Welcome All

So I should probably introduce myself. I'm a student studying particle physics at Osaka University. I was born and raised in Palmerston North, New Zealand, and after finishing high school I came over to Japan to study physics. I spent my first year here at the Osaka University of Foreign Studies to try to learn a bit of the language, and then switched to Osaka University where I finished my bachelor's degree in 2004.

I've just spent the last two years doing my master's degree on the Belle experiment. The aim of the Belle experiment is to measure some of the differences between matter, which makes up our universe, and antimatter, which is a sort of mirror image of matter. The experiment is situated in Tsukuba, a medium-ish sized town about an hours drive north east of Tokyo. I spend about half my time at the lab here, and the rest at university in Osaka or in Kyoto.

Up until now I've been mainly working on developing part of one of the pieces of software we use for the experiment. Graduation is in another couple of weeks, and then I will begin work on a doctor's degree where I will probably be analysing some of the data from the experiment. In the meantime I should hopefully be able to carry on with the software work, as well as help with some of the research and development for a hardware upgrade we're hoping to carry out in another couple of years.

Other than research I spend time reading, relaxing, getting out to see the sites in Kyoto, and catching up with friends here and overseas. I play soccer and go running occasionally here at the lab, and try to do a bit of travel when time allows.