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Seminar at Otsuka Synthetic Organic Chemistry Symposium

The other day, I gave a lecture at the Otsuka Synthetic Organic Chemistry Symposium held at Otsuka Pharmaceutical in Tokushima Prefecture on November 28 and 29. The speakers including me in two days are as follows.

  • Takeshi Wada Professor, Tokyo University of Science
  • Prof. Teruaki Urano, Graduate School of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Graduate School of Medicine, The University of Tokyo
  • Katsunori Tanaka Senior Researcher, RIKEN
  • Professor Hiroki Oguri, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology
  • Junichiro Yamaguchi Associate Professor, Waseda University
  • Fuse Shinichiro Associate Professor, Tokyo Institute of Technology
  • Matthew J. Gaunt Professor University of Cambridge

There are no external auditors, all lectures for researchers planned by Otsuka Pharmaceutical researchers. Inviting the above speakers, Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s power was shown by how much it would cost, including labor costs over 160 researchers listening to the lecture for two days. The lecture hall is also a wonderful place and not a regular lecture room but a complete hall. No, it’s beautiful. The itinerary was perfect and everything was on time when we got to Haneda Airport on time.

Now, instead of talking about Tokushima, there are unpleasant memories. Twelve years ago, when the natural product debate was held in 2005 at Asti Tokushima in Tokushima City. Late Professor Mutsuo Nishizawa (Tokushima Bunri Univ.) requested for the seminar and lectures to be in English that year. At that time, I couldn’t speak English at all so I remembered feeling frustrated of memorizing the presentation script at the Castle Park in Tokushima. The presentation was a success for me but those strong doctoral students who got difficult-to-synthesize compounds or isolated interesting natural products presented in English quite terribly..

Sometimes the presenter asks the chairperson for help, “I do not understand!” (in Japanese) and the chairperson’s teacher laughs ” I also don’t know.” Since then, natural product debates have been held in Japanese.

The reason why I remembered was that it was translated into English with simultaneous interpretation at this symposium. I would have been happy by then but now it doesn’t matter to me at all.

A quiet talk.

In addition, researchers who always accompany me at the symposium were Prof. Urano and Prof. Wada who doesn’t have much opportunity to listen to lectures. Foreign speakers named Matt was also there on the first day so after the social gathering, we went to drink together, karaoke, and then went to Shimen Ramen. After midnight, I didn’t have a delicious Tokushima ramen restaurant so I’ll eat a refreshing ramen called “Donoura”.

Actually, my lecture was on the second part of the last day and I just listen to lectures on the first day. I played too much the other day so I just listen while feeling sleepy and the talk just ended somehow without me realizing. I was able to meet and talk with Urushima-kun, Uno-kun, Hayashi Laboratory’s younger student, Yamaguchi Atsushi-kun, who was my first student, and Dr. Miyamura, who researched as my contract researcher. It was a very satisfying symposium.
 Finally, I would like to express my sincere appreciation to Otsuka Pharmaceutical’s Director Kondo, who invited me to the symposium, Mr. Shinohara, who took care of me, and other symposium committee members.

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山口 潤一郎

教授 at 早稲田大学
趣味はラーメン、マラソン、ダイビング、ウェブサイト運営など。化学の「面白さ」と「可能性」を伝えるために、今後の「可能性」のある学生達に,難解な話でも最後には笑って、「化学って面白いよね!」といえる研究者を目指している。.化学ポータルサイトChem-Station代表兼任。

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Comment

    • 後輩の漆島くん
    • 2017.12.08 5:26pm

    来徳ありがとうございました。
    来年の例のイベントの方も宜しくお願いします。

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