00:12
Okay, so Asami-san, I have a question for you.
So as you know, I don't have any new adult friends yet.
As I know, so far.
Since I came back to Japan, I still haven't made...
Which it has been a while by now.
I still haven't made a single new friend.
Which has been problematic for my mental health.
Do you think so?
I'm not sure.
Do you feel like you need it?
I feel like I need it now.
That's fair.
It's getting colder.
It's getting colder. You're gonna miss human interaction.
And it's getting darker because it's winter.
We need some friendship.
So now you've moved to a new place.
How's your making friends going on and what is the strategy?
How do I find anyone?
Well, first of all, I'd like to remind us and the listeners
that this is a fifth time we're talking about this topic.
We really love this topic, don't we?
But I think it's one of the universal topics.
It's kind of hard as like researchers who only interact with
like the same five people every day to expand our friendship circle.
To answer your question, though, I don't have new friends either.
See, so I consider my work friends who I am friendly with as work friends.
So, you know, I go out for lunch, dinner.
Those are fun.
But I consider them a separate category as work friends.
I mean, some of them might become my friend friend eventually.
But for now, they're work friends.
So in terms of that, I feel like my social need has been satisfied
in my work friends because they are, for once,
I'm working in an environment where there are a lot more women than men.
And most of them are more or less my age.
Maybe plus minus five years old.
So we're in a similar life stage, most of us.
03:04
We have experience, but we're not like senior staff kind of thing.
And they're a very nice bunch of people.
I kind of just lucked out.
So my work friends, great.
But my friend friend in Hong Kong, not to be found yet.
I think you two have a friend.
I have a high school friend that we sort of rekindled our friendship.
So there's that, but it's not new friends.
You know, she's been my friend for a long time.
And so, like, you know, do I have a new friend?
Not really.
But you may consider promoting one of your work friends to friend friend, right?
Well, yeah, maybe, maybe.
Maybe in the future.
We'll have to see how that goes because, I mean, when I say friend friend,
for me, the true test of being my friend is like,
can we survive long distance friendship?
Oh, I see.
Just because I have been moving around all over the place.
There's a lot of friends that I make that I'm close with at the spot
in this particular city, but outside of that,
I don't really feel like I need to know what they're up to
or they don't really need to know what I'm up to.
There's very few of them that I, you know, still keep in touch with.
I send them my new number, like new country's phone number.
If I am moving to a different city, there's very few of those.
And many of them, while I had really good time and enjoyed our friendship,
those were sort of like specific city friends.
And sometimes...
So those are city friends, but not friend friends.
Yeah.
I mean, maybe I shouldn't say that.
Work friends.
Work friends.
City friends.
Yeah.
City specific friends and the friend friend.
Yeah, I guess so.
I guess so.
And maybe, you know, most people don't need city specific friends.
Like they are also automatically friend friend for them.
But I just need that extra step because, you know,
it's the difference of do I want to travel overseas for your wedding or...
Yeah, but the problem is you never know whether those city friends
would become your friend friend, right?
Until I move out.
Wow, yeah, yeah, yeah.
06:00
So I guess for now...
Until you move out, any friends could be only regarded as city friends, right?
By definition.
Yeah.
So they're not promoted to a friend friend yet because you have to move out.
Unless I have a very strong connection with this person that I know that
no matter where I am in the world, I will want to be in and of themselves.
Okay.
Then my question is, was I your city friend or friend friend?
Oh, we were going to go there.
Yeah.
Oh, okay, okay.
You can think about it.
Think about it.
Well, so let's see.
I think the first couple of times we've met in the city we met...
Okay.
You were like, I think you were squirrely in the like, I'm friends because there's
only so many Japanese people around and you're an interesting person.
And I thought you're going to be city friend for the most part, right?
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I think towards the end of your stay, like right when you were about to leave,
which was also around COVID time.
Yeah.
Right?
Like at the beginning of COVID time.
And you also trusted me to look at your job applications and stuff like that.
You wanted me to proofread some of your stuff.
Maybe not proofread, but you just wanted some opinion.
And I was very touched by that.
I was like, whoa, you trust me to do this?
Because I'm from a different field and I don't know anything specifically about your research.
I just know, I barely know my own field.
And I was really flattered that you trusted me to do that for you.
And so I felt like we're like, oh, we're going somewhere with this.
And then I think we are both not super good at keeping in touch.
