Lincoln Weber
Home Institution: Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Status: Freshman, Expected Graduation Date: May 2021
Field of Study: Physics and Mechanical Engineering with Minors in Mathematics and Spanish
Host Lab in Japan: Osaka University – Inst. of Laser Engineering, THz Photonics, Tonouchi Laboratory
Host Professor:  Prof. Masayoshi Tonouchi and Prof. Iwao Kawayama
Research Project Abstract & Poster: Terahertz Emission from Aligned Carbon Nanotubes (PDF)

Why Nakatani RIES?

This fellowship seems like the perfect opportunity for me as a researcher. I will gain valuable technical knowledge and experience from the program, and a fresh outlook on research in nanomaterials. I am also passionate about a few different research areas, and this fellowship will allow me to explore my interests. The opportunity for research in this program is obviously great, but I am also excited about the opportunity to visit Japan. Specifically, I want to learn about Japanese culture. From an outsider’s perspective, culture in Japan seems to form a contrast with the culture that I am familiar with in the United States, and it is increasingly important to be aware of others’ culture in today’s world. If I can experience different cultures now in my youth it will prepare me for my work later in life.

This summer, I would like to benefit from the experience and knowledge I will gain, and I will become more culturally educated as I will have hands-on experience with another culture for the first time in my life. I also would like to gain the experience necessary to become a mentor for younger researchers in years to come (as I have had some excellent mentors myself), and the Nakatani RIES fellowship can help me gain that experience.

Goals for the Summer

• Learn about synthesis methods of 2D materials
• Get experience with and feedback about making research posters
• Climb Mount Fuji
• Play a Japanese instrument
• Try some of the Japanese Kit-Kats that I’ve heard so much about

Impact of Nakatani RIES: Post-Program

The Nakatani RIES program was extremely valuable to me. I had no international experience before coming to Japan, so I was able to learn more about (and actually be immersed in) a different culture than the one that exists in my part of the United States. It’s interesting – I heard some U.S. Fellows say that as the summer went on, they started to see Japan as being more and more similar to the United States. I felt the opposite way – when I first arrived, Japanese cities seemed a lot like cities in the States to me. However, the longer I stayed, the more I saw that the Japanese style of living is quite different from the style of living in America. I think there’s a lot to Japanese society that can’t be noticed at first glance. The Japanese style of research is also very different from the one that is used in my lab in America, and it also took a while to adjust to that.

The biggest takeaway from this summer experience, then, was my realization that different people from different places work, live, and behave differently, but they can still collaborate effectively to do great things, especially in the context of physics research. I feel very lucky that I have been able to see both the Japanese approach and the American approach to research, and I’m sure that will help with international collaborations during graduate school and during my career. Of course, I also learned a great deal about physics and experimentation, and I met some researchers that I plan to keep in touch with for a long time. This was, without a doubt, an unforgettable summer, and I doubt I will have an equally rewarding experience for a while.

Research Project and Group Overview 

Over the course of the summer, I did experiments investigating the terahertz emission properties of carbon nanotubes using time-domain terahertz emission spectroscopy. Although we had many setbacks, my mentor and I were able to take some good data that may lead to some interesting discoveries or applications. I’m not sure that terahertz technology is the field I want to work in for the rest of my life, but I am considering doing some optics work. I think that I definitely want to do some sort of optoelectronics, but I’m not sure exactly what that would be. Doing this research in an international lab was quite the experience – I had access to instruments that I never will in my U.S. lab, I had a different schedule than I do in America, and I didn’t speak the same language as most of the people in my lab. However, adapting to the new environment was just another challenge that I had to work through. The fellowship and the research I did helped me gain new knowledge and ideas that I can apply to my research in the States, and it also convinced me that physics research (although perhaps not in terahertz technology) is what I want to do for a career.

My research group seemed like a fairly typical Japanese lab. There were 10-20 members (including a few summer interns), and most people came in to the lab around 10:00 or 11:00 am and left around 5:00 or 6:00 pm. Most of the time people were working in the office (especially B4 students who had to study for exams), but there were a few members that were in the lab all the time. Most of the people in the lab had their own projects, and it appeared to me that there wasn’t too much collaboration between lab members. My mentor was great – he’s Filipino and speaks fluent English. He was also very fun to work with, helpful when explaining his research, and accessible if I needed questions answered or advice on how to proceed. Not only that, he invited me to basketball games and occasionally to the city to do things with him and his girlfriend. The rest of the group was a little less friendly – most of them spoke either Japanese or Chinese primarily and didn’t speak much English, so they mostly spent their time in Japanese or Chinese groups and didn’t talk to me. However, part of the way through the summer an Albanian intern came (an English speaker who didn’t know any Japanese), and the two of us along with a Japanese guy that wanted to learn more English were able to convince some lab members to go out with us a few times.

Daily Life in Japan 

My daily life was for the most part pretty boring – on the average day, I would get back to my dorm around 6:00 or 7:00 pm, maybe try to cook or get something to eat from a supermarket, and then wander around my campus or perhaps the main shopping area near my dorm. I didn’t really interact with anyone on a daily basis. However, on occasion I went to the city to do something (every once in a while with someone from my lab or a Nakatani Fellow), and there’s a bunch of things to do in the busiest areas of Osaka. Usually on weekends I took a trip somewhere – to the city to go sightseeing, to another city nearby, or hiking on a nearby mountain. I even went up to Tokyo for a weekend. My housing experience was good – I had a room to myself, and there was a decent kitchen down the hall. I did have to use a public bathroom and showers that were in another building, but it wasn’t too big of a deal. I tried cooking early in the summer, then when I had about two weeks left in the program I realized that most of my attempts to cook were disasters, so I gave up and ate from konbinis for the rest of the program. My favorite part of life in Japan was the opportunity for hiking – I took every chance I had to hike mountains, which is something I probably won’t be able to do even in the States for a while.

Cultural Experiences in Japan 

The experiences that I had that exemplify Japanese culture the best are the times that my lab took me out to eat. I went out to eat dinner with my lab group three times, and each time they insisted that I shouldn’t pay for my meal. The first time they called it a welcome party, the second time they called it a second welcome party, and the last time they called it a farewell party. I think this shows that Japanese people are very polite and want to take care of guests, as I felt that I was treated as a guest during my entire stay in Japan. It taught me that perhaps I need to be more welcoming to newcomers, both to my country and to my college. I felt very welcomed by my lab group, and their first and last impressions were quite good. This lesson will come in handy during the first few weeks of college when all the new freshmen are trying to get used to college life – I will attempt to treat them with the same hospitality that I received in Japan.

• My favorite experience in Japan was… karaoke with the other fellows and with people from my lab.
• Before I left for Japan I wish I had … taken more time to memorize completely hiragana and katakana.
• While I was in Japan I wish I had … encouraged the people in my lab to go out more together.

Excerpts from Lincoln’s Weekly Reports

• Week 01: Arrival in Japan
• Week 02: Language Learning & Trip to Mt. Fuji Lakes
• Week 03: Noticing Similarities, Noticing Differences
• Week 04: First Week at Research Lab
• Week 05: Cultural Analysis – Life in Japan
• Week 06: Cultural Analysis – In the Lab
• Week 07-08: Overview of Mid-Program Meeting & Research Host Lab Visit
• Week 09: Research in Japan vs. Research in the U.S.
• Week 10: Reflections on Japanese Language Learning
• Week 11: Interview with a Japanese Researcher
• Week 12-13: Final Week at Research Lab & Re-Entry Program
• Final Report
• Follow-on Project
• Tips for Future Participants

Week 01: Arrival in Japan

Tokyo was a new experience at first – I’ve never lived permanently in a big city and getting used to my daily life involving navigating streets along skyscrapers was a struggle. The thing that surprised me most about the city was how busy it is. There’s hardly ever room to walk on the sidewalk or sit in a subway train, and it makes the city feel alive 24/7. Another big surprise were the convenience stores – not what’s inside of them, but how many of them there are. I had never seen two of the same store in the same town (short of a city like Chicago) before, but just yesterday in Shinjuku I noticed three FamilyMarts within five minutes walking from each other, and two of them were just a crosswalk apart. That strikes me as bizarre, but I guess it’s a good idea if they can all get business. There are actually two “most challenging things” about living in Tokyo, and those are the bathrooms and food on the street. I’ve never had to share a community bathroom for more than a week or so, but here I’ll have to share one shower with several floors for three weeks. That will probably be a little rough. Eating food is also a problem here – once I buy food in a shop, I usually can’t eat it standing on the sidewalk because the sidewalks are usually too crowded, and I can’t eat it on the go because that’s rude and dirty. That leaves me with only one option: walk somewhere where I can sit down and eat in peace. That is a large change from my habits back home, which almost exclusively consisted of eating food while walking. However, these are minor changes and I should be able to adjust with no trouble.

Language classes have been pretty good so far – I’ve definitely learned a lot more than I expected, especially starting from ground zero. The exciting thing about class is that by the end of the week we had begun to put together sentences in different ways, and I finally began to understand sentence structure. This is pretty cool because now I can say more than a few things in Japanese if I put my mind to it. I think the trick all along was to learn some grammar and be able to apply it, instead of just focusing on certain “survival phrases”. Honestly though, it seems like Japanese people say, “Excuse me”, “Thank you”, and “Nice to meet you” more than anything else in the language, which is convenient for me because I know how to say those things. The language classes are good for more than learning the language, too – there are some pretty nice vending machines in the basement, and I’ve had the chance to try some Japanese candy and drinks during our ten-minute breaks. I think the lemon water and a candy called something like “Chocolate veil” is pretty good. My introduction speech also went well. To be honest, I was reading from my notebook more than I should have, but I think I still pronounced most of my speech correctly, which is a win in my book. I do think there are a couple of ways that the classes could be improved, though: the length, and the teacher rotation. The language classes are really long, and although I am learning the whole time, it sure seems like I reach a “saturation point” where I can’t learn anything new without forgetting something I learned earlier that class. I’ve also heard that the class seems really long for some other classes, though I’ve never had that issue. I suspect our class going by fairly quickly is because there are four people being in it (as opposed to two) or by us not knowing anything about Japanese. I’m also not a huge fan of the teacher rotation – It’s nice to get exposure to different teaching styles, but I’d also like to get to know my teacher well. Sometimes the new teachers also don’t know what exactly we have and haven’t learned. Other than those things, though, I’ve had a lot more success in language classes than I thought I would starting out.

The visit to the Prof. Tabata’s lab at the University of Tokyo was a lot of fun. I knew that it was a large university, but the campus was a lot bigger than I expected it to be. I also definitely did not expect to see the massive koi pond that was there. The lab tours were also pretty neat, and I don’t think I’ve seen such top-notch equipment in my life. The language barrier was also a pain at times, but if anything, it made me appreciate the students’ willingness to speak English. I imagine that they have to put in an extraordinary amount of effort to be able to research and speak in English at the same time, and I respect the Japanese grad students at the University of Tokyo a lot for that.

Taiko drumming, so far, has been one of my favorite parts of my time in Tokyo. I had never played a percussion instrument, but the drumming and the choreography was really fun and easy to catch on to. To be honest my arms were a little sore afterwards, but it was all worth it, and I never realized how cool music with nothing but Taiko drums could be. The best part of that day was not the drumming I did, but the drumming the instructor did on the massive drum that he said is worth as much as a Ferrari. Honestly, I didn’t even realize that it is possible for an instrument to make such a deep noise for that long. I’m used to hearing an upright bass but the sound coming from that thing sustained for so much longer than a bass would.

