My Chemistry Research Internship at Hiroshima University
Monthly Archives: June 2013
Tokyo! June 18, 2013
What a week it has been!
My last post mainly concerned the Tokasan Yukata Festival which was going on all last weekend in Hiroshima. However, a second, much lesser known festival – the Firefly Festival – was occurring simultaneously, far away from the hustle and bustle of the city in a little park outside of the Hiroshima Airport. A wonderful lady who does office work for our lab group invited me to go to the festival with her and her daughter on Sunday evening, and I gladly accepted. The festival ended up consisting of a live, sunset performance of traditional Japanese music followed by a meandering through the park to look at the many species of fireflies found there.
Although the festival was enchanting, to say the least, I most enjoyed getting to know my host and her family. Upon setting foot in her car, I was greeted by an onslaught of Beatle’s music coming from the stereo, and when I inquired further I was intrigued to hear that it was the family’s favorite band and that their daughter had taken up the drums in the hopes of one day being able to play some classic rock. Good musical taste – and good taste in general – seems to be a common theme here in Japan. My friend from lab who drove me to the train station was jamming out to Queen in his car, and in Shibuya shops were blasting Daft Punk down the main streets and playing classic rock music in the ramen restaurants in the back alleys. Going back to the family I went to the festival with, as we were getting to know one other, the mother asked me a rather general question that ended up really making me think.
The question, simply put, was “Why did you want to come to Japan?”
If you happened to read the very first entry of this blog, I mentioned there that my interest in Japan was spurred on by a thirst to learn about cultural differences and a desire to visit the place that anime was born. This answer, occurring to me after several minutes of thought when I was trying to think of a good introductory statement for my blog, was similar yet, at the same time, quite different from the answer that I came up with on the spot. I merely stated this second time that, when I was fourteen, I saw an anime called Death Note and liked it because it subtly showed a very interesting relationship between two very powerful people, best friends because of their similarities and worst enemies because of their ideals. As I continued watching anime I realized that this was a common theme and I wanted to experience the culture that obviously spent a lot of time thinking about this interesting subject. She smiled and replied that, yes, such a storyline was very Japanese.
After further thought on the subject, however, I noted some rather funny ironies in my answer and began to truly delve into the rather deep question of why I had wanted to travel to Japan in the first place. As an aside, I am going to briefly share my thoughts on the matter because I believe they have become this blog’s newly realized theme!
Our entire lives are driven by the desire to form relationships. Think about it. The second that you were a born and the umbilical cord connecting you and your mother was severed, you witnessed the detachment of yourself from the only other being you will ever truly be a part of. From that moment you began the quest around which the rest of life is centered: to perfectly connect with something to make you feel whole. For most of us, I think, that something ends up taking on multiple forms simultaneously. We try to perfectly connect with people, forming romances and building families. We try to perfectly connect with the forces of nature, either mentally trying to understand them through academics or physically embodying them by becoming exceedingly good at a hobby or activity. We try to perfectly connect with God. In the end, this desire to connect leads us to form cultures with the people around us that are trying to connect in the same way that we are. We then define our new culture by whatever chosen way that is. Ironically, though, by strictly defining ourselves and our cultures, we end up creating an almost insurmountable gorge between ourselves and those who have aligned themselves too strictly with other things, those who are a part of different cultures. So although life itself calls us to arrange our lives in a certain way so that we may more perfectly connect with one another, nature, and God, and although most of our sense of purpose in life is felt through this act of arranging, by flying the banner of what we have chosen to live by without showing even the most fleeting desire to change, we end up separating ourselves from those of other cultures. “I am already aware of the pros and cons of my own culture,” we say, “and it’s simply too exhausting looking at the pros and cons of another culture and trading out my own cons for their pros”. In the end, this little facet of human nature keeps us from truly connecting to anything.
How counterproductive!
I now realize that, by coming to Japan, I didn’t just want to come to the place where my favorite show was created: I wanted to be one of the two protagonists in my favorite show. I wanted to go to Japan with the purpose of connecting, yet all the while flying the flag of my probably-not-very-Japanese ideals in order that they might be bent and battered and rid of imperfections as through fire. Will the culture shock lead me to close myself off within an Americanized bubble, or will the desire to open myself up to truth and change prevail? That is what we shall see! And Hiroshima, a city set upon world peace, seems to be the perfect backdrop for my experiment!
And now, back to the week’s adventures...
Although I had many interesting conversations with Japanese and international students alike over the course of my week and (inevitably) experienced some rather crazy twists and turns in my research, my four-day trip to Tokyo still surpassed them all in terms of excitement. To give some background, my internship was originally set for Kitasato University in Sagamihara outside of Tokyo working with Dr. Yosuke Uchiyama. However when some complications arose and my internship was switched to Hiroshima University to work with Dr. Yohsuke Yamamoto, Dr. Uchiyama told me that he and his wife would be more than happy to have me visit Kitasato University and Tokyo during my stay in Japan. I, of course, gladly accepted his offer, and, with such an accommodating guide native to the city, I ended up having what I consider to be one of the best Tokyo experiences possible.
My trip started by traveling from Saijo to Hiroshima on a normal train and then from Hiroshima to Tokyo on the Shinkansen, the Japanese bullet train.
