2nd Semester in CBCMP: Circles and Clubs

I haven't updated this blog in a while lol... A lot of stuff happened in the 2nd semester honestly. Firstly I joined circles. For those of you who don't know what a circle is, it basically is a club which is not demanding. The definition of club or 部活 here in Japan is basically student groups that are more official and demands your time, for example if you join some sports circle, you gotta practice several times a week and attend all their activities.

So basically in this 2nd semester I joined 2 circles. I'm not really into sports activities so I was just trying to join something that will possibly give me something in the future such as achievements and experience this and that.

Gonna talk about the one I first joined: biomod. It is not really a circle to be honest, more like a relaxed class (going to get credits for this circle lol).

Image result for biomod
What is this circle about anyway? To summarize, what we do is we are trying to create molecular machines or structures using DNA and join the international competition held in UCSF (previously Harvard), and is organized by Wyss institute of Harvard. We meet about once a week, depends on the members empty slot, this semester it was decided to be every Friday from around 5pm in Suita campus (gotta rush and ride the 4.20 blaze it  bus from Toyonaka campus).

The 国内大会 or the national competition was usually held in Tokyo but this year it was decided to be held in our university, Osaka university (yay! no need to buy tickets to Tokyo). Rather than competition, it is more like a practice to prepare teams before the real competition. Looking at the previous years' abstracts, seemed like most teams haven't even started the experiments hahaha.

For this competition, we have to do planning of the DNA structure (of course), do the experiments and observe our results, then we have to present our results through presentation and a website (wiki page) and also a promotional video. A rigorous job knowing our team consists of 6 1st years who know nothing about web design and video making. In addition to that, we had to apply here and there for research grants, which was a pain in the ass but we ended up with around 900k yen in research fund, so not bad I guess?

Anyway we held on, we have decided on the structure and 90% finished the design. Then we just have to work on the video and wiki page to try and secure a better place than last year's team who won bronze project award.

Here goes team Handai:

A post shared by Johannes Nicolaus (@otjin) on


Anddd..... the other club I joined is tamakomi, basically an 英会話 or English speaking club, not particularly active but I do enjoy going there from time to time. Basically joined bcs the other guy in Biomod is there so why not right? Maybe find someone cute am I right? hahahahaha. Also, surprisingly, some Japanese actually speak really good English. We have meetings every Thursday from 6-8 pm and after that is dinner so people who wanna go can decide if they wanna go and eat out or not.

So that's basically my 2nd semester club activities. If you feel like joining our just have any questions about any of these (actually about anything), just hit me up and I'll tell you more about it!

more on biomod:
http://biomod.net/
http://www.molecular-robotics.org/tag/biomod/ (in Japanese)

more on tamakomi:
https://tamakomi.jimdo.com/






2023

Scuba diving in Okinawa Part 1

Ever since my childhood, I’ve harbored a deep love for the sea and its myriad marine creatures. However, living far from the coast meant that my experiences ...

Back to top ↑

2022

Publishing my first research paper

After a year long review, my first paper finally got published: Link. The paper went through 3 rounds of revision, where I believe that the 3rd round was not...

Landing a PhD position

Hi there, I haven’t updated this blog for so long! I have been busy with research and the whole pandemic did not help with the current situation. But, to rec...

Back to top ↑

2021

What happened to my research?

So COVID struck while it’s been like about a year since my last post. A lot of things happened this year, I learnt new experimental techniques, got an award ...

Back to top ↑

2020

Back to top ↑

2019

My research projects

Hi, haven’t updated my blog in a very very long time but here I am lol. Happy new year to everyone! How was 2018? 2018 was a rather productive year for me, I...

Back to top ↑

2017

Shirahama Marine Biology Field Trip 2017

At the end of the first year, we have an optional (used to be compulsory) trip to Shirahama. If you don’t know what Shirahama is, it is basically a beach in ...

2nd Semester: Labs

Hello there, different from 1st semester, we have labs on our 2nd semester. A rather good thing knowing that we almost never had any lab experience during th...

2nd Semester in CBCMP: Circles and Clubs

I haven’t updated this blog in a while lol… A lot of stuff happened in the 2nd semester honestly. Firstly I joined circles. For those of you who don’t know...

First Semester in the CBCMP

Haven't posted in a while, first sem was really hectic... Let me sum up my first sem in the CBCMP then.. First time I came for the orientation I wasn’t real...

Reaching Osaka University

Usually it takes about some 7-8 hours to get from Indonesia to Japan. However, MEXT somehow managed to book a ticket with a layover at Denpasar (Bali) and so...

Back to top ↑

2016

About Month After Announcement Of

About a month after the announcement of passing into the university, I was asked to choose among 4 departments: Department of Biological sciences (School of ...

The Next Step to 阪大

So, I’m gonna save the language school post for later and the Osaka University post for today.<div></div><div>Some of you might think that ...

Why Japan?

Out of the countries that I could have chosen to go to, why Japan?The answer is simple: the people.So what’s with the people? How are they different?Well let...

How I managed to get into Japan

So I went to this University fair about 2 years ago and got some info regarding this Osaka University Global 30 program, however I didn’t really look further...

Why this blog and who am I

Maybe a little too late to make a blog, but maybe not too late to share stories.<div></div><div>So let me introduce myself, my name is Joha...

Back to top ↑