We’re currently in the middle of a Typhoon here in Japan!

Shows how dedicated we are, though, ’cause we’re still going to be running our experiments tonight!

We already brought all of our flasks over to the HIMAC facility where we will be irradiating our cells, so the only thing we really have to worry about is getting wet/blowing away walking over there.

Well since Chris wrote a lot, I figured I would post a bunch of pictures to along with his narrative =)

My name is Michelle, and I’m here with Chris & several other graduate students. We are conducting research at the NIRS institute in Chiba, Japan, which houses one of the premier cancer therapy centers in the world. One of the draws of this facility is the fact that they have a heavy ion medical accelerator (HIMAC). On our tour yesterday, we learned that the reason that heavy ions are the ‘next big thing’ in cancer treatment is because they are effective against hypoxic tumors. Japan is one of two facilities in the world to offer this cutting-edge technology.

Yesterday, we had the opportunity to go to dinner with several scientists from the NIRS institute. One of them – Dr. Okayasu – knows my mom! Crazy how small this world is.

Chris & I have only been here for two days now, and today marks the start of our experiments. Tonight the ion beam will be diverted to the ‘research’ side of the facility, and we’ll have the opportunity to utilize carbon ions for our experiments. It’s going to be a busy day! Hopefully the typhoon doesn’t cause us too many problems.

So I slept for 11 hours my first night here and believe it or not it wasn’t enough, guess I undersestimated how tired I’d be after my first trip abroad. Breakfast consisted of the yogurt and frosted flakes we bought at Aeon last night. By the way, all portions in Japan are much smaller, much smaller. After breakfast we all met and went to the lab for a meeting. Turns out the meeting is tomorrow instead so Team B (the three of us who came to Japan a week later) watched a radiation training video (snoresville). Oh, when we got to the lab we also met most of the people working in our lab and watched a video. It was the son of one of the ladies in the lab and his water polo team had choreographed a synchronized swimming “dance” (?) I know it sounds odd but it was very funny.

Then it was time for lunch. I feel like a lot of my posts will discuss my meals because they are sooo good. There is a cafeteria on campus and to order you put money i a vending machine, press a button, a ticket pops out and you hand it to the chefs. Most of the time the choices are written in Japanese so it can be a bit of gamble but there is usually pictures to accompany the choices. Today we had miso flavored ramen and it was absolutely delicious. Plus it’s good manners to slurp your ramen so that’s a bonus!

After that we went on a tour of the HIMAC facility and the medical center on the NIRS campus. A HUGE shoutout to Mr. Motoki Kumagai, Ms. Yuka Matsuzaki, Mr. Yasuhisa Fujibayashi, and Mr. Hiroshi Ishihara who presented different areas of the facilities to us. All of the technicians, scientists, professors, etc have been incredibly kind and helpful to us. All of these presenters were prepared and excited to teach us today and they were all very prepared. I must say that the facilities are absolutely beautiful and state of the art and everyone very courteous and knowledgeable. All the machines are state of the art and anyone would be lucky to be treated for cancer here. Again I will try to upload pictures.

After the tour we spent the rest of the afternoon working in lab and then it was time for dinner. Dr. Fujimori took us out to a local restaurant. It was funny because when he asked if another man wanted to join us he just said “what? that’s just a bar!” and we all laughed. Again the food was very good we even got to eat Mt. Fuji! After dinner we made a quick trip to Aeon for some snacks and then went back to the lab. We worked in the lab from about 10pm to 12:30 am plating our cells and getting prepared for our first beam time tomorrow. Because all of our beam times are in the middle of the night I think that we are going to be doing the majority of our work late at night, a blessing and a curse.

Also when we were walking to and from lab tonight it was raining very hard. Surprise there is a typhoon coming in tomorrow! Yay Japan is just full of surprises. S far all of them have been good. Lissa is borrowing the cord for my camera so I will try to upload pics ASAP. Peace

The guest houses are all very nice and very…efficient. There is a bedroom with desk, bed and closet, a kitchen with sink, refrigerator, microwave, and washing machine, and a bathroom with a shower that you can set the water temperature digitally on. After we got settled in our rooms we went out to dinner for sushi and some beautiful fresh sushi at a local restaurant in Chiba, I will try to upload pictures later. After that we went to Aeon for some essentials. By the way Aeon is a huge superstore where you can buy almost anything… including an electrical adapter so your computer plugs into the wall here. After Aeon I fell asleep right away because yes I had been awake for over 24 hours straight, thanks for asking!

I’ll post the next day in a separate post because a lot happened! Obviously

The rest of this week has mostly been spent in our office.  I share a room with Adam, another intern, and a couple other people conducting research at Harbor Branch.  So far I’ve written an introduction and methods section summarizing why our study will be beneficial and what type of work we will be doing.  Each intern has to write a paper and present their completed research at the end of the summer, so I already have a lot of work for that done!  We have also collected and ordered a few materials we need for the human sample collections, like scissors and culturettes.  Today Adam had me help him with growing and splitting some dolphin cells.  In addition to the mercury analysis, we are also looking at antibiotic resistant bacteria found in the dolphins residing in the Indian River Lagoon, so he has recruited me to assist him with some of that lab work since I’ve worked with cell cultures before. 

All in all its been a great week, but I am definitely looking forward to the long weekend.  Tonight some of the interns are getting together at a nearby beach and having a barbecue and then we are gonna get together again on Monday and go out on one of the intern’s boats.  A nice fun and relaxing weekend after a week of hard work

Today we had orientation where we were briefed on numerous things, including security procedures and we were given a tour of the campus.  The campus is really beautiful-there are lush trees everywhere, a few ponds (which have alligators living in them), and we are right along the lagoon where dolphins and manatees live.  We had to have our photo taken several times for ID badges and for the website and we then met our mentors and ate lunch with them.  My mentor seems very nice and helpful.  I am so excited to be working on this project with him!

But anyway, enough about me. This project, like all of education, is about the students. I am happy to tell you that Jack received a first place award for his poster and presentation of his project concerning microbial digestion of grass. It was extremely rewarding for Maddie, Bianca, and I to see Jack’s excitement when working with him, and his growing understanding and comprehension about what we were doing as the project progressed. A huge key to his success was his desire to be in the lab and to be challenged. I have a sneaking suspicion that we may have helped recruit another microbiology major. All in all, I am very grateful for the experience, as both the middle schoolers and the college students came away with personal growth and achievement.

As for me, this is my farewell. The science fair is done, and thus my blogging material. There may, however, be another opportunity for me in the future which I look forward to. A big “Thank You” to all of my readers and followers. As always, good night and good luck.