Day 2 in Japan: Bit of wandering, bit of science and 3 square meals at last

So after a good 12ish hour sleep I was much refreshed and ready to tackle the day. Such a shame that I’d fallen asleep at six so the day was starting at about 6:50. Still there were a few things left to do, namely figure out what everything in my room in the guesthouse was, all the labels are in Japanese. Also this was a unique chance to watch some Japanese TV. For some reason the first channel I flicked to had people doing aerobics. Weird ey?

Anyway showered and done tidying I wandered over to the cafeteria for my first taste of a Japanese breakfast. I was dammed hungry having not really eaten since 1:30 the previous afternoon. There was a lot on selection and I’m still not entirely sure what most of it was. Generally though it was Oishii (delicious), in particular the seaweed (the black stuff) and the yams (the little round grey things). I also gave the natto a go (fermented soybeans) deffo an acquired taste.

Now fed I went back to my room to chill a bit and got a call from Liam and Cheung (my collegues). They’d arrived at silly o’clock last night after an even more mental journey than mine. I sorted them out with breakfast and then went off to meet Yamamoto-San my new supervisor.

I got a brief introduction to a few members of the lab, can’t really remember anyone’s name apart from Hinami Takahaki but they seemed pretty nice. I tried my best with a bit of Japanese but I’m still a bit hopeless. Takahaki-san showed me round the wet lab and where all the reagents were. I took a few pictures mainly so I could learn the safety labels, important stuff. Takahaki-San also informed me that there would be a meeting with the whole of Spring-8 at 1:30 and myself Liam and Cheung where invited. Sounded cool I couldn’t wait.

So I headed back to get Liam and Cheung and we headed off to the high-throughput building to try and sort out our passes. Unfortunately for me all my paper work was in my main luggage so no pass for me. Still the other guys were sorted and I had a visitor pass.

Anyway it was like 12:30 now so we had to grab a quick lunch.  I was so happy it was bento boxes for lunch today and I’d been looking forward to them. They are essentially just a mix of things local to the region in, surprise surprise, a box. Sadly due to some confusion trying to explain my allergies the staff prepared a ‘special’ meal for me. This was basically just rice, some yams, a bit of fruit and some seaweed, A.K.A  chooshoku no refutobarusa (breakfast leftovers). Well twas alright since I didn't have time to enjoy it anyway.

We got a lift to the XFEL conference room from Takahaki-San. It was nice to finally see the beast up close, and it was no less impressive. The inside was lush, everything looked pretty new. The first half of the meeting consisted of an awards ceremony and two talks from the research groups that had won the special awards for outstanding research. I won’t pretend I understood the first one. Japanese or not it was all about materials science, which I have no expertise in. I think they were developing a new titanium oxide for use in fuel cells, batteries for everything from Kuruma (cars) to keitei (mobile phones). Exciting but completely over my head. The second was more biochemistry based, I think it was something about a new pipeline they were developing for screening membrane protein concretes based on the fluorescent protein tag GFP.

*Danger Bazman, Science*

Woah there buddy take a breath. Haha basically at Spring8 due to the uniquely large access to lots of X-ray radiation there are a lot of groups here interested in structural biology, the study of the 3 dimensional shape of proteins right down to the atomic scale. The main method for this is protein crystallography, producing crystal lattices of proteins where all the proteins in the lattice are in the same orientation. This allows you to do some funky things with X-ray diffraction which I won't go into here but the end result is you can work out where individual atoms within a protein are.

The problem was that this group was interested in membrane proteins. In particular the trans-membrane, those that span the internal are of a cell and it’s exterior, acetylcholine receptors, these are crucial for the transduction of nerve impulses, in insects. They were studying what structural properties of these proteins meant they were specifically inhibited by various insecticidal toxins, like some spider venoms. Anyway membrane proteins are notoriously difficult to produce and even harder to crystallise. This group had set up a system whereby the proteins were tagged with a protein that glows green under certain light. The level of fluorescence gives a good indication of how well folded the protein is, the better folded the more useful the protein, and so how well it may crystallise. Pretty interesting right? No? Just me?

*Science ends*

Right so after that there was a big photo shoot that we were invited to be involved in. Everyone seemed to know who I was which was a bit embarrassing. After that there was a poster session featuring the work of all the research groups. I had a good chat with some of the members from my group and then had a wander, got some freebies to distribute back home to.. I met the other IPA (International programme associate) working here. His name was Nam and he was an engineer from Korea. I won’t lie I was relived to meet someone closer to my age. His project is similar to mine only involving a liquid phase droplet system rather than as phase. He’d been here a year already and told me that there were Japanese lessons provided by Riken, which made me a happy bunny.

So after that I went back to the office to use the web and catch up on emails etc. I also got a wonderful surprise when I used the toilet. For the record, never push the buttons. Ever, Then it was time for the final meal of the day. Someone helped me out a bit explaining my allergies o the staff and this time I got something much better. Ramen noodles with tempura squid, basically calamari, and fried bean curd. Tasty stuff. Though sweeter than expected. After a pretty packed day I hit the sack, needed to rest up for a weekend of exploring.