More Culture, More Work!

Hello, dear readers!
It's been a while again since I last wrote, as I was pretty busy in the last days. The weekend before last, I was at a softball and baseball match, playing together with members from my lab against two other labs. This was part of a cooperation between the groups, which are all three leading in the domain of photochemical catalysis and artificial photosynthesis.
It was the first time I actually played softball, or baseball, but it turns out to be a really fun game. The only downside is standing for long times on the field without really moving (in defense, I guess). It was a pretty cold and windy day, so in addition to having light sportswear only, it felt like freezing alive... The first match started around 10 in the morning, and with the pitch being at the other end of Tokyo, I had to get up pretty early (2.5 hours travel!!). Not only was it a lot of fun to play baseball, our lab even managed to win one match (we got a cup, out of which the professors downed a beer at the party held in the evening).

*I will add pics once I get some*

Sunday was a pretty painful waking, as I had managed to fall during baseball the day before and rip open my hip. Furthermore, I had sore muscles in my arm at places I didn't know there were any :P
The next week was productive (and the pain went away rapidly), I started two multi step syntheses of photocatalytic complexes. One of the complexes is based on rhenium, the other on ruthenium. I learned how expensive the starting materials are a few days ago, and it's around 7000 $ per gram for the ruthenium, the rhenium is even more expensive. If you are interested in investments in raw materials or rare metals, consider these two as viable alternatives to gold or silver.
Of course, the very high price and scarcity of ruthenium and rhenium make limit the applicability of their use in photocatalysis on a large scale. A few members of the lab are therefore investigating alternative metals for the reactions. It is really interesting to see how well the lab is organized in the context of research: based on knowledge accumulated over the past 15 years, the most promising results are developed and research is expanded to several specialities, with two or three students per speciality. There are long-term goals (ex. alternative metal complexes with same efficiency), that build up on the research already conducted and they are approached step by step. This is the first time I see this structure in a research group (although I am sure that other groups do something similar).

Anyways, by the weekend after baseball, I had successfully performed three ligand substitutions. The hard part, purification, was on Monday and Tuesday. I spent 13 hours at the lab on Monday, 9 of which on a flash chromatography! The time-consuming step of the purification was the necessity of measuring a mass spectrum of each fraction. But, it was worth it! :) End of the week, I had my products with high purity and an acceptable yield (40 % over 3 steps, which isn't too bad for me). And the best thing: very intensive and beautiful colours of my products give them even an aesthetic value. That's the way chemistry should be!

Enough about work. Last weekend, I went to a snowboarding competition, at the heart of Tokyo. It was really impressive to see a 30 m ramp and snow, in the middle of Tokyo. Check the video!
I even got an autograph (don't know exactly from whom though, but he was a good boarder), first one I ever got. Perhaps I will be hanging it to my wall here, it's better than plain white.
On Sunday morning, there was an earthquake that shook me awake. After checking out the info on the USGS site (http://comcat.cr.usgs.gov/earthquakes/eventpage/usb000kvca#summary), I found the epicenter to be located exactly at the place we had been playing baseball the weekend before. That can't be a coincidence!! :o

We held our presentation on Switzerland I had mentioned in an earlier post. We decided not to include the wonderful video suggested by an enthusiastic reader (although it was mesmerizing), however I bought some chocolate at the Lindt shop in Shibuya and distributed it during the talk. Everyone loved it! (no surprise there).
This Wednesday, I joined a trip to the Asahi Glass factory as a part of my SJCI class. We took the bus through Tokyo, passing through the harbour on our way to Asahi. It was a long trip, over two hours to go and nearly three to return. Once there, we visited a plant that produced giant glass panes through the so-called glass float technique. We could take a look into the oven (1600 degrees!) and it appeared like two dragons were in there, spitting fire (in fact, they were giant burners). Unfortunately, no picture-taking was allowed.

I am busy, as you can read. The workload will probably increase even more, as I will be presenting my work to the group in 3 weeks and need many more results still. I will try to find some time to post a little more, and certainly upload some photos from baseball! I hope you enjoyed reading and watching.

Stay tuned!

Japanese Culture (2)

From Ikebukuro, we continued towards Korakuen, which is in the north of Tokyo. Directly at the station there is the Tokyo Dome, a 55'000 person fitting baseball arena. Sadly, there was no possibility to enter the stadium, but there was a small amusement park right next to it. If the weather hadn't been as wet, we might have taken a ride on this very nice looking roller coaster (which has a 50 m long, very steep drop)!

We then went on to Ginza, which is in the southern half of Tokyo. It is a modern quarter, with very new and fancy buildings. There is a large shopping mile at
the foot of this building.


