Nishihara Laboratory

At Nagasaki University, we have a five year PhD program, that provides 600,000 yen a year to enrolled students for research. In their second year, they get a midterm evaluation. So they need to present their research progress and near-term goals. Ms Song is working on how environmental estrogens and climate change (temperature increase) affects the reproductive development of the common goby, マハゼ. She has a lot of experience speaking, so the presentation went well.

In the evening, the students were involved in another exercise  and collected plankton samples. They deployed two underwater halogen lights to attract plankton and fish.

After collecting animals for an hour, the students brought them back to the lab for identification. They will sketch and identify at least 5 species.

Starting the summer labs today. This is the first of a few that we will host at ECSER. These are second year students collecting animals from a small stream mouth near the Institute. They take them back to the lab for sketching and identifiers。

I went to Jeju University, because we extended a number of exchange programs for another five years or so. We got to visit the new president of the university, Prof. H-J Huh, as well as the International Exchange dean, the den of the College of Ocean Sciences, and the vice dean as well. We had a good discussion, regarding our visit and how we can improve our exchange programs. One of the key objectives of these programs is to encourage our students to interact internationally. I think we all agreed to that. The task for them now is to find a good liaison officer, who will be interested in coordinating activity on their side. Hope they can find someone. Anyways, large parts of the campus are being renovated and new building are popping up all over the place. The Nagasaki University Liaison Office was also moved, and is next to their public relations department. Afterwards, we had dinner at a restaurant where they serve Jeju's famous pork. You can see Prof. Matsuok...

Ok I am in Jeju now. It is very hot and humid here, and it makes muggy Nagasaki look like paradise. There are a lot of tourists from China here, and not many from Japan. Well at least in the flight from Fukuoka to Jeju, the seats were more than 70% empty. Infact, I was the only passenger in the mid-section of the aircraft! So I figured out how to catch the city bus to the hotel,and bought myself a T-Money card, which is just a rechargeable prepaid bus fare card. All I needed to do was take the 500 toward Halla University, but I went the opposite direction by mistake. Just got off and caught another bus back. Prof. Matsuoka will be meeting up with me tomorrow, and so I got us some rooms in the cheaper hotels. The one the Jeju staff suggested was > 14,000 yen a night. I found place under 10,000. But it is in the back-alleys and looks like a renovated love-hotel . At least it has free wifi and good food is nearby.