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Hello Masako. Hello Asami. Long time no see. Yeah, sorry about that. No, not a problem. I am happy to
have you back on the podcast. And today, it's the time of the month where we have another 企画
from 科学系ポッドキャスト. So in this 企画, a few of us 科学系ポッドキャスト get together
and create our episodes based on a common theme. And this month, it is hosted by 腸内細菌相談室っていう番組の鈴木大介さんがホストしてくださっています。
This podcast, let me read the description. It says 腸から自分と世界を知ることを目指して、腸内細菌や腸内環境について論文を根拠にお話しする
腸内細菌相談室というポッドキャストをやられています。 I have listened to a few episodes by him and it's amazing how consistently high information content
episodes he creates. You know, we're just おしゃべり podcast. We just kind of chat.
You know, we don't have 台本. We like don't prepare anything. Nothing. And like his podcast,
he usually cites several papers about one topic. And it's, you know, the topic, I'm amazed at how
much he has to talk about 腸内細菌. Yeah, like I learned so much about 納豆とか。
納豆ってさ、体にいいって言うけど具体的にどういいのかってさ、知らなかったし。 I don't know.
Or like, ビフィズス菌とか聞いたことあるけど、 What about it that makes it so good for 腸内環境?
The science behind it. It's fully scientifically backed up. And, you know, I'm not a biologist.
I like science, but I'm not a biologist. And his explanation is very clear and concise to the point
that it's like still exciting for someone like a biology noob like me to be able to enjoy it. So
yeah, it's a great 科学系 podcast. So he proposed the topic of 出会い because it's 三月だから。
出会いと別れのシーズンだから。 And he specifically asked about how we, you know,
the hosts of the 科学系 podcast have met with our respective scientific field.
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And I think we only have enough time for one of us. So I will share about how I met
science, I guess, here. And it really got me thinking, like, when do I say, like, when was
was there a definitive moment where I felt like, oh, this is what I want to do,
kind of thing with science. And I'm not sure if there was any definitive moment, I was struggling
to find it, you know, it's like, is it, is it 自由研究? Or is it just like my curiosity?
Like, I was a curious child all the time. I loved 図鑑, but like, I can't remember which 図鑑 I
was reading, and like, stuff like that. And I also kind of just accidentally became a chemistry
major more than anything. So I, I wasn't sure if I had a good story about it. But then I
realized that I think English is what opened up the doors for science for me.
Yeah, to explain that, we need to go back to my childhood. So when I was in Japan,
as a 小学生, I was pretty 文系より少女, you know, I loved books.
And I don't know why I became that kind of bookworm. But because of that, 国語 and things
that are based on 国語力, like history, like sociology, 小学校の段階だけど、社会とか国語とかの方が、
it came naturally to me. And like, I didn't hate science. I didn't hate math. It was one of those
things where like, I still needed to put some effort in. If it was 国語のテストとか歴史のテストだったら、
まあ勉強しなくても80点以上は固いみたいな感じ。
But like, if it's math, I needed to know. Yeah, exactly. I needed to prepare a little bit.
And that became even more clear when I was 中一, I think. And I liked English as well. So like,
that made me squarely into like, 文系 pathway, if I just stayed in that way for long. And also,
you know, maths and science was becoming increasingly more difficult at that point.
It was becoming more complex. And I think I still loved science, and I think I had a natural
knack for it at that point. But maths, I know it did not come naturally to me. I was like,
This is so めんどくさい。
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So at that point, like 中一の段階では、
everybody, including myself, thought that I am going to be a 文系 person.
You know, if I were to sort of make that distinction. And then I went to Singapore,
and then I was thrown into international school. And suddenly, the 科目 that I was the best at,
which was English, was like my worst 科目, right? I suddenly sucked at what I was good at before.
And luckily or not, maths and science were very simple compared to what I was doing in Japan.
Or at least it felt that way. I distinctly remember my first math test, when I entered
international school, what, like, grade 7. And it was very simple.
And then I just, you know, did my math in my head, and I wrote the answers, right?
And I got all correct, but I got 50%.
And I asked the teacher, like, but I got the answers, right?
