my latest reconstitution in a tube, and then went to work on my article. I worked on it for most of the day. Whenever I walked past the windows, I noticed that it was pouring rain- just like it had the previous Friday.

At 4 pm, I started to walk to IPR to pick up the samples that I had submitted earlier in the week when I ran into Kiyoe near the parking lot. She was heading home, since her kids were let out of school early on account of the storms, so she offered to drive me to IPR. After retrieving my samples and walking back to lab, I decided to leave for the day and continue writing my article at home. After all, I had just reached the halfway point on my paper: 2225 words. I went out to catch the 4:35 bus, but it was just as full as the previous Friday, and I was not that far up in line. For the second time ever, the doors of the bus closed without everyone getting on, and for the first time, I was on the wrong side of the doors!

I didn’t feel like heading back to the lab and unpacking all my stuff.

I considered sitting on a step and working on my writing while I waited for the next bus, but it was too wet. Then I remembered that Justin had given me a fare ticket that he found on the ground. It had 360 yen on it, just enough for one ride home on the monorail. I decided that, if there was a good time to use the ticket for one free ride home, this was it. I got home a little after 5, about the same time I would have if I had made it onto the bus.

Although I had planned to write more at home, it turned out to be very slow going- with the boys running around the house as well as the general noise from the T.V. I did manage, however, to bring the article up to almost 2500 words before quitting for the day. Trudy and I walked to Server to get more drinks, which we were out of; then she made donburi for dinner, a bowl of rice with a beef mixture over the top that resembled chop suey. We watched some of the World Series, but once again Trudy had seen it earlier in the day and we were able to guess who won from her expressions and comments. Before going to bed around 10:30, I emailed Kiyoe the latest version of my article so she could read it during her trip to Denmark the following day.

October 27- USJ

We got up early and left the house by 8 am, since we were meeting my friend Paul at his hotel and going to Universal Studios Japan. I had met Paul, whose real name was Cheol-Sik, at Western Illinois University when I was an undergraduate and he was in the biology Master’s program. We took a Mycology (study of fungi) class together that had three students in it and was team-taught by two professors. We hit it off right away- we would study together, and Trudy and I used to go to his house to eat Korean food. He and his wife had first introduced us to bulgogi, kimchi, and gimbap. Paul and I had both gone on to Ph.D. programs at U of Illinois, but then Trudy and I moved to Evanston, IL in 1991 so I could finish out my graduate work at Northwestern, and I hadn’t seen Paul since. He had moved back to Korea after getting his degree and had started a small company in Seoul that made pharmaceutical products from fungi. Paul had now brought his family to Japan for a three day trip in order to see us. The tour group he was with had sightseeing scheduled for only two of these days, with the middle one being a free day. I had asked what he wanted to do with us on his free day and he had chosen USJ, hands down.

We switched to the subway in Umeda and took it for one stop to find Paul’s hotel. He was waiting for us in the lobby with his family: his wife, Seon-Hee, aka Sunny, his 9 year old daughter, Su-Yeon, and his 7 year old son, Hee-Man. Trudy and I couldn’t help but think of a cartoon character which was popular when we were kids called He Man that consisted of a manly bare-chested superhero. We talked for a while in the lobby; they had brought us all presents from Korea, which we opened. Soon, we were ready to head to USJ. As we walked to the subway, we ran into two other groups of Koreans who were in the same tour group and wanted to go to USJ, but did not know which way to go. I therefore offered to show the entire group how to get there.

There ended up being 14 of us that navigated our way back to Umeda and through the underground passages to the Osaka JR station, where we took the outer loop train to Nishikujo and changed to another train that would take us right to USJ. We split up with the other groups at the entrance, since we figured that, once everyone had seen how to get there, they should be able to find their way back. As we walked into the park, we saw Popeye posing with people, so all the kids (with me included) had to get our picture taken with him. My family wanted to ride the big roller coaster right off the bat, but it looked a little intense for Paul’s family, so we decided to split up and meet back together when we were done.

The sign said that there was an 80 minute wait for the “Hollywood Dream”, but it ended up being less than an hour. We then returned to where we had last seen Paul and his family and waited for him to call us on our cell phone. While we waited, we met all the Sesame Street characters: I got my picture taken with Burt and Brennan posed with the Count. Paul called after a while, he and his family had gone to the E.T. ride, which ended up being a longer wait than the brand new roller coaster we had gone on! As far as I could tell, USJ was an exact replica of the Universal theme parks in FL and CA, everything seemed very American, which is probably why it appealed so much to the Japanese. Two exceptions were the plentiful stands which sold things like mochi balls and stuffed dumplings to eat, and that all the attractions, although they usually featured short films starring American actors, had been dubbed into Japanese.

By this time, after going on just one ride a piece, we were all ready for lunch. We went to a build-your-own hamburger restaurant in “San Francisco”, where we watched American rock videos while we ate. After lunch, we went to the Back Draft, Back to the Future, and Jurassic Park rides, which had progressively longer waits each time. The adults enjoyed talking and catching up on things in line, while the kids played around with each other. They had lots of fun, despite the fact that Paul’s kids spoke very little English. We stopped in “Amity, MA” to get the kids a snack and then went to see the Jaws attraction.

After another hour long wait, when our boat had finally been attacked by the mechanical shark, it was time to catch the last show of the “Waterworld” stunt show. Justin and Brennan sat in the second row, in the “splash zone”, while the rest of us sat safely in the back of the amphitheater. The show did not let us down, it was filled with lots of water vehicles racing around, splashing water, and explosions. The kids got a little wet, but they were disappointed that they were not soaked. It was probably for the best- since it had gotten quite cool out once the sun had gone down. The wind had also picked up, so much so that they had cancelled the nightly Peter Pan finale, which involved people flying around suspended on cables.

Since we still had time to go to a few more attractions before the park closed, we went and saw the 3D Terminator movie, and then Justin and Brennan went on the Spiderman ride, while the rest of us stopped at the main souvenir shop on our way back to the gates. We left the park at 8:45, 15 minutes before closing time. We all ate dinner at the Hard Rock Café, which was on the “City Walk” that stretched between the train station and USJ. It was very loud, of course, but it definitely felt good to sit down at that point. Brennan and Su-Yeon were both so tired that they rested their heads on the table and would have fallen asleep if our food had not arrived when it did.

By the time we had taken the train back to Umeda, walked Paul and his family to the correct subway stop, and taken our train back to Ishibashi, it was almost 11:30. We decided to take a taxi home, rather than face the 20 minute walk across campus. We all went to bed around midnight, exhausted from our day.

October 28- Men’s Meeting

We slept in as much as possible, but eventually had to get up to go to church. I must have been tired- I had slept until after 7! We arrived at church just as it was ready to begin. Yudai was visiting again from Tokyo and gave a message from the Sermon on the Mount. After church, the married men were having a meeting and hearing from Yudai again, so Trudy and the boys headed to lunch with a group of the singles who were going to Saizeriya. The men who were staying for the meeting ordered bentos for lunch, I looked over the Japanese menu that the church had on hand and decided on “karakuro”, karage and a potato croquette, along with rice and pickled vegetables. We talked about the challenges of raising kids during the meeting, most of the dads there had young children and were dealing with much different issues than I usually faced with my two boys, but I think the meeting was helpful for all.

I met the family back at the house a little after 4; they had just gotten in 10 minutes before me. Later, when we were getting hungry, the kids wanted to go to Cha Cha’s, but Trudy wasn’t up for the walk, so just the three of us went. Brennan and I ordered something different that we usually did, just to show Beam that we could branch out a bit. We ordered some extra naan as we left, so Trudy could have some for lunch with the leftovers we were bringing back. When we returned, “Resident Evil” was the English movie for the night, which was about an evil corporation that accidentally releases a virus that turns people into flesh-eating zombies. In Japan, however, it was entitled “Biohazard”, which also seemed appropriate. Trudy, who was disinterested in zombies, went to bed early, while the boys and I finished watching the movie before going to bed.

October 29- Writer’s Block

Since I was in no particular hurry on this day, I took the 8:40 bus in to work after seeing both of the kids off,. I was a little stuck on my writing, however. I had just written that the sites of chemical modification of H1 had first been determined in 1995, which I sensed not to be true. I spent the morning digging up old papers which I had not read on the subject, until I found a review article from 1983 that detailed no less than 8 regions of modification which had been previously characterized. I spend a lot of time reading this review, as well as looking up the individual papers which it referred to. I also realized that I had not discussed one of the papers that I had in my stack, even though I had already written the section which would have included it. By afternoon, I had dealt with these issues but had only written 250 more words, the same as on the very first day that I started to write.

I decided to skip the group meeting at 4:30, since Kiyoe was out of the country and I wasn’t going to understand it anyway, so I headed to the bus stop early. When I got there, I had just missed the 4:35 bus, and there was a huge line of people waiting for the 4:55 already. After Friday’s experience, I could read the handwriting on the wall and knew that I wouldn’t be able to squeeze onto the next bus. I decided to spend the time walking to the bus stop on the Engineering campus, so I could board it one stop earlier than usual. My plan worked, I was able to make it on at the earlier stop, while more than half of the line at my usual stop did not. It was not the most comfortable ride, however, with all of the people smashed together. I tried to envision how claustrophobic people were able to survive in Japan during the 35 minute trip to the Toyonaka campus.

The family was surprised to see me so early, but luckily Trudy had soup with Chinese dumplings in it on the stove already for dinner. After we ate, Trudy and I walked to the store to pick up a few things that we were out of. When we returned, Game 4 of the World Series was on, but all of us knew the outcome because it had been featured on the Japanese, as well as the American, news that the Red Socks had swept the series, so there wasn’t much point in watching it. We all bed to bed around 10 pm.

October 30- Shitennoji Temple

I decided to take the day off and spend it doing something fun with Trudy. After we saw the boys off to school, we got ready and headed to the southern part of Osaka to see Shitennoji Temple. Built in 593, it was reportedly the oldest temple in all Japan, but didn’t have the oldest wooden structures in the world like Horyuji, since they had been destroyed at various times over the years by war and natural disaster, and had to be rebuilt. It reminded us a lot of Horyuji when we were there, with the exceptions that the pagoda at Shitennoji was open to the public, while most of the huge courtyard was not, having been raked into a Zen rock garden.

We took advantage of this former exception by climbing to the top of a spiral staircase which wound its way to the top of the pagoda, after changing into the provided indoor slippers, of course. While there wasn’t much of a view from the top on account of the shuttered windows, we still enjoyed the atmosphere as well as the simple fact of knowing that we had reached the top. We were the only two people in the pagoda, and apparently two of the few visitors to the temple that day. We next walked through the Kondo (great hall), which had a large statue of Buddha. What interested us most, however, were the murals which were painted on the walls of the Kondo which depicted episodes from Buddha’s life. We then walked through the equivalent of the lecture hall, where there were more statues as well as another collection of wall murals. Finally, we went through the large main gate and viewed the scary watcher-gods which inhabited it.

Knowing that we would likely have lunch in Umeda, I extracted the phone number I had written down for Los Incas, the Mexican restaurant, from my wallet and dialed it on my cell phone. The man on the other line, however, apologized that they were not, indeed, open for lunch but only for dinner that evening. We took the subway back to Umeda determined to find an alternate location to eat. I had heard that there was a Korean restaurant in Yodobashi Camera and thought that this would be a good time to try it out. There were a variety of restaurants on the 8th floor of the mall, but, for the life of us, we couldn’t figure out if one served Korean food by wandering around and looking at their displays. Finally, I remembered that I knew the kanji for “Korea”, so I went back to the mall directory and figured out which one it was. They had excellent food- we both ordered a bulgogi set, which was different from the way we normally made it, but probably much more authentic. After lunch, we returned home to await the boys’ return from school.

Justin got home first and, while we waited for Brennan, I decided to walk to the Post Office to pay a bill. On my way back, I passed a European-looking lady who was walking toward the school. “You must be Gabby,” I said, referring to the Austrian woman that I had never met but had heard about from the family. She confirmed my suspicions and we exchanged some pleasantries before we both continued on in our respective directions. Up ahead of me, I spied Brennan making his way home as well. I snuck up behind him, followed him for awhile, and suddenly said “Hello, boy” in a raspy voice in imitation of an old hag who had addressed him in Cambodia. Brennan jumped out of his skin and then chased me for much of the rest of the way home. We would go on to joke about this incident for years to come! At home, we had spicy Chinese noodle soup for dinner, which was similar to the “four rivers” soup I still had for lunch every now and then. Trudy and the boys played gin rummy together, something they had picked up from watching “Beaches”, aka “Friends Forever”, too many times on video. I tried to write more on my article, but only managed about 100 words before turning in for the night.

October 31- Halloween?

I woke up feeling terrible- I had felt like I was getting a sore throat the previous evening but by morning it had turned into a cold. I needed to head into work early, though, since I had committed to getting certain things done before Kiyoe returned the next day. I took the 8 am bus in and started my new reconstitution trimming with enzymes before heading to journal club.

It was actually ok this time; it was about small RNA that is expressed in breast cancer patients. Afterwards, I returned to my writing the best I could. I also poured the gel that we would need when we had prepared more linker histone to use in my experiments, but since I found that it had not solidified by late in the afternoon, I had to redo it.

I left on the 6:15 bus, after loading my digested samples on a gel as well as re-pouring the gel that didn’t work. I had written 500 more words, bringing my total up to 3250. The last people to cram onto the bus after me were two foreigners, a Bangladeshi and an Austrian. I talked with the former during the trip home; he had only been in Japan for 3 days and was just beginning a 2-year stay. I remembered when I had been that new to the country, and didn’t envy him. The latter foreigner turned out to be Bernard, Gabby’s husband. We talked on the walk back towards the International House. Trudy had made clam chowder (from Costco) for dinner, and tried to nurse me back to health. I attempted to write some more on my paper, but couldn’t really concentrate. I ended up taking some cold medicine and going to bed early. Nothing really happened for Halloween- Justin, for his part, had forgotten all about it. Brennan later said that he remembered but knew that not much was going on, so he put it out of his mind. I guess our celebration had been at USJ, which had been decorated for the holiday, in addition to most of the workers donning witch hats. Otherwise, Halloween in Japan had seemed like just another day.

November 1- Fourth Writing Assignment

I still felt bad when I woke up at 6, but got up and got ready, so I could head in early and at least be able to develop my gel before Kiyoe came in to see what I had accomplished. As I walked to the bus, I thought it seemed awfully quiet near the stop- no whistles as it backed up, and no line of people waiting for it. A man who was emptying the trash can as I walked up motioned to me that there was no bus for the day, and a quick broken conversation determined that there wasn’t going to be one until the next Tuesday. As far as I could understand, campus was on some kind of break until then. I walked to the monorail and took that to work instead, arriving around 9 am. I developed my gel, which looked just like I had hoped it would, in plenty of time, since Kiyoe did not come in until early afternoon.

