Brain-imaging in Japanese

When I got to Mitani this morning, dressed as "Spidey Santa", the school nurse Kuboyama-sensei had newspaper clippings for me.

Last week, when Kamitani's "Neuron" paper came out on Thursday it made the front page of the Asahi Shinbun (目で見た文字や図形、脳活動からコンピューターが再現 "Letters and Shapes seen with the eye are recreated from brain activity by a computer.") The Asahi is kind of like Japan's NYTimes, one of the two most-read national newspapers, with the Yomiuri. It was also written-up on page 3 of the more local Sanyou Shinbun. Both had some great manga like the ones I've doodled in my notebooks, to illustrate how brain-imaging and pattern classification work. A person imagining a snowman, having his brain decoded and the snowman reproduced on a computer screen. The headlines mention mental images, too: "Dreams and fantasies we can see" was the headline of one:夢や空想見えれかも, yume ya kuusou mierekamo. It's exciting to see the experiment start popping up in the real-world press.

I haven't spotted anything in the mainstream U.S. media yet, but it popped up on pink tentacle through digg.com if anybody wants to read something in English that's not hardcore technical jargon. My friend Adam mentioned the experiment on a train on Saturday, after reading about it on Digg, without ever having heard of it from me ;-)

I spent all afternoon learning how to say things like "brain-imaging", "changes in cerebral blood flow", and "functional magnetic resonance imaging" in Japanese. It's exciting to be learning the vocabulary, and even kanji, I'd need to talk about my thesis in Japan. Let me know if you guys spot the study anywhere else.

p.s. No newspaper yet has mentioned the foreigner who provided mild grammatical help and was credited in small print on page 33. Most papers, true to Japanese style, don't even mention the main author of the paper. Just Kamitani, since he's the 研究室長、the head of the lab. No credit to the little guys...

Simstim

Definitely the coolest science cover I've seen ;-) That roll of "brain film" is actual pictures reproduced from visual-cortex activity, of what people were seeing or reading. This is the first time my name's appeared in a scientific journal. In a brain-reading study from Yuki Kamitani's lab in Kyoto called "Visual image reconstruction from human brain activity." I'm the only non-Japanese name on the paper! I'm credited in the acknowledgments section on the last page for "manuscript editing" (fixing English prepositions and overuse of the word "the", mostly; very scientific). I can send anybody a copy if you're interested to read it.

The paper gets pretty technical in parts, but at least take a look at the first two figures. These are two of the clearest images of brain-pattern classification I've seen, like cartoons of how this science is done. And the pictures of the word "NEURON" reconstructed in real-time from visual-cortex brain activity are eery. I love how the figures illustrate the power of the technique both scientifically-- in terms of "mean square errors"-- and viscerally, in the form of the actual images being decoded direct from the brain. I'm excited to have been attached to this paper in any way, even if my only contribution was English prepositions and articles (If you read a particularly well-used "the", "of", or "in", that may have been me ;-). I really think this is a paradigm shift in brain-imaging... Gone are the days of flaky region-of-interest studies pointing to a hunk of cortex "representing language" or "emotion". If you like this one, definitely check out the Mitchell, 2007 paper from Carnegie Mellon. Those people are decoding words-- novel nouns that the classifier's never seen before!-- from brain pattern's, by defining "meaning" in terms of a noun's frequency of co-ocurrence with certain sensory-motor verbs. Language theory meets biology meets computer science in a really thrilling way.

Speaking of speech. I heard today on the November "Neuropod" podcast on this year's Society For Neuroscience conference (SfN; the conference I went to in Atlanta in senior year; this year in DC) that a neuroscientist and a brain surgeon at BU, Frank Gunter and Dr. Kennedy, have designed a brain-machine interface that can decode speech sounds from neural activity. Speech from thought! Our work is connected to this-- the ultimate clinical goal for all brain-pattern-classification work, like my Spidey experiment in Ken's lab-- to help brain- damaged people regain use of speech and motion and their senses.

This speech-decoder is an implanted electrode in the brain of a guy in Georgia with "locked-in syndrome", who's paralyzed except for his eyes. The coolest part about the brain chip is that it's a "neurotrophic device", meaning that it's filled with nerve food-- neurotrophic factors, nutrients for neurons. So, the axons of the nerves actually grow inside the chip, stitching it in place so it doesn't move relative to the brain. A genuine neural cyborg! The hope is that within five years, this locked-in man who hasn't been able to speak beyond yes/no eye-blinks for years, might be able to talk at speech-speed through a computer's synthesized voice. Amazing stuff huh?

If anyone's interested to hear the podcast, it's the November edition here. Neuropod is the journal Nature Neuroscience's monthly podcast, and I love it. It's at a layman's enough level that someone pretty interested in brain science would get something out of it, and it clues you into the latest cutting edge in research if you happen to not be in academia... So I can get cool new articles sent to me from Greg, my grad student buddy back at Princeton. Brain still hungry for brain. and stomach for dinner.

best from the paddies and brains of japan,
T

夢 Obama's election across the world.

I was hanging my Spidey suit out to dry one evening last week when my neighbor walked by with his dog and introduced himself.

He asked in Japanese if I was American, then whether I support Obama or McCain. When I said Obama, his response was immediate: "If Obama is elected, he will be assassinated." I raised an eyebrow, he explained: "In America, there are lots of guns." I didn't understand the Japanese word for 'assassinate', or was surprised he'd used it, so he held up his hand like a gun to show what he meant. "Like Kennedy, or King-san. Same thing. America is a dangerous place." I finished hanging my Spidey mask, shook the guy's hand and said I'd see him around.

Spiderman told my kids today about America's election, as I taught my last Halloween lessons in costume. I told them Obama had been elected, by 7 million votes, and about the Obama and Sarah Palin jack-o-lanters my Dad carved for last Friday night. I told them the most popular Halloween costumes in the U.S. are monsters, super-heroes, jobs like policeman, doctor and teacher, and this year, Obama and McCain costumes. (Obama costumes sold more than McCain's, according to the BBC). The kids seemed pretty excited at the idea of America's first black president. One second-grade girl, Megumi-chan, said she wanted to vote for Obama too. Her teacher had to tell her she can't vote for President, because she's Japanese. It was sad. At lunch one of the 6th graders asked me a lot of questions about America's political system and history, and quoted Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" (just that sentence, not the speech...). His teacher seemed interested, too, to teach me about Japan's political process, parties, and legislature, and to ask me about ours.