Ogawa-san’s talk on sumo wrestling was quite informative, and it did correct a misconception that I had about sumo wrestling. I thought that the sport was dying out and losing popularity fast (which apparently it is with young people), but the video he played made it seem like sumo was becoming more popular and that it would soon become an international (or maybe even Olympic) sport. I don’t know about all of that, but I would like to watch a sumo match sometime. As long as I’m trying to experience Japan, I may as well experience the most traditional Japanese sport. The supercomputer talk was also interesting, and it too cleared up some misconceptions. I didn’t actually know that supercomputers were all about volume of computations and not necessarily speed. The talk was a good mix of technical and application material and I think it did a good job of getting me excited to visit JAMSTEC tomorrow.

The safety training we did at the Ikebukuro Life Safety Training Center was pretty neat. I thought it was a good idea to have safety training right on top of the fire department (at least, I think that’s what the first floor was). I know we’re supposed to take that stuff seriously, which I did, but to be honest it was a blast to use a fire extinguisher and walk crouching through a smoke-filled room. The way I figure, people that train young people to be safe are doing it right if you can educate them and let them have fun at the same time. The “guide” around the place that we had also seemed really funny, but I think some of his humor was lost in translation with Ozaki-sensei and her students who were acting as translators. I can definitely see how and earthquake of the same magnitude we experienced in the simulator would destroy a city, so that at least educated me about the importance of things like early detection and aid after a large earthquake. I would most definitely recommend repeating the safety program next year.

I also thought the archaeology activities were cool. Speaking frankly, I’m not much of a museum guy, but vising the keyhole-shaped mounds and the square ones later was awesome. The archaeologist leading our little “tour” was also very helpful and passionate about the history of the area, which was nice because I know very little about the history of Japan in general, let alone the practices of local elites in the fifth century. Things like those burial mounds are especially impressive considering the work that must have gone into them – I don’t know how it was possible to carry around chunks or rock large enough to carve a coffin out of back then, but they managed somehow.

The last thing I did this week (on Sunday) was not a programmed activity, but I’d like to talk about it anyway. I hiked from the train station in Mitake to the peaks of three mountains – Mount Mitake, Mount Odake (or Otake), and Mount Nokogiri. It was a pretty challenging hike, and I was probably hiking for around 6 or 7 hours, all in all (that’s excluding breaks and travel). While it was a challenging hike, I definitely think it was worth it – I got some of the best views that I’ve seen in my life, and I finally got to see Mt. Fuji. I’ve seen pictures of Fuji before, but seeing it in person was something entirely different. The rest of the mountains reminded me of the Appalachians somewhat – very big, rolling, and covered in trees. The best part was that during most of my hike I was surrounded by mountains on all sides. I guess I never really thought of Japan as a mountainous country, but I was dead wrong. The worst (actually, the only bad) part of the hike happened when someone from the visitor’s center told me that I couldn’t finish the trail before sunset, so I did the reasonable thing and hiked the trail anyway (and finished long before sunset). Anyway, I enjoyed the day immensely, and I’ll be looking for some good hiking around Osaka during the rest of the summer. I’m also looking forward to hiking Mount Fuji at the end of the summer – this day trip was an excellent warm-up for that.

Research Host Lab Overview
As far as I know, in the Tonouchi Laboratory at Osaka University I will be working with aligned, chirality-controlled semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). These carbon nanotubes tend to form excitons, so I will try to understand exciton dynamics in SWCNTs using terahertz emission data. Apparently, the terahertz emissions correspond to a transient photocurrent, which I’m not too clear on because I didn’t realize that photocurrent measurements could be taken from THz emission experiments. Long story short, I’ll be doing THz emission experiments on aligned SWCNTs and trying to figure out what’s going on with the excitons in the CNTs from the data collected.

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Week 02: Language Learning and Trip to Mt. Fuji Lakes

So far my language experience has been a little rough, but the classes are still a fun and valuable experience. I am finally becoming able to form sentences on my own, and I am beginning to apply individual words instead of having to form sentences from formulas I am given. The teachers are all really nice, and although three and a half hours a day is a long time to be in class, the class is usually engaging. However, it’s the best I can do to memorize only a fraction of the things we learn in class, both from a vocabulary and grammar standpoint. There is so much information taught to me on a daily basis that I pick up what I am able to and try to apply it later. Unfortunately, there have been limited opportunities for me to apply Japanese in conversation due to my lack of knowledge about the language, but I have been able to successfully navigate stores and some streets using my basic knowledge of katakana and introductory phrases. I can’t say that any of my language application experience has been particularly extensive or exciting but finding my way around at least a little bit has been quite useful so far. A few days ago, I was paired with an AJALT teacher and instructed to talk in Japanese for half an hour – that experience was particularly difficult. I didn’t understand his first question, when he asked what my name was, and it only got worse from there. By the end of the conversation, he was saying a word in Japanese that I didn’t know, translating it to English for me, and then moving on. This was frustrating, but we somehow managed to converse for 30 minutes, and then we went to go get ice cream. The ice cream was sesame flavored, which I was skeptical about at first. However, I soon found that it was very good, tasting both salty and sweet at the same time. The flavor was definitely a good choice (actually it was recommended by the language teacher I talked with), and I would like to go back some time for another cup.

I would also like to continue to practice my Japanese for the rest of the summer – I think we will begin to learn some basic kanji this week, and maybe if I could know 100 or 200 kanji by the end of the summer I would be happy. I also want to try to talk to the people in my lab in Japanese, both for practice and to show that I am doing my best to learn some of their culture. However, I don’t know if this goal is realistic or if it is too easy yet because I have no idea how much/how often I will be working in the lab. If everything works out though, perhaps I will add a Japanese minor next semester, or at the very least continue to take Japanese classes. I suppose the best thing to do going forward is just to play it by ear and learn as much as I can.

Our visit to JAMSTEC was also a lot of fun. I’m a big fan of science demonstrations (who isn’t?) so I found the water pressure demonstration where the styrofoam cup was shrunk to be quite interesting. Of course, the supercomputers were also interesting, and I learned a lot about them. Unfortunately, it was hard to hear in the building because of, I presume, all the cooling systems, but that was pretty cool in itself. Learning about the biology of the deep sea was a good way to end the tour, especially since the woman giving the talk was very passionate about the topic. I learned a lot, but most about the measurements that JAMSTEC takes and the drilling that they do underwater. I did not realize that this was possible. However, entertaining as JAMSTEC was, it was no match for the all-you-can-eat Chinese restaurant that we went to afterwards in Yokohama’s Chinatown. Ogawa-san, the people from JAMSTEC, Katlin, Janmesh, Sahil, and I all sat at table, and we started ordering as soon as we sat down. The second and third rounds were already ordered by the time the first one came out. In fact, Ogawa-san got up to give the servers in the kitchen our orders because, according the older folks at the table, “time is money”.  By the time the night had ended, we had eaten countless dumplings and sweet and sour pork, and I don’t think Kaitlin and I ever stopped eating dessert options. When we had finished, all of us were stuffed, and I couldn’t even stand to look at food. The funniest part of the night (for us at least) was that we suspect some of the food that the other table ordered was sent to ours, which meant we had even more food to eat. All in all, it was a good time, and I would definitely do it again despite the fact that I probably gained a few pounds after I was finished.

The Edo Tokyo Museum and the sumo tournament afterwards were a blast. The first part of the museum had a bunch of large models and interesting exhibits, and I took some time to walk around and see them all. However, I can’t say I learned too much just because I didn’t read many of the plaques. The (numerous) graphs were also in Japanese so I had no idea what the data meant. I actually read the most in Spanish because I used the translation screens to practice my Spanish reading skills. Still though, the exhibits were fun to look at and there were plenty of interactive things. The second part of the museum was even better, though – much of it covered more modern Japan and Japan during WWII. I read all of the information about that, and it was interesting to me to see how WWII was portrayed in a museum in Japan. After we left the museum we were able to go to the Grand Sumo Tournament, which was very entertaining. I grabbed some concessions, in this case a fluffy pancake and some ice cream mixed together, and we watched the spectacle unfold. The odd thing about sumo is that relatively little of the tournament time-wise is taken up by actual wrestling. Most of it consists of wrestlers getting into the ring, showing off for the crowd, and slapping their legs. This is all for entertainment’s sake, but personally I found the showboating a little boring. It is my understanding that Japanese people appreciate the act that the wrestlers put on, and this was apparent from how much applause the leg-slapping was getting. The actual wrestling was fun to watch, though, and to my surprise the biggest wrestler does not win all the time. I suppose that means that sumo wrestling is a very skill-based and strength-based sport.

We ended the seminars with a particularly interesting one about baseball in Japan and its relation to baseball in the United States given by Prof. Shimizu-Guthrie from Rice University. She introduced how and when baseball came to Japan, how Japanese teams got the necessary equipment, and how Hawaii was impacted by baseball. She also explained how the war affected the sport and how American teams came to Japan. Overall the talk was great, both because of its content and because of the wittiness and clear depth of knowledge of Prof. Shimizu-Guthrie.

Mt. Fuji Lakes Trip
The Mount Fuji Lakes trip with the 2018 Japanese Fellows was definitely a lot of fun. One of the best things about the bus ride was the rest stops. In Illinois, most of the rest stops are closed due to funding problems, and the ones that are open have small bathrooms and maybe a vending machine or two. The rest stops in Japan are huge, with bathrooms bigger than I’ve ever seen before and a plethora of shops and convenience stores. It seems like road trips would be a lot easier in Japan solely because of that. After our initial bus ride, we ended up at the Mount Fuji Lakes area, which are a series of springs around the mountain. It was interesting to see how much water was coming out of the springs – to me it seemed like it was coming up at an alarmingly fast rate. I also noticed that the fish in the lakes were very used to humans, and it seemed like they are fed fairly often based on their behavior around us. After the lakes we went to a shrine, where we saw some pretty cool buildings and some even cooler trees. One tree in particular was more than 1,000 years old, according to the tour guide. By that time we were all hungry, so we ate at a noodle restaurant. They served very good noodles, especially because there were sweet potato chunks mixed in with the noodles. After lunch we drove up to the fifth station on Mount Fuji, where there was another shrine and some gift shops. When the clouds were not in the way, we could even see the summit from where we were. We then returned to the hotel, which was called the “Blueberry Lodge”. The Blueberry Lodge was fun but a little creepy. All of the rooms were circular huts with lighted roofs, and there were a couple of sheep statues next to our room. On top of a nearby hill was a carousel and a large, lighted cutout of a cartoon character called the Little Prince. Elsewhere around the lodge there were Christmas-style lights on railings and such. Interesting as this was, there was also a pool table in the “Play Room” next to the entrance to Blueberry Lodge. It was a quality pool table, and Janmesh and I played a few games. They had a cue there that was fairly nice, but there was no chalk and the tip needed to be scuffed so we both miscued many times during our games. For dinner we went to a buffet that served many types of food – I ate some Chinese, Japanese, and western food. They also served some pretty good steak and some tasty deserts. After dinner we all went back to our room and played card games with the Japanese fellows until we went to bed.

