This visit was in March 2003. I was invited as a special guest to the farewell symposium celebrating the retirement of an eminent professor of Microbiology at Yamaguchi University Professor Osao Adachi. He and his Department members had worked on acetic acid bacteria and especially their enzymes for oxidation of alcohol and sugars for many years and are the foremost experts in the world on this subject [Click here for a pdf of a review of their work]. They included Kazunobu Matsushita and Mamoru Yamada who have visited us at home, and Hiro Toyama who worked with me for a short time. Prof. Ameyama, Adachi and Matsushita were my first good friends in Japan, inviting me to be the opening lecturer at the 2nd International Symposium on PQQ and Quinoproteins in Yamaguchi in 1991.
On this visit I flew to Kansai airport near Osaka, then by train to Yamaguchi. From there I went to Nagasaki to visit my old friend Daisuke; I had met him in Southampton at on of the CSO concerts. He was a young bassoon player who was here to learn English. We were very happy to see him again when he visited us with his new wife in 2010.
After Nagasaki I visited Nobuo Kato and his wife in Kyoto. I had known him for many years from his work on methanol-utilising yeasts. He is an inspired Italian cook and I have shared some on my most memorable times in Japan with them.
This page of pictures is a tiny expression of thanks to all my friends who have helped make Japan one of my favourite places in the solar system.

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