September 29, 2005
I spent this past week in Japan at the Okayama University attending NuINT05, a conference on 
"Neutrino-Nucleus Interactions in the few GeV Region". It's a great conference for me to attend since it is all about the physics that the MINERvA experiment (for which I’m the project manager) is going to address. In fact, one of the earliest conferences in this series is what got me interested in how much understanding neutrino interactions matters if you are going to try to measure how neutrinos change from one flavor to another. This year I was asked to give an overview talk on exactly this subject, and I have to say that it was daunting to speak here about experiments that take place in Japan when there are so many in the audience who are on those very experiments!
Although I've been to Japan before, it's the first time I prepared for the trip by listening to Japanese language CD's, and the series was the same as the one I listened to for my trip to Greece earlier this year. The funny thing about listening to both series is not the fact that I learned the same words in both languages (hello, how are you, I want to eat something), but the few cases where they decide to teach different words in Japanese than in Greek. For example, they tell you in Pimsleur Japanese that when someone compliments you in Japanese you should downplay your abilities and say "Jozu Jarimasen" which means "I'm not very skilled". Interestingly enough, the Pimsleur method never teaches you how to say that in Greek!
But the thing that strikes me now about this trip is just now stark the contrast is between the lecture hall (where I am typing this now) and the world just outside the doors. Everything feels completely alien outside: I don’t understand any of the signs or most of what anyone says to me, I can barely identify the food in the restaurants (even if I am looking at the plastic models outside in the glass cases!), and many 
people gawk to see a six foot tall Western woman walking down the street. However, once I walk into the lecture hall I see friendly faces (many of whom call this country home) and we are more defined by whether we are theorists or experimentalists than if we are from Japan, the US, Italy, Russia, Greece, or any of the other countries represented here.
I did get to eat fantastic food (see the amazing grapes the size of small plums at the left from the conference banquet) and get to see beautiful gardens and shrines, though, and hopefully on my fourth trip to Japan (whenever that is) I’ll be a little more "jozu" and identify at least some of what is around me when I walk out of the lecture room.
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