Looking forward to the unknown, no matter how small it might be

The healthiness of one's brain can pretty well be judged by whether one embraces the uncertainties in life with pleasure.
A kid has great expectations for the future. On the night before the school trip, for example, it is not uncommon for a kid to be so excited that it is difficult to sleep. It is not that those school outings are going to be anything great in actuality. It is just the expectations that brings the children into the cosmos of the infinities.

As one grows older, this great ability of being excited over the unknown is gradually lost. The future becomes mundane. There, the decline of the brain health starts.

Looking forward to the unknown, no matter how small it might be, is a great way to keep your brain young and up.

On intolerance

Much as I respect and love my fellow country people, there are some tendencies recently in Japan that I cannot go along.

One thing is the spreading of intolerance. It is not that people in Japan are generally intolerant. Far from it. All my trusted friends are quite liberal, and respect the individualities and variances. At best or worst it is a divided nation. It is only that intolerant people are often noisy. And the media follow them without reflections and criticism. Making noise is one of the business models of big media, much to the disservice for the whole community.

Intolerant people are old in spirit. They cannot accept change. They inhibit the creative dynamo of others and themelves. In a society where many people are eagerly applying anti-aging techniques, I sometimes wonder why people do not take the prescriptions for tolerance.

If the wave of intolerance spreads further, everyone loses. Not only does it have a generally intimidating effect on the young and creative, but also the intolerant people themselves lose the most essential brilliance of life.

If, on the other hand, more and more people learn how to be tolerant to individuals of different opinions and value systems, no matter how alien and strange they may appear, everyone would be a winner.

Either way, they have nothing to say about their performance

The Vancouver Olympics is well under way. When I watch the games, when I can that is, I tend to focus on the losers, as well as the winners. Athletes cannot explain their failures away. They have nothing to say about their performance. They just do it, based on the skills and experiences that they have acquired over the years through arduous training, and they just accept the results as they come, no matter what nature. If they lose, they quietly fade away. If they win, they enjoy the transient spotlight. Either way, they have nothing to say about their performance, as everything is over once the competition time is up.

As the world become increasingly talkative, delving into other people's matters and widening the range of one's objects of comments, the athletes in the Olympics provide a refreshing contrast, just concentrating on what their finite bodies can and cannot achieve.

Maybe we should all be like the athletes.

During the dinner party even, I strolled onto the night street alone.

I came to Shimada, Shizuoka. I gave a public lecture in the city auditorium, talking about the brain, life, and mindsets.

After the lecture, I had a break before the evening social events. I strolled the backstreets of Shimada.

It is always such a great pleasure to be lost, or, more precisely, to try to be lost in an unknown city. Narrow streets would meander, and you're led to a new vista, in a metaphorical movement for life itself.

It is so soothing to be released from your everyday social networks, and to be immersed in the soothing radiance of the isolation of choice.

During the dinner party even, I strolled onto the night street alone. Mr. Kawamura came to search for me. I raised my hand to assure my connectedness. We are all connected, through the great darkness that envelop the planet earth in periods.

On Fridays, Crick would take loads of papers with him to read over the weekend.

We hold a weekly journal club. It is called "the Brain Club." I regard the reading of journal papers as an important part of the education for graduate students. At first, it might take even a week to understand the significance of a paper, and present it to the lab members. As you get accustomed to the genre, you start reading the paper very rapidly. When you are thoroughly accustomed, you may be able to read a typical neuroscience paper in 10 minutes, and tell the gist of it to your colleague.

I got my Ph.D at University of Tokyo under the supervision of Dr. Takeyuki (Taki) Wakabayashi. Taki did research a few years at the Medical Research Council laboratory in Cambridge, United Kingdom. Taki used to say that Francis Crick read a lot of papers. On Fridays, Crick would take loads of papers with him to read over the weekend.

Training yourself to read lots of research papers is fun, and I whole-heartedly recommend it to people of high intellectual aspirations. Nowadays, it is very easy to do, as many papers are available on the internet for free. You don't have to belong to a university, or any institution whatever.

I always remember the glorious moment for the bass boys.

Nowadays, when I work in the morning, I listen to Messiah of George Frideric Handel. It is one of my all-time favorite pieces of music.

When I was a senior high student, we practiced the Hallelujah chorus. I was a bass. All the good parts are taken by the soprano and tenor. There was, however, one passage where the bass went solo.

"And he shall reign forever and ever"

For this particular line, the bass went first, and then the other vocal parts followed. We the bass boys were naturally very proud of it, and waited eagerly for that eternal moment.

Messiah's music is beautiful all through, and I can only marvel at the genius of Handel. When it comes to the Hallelujah chorus, I always remember the glorious moment for the bass boys. There is at least one shining moment in life for an underdog.

The whole process of ordering, eating, and then leaving would fall into a jazzy pace

Just outside the ticket gate of Ginza subway station in central Tokyo, there's a curry restaurant that I like. I have been the customer there since my university days. It is not a fanciful place. Just an ordinary establishment, where the curry and rice is served quickly, as you order them at the counter and wait.

I used to go to the Kabuki theater and nearby cinemas often as a student. When you are alone and hungry, you would like to get done with the ritual of filling your stomach quickly, without any fuss. At such occasions, the curry place would be a prime choice, where the whole process of ordering, eating, and then leaving would fall into a jazzy pace.

In and out of Tokyo, I have several places like the Ginza curry restaurant, my solitary meal destinations. I used to go quite often to a yakisoba restaurant in Ueno station, which is close to my old university. The yakisoba place was just beside the stairs, and you would buy tickets before ordering. As you waited for the culinary delight to arrive, watching the cooks using large forks and tongs, your expectations would grow. As I remember the place, noises and smells and the whole atmosphere come back so vividly.

Sadly, the Ueno restaurant is no longer with us, after the huge renovation the station went through several years ago. There is
now a Hard Rock cafe near the ancient yakisoba restaurant place.

The remarkably late realization on the part of Rick

Now I am back in Tokyo. Reflecting on my encounter with Rick Baron, I think the most remarkable fact was that although Rick is gifted with this most astonishing ability to recall autobiographical memories, he is at the same time good at social skills, and warm to people. In other words, there is no apparent effect of "trade-offs" in his overall cognitive skills.

I think this fact had partly to do with the remarkably late realization on the part of Rick (two years ago) that his special talent is something rare in this world. Indeed, there are only four confirmed cases of hyperthymesia so far. Because Rich Baron is such a nice and "normal" person, nobody including himself suspected that his brain was so special.


The crew from Fuji television filming Rick Baron.

It always has a human touch

On the final day in Cleveland, we went to various places with Rick Baron.

About one hour after shopping in a liquor shop, I asked him if there were anything particular that he remembered from the shop. Rick came forward with the list of items we bought, complete with their prices, in a very straightforward and spontaneous manner. I, on the other hand, had only a fuzzy idea about what we have bought, let alone the prices.

The strange thing is that as you get accustomed to Rick's way, you feel as if it is only natural to remember things with precise chronological data. Failure to do so start to look like embarrassing.

One could not learn to perform like Rick by training, though. After spending a few days with Rick Baron, I am convinced that his remarkable memory ability is something that he was born with. It is not an acquirable skill. Even if the trick of retrieving the precise chronological information could be mastered after many years of strenuous efforts, the resulting memory skill would not be in its nature equivalent to Rick's.

In other words, Rick's memories are "personalized". It always has a human touch, and adds warmth to the information he gives away in such a positive and reassuring manner.


Watching the Super Bowl, New Orleans Saints vs. Indianapolis Colts, with Rick Baron in a Cleveland Sports Bar 7th February 2010.