The next day we got up early to eat another buffet, this time a breakfast one. The breakfast was also quite good, and it included a wide variety of salads, meats, and of course rice. Afterwards we visited a deep sea aquarium, which was very interesting because I don’t know much about the creatures that live in the deep sea. An exhibit featuring two very large spider crabs was the best part of that excursion. For lunch we ate a seafood place, where I had the freshest seafood I’ve ever eaten. By that I mean that we were given plates of raw fish, scallops, oysters, and various crustaceans, and we grilled them ourselves using a grill that was located in the center of our table. That was most certainly a unique dining experience. After lunch we drove to Mishima Skywalk, a pedestrian suspension bridge that extends over a large, mostly forested gorge. The view from there was beautiful, especially the view of Mount Fuji extending through the clouds. I could probably have spent an hour or two just sitting on or next to the bridge and enjoying the view and breeze. To end the day, we went strawberry picking. It wasn’t exactly what I am accustomed to – in the Midwest, usually strawberry picking is in open fields and has a lot more strawberries the ones we went to, so the few rows in the greenhouse got picked over for the best berries quickly. It was still fun, though, and I learned that strawberries in Japan (or at least the ones at this greenhouse) taste differently than strawberries in the United States.

All in all, my favorite part of the trip was definitely going to the fifth stop on Mount Fuji itself – I don’t think I’ve ever (except in an airplane) been high enough to be engulfed in a cloud, which was very neat. Seeing the peak of the mountain so close was also really cool – it’s made me much more excited about climbing to the peak at the end of the summer. Based on what everyone has been telling me, seeing the sunrise from the top of Fuji will be just about the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen. I just hope that everyone is able to make it there. The light show also was a great experience – for whatever reason, my expectations were low for the show (perhaps because of all the lighted rooftops), but the show was a lot of fun and probably one of the best light shows I’ve seen. It exceeded my expectations. With that exception, though, the trip was basically what I thought it would be, which was a fun weekend trip where I was able to make friends with the Japanese Fellows and see some interesting things on and around Mt. Fuji. The biggest challenge of the trip was probably walking on the suspension bridge – I’m not too good with heights, and although the view was gorgeous, walking the entire bridge made be uneasy. I didn’t really manage this except by not looking down, but I got through it and the experience was worth it. Another great part of this whole trip was meeting the Japanese fellows. They all seem really nice, and although I can’t quite remember most of their names (that’s my fault, not theirs), I enjoyed talking to each of them. In particular, I was able to play card games through the night with our two roommates, and I learned a lot about the program for Japanese Fellows as well as what my experience in Osaka will be like. No one conversation stands out to me, but I did notice that all of the fellows were very polite, and quite a few of them were timid at first until they got to know us. The latter is, upon reflection, a characteristic that I would probably share, so it’s to be expected. To be honest, with the possible exception of the fellows acting very politely and perhaps not being quite as direct as Americans, I didn’t see too many obvious cases of Japanese culture values in the Japanese fellows. I think if they didn’t have accents when speaking English any of them could have passed for native-born American citizens. They all seemed to get along very well with the US fellows and they fit in like we have known them for a long time. The group was a lot of fun, though, and I am saddened that we only got to meet the group for two days. I’m looking forward to seeing them again in Kyoto. Overall the trip was a lot of fun and I had a lot of takeaways from it: among these are to try and make friends with as many Japanese people as I can because they seem very welcoming, to try more fresh seafood because it’s really tasty, and to do some more hiking preparation before I climb Fuji because it’s going to be a challenge.

Question of the Week
For better or for worse, I heard a fair amount of talk with the Japanese fellows this weekend about things like people owning guns in the south and in Houston. I would like to know what Japanese students actually think about this. Is gun ownership/hunting at all common in Japan? Are the Japanese fellows scared of gun owners in the US, are they just curious about it, or do they think it’s fairly normal?

• Japan has some of the strictest gun regulations in the world and gun violence is so uncommon in Japan that it is shocking how frequently gun violence (particularly school shootings) occur in the U.S.  This is true for most other countries as the U.S. has some of the most lax/lenient gun ownership regulations in the developed world and you would likely receive similar questions from students from China and Europe as well. Most people worldwide, particularly in Japan, do not understand how the individual right to bear arms in the U.S. is more important than the group’s right to live safely and peacefully and, particularly, how children can be regularly killed by guns in schools.  Truthfully, the U.S. is the ‘odd-man-out’ and our policies on gun ownership and control seem quite shocking to people from many other countries worldwide where regulations are much more strict.
• Indeed, the week before the Mt. Fuji trip there was, unfortunately, yet another school shooting that occurred in Texas and news media reports on this in Japan likely led to increased concerns/questions from the Japanese students about this topic.  This is why it is helpful to scan/read the English news media when you are abroad so you have some context for questions like this when they come up, as it is not uncommon that you will be asked about your perspective on things that are currently happening in the U.S. that have been reported in the Japanese press.
• For more on this, see the section on Guns in the U.S. under the Safety in the U.S. section on our resources page for Japanese students.  There are a number of articles here that compare and contrast gun ownership and control in Japan vs. the U.S.

Introduction to Science & Engineering Seminars 
Over the past week, we have been given a series of lectures about physics theory and experiment by Prof. Kono and a few guest professors. Prof. Kono, from Rice University, started off the series by giving a lecture about the basis for the research we will be doing this summer. He discussed each of our research areas and applications briefly, then began talking about basic electrical concepts and semiconductors. Prof. Kono discussed band gaps, simple quantum theory, junctions, and indirect/direct band gaps. Prof. Otsuji, from Tohoku University, then talked about terahertz radiation techniques for characterization and using lasers for characterization. He then discussed the physics theory of graphene, and I was lost in the details of that section. Later on, Prof. Saito, from Tohoku University, gave a talk about carbon nanotubes, theory behind CNTs and other carbon structures, and application of carbon materials. Prof. Saito’s talk was very interesting to me, and he even brought demonstration materials with him. To be honest he was such a nice man that I regret not doing theoretical research and joining his lab group. Finally, Prof. Kono gave another talk where he elaborated on the properties of two-dimensional materials. He also discussed dimensionality and the quantum theory behind dimensionality of materials. Prof. Kono ended his presentation by talking about the applications of these materials in physics and other fields. These speakers were very good at what they do, and it showed in their talks this week. The most interesting part of the week was (in my mind) Prof. Saito’s demonstrations, just because I have a soft spot for experiments. However, I thought Prof. Saito’s lecture and Prof. Kono’s second lecture were very informative and important (potentially) for my research. For my research interests these four lectures were very useful, but I do wonder whether four physics lectures are terribly helpful for students in our program doing research in chemistry or biology. Regardless, Prof. Kono and everyone else involved with these lectures were able to provide a strong background for the research that I will begin shortly. I don’t have any questions about the topic at this moment, mostly because my research directly involves concepts like direct band gaps and two-dimensional Van Der Waals heterostructures. Luckily, I was able to follow most of Prof. Kono’s talk without too much trouble.

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Week 03: Noticing Similarities, Noticing Differences

This past week I’ve noticed some trends that passengers tend to follow on public transportation. Generally, people don’t eat messy food on trains or buses, and they usually don’t talk or if they do they talk very quietly. That’s not to say that people never break these rules – on numerous occasions I’ve seen people eating food and/or talking loudly, but these people get some dirty looks. When people sit down, they seem to sit with a space in between every group unless it can’t be avoided, and they keep their bags in the rack above or close to them. Likewise, when people stand, they keep their bags in front of them or at their feet. I suppose this is a common courtesy to allow for the maximum possible amount of people on the train. Also, when the trains are crowded, people stand facing the seats to fit more people. If a train is filled with people but more need to get on, the people not yet on the train usually just push their way on and everyone on the train just shuffles backwards to compress further. This also depends on the time of day because trains are more crowded during rush hours and nobody seems to care what is done on the trains when it’s past 10:00 PM. Finally, usually people offer their seats to passengers with a lot of luggage, children, or elderly people. The whole process is very somber, and I often feel like I’m riding with a bunch of corpses. This is very considerate of Japanese riders, but it is a little hard for me, because I talk a lot and I’ve had to stop myself several times because I started talking too loudly or too much on the trains. Really the best strategy seems to be to just put headphones in and listen to music while you wait for your stop.

This all seems to be important, but it also seems like there are definitely no hard and fast rules. My perception is that young Japanese people follow a different set of rules than older folks do, and foreigners do their own thing. It depends on a lot of different factors what’s appropriate on public transportation, and I have to play it by ear most of the time. I don’t have too much experience with public transportation in the United States (I’ve never lived in a town large enough that I needed it to get around), but in my limited experience it seems a lot easier to navigate in Tokyo. Normally frequent announcements are made about where to stop to transfer, and on subways it’s easy to tell which train is going one way and which is going the other. I also think Tokyo subways are cleaner than the American subways I’ve been on. However, I think that talking on public transportation is a lot more commonly done in America, which I am a fan of. The trains here are just too quiet for me.

These differences are, I suspect, both cultural and practical. When trains are crowded, there are some things that are just plain polite to do to respect others. This is oftentimes necessary in Japan, but it hasn’t been for me in America, with the exception of post-sports games crowds. Some trends are cultural though, such as the practices of not eating or talking. Perhaps this shows that Japanese culture tends to value being respectful of others more than American culture does, whereas Americans value convenience more than respect (in some cases). It’s hard to say having only been here three weeks, though. I’ll reevaluate my thoughts at the end of the summer.

Overview of Week 3

This week has been very exciting – on my free day on Monday, I went shopping. First, I took a train about 40 minutes away from our hotel to look for a shamisen, a traditional Japanese instrument. I would like to play the banjo this summer, but as it seems unlikely, I can settle for what some call a “Japanese banjo”. Anyway, I had to navigate the selling of the shamisen using no English (in fact, I mostly relied on google translate), so I have a shamisen now that I have to learn how to play. I imagine it won’t be too hard – I play a five-stringed instrument and this one only has three, but we’ll see. Hopefully I get some time to practice. On my free day on Wednesday I had another Japanese immersion experience, but not the fun kind. I had lost my Japanese phone outside on Tuesday, so I spent two hours in two different police stations on Wednesday trying to fill out the paperwork necessary to figure out what happened to my phone. As it turned out, the police had it in the lost and found, and I was able to retrieve it without an issue. This was a fortunate turn of events. On Saturday I spent the morning eating pancakes and then in the afternoon I went to Disney Sea, which was a lot of fun. It seems a lot like the Disney in Florida except maybe a bit stranger, but I enjoyed it a lot. I actually left about fifteen minutes after the park closed because I got in line for the last ride ten minutes before closing.

The culture talks have also been very interesting. Dr. Nishiwaka’s talk was very informative and thought provoking, especially because biology is a field I don’t know much about. However, the philosophy in it was a little hard to follow. The talk about kimonos and culture was very interesting and it really made me want to buy a kimono, so I will go shopping in Kyoto with Janmesh for a used one of those now. Finally, Ozaki-sensei’s talk about language and culture was also helpful, and it helped with many of my questions about omiyage, which I’m sure I will use this week. The third week was a good one to end our stay in Tokyo, though it went a little fast and I’m sure I’ll miss the Nakatani Fellows that aren’t in the Kansai region.

Now is a good time to reflect on my language experience, I guess.  My experience learning the language has been good and I have even had a few instances where I was able to apply it, but I fear that I will soon forget a lot of my Japanese knowledge. I will have to refresh often to make sure I keep at least the “survival Japanese” I know now, and I would like to try to learn some more kanji as well, so I can start reading at a higher level. Really though I realize that I won’t have too much time with all the sightseeing and research I’ll be doing, so my goal for now is just to improve at Japanese over the rest of the summer and not become less proficient. Hopefully that will provide me with a basis for a formal Japanese education in America if I want one. I do think the language class was worth it in the end, and there were a lot of fun moments. My favorite parts of the classes were honestly when the teachers answered our questions about Japanese culture. I think it’s possible that I learned more about culture than I did about language from the classes.

