00:00
いつも3,2,1でパチってやってスタート言ってるんですけど、いいですか?
じゃあ、3,2,1
Today we have a guest from えっと、ひよけん…あれなんだっけ?
オフィシャルでは何でしたっけ?
ひよっこ研究者のサバイバル日記
There you go! That thing!
そこから、はちさんに来てもらっています。
Yay!
Hi guys, I'm Hachi.
Thank you so much for coming to our episode.
Why don't you introduce yourselves a little bit about who you are, what you're doing.
I'm Hachi from ひよっこ研究者のサバイバル日記.
Please call us ひよけん.
I'm a researcher and I got a PhD in Japan.
And now I'm working at university as kind of, I think, type of faculty member actually in Japanese way.
Right, yeah, yeah, yeah.
I mean, different cultures have different names for this.
It's so confusing.
And I'm study about animal, some small animal, but I didn't explain everything in podcast, on podcast.
Yeah, which is really cool.
I mean, I don't know.
I have a few bio-related friends and it's always fun to listen to them, their research,
because it's just so much more catchier to talk about an animal than like saying...
Because we are animal.
Yeah, exactly.
Like humans are animals and humans love thinking about ourselves.
So if you talk to other people, hey, I study about blah, blah, you know, insert any animal name.
Like that's immediately interesting to them more so than like, oh, I study like this cool movement of molecules.
And they're like, okay, you know, dot, dot, dot.
Moving on.
Actually, I'm studying about some movements.
So maybe we are similar.
But like a friend of mine studies about uni and I was like, wow, like you can like, what do you learn about uni?
Like, do we want to know anything more about uni other than that it's pretty tasty?
But it's really funny.
And, you know, there's all these difficulties associated with handling animals.
Like, you know, you need to grow them or you need to breed them.
And I think animal in marine, in my sea or...
Marine animals, yeah, yeah.
Marine animals, they are so interesting.
They have really, really weird ecology.
Right, yeah.
Like mating or reproduction.
03:00
Yeah.
So she's, she's studying about reproductive system of uni.
And first of all, I never thought about uni reproducing.
Yeah, I observed their egg or sperm.
Yeah, I don't even know.
See, so like, that was interesting.
And she says that in her undergrad, or maybe master's or maybe PhD, I can't remember.
At some point, like, in her previous research, she studied pigs.
So uni is like, 100 times easier than pigs, apparently, for like, for the purpose of her research.
And because, you know, you don't need to wait for like, like handling mammals were way harder, regulation wise, than handling invertebrates, I guess.
Yeah, yeah, vertebrate and invertebrate, they had a really large boundary.
Yeah.
So, like, you know, these are things that I never thought about.
Like my sample, my molecules, I just like, you know, open the bottle and pour it into my sample holder.
It's like nothing complicated about that.
So you said molecule, molecule is what kind of?
So, so far, yeah, so my PhD research was only focusing on gas phase.
Gas, okay.
Yeah.
And the reason why we only did kitai is, if it's in a liquid or solid, like any condensed matter, there are so many more interactions that you need to consider between the molecules.
So it's not just the environment that it's sitting in, but like, it's like neighboring molecules.
And there's a lot of localized effect that is really hard to see the overall picture of.
Whereas if they're all gas, we can assume ideal gas and just assume that all of these gas molecules are far enough apart from each other that they don't see each other.
And we can just like ensemble average them.
We can treat them as like an ensemble and just take the statistics of all these like hundreds and millions of molecules.
And that way we get statistically accurate sort of behavioral studies of these molecules.
You know, it's...
So in the liquid or in the cocaine, that means the molecule is attached.
Yeah, they're a lot closer to...
They're closer to...
Yeah, they're closer to each other.
And they're influencing each other, so they're closer.
So like, you need to consider those interactions when you're thinking about how they're moving.
Because molecule A's behavior is impacted by the surrounding molecules around it.
06:03
Whereas gas phase, you can think of them as free.
They are just alone.
And we can look at them individually.
We can treat them as an ensemble.
So that's like the biggest sort of...
It simplifies the experiment a lot.
And what we're trying to do is already difficult.
So we needed to simplify that a lot.
But yeah, so really just like I had very smelly molecules.
Like, you know...
Yeah, just like screw open the bottle.
It's smelly, but it's not gonna kill you.
And yeah, that's it.
So like, it was so much easier than like, I don't have to grow hamsters.
I don't have to like grow gokiburi or things like that.
I don't have to worry if they're still alive after my holiday.
Yeah, yeah.
Yeah, that's important for...
I need to tell my students like, you need to come because they're alive.
Sorry, it's a holiday, but you need to come and feeding them.
As everyone can hear, you speak amazing great English.
And I know that you did a little bit of study abroad.
Was this during your PhD?
Yes, no, as a postdoc.
Oh, as a postdoc, okay.
Was that your first time going abroad?
Actually, yes.
Wow.
I mean, of course, I've been there.
I mean, traveling.
Right, right, right.
But that's so different from living.
But live abroad is the first time.
Wow.
That must take a lot of courage.
Like, was that always in your mind?
Like, you always wanted to go to Ryugaku?
Or was this something else?
So like, so for me, always my...
I follow all advice by my senpai.
So you need to do that.
You need to do that.
Okay, I will try that.
That's a way I'm...
成長する。
Yeah.
So all my senpai told me that you should go to abroad.
Because you want to be the researcher, you need to go.
That career, for your career, it's really important.
But I really don't want to go there.
Because I really like Japan.
And I don't have confidence in my English.
That was my master or PhD student.
So, but I understand English is very important.
And networking abroad is very important for researcher.
So, okay, and I will try to find good people and good PI.
How do you say?
受け入れ先?
And I found a good lab.