Also, there is a statue of a spider, about 5 m tall, standing right next to the tower (I'm not showing any picture in case some of you are scared of large spiders ^^).
At around 5 pm, we returned to the starting point of the tour (university) to evaluate the orienteering rankings. Our group made 5th place (out of 7), but we enjoyed the tour a lot more than we would have if we were competing seriously. After dinner, a select few, including myself, went to sing at a karaoke place near the campus. After this pretty intensive and tiring day, a good night's (and morning's) sleep was really nice :)

Although I did see a few interesting and beautiful things, I had only seen a small part of Tokyo. Therefore, on Monday (which was a public holiday), I went to Asakusa and Akihabara. Asakusa is in the northeastern part of Tokyo, close to the Skytree (Japan's highest building) and around 2 hours from my dormitory.

Asakusa temple is a very famous Buddhist temple, and also the oldest temple in Tokyo (founded ~650 AD). In front of the main gate, there is a long "shopping mile" which once had many small, specialized shops. Today, the content of these shops has been replaced with tourist merchandise... Still, from far, a bit of the ancient flare and atmosphere is left. The main gate is decorated by very big painted lanterns and is around 30 m high. On the right, there is a stacked tower, in the center the main shrine.

What has struck me most can be seen on the left picture: the proximity of old, traditional buildings and modern constructions. This is impressive and beautiful at the same time. Japan has managed to modernize without destroying the cultural heritage, compared to some other countries I've visited, they did a great job!
The temple was bustling with people and very lively. On the side of the main building, there was a show with a trained monkey, which I found somewhat grotesque, but entertaining for the children. Asakusa is very beautiful and if you ever visit Japan, you should try to see it.

After having dinner at Asakusa, I went on to Akihabara, which is the place for electronics and anything related to manga and anime. I had been in the gigantic electronics store already, but only on one floor. The shop is truly enormous and has much more than only computers and cellphones. There is a whole floor dedicated to games and Japanese movies, as well as collectors' items (for model ships and the like).
After going to the main street, the most prominent aspect of the area are the large luminescent signs on the walls. There are many food stalls, comic book shops, pachinko halls and so-called maid cafes. The street is packed with people trying to sell stuff or trying to get you to play on their slot machines. I went into a pachinko hall, and apart from the fact that the slot machines are extremely dull, my memory is mainly of noise. These halls are insanely loud!
I went into a gaming arcade next, and there were many people playing all sorts of games. The most impressive one is a machine where you have to press the screen in certain places to a given rhythm. There were "professional" players there who came with special gloves and played one of these machines after the other, at a dazzling speed. I would guess they spend many evenings training for that...

The last thing I saw in Akihabara before returning home were these two Jeeps, driving around the place advertising the newest Battlefield game. It is common in Tokyo to drive around in fancy cars or trucks to advertise to the people on the streets. Haven't seen too much of this anywhere else until now.
Tuesday was back to the lab again. Or it should have been. Unfortunately, I seem to have caught a cold during my tours and was laying in bed with fever. Thankfully, I recovered quickly and was fit on Thursday. I started a new synthesis (the lamp for the photocatalytic reactions broke) of two ligands that I will use for reference purposes in the measurement of catalytic activity.

There is still more culture coming up, but I will post it at another time. I hope you enjoyed the read and the photos!! If you have any questions or want to express how bad my picture taking skills are, do not hesitate to comment ;)

Japanese Culture! (1)

Dear readers,

Last week, I was finally able to see some of Tokyo's cultural highlights on an orienteering tour around the city. The participants of the tour (http://www.siengp.titech.ac.jp/~sage/Tori_e.php) were split into groups, so together with 4 other students (1 Japanese, 2 Indonesian, 1 Chinese), I started my round trip through the capital. There will be more pictures than usual in this post so it might look a bit strangely formatted...

Our first stop was Shibuya. For the orienteering tour, we had to take pictures and answer questions via Twitter, and each picture should include this logo.
We had day passes for the Tokyo metro system and moved from place to place by train.
In Shibuya station, there is a very large work of art by Japanese painter Taro Okamoto, called the myth of tomorrow. It is really oversize and a scary piece, depicting some kind of animal perhaps (which I would not want to eat though, despite the great Japanese cuisine.

Next, we went to the Meiji Shrine (明治神宮) that is located a few km north of Shibuya. This shrine is dedicated to the Meiji emperor (important ruler in Japanese history), and on the way from the main gate to the main house, you will pass by a collection of sake and wine casks, the latter were donated by the French to honour the emperor.
On that day, there was a festival and many weddings, which meant that there were people in traditional Japanese wear. I was lucky enough to get a photo with them. The little girl has a very complicated dress and hairstyle, all in all very impressive.

