I travelled last ten days (September 26-October 5) in France and England. The meeting on chromosome segregation was held at a small town called Arcachon near Bordaux. I stayed one night at a hotel nearby the central railway station Bordeaux St Jean, as I wanted to visit even a few hours Saint Emilion that is famous for its hundreds of wine chateaux. My visit was very short but was really worth for it. Grapes were just before harvesting. The weather was fine. I really enjoyed to see everything there.
In Archcho, I saw one kaki tree (photo shown).
Ancestors of the native Taiwanese people seemed to be great sailors and their current language are very close to many islanders in Africa, Indonesia and Pacific. According to the articles I read, these native Taiwanese are the origins of many islanders except Papua New Guinea. They started to sail around 5-7th century in the Pacific. Some might come to Japan although it would be difficult now to find their genetic traits among the current Japanese.
While I am not reading the original publications, there appear to be intensive investigations of the DNAs of human bones in many Japanese ruins. I do not how much trustworthy the reviews I have read were, but there seems to be a safe consensus that the bone DNAs from the ruins at the times of Jyomons or Yayois were rather different. People lived in the Japanese islands in the period of Jyomons did not do rice culture but had more or less hunting life. Their pottery is strikingly different from that of Yayoi as any Japanese learn that in the elementary school. An example of the Jyomon pot is borrowed from the internet.
To understand the Japanese culture and history, solid knowledge about the Jyomon people and their culture is crucial.
On February 27th, the G0 lab in Okinawa received the visit of the five-membered committee to evaluate our studies. All of the members are very well known and world experts in the field. It was really a great experience for me and all of the lab members. Perhaps I should not detail how the visit proceeded.
I must say I really spent a long time to prepare the report of the ongoing and past research in the G0 unit, and now feel that the visit was so rewarding for that effort.
I have now a rosy picture in the future of the unit.
The name of Mr Obama stimulated me to think about the Japanese (family) names, which are rather different from those of Koreans (and Chinese too). The Japanese names are longer and contain more vowels.
I have some doubt that the current Korean family names may be quite distinct from the ancient ones. The areas I live were one of the immigration routes for ancient Koreans, and the town names such as Wani, Hira and Ono are believed to be the names of ancient Koreans, but these do not sound like the current Korean names.
As long as I understand the recent findings on the evolution of Japanese in the Japanese islands, the DNA markers examined are surprisingly homogenous and seemingly originated from the northern Asian area (near Baikal).
The previously held popular concept was that the ancient Japanese were invaded by the people from the mainland (probably through Korean peninsula) and split into the northern ancient people (Ainu) and the southern ancient people (Okinawa). This seems to be wrong. Ainu, Okinawa and the main Japanese island people possess the DNA markers just alike.
This poses a number of questions, but I like the new DNA result, which makes more sense to me. (this continued)
Obama means a small beach in Japanese.
I can think about only two nouns for Obama in Japanese.
The city of Obama, an ancient port and fisherman town in the Obama-bay connecting to the Japan sea. The city is famous for the National Treasure temple and the delicous sushi of Tai and mackerell. It is located less than 100 km from my house and I was there several times. The temple was worth to visit. The ancient Obama town was the port for the Korea penninsula. I heard that people in the city is enthusiastic to the presidential candidate because of the same name.
The other is a family name. Obama-san. It is not a rare name but also not a common name.
The most famous Obama in the history was probably Ritoku Obama, a political commentator. He was sour-tasted and too straightforward speaker but he kept certain popularity because of his intense humor.
If Barack Obama shall become the president of the USA this year and visit Japan, he will be very popular in Japan one reason for his friendly name to Japanee. He wiould the first USA president whose name pronounce exactly the same as a Japanese faimily name.
I understand that the name of Obama is the Kenyan faimily name.
Hs father, a muslim, died but his grand parents live in a simple village. According to the news, they pray for his victory everyday.
He then would become the first USA president with the genuine African name and some muslim culture background.
His popularity is so prevailing in USA, perhaps will spread throughout all the wordl if he once completed his success in the USA.
Personally I cannot like his speach.
I decided to buy an AirMac of Apple Computer ten days ago and ordered it.
I am waiting for a new life with this light 1.3 kg computer.
I do not know how much change my next life will be.
I walk a lot everyday always with a backpac carrying 2.7 kg Powerbook G4 so that my next life will be surely lighter than now.
Anything else for new life?
I do not know, but I decided to take a closer look into the numerous files I have in my computer. Because all of the lab people's data are in, they are often too much and deleted from the computer to make the space in the hard disc.
I bought a 1000 G hard disc to compile in a more ordered way.
So my next life will be lighter and in more order.