Returning to Japan, this time for the entire month of July, I was greeted by the now familiar smell of Cedar and the sound of my shoes echoing in the narrow streets around Ookayama. As in with my past visit, I picked up some new words. Cute is an apt term for many things here, and it's a word that's often used: ka-wa-i-i, (like Hawaii), かわいい in hiragana, or 可愛い in kanji.

This trip was bracketed by two meetings: the Origins conference in Nara and the Asia Oceania Geosciences Society Meeting in Sapporo. My fiancee Sara joined me for the first part of my long visit, and we attended the Origins meeting in Nara together.

I presented a half-hour talk about very deep oceans in Titan, Saturn's moon, where I suggested the salt in deep extraterrestrial oceans on moons and exoplanets may promote water rock interactions that can provide food for life. I have been excited about my "Big Mac" ocean model for a few years now because it suggests ways that the "weather" in deep oceans may be very strange indeed. Future missions might be able to see signs of that weather, but for now, there's plenty of work to do to in the lab to make sure I can accurately simulate those properties. There's also plenty of work to do on the computer, to test whether the "Big Mac" could actually occur, and to explore other weird phenomena like upward snow of ices and downward snow of salts.

In Nara I also shared an overview of the Europa Clipper mission concept during the meeting's poster session. With discoveries of possible active geology and Enceladus-like plumes, it has been a very exciting time to be involved in Europa science and part of a team studying possible missions there.

The Origins meeting included a diverse group of individuals passionate about life's origins. The lively discussions I enjoyed included these topics to name a few: the definition of life, efforts to create life in the laboratory; the possible origin of our first ancestor on Mars and delivery to Earth by meteorite; and whether we will first discover life away from Earth within our solar system or around another star.

In between conference sessions Sara and I explored ancient temples and watched the omnipresent Nara deer (very 可愛い). Tourists in Nara are encouraged to feed the deer, so they are abundant and interested in people. We visited the large and ornate Buddha statue, and enjoyed a short Noh theatre performance as part of the conference's opening ceremonies.

After the meeting we enjoyed a too-short weekend in Kyoto post-conference. The weekend included a lovely dinner with Piet Hut and his wife, and a walk together along the Philosopher's Path to Ginkaku-ji temple. On Sunday night, Sara and I returned to Tokyo for a brief stay at the Ours Inn Hankyu at the Oimachi station. I said goodbye to her for the rest of the month and moved into the International House in Ookayama.

During my two weeks at ELSI, my days and nights were filled with an incredible diversity of activities and topics. I learned about ELSI's progress and long-term plans by sitting in on the annual "Site Visit" (described in another blog post by Kuruma-san; I'm the guy in the purple shirt kneeling in the left-hand side of the picture). I was happy that ELSI was encouraged to deepen its JAXA involvement, as an organization uniquely positioned to help answer one the most important questions of space exploration: are we alone?

On many evenings I enjoyed far-ranging conversations with ELSI scientists and staff at restaurants or Japanese tapas bars (i-za-ka-ya, いざかや　or　居酒屋). Despite late nights with my colleagues, on most mornings I woke before 7 am to meet with student interns back home at JPL. I have five talented interns, all examining different aspects of how we can understand Europa's ocean, what salts are in it, how we might understand the ocean from materials on the surface ice, and whether the ocean might support life.

After my morning meetings I walked across the street to ELSI, sometimes working quietly in my shared guest office, but more often participating in discussions in the main social area or tatami room. I was fortunate to be at ELSI for the beginning of the Modeling the Origin of Life (MOL) workshop, which brought together world-class mathematicians and physicists studying how natural systems might self organize to create information in the way that life does. I found the conversations stimulating as someone who thinks about thermodynamics and life, but usually in terms of more straightforward water-rock chemistry.

In the midst of continuing my JPL work and participating in origin-of-life discussions, I also collaborated with the top-notch scientists at ELSI studying the stars and planets, including our own planet Earth. I experienced the intoxicating cultural and scientific melange at ELSI most vividly on my last day there, when I sought out Matthieu Laneuville for a discussion about magma ocean dynamics that we had been planning, but instead ended up participating in the Japanese lesson that was taking place. I was feeling pressured for time, since I had agreed to meet for an origin of life discussion. I somehow managed to fit everything in. Not only that, I participated later that day in an ELSI town hall meeting, and then in a rousing discussion in the early evening about different modes of ocean convection and heat transport in icy satellites.

I'm writing this from Sapporo, where I am participating in the AOGS meeting. I presented my talk about Europa on Monday, and my poster yesterday. As at ELSI, I have enjoyed stimulating presentations about topics in astronomy, planetary, and Earth science. It's easy to do when you bring together thousands of people in one place. ELSI is remarkable for achieving something similar with a much smaller group.