I got a cellphone e-mail after school from my Korean friend Minhee in Japanese, congratulating America on Obama's election. The subject line said 夢 yume: dream. Her message, in emoticons, Japanese characters, and one English sentence, said:

オハヨー [pink music note] [Ohayo = Good morning!]

オバマの当選おめでとう [yellow star] [Congratulations on Obama's election]

We can do it!
感動的だったよ [This makes me believe "we can do it!". I was very moved. [smiley face]]

今日も頑張ってね [Today too, let's do our best, eh? [Minhee's signature winking girl with rabbit ears]

Getting Minhee's message made it worth living abroad on Obama's election night. The excitement being generated by one man in Chicago is palpable on the other side of the globe.

* * *

The school nurse this morning at Nakagawa Shougakko seemed moved by Obama's victory, and envious of me as an American. She told me that Japan's prime minister (大統領　daitouryou; same kanji as "daimyou", feudal lord) is not popularly elected. "Citizens don't choose our leader in Japan," she said in Japanese. She added that she wants to see change in Japan, but it doesn't happen here.

Japan's prime minister is chosen by the Diet: The head of the party with the most seats in the two-house legislature becomes president of the country. These representatives are elected by the citizens, but only about 50% of Japan's eligible voters tend to show up, and the same conservative party, the Liberal Democratic Party (自民党　Jimintou) has run Japan's government continuously since World War II. Almost every prime minister since the war had been a bureacrat in the pre-war government, or a descendant of one, the same aristocratic old boys' network, and the government is overwhelmingly male. Only 7.5% of the Diet is women. In the 2002 election, 10% of the candidates were women but only 5% got elected, despite more than half of the voters being women! In the time from 1989 to 2001, when America had 3 presidents, Japan had no fewer than TWELVE prime ministers-- each forced to resign after a few months or years because of corruption scandals or a vote of no-confidence. Pork-barrel meetings behind closed-doors among old men in suits is really how politics are done in Japan. The Japanese people seem generally apathetic. Almost no Japanese people I've met have political opinions. Most, when you ask, will tell you straight: "I don't care about politics" or "I'm not interested in government."

At taiko practice last night, I asked my friend Yasu why Japanese people aren't more political. I asked in particular about Japan's "Peace Constitution" (平和憲法), which has barely been modified from the version written by the Americans 60 years ago. Yasu shrugged and said "We don't care. It's so old." So it is... but there was a time when it wasn't old, and no one seems to have cared then either. The Constitution is a living document, anyway-- it's the basis of Japanese law. But honestly, no one here cares. "Popular sovereignty" isn't a felt ideal in Japan-- personal freedom and responsibility isn't a political tradition here, and the people here don't seem to feel civic responsibility, or political power. Nationalistic, sometimes racist pride at the purity of the Japanese race, yes, but not civic responsibility, not active involvement in the political process.

Many Japanese politicians don't even have responsible political views. Many are outright right-wing nationalists, and revisionist history deniers-- and few in Japan seem bothered by this. The Prime Minster at the time when we were born, Nakasone (still a popular political figure), said in a speech in 1986 that Japanese are more intelligent than people from multiracial societies, because unlike the U.S., their blood is not tainted by Hispanics and blacks. Nakasone also was the first PM to visit Yasukuni Shrine, which honors war dead from WWII including convicted war criminals, angering Koreans and Chinese and blurring the line back into official state Shinto. The current prime minister, Aso Tarou, refuses to acknowledge the Korean "comfort women" who were kept as prostitutes by Japanese soldiers in the War, supports the textbook revisions (教科書 作る買い、kyoukasho tsukuru kai) to omit teaching the history of Japan's wartime atrocities in schools. Some of his ministers have denied the Nanjing Massacre, including his tourism minister who was dismissed a month ago for saying that "Japanese don't like foreigners" and that Japan is a proudly mono-ethnic society. The mayor of Tokyo, Ishihara Yoshitsune, is probably the most disturbing. He has repeatedly said that Korea wanted Japan to take it over during its occupation from 1910-1945, and suggested that many Asian countries are better off now, having been Japanese colonies, whereas European and American former colonies are floundering. He also believes that the U.S. used the atomic bombs on Nagasaki and Hiroshima rather than on Germany for racist reasons, ignoring the not insignificant fact that atomic bombs were not tested until July 1945, three months after Germany surrendered. Ishihara is allowed to say racist nationalistic nonsense like this, and nobody within Japan speaks up. Nobody cares.

The nurse's Obama enthusiasm today made me appreciate how rare our "we the people" politics truly is. I feel lucky to have been born American.

Democracy as Science: truth is provisional

Absolutes are anathema to scientists, and liberals. James Madison, the great experimenter-founder of America, stitched the ephemerality, the mutability of all truth into the very fabric of our government, in what Joseph Ellis calls the "evolutionary revolution" of America's founding (American Creation, 3-19).

When I read about James Madison's political philosophy last month in Ellis' American Creation ("The Argument" p. 87-126), I realized that Madison envisioned politics as a scientist would. He founded American government on progressive renewal-- the belief that principles must be challenged continually in order to remain vital, that conflict would stabilize not weaken a democracy, that no politics of individual liberty remains free if it calcifies into conservative doctrine, but must be kept "true" by being debated, questioned, tested. As in the peer review process of science, where any theory is validated with experimental evidence and old theories are continually tested, clarified, sharpened, modernized, by new experiments, American politics should be forever a work in progress.

Obama, as an expert on constitutional law, understands this:
"Its not just absolute power that the founders sought to guard against. Implicit in the Constitution's structure, in the very idea of ordered liberty, was a rejection of absolute truth — the infallibility of any idea or ideology, or theology, or 'ism', any tyrannical consistency that might lock future generations into a single, unalterable course."
(From The Audacity of Hope, quoted here.)

Science's assumption about the nature of "truth" is that it doesn't exist. All facts are provisional on experimental evidence. This is why it is silly when Creationists argue that evolution is "just" a theory. That's right, it is a theory, as is all of human knowledge-- but it happens to be a theory that is supported by more empirical evidence, replicable experimental evidence, than, say, the "theory" of Intelligent Design (which isn't a theory because it poses no testable hypotheses to verify). Churchill might have said about natural selection what he did about government: "Democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others that have been tried". Yes, it's just a theory, inferior perhaps to absolute truth, but it is better than any other theory we've come up with yet-- including the theory of an absolute truth. Scientific "knowledge" is a liquid rather than a solid form of fact, adaptable rather than brittle. It is a body of temporary claims, that today's scientist realizes may be overturned, or better put, re-framed, by the discoveries of tomorrow. We work to make our picture of the world ever clearer, recognizing that the scientists of the future will see a different world than the one we see now, and will adapt our contribution to that newer, more modern reality.