While I waited for her, I continued working on my article. I was typing the last paragraph when she finally popped in to see what I was up to. She had had a good trip, but was very worn out. She had finished writing a grant application the night before she left and had taken the portion of the article I had written with her to read during the trip. She had a few suggestions, one of which was to include our own unpublished results in the discussion of the histone variants. I went to work on this right away and soon had given her the finished product- 4250 words long- with space for a table and a figure, both of which would be included in the total word count.

I left on the 5 pm monorail and got home to find that Trudy didn’t feel great either. She had not slept well since I was waking up to blow my nose a lot, and had tried to sleep with Brennan for part of the night. Justin and I walked to the pizza place and ordered dinner, then walked to Server to pick up drinks. We soon returned home with both pizza as well as the drinks in hand. We all watched a rerun of “The Office” on my computer, since we had established the tradition of ordering pizza and watching our favorite show together.

We all took it easy until it was time to go to bed.

November 2- Bamboo Forest

I still had my cold when I woke up, but I felt like I was starting to get better. I got Justin up at 6:30 so he could leave early for his trip to USJ. Justin had planned to meet Thomas at his house so they could walk to Ishibashi together; they were then meeting the rest of their class at Toyonaka Station. I walked with Brennan towards school until we had to part ways at the fence so I could head to the monorail. I got in at 8:45, but for once didn’t have anything real pressing to work on. Our next step in the experiments was to add more linker histones to my reconstituted chromosomes, but I had to wait on Kiyoe to prepare more linker histones for me. I answered some emails that I hadn’t gotten to in a while, as well as wrote a letter of reference for one of my students back in America. I figured that this was a good opportunity to read the material that I would be teaching my class on in less than a week’s time- so I spent some time looking through it. It was 2:30 before Kiyoe came by with the new linker histones. She had prepared 6 samples of different types of linker histones which I had to run on the gel that I had poured (twice). While I prepared the gel, I stepped into the hall and saw Bernard walking by. He had returned to campus to take a Japanese class and just happened to be passing through my building. I hadn’t expected to see him again so soon. I started running the 90 minute gel at 3 pm.

While I waited, I decided to take a little walk around campus. There was a walking trail that I had planned to take whenever I got the chance, and I felt that my chance had finally arrived. The trail crossed a pond via a wooden bridge and then led through a bamboo forest, before ending in the parking lot of one of the campus buildings. It was very peaceful in the forest and ended up being a nice little walk to take while I waited for the gel to finish running. It was coming up on 5 pm when I developed the gel and went to discuss the results with Kiyoe. Five of the 6 samples looked fine, while the last one had nothing in it, as far as I could tell. Luckily, that sample was one of two samples of Hela H1, so it was not really crucial for my experiments at that point. After discussing the plans for the following week with Kiyoe, I left for the monorail. Trudy had made marinated chicken mixed with rice for dinner. Justin had enjoyed his time at USJ but wished it had been longer. He didn’t get to do anything different from what we had the previous weekend, but still enjoyed the time with his friends. Trudy thought that she was getting a sore throat, the same way my cold had started. She and Justin packed for our trip while I did the dishes. We went to bed early so we could be rested up for another exciting weekend in Japan.

November 3- Fourteen Hundred Steps

I wanted to visit Shikoku, the smallest of the four major islands of Japan during our stay. This would only leave Hokkaido, the northernmost island, that we had not seen- which didn’t seem likely this trip due to its distance from Osaka. The main thing I wanted to see on Shikoku was the shrine on Mt. Kompira. One of the oldest shrines in Japan, the top of Kompira-san could only be reached by climbing 1385 steps. In ages past, people who didn’t have the money for a pilgrimage to this shrine would attach a sack full of money to a dog’s neck, along with a sign that read “Pilgrimage to Kompira-san”, then send the dog to make the journey in their stead. People who found the dog would then use the money to buy things like a fare for it on a ferry, before sending the dog on its way. However, since our dog, Riley, was staying in America with friends during our time in Japan (not to mention the fact that I wouldn’t have trusted the lazy mutt to make the trip even if he were with us), I had decided to make the journey myself.

We left the house around 8 am. Our family had certainly seen better days health-wise. I still had a cold, Justin reported that his stomach wasn’t feeling well, and Trudy now seemed to have caught my cold as well. We stopped at Sanomiya Station in Kobe at the same café that we had eaten at when we left for our summer vacation. Justin, who had only eaten an apple for breakfast since we were out of milk and bread, proceeded to eat two sub sandwiches for “2nd breakfast”, which actually made him feel much better. Soon, we walked down to the JR station to catch a bus to the “Jumbo Ferry” port. Once there, we bought round trip tickets to Takamatsu, which, with 300,000 people, was the second largest city in Shikoku. We waited in the overheated ferry waiting room for a little while- once fall had come, many establishments started heating their rooms whether they needed it or not, and people had started wearing coats and scarves, even when it was nice out. We then boarded the ferry, which happened to be named the “Kompira 2”, about 10 am.

The ferry had four floors- the second of which had a lounge with reclining seats as well as tables with four chairs around them. We put all our belongings at a table that faced some large windows looking out onto the water, and sat down around it. After the ferry had gotten underway, the kids were most interested in the top floor, which contained a game room, as well as an outdoor, rear-facing deck. The kids went to play video games while Trudy and I talked. Our floor was also the location of a number of vending machines, as well as a little restaurant which served two different kinds of udon. When lunchtime came, we made use of the machines, which had things like yaki soba, onigiri (rice triangles wrapped in seaweed), and ice cream, while Justin and I split a bowl of curry udon. I slept on and off during the trip, which took us underneath the longest suspension bridge once again, but this time headed across the Inland Sea, instead of following the coast of Honshu, the large island, as our last ferry had done.

Around 2, we caught sight of Takamatsu. The approach took us by many small rocky islands with few signs of inhabitation. We noticed a small tori gate out on the end of an outcropping from the main island of Shikoku, as well as a deserted beach which led all the way from the outcropping into the town. Brennan thought it would be fun to walk down the beach, along the rocky shore. We had soon docked and then boarded a bus which took us to the train station. After a couple of stops on the train, we walked the half mile to our hotel. Unlike Osaka, the streets were nearly deserted as we made our way through town. Trudy said that Takamatsu reminded her of the Quad Cities near our home in America in a way. We got turned around a few times looking for the Takamatsu City Hotel, but soon found it, after asking some people on the street for directions. We then checked in to our two rather tiny rooms, each with a double bed with barely enough room to walk around it.

Trudy was quite hungry for lunch by this time, since she had not partaken of the boat food as much as the rest of us had. I asked the person at the front desk where to find some good udon restaurants, since Takamatsu was known for making the best udon in our part of Japan. He directed me to a shopping arcade, but once was arrived there, we discovered that many of the restaurants were closed. It was 4 pm, which was a bad time to be looking for food in Japan, since many restaurants (even Cha Cha’s) closed between the hours of 3 to 5. We finally got tired of looking and went to the one restaurant that you can almost always count on to be open- McDonalds.

After lunch, Trudy and Justin (both of which were still feeling under the weather) returned to one of the hotel rooms, while Brennan and I set out for Kompira-san. We took the train for one hour inland to Kotohira, the town of 11,000 which housed the shrine which we were seeking. By comparison, Kotohira made Takamatsu seem like a booming metropolis. We arrived in town at 6:35 and, seeing that the last train back was at 10:12, did some quick calculations to figure out that, around 8 pm, we would need to turn around and head back to the train, no matter how far up we had made it up the steps by then.

There was a map of the area displayed outside of the train station, and did our best to memorize our route before setting out for the shrine. Despite our best efforts, however, we ended up wandering around the village for a while before finally stumbling upon the stairs which led up Kompira-san. It was pitch black be this time and the streets that we were walking through had been completely deserted. Luckily, the stairs did have lights which were spaced periodically along them- illuminating our way. The first thing of interest that we came to was the big gate which led into the complex. It was similar to previous gates that we had seen, however the watchers of the gate were wise-looking seers armed with bows and arrows, instead of sword-wielding, scary gods. We proceeded more than halfway up the stairs without seeing another soul. While Shikoku itself was pretty far off the beaten path as far as tourists went, it appeared that even the locals did not climb Kompira-san at night.

After 750 odd steps, we finally reached the main (outer) shrine. The outer shrine was made up of a series of buildings, connected by covered wooden walkways. There were two policemen patrolling the grounds, the first people we had seen since the train station, but they did not seem too concerned about us. We took some pictures and then walked around to the side of the building. From there, there was a spectacular view of the countryside below, which was dotted with lights. Brennan thought (or simply hoped) that we had reached the very top, but I had my doubts. Sure enough, as we continued around the side of the shrine, the stairs continued up the mountain.

The walk to the inner shrine was a bit creepier than the walk to the outer one. While the latter had involved walking up a wide, well-lit staircase, the former involved a narrow staircase which hugged the mountain and whose lights were fewer and farther between. Near the beginning of the stairs, we crossed a bridge which spanned a dark gorge; as we climbed we caught glimpses of the lights in the valley below. We actually passed a few fellow hikers going the opposite direction, but we felt secure on this dark and remote trail, remembering that we were indeed in Japan, one of the safest countries on earth. Every time a particular staircase would end and the path would level off, we hoped that we had finally reached our goal, only to find that the stairs continued out of sight around the corner.

As it neared 8 pm, our pre-determined time to turn around, we were nearing the top of yet another staircase. As I looked out at a break in the trees, I saw a shooting star. When I told Brennan, he said “Make a wish, dad.” Immediately, I knew what to wish for. I said “I wish we were at the top!” With that, we took our last few steps and came to the end of our quest.

The inner shrine was a small orange and white wooden building; it wasn’t so spectacular that your average person would want to climb almost 1400 steps to see it. I tried to explain to Brennan that I had wanted to come there more for the sense of accomplishment than to see some amazing shrine. We paused to call Trudy and Justin on my cell phone to tell them that we had made it, then took each other’s picture in front of the shrine before we started back down the stairs. As one could imagine, the trip down the stairs was much easier and went much faster than the trip up them had gone. One thing we were very grateful to see when we reached the village was a vending machine with drinks in it. We had been pleasantly surprised at first that these normally ever-present machines seemed to be lacking on Kompira-san (feeling that their inclusion often made such hallowed places look a bit tacky), but had quickly grown to desire a drink nonetheless.

We reached the train station in plenty of time, taking the penultimate train back to Takamatsu. When we arrived back at our original stop, it was nearly 10 pm. None of the family had eaten dinner yet, but 10 seemed like an even worse time to be eating than 4, since even McDonalds was closed by this time. Justin and I therefore walked to Family Mart and bought an assortment of snack foods for dinner. We divvied up the food, and then the kids retreated to their room to watch a movie on T.V., while Trudy and I ate our dinner and then went to bed.

November 4- Return To Osaka

Despite the fact that there was more to see in Takamatsu, Trudy and Justin talked me into taking an early ferry back so that we didn’t get home too late. I was content that I was able to visit the one “must see” item on my list. We had some little loaves of bread, which we had picked up the previous night, for breakfast, along with green tea and orange juice, and then checked out of our hotel. Since we had plenty of time, we walked to the main train station in town this time, instead of taking the train. We waited for the ferry bus for a while, but, since I wasn’t positive of the schedule or exactly where to catch the bus, we ended up taking a taxi to the ferry port. We caught the 10:30 ferry back to Kobe, sitting at the same table that we had occupied the previous day. The kids busied themselves playing video games once again, while Trudy and I talked. At lunchtime, three of us ordered udon from the ship’s restaurant, Trudy and I having kake udon, where the noodles are in a simple broth with radishes and onions over the top of them. Brennan, on the other hand, preferred the yaki soba out of the vending machine. After we ate, I took a nice nap, and only awoke when they started to play the music which signaled that we were about to pull into port.

We arrived at Ishibashi around 3:30, the same time that the ferry I had originally planned to take back from Takamatsu left for Kobe. Trudy and Justin were grateful to be arriving at this time, rather than 5 hours later. Brennan and I parted ways with them at Ishibashi, so the two of us could go to the store there to get some of the staples that we were out of. As we walked across campus on our way home, we found ourselves in the middle of the festival that was apparently the reason the campus busses were not running for three days. The festival featured a number of food stalls, as well as a main stage, where a Slipknot tribute band was playing. If you are not familiar with this band- consider yourself lucky. Suffice it to say, the members of the band were wearing masks and screaming completely incomprehensible words, except, of course, for the frequent obscenities, which we could, unfortunately, understand. campus was packed with people, making it difficult to circumnavigate the crowds with our bags of groceries.

We finally reached home a little after 4, not long after Trudy and Justin, who had taken all of our luggage, had gotten there. After helping put our things away, I fell asleep on the couch- waking just in time for dinner. Trudy had made Cesar salad, along with chicken salad sandwiches. The English movie was “Bourne Identity”, which the boys and I watched, but Trudy decided to go to bed. I joined her about half way into the movie, and left the boys to turn in when it was finished.

November 5- Course Coordinator

I took the monorail in to work, where I bound more H1 to the chromosomes (presumably the highest levels of protein that I would test, considering that I had obtained good results from the next two lower levels) and started running a gel with the pellets from Kiyoe’s samples on it, in order to figure out what happened to her 6th sample. At 10:40, Kiyoe dropped by my desk and announced that we had an 11:00 meeting with the Molecular Biology course coordinator to go over what I was planning to teach later that week. Luckily, I had actually thought about what I was planning to say far in advance this time, although I hadn’t quite been expecting to discuss it with the coordinator. He ended up being a very nice man who spoke English with a slight British accent, and who was quite agreeable to what I had in mind. I got the feeling that I could have almost talked about anything, as long as it was in English and gave the students the desired exposure to some English lectures.

In an effort to clear my sinuses, I had the hottest food that I could find for lunch- pork with kimchi over rice, along with curry wonton soup. After lunch, Kiyoe told me that she had finally made contact with Sakari-san, and that she would analyze some samples for us if I could get them to her right away. I therefore immediately walked my samples over to IPR and dropped them off. I stained my gel when I returned and found that most of the 6th sample was in the fractions that I had just tested, as we had suspected. Kiyoe thought she knew what she had done wrong with that one, and therefore would not do it again. At 4:30, I went to group meeting and listened to two of my lab-mates detail their latest results. I actually understood what some of the last one said, since I had just discussed some of the information in my review article. I returned home on the 6:30 monorail. It was raining as I left the Medical School, but luckily had stopped by the time I had to walk home from Shibahara Station, since I had not bothered to pack an umbrella.

