Keeping myself busy

Only three days and so much to tell!

After the group presentations on Monday, which were mostly held in Japanese, my research project work was decided upon on Tuesday. I will be doing to parallel experiments, one of them consists of characterization of a photochemically active metal complex and mesoporous material hybrids, the other one of the synthesis of another metal complex. So I'll have enough to do for the next few months... But the science is really interesting, although quite complex (get it? ^^).
Apart from that, in the evening I went to Mizonokuchi, an area with a few large stores between Aobadai (where I live) and Ookayama (university campus I work in).

The picture on the right shows you a view of Mizonokuchi from the station. These high buildings are not that common in Tokyo, it's a rather flat town (somewhat alike Zurich). But considering the very large population, the city spreads very widely... I hope to get a good picture of that later.

On Wednesday we had 2 YSEP related subjects or courses which we attended. However, also non-YSEP students could join, and this was a nice opportunity to meet other Tokyo Tech students. For this course (called "Topics on Japan", or TOJ), we will need to present our home country. so I will be presenting Switzerland. If anyone has any wishes on anything special I should say, please comment!

Thursday was a long day of work. And I learned that recrystallizing a substance is not always the best method to clean product (in my case, it seems not to have worked so well). My product (that was relatively clean by NMR) was coloured, though it should be white.

I tried doing a column chromatographic purification, but that didn't work out as well as I had hoped. So Next week, I will repeat the experiment. Just to have more product...
Anyway, I got to play around with some liquid nitrogen! Fun as always ^^
Well, after spending most of my time in the lab, I went to have ramen in the evening with a few friends from the dorm. I must say, the original ramen (although technically I had tsukemen) are a lot better than the instant cup-noodles version. After that, we went to small bar, which was supposedly Norwegian, to try some wasabi-flavoured beer. It was really good I must say, so if you ever want to try something interesting if you are in Tokyo, drop by at that place! It's also one of the best coffee places here, so any time you pass by there is something nice (link to their fb page: https://www.facebook.com/Fuglen.Tokyo)

After this calm and enjoyable evening, I had a bad headache on Friday. No I did not drink too much (I had 1 beer only), but I just felt really unwell, so I decided to stay home. It wouldn't have been a very productive day anyway since the people in the lab were training for group presentations they will be having next week. There's three of them... However, most presentations next week will be held by doctoral students, who are supposed to present in English. More news next week about that.