Madison envisioned American politics like this, as a laboratory, "an institutionalized forum for everlasting debate" (125). He came to believe that the best resolution to the argument over central versus state sovereignty was to leave it unresolved, forever . In fact to institutionalize the conflict, to make the tension permanent. That way, competing factions would continually negotiate compromise between two opposing visions of America, allowing neither to dominate unchallenged. John Adams used the same logic in distributing powers among the Executive, Judicial, and Legislative branches of government, and in keeping the Judiciary independent of the federal government. A distributed network of competing interests insured against consolidation of power, and against political stultification. Ideas that are being constantly debated-- "peer reviewed" in the science language-- never have the chance to calcify into unquestioned facts or political cudgels.

"The genius of Madison's argument," as Ellis writes, "for a version of sovereignty that was at once shared and divided raised the wholly pragmatic and politically painful compromises reached at the Constitutional Convention to the level of a novel political discovery: to wit, the notion that government was not about providing answers, but rather about providing a framework in which the salient questions could continue to be debated" (p. 123).

The role of government: Not to provide answers, but to provide a framework in which the questions can continue to be debated. Discussed. Sounds an awful lot like the kind of world Obama sees.

Hopefully we'll all live in that world, starting tomorrow.

Country of Possibilities: Our liberal mandate

My ex writing prof Roger Cohen writes about American Stories in today's NYTimes. How America is the only country on Earth where Obama's story could be possible. Why Obama stands to bring hope and credibility back to the American ideal, its "twin badges" of liberty and capitalism, of equal rights and possibilities for all-- races, religions, nationalities, classes, sexualities-- that America is supposed to represent. Undermined by 8 years of Bush conservatism, and the cartoonishly fundamentalist "Good versus Evil" world view that goes with it.

Roger's take on Obama made me think of my dad's favorite historian Joe Ellis, who writes the following in his great latest book "American Creation".

"America's founding succeeded [in that] against all odds, the most liberal nation-state in the history of Western Civilization was now firmly embedded in the most extensive and richly endowed plot of land on the planet. The plot itself was providential, a function of geographic and chronological good fortune. The political shape of the emerging American nation was a more human creation, flawed as all human creations must be, most notably in its prevailing racial prejudices and its inability to envision the multicultural ideal we now take for granted.
"But the design of the political foundation was ingenious in its combination of stability and agility, most especially its prudent placement of an explanding liberal mandate at the start that left room, up ahead, for an Abraham Lincoln and a Martin Luther King to join the list of founders. In that sense, perhaps the most creative act of the founding era was to make time as well as space an indispensable ally, in effect extending the founding moment everlastingly into the future." (

Next Tuesday could be America's 21st century founding moment, and we will be a part of it. I'm convinced if Obama is elected, America's "expanding liberal mandate" will have taken a historic leap that will be remembered forever in the history of our founding-- a leap towards a globalist, progressive, genuinely egalitarian world society. When another Joseph Ellis comes along in 300 years, Obama and the diplomatic, open outlook he'll bring to American foreign policy, will be added to that list of liberalism's founding moments. We're here, now, to be a part of it. We can describe it to our kids and grandkids when they read it in their history books. Our potentially multi-lingual, multi-colored American kids, whose world, thanks to the ever-expanding power of the Internet, will be so much bigger than ours has ever been able to be.

With hope.
T

America's Election in Japanese Cartoons

I'm jealous you guys get to be in America next Tuesday night.

This week's 小学校毎日新聞Mainichi Shinbun elementary-school newspaper has a front page story on the American election. The illustration is a manga of Obama and McCain over a map of the American voters, including Spiderman, Batman, and Superman near NYC, a cowboy out west, a Johnny Depp-ish pirate for Owen's mom, two (gay?) male sailors holding hands; a black jazz trumpeter and a basketball player; some football and baseball players, a boxer, a gangster, a priest and a nun, a few news broadcasters, King Kong, Mickey Mouse, and a big bald eagle. Makes me miss my country, Spidey, Louis Armstrong, and The Godfather in particular.

The article explains, to a Japanese elementary schooler and me, that America's election process is complicated because America is a 連ぽ国家 (renpotsu/kokka), a union of states nation: "America" is a "country" (国 kuni) but also 50 separate states gathered together. There's a great manga showing McCain and Obama's heads poking over the American flag, both sweating with voices merged saying "It's complicated". A speech bubble runs from the stars, saying "The 50 states' voters choose". Next to the speech bubble, in front of the stripes, stand five men and women representing the "538人" electoral college voters, and an arrow runs from them back to the two candidates above, with a speech bubble saying "The candidate who obtains 270 or more people is elected." Absolutely the most clear representation of the electoral process I've ever seen... in a Japanese newspaper for 10 year olds.

The kids' newspaper reminds me why comics are such an awesome communication tool. I see the manga on the covers of the kids' newspaper tacked on the school bulletin board every day, and if it's an interesting story-- about politics, or a neuroscientist, or "What was life like for grandpa?", about Japanese history during WWII-- I copy the article and spend my free period translating the kanji in it. That's how I've learned the characters for "neuron", "development", "green fluorescent protein", "gene", and now "Democrat", "Republican", and "election".

I also learned today the reason our election day is on Tuesday. Since America is a Christian country (クリスト教の国, "Ku-ri-su-to　kyo no kuni", country of Christ's teachings) where the president-elect puts his hand on the Bible at his inauguration, we could never have Election Day on the "day of repose”、安息日, Sunday, like they do in Japan. (Japanese people are mind-boggled that Americans vote on a weekday, because they can't imagine how any voter with a job could make it home for dinner with his family before 10pm, let alone to a voting booth, on a day of work.) Why not Monday you ask? well, since our country is freaking gynormous-- about 25 times the size of Japan-- and covers a few time zones, we don't want to encroach on Californians' day of rest either (at least, I think that's what it says). So we vote on Tuesdays.