Trudy had made soup with carrots, cabbage, potatoes and little weenies in it for dinner. Like my lunch, it was another good meal to have when you had a cold. After dinner, we watched the latest episode of “The Office” on my computer, and then Justin and I walked to Family Mart to get his lunch for the next day, as well as pick up some treats for the family. I got an ice cream bar that was covered with a butterscotch coating and was filled with mochi in the center. Brennan and I then watched “Shrek the Third”, another video selection from Anna, while Trudy and Justin took some cold medicine and went to bed. The two of us turned in at 10:15, when our movie had ended.

November 6- White Heron

The bus was back running on this morning, so I took the first one in to work. Since I had just dropped off samples to be analyzed the previous afternoon, I didn’t expect to hear back from Sakari-san for a while. I started organizing the slides I planned to show during my teaching presentation and read another chapter in the book that I was using for lecture, although I didn’t really expect to get to that material until the following week. In the afternoon, Kiyoe came by and wanted a particular figure that she had given me when I started writing the review article. I found it, but only after some searching on my part, which precipitated me to go through the papers which were stacked up on my book shelf and get rid of some of the ones I no longer needed.

Since I really didn’t have that much to work on in the lab, I caught the 5:15 bus home. As I walked past the pond that was next to the International House, I saw a white heron standing on the small island where turtles usually gathered. It looked particularly stately standing there in the growing darkness, catching the dim light on its ivory feathers. As herons were the frequent protagonist of Japanese legends, I considered it good luck to have sighted such a bird.

Trudy had made marinated beef over rice for dinner; we caught each other up on our days’ events as we ate. We watched the Women’s Volleyball World Cup after dinner and witnessed Japan sweep Thailand, 3 games to 0. Justin started working on a project for school where he would describe American schools to the 7th graders there. He downloaded pictures of some of the things that schools lacked in Japan: lockers, cafeterias, as well as prom, and started organizing them for his newest presentation. I finished organizing the slides for my own upcoming talk and went to bed around 10:15, with Justin still working on his talk on the computer.

November 7- Tapas

I left for lab early so that I could make it to journal club in plenty of time. The topic of the day concerned stem cells, something that I was quite interested in, but the talk ended up being pretty boring to me. Afterward, I spent more time preparing for my upcoming lecture- rereading the material I was basing it on, as well as adding slides to my presentation. It seemed that I was putting in much more time on this lecture than I normally would in America, but I felt especially driven to do a good job. After all, this was, ostensibly, what Osaka University was paying me for, and I hated the thought of letting them down. My worse fear was going through the material too fast and thereby running out of things to say before my 140 minute period was up; I kept adding slides which I hoped that I would not be able to get to- but wanted there for backup, just in case.

By early afternoon, I had received my results back from Sakari-san. My new Hela reconstitution (without any linker histones added) seemed to be of superior quality than my first preparation, which had always seemed slightly over-reconstituted. Also, the old reconstitution to which I had added maximal levels of linker histone had condensed chromosomes in them, just as I was expecting. The one containing B4 had not moved significantly down the tube until now; its current movement allayed any fears that something was wrong with this particular histone sample. Looking back at my old data, it appeared that the previous B4-containing samples had even moved the opposite direction slightly, indicating an unfolding of the chromosomes. This was not what we wanted to see, since we were predicting there to be differences between the two linker histones: H1 and B4. We decided that repeating the experiments using the new reconstitution was the only way to tell for sure.

Justin arrived at campus on the 4 pm bus, he wanted to print up some of the pictures he had gathered for his own presentation, since the projector wasn’t working that would enable him to show PowerPoint slides. While he worked, I added linker histones to aliquots of my new reconstitution, so I could submit them for analysis the following day. Before we left for church, I printed up notes from my lecture to hand out in class the next day and Justin helped me collate 30 copies of this handout. The course coordinator had told me that, although 100 students were registered for the course, I would be lucky to have a third of them show up for my lecture. He said that the students had worked so hard to get into the Medical Science bachelors program at the University, that they didn’t always feel like working hard once they had arrived on campus.

Justin and I left campus at 6 pm and headed to have a special dinner together. I had seen a Spanish restaurant which served tapas, hors d’oeuvre-like entrees similar to what we had eaten during his birthday celebration, off of one of the train stops on my way to Mikuni and thought that it would be a nice place to eat. I didn’t tell Justin what I was planning, however, since I wanted it to be a surprise. The restaurant was crowded when we arrived, so we sat at the bar to eat and ordered a round of ginger ale to get us started. They played Latino music, mostly Ricky Martin songs, the entire time that we were there, but nothing that seemed to originate from Spain itself. All of the workers in the restaurant were Japanese, not Spanish, but the atmosphere had a fun, festive feel. We watched the cooks prepare the dishes behind the counter and then place them near us before being whisked off to a waiting table. . We ended up getting Prosciutto ham, a tripe stew, white mussels, rice croquettes, cheesy garlic bread, and onion rings, and splitting all of them- they were all very delicious.

In the interest of time, we decided to pick up dessert at McDonalds and eat it as we walked to the service. Once we arrived at Mikuni, however, we discovered McDonalds was undergoing some sort of renovation and was therefore closed, so we walked to a nearby convenience store and picked up ice cream, instead. We spent much of the midweek service practicing songs that the church was planning on singing for a special service in a few weeks time, and then listened to a short message from a brother. We finally formed small prayer groups to close out the service. Once again, Tadashi gave us a ride home afterwards. We arrived home around 10:15 and went to bed soon afterwards, Trudy and Brennan having already turned in for the night ahead of us.

November 8- Teaching

I headed out to take the 8 am bus, only to find an extremely long line of people with no bus in sight. Of all the possible days, the bus company had picked the day of my teaching debut to run the bus a full 10 minutes late- the latest it had been during my nearly six month stay in Japan. I still arrived in plenty of time, however, and looked over my materials one last time while I waited for Kiyoe to come in. Unlike in America, I had not typed up any notes for my lecture- being more concerned with explaining general concepts to the students, rather than espousing a collection of factual information from the text. I grew a little concerned around 8:50 when Kiyoe still had not come in, since I realized that I had no idea where the class actually met, she having insisted on showing me herself in addition to attending the class. She soon arrived, however, and guided me to the classroom.

Kiyoe wasn’t the only professor in attendance that morning; the course coordinator came as well, along with two other professors that I didn’t know. I think they all wanted to see how their grand experiment in English lectures would go; mine was reportedly the first that had been given at the medical school. The previous estimate on the number of students in attendance ended up being fairly accurate, although the number grew slowly as time progressed. While I started my lecture with 18 students present, by the time it ended, more than 2 hours later, there were 55. In general, the students seemed similar to those I had encountered in America. Some were obviously very good students who listened intently and, with some prodding, eventually answered the questions I posed for them. Others looked bored and were quite resistant to my attempts at interaction. Overall, I felt that the lecture went well- I didn’t run out of material and, in fact, reached a very good transition point just as lecture ended. The professors, including Kiyoe, seemed pleased with it as well.

When I returned to lab, I graded the assignment that I had given. During the last few minutes of class, I had administered a pop quiz, something which the course coordinator had suggested in order to collect some assessment data. But, since I had been so focused on the course material during the last few days, I had actually forgotten to prepare one. As I finished my lecture, Kiyoe waved some blank paper that she had brought with her, reminding me of the promised quiz- so I made one up on the spot. I asked three general questions about the material I had presented, “Methods for the Study of DNA Structure”, which most of the students got right. The next two questions were: “what percent of my lecture did you understand?”, as well as “would you like to see more English lectures given in this class?” Responses to the former ranged between 1 and 100%, but averaged around 60%, despite this, an overwhelming majority answered in the affirmative for the latter.

Since I was still in the “teaching mode”, I decided to begin preparing my lecture for the following Monday, knowing that I would have to make handouts of the slides by Friday evening, and therefore really did not have that long to work on it. Around 2 pm, I walked my newest samples over to Sakari-san, along with some of the old samples that we wanted to have re-analyzed. Not only had my latest reconstitution looked better following ultracentrifugation, but even the samples using my old reconstitution were clearer, probably because the complex, and somewhat quirky, machine had been serviced recently. We thought that re-analyzing some of the old samples might clear up our questions about what direction B4-bound chromosomes were migrating.

I took the 5:15 bus home, knowing that I could finish organizing my lecture from there. The family met me at the bus stop and we walked to Cha Cha’s for dinner. Warus was back from his month-long trip to India; we were happy to see our old friend again. As we ate, a cute little Japanese girl who was waiting for her mother played peek-a-boo and janken, the Japanese version of rock-paper-scissors, with us. Brennan was a big fan of this game, having played it frequently at school to combat boredom. He told us a story about his day while we enjoyed our meal. During one of the breaks at school, one of the girls in his class wouldn’t be quiet and would scream periodically, even though Brennan had told her “shizuka” on more than one occasion. Finally fed up with her, he led her to a broom closet and shut her inside until she had agreed to quiet down. We thought that his story was quite funny, but implored him not to shut any more classmates in broom closets!

Justin, on his part, had given his first of a number of presentations on school life in America. He was also pleased that his material had lasted the entire 50 minutes which he was allotted, this included questions about himself and his interests, which he had provided for the audience, knowing that the students probably would not be able to formulate good questions by themselves. Trudy had also experienced a busy day and had attended the women’s devotional group that morning. She had even been asked to lead the discussion in a few weeks time. When we had finished eating, Warus, as was his custom, added liberally to our leftovers so that we ended up taking home the equivalent of another complete meal from the restaurant.

We sent the kids home with these leftovers, as well as my briefcase, while Trudy and I walked to the store near Ishibashi. There, we picked up some of the basic items that we were out of and then joined the boys at home. A basketball game between the Knicks and the Nuggets was on T.V., which had most likely been played about 12 hours earlier, but since we didn’t know the outcome for a change, we decided to watch it. During this time, I finished organizing my up-coming lecture and, before too long, headed to bed.

November 9- Trudy’s Big Outing

I took the early bus in to work, even though I did not have anything too pressing to do quite yet. Since I had just turned in some samples the previous evening, I wasn’t expecting to hear from Sakari-san for a while. I also wasn’t going to be surprised if it took a little longer that normal this time, since the ultracentrifuge was starting to get booked up rather heavily, and Sakari-san hadn’t promised any specific time that she would run the experiment, just that she would try to fit it in whenever she could. I put the finishing touches on my lecture and printed up 55 copies of an outline of the slides that I planned to present to the students.

As I worked, Kiyoe stopped by my desk with some sad news. She had heard a rumor a few days before that one of the women scientists who worked at Kyoto University and that had served as a role model for her had died. She had just confirmed this to be true and learned that this woman had actually committed suicide. It seems to be especially hard for women in Japan to be successful in science. Women like Kiyoe make many sacrifices in order to compete with men for positions, for funding, as well as for recognition. Her friend, although she represented one of the few success stories, apparently wasn’t very happy with the life that she had chosen.

Early in the afternoon, the secretary stopped by my desk. She was trying to tell me something that I couldn’t understand, so we both went to find Kiyoe so she could translate. Apparently, the water company was on the phone and wondered why we had used 1.5 times the amount of water during the last two-month period than we had normally used. Kiyoe talked to them and assured them everything was ok. She theorized that we had been washing more clothes and taking more showers during our sports day activities and such, especially since it had been so hot at the beginning of fall. I figured that I better ask the family to try and conserve water so that we didn’t get any more phone calls like this.

I took the 5:15 bus home, the kids were there when I got there, but Trudy was still gone on an outing. She had met Fiona and Tsuneko that morning so that they could spend the day in Kobe together. I offered to make the kids dinner, but they really wanted pizza from Chicago Delighta. Brennan walked there with me and then we wandered around the neighborhood while we waited for it to be ready. Soon after we had gotten back, Trudy got home from Kobe. She had gone shopping and had walked along the waterfront with the girls. They had all eaten at a Brazilian restaurant for lunch and had enjoyed it immensely. We watched a new episode of “The Office” on my computer while we ate our pizza, according to our Friday night tradition. We went to bed fairly early, since Trudy had another big day planned the next day.

November 10- Trudy’s Second Big Outing

I slept in late- until 7 am. Trudy got up 90 minutes later, while the kids got up long after that. Trudy had planned to meet Nami at Juso so they could spend the day in Kyoto together. It just worked out that she had planned her two outings back to back. She had left at 10 am, while the boys and I hung around the house for a while. I eventually convinced them, however, to go to the store with me. We left the house a little before noon. Brennan, for his part, had not yet accompanied us to the grocery store, despite having lived in Japan for four and a half months. We got the things from the list Trudy had made and then picked up lunch for the day. Brennan and I selected an assortment of sashimi, which we planned to roll in seaweed with rice to make our own sushi, but Justin opted for a package of Chinese dumplings, instead.

Back at the house, we assembled our sushi lunch. I had eaten similar lunches at Kiyoe’s house, but this was the first time we had really made sushi at home. Around 3 pm, we left to meet Shohei in Umeda. Since we knew that Trudy would be busy with her outing, we had decided to meet Shohei and spend some time with him downtown. Since we arrived at Umeda a little early, we visited our favorite bookstore (the only one that we knew of with a section of books in English) for a while. At 4:30, we met Shohei near the main gates of the train station.

We had wanted to go bowling, but when we got to the lanes near the movie theaters, they said that there was a 2.5 hour wait. We decided to go shopping for a while and to try to bowl at a different location. We went in search of shoes for both of the boys and finally found some decently priced ones at Yodobashi Camera. By that time, we were pretty hungry- so we took the train to Mikuni in order to eat at one of Shohei’s favorite restaurants. This ended up being a Japanese place that we had walked past many times but never ventured inside. We sat at a traditional table, where we removed our shoes and hung our feet into a depression below a low table. We ordered an assortment of Japanese food: sashimi, okonomiyaki, marinated fried chicken, as well as conger eel. The kids agreed that it was the best sushi that they had ever eaten.

After dinner, we walked to the nearby bowling alley and, in contrast to the one in Umeda, found it nearly empty. Bowling in Japan was generally like it is in America, with one notable exception- we got our shoes out of a vending machine which was located in the lobby. When we were finished, there was a series of slots to put our shoes through to return them, depending on their size. We bowled one game and then the kids wanted to go down a floor to the arcade.

