Restarting in Japan

I arrived in Japan this Sunday (19th) and am setting up new life here. My new base is Kobe near Osaka (but distant from Tokyo). I learned in Europe that this city is famous for its delicious beef as well as for the big earthquake in 1995. Regarding this beef, most people have not tried to eat, but just heard cows that produces 'Kobe beef' are fed beer.

Special last days in Konstanz

I have only two more days in Konstanz. It has been hectic to pack at home and send out, while working on some residual burocuracy etc. Unexpectedly we had a lot of snow although the temperature arose quite a bit. My winter shoes were already sent out in a package for surface mail. I have to survive with my favorite lether shoes, but they are already quite damaged.

This morning we had emotional moments to say goodbye to our 6-year-old son's teachers and friends. It is unbearable when I imagine what this move means to him. Apart from this, I mostly can stay calm, probably because I know what the life is in my next place. But, people saying goodbye to me would feel that I am moving away to an unknown world. I really want to stay in touch with them (you!?) and show how I start in Japan.

Rehabilitation effort (1)

I now need to work on filling out forms for contracting for my position in the next working place. I found a few Japanese traditions (that I need to recover) in this kind of formalities.

1) In Japan, we are based on a unique way of counting years in official documents. For example, this year 2012 is the 24th year in the Japanese way after the previous emperor passed away. I lost the habit to stick to this Japanese year count system. Often I mistakenly write '12' in some blanks instead of 24, for example.

2) A very basic thing. I am accustomed to write and recognize the digit 7 in the European way. This European handwriting is hard to recognize by Japanese people, and the Japanese normally write it in the way shown here (mostly #1). I know this well, but I am so familiar with the European way and spontaneously write 7 in that way. I always realize this after my hand automatically makes a mistake, and say to myself 'These 5 years made a big difference!'

It should not take a lot of time to recover the habits, though. Let's see.

Croc genomes

A paper reporting results and plans of crocodile genome sequencing is out in Genome Biology.

The consortium page is here. One can also run BLAT searches at the UCSC site.

A course at NHGRI

I have just found a web page containing the schedule of a course running at NHGRI in US. The course is titled 'Current Topics In Genome Analysis 2012'. This should be a great overview of where we stand in genomics.

New year's shock

I am preparing hard to clean up things here in Konstanz and prepare for new life in Japan, while still taking care of a lot of teaching especially this month.

Over the Christmas holidays, I was expecting a set of documents for apartment rent contract I am going to make through a real estate agency in Kobe, Japan. The contact person at that agency told me that he sent out the envelope containing the documents on December 22, with a relatively quick mailing method. Normally, with this method, an envelope arrives at my place in 4-5 days.

I watched crazy fireworks from the balcony of my apartment on the Silvester day (Dec 31), ...... still waiting for the envelope.

The new year came, and I could not wait any more. It was already two weeks - too long! I requested the shipment code from the sender, and contacted a central post office in Frankfurt, because the sender in Japan told me that he confirmed that the envelope was already in Germany. At the post office, the person who answered my phone call was totally unfriendly, maybe because of my awkward Germany. She said 'schon zugestellt !' (means already in its way to my home). It was weird because even if the envelope is really in its way, it is too slow. But, ....... the envelope did not arrive for the next 5 days. ........... what?

Finally, yeasterday, I called the post office again with the help of a German colleague at my working place. She explained my situation well, and found out that the envelope came to the building including my apartment, but the postman could not find the right recipient, because he could not read my name which was written .............. in Japanese. When we made this second call, the envelope was right back at the post office. We told her my name in alphabets, and got an expected delivery time range. This morning the envelope finally arrived. It turned out that the tag for delivery did not even have the names of the countries on both the sender's and recipient's sides. It was lucky that the envelope was first sent to the right country (probably with the help of my phone number included there). It is simply shocking that the sender, a Japanese, did not have any international mind - wrote no destination country and included the recipient's name in Japanese (more precisely, in Chinese letters). On the other hand, he looked very able and resourceful when I got a lot of help to look at some apartments in Kobe in my last visit to Japan. Yes, he is able but probably within the country - very symbolic in the geographically and culturally isolated country, if I may say this.

One more shock of today was that my application to open a new bank account in Germany was rejected, possibly because of my nationality. I prepared some documents for this. It is very discouraging - tough life as a non-European continues until the last moment. I know, it is not a big deal. This (rejection like this) is not the first time in Germany. I will say at last 'Nein Danke & Nicht mehr !'

Looking for staffs

To launch new research projects at CDB in Kobe (details about my move)  regarding the evolution of vertebrate gene repertoire and its functional characterization, I am looking for staffs (PhD students or postdocs) with special focus detailed below:

・Bioinformatician with prior skills to analyze output of next-generation sequencers
・Pre-/post-doctoral researcher who is specialized in molecular evolution and phylogenetics
・Pre-/post-doctoral researcher who has prior experience in chromatin biochemistry for ChIP assays
・Pre-/post-doctoral researcher with skills of molecular developmental biology (RT-PCR, in situ hybridization, etc.)

At the moment, no position funded directly by CDB is advertized, but I welcome candidates applying for external fellowships/scholarships. Please don't hesitate to contact directly to me (shigehiro.kuraku (at) uni-konstanz.de).

'Good slip' into 2012 !

In this season, every German says 'Guten Rutsch!',
meaning 'Good slip (into the new year) !'. 

Today I organized several things to leave the apartment and the town soon.

I wish you all a happy new year.

About my move

I included the info about my move in the page 'Author info' linked above. I am widely looking for staffs (Ph.D. students and postdocs) who can join in my new team in Kobe. I will probably also announce that in this page later as wel as in other sites.

Turtle symposium

There will be a symposum about turtle evolution held in June 2012 in Tuebingen, Germany

Devo Meetings

Click on the images for details!

Academic positions in Germany

I found a few interesting web sites summarizing descriptions of various academic positions in Germany as well as in other countries.

European University Institute

Wikipedia

my science

Ensembl ASIA

I am now in the middle of a one-week trip in Japan to attend this conference.

I didn't know that if I access to the Ensembl here, I am automatically redirected to 'Ensembl ASIA'. Of course, the contents there are the same as what I normally see in Europe.

Guess what fish, frog and chicken have but we don't

The work I started in 2005 has just been published online.

Genome-wide Detection of Gene Extinction in Early Mammalian Evolution.
Kuraku S & Kuratani S.
Genome Biol Evol. 2011 Nov 17.

My team has been dealing with several examples of lineage-specific gene loss within vertebrates, including Hox14, Bmp16 and Pax4 . These are based on small-scale focus on selected examples of gene loss. The genome-wide assessment is the focus of the article just published. There I stick to gene loss in the early mammalian lineage. In addition to some gene loss already implicated by previous gene-level studies, I have identified many gene losses that require functional dissection.

There are still many questions to be addressed employing molecular phylogenetics.

I will move

It seems that I am still not allowed to say exactly where, but I am moving to a different place some time in February 2012.

Not simply because it is just my home, but also because of many other reasons, I decided to move to Japan.

It is a long story ...... which I can write here ...... maybe little by little.