And he was like, oh, but you didn't show the work. I don't know if you copied it from someone
next to you or not, if you didn't show the work. And I was like, but that was so easy. Like, I,
dude, this is such a simple math. It's just, you know, like, looking for answer for x.
Yeah, in your head, and then you can write it down.
Yeah, I just did it in my head and wrote it down. And that was apparently
not enough. And I was just really surprised by that. So, like, this whole concept of
showing the work, also didn't happen to me.
Like the evidence, or the processes.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, the process. Because it was, it was that easy, you know,
maths class in that level. Science was a little bit different. Like, I,
um, you know, science is not just maths, right? Like where you still need to use words to describe
and answer things. And I remember thinking, like, all of these concepts that we're doing
in science classes are very familiar to me. I have done this before, but I just don't know
how to say that in English. And that frustration. You could say that that was also a motivation.
But at that point, I, you know, suddenly my tokui kamoku reversed. And that was a weird
experience, I guess, in a way that I didn't know.
That meant you become more interested in science and maths, maybe?
Oh, just because like, I was relatively speaking, compared to my essay writing skill,
you know, my ability to answer maths and science questions were better. And you know,
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when you're at that age, like when you're 13, 14, you like the stuff that you're good at, right?
So true.
Right? Like you end up liking the stuff that you're good at. So suddenly, my liking for one
thing or the other shifted. Suddenly, I enjoyed my maths and science classes way more than
my English classes, where I felt like no matter how hard I try, or how long I spend writing the
essay, it didn't matter. Like I was never gonna get an A in that class, because my English just
was not comparable to the native speaker. And I know that I sound unintelligent or more childish
than the ideas that I can form in my head, if I were to write that in English words.
And that like, knowledge loss between the translation was a lot less in science and maths,
because you know, what I was capable in my head, yeah, was like a lot more directly translated in
the scientific and mathematical languages. So I started working hard for it. And
I somehow managed to do pretty well in high school level, you know, at least for science and
maths. And to the point that my teachers started asking if I wanted to study chemistry in college.
At that point, again, I had no clue what I wanted to study in college, which is why I went to
a liberal arts school in the US. And where you don't have to decide a major, right? You
you only decide a major, like one or two years in the university. So that's when I started.
Yeah, like started doing science more. And in college, again, I had zero intention of
becoming a chemistry major. But in my liberal arts school, everyone had to take
some kind of science course and some kind of, you know, a little bit of everything.
And for my scientific studies requirements, I took chemistry because I liked chemistry,
the most of, you know, biology or physics. And I fell in love with it, I realized that it is
really, it's not a subject that comes naturally to me. It's not, it's not necessarily that I'm
better than everyone else in chemistry, but I didn't mind at all working hard at it. I didn't
mind putting hours of work in it, I actually kind of enjoyed it. And I seem to not mind putting a
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lot of hours that a lot of people complain about, right? Like they will be like, oh, I worked six
hours for this experiment, blah, blah, blah. I was like, oh, well, you know, it takes however long
it takes. And I realized that that's not normal. Like that, I realized that that only happens to
some people, like a lot of people who are maybe better at taking tests, maybe better at doing well
in school. They didn't enjoy experiments, they didn't enjoy the lab, they wanted to get out of
the lab as soon as possible. They wanted to write the lab report so quickly with like a minimum amount
of effort that would get them an A in the class. And I didn't mind at all. Yeah, which part do you
think made you motivated and like passionate about chemistry? Which part do you think?
I think, I think the, I mean, maybe this is why I studied molecular dynamics.
But the mechanism of chemical reaction, I think is what made me excited about it.
I, and that's probably why I went to this like a very fundamental field of molecular dynamics. I
wanted to know even more smaller things like how do bonds break? Like what happens when bonds are
formed? And like what makes the bonds, certain bonds to break and certain bonds to form, you
know, in the chemical reaction? And how, how can we, how can we see that in real time that's relevant
to the molecules? Because basically a lot of chemical reaction is educated guesses
on what happens between A and B, right? Like A turns to B in between, there's a very,
very good educated guess on what happens, right? Because of years and centuries of research.