But when we do, we always have more fun things to talk about.
Yeah, yeah.
And that's the kind of friend-friend that I sort of seem to make a long-lasting friendship with.
Like I don't need to be talking to them all the time.
Like my best friend, my best friend from high school, we text maybe like five or six times a year.
That's it.
That's it.
Because I know she's so busy with her law school.
And I was until recently was like swamped with grad school.
And we're both such bad texters.
09:02
But will I fly eight hours for her wedding?
Yes, I will.
And I will take like five days of leave from work to go to her wedding.
Yes.
Do I say yes to for her asking me to do a speech for her two days before the wedding?
Yes, I will.
It's that kind of friendship.
And so with you, I felt like you're the same level of like maintenance requirement for friendship.
You don't need a lot, basically.
You don't need to be constantly talking to me.
And yet we can still remain friends.
So I think that's when I realized that you can be friend-friend.
Oh, thank you.
But I never knew that was a moment I was, you know, promoted to a friend-friend.
It's not like, you know, it happened like that.
Like zero to one.
Right, it wasn't like that.
But I was really kind of touched that you trusted me to read over your applications, basically.
And I mean, you are way more experienced researcher than me.
And like all of these other things.
And I also feel like I have few, maybe one other person other than you that's like maybe your age.
Because we're actually probably like 10-ish years apart.
And maybe a little bit more.
Yeah, more than that.
And that's like a weird in between.
Because like you're too young to be my parents' friends.
But you are like...
I'll be younger.
Yeah, you're too young for that.
But I don't...
That's like your age group is like the least amount of interaction for me.
Unless I actively like I have like a shimmy or something that overlaps with them.
Yeah.
So it's always interesting.
I love...
I mean, maybe as of...
Since I started grad school.
So since I became like...
After maybe like 26, 27, I'm so interested in how other women are living their lives.
Like making choices, career, like relationship, everything.
And I love hearing different sort of interpretation of that.
And all of my friends are making that choice work for them.
But the sample size for the woman in your age group is so little.
12:05
But it's so relevant to me.
It's like my near-ish future, you know?
And so...
I hope you will be more successful.
In making friends?
But it's so interesting.
I get to be like...
I can look up to you as a mentor, but also just be friends with you.
Which I like.
Well, yeah, I'm so flattered.
Yeah.
Thank you.
That's so nice.
In many ways, you're very different from my other friends too, you know?
Yeah.
The fact that you're a PI is also relatively...
Maybe more of my friends of my age are becoming...
They're trying to be PIs.
But they're not there yet, right?
Most of us are postdocs or working, doing something.
We're not quite bosses of people yet.
And you are managing people in the research context.
That's new.
And yeah, just everything.
So...
And yeah, it's very...
I don't know.
Is it just me?
Or I'm really interested in how these women are making their life choices.
And I like listening to their stories and background.
Yeah, I also like interacting with not just around the same age group.
But also younger people like you and also older generations.
Yeah.
Yeah, so I do have a...
I feel like the age range of my friendship is kind of really large.
They could be more than 10 years older than me and more than 10 years younger than me.
And I'm grateful to have those friends.
Those are considered friend's friends.
Definitely.
Thank God!
I'm a friend's friend.
Yeah, you're my friend's friend.
It would be really sad.
Like I promoted you from city friend to a friend's friend.
And I'm just like a city friend for you.
That would be sad.
Well, so...
Well, in conclusion, I think...
Regardless of the current situation, without making new friends,
but still we're surrounded by great friends, right?
Yeah, so here's how I think about it.
We might not have a lot of local friends.
We might be lacking in our city friends at this minute.
At this moment, yeah.
But we have other friendships that are long distance.
15:00
Maybe difficult to access.
But they're there and we have that to take care of.
Just because they're low-maintenance friends doesn't mean that you don't have to do anything.
Once a year.
If they are in need of your help, if you want them to listen to your questions or stories,
you do have to reach out to them.
You can't just not talk for five years and just like, hello again.
That's very special if you can do that.
That still requires effort to maintain that friendship.
Right now, I guess we're just invested more in our long-distance friend friendship
than short-distance city friendship.
And that's okay, I guess.
All right.
That's it for the show today.
Thanks for listening and find us on X at Ego de Science.
That is E-I-G-O-D-E-S-C-I-E-N-C.
See you next time!
