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African Group
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> KI-san & NI-san
> NK-san & TK-san
> KN-san & YN-san
> T-san
> Kazuko Yoshida
Jewish Community
Young Asylum Seekers
Individual Reminiscences
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NK-san & TK-san's Story
Researcher: Welcome Trust, sanger Institute, Hinxton Cambridge
http://search.sanger.ac.uk/cgi-bin/exasearch
Current Research: Genes to Cognition
Life in UK/Cambridge
Untold Stories: Before coming to the UK/Cambridge – where did you live in Japan ? What was your work?
NK-san: I lived in Okayama and Osaka. I was a graduate student for a masters degree in Molecular Biology.
Untold Stories: When did you come to Europe and UK? What age were you?
NK-san: I think it was 1991 and I was in my early 20s.
Untold Stories: Why did you come to UK/Cambridge? What work did you do?
NK-san: I first came here as a summer student and subsequently transferred to the Ph.D. program. I worked at the MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge.
Untold Stories: Do you have any memories of Cambridge/UK linked to a photograph?
Click image to enlarge
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NK-san: The chief editor of the Japanese comic magazine Shounen Jump took the photograph shown left. They visited my boss, Max Perutz, (Nobel Prize Chemistry winner – 1962) when they were serialising the stories of Nobel Prize winners in their magazine. Max told them that Noboru would be happier if his name appeared in their magazine rather than in a science magazine like Nature. |
Untold Stories: .When you arrived in the UK what were your impressions and feelings? What surprised you? What was really nice/good?
NK-san: What surprised me most was that all shops here were closed on Saturday and Sunday, unlike now.
What was really nice here was the English summer. No sweat, no mosquitoes!
What shocked me was how many women were working in the Laboratory. In Japan it was almost only men.
Untold Stories: What did you like most when you came to Cambridge?
NK-san: The scientific environment at the Laboratory of Molecular Biology, I should say.
What I liked least (here at the time) was house sharing.
Untold Stories: And now what do you feel about England, Cambridge?
NK-san: Snobbish … no, no. Good old traditions!
Untold Stories: What has been good for you?
NK-san: I hope that I could come up with something for this, but...
Untold Stories: What has been difficult for you?
NK-san: English!
Untold Stories: Have things changed since you first came to UK?
NK-san: More shops are open on Saturday and Sunday now.
Untold Stories: What other memories do you have – of your time in the UK linked to photographs.
There are two replies to this question:
NK-san: “I met my wife T-san here for the first time.”
Click images to enlarge
T-san: Above left is the picture we took in London (May 2005) and above right,
as `friends` in a Cotswold village in August 2004 -
the first time after I moved to the U.K. We always laugh about the difference of these pictures. Because in the photographs the distance between Noboru and me had changed!!
Untold Stories: Why?
T-san: We got married on 26 December 2004.
Click image to enlarge
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