Living in Japan

We have been coming to work at KEK for more than ten years now. Our select group from SLAC works very well with the designers, builders and operators of the KEK Accelerator Test Facility (ATF). Usually we work at KEK for a two or three week stretch every three months, and then return to SLAC for re-thinking and preparation for the next trip. It is hard work with long hours, but we do not come close to matching the effort of the KEK ATF group. The development of the ATF, unique among linear collider accelerator RD test facilities in that it is focused on the generation of low emittance electron beams, has been a path of steady progress. Now our collaboration is quite close to the goal performance.

More so than any other large scientific project, physicists and engineers working on the electron-positron linear collider have come to embrace internationalism. The linear collider will be a truly international project, with strong support and management from each of the high energy physics centers. It is entirely appropriate therefore, that the group really get to know each other and each other’s cultural background.

During the last ten years, the SLAC group has come to know and appreciate some of the wonders of Japan, especially of Ibaraki and Tokyo. For many of us, the most exciting part of learning about Japan has been living in a Japanese house near the lab.

It is a real Japanese house with tatami and
o-furo. It was a challenge to outfit it and arrange things so that complete novices feel at ‘home’. Furnishings and all the necessities of a home take time to find and understand. With very busy KEK partners and poor kanji reading skills, the task can seem impossible.

Our next challenge was the cold. We rented and moved into our house in the early fall, near the equinox holiday. The heat was utterly unbearable. About 6 weeks later, our colleagues landed at Narita and headed straight for the new house. It was extremely cold, or at least it seemed so. With only 3 kilowatts of electricity service and
little experience with kerosene heaters, we had to learn quickly. By carefully looking over the homes visited in Yamagata, where it is quite a bit colder than Tsukuba, it was possible to pick out the most important devices for staying warm, the kotatsu, electric carpet, electric blanket and the hot bath.

Home delivery was required for some major purchases. How could we describe the location of our house to someone, in a language we don’t know, if we hardly know how to find it ourselves? Fortunately, using a team of helpers, one standing in front of the house, one on a cell phone and a third giving directions, we were able to succeed.

My visits with a family in Yamagata helped me experience life in Japan a whole new way. During one of those interminable flights across the ocean, I met Miki – a young activist on her way to a summer in Berkeley. A year or so later I visited her family and husband in the northern town of Yamagata. Their hospitality and the wonders of Japan’s mountains are truly amazing. Among other things, I could see first hand how a Japanese house works. Our families continue to exchange visits and I am now learning how to prepare some of the interesting foods I see in the grocery store. I was extremely lucky to meet and visit a Japanese family, just by chance, and take the opportunity to explore all the trappings of a real home.

Of course, one can never lose one’s own cultural bias and background. It is impossible to imagine becoming Japanese. But to know a bit and be comfortable in your host’s environment makes a huge difference. Doing this will ease the construction of our project, the linear collider. Perhaps more importantly, working effectively in a different environment, in a different culture, has helped us to understand how to better function in our own land.

The author of this article, Marc Ross, works on the linear collider project at SLAC and KEK. His area of expertise is beam instrumentation and tun-ing. For more than 10 years, Marc and his colleagues have been working with the ATF project at KEK.