The kids spent their time at the arcade shooting zombies; I was content to watch, while Shohei went off to play a driving game. When the kids had finished, Justin and Shohei decided to play a shooting game together. Just then, some of the staff approached me and started to explain that (apparently in keeping with the Japanese quest to prevent kids from having any fun) one had to be 16 or over to be in the arcade after 7 pm- it was nearly 8:30. My cell phone rang as they were explaining this to me in broken English- it was Trudy, who was starting to head back from Kyoto. While we talked, I escorted Brennan out of the arcade. The staff didn’t seem worried about Justin; they must have thought that he was old enough. After all, he has already passed for 18 at the movie theater!

We decided to call it an evening after that, so we headed back to Ishibashi Station. We had asked Shohei, who lived 90 minutes away from Osaka, if he wanted to spend the night so that he wouldn’t have to make the trip home that evening and then turn around and come back for church in the morning. Shohei and the boys left for the walk across campus right away, but I waited around for 30 minutes, until Trudy got to the station, so we could walk home together.

Trudy had experienced a full day, having been gone for nearly 12 hours. She had shopped, eaten a late lunch at a Japanese restaurant, and then met up with another girlfriend, Haruka, to attend the lighting ceremony at Chion-In Temple. In the fall, a number of the temples opened at night, lighting up their grounds for visitors. After walking around this temple, the headquarters of the “Pure Land” sect of Buddhism, the three of them had headed to Kodai-ji Temple, which was also lit up that evening. This temple had been founded in the 1600s by Nene, the wife of the late Shogun. Trudy, unfortunately, had done something to her foot during the last hour of her journey, as it was very sore. She was limping for most of the 20 minute walk home.

When we got home, we caught up on the news of everyone’s day and didn’t get to bed until around 11:30. Shohei was still awake when we went to bed, working on the message that he was to give at church the following day.

November 11- Sushi Chef

Since Shohei needed to be at church early, he got up and left the house by 9 am. Justin got ready early as well so that he would be able to leave with him. The rest of us left at the usual time, Trudy took it slowly, as she was still limping. Shohei gave a great lesson about Joseph and his trust in God through many trials after he was sold into slavery. After church, we ordered bento lunches so that we could stay and watch a movie they were showing. I had beef donburi, while the others all ordered karakuro, the lunch I had gotten previously for the men’s meeting, consisting of karage (fried chicken) and a potato croquette. We watched “Facing the Giants”, an inspirational tale about a Christian school’s football team. While it wasn’t the best movie ever made, it did have a great message. Justin especially enjoyed it, saying that it was the best football movie that he had ever seen.

When we reached Ishibashi, Brennan and I sent Trudy and Justin ahead while we went shopping for dinner. Emboldened by our recent success in sushi preparation, Brennan had offered to personally make sushi for the whole family. He therefore made his second trip to a grocery store in as many days to pick up sashimi and crab. We also stopped at a sushi specialty shop to pick up a large seaweed roll which contained an assortment of goodies. The one thing we had been unable to find was raw ground tuna, so I headed to Mandai once we returned home, while he began his preparations. We ended up eating fairly late, since we had eaten a rather late lunch, and Brennan’s skillful preparations took some time. He carefully arranged all of the food just so on plates, as well as everything on the table, before he allowed Trudy and Justin to come downstairs to see our dinner. We had a great time eating everything- it was hard to destroy Brennan’s artwork but we were left with no choice in the matter.

Much to our dismay, there didn’t appear to be an English movie playing at 9 pm, as there had been most Sunday nights, so Trudy and I read for a while instead before going to bed.

November 12- Family Feud

Brennan was not so happy about going to school on this day because of an incident that had happened the previous Friday. He had previously complained to us about Daiki, a boy who “stalked” him at school. This 6th grade boy was not in his class but would follow him around and watch him when he was in the hallway. The final straw came when Daiki followed Brennan into the bathroom on Friday, watched him as he went, and then commented about his anatomy. Brennan was pretty freaked out by this and had said that he would not return to school until the boy was punished. Although I doubted that the school would punish such an act, no matter how weird it was to us Americans, I did write an email to Noriko to see if she could ask the school officials to encourage Daiki to no longer follow our son around. The fact that I had sent this email must have assured Brennan somewhat, because he did head in to school about the time I left for work.

This was my second, and final, day of teaching. I caught the 8:10 bus and got my things together: computer, handouts, and tea, before heading to the classroom. Since I knew how to get there this time, I didn’t wait for Kiyoe. This ended up being a good thing, since she did not make an appearance in my classroom this time. Neither did two of the other professors who had attended Thursday’s lecture- a lone professor, one of the ones that I did not know, was sitting near the front. I guess the novelty of an English lecture had worn off for the others. I talked about “Biotechnology” this time, including a discussion of some of the controversies surrounding certain recently developed procedures. My class went well again, I had a better idea this time how much material to cover and still allowed time for another impromptu quiz.

At 12:30, I met Evgeni for lunch. Brennan and I had run into him while we were shopping for sushi and we had agreed to meet for lunch in celebration of my extensive teaching responsibilities coming to an end. Evgeni had observed that it was probably time for Brennan to get braces soon, which Brennan later told me would have upset him if it had not come from a dentist. Evgeni and I walked to the engineering campus together and ate at the top of one of the buildings there. The 15th floor of the engineering hall had a very nice buffet for lunch that one could eat while enjoying the nice view out of the windows there. It started to rain as we ate, but luckily it tapered off in time for us to walk back to the medical school.

After I returned from lunch, Kiyoe sent me a table and some figures on which to base my own illustrations for my review article. Although I had finished writing, the next step was to prepare my own illustrations for the article. I worked on this some in the afternoon, but was not able to get very far. We had our group meeting at 4:30, like usual, and then I was able to catch the 5:35 bus home.

Trudy had made Chinese noodle soup for dinner. After we ate, we had a family devotional where we talked about Hebrews 12:1 and what it meant to have real faith. I related this to some of the things that we had seen in the movie on Sunday. We then played a game of “Family Feud”, which Brennan had been upstairs in the office preparing, while Trudy was fixing dinner. He had written around ten categories of questions, each with the “top” half dozen or so answers, according to Brennan. Justin and Trudy comprised one team, while I made up the other. We gave our answers in categories such as “something you would eat for breakfast”. The two of them beat me handedly and progressed to the “speed round”, which Brennan had also prepared. We had a lot of fun playing this game together as a family. After we finished, it was soon time to go to bed.

November 13- Table and Figure

I got in early and started working on the table for my article. To do this, I made a chart of the different types of linker histone and then looked in the papers that I had, so I could list some distinctive characteristics of each one. Kiyoe stopped by to tell me that she had received the results from my latest ultracentrifugation run, but had not been able to open them for some reason. She had emailed Sakari-san and asked her to resend them. Once my table was finished, I went to work on the figure, which proved to be a much more difficult job. For it, I transposed data from the papers which described various chemical modifications of the linker histones onto a diagram representing the general structure of this group of proteins. I made circles of different sizes and colors to represent the modifications and placed them in the correct locations.

As I worked, Kiyoe stopped by again. She had received some of the data by that time, but not all of it. She was not happy with the preliminary results, though, since she thought both B4 and H1A had unfolded the chromosome, something we were hoping would not happen. She had once again asked Sakari-san to resend the results, since certain data were missing from what she had received. I finished working on the figure sometime after 5 and printed it, along with the table, before putting them both on Kiyoe’s desk. I had yet to see the data from my ultracentrifuge run with my own eyes, but I figured that knowing the truth would have to wait until the next day. I hurried to catch the 5:55 bus, but saw it pulling off as I left my building, so I was forced to wait for the 6:15 bus, instead.

When I got home, Brennan was downstairs working on the computer, while Trudy and Justin were both in our bed, reading. Neither of them felt the greatest, they both had slight stomach aches. We decided to have pasta for dinner, but, since this didn’t sound good to Justin, I walked to Chicago Delighta and ordered him his favorite “white pizza”, topped with Brie cheese but no tomato sauce. While I waited for it to be ready, I walked to Server to pick up some more drinks for the family as well. As we ate, we watched “Monday Night Football”, even though it was a Tuesday. The Seahawks handedly defeated the 49ers, reminding me of our Family Feud game the previous evening. Trudy and Justin went back to reading in bed after the game, so I decided to join them. Brennan remained downstairs, however, and watched “Biohazard II” on my computer. After he was done, Justin took his turn with my computer, watching the British version of “The Office” (which he had been forced to resort to after a strike by the American Writer’s Guild kept any more American episodes from being produced), while the rest of us went to bed.

November 14- The Return of Kanji Table

Before I left for work, I checked my email and found that Kiyoe had forwarded the graphs from our ultracentrifuge run to me before she left the lab at 8:30 pm. I looked at these quickly and discovered that our fears had been unfounded. The new results had all condensed the chromosomes and had all moved down the tube, not up it. Kiyoe had forgotten that the newest reconstitution was not over reconstituted and started at a different position that the old one had. What is more, the old samples I had run again revealed no unfolding action by histone B4, something that had been difficult to judge when comparing separate runs. My new results therefore confirmed our hypothesis by still showing a difference between the two linker histones.

I caught the first bus to work and hurried to journal club at 9 am, only to find that we weren’t having one on this day. This didn’t upset me in the least, although Anna, who came in 5 hours earlier than normal to make it to the meeting, was a little more disappointed. Since I had the figures for my review done, the only thing left to do was to carefully proofread it, which I had been putting off. I decided that it was time to print off the paper and start going through it carefully. I also printed up my latest data and arranged it in my notebook. Kiyoe gave me more purified linker histones in the afternoon. Since my last experiment had shifted everything down the tube, it was time to add less of each protein to see if H1A, an amphibian version of the protein, would unfold the chromosomes (as it had before for Kiyoe), shifting them up the tube. I added the appropriate amounts to my samples and then headed to kanji table, which had been on hiatus for the past 3.5 months since classes had ended the previous semester.

Our Austrian friend Bernard, who appeared to be taking every Japanese class available, was there. I had just talked to Trudy on the phone and learned that she gone out for coffee with his wife, Gaby, at a nearby café, and that Justin was over at their house at that moment, hanging out with Thomas. I later learned that Brennan had eventually showed up and that all four boys had ended up playing tennis together. Since Yoshinaka-san, the man who used to help me, was busy with other things, I had a woman assigned to me who didn’t speak more than a handful of words in English the entire time. This actually worked out fine, since we went through my book and I practiced the kanji, asking her what each meant if I didn’t know. She would then respond to me in Japanese and make various motions with her hands until I figured the word out.

A little after 5, I walked my samples over to IPR for analysis. Sakari-san, for her part, was not expecting me, since Kiyoe had not called this time to schedule another run on the machine. She said that it might be another week before she could analyze the samples. Since her group had the only ultracentrifuge on campus, I didn’t see much choice but to leave the samples with her and hope for the best. I caught the 5:30 bus home from the Engineering Campus, bringing with me my old chromosome samples from our previous run in a little Styrofoam cooler.

Trudy had made beef donburi for dinner. After we ate, the kids wrestled around while Trudy and I read. I watched “Biohazard II” with Brennan before going to bed. Brennan, who had just watched it the night before, apparently never tired of seeing hoards of zombies disposed of in various ways.

November 15- Lunch with Justin

I finished proofreading my review article after I got in to work and then sent the finished copy to Kiyoe. Since Justin got off school early due to ongoing parent teacher conferences, he had suggested that he come to campus to have lunch with me. Trudy was planning on being gone most of the day, first to the women’s devotional, and then to Costco with Tsuneko, probably the last trip she would take there before we returned to America. When Justin arrived on campus, about 1:15, we decided to go to the top of the hospital to eat. There, I ordered beef cutlet and Justin had pork cutlet with curry rice. We both enjoyed a nice dessert and then went down to Starbucks to get coffee as well. Justin had white chocolate mocha, while I tried the seasonal gingerbread latte. We took our coffee outside and sat by a small pond while we drank it. After a brief visit back to my office, I walked Justin to the bus stop for his return trip. He took the 3:15 bus in order to be home by the time Brennan got off school.

Things were a little slow that afternoon while I waited for Kiyoe’s comments on the paper, but began to pick up around 5 pm as she finally was able to read it carefully. She stopped by my desk a number of times over the next hour with various comments and questions. Finally, as it neared 6, as I hadn’t seen her for a while, I sensed that all of her questions must have been answered- so I took the next bus home. When I arrived, Trudy had just gotten home about ten minutes before me. She made bulgogi for dinner using the sauce Paul had brought us from Korea. We also ate pita bread and hummus on the side, both of which Trudy had picked up at Costco that day. It was a strange mix of cultures, but a delicious meal nonetheless.

After we ate, we watched Japan play America in women’s volleyball but after Japan lost their first game, Justin and I retreated upstairs to watch a couple episodes of the British version of “The Office”, while Trudy and Brennan went on to witness America sweep Japan 3 games to zero. We were all reunited downstairs when the English movie came on at 9, Disney’s “The Princess Diaries”. After the movie ended at 11, I helped Trudy do the dishes, then we all went to bed.

November 16- Acknowledgements

I caught the 8:20 bus in for a change, and then went back to work on my review paper when I got in. After I left work the evening before, Kiyoe had emailed me a few comments, asking me to change the figure legends slightly. It was soon after this that Kiyoe made her sole writing contribution to our review paper: she wrote two sentences of acknowledgements. To be fair, she had helped come up with the idea as to the subject of the review and she had supplied me with the table and figure in their early forms. Most importantly, she was the one who had been invited to write the review in the first place, so her name definitely had to be on it. I still found it funny, however, that this was all she contributed to the writing in the end.

Kiyoe stopped by my desk to show me what she had written: in the acknowledgment she thanked Dr. Kaneda, as well as members of our laboratory, for “helpful discussions” and then thanked a particular grant for monetary support, one that just happened to be provided by the organization which published the journal we were submitting our paper to, the “Journal of Biochemistry”. This, of course, was completely political, as was the inclusion of Dr. Kaneda, with which we had had no discussions concerning the review, helpful or otherwise. By noon, the paper had been sent out and one more writing assignment was officially out of my hands.

That afternoon in lab was fairly uneventful, as I tried to keep busy until it was time to head for home. At 4:30, I decided that it was time to make a break for it. I barely caught the bus which left five minutes later, luckily it was slightly delayed by the long line of people waiting of it. The driver was forced to open the front door to let in the last stragglers, including myself, on. I rode home standing in the front door well of the bus. Trudy had made kake udon for dinner, but didn’t really feel like eating at that time. She and Justin, who had gotten out of school early yet again, had gone shopping for jeans. They had therefore eaten a late lunch at Mos Burger in the mall.

Justin spend the next few hours watching “The Godfather II” on my computer, while the rest of us alternated between reading, watching the Japanese women lose another round of volleyball (this time to Brazil, the number two team), and playing hearts. We all went to bed at a decent hour.