Question of the Week
I just learned today that some supermarkets have counters behind the checkout where you bag your own groceries and then return the basket you used. I’ve never seen this in America – do they exist in the States? Is there a reason why baggers aren’t used (at least in some stores) in Japan and they are (in my experience) almost universally in America?

• Yes, it is a different process to bag groceries in Japan but this is not much different than the self-checkout kiosks that are becoming increasingly common in the U.S. where you not only bag your own items but check-out yourself too.  Indeed, bagging your own groceries is not uncommon in much of the world and this may be a testament to how low labor costs are in the U.S. compared to the minimum wages/labor costs in other developed countries worldwide.
• For more, see the section on Grocery Stores in Japan under our Food in Japan resources page.

Introduction to Science & Engineering Talks 
Professor Stanton’s talks were quite interesting, and also helpful for my research. I am very interested in applications of nanomaterials, so I enjoyed the bits about that the most. Solar cell theory and application especially was interesting to me, and at some point (perhaps not this summer) during my undergraduate career, I would like to do solar cell research. Professor Futaba’s talk was also very exciting, because he spent a lot of time explaining the research process and tips about scientific research in general. These were some of the most applicable parts of any of the presentations. I also enjoyed hearing about different synthesis techniques for carbon nanotubes because this is the material that I will be working on.  Finally, Professor Ishioka gave a very interesting talk about her experience in research. The explanation of her projects was interesting, but it was also cool to hear her experience with research as a woman. She brought up some points with the topic that I hadn’t previously considered.

Considering the background knowledge that I have about my area of research, I’ll be the first to admit that I don’t understand everything. My background is not in CNTs and I still am a little unsure about some of the theory behind excitons in CNTs. However, I think the best thing to do going forward is to just jump into the experiment (I am an experimentalist, after all) and learn the necessary theories and methods along the way. If I am really unsure about something that I need to understand, I am sure that the graduate students I work with, Prof. Tonouchi, or any of my contacts in the United States would be happy to help. For now, I will just do the best I can and start researching.

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Week 04: First Week at Research Lab

My transition to my housing in Osaka was more or less painless. I had to stay in a hotel in a station near Osaka for a night but getting from the shinkansen to there was not an issue (although the other hotel with the same name as mine was a little confusing). It was a very nice hotel, although I did lock my keys in my room and I had to go get the person at the front desk to unlock it for me. That night I just walked around town with Hana (who is also in Osaka) and got some sleep. The bus ride was a little bit of a pain carrying all my luggage, but I managed. After I got to Osaka University, my mentor TJ came and picked me up, and showed me to the lab. That day, the secretary of my lab (Iwami-san) showed me around the campus and helped me get some paperwork filled out. She also helped me get a temporary library card. After that, I had lunch with the lab members, toured the labs that we use for our experiments, and went to another campus of Osaka University to check into my housing. Luckily, a graduate student in the lab is living in the same housing that I am, so the check-in was easy. The travel between campuses is also pretty nice because there is a shuttle that will take me for free on weekdays. All in all, I don’t really have any complaints about the process and I think it went pretty well for me. I suppose it probably would have been easier to ship my bags to my university housing instead of the hotel, but I’m not sure that it would have taken them, and it wasn’t too bad taking them on the bus anyway.

I didn’t actually do anything in the lab the first day I was there – as I mentioned it was just walking around campus, doing lab tours, and checking into housing. I did have lunch with the lab on Monday, which was fun because I got to meet everyone. The only problem was that Professor Tonouchi bought lunch for everyone at a really fancy restaurant – in fact, it was probably the fanciest restaurant I’ve ever been to. The food was good, but I didn’t know any of the etiquette (the order to eat food in, how much food to eat, the proper way to drink from a wine glass, etc.), and on top of that I’m slow at eating, so I ended up with a bunch of dishes when everyone else had them taken away. It ended up working out though, and later that day I went out to a place near my dorm with two of the graduate students from my lab. We ate three large platters of sushi at one restaurant (which they paid for quite generously), and then they were still hungry, so we went to another restaurant and got some octopus balls and chicken. It was a fun time, and I ate a lot of food for free. Monday seemed like a good welcome to me. Since then I’ve just tried to say hello and have short conversations with everyone in the lab, and hopefully I’ll get to know everyone soon.

My mentor in the lab is TJ – he’s from the Philippines, but he speaks English fluently (and doesn’t speak Japanese). Because of this, I mainly speak to TJ in the lab. TJ actually did some research in my lab at SIU back in the States, which I didn’t know until I got there, so that was a pleasant surprise. I don’t talk too much with the other people in the lab, and most of what I do say is small talk. The problem is that everyone except TJ doesn’t speak English too well, so they speak in their native languages (either Japanese or Chinese) among themselves. This is kind of awkward in group situations when everyone else is speaking Chinese and I’m just hanging out not understanding anything they’re saying. I’m doing a project with TJ, so I think my research should be unaffected (and besides I think everyone in the lab speaks at least a little English). There is one student in the lab who is preparing to enter graduate school and doesn’t speak much English, and we have been having conversations in English because he wants to improve his speaking ability. I just hope that my English-speaking ability does some good for someone while I am working in the lab.

My housing is fine – it’s nothing fancy, but it does the job. I have a relatively small room (I’d say slightly larger than the one in the Sanuki Club) with a good-sized bed, a desk, and a closet. I’m happy about having internet access in the room, and there’s a washing machine that I can use for free down the hall, which is nice. The only things I wish were better are the bathrooms and showers – I have to walk down the hall to use the bathroom and to a separate building to shower. The kitchen is also very dirty, and I’m not quite sure of the reason for this. However, these are minor concerns, and my housing situation should work just fine for the remainder of the summer. I do have to commute to my lab by shuttle, but it’s not too much of a hassle (it’s free, and buses leave every twenty minutes). I’ll have to leave the lab by 7:00 PM each day if I want to catch the shuttle, though – the shuttle ride takes about 30 minutes, but if I miss the last one I’ll have to take the monorail, and to get to my dorm by monorail it takes more than an hour and costs more than 400 yen.

The neighborhood is pretty nice where I am – there is a convenience store fairly close, and about fifteen minutes’ time walking away there is a train station and a “shopping street” where I can eat out or go shopping if I like. There’s also some nice stores and supermarkets next to the Suita campus (where my lab is), so I can always stop by there when I get out of the lab if need be. So far, I guess I’ve discovered a lot of the town (it’s really more of a suburb of Osaka where I am), but I’d like to take a closer look around my campus specifically to get to know it better. I also hope to explore the city of Osaka quite a bit this summer.

I’ve had a good time outside of research this week – on Wednesday night, I went to a middle school gym to play basketball with TJ and some other guys that play there every week. It was pretty fun, though it was also a new experience for me because I’m used to being relatively short compared to the people I play with. However, on Wednesday I was the tallest one by two inches. I suppose I’ll adjust to it eventually, but I can’t help but think what the people I played with on Wednesday would think of my friends back home that actually play basketball and are 6’9” or 6’10”. On Friday I spent the night making fourteen potatoes’ worth of potato salad, which should last me a while, and then on Saturday I went into the city with Hana. We went to a lot of the major attractions, such as the Osaka Castle and the aquarium (Osaka Kaiyukan). Sunday, I stayed in – it rained, so I mostly just got some sleep, did some work, and walked around campus. Overall it was a good week, and it was fun and relaxing. Hopefully next week will be more of the same.

Reflections on Orientation Program in Tokyo 
The orientation program in Tokyo was a lot of fun. The lectures we had were interesting and informative, the language classes were a little tough, but I learned a lot of Japanese, and the group trips we did (especially to Mt. Fuji) were a blast. I’m not quite sure what to say about the program as a whole other than I enjoyed it a lot and I thought it was a good cultural experience. I think if I could change one thing I would leave more afternoons free – There were a few more places I wanted to go in Tokyo that would have taken an afternoon, but obviously Tokyo is a big city and I can’t see everything there.

The thing I found most interesting about Japan is the stores here – it seems like convenience stores are way more common than they are in the United States, and grocery/produce stores are fairly common, but the drawback is that it’s hard to get everything you could possibly need in one store like you can in a Target (for example) in the United States. I’m not yet sure which system I prefer more.

I learned about myself that I’m adjusting quickly to Japan – from what I hear, most people have a moment when it “hits them” that they are living in Japan for the summer. I never had such a moment, and I also haven’t experienced any shock or homesickness about living in Japan. That strikes me as a little odd because I’ve never lived in a city in the States, and Tokyo is a very large city (as is Osaka, for that matter). I’m not sure why the transition hasn’t been harder or more surprising for me, but I suppose it’s a good thing and I’ll just go with it. The one thing that I want to look more into regarding Japan is the bluegrass culture here. I’ve heard that Osaka has an active bluegrass community, and I’ve heard from several people back home that there’s bluegrass in Japan. The problem with bluegrass communities in general is that they can be hard to find, and it often takes a while, so I’m going to have to start doing more research to figure out where bluegrass is being played here. However, I’m optimistic that by the end of the summer I’ll have it figured out and I can experience the bluegrass scene here firsthand.

Question of the Week
Why do so many of the shops here close around 8:00 PM? It seems like oftentimes there are still many people outside and stores could have decent business, but they close early anyway. For example, I was on the most touristy street of Osaka around 10:30 on Saturday and a lot of the shops were closed. I wonder why this is.

• Probably because many shops in Japan are independently owned rather than being part of a large corporate chain. Smaller, independently owned stores likely cannot bear the high labor costs needed to stay open late when there might not be very much business.   However, corporately-owned stores in Japan such as convenience stores, Don Quijote (the largest discount chain in Japan), Aeon Shopping Malls, and Seiyu (Wal-Mart Grocery Stores in Japan) do tend to stay open much later.   This is true in the U.S. too. If you visit the Rice Village shopping district near Rice University you will see this too. Most of the smaller, independently owned stores will close at 6:00 PM but the corporate stores like Gap or Banana Republic stay open until 9:00 PM.

Research Project Introduction
This week I haven’t actually done any work in the lab – on Monday, I just met everyone and looked around our labs, as I mentioned. On Tuesday I read research papers that TJ gave me. I was supposed to start work on Wednesday, but on Wednesday TJ had to prepare some things for our lab meeting on Thursday. Then on Thursday and Friday TJ had to analyze some data to give to Prof. Kono, so as it stands I’ve been doing a lot of reading. I plan to start our first set of measurements on Monday. I did get the opportunity to watch one of the grad students work in the lab, but that was fairly boring because he was just trying to find the right distance for the delay mirrors and he never actually found it, presumably because the setup is misaligned. However, on Monday I will start taking THz emission data for our CNT film samples. The first week we will change a few variables such as pump power and collect emission data, then the following period of time will be used to take temperature-dependent measurements. I don’t think we have any plans after that other than data analysis of course. Initially the motivation of the CNT THz emission spectroscopy was to evaluate the potential of CNTs for THz emitters, but that’s probably impractical due to low light absorption. At this point I think we’re just doing the experiment to investigate things like exciton dynamics in CNTs (basically for the physics understanding) and also to see if anything interesting happens, because we don’t know exactly what will happen. I’m excited to begin!

We will be using a standard time-domain THz spectroscopy with a CNT film on a photoconductive antenna (PCA) as our emitter and LT-GaAs on a PCA as our detector. As far as I know, I don’t need any further training to conduct these experiments. I have talked with my lab about the mid-program meeting, and they seem confident that I will have some results by then, but I’m still unsure about my exact timeline.