And so, after passing several tents displaying flowers and bonsai trees, we arrived at the main building. There were many people there, despite a little rain that had begun to fall. If you look closely at the center of the image (I know that the quality is not great), you will find a traditional Japanese dancer with a fan. He was accompanied by traditional music (yes everything was very traditional, but that's really interesting to see!). This was a great bonus to the visit of the shrine.
What I liked most about this place is the park: A spot of green in the midst of a concrete plain. It was very refreshing to see a forest, even though it was small.

After the Meiji shrine, we went to the Shinjuku area (Shinjuku is the station with most passengers passing, world wide). There, we had lunch in a small udon shop, which was delicious!
Strengthened, we made our way to Ikebukuro to have a look at the animate store, which is very popular with girls who read manga and watch anime. The rush into the store was pretty overwhelming, I only visited the ground level (selling different posters, action figures, books, etc.) as the stairs were  evidently clogged with ecstatic girls/women! To join in, I bought a small figurine of Gintama for 200 yen (2 CHF) :)

Read more in the next post!

Sorry for the Break!

Dear Readers,
It's been quite a while since I last updated the blog. Sorry!! :(
In the week of my birthday, I had some family visiting me, which made me pretty busy in the evenings. On the other hand, I got to taste some of the best Japanese food, served as a nine dish menu. The only thing I did not enjoy was sea-urchin (I stepped on one of them a couple of years ago, that was pretty painful). The evening after (I think it was a Friday), we were invited to the American Club Tokyo, where I had the best burger in a very long time! Seriously, it was insanely good!

On Monday, I went to see the place I lived in before, over 15 years ago. I even found the kinder garden I was at. Although I can't really remember much of my first stay in Japan (I was born there ^^), it was an interesting experience. Learning about your past is always something special. There is actually a Japanese temple with graves just behind the house where we stayed. We asked the old lady who was working there if we could enter to have a better look, and then I was told about my birthday party on the balcony when I turned three...

A very strong typhoon hit Tokyo on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning. It was so severe that the trains didn't work for a few hours (which is extremely rare in Japan!). Luckily, Yokohama wasn't hit directly, and we only had rain and strong winds. So I think most of the exchange students stayed at home, as I did.

After this exciting week, the weather turned and Japan froze. Ok, I am going a bit over the line with that, but from the mild 25 degrees we had, we were down to 15. And rain and wind. Luckily, I brought enough warm jackets with me to survive the cold. Nevertheless, I somehow managed to become ill and spent time in bed with headaches and stomach pain. I actually think that the diet consisting mainly of rice and noodles is not exceedingly healthy and I guess my stomach shared this view. It is also due to the season, but I don't feel really healthy again yet.

Work is getting interesting now. I moved on from synthesis to actual catalysis, which is a totally different topic. I work with very small quantities: I have started losing patience waiting for the scales to tare out to the fifth digit... I obtained, until now, quite promising results though. Nothing that will change humanity yet, but on the way there ;) My job is to combine the photocatalyst metal complex on a zeolite, and then to measure the loaded amount and the reactivity. It's not trivial, but doable, with enough patience.

Last weekend, we had an (early) Halloween party, to honor the birthday of one of the french YSEPers. As Japan is famous for great cosplay and costumes, I decided to join in on the fun. However, I preferred to make something myself, which was more practical than and I think the result wasn't half bad. We actually, taking the train, amused ourselves by scaring a few people. :)

Oh and as you can see, I had a haircut. I decided that it was time to see a world free of hair in my face. Also, since I wanted to join sports clubs in November (after the official match season ends), I thought it might be useful. Getting a haircut in Japan is a nice experience, since you get a little massage after your haircut and they wash your hair before and after cutting. My lack of Japanese was disturbing though and their English wasn't too good either, so I consider myself lucky that it turned out well.

Last week on Wednesday, we visited the Life Safety Learning Center in Ikebukuro as a part of the TOJ class. Basically, it's a center that kids go through in primary school to learn about basic fire and earthquake safety. It was a great experience though, since they had a firefighting course (using water to "extinguish" burning oil! Bad idea) and an earthquake simulator we tried out.  And just a few days after that, a real earthquake actually struck Japan. Strength 7.3, but in Tokyo, only a slight shaking was felt. Still, it woke me up...

So, I survived until November... I'll try to update a little more often since I know you guys are waiting for the stories :D See ya!

PS working on the Switzerland presentation... Comment any good ideas below! I'll post the presentation once it's finished.