In the August of this year (2005), I was back in Japan, I mean in Tokyo and Nagano. Here in this blog, there is nothing to talk about Nagano because I usually cannot put myself into any kinds of physics research there. Gardening, riding a bicycle to challenge moutain passes, eating Japanese noodles (soba) in Oiwake... there are too many things to do to read even a single physics textbook in my beautiful home village. And, this is nearly the case again for this Summer.
One small difference in this year is that I had two visitors. They are my all friends and junior colleagues in Univ. of Tokyo, Komaba. One (Dr. F) is from New York and the other (Dr. O) from Kyoto. The main purpose for the gathering is to climb a volcano mountain (more precicely, a ridge of the valcano crator of Mt Asama) near my village. However, due to this summer's bad weather dominating most of the eastern part of Japan, we had to give up the climbing in the end. (We could climb one of the parasite volcanos to Mt Asama, called Ko-asama, the day before the ascent to Mt Asama, though.) So that, we had a plenty of time for discussion in my log cabin, my nice summer cottage in Nagano, over a glass of Long Island wine Dr F broght for us from Brook Haven and RIOJA I bought at Sainsbury in Burpham....
