As the receiving editor and coordinator of this blog, I want to start by thanking our visitors, Betul Kacar and Zach Adam, for their blog entries last week. I do not know if ELSI has just been tremendously lucky or that scientists tend to be a happily curious bunch to begin with but we have had some of the best visitors come to our institute. By day, they are busy engaging in discussions and their research and by late afternoon, they are often off exploring Tokyo. One visiting postdoc climbed Mt. Fuji at night (coming back with the unfortunate tale of a body being discovered!), another month-long visitor put me to shame with his (quickly acquired) far superior knowledge of all the hangouts in ELSI's neighborhood. What is that line from the movie The Shining, that all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy? There is nothing dull (or, rest assured, scary) about the visitors to ELSI who go and explore Japan on their free time.

I came to ELSI to assist the internationalization of the institute, a task that had been given to Piet Hut, as Councilor of International and Interdisciplinary Affairs. Like everything at ELSI during the first few months of our brand-new institute, at first my position was not yet well defined, but after half a year it has now grown into me being part ombudsman, part counselor, part cheerleader. Concretely, this ranges from the practical (such as making sure international visitors, postdocs, and PIs get looked after so that they can maximize their time at ELSI) to the more general (to be able to promote and improve ELSI as an active institute with global standards, one that has the ability to attract the best and brightest foreign scientists to come and work at ELSI). The most recent addition to my job at the institute is to organize the contents for ELSI's blog, in coordination with Piet Hut and Yu Yonehara, the PR leader of ELSI.

As a Japanese who was born and raised by Japanese parents, living outside of Japan until my early twenties, I find that I have a fresh awe towards the country that other "old timers" take for granted. Perhaps I am making up for lost time. I have also been interested in projects that invite change to Japan through international contact, whether it be joint projects or ventures in the business sector or through recruiting Japanese students to spend academic time abroad. ELSI as a WPI institute could not be more perfectly suited for me.

What is WPI? The World Premier International Research Center Initiative is the Japanese government's effort in addressing the country's need to remain globally competitive in the realm of science. It is a unique initiative that started six years ago, when the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) generously funded half a dozen WPI centers. ELSI is one of the three centers funded at a more modest scale in the second funding cycle, last year. WPI has four objectives: to advance leading-edge research (Science); to establish international research environments (Globalization); change how research organizations operate (Reform); and create interdisciplinary domains (Fusion.)

ELSI's scientific research capabilities can speak confidently for itself. Our scientists, on their own, can attract great visitors to engage in collaborative research. The other three mandates of the WPI Initiative, Globalization, Reform, and Fusion, are bigger challenges not only on the institutional level but on the national level as well. Therein lies the value of the WPI and, personally, the motivation for me. (Globalization, Reform and Fusion: they somehow blip my mind to the three Greek goddesses who control mortal destiny...)

Gertrude Stein said of her childhood Oakland, "There is no there there." Her utterance of that phrase has been interpreted in multiple ways but I find that all explanations distill to one meaning, namely, "what gives a place its heart?" What gives a place its "there"-ness? I think of that question for ELSI all the time, as we juggle being an English-language institute in Japan, as we communicate amongst ourselves in the differing languages of Biology, Chemistry, Geology and Planetary Science.

In the context of our mandated tasks and our cultural environment, I see the blog as providing a supporting role to the main work of our institute, which is the advancement of scientific research. The blog is ELSI's neighborhood café or bar, where you will get a glimpse into the life of ELSI, through more personal recounts or thoughts related to our research, of experiences of Tokyo/Japan, stories from our researchers as well as visitors, basically, of anything that would give color and life to ELSI as an institute in Japan to the outside world. It is also a space for building a sense of community within ELSI, by sharing our research and personal tales even while we are busy and scattered, while our temporary building is under renovation and our official building will begin construction. I encourage members and friends of ELSI to participate in this blog by sending me your stories of interest. I can be reached at hnr@elsi.jp.