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Seminar at Otsuka Synthetic Organic Chemistry Symposium

2017.12.05

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.