I'm very jealous that you guys will get to sit around a TV, Super-Bowl style, with your friends next Tuesday night, with beers (Dogfishhead! god I miss you), Doritos and pizzas, and shout at the TV (or celebrate all night if the results are obvious fast, knock on wood), as the votes are tallied. But there's something interesting about viewing this election from abroad, too. I never figured I'd be learning Japanese from the American electoral process, but now that I have, I'm damn sure never gonna forget it. Especially when Obama wins.

Did you know that next year will be the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln's birth, and the Lincoln Memorial, founded in 1922 in DC, will be re-dedicated by the new president on May 22? No black people were invited to Lincoln's 100-year birthday party in Illinois. Few were at the opening of the memorial either, where Lincoln was praised by the Republican president as the preserver of the union, not freer of the slaves. As Thomas Mallon put it in a great article, "Set In Stone: Abraham Lincoln and the politics of memory":
"The look and the emphasis of the occasion will have changed-- measurably, for certain; astoundingly, perhaps-- in the fourscore and seven years since 1922."

Breathtaking stuff. Wish I were with you, and Obama, on Tuesday night.

P.S. This American Life ran a great show this week on the Obama and McCain campaigns' competition in Pennsylvania-- "Philadelphia and Pittsburgh with Alabama in the middle", as James Carville put it. An interesting microcosm of the country as a whole, on the brink before next Tuesday. By the time of Ira Glass' next episode, we'll have a new president.

Green tech rising

My dad sent me this NYT mag article, Capitalism to the Rescue, to cheer me up about investment. It's about Kleiner-Perkins, the venture capital firm that funded Google and now invests in scientists working on renewable energy. I find it inspiring as a former/ maybe-future scientist, to learn that this progressive, pro-fundamental science current is so strong in America's financial world. The money-gamblers aren't all cynics, some have hope to invest in basic science exploration. Here's an inspiring American financial story in the midst of the economic meltdown. It's an interesting point that the reason, other than Wall Street, that the U.S. financial world is unique is based in California, not New York. It's our venture capital/ tech/ science culture, and it's the reason why I've never been sold on the case people make that American cultural influence in general is on the wane worldwide. We're at a cutting edge that matters.

Spiderman Stitch Halloween

Since this is my last Halloween in Yakage, I figured I'd have two costumes this year. Spidey was an obvious decision. I realized one crucial aspect of Americana my students hadn't been taught about yet, superheroes. The Stitch costume comes with a story.

Stitch came to Yakage this week via Mary Childs, who got it from a Japanese guy in Tokyo. Mary is a friend of Kate's from her semester in Dehli, where they were two of twelve on their program, including a girl from Wesleyan. Mary graduated from Washington & Lee last year, and has a Watson Fellowship now to travel around the world for a year painting people's faces. She was in Brazil in July, came to Tokyo about August 15th, and got to Yakage a week ago to stay with Kate. We put her on a train tonight to Kyoto, and she's heading to Shanghai at the end of the week.

Here's the crazy part. Before all those other places, Mary grew up in Richmond. She went to St. Catherine's K-12 the year behind us. A year ago, she dated Andrew Barr. In our game of "Do you know.." the first night we met last week, we had sort of stunning success.. first she told me about Andrew (I'd mentioned I'd gone to Tuckahoe and had you guys at Freeman). Then I told her my one St. Cat's connection, Mary Depasquale-- My first girlfriend, who Owen and I met at summer camp on the James when I was in 6th grade and she was in 5th, whose dad, Paul, made the Arthur Ashe statue and the Braves Indian at the Diamond. Turns out Mary and Mary were good friends, and grew up together in the same class at St. Cat's for 12 years. Then as we were cutting onions and peppers to make spaghetti at Kate's house one night, we realized we had both gone to St. Mary's Episcopal church. She sung in the choir, maybe even with Greeley. I asked if she knew Mrs. Erb, Esther's mom, who taught singing at St. Cat's, and Kate said O yeah, actually Esther is one of her best friends. So a few Facebook messages later, I get a message from Esther (in Vienna) saying she hears I met her best friend from Richmond, in Yakage.

Tiny place, this planet. How do you guys like me as Peter Parker?

Japanese bugs I like

These insects, 虫 mushi, are common in Okayama, especially at the rural schools where I teach. My students keep them in plastic cages in their classrooms. From top:
Kamakiri-mushi, the Japanese praying mantis.
Tonbo, Japanese dragonfly.
Kabuto-mushi, rhinoceros beetle.
Bata, or Kirigirisu, Japanese grasshopper.

Great names, eh?

Hey hey Mr. Turtle Mr. Turtle yo!

Kasumi & Erika's "Turtle Song":

Moshi moshi kame o (Hey hey Turtle)
kame san yo (Mr. turtle yo!)
seikai no uchi de (In the whole world)
omae hodo (no one is slower than you.)
ayumi no noroi (why do you go)
mono wanai (so slowly?)
Doshite sonna ni
noro i no ka?

Kasumi and Erikia taught me this song after school today, while teaching me how to use the kendama: a ball on a string attached to a wooden three-pronged piece with three different-size circular bases. You hold it navel-level and try to flip the ball like a yoyo to land it on one of the cups. It's hard, but the turtle song is funny.

The Moon and Sports Day: Pumpkin-Bear and Bald Mouse

9/11/2008

September in Japan is the season of moon viewings and sports days. Sports Day, undokai 運動会, is like an American elementary-school field day- relay races, tugs-of-war, gymnastics, human pyramids, synchronized dances to JPop-- with a more serious, military style. The day begins with a proclamation by the principal to the students, who stand at attention in rows by grade, followed by lots of bowing on command, and the raising of the flag to Japan's intense, solemn national anthem. Then there's an address by the team captains (Red and White caps; 6th graders), who walk along straight paths down the sidelines to the platform at the front of the yard, to salute the principal and promise their teams will gambaru. Do their best, persevere.

Undoukai's mood is more nationalistic than American field days, more like an Olympics. The schoolyard is decorated with two strings of banners, stretched from flagpoles to trees above the playing field, showing the flags of 20 or so different countries. Japan's red sun flag hangs next to America's stars and stripes.

During 5th period on September 11th (Thursday) at Nakagawa Shougakko, the 4th and 5th graders practiced in the gym, making human pyramids, towers, and "mountains" (山) to the tune of Jpop rock ballads. The students are divided by gender-- too much back to back butt-touching and chest and leg holding to be co-ed-- and two female teachers supervised while the male 5th grade teacher led the drills with a whistle.