November 17- Waiting for Company

I slept in until nearly 8 am, almost a record for me while living in Japan. I had a quiet morning while I waited for the rest of the family to wake up and to get their showers in. It was nearly lunchtime before everyone was ready. Justin and I walked to Family Mart to get milk and to pick up an American Dog or two for his lunch. Justin had to settle for a chicken patty, however, after we discovered that they were out of American Dogs. Trudy and I had leftovers for lunch, while Brennan had a ham sandwich.

We wanted to keep busy while we waited for my sister, Lisa Kerr, and her two kids, Nathan and Jordan, to arrive that evening. Trudy, however, didn’t really feel like walking anywhere, so I decided to take the boys to Sega World in Umeda. Once there, we took a glass elevator to the 8th floor of the Hep 5 building, which, along with the 9th floor, was filled with arcade games as well as eating establishments. We started our adventure by sitting in a little covered jeep and taking a virtual jungle voyage together. It reminded me of Angkor Wat, except for the giant spiders, bees, and other insects that were attacking us, which the boys had to fend off using machine guns. After this, the boys put a summer’s worth of training to good use by finally beating “House of Dead 4” and saving the world from zombies once and for all.

To celebrate, we all had crepes at Crepe Ojisan, or “Uncle Crepe”. Trudy had gone there previously with the boys and had reported that they had the best crepes that she had ever tasted. I split a blueberry, rare cheese and ice cream crepe with Brennan and agreed with her assessment, although I wasn’t sure what “rare cheese” was. I later found out that “rare cheese” is what the Japanese call a cheese cake that you don’t have to bake. “Rare”, therefore does not describe the uncommonness of the cheese as much as it describes the amount of cooking, as in the case of steak. After we ate, I played Brennan in air hockey while Justin practiced his driving in a racing game. Soon, Brennan joined in on the driving before we finally decided to call it an afternoon.

Back in Ishibashi, we went to a vending machine restaurant which was located across from McDonalds. Justin got beef donburi, Brennan ordered mabo dofu, and I just had a small bowl of kimchi so I could eat something with Trudy when we got home. After we had finished, I stopped off across the street and picked up something for Trudy to eat. By the time we had walked home, we only had about 15 minutes before having to leave in order to get Lisa and the kids at the airport- we had successfully kept occupied for the entire afternoon. At 7:15 the whole family left for Itami airport, arriving there via monorail about 30 minutes later, where we found that the Kerrs’ plane had been delayed 10 minutes. Lisa later told me that the airline staff had apologized profusely for the delay.

It was great to see the family- Nathan looked like he had gotten a lot taller since we had seen him last, with Lisa and Jordan looked just as radiant as we had remembered them to, Jordan’s blond hair making her especially conspicuous in a sea of dark heads. As we were boarding the monorail, Jordan looked very nervous, and said she was afraid of heights. I tried to reassure her by saying that the mode of transport was just like it was at Disneyworld. Jordan, however, became even more horrified, as she pictured some sort of rollercoaster taking us home. Lisa laughed about this for almost the entire ride back to Shibahara.

We made it to our house sometime after 9 pm and ate some of the snacks Lisa had brought with her, while the boys played with Nathan’s dictation software on his computer. It was, of course, hard to get everyone settled down for bed. Lisa fell right to sleep in the office, but the kids, who had taken over Trudy and my room, couldn’t stop talking. Brennan eventually headed downstairs and slept on the couch. Trudy and I fell asleep on the air mattress that the boys usually used once the din next door had reduced to a dull roar.

November 18- Jacket Weather

I woke up at 7 am and kept myself busy until the rest of the family got up. By 9, everyone else was up and buzzing around trying to get ready to leave by 10. Lisa and her kids had slept well, despite the time change, and seemed full of energy. Since the overnight temperature had dropped into the low 40s for the first time, I was finally forced to wear my jacket during the day. Sure, I had put it on to climb Mt. Kompira with Brennan, as well as one other evening when I picked up some pizza, but this was the latest date that I could ever remember going without having to wear a jacket. We left the house a little late and arrived at church after they had started singing the first songs. Rich was visiting from Tokyo; he gave a great message about not following God from a distance, something Peter did after Jesus was arrested. Although Rich spoke English well, he gave his sermon in Japanese, and Fiona translated for us.

After church, we all headed to the kaiten sushi place that we had recently discovered, where we had also taken my mother when she visited. Since it was going to take a long time to get a table, we all sat in a row at the counter. The kids had a lot of fun trying different dishes- Brennan and I were feeling especially daring and both tried kani miso, or crab brain sushi. It looked exactly like some kind of excrement and didn’t taste much better than we imagined excrement to taste, but it was a cultural experience to remember. Jordan, who was not a big fan of fish, stuck mostly to cooked shrimp sushi, karage, and also split a plate of corn sushi (a little roll of seaweed stuffed with corn kernels in a sweet dressing) with Lisa. After lunch, the kids all ordered ice cream cones, with the exception of Brennan, who was full by that time. We then walked back to Mikuni Station and took the train to Kyoto.

We got off at our usual stop in the Gion district and then walked across the bridge over the Kamo River to catch the subway. Around 3:30, we finally reached our destination- Fushimi Inari Shrine. Although Justin and I had been to the shrine previously with Pei, we had both agreed that this would be a perfect place to bring the Kerr family and to run around in after dark. Everyone paused to take in the main shrine area, complete with the giant gate, the place to ring the bells, as well as the giant stone guardian foxes which were a reoccurring theme in the shrine. We then started the long climb up the mountain path which was lined with 10,000 orange tori gates.

It was not too long before the three boys wanted to explore a side path, so I gave them one of the cell phones before they bounded up a sheer dirt path and disappeared from sight. The rest of us, however, opted to continue on the main, paved path. About halfway to the top, we encountered a lake that was surrounded by interesting graves, statues, and shrines filled with candles ablaze. Trudy was getting quite tired by this point, but we pressed ahead, only stopping to feed a stray cat some crackers before reaching the clearing that was located 2/3 of the way up the mountain. It was quite cold there, since we could feel the wind whipping at us for the first time since we had begun our ascent.

Just then, the boys called us- they had reached the lake using their side path and were just a little behind us on the main path. The boys reached the clearing just in time to see the sun set over Kyoto, followed by the lights in the valley below us begin to sparkle. Most of the group then pushed ahead in order to reach the summit, but Jordan and Brennan had lost interest in the climb, since they had discovered yet another cat. They were taking turns petting it while Brennan held it in his lap. I therefore stayed at the clearing with them to wait until the others returned. I sat on a picnic table in an area that was somewhat sheltered from the wind and talked to an Israeli man who was visiting Japan for a few weeks. After 40 minutes had gone by, I talked the animal lovers into saying goodbye to their friend and starting up the trail that we knew the others would soon be coming down. It was, of course, pitch black by then.

As we reached a graveyard in the hills, we heard the others coming down the steps which lay ahead, so we hid from them and made noises until they found us. Then the older boys invariably had to explore the graveyard before we once again regrouped in the clearing for the rest of the descent together. Everyone was pretty cold and tired by the time we reached the train station from which we had originally come. 90 minutes later, we had reached Ishibashi Station, where we all went out for Indian food at Cha Cha’s. When we finally reached home around 9 pm, the adults were ready for bed, but the kids insisted on watching the movie “Transformers” on Nathan’s computer. At 10:30, however, we made them turn it off and turn in for the night, in order to be ready for school the next morning.

November 19- School Visit

We had arranged for Nathan and Jordan to attend school with Justin and Brennan, respectively, so the morning was abuzz with children getting ready for school. I went into work at the usual time but, since I had just finished writing the review and was still waiting for results to come back from my latest ultracentrifuge run, I didn't have anything particularly pressing to do. I had expected to put in a fairly light week since Lisa was in town, but I didn't want to push it too much- so I found some "busy work" to do to keep me occupied.

Lisa and Trudy came to campus for lunch and I took them to the top of the Engineering Building. After lunch, the two of them came by my laboratory for a quick tour, as well as to get onto the internet, which had not been working at home lately. I introduced Lisa to Kiyoe, as well as to Anna. After awhile, Lisa and Trudy left again so they could take a walk through the bamboo forest together, as well as do some shopping at the university co-op. I met them near the co-op about 3:15 in order to walk them to the campus bus stop, and, since I could find no reason to continue sitting around the lab pretending to be busy, I accompanied them home on the next bus.

The kids were all home from school by the time the three of us arrived there. The Kerr children had enjoyed the day immensely and wished that they could go back. My kids assured them that the novelty would soon wear off if they did. Both had taken pictures of their day, and we were all treated to a slide show of their experiences. Jordan's perspective on the elementary school was much different from the stories we usually heard from Brennan. She had enjoyed the attention given to her by the students, who had stroked her blond hair and called it "beautiful". Jordan was able to name most of the children in her pictures, something that Brennan had still been unable to do. The thought crossed my mind that Jordan had made more friends at school in one day than Brennan had in 5 months, but I didn't say anything.

The older boys had had fun too, but observed that the Japanese kids tended to act immature as well as to laugh at things that were not funny at all. Both had attended a Health Education lecture on the uterus and Nathan had then been asked to write a reflection on what he had learned and to read it in front of the class. Nathan had written two sentences, where he said that, although he didn't really understand what they were talking about in class, he thought that it was really important for kids to learn about such things. Notwithstanding, the class had been amazed by his oratory skills.

The kids then decided to play songs on Nathan's computer and to have a "dance party". They cleared the furniture out of our living room and danced around for while, but the party started getting more and more rowdy, since the kids were pretty wound up from their day. For dinner, we decided that we would go to Umeda and eat at the other Mexican restaurant that I had discovered online. Just to be sure, I called Los Incas to see if they were open. "I'm sorry, Amigo", the man on the other line said, "but today we are on holiday". It was all very suspicious that the restaurant was never open when we wanted to go by.

Five of us then set out for Umeda- since Brennan didn't really feel like doing a lot of walking, Trudy had agreed to stay behind with him. Before we ate, we stopped at Hep 5 so Lisa and the boys could ride the Ferris Wheel. Jordan, with her fear of heights, decided not to ride, so I took her to Sega World to wait for them. After their ride, Lisa and the boys met us there and played a few games of their own before we walked to dinner. Since it was 7 pm by then, no one under the age of 16 was allowed in Sega World, so Jordan and I waited down one floor for the rest of them to finish, the boys apparently looked close enough to 16 to please the staff.

As we walked past Los Incas, the kids wanted to do a little detective work, since Justin has convinced himself that the restaurant was a front for selling drugs, or some other activity of a ill repute. They insisted that they go up to ask if the restaurant was open, despite the fact that I had called earlier. Although a couple ahead of them was allowed to go in, the kids were turned away at the door, adding to the mystery which surrounded the place and all but confirming their suspicions. We ended up down the block at the other restaurant that I had discovered. It was pretty good, but still not up to our American standards.

After we ate, we walked around Umeda for a while until we ended up at the Sky Building. A huge Christmas tree had been put up between the two towers and the whole area surrounding the buildings had been decorated for Christmas with a Bavarian flair. A sign had read "Welcome to the Night Market" in German, a we approached the grounds. As we turned in our tickets for the Sky Building elevator, the man working there handed each of us a gold star for us to write our wish for 2008 on before hanging them on the Christmas trees which were located in the observatory. I wrote that I wished my sister would remain cancer-free before placing it on one of the trees. Everyone enjoyed the view from the roof of the building, although Jordan was a bit freaked out by the whole experience and didn't stay outside for long.

Our whole crew was very tired as we made our way back to Umeda, and then walked home from Ishibashi after our train ride, but we eventually reached our destination, around 11 pm. We quickly summarized our adventures for Trudy and Brennan before going to bed.

November 20- Night Hike

Justin, Brennan and I got up early, as usual, and got ready to go to school and to work. We tried to be as quiet as possible, and were successful in leaving the house without waking the rest of our sleeping family. Lisa and her kids ended up sleeping until about 11 am, just in time for Nathan and Jordan to get ready in order to take the bus to Suita and have lunch with me.

The kids arrived around noon and I took them to the cafeteria nearest to the bus stop. After we ate, we walked over to lab and I gave them a tour of the facilities. Nathan taped the whole experience so that he would be able to present it to his science class at school when he returned to America. I went through the process of pouring and running a gel on the tape, something that I had become quite familiar with lately. During all this time, Jordan busied herself playing on the internet with her virtual pony, feeding it and shopping for cute little pony outfits. After we were done taping, Nathan took turns with his sister on the internet, solving increasingly harder puzzles where they tried to move a peg through a maze in order to drop it down a virtual hole.

I was expecting them to get bored at any time and to ask if they could go back to the house, but they never did. I eventually had to suggest to them that we had better catch the 3:35 bus, since my kids would be getting home from school soon. Once we had all reassembled at the house, we set out for Mino Park. We had tried to think of some things that we could do with the Kerrs in the afternoons after school got out, and the park was one of the places that we could think of that did not close at sundown.

We took the train from Sakurai to Mino and then made our way up the hill to the park. It was starting to get dark as we reached the park, but we had made sure to bring a number of flashlights along. Trudy and Lisa took the hour-long hike up the main road to the waterfall, but the four kids and I had alternate plans. We split off from the main road almost immediately, something I had not yet done at the park, and took narrow mountain trails through the dark that, according to the map I had printed out, would eventually rejoin the main trail. One time we found ourselves at a wide clearing on the side of a hill and worried that we would have to double back, but we eventually found a trail that headed downhill from the clearing- so we took it.

As soon as we reached some buildings and it was evident that we were about to rejoin the main trail, I ran ahead of the kids in the dark and hid near the trail in an attempt to startle them. They, however, found me quite easily using their flashlights, and we resumed our hike. Since we had looped out from the main road, we wondered if Trudy and Lisa we ahead of us of behind us as we continued towards the falls. When we came to a split in the trail that I had taken before when I saw the monkey, Nathan and Justin went left, while I took the younger kids to the right. We eventually caught up with the other adults just as they were about the reach the falls, and were soon reunited with the older boys, as their trail joined ours at the falls.

The kids ran much of the way back, since it was all downhill on a paved road. Occasionally, they would stop and wait for us to catch up and then would resume their race towards the train station. Once we all reached the station, we returned to Sakarai and then walked to Gyoza no Osho for dinner. We were all very hungry by that point and had very nice meal together, but Lisa and Jordan seemed to enjoy the bathroom the most. They were impressed by the toilet’s heated seat and also tried out the feature that sprayed them with water in order to wash their hind quarters. Lisa got her spray stuck on "high" and Jordan had to come to her rescue and show her how to turn it off.