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Week 05: Cultural Analysis – Life in Japan

The story I have to tell this week isn’t a particularly interesting one, which is probably because I haven’t been out too much this week having communications with Japanese culture things. That’s not to say that my week was boring – I played basketball, did some shopping, and hiked the Konze Alps. The closest thing I had to an international experience, then, occurred while I was shopping. I had decided that I needed to go to a fishing store, not because I need more lures or rods (I have plenty of good lures), but because I have some friends that are really big into fishing and I need souvenirs for them. Specifically, I was instructed to look for the “weirdest Japanese lure I could find”. One person in my lab also does a fair amount of black bass fishing, and he gave me some ideas for lures to look for. Anyway, I found a pretty big store (3 stories) for fishing supplies that was within walking distance from my dorm, and I headed over there on Saturday. I looked through the store, took some pictures, and ended up picking out around 4300 yen worth of lures that I wanted to buy. I went to the counter to check out, and the cashier started talking to me in Japanese, which was unfortunate because I understood none of it. I think she realized that I had no idea what was going on, which I didn’t (I just wanted to buy some lures and leave), and she switched to English and asked me if I was shopping tax-free. I barely understood what she was saying, as her English was not very good, but regardless I didn’t know what it meant to be “shopping tax-free”. She responded with some Japanese, and then some English that I didn’t understand, and then she looked up as if she expected a response. I didn’t understand what was happening, so I just kind of stood there and stared at her blankly. At that point, she just scanned my lures and pointed to the price on the register. She asked me if the price was okay and if I was okay with paying tax, and I stammered something that hopefully sounded like an affirmative answer because the price was exactly what I expected to pay. After that, the cashier standing next to my cashier leaned over and started talking to my cashier in Japanese. I didn’t know what they were saying, but after that miniature conversation happened the cashier that was checking me out started to explain what “shopping tax free” meant.

As I understand it (based on her English explanation), if I had bought more than 5000 yen worth of goods, they would all be tax-exempt. She then held up one of my lures and said (I think) that if I bought one more of them, then it would be tax-free. I thought we were on the same page but then I thought about it and my total was just over 4300 yen, as I recall, with tax. The lure she held up was no more than 800 yen. That would bring my total before tax to less than 5000 yen, not qualifying me for the tax-free offer, unless I did my math wrong. Of course, the 5000 yen thing could have been for totals over 5000 including tax, and maybe just the items that brought it over 5000 yen would be tax-free. It’s also possible that the cashier was incorrect or that I just misunderstood what she was saying. In any case, it was a confusing situation and I must have looked very disoriented then thinking about all of this. I decided that I didn’t want to mess with the tax-free thing, and I didn’t really want to spend any more money, so I just said something along the lines of “No, I’m okay”. She looked pretty confused by this and just pointed again to my total and asked if it was okay. I nodded yes, and then paid for my lures and left. It was definitely not the quick in-and-out lure-purchasing experience I’m used to. As far as I can recall, the most a cashier in the States would talk to you about is whether or not you want to get some sort of loyalty card. Then again, maybe on Saturday I was missing out on some great deal and the cashier was just trying to help me make a good buying decision.

I think the cashier’s intentions were purely good – she was probably just trying to make sure that I knew the different options I had when buying, and in this regard, she was very helpful. I suppose it is possible that she was trying to get me to buy more things at the store, but I find it unlikely. I didn’t really have any motivations for what I said or did, because I was just very confused the whole time. The funny part is that, despite all of the confusion, the situation ended up the exact same as it would have if I had just bought my lures without saying a word. I guess the purchasing situation was resolved but the one about the tax-free offer never really was. I learned that if I spend more than 5000 yen it’s tax free (probably). Also, I was impressed by how patient this cashier was with me and how willing she was to try and communicate with me about this offer. My guess is that cashiers in any country can be hit-or-miss: sometimes you get a really nice one (like the one I had on Saturday), and sometimes you don’t. At least I know now that in the future if I get asked about this, I can actually act know what I’m talking about and say that I’m not interested (or I guess I could buy some more things and save a little money). It was definitely a learning experience.

Research Project Update
My research this week has been a little rough. I can’t really remember what happened last week and this week, nor can I recall what I talked about in last week’s report, so I’ll start from the beginning. When I first started THz spectroscopy, the reflection of the dipole looked a little odd for the CNT sample we had and the THz response at the dipole was very weak. It was actually stronger in a location where the dipole wasn’t. We did the same measurements for a GaAs sample we had in the cryostat, and it produced a beautiful THz response. We then thought that something was wrong with our sample. We took it out and looked at it under a microscope, and indeed the dipole was really messed up. It appears that some sort of black residue is covering half of it and part of the electrode below the dipole has disappeared. Instead of using that sample, we had to put another CNT sample in the cryostat, but the problem is that this sample has the dipole fabricated on it at a 45 degree angle to the CNTs (the other sample had the CNTs aligned in the same direction as the dipole). This will make it hard to compare data from this sample to the past data my mentor took. Anyway, we figured that we could use this sample at the very least to get some polarization-dependence data. With the CNTs in the same direction, we can’t tell if the changing THz response with changing light polarization is due to the orientation of the dipole or of the CNTs. We tried to do this on Friday and it looks like (some data analysis is necessary, of course) there is some dependence on both the orientation of the CNTs and of the dipole. I suppose maybe we can do further tests to determine which role both of these things play. Other than that, the idea of fabricating another set of electrodes alongside those on the first sample has been brought up. I think I’ll probably just try and provide some input to TJ as he decides what the best direction to go is, because our initial plans are not exactly falling into place. I’m excited to keep moving forward and to see what we can figure out about CNT THz emissions!

Question of the Week
Are konbinis at all territorial? This sounds like a dumb question but for some reason the only convenience stores I’ve seen on campus are Lawsons and the two closest ones that I know about to my dormitory are also Lawsons. This makes me wonder if perhaps konbinis aren’t as universal here as they are in Tokyo and if I’m in “Lawson territory”. Then again, maybe I’m just imagining things or maybe I don’t know about all the konbinis in the area.

• Yes, just like in the U.S. with whether a university campus sells Coke or Pepsi, sometimes there are preferred provider agreements with different universities campuses. This may just be because Lawson’s was the first convenience store to open on the Osaka University campus you are at and/or the area surrounding campus.
• Also, Tokyo has the highest density of convenience stores anywhere in the world with lots of different types of konbinis all competing with each other for the market share. This article says that one of the difference people notice when moving from Tokyo to Kyoto (though I know you are in Osaka) is just that there are fewer convenience stores overall. That can also translate to certain neighborhoods only have 1 or 2 types of konbinis rather than all of the different options very close to each other.
• Sometimes, consumers in Japan do have a preference for a certain type of konbini over another and there are a few differences between the three top brands.  Most consumers though just pop into whichever one is most convenient at the the time.
• For more, see the section on Convenience stores on our Life in Japan page.

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Week 06: Cultural Analysis – In the Lab

I actually have two lab experiences to talk about this week – the first one is my lab meetings. We have one meeting a week, and, each time, it has lasted around two hours. The meetings consist of members of the lab giving talks about their research and the direction that they are headed, which I gather is pretty typical in physics labs. They’re a little tough because with the exception of my mentor, the researchers give their talks in Japanese. Their slides are usually partially in English and partially in Japanese. This gets a little awkward because I have no idea what is being said (especially concerning questions and answers from professors) for a couple of hours. Needless to say, this can get a little boring. On the other hand, I had to give a presentation introducing myself and my project this past week and I think I talked too fast which made it hard for anyone listening to understand what I was saying (I could tell because no one asked any questions). I’m not really sure what to make of the situation, to be honest. I think it just may be the case that most of the lab is proficient in Japanese but not so much English and that it’s an unfortunate coincidence that I don’t speak Japanese. Obviously, there are no bad intentions present, but I may have to ask the professors or my mentor what’s going on during the next group meeting. It doesn’t really seem like there’s a good solution to language barrier problems in general, but I’ll do what I can!

The other thing that happened this week in my lab is a cleaning of the lab. I didn’t participate in cleaning the labs themselves, just the office (and there was plenty of work to do there). The thing I was really surprised about when cleaning was that after cleaning the shelves, carpet, and other things around the office, the professor in the lab told us to go around and clean everyone’s desks. The other researchers there were picking up people’s things, cleaning keyboards and computers, and trying to tidy up everyone’s space. This was shocking to me, because the culture I’m used to is one where everyone cleans communal space, but no one touches another’s personal work space. Personally, I would prefer if I was tasked with keeping my work space clean and if no one moved around my things but I definitely understand the mindset that my lab has, which is probably something along the lines of “everyone helps clean everything”. Anyway, I went along with the cleaning, but I tried to not move as much of others’ things as I could. I think this may illustrate a difference between Japanese and American culture –  Americans tend to like to have control over things only concerning them if it’s possible (at least when it comes to lab work), and Japanese people tend to view the situation as more of a team project. Of course, I could be misinterpreting the cleaning process of our lab, but it came as a surprise to me. I guess this is just another cultural difference I will have to get used to.

I would say my biggest personal accomplishment is getting sleep. I have been getting way more sleep in this program than I did in college, and I still have plenty of time to do things. It’s been a really long time since I’ve been able to regularly enjoy six or more hours of sleep a night and I’m loving it. That doesn’t have much to do with me since my lab hours are very reasonable but it’s still one of the great things about this program. My biggest challenge has definitely been the social aspect of the internship. I’m used to being around people in the States – I always study in groups, eat in groups, and spend all of my free time in groups. However, at this point in my internship, most days I have less than an hour of total conversation. I also have a hard time making myself go out and do things alone – for some reason I feel extremely out-of-place eating in restaurants alone or walking around the city alone, and not having people to do things with has led to me missing out on things that I would have liked to do so far. I will try to do what I can about this – I have plans to go to a bluegrass concert and a pool hall that both should be a lot of fun on my own, but with the weekends slipping away so fast I need to start making more plans! Anyway, I am definitely looking forward to meeting up with everyone at the mid-program meeting.

My research is experiencing setbacks, but I’ve been told that “setbacks are the key to progress” by the professor I work with at SIU, so I will have made a lot of progress when this is all over. I didn’t actually work in the lab at all this week – Monday no one went into the lab because of the earthquake (and our optics table broke), Tuesday the university was closed, Wednesday I had to give a short presentation and my mentor and I worked on that, and then Thursday and Friday we didn’t work in the lab because my mentor was busy with an abstract and also because he wanted to discuss with Dr. Kawayama the research plan. This is kind of unfortunate because as of three weeks into my internship I’ve only spent one afternoon in the lab taking data (or more accurately watching someone take data), and I still can’t really do anything in the lab without my mentor, who is very busy. Add on top of that that we have to realign our setup after the earthquake because it was likely messed up, and it looks unlikely that I will have useful data before the Kyoto meeting. We’ve had about three research plans and they’ve all been scrapped, but I have faith that I will get some good data after we finish realignment. I have also learned a lot from reading papers, and this week I’ve been teaching myself to make nice-looking PowerPoint 3D images, which will come in handy for the poster. Additionally, I suspect that I have now more problem-solving experience in this project than most any other Nakatani fellow has in his/hers.

I’d say my overall experience so far has been very informative and valuable to me – there have been ups and downs but it’s definitely not what I expected an international experience to be, and I’m glad that I finally know what living outside of the United States for an extended period of time is like!

Question of the Week
Obviously, arcades are popular in Japan. I see a lot of young adults/adolescents in them when I’m around – Is it a common thing for groups of young Japanese people to go to arcades as a social activity? Do people go just on special occasions, or regularly? I don’t know a single person in the States that goes to arcades, so I really have no idea how outings to an arcade get planned.

