Japan, part III: Shiga and Kyōto

When I got off the Shinkansen at Kyōto Station and descended onto platform 2 (Biwako Line for Kusatsu and Maibara) I was overwhelmed by nostalgia, and started chuckling gleefully to myself. I had stood on this platform literally hundreds of times, listening to the bilingual service announcements and waiting for the special rapid trains (which do not stop at Seta Station, where I lived) to depart so that the local trains (which do) could pull in. Finally (after only 10 minutes) a local train arrived, and 17 minutes later, I was walking out the ticket gate and down the steps of Seta Station in the city of Ōtsu, my home for the first year and a half after college.

My friend Kondoh-san met me at Seta and drove me to his new apartment. That evening, I I drank green tea, caught up with him and his wife Tsuji-san, played with their baby Nagito-kun, and stayed up after they had gone to bed working on the presentation I had been asked to give to my old lab at the Center for Ecological Research.
Characteristically, I had waited until the last minute to do this, and even though I cannabalized an old PowerPoint file, characteristically I failed to get it done that night before going to bed. Kondoh-san took me to his office at Ryukoku University the next morning so I could finish it. There was a visiting professor from the University of Minnesota-Duluth in my old lab, so I was asked to give the talk in English. This meant I spoke too fast and I think my talk was difficult for most of the audience to understand, but there was a huge turnout and I felt embarrassed to explain to them that in America the graduate system is different, and that since I had just finished my orals, I didn't have much to present.

It was not as nostalgic as I had expected to go back to the CER, but that was probably because many of the people I knew there have now left. I walked around the experimental greenhouses where I did my research and went to look at my old desk. I think some issues of Ecological Research that I left behind are still on my old bookshelf. Also, I realized that the CER has a very distinctive smell.

Thirteen of us went off that evening to Hottokeya, an izakaya (bar) which way back when was the first Japanese bar I ever went to. My friends Miki-san and Yoneya-san were kind enough to put me up that night, and let me leave a lot of my crap in their apartment, and drive me to Seta Station early the next morning.

The next day visited the lab on the main campus of Kyōto University with which I have been (and will be) collaborating in my PhD research. This lab discovered the mutualism between Glochidion trees and Epicephala moths and reported it in a 2003 paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (Kato et al. 2003), and I fortuitously met them back when I was looking for a PhD topic and about to come back to the United States. I gave my talk again, this time in Japanese, although there were about as many comments as I had received from the English version the day before. Here we all are afterwards (I was unfortunately sober, and taking the picture).

I spent the next two days in Kyōto wandering around meeting people. I had lunch with Takeuchi-san, a friend from my time back at the CER, and in the afternoon I went over to Kyōto Institute of Technology to meet Nao-san and Hojo-kun, old friends and collaborators from back when I used to study aphids. Their lab has doubled in floor space because another professor left, and although the high-pressure liquid chromatography machine I used to use is still there, most of the faces are new. The fact I didn't know any of them was underscored when they all gasped after I introduced myself in Japanese.

Kyōto is an amazing city. I spent a beautiful, sunny Friday walking around the city, along the Takano River,
around the Kyōto University campus and nearby Yoshida Shrine, through Shijō Kawaramachi (downtown) and Gion. On the Kyōto University campus, I saw a fascinating exhibit on the history of the university, including a chilling picture from 1941 of the Imperial Declaration of War Against the United States and Great Britain being read to assembled students from from atop the campus' iconic Tokei-dai (Clock Tower). After asking various Japanese female friends for their advice I was able to find a stuffed Totoro for my roommate Jennifer at Loft in Shijō Kawaramachi. I also revisited Musashi Sushi, what used to be my favorite kaiten-zushi (conveyor belt sushi) restaurant, but was not so successful at finding Maruzen, a bookstore I used to frequent, so I suppose it must be closed. In Gion (which used to be the geisha and entertainment district) I noticed the sign below, which intrigued me because it is the name of my hometown:I went up to the third floor of the building, and found the door:
The sign on the right says, "Entry refused to persons under 18." Sounds a lot more exciting than the Los Gatos I grew up in.

Friday night I went back to Kusatsu in Shiga Prefecture for a dinner of temaki-zushi (roll your own sushi) at the house of Kimura-san, my advisor's assistant. Her kids, Yuka (in middle school) and Nozomi (in elementary school) are doing well. Nozomi, energetic as always, insisted on demonstrating that he knew more about Japanese history than I did. It was the most relaxing evening of my trip thus far.

Throughout this trip I regretted not having enough time to spend with everybody I met. This is what happens when you live overseas.