Dan's diary

As a first time attender to the MND/ALS meeting I was surprised at how close the community of researchers is in the MND field. Since returning to Sheffield, my colleagues who attended the conference (Sian, Laura and Richard) and I have gone through the highlights with the other members of our lab. They knew the speakers or knew of the lab where the research took place.

As a doctor I was interested in the clinical as well as the scientific side of the conference. The simultaneous sessions facilitate good communication between researchers and clinicians and provides a welcoming and friendly atmosphere at the conference.

The glial cells, which were thought to be a sort of ‘brain glue’, supporting the nerve cells are now known to have very important roles in health and disease. The session on glial cells had some excellent data on their role in MND.

The highlight for me was a talk by Dr Kohsaka who presented some eloquent experiments on normal microglial motility. He showed that a receptor that I have been looking at on microglia from a mouse model of MND is clearly involved in microglial movement.

I hope to keep in contact with some of the scientists I met in Japan so that I can learn more about these cells and produce data that may help explain how these glial cells are involved in MND. I would like to thank the MND Association for asking me to contribute to this blog but more so for making the conference a success and all the work they do in supporting patients and carers and for supporting science in MND.

The conference ends. I did not sleep well last night as I had to give my talk this morning. I think it went OK. I was sandwiched in between some big hitting high quality science talks and it ended up being a very interesting session on glial and particularly microglial involvement in MND.

So now I can relax. Being 9 hours ahead of GMT means that I can follow the Ashes in real time rather then checking the score after a day’s play when I wake in the morning. Unfortunately but not surprisingly it is not on television so I am following it on the internet. We have wireless connection in our room so I plan to have a very relaxed afternoon before going out to Dinner with my boss, colleagues and the last speaker.

My colleagues all head home tomorrow and I am heading down to Kyoto to meet my mother for the last two days of my trip to Japan. I think we will visit a Buddhist temple in hills outside of Kyoto. It is possible to stay in the temple and take part in meditation or cleaning with the monks. However, I don’t think my mother will be too keen on that.

The gala dinner went well, with good food, followed by traditional Japanese drumming. This did mean that my room mate was unable to perform his Karaoke number he has been practicing in the room. So after another good day of lectures we headed into China town, which is famous in Yokohama and we were also told that it was where we would find some bars and hopefully karaoke bars.

Most restaurants in Japan have plastic models of the dishes that they cook inside. On this occasion we risked not having these and luckily the menu had some English. We were going to try the Chinese Banquet but because each type of banquet had shark’s fin soup, we decided to select individual dished.

After the meal we met a friendly horse chestnut vendor who told us he had learnt his English from a English professor and had learnt the proper English. He then immediately asked about the situation in Ireland and the problems that have happened there. We asked him to recommend a bar and he told us of the windjammer, saying it was famous. The bar was on two levels with a Jazz band on the ground floor and a television screen with the Jazz band on it on the first floor. The bar was the covered in timber to look like the inside of an old ship. It was on the first floor where we met the owner. An American, who sat at the bar with his own beer pump. He told us he had been in Japan since the 1960s and regailed us with stories of his life in Japan.

Alas there was no karaoke. We have only one night left and Richard is getting anxious.

I arrived in Yokohama yesterday at 6pm after a busy day in Hakone. Hakone is a nearby mountainous area which was in beautiful colour as the Japanese Azelea trees turned reds, yellows and orange. It was raining the day we arrived so we visited the Hakone outdoor sculpture and art gallery, which had a fantastic collection of sculptures dotted throughout its gardens. We sat outside looking at Henry Moore sculptures in the mist with our feet in a hot spring containing oranges, lemons and limes. We stayed in a grand old 19th century hotel and the next day the sky was clear and we went further up the mountains and managed to get clear views of Mt Fuji, which looked picture postcardesque, as a snow capped volcano. We then went on a boat trip on a lake. The boat, for reasons unknown was made to look like a French pirate ship.

Yokohama by contrast to the genteel Hakone is a part of the Tokyo metropolitan area. We are staying in a sail shaped hotel on the 18th floor looking out at other skyscrapers and a neon lit 50 metre high Ferris wheel.

Two of my colleagues from Sheffield gave excellent talks today. I am quite jealous as they can relax for the rest of the conference whilst I am still practicing my talk. Tonight is the gala dinner and Richard, my room mate, is hoping for karaoke.

I am preparing my presentation for Yokohama and am trying to finish off some work this week before my flight to Tokyo on Saturday.

I visited Japan in 1996 as a 3rd year medical student on an elective. I spent four weeks working and studying in a hospital in a small town called Izumo on the Sea of Japan coast, north of Hiroshima. I remember the toilets with remote control flush and heated seats and Sumo wrestling on the television in the afternoons.

I only spent one night in Tokyo on my last visit, staying in a capsule hotel, so am looking forward to seeing a bit more of the city. I have read some novels by Haruki Murakami (South of the Border, West of the Sun), which feature jazz bars in Tokyo. The author ran such a bar for eight years so I am going to try one whilst in the city. I am then going to spend a couple of days by Mount Fuji. The area is apparently famous for its Udon noodles, which are long thick white noodles normally served in a soup. I think a bit of hiking underneath the snow capped volcano, lots of noodles and maybe some hot baths will be a good way to relax before going to Yokohama on Wednesday.