At recess I sat with a group of 6th grade boys who are good friends. They're smart kids, interested in English too. The variation of size at 12 years old is amazing. Two of these boys are a good foot taller than the other two, and possibly a hundred pounds heavier. Today the guys made up English nicknames (adama) for each other. Takuma-kun, the stocky, friendly, cuddly guy who speaks with a slight lisp, pointed to his small friend, who stands on Takuma's back in the human pyramid, and said to me: "Bald Mouse". Ryuki has a spiky buzzcut and is tiny, especially compared to gigantic Takuma, who probably weighs more than me.

Takuma's name became "Pumpkin-Bear" (Cabucha-Kuma). His other big, baby-faced friend Syouji is "Big Baby" (Okiina Okachan). Their other short friend was dubbed "Fish Boy" (Sakana no Otokonoko), plus the little crewcut leader Ryuki "Bald Mouse" (Hage Nezumi). Reminded me of Owen, Scott and me with our hockey-camp nicknames in about 8th grade: Cartwheel (SD), Shit-For-Brains (Owen), and Oafy (who do you think?).

Back in the gym, closing exercise practice. The heavy-set boys form the base of the pyramids, and the smallest classmates climb on top to stand above two levels of boys with their hands out to their sides. (Big "Pumpkin-Bear" and "Bald Mouse" were partners today). Every student has a role, and the gymnastics are elaborately choreographed. I notice that kids take undoukai very seriously, and there's a lot of teamwork involved. The boys smile at each other as they join hands to lift their friends. They count off time together-- "Ich, ni, san"-- and they cheer each other on. When a 12-year-old boy falls over trying to stand on his head, the other kids never laugh or tease him. They just call "Ganbatte ne!" (Keep at it!/You're doing your best!) or "Yokatta des yo!" That was great.

In the undoukai opening march, the kids parade onto the field through the net-less soccer goal, labeled "entrance gate". They swing their arms in time to spirited sport ballads in the ilk of "We are the Champions", "Eye of the Tiger", or "We will we will rock you", like cheerful marching soldiers. (Most 6th grade teachers have "The Best of Queen" CD in their classrooms). In the marching-band portion, the kids parade around the playground playing the "Mickey Mouse Club" theme song on recorders, drums, cymbals, xylophone, and tambourine.


Again, each group-member has a purpose based on his morphology. The big burly kids like Pumpkin-Bear and Big Baby carry the giant drums, while the littler boys and girls play recorders or tap tambourines. One charismatic (and lightweight) class leader heads the parade and directs the marching-rhythm by waving a baton. This little leader stands on top of the tallest human pyramids of his friends in the grand finale, with his hands out to his sides and his face serious. (The coach makes a big point of this: You can't fidget during undoukai, or falter or make childish faces, since you're representing your school. You don't want to make our school lose face.) Undoukai is a great photo op for the school and for parents, especially the parents of that kid, the school leader. Knowing Japanese dads, I'm sure every class leader has a thousand images of himself standing on his team-mates backs with the gold baton. He probably never forgets it.

For that matter, surely none of these kids will ever forget undoukai. They do it every year from kindergarten through graduating high school. It takes up a good 6 weeks of practice and excitement every year of elementary school before the big day (Sunday September 28th this year). That's six formative, impressionable years of socialization for teamwork.

The kanji for "teamwork" or "cooperation", kyouryoku 協力, includes the radical for "power" or "strength" (chikara), 4 times. "We're stronger together than we could be alone" seems to be the moral message of primary school education in Japan. It sounds like a western stereotype of Asia, but in my year here so far, that is one Japan generalization that has been born out dramatically in experience. Japanese people do seem to value community and self-sacrifice more than we do in the U.S. Values reflected in the way the kids are educated-- what a huge amount of time is devoted to these exercises in protocol and teamwork. The number of "giri" social duties and obligations that Japanese adults feel for their neighbors, family, and group-members (buying "omiage" gifts on vacation for coworkers, sending New Year's greeting cards to everyone you know) is huge, and the attitude of exclusivity, shyness or even iciness towards outsiders is something gaijin here talk about feeling all the time. I guess there's always a flip-side to a strong sense of group-identity and unity-- "We" always has to be opposed, or at least contrasted, to them, those others out there.

Article one of Japan's first Constitution, written by Prince Shitoku in 604 A.D., said: "Harmony is to be valued, and conflict avoided." Another one said: "Let the ministers and functionaries attend to court early, and retire late."

Both are attitudes that 1,400 years of Japanese history and technological innovation haven't managed to water down much. It's pretty amazing to see.

P.S. This "Community" nationalistic spirit is what felt so creepy and caveman tribalistic about the Republicans chanting "U.S.A.! U.S.A.!" against the liberal protesters at the convention in St. Paul last week. The implication being that the other half of America-- the black, gay, poor, secular, Muslim or Jewish half-- is "not American". Any sense of identity based on chanting your in-group's name at people who disagree, or look different (Remember George Allen's "macaca" comment about the Indian-skinned journalist more Virginian than Allen himself?) is bound to lead to misunderstanding, resentment and violence. A cartoonish naievete about the actual commonalities among humans-- reducing people to right and wrong, black and white, good and evil. The idea that the strongest superpower on Earth could be run by a party like that is terrifying, and embarrassing for us as Americans. As well as members of the human race.

Human as opposed to all those lesser species out there-- penguins, chickens, geckos, chimps. Next time you see a walrus who looks at you funny, be sure to bark at him: "HUMANS! HUMANS! HUMANS! all the way!"

Poor kids, rich brains

The world is in our brains. A kid's world isn't outside his head in the house he grows up in, as poor as his parents' means. Its limited by his brain's habits. If you can expand the way he thinks, the amount and type of information his brain is accustomed to taking in by the time he's three or four, when his prefrontal cortex fully develops and starts biasing what his sensory brain learns, you can change his world, for life.

That's what Jeff Canada is proving now in Harlem with his Baby College program. I heard a great "This American Life" story about it on my bike ride to school last week. The goal of the 9-week program on parenting, for 10,000 infants and their disadvantaged parents in Harlem, is to pull children out of poverty not by helping change their parents' financial or educational situation, but by giving poor kids the benefits of informed parenting. Helping poor parents give their infants rich educations. Rich brains.

