the mostly honorable professor Cleri-sensei

small news since the last one, the japanese working schedule is super-tight I don't even have time to go to pee..... Think that I have been meeting people and talking about 12 different subjects at least, and visiting laboratories almost without interruption. And, my local host had meetings scheduled for 8 and 9 (pm, of course!). Did you know why in Japan they don't use the daylight saving time? It seems that it is considered impolite to go home from work before sunset, and in fact no one leaves. In summer that could mean that people have to be at work until 7 or so.... therefore, this seems to be the actual reason why DST never made it to Japan!

Today I got another free meal, honorable professor Fujita-sensei took me to the Italian reastaurant on the campus (in a short break, then he had to rush to another meeting). The restaurant was good, in the end I must admit japanese have some good idea of what italian pasta looks like. Only problem, to make it even more italian, they put an horrendous quantity of garlic. This is what foreigners usually think about italian cooking, just add some pomodoro sauce and garlic, it will look enough italian :)) this one however was quite good.
In fact, yesterday I went for some japanese bbq grill around 9pm, since I was working on my presentation, to make it more appropriate to the audience (I did have no idea of what kind of people I would have met, except for a couple of contacts I had before). So I had to work late night, and early morning, to cover some other subject of closer interest. Despite that, some 2 or 3 people fell clearly asleep in the middle of the lecture, but woke up suddenly because of my strong italian accent. The lecture was good, and I received unexpectedly a complimentary check of 32,000 Y (it's about 200 euros), a parchment (fake) with an exhalting and joyful bi-lingual declaration of interest, and a gold (fake) medal of honor from the highly appreciative japanese people.

The labs I visited and the people I talked to are very good (in fact, some are extraordinary, but I will understate as usual). I threw my bunch of good ideas here and there, and apparently all the people I spoke to think I am some kind of genius. In fact, this only means that they are too faraway from the stuff I do, so I can sell quite obvious things as if they were pure gold. (Now I am thinking that maybe that's why they gave me the fake gold medal....) Some scientific collaboration is in order. I think they are subtly suggesting that I could come to Japan to work with them for some time, but they go by 2 years minimum sentence, and I could not like too much to be away for such a long time.

Despite all, Japan is great, food is amazing, and lots of nice-looking japanese girls all around. I have a friend of mine who despises me all the time, since I tend to appreciate a lot the oriental (chinese, japanese) woman type, while he thinks they are just ugly and have cranky legs. I think some of them are just fine, instead, and most of them have such an innate grace and elegance that is wonderfully captivating. Their traits can easily be the sweetest you'll ever see, maybe it is the special cut of their eyes, and their dark-black colour, that can be so enticing... Differently from what we see in Europe, most women here dress in a very neat and elegant way, and appear to shun from the kind of rag-doll dress very popular today. Even when you see them dressed as some improbable manga character, roaming in the general stores and bars around crowded Shibuya, they still retain a foreign and mysterious charme, that escapes many european women these days. While I was walking at night among all such a very young population, sprouting flashy girls in fancy dresses (among the under 20s, it is very popular these days to use lots of lace, wide ribbons, short flimsy dresses, giving a girly-dolly-like appearance), I was happy, and so I started smiling and smiling. And I still smile.