WINTER TRIPS of 2006

The later half of the month of February is generally eventful as the university organizes winter trips. I remember the fond memories of my trip to Okinawa on last year, and hoped there could be more fun over this time around. I was fortunate to make into two trips - A ski tour to Rokuroshi Highlands and Kyoto-Nara trip.

The Ski tour was organized by Prof. Nakashima of Bunkyo campus. We went in a group of 30 students to Rokuroshi Highlands, a 1 hour drive from Fukui. The first day was pretty cold with intermittent snowfall. After having a short lunch, we adorned our ski gears to go for the slide. With me being novice, it took a while to balance with a proper stance. Thereafter it was fun skidding and making all sorts of side, front and back falls often colliding with others. The ensuing onsen (hot spring) bath and sauna made it a refreshing experience all together. The evening dinner party was fun-filled with lots of singing, dancing and enacting talents in full-flow. The next day was even brighter with blue skies and was perfect for skiing. The final glide from the mountain top was the best part with Prof. Yamamoto teaching the skills needed to control the slide. It was satisfying moment when I could make a long final slide without fall!

Rokuroshi Highlands

The Kyoto-Nara trip was organized by University of Fukui, as a part of annual winter trip. More than 50 students got an opportunity to make for it. The first day was spent at Kyoto visiting only two of more than 1000 historical temples. We also were taken to Kiyomizu pottery arena where each one of us had a chance to make cups or saucers. The evening traditional Japanese dinner had few surprises to the taste buds exploring exotic flavors of sea food dishes.

The next day was a visit to Japan's ancient capital city - Nara. The first place to visit there was Nara Deer park, where in nearly 1800 Shikas (deers) make their abode. The park also had a famous Todaiji temple where exists the largest buddha idol (Daibutsu) of Japan. It also contains a large Shinto shrine (Jinja) containing around 3000 lanterns. Then two other nearby temples -Kohfukuji and Byodoin were visited and their historical importance were learned.

Kiyomizu Pottery work (Made a large tea cup)

Kinkakuji Otera (Golden Temple) at Kyoto

Daibutsu (Large Buddha) at Nara Deer Park

TREE ICICLES

According to standard weather records of Japan, the peak winter coldness is on the last week of January with varying low temperatures from north (-20 deg C at Hokkaido)to south (+15 deg C at Okinawa). I was glad that it was over and began to feel for the rise in temperatures. Instead, I felt the most chilliest of all, over this week, when the temperature dropped to well below zero degree centigrades following a fresh snowfall.





In such adverse conditions, one can also come across few brilliant natural spectacles too..The 'Tree icicles' is one of them.(I coined the word 'tree icicles' since I am not sure if they have any particular term). I was perplexed as to why it formed only on few of the roadside trees. I could see only on 3 of them while walking from my dormitory to my office, out of more than 25 roadside trees!!!!

On my research front, I did get first mouse microPET images following FES injection. Contrary to my expectations, I could perform the experiments with the help of Kobayashi-san without any major flaws.
Towards the end of week, I got an icing on the cake when I found my first research paper got published.
Feels like writing more..but, my fingers are getting numb being exposed to coldness pressing the keyboard as I am composing this at home!!!

Takes of the Week

The days seems to fly by as I realize it's already a week past since my previous post in the blog. Few things of interest do happened in this short period. I had a good discussion with Kobayashi-san about the new microPET (Hamamatsu SHR-41000) installed in our lab. He was kind enough to show me the basic operations of image capture window and reconstruction methodologies using the pc console. It was a necessity since there was no english manual currently available for the machine. The standardization was complete by the week and he informed me that I can perform the first mouse imaging on next week.
In this week's japanese lessons, I had a revision of "kanji" characters from two chapters (30 & 31) of Minna no nihongo 2. Though I tried to gobble up few of them before the actual class, it was a testing challenge for my visual memory. I feel that it is the most toughest task to recollect them even if you have observed them a few moments before. To be frank it is mental exertion at its peak!! However, at the end of day, I feel satisfied when I recognize the characters accidentally while I am out.
The week also brought a good news from my boss. I got a new post of Assistant Researcher since I am now in second grade of my doctoral program. It means I have to show up a job of 6hrs/week. Fortunately, it will be included in the already existing time schedule of my research work. So no more extras!!!
I also came to know that it costs nearly 23,000yen/FDG-PET scan with insurance cover in my University, an MRI scan as low as 5,000yen and that there are two PET facilities in Fukui...
Towards the end of week, boss came in and mentioned that a new Japanese Society of Molecular Imaging has been set up by a committee of 15 founding members and he is the key chairman of the society...also said that he worked hard for the past 6 months to make it happen...Amazing job!
Few other things too happened...had to finish here as i have to spare my time for other things..more next time....

CHILLY WORLD!!!!

I got back to my workland in the end of December after a brief sojourn in my homeland only to be surprised by the enormity of chilly, snowy but eye-catching views of scenic beauty as I rode from Nagoya to Fukui....I had heard from the news channels in India beaming about the record snowfall happening in Japan this year...I was visibly awestruck to see the snow pile-up on the landscapes spanning all across from the Chubu airport till the Fukui station as I traveled in the Inter-city bus. A cold air mass blew hard as i got out of the bus at the station.....just realised for a moment that I have to sustain and survive in this chilly world for the next 3 months to come...

Yeah, those were the days of last month still afresh in memories forcing me to pen few comments on it....The ensuing Christmas and New year was celebrated indoors with snowy splendor all around...
During this new season a lot happened --

• Distributing "homiyage = souvenirs" to all my near and dear ones in fukui including the BOSS, dept. colleagues, apartment colleagues-kin, godfrey; oba-chan and takashima-san..
• Small dispute with a close friend, which really took a long time to reconcile than expected
• Got net connection (thanks to Nakakoji-san) to my room in the dormitory..had to settle with ISDN conxn after knowing that only my dormitory in our lane cannot get broadband ADSL or Hikari network due to metal-fibre incompatability in the vicinity....never thought such drawbacks can occur in developed nation!!!
• Weekly grocery shopping was done in new way....boarding the university bus on a weekday, get down at Bunkyo campus and shop at Mitsuwa...
• My fortune--in spite of ISDN conxn, voice chat through Skype or yahoo msgr works..my joy knew no bounds when I spoke to my family and friends in Singapore and USA
• I set my japanese OS computer (which was idle on my desk for a long time) to use...thanks to Kathy for sending her japanese presentation to be converted into english...a challenging task, but got inspired by her accuracy in composition, clarity and the grammar..way to go...
• Lastly, I decided finally to publish happenings of my life in the BLOG....the motivation came from a newspaper article on blogging....ready, set bloggooooooo