But because molecules are super small and because some or most of these reactions happens really,
really fast until very recently, people weren't able to see what happens. Like they cannot say,
this is a physical evidence that this reaction happens in this particular way. And ultra fast
molecular dynamics was one way to answer that question. Like strip all of that back,
make it gas phase so that these molecules are essentially free molecules. They are,
they exist in their own space. They're not interacting with any other neighboring molecules.
And let's see, let's observe what happens to them when you inject the energy with a laser to the
molecule. And I mean, it took me a while to get to that point, but I think I was just always,
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ever since I started chemistry, college level chemistry, I think that was my sort of interest.
What are these molecules doing, you know? In the first place, like a formation of
interactions from completely independent. But like, yeah, going back to it though,
like English really was I think what opened up for me because I realized that science and math,
at least to me, came more systematically, came more naturally to me once I understood English.
It was easier for me to organize information, the new information that I was learning about science
and math in English in my head. For some reason, it was a lot easier to understand
scientific concepts and mathematical concepts in English than it was in Japanese for me. And
if it wasn't, if I wasn't exposed to English at that age, not only was my, you know,
tokui kamoku swapped, but I don't think my interest sparked in the same way that it did for
me in, you know, the same way it did for me, like in my current rendition of life. I think,
I think I would have just did okay in math and science and continue to do well in English and
Japanese and probably picked a subject in a university that would also align with that kind
of interest and never do chemistry after high school. I think I was very much one of those
people, but my exposure to English really changed my sort of thinking pattern, I think, maybe.
Maybe you know more about this, like, you know, language and like cognitions and things.
You do brain science, very different kind of brain science, but you do brain science.
So I wonder if I have developed this sciency tendency because of English.
Yeah, maybe it was a hard time, you know, the brain maturation and the timing.
Maybe the timing might have lined up, yeah, in a way that I was just old enough
to understand these scientific concepts, but young enough that my brain is still very plastic and
very moldable stage. And I don't know about you, but I feel like it's a lot easier to discuss
scientific topics in English than in Japanese. Like, I think I need to use less words. I need
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to use... And that's not because I suck at Japanese. I feel like it's just easier.
I think it's just straightforward. It's more straightforward, English is, than Japanese.
It's direct. Everything is direct. But in Japanese, everything becomes indirect.
It's very easy to be ambiguous.
Yeah, yeah. It's ambiguous language. Yeah.
Yeah. And that's not to say it's good or bad for science really, because, you know,
clearly there are plenty of good science that's being done in Japanese. But like,
for my particular, like, brain system, it was just easier to organize
the information in English. It was, it made more sense to me. And all of the stuff that
I struggled to understand in Japanese learning system was made simplified. Even though my
English was still at the learning stage, I don't think my English was that good at the time.
But even then, I still felt like, oh, this makes a lot, these words make a lot more sense.
These sort of way of describing complex issues and problems are easy, easier to break down
using English than in Japanese. And then that also motivated me to be better at English,
because I think I wanted to be more effective in learning science, you know.
But I think the thinking in English, like that process happened so much earlier for sciences,
for me than in English or other sort of like language based subjects.
Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So that was how I met science, I think.
Great. So if you didn't happen to, you know, like doing chemistry, then maybe this podcast
didn't, you know, exist. It probably didn't.
Because there's no chance we met, we've met, right?
There's no chance we met. I don't even think I was gonna be in school for this long.
Yeah. I think I would have
started working at 22, like everybody else. And I probably would have tried to make a career
out of my ability to speak English fairly well. English is secondary to me at this point.
It's like, it's not the fact that I can do English well is not that special. Like,
that's not the point. You know, the point is that I have this skills and expertise
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in scientific field. And that's the main part of my career. So that also would have been very
different. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I feel like my sort of origin story is a little bit different from
many of these scientists who, you know, read scientific journals or like,
I'm accidentally a scientist.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So, well, yeah, that that was that that's it for this, this, I guess,
but I think, yeah, please, I'm curious to know what other people have to say about their origin
story. And, yeah, it's kind of always fun, right? To like, yeah, maybe, maybe we should do another
episode, not not related to this, but like, about how you met your science as well. Yeah. All right.
That's it. Bye. That's it for the show today. Thanks for listening and find us
at Eigo de Science on Twitter. That is E I G O D E S C I E N C E. See you next time.
