I am now staying in Okinawa.
It is real summer time.
In the early morning, temperature is already around 30°C.
The color of sea and sky is real summer time.
I always explained Okinawa is a subtropical island, but should change to say that it becomes sometime real tropical during summer.
I have changed the photo of this blog. It is the Hyakumanben corner which can be seen from the window of my office in the lab. Hyakumanben means million times. The pray of that number will save us, that is the doctrine of the temple nearby. If you click the photo, you get enlargement of photo showing the busy traffics of the corner. Many things have changed around the corner last 10 years.
While my intention to work in Okinawa is to make an effort toward the possibility of doing a world class research within five years from the zero level without the use of my previous research resource accumulated in Kyoto University, it did not seem to be understood at all by younger Japanese professors. I felt that I was considered to be the luckiest or greedy boss to have the two labs in Kyoto and Okinawa by influential younger generation researchers in Japan. Therefore this professor K in Tokyo X University called me like a criminal to apply for the research fund for JSPS to continue on chromosome condensation and segregation. He even took a mission to reject my grant application on condensin as the head of the JSPS committee by asking many amazingly ignorant questions.
I feel very sad and also angry. As my effort in Okinawa was considered by such a distorted view.
To be honest, who else in Japan could do the level of our work accomplished in Okinawa?
I wish at least a few Japanese later sometime will take a look at me as a patriotic researcher.
a postscript
The fund for the research in Okinawa comes from the Cabinet Office of Japan then to the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Promotion Corporation. The fund is not a competitive one, a part of the operating expense of the OIST PC.
The main task of lab head is to ignite the motivation of and encourage lab people. This must be true everywhere. In Okinawa, we had no neighbor campus, nothing. The IRP institute had three groups working on rather distant projects (other EM lab is located near Tokyo). We thus did not expect daily stimulus that can be easily obtained in the big university campus. Our lab started by two post-docs and two technicians and later its size increased twice or three times. One graduate student joined us from the Nara Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He received PhD last year. The resarch project should be understood by technicians, and even liked by them. My belief is that this point is most important for the success of lab.
Several years later, I saw the posters of our lab explaining the research contents to visiting citizens, which were made by our lab people and fantastically beautiful and readable for everybody. I was so pleased to see these posters, as they showed some striking accomplishment in our lab. I also asked technicians to work from 9 to 5 and no longer.
Post-docs must work for their future, but technicians usually have different idea for their life. Therefore, it is essential for me to motivate the technicians for their own life, and motivated people do excellent work.
When our lab in Okinawa was initiated, I thought that my mission was to prove that initiating and conducting a so called world class research was possible in Okinawa. I thought that it was a real challenge. For realizing this, I decided to make such research plan starting from the zero level, not based on my research on chromosome segregation conducted in Kyoto University. Hence I proposed to identify and characterize the genes required for maintaining the non-dividing G0 (gzero) cells, as a model of post-mitotic cells such as muscle cells and neurons. I am greatly indebted to the tremendous courage of the OIST selection committed to chose our very adventurous project.
After six years in Okinawa, I am proud to say that the greater part of the initial proposal has been accomplished and am confident that we now know how to make a road toward the world class research in Okinawa. Young motivated researchers will be inevitably born with the success of research projects, I believe.