On the walk home, the boys and I were up for another adventure, so we decided to cut across the neighborhoods which lay between the restaurant and our house, something Trudy and I had tried during the long walk that we had gotten so turned around on. The girls, however, opted for the safer option of taking the main road, even though it was out of the way. About halfway home, Brennan decided that he needed to use the restroom and wanted to hurry the rest of the way. I was a bit worried that we would end up lost again as I rushed past the unfamiliar landmarks, but felt quite relieved when we arrived at Justin's school, just a few blocks from our house. We ended up arriving home at the same time as the girls did.

Everyone then decided that it was time for another "dance party", so they loaded some songs on the computer and moved the furniture once again. I was exhausted, though, and fell asleep on the couch in the midst of their revelry. Around 10:30, the "party" wound down, and we all went to bed.

November 21- Dark Tunnels

I got up and headed in to lab to attend another forgettable journal club. Since there was still no word from Sakari-san concerning my samples, there was still not a lot for me to do afterwards, but I somehow kept busy. I ate the rest of the Indian food that we had gotten during lunch and then talked to Kiyoe about our future plans. I also happened to mention that I was hoping to leave early that day, and she didn't seem to mind. Since it was Brennan's early day at school, we had decided to ask that Justin be released at the same time so we could take the Kerrs to the tunnel hike that we liked so well. I took the 1:35 bus home, arriving there about the same time that the kids came home from school.

Trudy, who was content to have taken the hike once already, decided to stay behind. As we set out across campus, we saw that the gate was open to the stairway which led to the wide swath of land near the campus museum. Since I had never walked that way before, having only seen it open two previous times, both of which Trudy and I were too busy to investigate, we opted for a pre-hike through this area on our way to Ishibashi. After climbing the stairs, we came to a T-intersection in the trail, with stairs going down to the museum on the left as well as up, further into the woods, on the right. This rightward path also contained a sign, written in kanji, that probably read "Don't go past this sign", but we told ourselves that it was also possible that it read "Don't miss what's beyond this sign!" as we took the path which lay beyond it.

Soon, we found ourselves on the edge of a bamboo forest, which the kids bounded into, while Lisa and I stayed on the trail. We could hear them crashing around in the forest as they stepped on fallen bamboo stalks, until I was nearly convinced that the guard at the base of the stairs a half-mile away would surely hear us and come running. I was therefore relieved when they finally emerged, but when they did- their shoes and pants were covered in burrs. The burrs were actually quite interesting, being unlike anything we had seen in America. They looked like little Velcro leaf hoppers; the kids spent most of the train ride to Takarazuka picking them off of themselves.

It was nearly 4 pm by the time we transferred to the JR line and walked to the head of the trail from Namaze station, first stopping at a nearby convenience store to get drinks and snacks for the hike. Once we arrived, one thing that we noticed right away was how little water remained in the river which lay below the trail. It had been summer the times that the family had previously visited, and the river had been full of raging rapids. By late fall, it had been reduced to little more than a stream, exposing all of the huge boulders which had caused the rapids. Justin and Nathan descended the first iron ladder that we came to which led down the embankment to the river and encouraged the rest of us to join them. Jordan, however, was not about to climb the 100 foot drop to the river bed, so we looked for another way down.

We therefore returned to the head of the trail and found a steep wooded slope with only a 10 foot drop at the bottom, from where we could reach the river. Once there, we climbed along boulders until we reached the older boys. The kids had a wonderful time jumping from rock to rock to reach the opposite shore of the river as well as climbing to the top of the largest boulders. We thus slowly made our way up river, until we reached the second iron ladder. Since it was starting to get dark by this point, I suggested that we climb back to the trail and continue along it, using our flashlights to guide us. Jordan was not thrilled about climbing the ladder, but, since there wasn't really any other option at that point, she did so, sobbing the whole way up.

As we walked through the first tunnel, I thought that I would try out my "run ahead of the group and hide" game again. Since the tunnel floor was lined with railroad ties, I had to be careful not to trip in the darkness, but I picked up my feet and ran out of range of the flashlights before slowing down. I apparently passed some bats along the way, since the group later reported that they had spotted two in a stone archway. I then hid along the sides of the tunnel just beyond the exit and waited for the hikers to pass before following them down the path at a distance. Once again, my plan was foiled by the flashlights, since Brennan shined his backwards, half expecting me to come up from behind.

The second tunnel was quite memorable as well, not just for being the longest, or for the fact that the kids kept a close guard on me the whole length to prevent me from running off, but for what we found on the other end. We were all quite hungry by the time we reached the end of the tunnel, so we sat on some rocks and ate the snacks that we had bought. As we prepared to leave, Lisa and Jordan decided to go to the bathroom near the mouth of the tunnel. Unfortunately, while they clamored around in the dark, Lisa stepped in some poop, which she was pretty sure had originated from a human. She cleaned her shoes to the best of her ability using some tissues and a bottle of water, but still couldn't get them completely clean.

The rest of the 2.5 hour hike went without incident. The boys climbed the aqueduct which made up tunnel number three, giving me the opportunity to run off once again. I behaved myself for much of the rest of the way, eventually walking through the dark with Lisa and Jordan. The moon was very bright that evening, allowing us to make out the trail, even without flashlights, which the boys had taken so they could run around the area surrounding the final two tunnels. We finally reached Takedo station around 6:30, although it seemed like it should have been a lot later by then.

By 8, we had returned home and ravenously tore in to the pasta dinner that Trudy had fixed us. We then played "Family Feud" on the computer for a while and finally went to bed around 11.

November 22- Thanksgiving

Since it was a holiday, everyone but me slept in, but, by mid-morning, the rest of the gang had to be up so we could leave the house by 11. I had gotten tickets to see the Takarazuka Review at 1 pm, an all women acting troupe that was well-known in Japan. Since my sister had been a theater major in college, I thought that she would appreciate modern Japan's answer to kabuki, where, like Shakespearean Theater, all of the roles were traditionally played by men. The troupe was originally founded in 1913 in a small town outside of Osaka called Takarazuka, which had since become the entertainment capital of the Kansai area.

Since we knew that the play would cut into our lunch schedule, we stopped a number of times along the way to Takarazuka to get snacks: first at McDonalds in Ishibashi to get fries, then at vending machines in the Takarazuka train station to get ice cream, and finally at a fast-food chain called Loteria to get chicken nuggets. At 12:30, we arrived at the Takarazuka Grand Theater as the doors were opening.

Since I had waited for a while after they had gone on sale to get the tickets, it worked out that I had gotten five on the balcony and two on the main floor. I had thus volunteered to sit in the balcony with the kids and allow Lisa and Trudy to have the better seats. There were actually two shows being put on that day, with a short intermission between them. The first was the main reason I had chosen this particular show. It was called "El Halcon", "The Falcon" in Spanish, and was a tale of rival bands of Spanish pirates. Anna had told me that the story was based on a popular manga, or Japanese graphic novel, but I was not familiar with the story. It, like all shows at Takarazuka, was performed as a musical. I figured that, of all the shows that were being put on this particular season, it was the one most likely to hold the kids' interests.

Although the play was, of course, difficult to follow at times, most of us got the basic idea of the story and especially enjoyed the excellent singing, along with as the elaborate costumes and sets. Lisa seemed to understand the most, and was able to give a fairly detailed synopsis of the plot to the rest of us after it was all over. It became clear during the intermission that women outnumbered men at the performance by a wide margin, this was especially apparent from the long line that formed outside the women's room, while the men’s room was practically deserted. The second play didn't really have a plot as far as we could tell, but was just a Vegas-style musical review with plenty of feather-covered costumes and girls dancing the Can-Can. The "men" in this performance were usually wearing fedoras and looked like gangsters, giving the whole show a "Guys and Dolls"-like feel. Overall, it was quite entertaining and served as a good way to end the day's performance.

We left the theater around 4 pm and soon made our way to the south side of Osaka to have Thanksgiving dinner. I had diligently searched the internet for places that would serve a traditional American-style meal, and had only found two: the Osaka Hilton and Tins Bar. While the former advertised a buffet for 5000 yen per person, the latter served essentially the same food for less than one third that price, making the choice between the two fairly clear.

Tins was located in a part of town called Tenoji, an area which also housed Shitenoji Temple, which Trudy and I had visited previously. We arrived just after the bar had opened at 6 pm. Tins didn't really look like much, neither from the outside nor from within. The interior was dark and slightly grungy looking; it had the feel of a bar that would serve cheap drinks and which would primarily cater to the college crowd back in the U.S. We pulled three tall, round tables together and sat around them using wooden bar stools. Justin was visibly disappointed and said that this was not how he pictured Thanksgiving at all. The mood changed appreciably, however, once the food was served.

The Thanksgiving meal was exactly as you would find at any household in America, complete with turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes and gravy, cranberry sauce as well as an assortment of vegetables. There were even massive pieces of pumpkin pie which were served after the meal. Before we ate, we went around the table and everyone said what they were thankful for. Most people's contribution centered on that fact that we were together with family and sharing a wonderful meal together, despite the somewhat unusual circumstances.

After dinner, the kids played foosball at the neighboring table. Although the bar had been nearly empty when we arrived, it was starting to fill up by this time, mostly with fellow gaijin. We noticed that the typical client appeared to be an American man, accompanied by his Japanese girlfriend, as if any girlfriend of such gaijin simply through in the towel on Thanksgiving as far as trying to cook a traditional American meal was concerned. Around 8 pm, we decided it was time to head toward home. Once we arrived at Umeda, we decided to split up. Trudy took the three boys to check out the bookstore which carried English books, while I took Lisa and Jordan back to Ishibashi to do some shopping in the nearby shopping arcade. After 30 minutes or so, we met the others and walked home together.

Since it was Thanksgiving morning in America by this time, Trudy was very interested in getting on the internet to send some Thanksgiving messages to her family. Since the internet connection had not worked from home since Lisa arrived, I had finally gone over to the Cybermedia center on the Suita campus the previous day to get a password which would allow me to access the campus system. The only catch was that we had to walk to campus in order to pick up their wireless connection using my laptop. We therefore set out once again, this time to the outdoor area near the campus bus stop, which had an array of tables outside. One thing that this area didn't have, however, was a place to plug in my computer. It, unfortunately, was running low on batteries and died as soon as we had established a connection. We therefore decided to try again later and returned home once again. Everyone went to bed around 11 pm- it certainly had been a Thanksgiving to remember!

November 23- Labor Day

Although Thanksgiving had not been a holiday in Japan, the following day was Japanese Labor Day, and most people had the day off. Since we had the whole day together, I planned to take the family to Arashiyama, a quaint little suburb of Kyoto, to see the fall leaves and to take in the sights there. We all left the house around 11 am in order to arrive at our destination by early afternoon. Since it was a holiday, the train that we took to Kyoto was packed with people, more so than any other train we had taken in Japan. It was all we could do to huddle in a group near the door of the train, people were so packed together that it seemed that we could lift up our legs and still not fall to the ground. We changed trains in Kyoto in order to take the Arashiyama line, where we were amazed to find that the trains were even more packed with people.

Arashiyama was apparently "the" place to be on Labor Day, judging from the hordes of people who were clamoring around the train station. We were quite hungry by then, and hoped that we would be able to find a restaurant that was not packed with people. Luckily, there were some food stands set up on the way into town. We stopped and ordered karage, hot dogs on a stick, corn on the cob, and little round sponge cakes for dessert. We came to call this latter treat "Hamster Balls", because they came in 3 sizes of bags, all which had a picture of a hamster on their side. The kids all ate their lunch on the side of a stream that was spanned by a stone bridge. Nathan spent much of his time floating a Styrofoam container that he had found down the stream, again and again.

After we had eaten our fill, we went to a park called Iwatayama, or simply "Monkey Mountain". As could be surmised, the park was best known for the 150 or so monkeys which inhabited the top of the mountain. After our failed attempts to see a monkey in Mino Park, it was time to pull out all the stops! Unlike the rest of Arashiyama, Iwatayama was not very crowded at all. After a 20-minute climb up the mountain, we started to see our first monkeys swinging in the trees above us or playing in their branches. Soon, we encountered more and more of them- sitting along the path that we were using or running across it in front of us.

There was a clearing at the top of the mountain with a building from which a person could feed the monkeys from behind a screen, accompanied by ample warnings not to try to feed them outside of the building. We, of all people, knew firsthand what happened when you mixed a herd of monkeys with some open snack food, after our experience on Mt. Popa. While the kids fed the monkeys, Trudy and I walked around the clearing and posed for some photos with the monkeys surrounding us. Monkeys were literally everywhere by that point, we had to be careful where we stepped so as not to run into one, all while trying not to stare any of them in the eyes.

On the way down the mountain was a playground that the kids wanted to stop at. There was a long slide leading down to the playground from the clearing, past which there were no more monkeys. At the bottom of the slide was a zip line, as well as a couple of see-saws. The kids seemed to have as much fun here as they did with the monkeys, they horsed around until things got a little too rough and Brennan got hurt while using the zip line. Trudy sat on a bench with Brennan until he recovered, while the rest of us started on the winding hike down the mountain. Eventually, we were all reunited at the bottom, at a small shrine near the entrance to the park.

We then walked down the Hozu River to a famous landmark, the Togetsukyo Bridge, to cross into Arashiyama proper. We watched the flat, gondola-like boats going down the river, steered by pole men. The next thing that I had planned to do was take an old steam-engine run train upriver to the little town of Sagano, then take one of these boats on the two hour long trip back down river, so we crossed the famous wooden bridge into the throngs of people who were wandering around Arashiyama.

The train station that we sought ended up being quite a hike from the bridge, but we finally arrived there after fighting the crowds for 30 minutes or so. Unfortunately, upon arriving there, we found that the tickets for all the remaining train rides for the day were sold out. In retrospect, this was probably not the best day to be visiting Arashiyama, since everyone from the surrounding area seemed to have had the same idea. We were un-thwarted, however, and quickly came up with "Plan B", a walk through some temple grounds, followed by a hike through a dense bamboo forest, and, finally, another stroll down the Hozu River, this time on the opposite shore.

As we walked back towards the center of town, we picked up some chicken and beef croquets from a store near the train station, a bag of orange chips a little farther on, and, finally, a bag of tangerines from a grocer closer to our destination. We all stood under the store awning, eating tangerines and watching the crowds shuffle by. Then, after a few stops at some nearby gift shops, we were on our way again, this time following the flow of people into the grounds of Tenryuji Temple. There, we were able to see what some of the fuss was about. The fall foliage was at its peak in Kyoto, and many of the trees in the temple grounds had turned into bright reds or yellows. The trees were particularly beautiful around the various statues, shrines, and stone bridges that could be found on the grounds, in addition to those which surrounded the temple itself.

