Sabbatical Update From Japan

Sabbatical update from the road! I've spent the past three weeks in Japan, where I had the pleasure of giving colloquia and seminars at four institutions — Doshisha University, Kyoto University, Osaka University, and the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) in Mitaka. This trip is part of the Amherst College–Doshisha University Short-Term Faculty Exchange, and it's been so, so wonderful.

My ties to Japan are old. I was a Japanese Studies major as an undergraduate at Middlebury, lived in Kyoto for a year on a Fulbright Fellowship right after college, and returned for several months in 2011 as an NSF East Asian and Pacific Studies Fellow at NAOJ. Coming back as a faculty member has been a wonderful way to reconnect with longtime mentors and colleagues — and to see how much the Japanese exoplanet imaging community has grown since I was last here!

My oldest son joined me for the entire three week visit and was a great sport as I dragged him along to most of my talks (including the one at Kyoto University where I studied as a research student in 2004-2005, see photo of us at the famous Kyodai tree below). He even attended a full week of school in Japanese at Doshisha Elementary and made many new friends. His principal takeaway was that Japanese school cafeteria food is vastly superior to the US equivalent.

Thanks to my hosts at all of these productive research visits and to those who made this exchange possible!