A developmental psych study in Kansas City in the 80's showed that the children of college educated professionals hear 20 million more words by age three than the children of parents on welfare. 20 million words: that's the difference that mattered most in predicting the kids' future success in school. Not their parents' education level, not income. Words. The kinds of language heard by children of educated parents is different too. Of the words educated parents said to their children from age 0 to 3, 500,000 were positive, words of encouragement, praise-- "Nice Elmo picture!", "Yes! That is a cool truck!", "O? You like grasshoppers? Me too."-- whereas 80,000 were negative: criticism, scolding. Children of parents on welfare heard pretty much the opposite language pattern: 200,000 negative words of criticism, yelling, reprimanding, scolding, for every 80,000 words of encouragement.

It's easy to imagine how such different environments might shape a kid's brain and attitudes, might affect his cognitive development in dramatic ways. If a kid only hears a small number of words from his parents, mostly negative, mostly criticism, I imagine he learns to think negatively and passively, to believe he doesn't have agency over his life. I'm no good. I'm powerless to change my situation. My world is shaped by others. I imagine he'd learn to fear rather than wonder, to fight with or run from authority figures rather than be curious. When on the other hand, the kid who's been encouraged by his folks, read aloud to, stimulated, thinks: I'm a superhero. I can do anything. If I'm in a bad place, I can fix it; I'm accountable and able. I'm responsible for my life and can shape my own future. He's curious, engaged with his world. This kid has learned to fish for knowledge, and he'll be fishing the rest of his life.

The idea of success in learning and life being connected to attitudes reminds me of the Japanese words 積極性　(sekkyokusei) and 消極性 (syoukyokusei). Sekkyokusei means enthusiasm, positivity, optimism, but also "drive" and "enterprising spirit." Its opposite, syoukyokusei, means negative or passive. I like these words because they emphasize that curiosity and effort, enthusiasm and hope, energy and attitude are not soft skills. They're the mental soil that makes success and growth possible.

Those attitudes, that sekkyokusei spirit of confidence, drive, and curiosity, of engaging with the world rather than rejecting or fearing it, can be planted early in a kid's head by parents or teachers. But if it doesn't get planted, according to psychologists who study this stuff, it will be hard for the kid to learn forever, even when he becomes an adult. He will grow up, will develop physically, but his mind will be stuck.

"Non-cognitive factors" matter in learning: patience, motivation, self-control, discipline, organizational skills, confidence. Very basic, learned logic. If a kid doesn't learn the right thought patterns, how to teach himself, and the right attitude toward learning- an open, engaged, un-intimidated approach, a comfort with abstraction- then no amount of retrospective teaching will get through to him. The books you show him will not be the same books read by an educated brain. The facts you teach him will not be the same facts. Knowledge will be gray and scary, not colorful and attractive. The technicolor world of ideas for him will be forever in black and white. Our worlds are not all the same world.

But if we can give impoverished kids enthusiasm for learning, if we can give them that confidence, drive, and flexible way of thinking, by, say, teaching them a foreign language while their brains are still developing... then they will be equipped to say yes to learning later. To open themselves to a world wider and deeper, through books.

I've got the same hope for my rural Japanese kids. Japan is a developed country but the kids I teach in Yakage come from poor, rural homes. Most of their parents make their living farming rice and tobacco, in the paddies along the Oda river that I bike past on my way to school, or as carpenters, or factory workers. When I see my students with their parents at the supermarket, Marunaka, or on the train, I'm often shocked. The parents are not much older than me often, and these kids are 6 to 12. One of my best 6th grade students told me that his mother was 21 when she had him, and his father was 17. The adults are often missing lots of teeth, which goes for lots of the students too. (Dental care was one major surprise for me in rural Japan. Most people, teachers, administrators, politicians alike, have some artificial teeth in their mouths that are a different color than white- bronze or brownish usually- crooked teeth or a few missing). Anyway, the parents of my bright-eyed kids are often smoking, dressed sloppily in old clothes. Once I saw a dad who smelled boozey. Most of them have probably never been outside of Japan, and many don't have college educations. It's legal in Japan to quit going to school after junior high (9th grade), and my impression is that plenty of students go this route, quitting to go to trade school to study carpentry, metalwork or hairdressing.

Yakage has a huge number of beauty shops. Some run by the young moms of my kids. Kaho, one of my best 6th javascript:void(0)grade students last year, told me in the "Jobs" lesson that she wants to be a beautician when she grows up, like her mom and grandma in Yakage.

My goal is to motivate some of the Kahos in my classes to dream bigger, beyond Yakage, beyond Japan. Some of their English is really wonderful. I've got hope.

WHAT Kamakiri?, or Dragonfly Sci-Fi

Erina chan ambled into the teacher's room during recess today holding her elbow. It was skinned and covered in dirt. The nurse Kawato sensei asked her what happened.
"Kamakiri wa watashi o hitsukamimashita": The Praying Mantis grabbed me.

4th grader Kasumi chan's eyes went wide.
"DONNA kamakiri?!" WHAT mantis?
As Kasumi pictured a gigantic green insect the size of the jungle gym pouncing on little weirdo Erina chan with enormous pinchers and teeth, Erina replied
"Te-i-ra sensei no kamakiri da ya." It was Taylor-sensei Kamakiri.
* * *

The bugs in Okayama may not be big enough to grab a kid, but they are the hugest insects I have ever seen.

Today in the 2nd grade classroom at lunch I saw a giant 蜻蛉(tonbo), dragonfly. Bright green with translucent wings, black and bright red features on its face and thorax. When the 7 year olds picked it up in its cage, the dragonfly would flap its wings intensely, like some kind of caged extraterrestrial, making an amazingly loud whirring sound like an electric motor.

I noticed last night when I was looking at the fluorescent-stained "brainbow" neurons from Harvard, how much molecular biology looks futuristic- like a sci fi landscape, a high-tech city on some alien planet, or technicolor robotics. The rainbow neurons reminded me of the animation in Cowboy Bebop or Akira- the way the artists imagine transparent pods suspended over undulating train-tubes and elevated landing docks, beneath the toxic clouds of Venus or above Jupiter's icy moon Ganymede. As I looked at the tonbo today, I had the same thought: Its face and bright-colored carapace looked most like an alien lifeform or a robotic helicopter. Maybe a futuristic form of flying transport directed by an artificial intelligence. Or better yet, driven remotely by a human brain in Kyoto or a monkey in North Carolina. The dragonfly's shiny green thorax-plates, bright red sidemarkings and rapid-flapping, broad black wings looked positively militaristic-- like some form of unmanned flying tank or missile device. I could imagine a U.S. Army colonel with his brain wired to a hi-tech helmet, looking at a video screen with inputs from the dragonfly's eyes, guiding it by thought through Afghanistan: "Turn left. Go straight to the entrance of the cave. Fly up and wait for the target to appear." 'Simstim', as Gibson calls it in Neuromancer-- Simulation + stimulation.