• See some of the articles about arcades under the Hobbies in Japan section on our Life in Japan resources page.

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Week 07-08: Overview of Mid-Program Meeting & Research Host Lab Visit

The Mid-Program Meeting was a lot of fun – on Saturday morning before I arrived, I went to Kobe with Kaitlin and we tried Kobe steak, which I can say was probably the best steak I’ve had in my life (although I’ve never really had fancy steak before). Saturday night the 2018 Japanese Fellowss and the US Fellows went to karaoke together, which was a lot of fun, although it was a little confusing after we ran out of English songs that the Japanese fellows knew. On Sunday we had the cultural activities, which were a blast, and then Janmesh, Shuhei, Katsuya, and I went to a maid cafe. This was definitely a weird experience, but it was a lot of fun and, at least to me, the particular place we went didn’t deserve the bad rap that some people had given maid cafes. On Monday, after our presentations, Janmesh, Sahil, and I went kimono shopping. I bought myself a used kimono, which I am very happy about, and then we wandered along the river before hanging out at the hotel for the night. On Tuesday we went sightseeing as a group, which ended at the Manga museum. After that, Sam, Ken, and I went to get some spicy ramen and explored another shopping area of Kyoto. Finally, after we got back on Wednesday, I went bowling at a place that offered five games for 1350 yen, which is a pretty good price for downtown Osaka. However, the lanes had a lot less oil than I’m used to so my high was a 182 with an average around a 150 or 160. I definitely enjoyed the Mid-Program Meeting, mostly because it was nice to see everyone and catch up.

Honestly part of me wishes that we were all at the same university (like the Japanese fellows are at Rice) so we could go out and explore together every night. Kyoto is a beautiful city, and I mentioned a few times that I would love to live there, but not sightsee there. It’s great to walk along the river and past the shrines in the middle of the city, but for tourism I got the impression that once you’ve seen one shrine or temple, you’ve seen them all. The other unfortunate thing about the city is that everything closed there very early (usually between 8 and 10). Luckily a few of us managed to find some good restaurants/bars open late on Tuesday, but it’s definitely not like Tokyo where everything is open late. I’m very excited about the kimono and yukata that I now have – I’ll be sure to wear them in my lab here and also once I get back to Carbondale. They’re surprisingly comfortable, I have one for warm weather and one for cold weather, and most importantly I won’t have to wear pants when I wear them.

My favorite part of the visit that we did as a group was probably the opportunity to catch up with the Japanese fellows – specifically, the group that I stayed in a cabin with at the Fuji lakes (Janmesh, Shuhei, Katsuya, and I) did a lot of catching up. Janmesh and I even told them that if they have a free weekend in the US they should fly up to Chicago and we can both meet them there (although the chances of that happening are probably not great). I’ve made some good friends in the group of Japanese fellows, and it makes me wonder why I’m having so much trouble making friends with people in my lab. I suppose it’s probably a combination of the language barrier and the fact that most of the guys in my lab are usually busy with classes or research. Anyway, I was planning on meeting up with Shuhei and Mariko (who live in Osaka) for a football game on Saturday, but that fell through because of all the rain. We’ll have to look for another sports game nearby that we can go to.

The trip was mostly what I expected, though to be honest I thought I would spend a little more time with the whole group at night. We did karaoke one night, but most of my free time after that was spent with just a few other fellows. That was fine, but I would’ve liked to go bowling or exploring or out to eat with more of the US fellows. It’s a shame that we only get to meet up as a group once more during the summer (actually, probably once more ever). Don’t get me wrong – I did a lot of catching up, just maybe not as much as I should have or would’ve liked to. I can’t really say I faced any real challenges this trip except maybe the challenge of finding a kimono I wanted to buy – the whole trip was pretty relaxing and a welcome break from the lab. I learned a lot during the trip, but not cultural things – rather, I learned a good amount of information from Prof. Kono about my project’s premise and where I need to go from here. I’d say that this alone made the meeting a success and I look forward to finishing out my project! By finishing out my project, of course, I mean making a poster. This project has been worked on since the Nakatani fellow was here last year and it doesn’t seem to have an end in sight.

I’d like to mention my situation with “things to do” in Japan – on one hand, it seems like I have way too many things planned (day trips and the like) for the short period of time I have left. However, I was trying to plan something to do Saturday, which was difficult because it was supposed to be raining all day, and I realized that there’s really not that much left for me to do. I’ve explored all the major neighborhoods of Osaka, done most of the shopping, and seen all the major touristy spots. Honestly, choosing from indoor activities, the most appealing things I could do would be going back to the pool hall or bowling alley I’ve been frequenting, which is ironic because those are the same things I do for leisure in the United States. I do have a lot of plans, but most of them involve things like beaches, sports games, or hiking (mostly hiking, actually). I think maybe if I’ve learned one thing about myself from the experience of living in an urban area for the first time in Japan, it’s that typically urban activities like museums or shopping malls aren’t really my cup of tea. I’ll take things like the beautiful mountain ranges of Japan over the city any day of the week. That being said, this weekend has helped me to realize that I’ve actually managed to complete the majority of “bucket list” items I had for Japan – now all the rest is just gravy.

I didn’t end up doing too much on Saturday, but on Sunday I went to a jazz club in Osaka to hear a group called the Bluegrass Ramble. Their banjo player, Randy Cotten, grew up in Carbondale and learned to play with the jam group that I play with now. The guys back home told me about him, so I was pretty excited to be able to go to this concert. When I sat down, a lady came up to me and started asking me if I liked bluegrass. I told her my story, and she went back to talk to the band about it. Not too long later, Randy Cotten came up to me and told me that there was a rumor going around that there was a foreigner here (I was the only person there that wasn’t Japanese). We talked for a little about bluegrass and the jam back home, then he went to practice for the concert. They played an hour set, then Randy invited me to the back room with the rest of the band. He gave me his banjo to play and offered to call me up in the middle of the next set, which was an offer I couldn’t refuse (I even brought my picks just in case). I played a little longer, decided on a song, and then five songs into the next set I got called up to say a few words and play a song. I played “Clinch Mountain Backstep” – I took a couple of breaks, and the fiddle and mandolin players each had one. After the show, Randy and I talked some more, the band leader asked me some questions and gave me some information about an upcoming bluegrass festival, and I even got a discount on my food, presumably because I went up on the stage. This was probably the thing I have enjoyed the most so far in Japan, and I’m sure the guys I play with in Carbondale will be happy to hear about it.

Mid-Program Research Presentation and Project Update

My talk at the Mid-Program Meeting was a little rough, and I think I can attribute this to a few reasons – first, I definitely could have been more articulate during the presentation, and this was most likely due to a lack of rehearsal. I believe that I understand the topic of my presentation fairly well, but this may not have come across to the audience because I had more of a general idea of what I was going to talk about than specific points I was going to make. I also think that I lacked an in-depth understanding of the physics principles behind excitons in carbon nanotubes (actually I still do), which makes it hard to explain some things. I have learned a lot already about this topic and I hope to increase my understanding over the course of the summer, but the theory of exciton dynamics in CNTs is very complex and still being developed. In fact, there are some theory questions that my mentor doesn’t even understand fully, which makes having a complete background to explain the motivation of my experiment a daunting task.

I also think the presentation would have gone better if I had memorized some of the details of the experiment – specifically, the length of the dipole gap and the measure of alignment in our CNT sample I could not give off-hand. Other than this, I’m not sure how the audience’s understanding of the topic was – for all I know, the people listening could have been completely lost or they could have thought that I was oversimplifying. The time constraint was a problem in this regard, and I think it would have been impossible for me to give an introduction to my project without assuming the listeners had an understanding of some basic experimental techniques, such as pump-probe spectroscopy or photoconductivity tests. I hope that everyone followed me when I talked about the setup and photoconductive antennas, but I’m not entirely convinced that was the case. I think this is a fundamental problem of physics education, or at the very least one that I’m having – when I try to learn a new concept outside of class, it’s often difficult to learn in any other way than someone sitting down with me one-on-one and explaining very slowly to me what I need to understand about it. Prof. Talapatra at SIU and Prof. Kono over this summer have so far taken many hours of their time to explain things to me that I wasn’t able to pick up without them, and for this I am very grateful. However, once I learn the new concepts I tend to use the same physics jargon casually that made it difficult for me to learn the concepts in the first place. Oftentimes I see this in publications – the authors write their papers for other physicists and not in a way that makes it easy for people relatively new to the subject to understand. I guess my point is that I may have talked in a way that made it difficult for newcomers to THz spectroscopy to understand (using acronyms and jargon and such) in order to be concise. Whatever the reasons, this was not my best presentation, but I will be sure to try and give a better one at the end of the summer.

I was lucky enough to talk with Prof. Kono and TJ (my mentor) for more than an hour after our presentations about the direction of our project. TJ also talked with Prof. Kono and Kawayama-sensei afterwards. We have somewhat refined our focus – before this week we weren’t really sure which direction to move in, but now (partially because TJ is under pressure to publish a paper), we have decided to shift our focus more towards device application. I won’t go into too much detail, but we now have a tentative list of tests we’re going to run, although before we do this we need to try and fabricate another photoconductive antenna on top of our CNT sample. We also will ask some people at Rice to mail samples to us which we can test before I bring them back at the end of the summer. Unfortunately, we weren’t able to work this week – on Thursday we had a group meeting and more discussion on which tests specifically we need to take, and on Friday there was so much flash flooding in the area that the roads were unsafe to use, and no one came into the lab. It rained for more than two days straight but it looks okay now so on Monday I should be able to get going on this project. I would like to thank Prof. Kono for helping guide our project over the past month. He has been a tremendous help to TJ and me, and he is excellent at explaining both experimental motivations and physics theory, which I learned during our lunch on Monday. If only I went to Rice and had Prof. Kono for my physics classes!

Question of the Week
Perhaps I’m imagining it, but it seems to me like many items such as meat or dairy products have dates on them (presumably sell-by or expiration dates) that don’t allow as much time as similar products in the US. Is there a difference in the way that these foods are labeled that creates this difference? Otherwise, what is the reason for it?

• For more on this, see the section on Food Labels & Expiring Dates under Cooking on Your Own in Japan on the Food in Japan resources page.

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Week 09: Research in Japan vs. Research in the U.S.

My lab in Japan is very different from my lab in the United States, though there are definitely some similarities. I’ll start with those. In both labs, most of the research is done by graduate students – in Japan, we have some undergraduate students, but they are mostly studying for the graduate admission exam, and in the States the undergraduates usually don’t do much research. This is admittedly partially due to the rule that at SIU undergraduates aren’t allowed in the lab without a grad student or professor present, although this rarely is followed. Another similarity is that research in both labs tends to happen around the lives of the researchers. My mentor in Japan works a lot, but his hours vary because of his girlfriend and his commitments to her and others. In the States, several of the grad students in our lab and others are married and have families, so they oftentimes have to arrange their hours around their children. This being said, the hours in the two labs are very different. Most people in Japan come into the lab around 10:30 or 11:00, or later if they have classes, and leave around 5:00 or 6:00 each day. The people in my Japanese lab do not work on weekends. At SIU, the grad students I work with usually come in for the mornings and/or early afternoons, leave in the late afternoon (between 3:00 and 5:00, usually to go home and have dinner with their families), and then come back around 9:00. They often stay in the lab until 1:00 or 2:00 AM, depending on their project. People in my lab at SIU also work weekends often, and Prof. Talapatra (who runs my lab at SIU) often jokes that to be in our lab one’s brain must work best late at night and on weekends. Indeed, most of our lab’s research tends to get done then.