After taking in all the sights, we headed over to the bamboo forest. At the entrance to the forest was a shop selling paper Japanese parasols. Jordan really wanted one, so she and Lisa went inside. The artist who made the parasols was inside the store and personally showed them a few umbrellas, most of which cost over $100. Since these were way out of the price range that they wanted to pay, the two of them kept asking to see less expensive ones. Finally, they found a beautiful one with a dragon on it for only $36 and got that one, along with a picture of Jordan holding it next to the artist.

As we entered the forest, there were five maiko-san on the path leading into it. We stopped long enough for all the kids to pose for pictures with them, and then continued our journey through the bamboo. As we got farther and farther from town, the crowds began to thin, until we were eventually left to explore the trails on our own. After 20 minutes of walking through the forest, the main trail wound around and headed back in the direction of the river. The sun was setting at this point, leaving us to walk back to Togetsukyo Bridge along the river in the twilight.

By 7 pm, we had reached the original train station that we had arrived at and were treated to a slightly less crowed train ride home. We still were forced to stand the entire way back, however, and Jordan fell asleep while standing and clutching onto her mom. It was 8:30 by the time we returned to Ishibashi, and we all ate at the vending machine restaurant near the station. It felt so good to sit down! Everyone was completely exhausted by that point, having been on our feet the entire day! We dragged ourselves back to the house after dinner and all went to bed early.

November 24- The Castle

We had planned another full day of touring on this day and I considered Himeji Castle another "must see" destination. Trudy was still wiped out from our trip to Arashiyama, however, and, having seen the castle already with my mother, decided to stay home for the day to get some housework accomplished. We got another late start due to various difficulties in getting the kids up and ready, and didn't end up leaving the house until close to noon. The weather was beautiful for an excursion, it had finally returned to what it had been like before Lisa's arrival, with plenty of sunshine and temperatures in the mid-50s.

By the time we had traveled to Umeda and then caught the JR train to Himeji, it was nearing 2 pm. About 20 minutes before we reached Himeji Station, Jordan had needed to use the restroom really badly. Since there was no bathroom on the train, she and Justin got off at the next stop and promised to meet us in Himeji as soon as they could. In the end, we actually didn't end up waiting very long for them, since they were able to catch an express train after the bathroom break, while the rest of us were riding one which had converted to a local.

When we finally reached Himeji, we were all very hungry, so we went to a Vie de France near the train station to have lunch. The kids had fun picking various pastries up with tongs and placing them on their trays, although they were not always impressed with their selection once they had tasted it. Between the six of us, however, we were able to eat all the food that had been chosen, with most of the questionable food being given to me. We then walked the rest of the way to the castle, arriving there about 3:15.

Instead of entering the castle proper, we headed directly to the courtyard where we were able to enter a portion of the walls which surrounded the outer keep, something that the boys had been unable to do on their first visit because of time. We of course had to remove our shoes to enter the wall, and the kids had fun running around the smooth wood floors in their socking feet, and hiding in the various anterooms while playing army. Soon, it was time to go to the castle itself, which was reached using a series of staircases surrounded on each side by tall stone walls.

Once inside the castle, we had to remove our shoes once again, but I had learned from my first visit that climbing six sets of steep stairs in slippers was as difficult a feat as it was to say really fast, so we all opted to walk around the castle in socks. There were a number of museum-like displays on the way to the sixth floor, but we passed them fairly quickly on our way to the top. Even though the castle closed at 5 pm, the last entry to the top floor occurred 30 minutes prior to this. We just made it under the wire, having hit a line of people on the fifth floor, since they only allowed so many onto the cramped sixth floor at a time. The view from the top of the castle was amazing, we took it all in for a while, but soon were encouraged to move on by the castle staff.

We spent the next 15 minutes being shooed on by the staff, first from each successive floor beneath the sixth one, then from the stairways leading down from the castle, and finally from the main courtyard which lay directly below. In each instance, we would stop to look around, along with the rest of the people who were on their way out of the castle, until a staff member came and asked us to move on. Before leaving the courtyard, we were able to take a series of beautiful photos of the sun setting beyond the castle walls.

After a stop at the gift shop outside of the castle grounds (where Nathan found a samurai sword that he really liked), we stopped for ice cream just outside of the castle moat. I had black sesame flavor, which all of the kids agreed tasted disgusting, even though I thought it was pretty good. We then continued to the train station, arriving home around 7:30. We were all famished by then and were grateful to see that Trudy had made bulgogi for dinner and had it waiting for us.

Since Justin and I were both speaking at church the next day, but had not yet prepared what we were going to say, we decided to walk to campus to get onto the internet in order to use an online concordance. Lisa and the other kids agreed to accompany us, so we all walked to campus and looked for a place where I could plug in my computer with the unreliable battery. We ended up in the stairwell of the Student Union, one of the few buildings that we could find unlocked at 10 pm on a Saturday night. Compared to American Universities on the weekends, Osaka U. seemed like a ghost town, with barely a sole in sight. As luck would have it, I could not pick up the university's wireless internet signal from the Union, so I left the others, who were either playing contently or were working on a computer that did not require the internet, and went in search of a signal.

I ended up picking up the signal back near the bus stop where we had logged on that first night, but vainly searched for an electric outlet in the area. I finally found one in a handicapped restroom nearby, but found that I would lose the internet signal as soon as I entered the hallway which led to the bathroom. I finally had an epiphany, and thought to check the courtyard where students could usually be found dancing in the evenings. I reasoned that there must be outlets for them to plug in their CD players and that it was also close enough to the Cybermedia building to pick up the wireless signal. I went there and found a live outlet, but then had problems joining the network, despite the fact that I could detect a strong signal in that location.

I then returned to the others in the Student Union and asked if I could use Nathan's computer to log in to the internet, instead. Nathan agreed, and everyone decided that they would join me in the courtyard. The main disadvantage of this location was that it was located outdoors and it had, by this time, cooled off considerably. After we got set up, I looked at Justin's progress on his communion message and saw that, after an hour in the Union, he had managed to write the title of his talk and nothing else. Meanwhile, the rest of the kids had decided that it was time for another dance party and began blaring music from the computer that I had just started working on.

I was beginning to get frustrated by this point, it was 11 pm and I had finally logged onto the internet to access a concordance, which happened to be the point at which Justin started asking me for ideas for his own talk, plus it was hard to concentrate because of the loud music. I had to chuckle to myself that I was planning on giving a message on thankfulness for the church the following day and that the whole situation called for more gratitude and less frustration on my part.

After a few dances, the younger kids were tired and ready to go home, so Lisa agreed to take them back. Shortly after that, Justin got an inspiration and typed out his entire message in about 10 minutes. Using the online concordance, I found some verses that I wanted to discuss and copied them into a file. Since we were feeling quite cold by then, we decided to head home, where I could finish out my message indoors. On the way back, we met Lisa and Jordan near the bus stop- they were just returning with some hot tea for us in a thermos to save us from the chill in the air.

At home, we all drank our tea and I worked on my message until I couldn't stay awake any longer, finally going to bed around 12:30.

November 25- International Thanksgiving Sunday

I had set the alarm for 5:30 so I could finish working on my message. After an hour or so, I was pleased with how it had turned out and walked over to campus so that I could email it to Nori, who would be translating for me during the service. I returned home to finish getting ready; Trudy and I left for church a little before 9 so I could attend the pre-service meeting and Trudy could help the women begin to prepare a Thanksgiving dinner. Since it was the weekend following the holiday, the church had declared it "International Thanksgiving Sunday" and had decided to prepare an American-style feast following the service for the first time ever. They had even printed up special invitations to mark the occasion and had asked the only American family in their midst to play a role in leading the service. Fiona was in charge of organizing all the food that was going to be served, but, being Australian, had never cooked turkey before. Trudy had therefore been called in to lend a helping hand that morning.

Around 9:45, Lisa and the kids set out for church together, but Justin soon realized that he forgot the computer that I had asked him to bring to the service and he and Nathan returned home to retrieve it. They ended up meeting Lisa and the others at the church building, since Brennan had showed Lisa how to buy tickets for the train, as well as which one to take.

We ended up having a great turnout for church, there were about 60 people there, including a record 13 Americans! In addition to the Kerrs, there was a couple from Denver who were living north of Kyoto with their two children, as well as two college-age students (who were in Japan to teach English) in attendance. Justin ended up doing a great job on his communion message and I felt that my sermon was well received. I started out talking about what Americans typically did to celebrate Thanksgiving, then went on to describe the somewhat unusual holiday we had experienced in Japan. Finally, I talked about the places the word "Thanksgiving" occurred in the Bible (mostly in Psalms), and how "thanks" is only good when you are giving it to someone else (namely God).

After the service, everyone enjoyed a wonderful meal together. The food ended up coming out perfectly, despite the lack of experience by most of the cooks, many of which had never before eaten the dishes they had prepared that day. Following dinner, Shinobu, a professional singer by trade, sang for all of us, and people went around the room saying what they were thankful for. By 3 pm, everything had wrapped up and I took all the kids back to the house, while Trudy and Lisa went shopping with Nami and Tsuneko.

Later, after the girls had returned home, they set about packing while I took the kids to the park next door to our house. They all wanted to play hide-and-seek in the twilight, which we did, until Trudy came out to call everyone inside. After we ate dinner, Jordan desperately wanted to check the courtyard on campus for the presence of dancers that we could join, a continuing quest of hers that had come up unfruitful for the last three nights in a row. Justin and Nathan therefore headed to the courtyard to check it out and called to say that there were, indeed, two dancers there. A number of us then decided to head to the courtyard to partake of the festivities, while Trudy went to the International House to pick up the wireless internet signal, and Brennan opted to remain at home.

The rest of us had a great time acting like fools, dancing around the courtyard in front of a mirrored pillar to the music that was being played by the dancers who were there. Since we were standing directly between the two of them, the music that we danced to was actually a strange mix from their two opposing stereos. After we had danced our fill, we returned to the house and went to bed.

November 26- Company Departs

I woke up at 5:30 and got Lisa up 15 minutes later. I had suggested that we leave for the airport at 6:30, in order to be there 90 minutes before her flight left. We filled an empty suitcase that she had brought with our deflated air mattress as well as the mattress pad that Trudy had bought, figuring that this was our one chance of getting them home if we could make it for the final month without them. We also sent our own suitcase filled with our summer clothes, which we would apparently no longer be needing. We left the house closer to 6:45, me pulling two large suitcases, with Lisa and the kids lugging the rest of their gear down the street to Shibahara.

Luckily, the line to check the luggage all the way to Chicago was not a long one; I made it a point to explain that Lisa’s suitcase contained a small sword, as I figured that luggage screeners didn’t like to be surprised by such things. They didn’t seem to mind much, though- I imagined that it would have been a much bigger deal it was in one of the carry-ons. It was 7:40 when they finished checking their luggage, which left time for a quick breakfast before they had to board at 8:10. We went to a Bagel Café in the airport but, after the kids had finally decided what they wanted and then the staff had explained to us that the bagel sets only came with a specific type of bagel and not your choice of them, it was 8 am by the time the food arrived. We all ate quickly and then went to the security checkpoint right at 8:10.

While arriving this late to security at almost any airport in America would have surely meant a missed flight, the situation was totally different in Japan. There were no lines to go through the 4-5 security checkpoints that had been set up, despite the fact that about 5 planes were boarding simultaneously. Lisa and the kids were whisked through the station, and were presumably soon on board their plane. After waiting for a little while just to make sure, I took the monorail from the airport directly to the medical school. I prepared the samples that I needed to submit to IPR for analysis and then walked them over to Sakari-san. Since I really didn’t have anything else pressing to do that day, I decided to board the bus for home directly afterwards from the engineering campus.

I arrived home in time to eat lunch with Trudy, during which I succeeded in finishing off all the leftover glass noodles. I had wanted to visit one last shrine in Osaka before we left Japan- Sumiyoshi Taisha, known for its purely Japanese architecture, since it pre-dated much of the Chinese influences that were adopted in Japan, and Trudy had agreed to go with me. However, after traveling to south Osaka, near where we had eaten Thanksgiving dinner, I couldn’t find the station where we needed to switch to another train. I asked a few people and eventually figured out that we needed to get on a trolley car at that point, something I had not yet done in Osaka. Trudy, however, still tired from the craziness of the proceeding week, was in no mood to search any longer, and wanted to return home. We arrived there in time to greet the kids as they returned home from school.

I then walked to Server to get drinks, along with various household items which we were out of. I was soon met there by Justin, who helped me carry it all back. We decided to order pizza for dinner, so I walked with Justin to Chicago Delighta and placed our order, and then returned to Server to exchange two of the items which were not the kind that Trudy had asked for. We finally returned home, pizza in hand. Since Brennan needed some hardware for a project that he was doing at school, the two of us set out for Kohnan after we finished eating (I had looked for the materials he needed at Server when I had first gone, hoping in vain that they would be there). We made the trip a little more enjoyable by cutting through campus past an area we had never been before, and then wandering around unfamiliar neighborhoods before arriving at the store and obtaining the desired parts.

When we finally arrived home, I took it easy the rest of the evening- figuring that I had walked for about 2 hours that day, all told.

November 27- Final Progress Report

Kiyoe came in soon after I arrived at work. She wondered how it had gone submitting my 9 samples in her absence and went over with me what I had done. After talking it over, it was her opinion that I really needed results using a high concentration of both linker histones added to the chromosome before I left for my meeting, something that I had not yet done. We therefore decided that 2 of my 9 samples could wait until the following week for analysis and that I should take the high concentration assays over to Sakari-san as soon as possible. Luckily, she also happened to mention that we had a progress report scheduled for that afternoon, which I had completely forgotten about again, despite the fact that I had prominently written it on Anna’s desk calendar.

I mixed the new binding assays together and then walked them over to the IPR; Sakari-san had gotten around to running one batch of three of my samples, but had not yet gotten to the ones which I wanted to replace. Back in the lab, I started a third large reconstitution scale-up, since I had just used all the material from the previous two. I then dialyzed the mixture into a high concentration of salt. By afternoon, I had typed up a progress report detailing the latest chromosome folding studies, which I presented at 3 pm. The meeting went well, as usual, with the next one being scheduled for the end of December, after I was planning to have left the country.