At the hoikoens (pre-schools) last month, I saw plastic cages with giant black beetles in them (甲虫, kabutomushi), fighting over food with their pincers and massive black jaws. There were semi, too (蝉)-- Cicadas, chirping loud enough to interrupt a lesson. Also, enormous black, brown or green grasshoppers (端, bata、or キリギリス, kirigirisu). These also look robotic, with their sleek exoskeletons, shiny as if made of steel, polished in a secret factory somewhere.

Today on the playground, 5th grader Yuka chan brought me a gigantic crawfish that she found in the little paddy-drainage moat around the school. It was flailing its menacing looking but tiny claws uselessly, as she turned it upside down in her hand, then dropped it in the dirt. The crawfish came up with its brown back speckled with white itchy-looking sand.

The kamakiri (蟷螂, praying mantises), my favorite Okayama mushi, are the most gigantic and beautiful of all. They come in a vivid emerald green, but also a camouflaged brown. I joke with my friend Iima that since Claire and Iima's girlfriend Xiao are both in med-school now, cutting corpses, both of us are dating kamakiri girls. Or, as Iima says, "Dr. S." Sadist mantis ladies.

I saw one of these guerilla warriors at the Yakage station ekki one night as I waited for the Ibara-sen about 8:30. In the lamplight by the edge of the tracks she seemed to be waiting for a train too. A mercenary job, I imagined-- the tools in her face and hands ready to dismember some unlucky guy. Dr. S. Kamakiri, MD.

*** The "brainbow" mouse neurons each express two of four colored fluorescent-protein genes from jellyfish and deep-sea coral. Green Fluorescent Protein, the first of these, was discovered in jellyfish in 1962, by Japanese chemist Osamu Shimomura (GFP, or 緑色蛍光単発　ryokusyoku koukei tanpakushitsu- literally "green-color firefly-light protein." Gorgeous science word huh?). Shimomura won the Nobel prize this year for finding GFP protein and explaining the genetic mechanism of its fluorescence, which is used now all the time in molecular biology to label cells. The distinct combo of firefly-colors expressed by each neuron, as in a TV screen, creates a rainbow of discretely labeled neurons whose axons and dendrites can be tracked over the course of brain development, making it possible for the first time to study the connections between many neurons over time. The images also happen to be fantastically gorgeous.

Octopus in my bathtub.

My Japanese notebook has a few new entries today:
私は　二回　蛸に　噛みました (Watashi wa nikai tako ni kamimashita)= I was bit by an octopus twice.
蛸が　恐れて　怒れた　だ　から、私に　墨を　かけた。(Tako ga okorete osoreta da kara, watashi ni sumi o kakemashita) = Since the octopus was pissed off and scared, he sprayed ink on my shirt.

Tonight at 6:00 there was a live octopus in a bucket on my kitchen floor. By 8:30, it had become a delicious dinner in my stomach.






I just finished eating the tentacles that grabbed my finger earlier this afternoon. The mouth that bit me, with its two small sharp teeth, I just chewed up. The brain that drove the siphon to spit water at me, three feet in the air, and to spray ink across my neck and shirt, is sitting on the cutting board in my kitchen. Yellow mush.



My friend Koichi Morikawa took me octopus fishing this afternoon, after I finished teaching Halloween at the library's English-playtime. We drove to Sami beach on the Seto Inland Sea, about 30 minutes southeast of Yakage. Sami is one of the "hundred best beaches in Japan", according to the Japanese government sign, and in my experience I'd say it's earned it. Sami looks out on the Hershey-kiss shaped islands of the Seto, a sea weirdly like the Aegean: bright blue water speckled with islands, and the ubiquitous green hills of Okayama across the blue.

On the way there, we grabbed tempura udon at Koichi's favorite spot, and talked about Full House, Koichi's favorite American TV show to watch for learning English. Koichi taught me some new kanji, and I told him about fishing for catfish, bream and bass with my Dad on the James, and on the lakes in Chapman. I told him about Brett and my early morning catfishing excursions to Belle Isle, with McDonald's breakfast and nobody but the herons out downtown, and to the fishing hole and our battles with monster catfish at Dover lake.

Octopus fishing is like any ocean fishing, except that you use a crazy-long rod and a gnarly looking hook with a bright pink lure, which apparently looks like the shellfish that octopus eat. As Koichi and I were casting along the shore, looking out on the Hershey-kiss islands and the mountains across the water, a 4th grade girl came over to ask Koichi if he'd caught any tako yet (not Mexican food, but octopus in Japanese). I was surprised how friendly and casual she was with a stranger-- very rural-Japanese little girl. She reminded me of Tsugumi, from Banana Yoshimoto's novel "Goodbye, Tsugumi"-- an uninhibited beach girl, who grows up along the sea shore and speaks bluntly to everyone she meets. Our Tsugumi instantly called Koichi "oji-san"-- "grandpa", or old man, in a cutely affectionate, familial way. And she tagged along with us all day. She seemed excited to learn I was an elementary school teacher, and surprised that I spoke to her in Japanese. She was one of the calmest 4th graders I've seen-- quiet, serious, companionable. She spent all afternoon just casting her reel next to a 55 year old Japanese man and a 23 year old gaijin from Virginia.

Koichi caught the octopus that ended up on my plate at about 3:00, after a peaceful hour of casting, reeling, watching the seagulls, and practicing Japanese vocab in my head. I caught my first as the sun was setting and the tide rising, about 5:00.

This animal was amazing. Koichi laughed at me later when I called it that-- an "animal"-- because he says "We Japanese don't say octopus is 'animal'. It is fish." He was concerned that I was becoming too attached to the octopus, and might feel sad about killing and eating it. After taking a bunch of photos of me checking it out, holding and watching and getting ink-sprayed and bit by the octopus, Koichi laughed and said he thinks I am a scientist.