For me working full-time in Japan, I come in around 9:30 or 10:00 every day and leave consistently between 5:00 and 6:30 or so to catch the shuttle back to the campus I live on. At SIU, I worked part-time. When I was busy in the lab, I would come in almost every day around 9:30 or 10:00 PM and leave between midnight and 1:00 AM. I also would come in for mornings and/or weekends when I was free. One big adjustment here is being able to keep a regular schedule whereas at SIU my lab schedule depends more on my classes, activities, and my mentors’ schedules than anything else.

The social dynamic in my lab here is also very different than the one in Prof. Talapatra’s lab. Here everyone in the lab (or at least the Japanese people) are very polite – perhaps, from an American view, they are too polite. I’m not sure if this is due to the level of their English speaking, but whenever they ask anything of me (even just to hand them a piece of lab equipment), they always ask to be excused or get my attention in a very timid way. An example of this occurred this week when a Japanese researcher many years my elder had to leave the lab and come back several times. To do this, he had to move past me, and this was a bit of a challenge because there wasn’t much space between the wall and the optics table. However, every time he had to leave, he would stop behind me and wait until I looked up, then say something along the lines of “excuse me, could I please…?” and gesture towards the door. I imagine if I had to do that in the US I would just say “excuse me” as I tried to get around the person in the way. My mentor, TJ, doesn’t really fit this mold, but I suspect that is because he is Filipino.

The dynamic at SIU is very different because the people I work with there get along very well and like to laugh and joke around a lot. I fit in really well with this mindset, and when we do something wrong in the lab (even when Prof. Talapatra messes up), the grad students and I will tease him/her in a playful way. I can’t imagine this ever happening in a Japanese lab, or at least not mine. A few examples: One Ph.D. student in my lab said he was going to finish his thesis at the end of the summer when he hadn’t started in April, and we all joked that he was going to take another four years before he finished. That same student and Prof. Talapatra had a sort of fake argument that it wasn’t possible to cut a piece of silicon substrate into six square pieces because it was too small, then while we were working in the lab one night Prof. Talapatra walked in and cut the substrate in front of the Ph.D. student, then said something like “I’ve still got it”. Another time, I broke a part for an xyz stage and a grad student had to spend two hours fixing it with me. When someone in my modern physics lab asked why he didn’t have time to grade (he was also my TA), he joked that he didn’t have time to grade because he has to go into the lab every night to fix the things that I break. My point of these stories is that we make fun of each other a lot in my lab at SIU, but that doesn’t seem terribly appropriate in Osaka. I mentioned that perhaps Japanese people would seem too polite to most Americans, and I suspect that Americans (or people working in American labs) may seem too rude or forward for Japanese people.

In both of my labs, I think there generally exist values of getting a lot of research done. I am lucky enough to have participated in two very dedicated lab groups. My first impression of my lab in Japan (and perhaps this is not an accurate one) is that there is a lot of pressure to publish papers. I have heard several times the professors ask when their researchers were going to be ready to publish. At SIU, I’m not really sure what the motivation is for research – the Ph.D. students I work with frequently mention that they have almost all the data for their thesis that they need already. To be honest, it seems like a lot of the research we do is a mix of things that the researchers (me as a freshman included) find interesting and what Prof. Talapatra finds interesting. I’m not sure how this can be tied to Japanese/American values or culture, but it seems like in my Japanese lab research is more conclusion-driven and my lab at SIU is more curiosity-driven.

My lab experience has definitely been a lot different than I expected – I expected my subject would be more defined, but the truth is that there are a lot of unknowns in both the expected findings and the experimental procedures of my project. Also, quite frankly I expected Japanese people to work more than they do (at least in my lab). My impression is that Americans tend to think that Japanese people overwork themselves, and that Japanese people tend to think that Americans overwork themselves. In my experience neither is really true, both Japanese researchers and American researchers that I’ve met work modest hours and leave some time for themselves. I am surprised by all the free evenings that I have – in the US, most of my evening time is taken up by bowling, pool, studying, and/or working in the lab. I don’t have any of those things (at least not regularly) to do in the evenings in Japan, so I’ve been struggling a little to find things to do with myself.

At least right now I prefer my American schedule to my Japanese one, and I think the reason for this is that I felt busier at SIU. I am a person who likes to have most or all of his time occupied, and in America I had little enough free time that I could fill virtually all of it with time in the lab. Luckily, I built things like recreation and studying with friends into my schedule, so I didn’t go crazy. However, in Japan I don’t really feel like I’m busy – I think in order to do this I would have to work twelve or more hours a day in the lab, and to be honest I would get pretty worn out if I worked twelve straight hours in the lab every day. If I had more time in Japan, I would pitch the idea of the lab group going outside for an hour or two every day to play a game of baseball or frisbee or soccer or something and then head back to the lab. This not only sounds super fun, it also would be a break that would make the day more tolerable if I worked long hours. I suppose this is a moot point because I don’t work long hours and most people in my lab likes sports, but it’s a good idea regardless. I suppose what I’m trying to say is that I like the US system better because in my lab the day is taken on in sizeable chunks but not all at once, whereas in Japan it seems like researchers come to the lab in the morning, leave in the afternoon, and then are done with research for the day.

Research Project Update
This week for my research project I took some wavelength- and polarization- dependence data on our CNT sample and our GaAs sample. I haven’t looked at the CNT data, but I analyzed the GaAs data and it appears that the photocurrent is increasing with increased laser wavelength, which as I understand it doesn’t make much sense at first glance. I will have to look into that and maybe retake some measurements. Later in the week we did more wavelength-dependence tests while varying the bias. My mentor is analyzing the data for that now, but he said that there are some confusing parts of it, which means we’ll probably retake that data as well shortly. On the plus side, the more data sets we take that aren’t easily explained, the greater the chance that we discover something amazing and win a Nobel prize!

The project right now is becoming more defined, but we have two papers planned and also possibly some device fabrication, not to mention that a student from Rice mailed a new sample to us, so the direction of our project during the short time I have left is at the present moment far from clear. This makes me especially nervous as I begin to write my abstract, but I’m sure I’ll figure something out. The biggest problem we’ve had is that the laser we are using has been having a consistent and very significant drop in power output recently, so much so that at the lowest wavelength (490 nm) that the system is usually capable of, there is no output whatsoever. This may be due to the earthquake but we’re not sure. My mentor has said that he thinks we may have less than a month before we’re unable to do experiments due to the laser, so we probably need to pay the cost for servicing it (more than $1,000 actually). Luckily for me, TJ wants to try and put this off until after I leave.

Question of the Week
Do college students in Japan (either bachelor’s or master’s students) live at home oftentimes? I have noticed a few students commuting for a half hour to an hour by train to get back home from the lab, and I don’t know why they would live so far away if they just had an apartment (which I thought was normal for grad students).

• Yes, due to the cost of housing in Japan (and that graduate students must pay their own tuition individually) there are many students that do choose to live at home or with family.  If they have an apartment, particularly if they need a large enough apartment for a family of their own, they may need to leave further out from the university/city center just simply due to the cost of housing being too high to be closer in.
• You might also want to poll the Japanese Fellows to see what they do.  You’ve got a ready made dataset of 12 Japanese students through the program. 🙂

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Week 10: Reflections on Japanese Language Learning

Learning and using Japanese this summer has been quite the experience. I learned what I know now in the first few weeks of the summer, during the intensive language classes we had. I would have liked to keep studying Japanese and to learn some kanji during my time in Osaka, but I regret to say that I haven’t been able to do this. My level of speaking is probably around the same level that it was when I left Tokyo, or perhaps a bit worse. I do try to use Japanese phrases here and there whenever possible – I use Japanese in stores more than anywhere else. I actually almost never speak Japanese in the lab, and this is mostly because I don’t really talk to anyone in my lab except one or two people that are fluent English speakers. The times I’ve been with the other people in the lab, it’s usually in a group setting, and they are speaking their native language. This is either Chinese (which I can’t understand a word of), or Japanese (which they speak too fast for me to pick up). I think it’s probably not a great idea to interrupt their conversation that I can’t understand to try and insert an irrelevant comment in broken Japanese, so I usually just stick to English.

I have had a couple of awkward speaking experiences to share: first, I decided to visit a cowboy-themed restaurant near my dorm. They had pictures of some good-looking steak outside and I thought it would be funny to be an American in a cheesy American-themed restaurant in Japan. However, I assumed that since it was based on “Western” stereotypes, there would be at least one English speaker. There was not. What’s more, the place was actually a bar and not a restaurant. I walked in, sat down at one of the bar stools, and realized that I was the only person in the entire place. The guy behind the counter started talking in Japanese and gave me a Japanese menu, and I managed to ask (probably with incorrect grammar) if they had an English menu. He shook his head, and at that point I decided that I wasn’t about to be the only person, an American who doesn’t speak English and wouldn’t be drinking, in a bar that only has Japanese speakers and menus. Therefore, I stood up, said “sumimasen”, and just walked out. That was probably one of the more awkward things I’ve done so far in Japan. I had another awkward language experience at QB House, the $10 haircut place. I’ve been there a few times, and usually I manage to communicate the haircut I want pretty effectively with a few Japanese words. The most recent time, I guess I used the Japanese words convincingly enough that the barber thought I spoke some Japanese. The whole time he was cutting my hair, he was asking me questions in Japanese that I didn’t understand at all. I had to do my best to guess at the questions he was asking – for example, I heard the word “benkyo”, or study, in a question and I just replied with the Japanese equivalent of “yes, Osaka University”. For a lot of questions though I just shrugged awkwardly, which was a little weird because I couldn’t leave until after he had finished cutting my hair.

I’ve had a lot of fun with Japanese this summer, and I don’t want to stop learning it after this program. I was looking into getting a Japanese minor after I get back, but that might be a little impractical due to my current two majors and two minors. However, I think I will probably try to take an introductory class or two and see if I can’t get very basic conversational things down. This trip has definitely sparked an interest in the language, but where that will take me after this summer is anyone’s guess.

Research Project Update
My research project has hit a few more obstacles this week (surprise, surprise), but we’re making progress. Early this week, it got very hot outside and the air conditioning in the room where our laser is broke. This changed the power output of the laser and also the profile of the beam (both make it impossible to do experiments), but we got the air fixed and now it looks like it’s back to normal. The only problem is that when it gets too hot outside, we have to go pour water in a fan outside the building or else the room starts heating up. In other news, the power output of our laser is still steadily dropping, and we aren’t able to test a few frequency ranges because of it. We’re also really starting to see the effects of our optics table not being a floating optics table, because the noise levels are very high for our terahertz waveforms. However, TJ says that we should be able to go on without maintenance until after I leave, which means that my project should be unaffected. However, after I’m out of here they will need to fix the laser and table as soon as possible. Other than those things, all is well, and we are finally starting to get some data that we may be able to use.

The only thing I’m worried about with my poster is that Kawayama-sensei most likely won’t want me to use most of the important data that I’m taking for my poster because it will be used for TJ’s paper, and he wants to keep it under wraps until TJ publishes. I may have to make my poster a bit more general, and perhaps I’ll just discuss general properties of THz emissions from carbon nanotubes as opposed to the specific excitonic effect we’re looking at. That’s probably a good call because my understanding of the general idea is much better than my understanding of the theory behind excitons in carbon nanotubes.

Question of the Week
Are sports teams here usually coed? I’ve seen several sports teams traveling (with uniforms and equipment and everything), and oftentimes there are men and women traveling together. Is that a common thing in Japan?