すごい、そのキャリアのためっていうモチベーションだけで。
09:02
Like, okay, let me pack up my life in Japan that's comfortable.
I have friends and family here.
And then to go to like, you know, somewhere you've never lived.
Somewhere you don't really speak the language of.
That's pretty brave.
Like, kudos to you.
Yeah, I always said, I'm proud of myself.
Yeah, you should be.
My decision is, yeah.
え、じゃあそんなに行きたくなかったけど、
まぁなんか行かなきゃいけないかなっていう雰囲気になって。
で、always なんかもう行かなきゃダメだみたいな。
私は行きたいんだってなんか思い込んで。
洗脳してた。
そうそうそう。洗脳って英語でなんていうの?
Brainwash.
まんまんでしょ?
Brainwash?
いいね。
でもBrainwashめっちゃしてて。
もうずっと、PhDからずっと、
いや、私は海外に行きたいみたいな感じで。
そしたら意外と行きたくなったかも。
So maybe this is thanks to your senpai as well,
keeping telling you that like,
keeping on just like,
you need to go to abroad, you need to go abroad.
And then like, after some years you're like,
okay, I guess I need to go.
So how did you find your 受け入れ先?
So it's really weird.
I think it's unusual episode.
So I published one paper a little bit outside my main topic.
And she read this paper and contacted me.
Oh, wow.
So like, you didn't actually go out to find out.
They contacted you.
Wow.
Yes.
That's when you know that, you know,
you're on the right track, I think.
Like when the opportunities come to you.
Yeah, maybe.
I mean, that doesn't always happen.
Yeah, and I also didn't think,
this paper is really, really short paper.
And I and my supervisor maybe discussed,
should I publish this data?
It's a little bit thin.
But anyway, they're always important to any information.
So we decided to publish that and she contacted me.
Wow.
I always thought that everybody need to write in paper and publish all data.
Yeah.
So you found your postdoc through the paper you published
and the person contacted you.
And you were like, okay, let's go.
Yeah, and I took the research grant by myself.
Oh, okay.
留学の...
So that's like extra reason for them to have you
because they didn't even have to pay you.
Yeah, I'm like...
Well, I mean, whenever anyone asks me
about how to get into American universities
or things like that for PhD or postdoc,
I always just tell them, like, try and get any,
any 小学金 as possible.
12:01
Like if you can get anything,
you know, the door is so much more wider open to you
than if you ask them to pay you.
I think it's...
I think it's...
There is nothing...
It's...
何て言うの?
ありえなくない?
断られることない気がする。
うん、ない。ほぼないと思う。
If this person refuse you,
that means that this person is a little bit weird,
so you shouldn't go there.
Yeah, exactly.
Or like maybe it's a completely different background
or requirements that they're looking for.
But like, yeah,
even if it's like,
even if it only covers like 50% of your entire cost,
like that's still like,
so much more economy for the PI.
So they're like, yes, please come.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, literally.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
So, okay, so you, you win.
And how long were you there for?
It's just 10 months.
10 months.
Oh, wow, that's, that's really short.
Like that's a lot of pressure.
I was planning to go there for three years.
Oh, okay.
So it was a plan for three years,
but you cut it off at 10 months
because you found a job, I guess.
Yes, I got a job.
Okay, okay.
Makes sense.
Wow.
Maybe if it were up to you,
would you have considered living abroad?
You said you never thought of it as a forever permanent kind of option.
But did you want to stay there for like,
maybe like a few years, maybe 10?
Yeah, yeah, because many people told me
that the first year is really hard.
So you need to, a lot of things happen.
But maybe the second year you're used to the many parts.
So maybe you can enjoy.
So I really wanna.
So you just did the hard part and came back.
Yeah.
I think so.
I think so.
So many things to adjust.
And was this, by chance, the first time like living alone?
But still like, you know, I think.
Like, which one is the softener and which one is the detergent?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
15:00
There are so many colors, but like, what is this?
Wow, that's amazing.
But it's not also that, it's not written in English.
Oh, right, because.
Yeah, it's Switzerland.
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You went to Switzerland, so was it like a French side?
French and German.
Oh, okay.
French side, yeah.
Yeah, and that's like, that's like another thing where a lot of, you know, that's like additional hurdle, right?
Like, because in the lab you speak in English, but like outside most people speak in French by default, usually.
Yeah, but actually it's one good thing is many lab mate is not native English speaker.
So they understand me, like how much difficult to get the second language.
So to study the second language.
So also they speak slowly compared to native speaker.
That I think is also huge.
Now that you're saying that, when I first returned to English speaking environment,
I was also put in a class where there are a bunch of non-native speakers.
So we were separated from the native speaker or native equivalent speakers class.
And we had a separate sort of, we went to the same school, but had a separate curriculum.
And in that class were Brazilian, French, Norwegian, Korean, maybe Thai girl as well.
And, you know, none of us speak very good English.
We're all like...
But like, you know, we try to understand each other, like the default environment,
the default setting of the atmosphere is like, we all are trying hard and we're all trying to help each other.
Right. And that's so different from being the only non-native speaker in otherwise all native speaker lab.
And they just cannot understand what you're struggling with.
Yeah. Also, only my PI is native English speaker.
Oh, okay.
She's from US, but she can speak French too.
So she already know that.
Those people, one of those people.
Yeah, I think all in the lab, I think that all bilingual people in the lab.
Which is not...
Or trilingual.
It's not uncommon in Europe.
Like a lot of people are casually...
Yeah, multilingual is normal, I think.
Just the two, like...
Yeah, I know.
I'm like, it's really embarrassing when like...
When I speak English like this, people kind of assume that I'm like language genius.
And I'm like, what else do you speak?
I'm like, no, Japanese and English only.
I think Japanese is kind of a rare case.
18:03
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Eigo de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C-E.
See you next time.