I did feel that marine biology itch again, that I remember from snorkeling with DBow's family in Hawaii after college freshman year. Seeing an octopus up close made me appreciate how similar the ocean is to outer space. These creatures don't seem like they come from our world. For one thing, their eyes seem disturbingly intelligent, like an extraterrestrial life form, and their freakishly soft bodies move fast and agile in your fingers. The suction cups are much stronger than I'd imagined. When I reached into the bucket to touch one, it sucked instantly onto three of my fingertips and wouldn't let go. When an octopus attached itself to the side of the bucket, there was no way you could pry it loose. But on the other hand, they also seem like sophisticated robots in their reflexes-- wriggling through your fingers, turning themselves to mush like a Marvel superhero, tentacles softening, tightening. When Koichi's octopus fell off his hook, it started crawling towards the shoreline, fast. I had to guard it while he went back to get the bucket. Watching alert predator eyes.

My brother showed me a nature channel video one time of an octopus in a two-chamber tank who liked to eat in the chamber where he slept. If he was fed in the other room, the octopus would actually break the shellfish into tiny pieces with its two razer-sharp teeth, push the pieces through a tiny hole between the rooms, then squish himself through the hole like putty and eat his meal where he wanted it. I didn't see these octopuses do anything smarter than blasting me across the neck with jet-black ink, but they did seem eerily, foreignly, coldly smart. Made me think of androids in "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" or "Necromancer", hardwired for killing and survival.

Koichi let me have his octopus. When we got back to my house at 6 tonight, he unloaded the blue bucket from his car and poured it in a bucket in my kitchen.

I asked if I could keep it alive for a while as a pet. But Koichi pointed out that octopus need to live in salt water to survive. It has to be a certain kind of salt, too (His son knows, because he's been making "seawater" for school). And we don't live anywhere near ocean. However.


All you have to do to cook an octopus: Boil water, add soy sauce. Add octopus.

I killed my octopus by accident. When we got inside, I realized he might not be comfortable in the bucket he was in, which was pitch-black with ink that he'd tried to spray in my eyes. So I decided to dump the black water out in my bathtub, and refill it with new water. There was a tree frog stuck to my shower wall as I refilled the bucket with lukewarm bathwater. The octopus was already pretty zoned out, after spending all afternoon in a bucket of fresh water, and he didn't budge as the tap ran over him. But it wasn't until I put the bucket back down in the kitchen that I noticed he was acting kind of dead. The tentacles were curled up around the body in rigor mortis. I'm not sure if it was the change of water, or that the water I added was too warm for him, or if he had just spent too much time outside of salt water and died of oxygen deprivation. But by the time my rice was cooked and the water was boiled, it was a dead-looking octopus that I dropped in the pot.

After a few seconds of that to be absolutely sure I wasn't sticking a knife in a living animal, I pulled it back out to dissect, and cut the guts out. I made a mess when my knife hit the ink sac. But luckily I was cutting over cardboard. It looked like I'd broken a fountain pen.

Octopus insides are incredibly simple. Yellow mushy brain, white lungs, a tiny red heart and brown liver, black ink sac with enough ink to sign a few declarations, and a tough white digestive tube that enters and exits from the same hole in the middle of the tentacles. It takes just a minute to scrape all of this out of the body cavity, and you're suddenly left with something that looks like food. Well, like food if you've lived long in Japan. Chewy white meat, ready to be boiled in soy sauce. I've lived here long enough that the sight of rubbery white tentacles honestly makes my mouth water.



For more photos of octopus in all stages from ocean to plate, see my latest Facebook album.

Tanukis at Sunset on the Seto Sea

On Sunday I took a car trip to Iima's hometown Takamatsu, Shikoku, across the Inland Sea from Okayama by the Seto Ohashi bridge (formerly the longest suspension bridge on Earth). I went with Iima, our Korean friend Minhee, Xiao's childhood friend from Kyushu "Hime" (Princess; I don't know her real name), and Erik Hansen, a new JET from Virginia who studied Japanese at UVA, likes Carbon Leaf and folk music.

We went to Yashima Terra (屋島寺), 84th of the 88 temples on Shikoku's pilgrimage. The pilgrimage was founded by Kobo Daishi, or Kukai ("Sky Sea", 774-835AD), a saint who apparently invented the hiragana writing system and founded the only sect of Buddhism that believes enlightenment can be reached in this lifetime.

Yashima was one of the prettiest and most unique temples I've seen. Kannon, the thousand-armed goddess of mercy, is the temple's patron deity, and there's a pretty statue of her, gesturing Buddha's peace sign with one of her right arms. According to legend, when Kodo arrived at this temple, he met an old man on the hill who guided him to the place, then disappeared. The man was apparently the metamorphosis of the temple's guardian animal, Kannon's messenger the "Yashima badger", or tanuki (タヌキ). There are a few giant tanuki sculptures here-- Sleepy eyed, drunken-looking rodents sitting on gigantic testicles, wearing wide hats that look like sombreros, and holding bottles of sake. The statues are very kawaii-cute and unique, especially for a temple. There's an especially interesting pair of htem flanking an orange archway of toriis (temple gates), where we took a few photos. Iima came up with the idea to take a photo of me in front and all our arms out to our sides, so I look like the thousand-armed kannon.

Since the tanuki is a monogamous rodent, it is the patron spirit of families, and the restaurant business. This explains the charming tanuki in front of Hiroe's family's Odazushi sushi restaurant, and the reason for the tanukis' oversized, saggy scrotums: They're fertility gods, of course.

On our way to the temple, Iima took us by his house to meet his parents and his dog, Choco (for chocolate). Choco is a friendly Yorkshire terrier, like the "data dog" on Cowboy Bebop. He jumped on us and licked us a lot, made me miss home. Iima took us to three of his favorite restaurants-- a cheap, tasty udon place where you could get hiya- or atsu- (cool or hot) broth and noodle combinations; a gorgeous garden-restaurant where we ate the local udon specialty (egg, soysauce, ginger, chives, and spices over thick, deliciously hot noodles) for our second lunch. Then, after watching a beautiful sunset over Takamatsu and the Hershey-kiss shaped islands of the Seto Inland Sea, we went to a chicken restaurant where I ate the most tasty, juicy, spicy roast chicken that I've eaten in Japan. Eaten by hand, holding the drippy, juicy, greasy bone wrapped in napkins. Mm.