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Week 11: Interview with Japanese Researcher

I conducted two interviews this week. One was with a professor in my lab, Kawayama-sensei. The other was with two students in my lab, one finishing his B4 year and one who is in his M1 year I believe.

Kawayama-sensei was very talkative during his interview, and he talked more about physics than about his experiences as a professor, which is what I was trying to ask about. I adjusted to this, and the interview became more of him teaching me about superconductors than an interview. I learned that Kawayama-sensei’s degrees are in chemistry, and his first research was in physical chemistry, specifically in synthesis of superconducting oxide thin films. However, as he explained, silicon technology has been developed much more quickly than superconductor technology, and many labs have chosen to focus on silicon at the moment. He said he was exposed to terahertz technology while doing research at a university in Japan, and he wanted to study it because it was (and still is) a relatively new technology with much left to be discovered. His interests right now are in both the physics principles of THz technology and also functionalizing it for commercial applications. Kawayama-sensei said that the lab works with several companies to try and see how they can develop THz technology further.

I also asked him about being a professor in Japan, and he said that at the moment he is not a full professor. Apparently in Japan it is very difficult to be a full professor and in physics one must have several publications in top-level journals. He also said that often to become a professor a candidate should also have connections with companies, and that it is becoming more and more difficult due to budget decreases. Kawayama-sensei also mentioned that for funding, labs must submit applications to the government (similar to grants in the US, I suppose), and then the government decides where and how money for universities will be spent. He made it seem like universities have very little control over how money for research is spent.

My interview with the students in our lab was a lot more casual, though it was also a bit confusing at times because I tried to make a lot of jokes during the interview and they didn’t get any of them. It was also a little awkward because they don’t speak much English and I could tell that they were having difficulty understanding what I was saying. I started the interview asking about research and school, but it soon became clear that they didn’t want to talk much about that kind of thing. I managed to get out of them that they are both electrical engineering majors, and when I asked why they chose their field of study, one student said that he liked electronic devices and the other said that he liked circuits. I asked the M1 student (who had done research) if he wanted to study abroad, and he said that he did but that he doesn’t speak English. He also said he would give the advice “work hard and enjoy life” to students starting college, which is not the most profound thing to say but it’s actually pretty good advice. This line of questioning being finished, I switched to questions that they would be better equipped to answer: ones about culture. I learned a great deal from this part of the interview, so I’ll format my findings in a list:

• 7-11 is the best konbini because their onigiri and bread selection is the best
• Baseball is the most popular sport in Japan and no one cares about college sports
• The average free evening for a Japanese person involves drinking and/or watching TV
• Religion is not important to people in Japan and most people identify as not religious, but religion is still incorporated into a lot of things that people do
• I asked why the beach that I went to was so dirty and one of the students said “stupid people go beach” to “make garbage, fireworks” which I think is a good way to put it
• Japanese people love rice and apparently never get tired of eating it
• Sometimes they even put rice in their ramen for reasons I can’t explain
• Gambling on horse racing is relatively common
• Melonpan isn’t made with melons, it just looks like a melon
• Their favorite types of sushi are salmon and shrimp, and they both prefer ramen noodles over any other type
• Both adults and children use read/watch manga/anime, but there are different types for young people than for older people
• The weather on Fuji changes suddenly so I was advised to bring a rain jacket
• One student thought that college students in Japan don’t work very hard and he assumed that college students in America work much harder on average
• Political candidates can’t use public forms of communication (TV, radio, etc.) to campaign, so they have to use the internet or just visit a lot of places
• Many young people don’t care about politics because they feel that their vote doesn’t matter. They said that due to increasing elderly populations, “old people decide elections.”

As you can probably tell, I learned a lot from this interview, and it lasted for about an hour. Both interviews were very informative, though neither went in quite the direction I expected. I learned a lot that surprised me in these interviews – I was particularly surprised when Kawayama-sensei was talking about how long it takes to become a full professor and start your own lab, and when the students I interviewed talked about politics in Japan. I also really liked the advice “work hard and enjoy life” – the way I figure, if I can do well in school and have fun at the same time, there’s no reason why I shouldn’t. I think we all need to remember to work some time into our daily lives to enjoy ourselves.

Research Project Update
I took a fair amount of data this week – it feels like my research is just now starting to pick up a bit, which is unfortunate. The project I’m working on will take a very long time to finish, and at this point I’m taking data that won’t be used for my poster but will probably be used by TJ when he writes his paper. Deciding which data to use for my poster has been difficult – TJ doesn’t want to put some of our data on this poster because he’s trying to publish, and due to us needing input from a few different people, I didn’t actually know which data I could use at the time of me writing this report. I suspect my poster presentation will just give a general idea of the methods I’ve been using, and it won’t include too many specific goals. I think this is a bad time to make a poster because TJ is just starting to begin exploring a new area of interest, and despite our focus moving towards that area I can’t talk about it for the poster, both because I won’t be able to use the data and also because I still don’t understand entirely what it is that we’re exploring, not to mention that the research on this topic is still in the early stages of its development.

At this point I think I’m mostly ready to go back to the United States, but the thing I will dislike most about leaving Japan is not being able to stay and see this project through. I feel like I’m jumping ship without doing my part, so I guess I’ll have to tell TJ to send me some of his data after I get back. There will be no real conclusion to my project at the end of my time here and probably not for a while afterwards, but I suppose that is part of experimental condensed matter research. I do, however, have a few new ideas for projects to work on at SIU that I’ll pitch to Prof. Talapatra. Hopefully I can start work on a few ongoing projects of my own, and the motivation to do that is another thing that I think I’ll take away from this summer.

Question of the Week

I stayed out overnight in Namba during the weekend, and in the morning, I noticed a lot of garbage trucks and sanitation workers cleaning up all of the trash in the street – does this happen in cities in the US? I suppose I’m not used to the idea of streets getting so dirty overnight that they require a cleaning every morning.

• Yes, cities do have street sweeper/cleaner machines that go out in the wee hours of the morning in the U.S. usually but often this is only once a week or so and usually just in the downtown/more heavily congested areas. In Japan, cleaning of streets does happen more often – even daily. Shop owners in Japan also clean and wash down the sidewalk in front of their stores on a daily basis too.  That is why large cities like Tokyo don’t smell ‘bad’ but large cities in the U.S. are known to have a particularly bad smell during the hot summer months.

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Week 12-13: Final Week at Research Lab & Re-Entry Program

My last week was spent mostly preparing presentations and my poster. TJ decided that he wanted to switch CNT samples to get better data moving forward, so I spent much of my time preparing a presentation for my lab group, for the other fellows in Tokyo, and my poster for Houston. There is much left to work on – really, we are just starting on the exploration of an exciting new characteristic of CNTs, and this will probably take several years to develop. I hope to stay in contact with TJ and hopefully do some work on the project from the States if I can. However, I will also continue to work in Dr. Talapatra’s lab at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale this fall and I have some new ideas for projects to do in his lab.

During my final week in Osaka, I had a farewell party, and I was given some nice gifts. I also gave away the rest of the SIU things I brought, more so that I could fit all of my souvenirs in my luggage than because I felt like I needed to. On my final weekend I hiked Mt. Fuji, which was a little disappointing because it was very crowded and easy – if I were to hike it again I would have definitely picked one of the harder trails. It was something I didn’t want to leave Japan without doing though, and I’m glad that I made it to the crater.

Looking back, I don’t know that I have changed much as a person. Perhaps I am more tolerant now of people that don’t act the same way that I do, but I think more than anything I have simply gained an understanding (if only a partial one) of another culture. I didn’t expect to undergo any huge transformation upon coming to Japan, but I did expect to have a better knowledge of the world and of my role in it, and I think I have exceeded my expectations in that regard. My perception towards Japan hasn’t changed too much – I find it interesting that a lot of Japanese stereotypes in the US that I assumed were only stereotypes were proven true in Japan (such as Japanese people’s love of anime or some quirks about Japanese language). However, I definitely understand how Japanese people think better now, and this may help me when interacting with Japanese people in the States. I do think that I’ve come to love the United States from living in Japan, because I feel like a lot of the time US citizens only talk about the bad parts of living in America. If anything, living in Japan has shown me that there are a lot of things that I prefer about living in America to living in Japan, so this summer has definitely made me grateful for being able to live in the States.

The thing I will miss most about living in Japan is the ease of doing karaoke – while Japanese people might not have been willing to play sports with me, any one of the people in my lab would always be willing to go do karaoke. I don’t think my friends in the States would be as interested. One frustrating thing about Japan was the lack of water fountains, trash cans, and public restrooms. I am very happy to have these things back in America, and quite frankly I don’t know how Japanese people manage without them. I suppose I learned that Japanese people just have a different mindset than Americans do about things like littering or buying water bottles. From the research experience, I learned two things: one, that I want to do physics research for the rest of my life, and two, that that research probably won’t be in terahertz technology. However, I’m keeping as many doors open as possible, and we’ll see what happens.

The final presentation in Tokyo was a little awkward – the professor of my lab seemed to be running the show, and we weren’t exactly on the same page. At one point he asked why I didn’t have certain figures in my presentation, and during my presentation while answering a question I asked if I could talk about something that I thought he wanted to keep under wraps, but he didn’t really understand what I was saying. It went well though, and I managed to relax and just talk casually during most of it. During the re-entry program, I was happy to learn about other experiences I could have abroad, because I would like to travel abroad again sometime if it’s possible. The colloquium was fun, but a little taxing especially because we all just wanted to go home at that point. It was a good experience for me, though, especially since it was in a low-pressure environment. I still have some work to do on explaining my project to people but it’s all over and done with now.

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Final Research Poster & Project Overview

Research Project Abstract & Poster: Terahertz Emission from Aligned Carbon Nanotubes (PDF)
Host Lab in Japan: Osaka University – Inst. of Laser Engineering, THz Photonics, Tonouchi Laboratory
Host Professor:  Prof. Masayoshi Tonouchi and Prof. Iwao Kawayama
Mentor: TJ

Introduction: We initially aimed to characterize a CNT film for use in a high-efficiency THz emitter, but later we decided to explore the properties of exciton dissociation in CNTs.

Big Picture: CNTs can be used in the high-potential field of THz technology and perhaps with several other applications depending on the findings of our later experiments.

Approach: Time-domain THz emission spectroscopy.

Results: We confirmed a polarization dependence, wavelength-absorbance dependence, and we are now exploring the nonlinear photocurrent increase with increasing bias.

Discussion: This confirmed several intuitive properties of the THz emission of CNTs and now we are looking further into what may be due to exciton multiplication in CNTs.

Further Research: Explore more wavelengths, do more detailed bias dependence measurements.

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Follow-on Project

I would like to present about this project to my college- I think we have a study abroad fair that I might try to go to, and I will also try to present to the physics department. Most likely I’ll make some slides and just give a talk about the program and how to apply.

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Tips for Future Participants

• Pre-Departure Tip: Learn all the hiragana/katakana well.
• What Gifts To Bring to Japan: I would suggest bringing more food than anything else for omiyage. It’s easy because you don’t know if people will like other things like hats or mugs or whatever.
• Orientation Program in Tokyo: Go out every single afternoon/evening to make the most of your time.
• Mid-Program Meeting in Kyoto: Don’t stress about the presentation. It’s not a big deal.
• Working With Your Research Lab: Suggest to go out to karaoke because Japanese people all seem to like it.
• Living in Osaka: Try to avoid the monorail because it’s really expensive. Use buses if you can figure them out (I couldn’t).
• Japanese Language Study: I think there is a language class at Osaka University that you can enroll in. I didn’t, but I probably should have.