I took the 5:35 bus home in time for a dinner made up of yaki soba and barbeque chicken. After dinner, we had a family devotional and talked about only saying things that build people up and which benefit those who hear them. We then watched the latest episode of “The Office” together. We also turned on “Monday Night Football” in time to see the Steelers beat the Dolphins 3-0, in the lowest scoring game in over 60 years. We all went to bed fairly early, but Justin stayed awake to watch “Shrek 3” on my computer, since he didn’t have school the next day. He would actually have the next three days off from school due to parent-teacher conferences.

November 28- Stem Cells

I went in to work in time to change my dialysis buffer and then attend journal club. This week’s subject was actually quite interesting since it detailed a fairly major advancement. Scientists in both America and Japan had succeeded in converting adult human cells into stem cells, capable of developing into any type of cell. Since stem cells were usually derived from fertilized embryos, there had been a lot of opposition to stem cell research, especially in America. The creation of these cells from adult tissue promised to appease most moral objections to this type of research. I had given talks on the ethics of stem cell research in America and therefore tried to keep up with the field. Perhaps because of this, my late grandmother was convinced that I actually worked on stem cells, something that she proudly announced to a table full of Republican members of the House of Representatives at the inauguration party for Speaker Dennis Hastert, which we attended together in 2003. Despite my familiarity with the topic, I did find the technical details of the paper fairly difficult to follow, especially when discussed in Japanese.

The rest of the day was spend making my dialysis buffer changes and doing various administrative tasks as I waited for my latest results to come back from IPR: I wrote a letter of reference for a student who was applying to graduate schools back in the States, wrote up a short proposal asking Osaka U. to help support my upcoming trip to Tokyo, and I did some calculations concerning my previous data that Kiyoe’s student had asked me about following my progress report. I also read through an article about the origins of a Parkinson disease gene that I had agreed to review before it was accepted for publication. Although I had reviewed grant applications before, I had never been asked before to review a scientific article. When I received an email from the Journal of Molecular Evolution asking if I would do this, I was thrilled that they had thought of me, and just couldn’t refuse. In the afternoon, I went to kanji table and this time was assigned to a lady who had never attended before. She spoke good English, however, and helped me read through my workbook, starting from where I had left off the previous semester.

I left work at 5:30 in order to meet Justin at Mikuni so we could go to church together. For dinner, I had found another restaurant on the internet that I wanted to try. I had printed up a map to get to “Happy Bali”, an Indonesian restaurant which was not too far from the train station. The place was deserted when we entered, not unlike Cha Cha’s on a typical Wednesday night. The food was excellent, though. We shared some spring rolls, then I had fried noodles, while Justin ordered tacos. This last dish, while not technically an Indonesian dish, was different from the Mexican variety as well- Justin was kind enough to give me a taste. We finished off our meal with fried bananas for dessert.

For the midweek service, the men and the women split up to have their own discussions. Near the end of ours, the men asked what Justin and I had learned in Japan that would continue to affect us after we returned had home. We both agreed that we would be more grateful, even for the little things that we might be tempted to take for granted, upon our return to America. Tadashi gave us a ride home after service, arriving there about 10:30. I, for my part, went straight to bed, but Justin stayed up for a while longer since he did not have to wake up early to go to school.

November 29- Fifth Writing Assignment

I took a sample of my third reconstitution scale up and started cutting it with enzymes as soon as I got in to work. Kiyoe stopped by my desk midmorning to ask me something. She made it clear that she didn’t want me to feel pressured to answer in the affirmative, but she had received a request to write another review paper and knew that she, personally, would have no time to do it. This time the review would appear in the International Journal of Developmental Biology, and had to be 10,000 words, over twice as long as our last one. The good news was that it wasn’t due until March 1. I told her that I would think about it, knowing full well that I probably would agree to do it. Maybe I have a problem with saying “no” to things, but I did enjoy writing, and the last review seemed to flow fairly easily, once I had actually got around to starting on it. In addition, the requested subject was “Linker histones and development”, something that I had considered writing about for the last, completely open-ended review. This meant that I had read a number of the pertinent papers already and would just have to add to this number, instead of starting completely from scratch.

I poured a gel in the afternoon so that I could run my sample on it overnight. There had still been no word from Sakari-san, who had presumably run all of the samples I had given her earlier in the week. I told Kiyoe I that would write the review, and she emailed the information to the editors of the journal. Before I left for home, I loaded my sample onto the gel in the coldroom and started it running. I then left on the 6:15 bus.

Trudy had made seasoned beef for dinner, which we ate over rice. Brennan said the prayer for dinner, thanking God with a slight hint of sarcasm, that we got to “eat rice every day of our lives”. I think he was getting a little tired of the food in Japan. Trudy had been asked to lead the woman’s devotional that day. She had given a lesson on how to do “family devotionals” with your kids every week. The women were very interested in all that she had to say. After dinner, we surprised Trudy by watching “National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation” on the computer. Justin had asked me to have Anna download it, knowing that his mom would be thrilled, it being her favorite Christmas movie. We all turned in fairly early that evening, after the movie had ended.

November 30- Magnesium

I stained my gel as soon as I got in to work; thankfully it looked just as good as my second reconstitution had. I showed Kiyoe, who was pleased that we had gotten more sample to work with without any trouble. As we talked, I brought up a recent paper that she had asked me to read. In it, the authors had used magnesium to precipitate, and therefore purify, their samples after adding linker histones to them. Their approach was particularly appealing, since it allowed them to measure the exact ratios of linker histones to the core histones, something that we had been unable to do up to that point. Kiyoe suggested that I try their method, which was only slightly different from the one that I had previously attempted, that had resulted in a loss of our sample.

I decided to work with some of the old samples that I had kept around, but presumably would not be needing any longer- since they had already been analyzed using the ultracentrifuge. I followed the simple procedure: adding magnesium, waiting 5 minutes, and then spinning in a centrifuge for 10 minutes; then ran the samples on a small gel. The results were surprising- not only had I recovered all of my samples, but the samples containing concentrations of histone H1A which had decondensed the chromosomes and shifted them up the tube, instead of down, proved difficult to precipitate, with much of the DNA ending up in solution, not in the pellet. It seemed that I had stumbled upon a simple test for decondensation that did not rely on analysis using a $100,000 ultracentrifuge.

I then repeated the magnesium precipitations on the samples which contained B4 linker histone, with much the same results. Kiyoe suggested that I scale-up the procedure to precipitate enough material to load on a protein gel, just as they had done in the paper we had discussed. This time, I would need ten times the amount that I had used for the DNA gel, since the proteins in my samples would be harder to detect. She asked if I could run the gel over the weekend so we could have the results on Monday morning. I agreed, even though I had already planned out a very busy weekend.

Since it was her “early day”, Kiyoe was leaving the building as I hurried to catch the 6:15 bus. She told me that she had finally received some results from Sakari-san and had just emailed them to me. I figured that I would have to check them from home. Trudy had made beef over noodles for dinner. She and Justin, who had experienced his final day off due to parent-teacher conferences, had called America in order to talk to my six year old niece, Alexis, about her upcoming surgery to remove her tonsils and adenoids. Justin was primarily who she wanted to talk with, since he was our family expert in this procedure, having undergone the operation himself. This was the only time that our family made an overseas call during our stay in Japan, all other verbal communication having been accomplished over the internet using Skype, a program that had allowed us to call our family members for free.

After dinner, Brennan and I walked to campus to get onto the internet, so I would be able to download the data that Kiyoe sent me. I analyzed the data when we returned home, but found that, out of the 11 samples I had submitted, only one of them had been included in the email that Kiyoe had forwarded me. Alone, this sample didn’t really tell us anything.

December 1- Boys’ Day Out

The boys had been looking forward to returning to Spa World on December 1st, since we had last been there in July and the men’s public baths moved from “Europe” to “Asia” every other month. December was finally going to be our chance to visit Europe, since we had been to Asia in July. Fortunately, I happened to check their webpage the previous day to see if they were still running a special on their admission. I had thus found out that the women were going to be in Europe during December, for the second month in a row. Since I knew the boys would be disappointed, I had searched around for some place that was just as cool, assuming that they would not want to visit Asia a second time. I had finally located another public bath and swimming pool complex near the Osaka aquarium. The pool looked especially neat, since it was suspended in mid-air and was made of see-through acrylic.

We finally got going about 11. Before going to the water park, however, we headed to Umeda to check the movie show times. Since it was the first of the month, movies were only 1000 yen, and Justin wanted to go see “Saw 4”. When we arrived, there were already lines of people at the theater waiting to buy tickets. I decided that I better wait as well, before they were all sold out. It took me about 20 minutes to secure two tickets to the 6:30 showing. We then ate lunch at Subway before finally heading to the water park complex.

Once we arrived, we were disappointed to hear that the pool was closed between October and March, something that the internet had failed to mention. We made the best of it, however, by heading to the public bath. Although the bath wasn’t themed after any particular continent, it did have all the basics: two different hot baths, two different types of massage baths, a sauna, and an ice cold bath to jump into after using the sauna. Justin mainly liked the fact that he could take a shower for as long as he liked and could use as much soap and shampoo as he wanted to.

After bathing for about two hours, we got dressed and headed to their snack bar for some refreshments. Since we still had time before the movie, we then went to the local arcade for an hour or so. We arrived back in Umeda about 5:30, where we put Brennan on a homeward bound train, since he had no interest in seeing the movie. Justin and I walked up a street that we had not ventured up before until we found a nice place to have dinner: a New York-style bagel bakery. There, I had a teriyaki chicken bagel sandwich, while Justin ordered a “Christmas Chicken” bagel, although we had no idea, either before or after he ordered it, what made it particularly Christmas-like.

Walking back to the movie theater did feel like Christmas, since one of the department stores was blowing soap flakes into the air so that it really looked like it was snowing. We enjoyed what would most likely be our last movie in Japan, but must have been feeling particularly rebellious, since we left the theater without watching all of the credits! We took the train home, arriving there around 9:30.

December 2- Sumiyoshi Shrine

Since it was evident that Justin was running a little behind getting ready for church, I encouraged Trudy and Brennan to meet us there. Justin had become notorious in our family for making us late by taking so long in the morning. The two of us made it to church about 5 minutes late, but they luckily hadn’t started anything yet. We had a guest speaker on this particular day, the leader of the Nagoya church and his wife were in town for the weekend. He was a medical doctor and possessed a broad knowledge about a range of topics. His sermon, however, was a little hard to follow, even for the Japanese members. He spent over 30 minutes talking about Sigmund Freud’s lifelong addiction to smoking and then told the story of Judah, one of Joseph’s 11 brothers, for an equal period of time. We weren’t sure afterwards how it was all supposed to tie together, but at least we had learned something about 19th century Vienna.

Justin and I had decided to take Trudy and Brennan to Happy Bali, a fact that we happened to mention to a few of the church members. Soon, a whole group of people decided to join us there- we ended up having a party of 11. Brennan had fried rice, as I had expected he would, while Trudy had the fried noodles that I had ordered the first time I had gone. I tried the glass noodles this time, while Justin had chicken curry. Trudy and Brennan thought it was delicious, another fact that I had predicted ahead of time.

After we ate, Trudy agreed to give the shrine that I had been wanting to go to another try. The kids, however, didn’t feel like going, so Takashi and Tsuneko agreed to drop them off at the train station from which they could head home, instead. This time, our trip to the shrine went without a hitch. Once we reached the Tennoji area, we quickly found where we had to board a trolley car for the remainder of the trip. We arrived at Sumiyoshi Shrine about 4 pm.

The shrine was a beautiful and serene place. There were huge lanterns lining the entire walkway there which reminded us of Mount Koya. We crossed over a river to get to the main shrine by walking over the neatest bridge that I had seen in Japan. It was a wooden bridge which made a tall arch over the river that we had to climb using low steps. The fountain in which to purify yourself before entering the shrine was also unique, in that it was in the shape of a rabbit with the water coming out of its mouth. We realized about 10 minutes ahead of time that they were going to close the shrine at 5 pm, but we still had plenty of time to walk around the grounds and to look at the thatched roof buildings before they did so. It was starting to get dark as we walked out thorough the shrine’s main stone tori gate.

We then boarded a different train line from the one we had arrived on in order to head into my work for a while. I had told Kiyoe that I would accomplish the experiments that she had wanted me to do, and the weekend wasn’t over yet! It took us about 90 minutes to reach my laboratory via the train, subway, and monorail, respectively. We stopped off along the way and got pizza, a hot dog in a croissant, as well as some dessert at a bakery, which we took to my office to eat for dinner.

I used magnesium to precipitate a fairly large amount of each sample that we wanted to check, and then started the resulting fractions running for 90 minutes on a protein gel. While I waited for the gel to run, I ate dinner and then loaded the DNA samples onto a gel in the cold room. Since it was after 9 by the time my protein gel was done, I put the gel into a solution that would preserve it until morning, as it was going to take another 90 minutes to stain and to scan it. We arrived home around 10 pm and soon headed to bed.

December 3- A Flood of Data

I took the 8:10 bus in and started the protein gel staining right away, since it would take a whole hour. In the meantime, I stained the DNA gel and found that the magnesium precipitated samples still shifted higher in the gel as more and more linker histone was added. When I checked my email, I found that Kiyoe had emailed me some of the ultracentrifuge results over the weekend. Looking at them, I came to the conclusion that the chimeric histones which contained half B4 and half H1A behaved most like the histone from which they had received their central, compact "globular" region, not like the one from which they received their long, extended "tail". This was the opposite of what Kiyoe had predicted, but was precisely what our mutual postdoctoral boss, Alan, had predicted before he died. Despite this finding, I tried to avoid running into Kiyoe until I had the results back from the protein gel, since I didn't want to advertise the fact that I had waited until Sunday evening to run the gel.

Luckily, Kiyoe didn't stop by my desk until soon after I had stained the protein gel. While the gel didn't look great, it did answer one of the questions that we had recently pondered, whether the "chaperone" protein we had added during the reconstitution had precipitated, along with the chromosomes- it had, although we were hoping that it would not. We also discussed the ultracentrifuge results and decided that what we really needed was one more batch of samples analyzed before I went to the meeting: the two chimeric proteins mixed with the original reconstitution in just the right amounts. Soon, I had mixed these together and walked them over to Sakari-san. I took this opportunity to ask her how I could manipulate the data to make my own graphs of the results, something that I would have to do before too long.

As the day went on, we received more and more data from Sakari-san, via email. By the end of the day, we had data from 9 of the 11 samples I had submitted (not counting the three new ones I had dropped off that day). Before I left work, I started re-reading the paper concerning the Parkinson's Disease gene that I needed to submit a review for by the end of the week. I left for home on the 6:35 bus.

After a dinner consisting of salad and pasta, Trudy and the kids played spades, while I finished re-reading the paper and making corrections. It was 11:30 by the time we all went to bed.

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