by Martin Horejsi of  Martin Horejsi's Meteorite and Tektite Books

The National Institute of Polar Research, Tokyo, Japan

Often, there is a considerable amount of luck involved in Meteoritics. The luck of the find, or better yet, the observed fall. And there is the luck of the researcher or collector being at the right place at the right time to get that rare specimen. Well, the luck I recently had involved a chance meeting with the right people, many hours of walking and being at the right place at the right time. And often, the best part of all this luck are the memories.

Although I have had more than my fair share of wonderful experiences, even before I left the United States, I expected more excellent adventures await me. Why? Because the airplane I was taking to Japan happened to be a commemorative aircraft. This flagship of Singapore Airlines was the 1000th Boeing 747 ever built. The plane was immaculate, the staff, the food, the flight, all were wonderful. In fact, I even was allowed into the cockpit during the flight to chat with the pilots, and see the view from up there.

As a science teacher and meteorite collector, I had more than a passing interest in seeing Japan's National Institute of Polar Research (NIPR) Antarctic meteorite collection while on a trip to Tokyo. The only problem was, at that time, I didn't represent any major university or research program. In fact, I didn't even have a business card to make myself look official. In case you don't know, business cards are considered so essential in Japan that the exchange of cards is as routine a greeting as a handshake in the United States.

Once in Japan, I organized my list of what I wanted to see. The size and complexity of Tokyo can make even small excursions last a better part of the day. The efficiency of their mass transit system helps, but Tokyo is not as user-friendly as the larger cities in the US and Europe. Since all I had was a very rough address for the NIPR, I placed it near the bottom of my list. I decided to wait until one of my last days in Tokyo before searching for the NIPR. It's a good thing I waited, or I would never have seen anything.

The National Institute of Polar Research in Tokyo (Internet site at: http://www.nipr.ac.jp/ ) is home for one of the largest (or maybe the largest) collections of Antarctic meteorites in the world. Since 1969, the number of meteorites found in Antarctica has grown from six to 8900. Many of these meteorite finds are the work of the NIPR. This huge collection includes a majority of chondrites with plenty of irons as well. However, the real gems include hundreds of achondrites including a small handful of SNCs and lunar meteorites. But what does the NIPR really do with all these jewels from space? They identify and catalog all the specimens for other scientists to select and request samples for their research.

The reason I would never have gotten in had I headed straight for the Institute when I first arrived in Tokyo is that nobody informed the institute that I was coming. A wonderful coincidence occurred as I was riding a bullet train south to Hiroshima. A Japanese man came up to me to just to talk. He recognized my friend and me as Americans, and said that he used to teach geochemistry at Texas A&M University. He said he was interested in just talking to some Americans because he missed America, and speaking English. I asked him about the nature of his work at A&M, and he was thrilled to tell me about it. He was even more excited when he realized that this unshaven, backpack-carrying American understood what he was talking about.

Naturally, the conversation turned to meteorites, and he was just as excited about this subject. When I asked him about the NIPR, he said that the only way I could see anything is by invitation. I nodded hoping for what I then heard. He knew the director and would call him when he got back to Tokyo. He handed me his business card and I scrambled to find a piece of paper on which to write my name. As we parted company, I felt I now had an obligation to go to the institute.

When I returned to Tokyo, I set out to find the NIPR-no small task. The streets of Tokyo are laid out so haphazardly that even the residents often don't use addresses, but rather maps with a distinct landmark used to navigate to another landmark, and finally the address. I had seen a photograph of the building so I figured I'd just walk around until I saw something familiar. After about two hours of this I decided I'd get help. I came across a young delivery boy with a map. We hopped in his van, and he pulled out a credit card sized language translator. I explained what I was looking for, and five minutes later we arrived at a chemical supply house. I thanked him profusely and went inside. He, sensing that this was not what I had in mind, went in with me to ask the people inside if they knew of the NIPR. One of them drew a complex map and after five minutes of drawing, nodding, and bowing, we were off again. Two minutes later, the scene looked just like the picture of the NIPR I had seen. I walked into the main room. On display in front of me was a large chondrite in a well lit glass case. It was the largest meteorite found so far by the Japanese teams. Around the walls were colorful posters and dioramas depicting the Antarctic region, and the research that took place there. Included in one display was an actual snow vehicle that looked like a tank. As I would find out later, there is one just like it in the bottom of a crevasse in Antarctica.

A woman came out of a room, and I introduced myself and gave the name of the man I met on the train. She said that they were expecting me and would I like to wait in the main office for the curator. I was offered tea and invited to lunch with the people who work there. I nodded and bowed. In Japan, there is a very fine line between a suggestive question and a command.

The two women who worked in the office prepared a table with many different kinds of fresh vegetables and pieces of what I thought were cheese. When the curator and his assistants entered the room, I bowed and thanked them graciously for such a wonderful opportunity to visit. I sat down to eat with Drs. Hideyasu Kojima, Keizo Yanai, and the assistants.

The food was quite good. Rice, green and red vegetables, and small square cheese-looking items. I put a piece of cheese into my mouth, and discovered that it tasted more like raw catfish. It was raw catfish. Well, since I was a vegetarian and representing the United States, in the interest of national relations and diplomacy, I did my civic duty and swallowed.

After lunch, I spent the better half of the afternoon touring the NIPR facilities with Dr. Yanai. We started with the meteorite collection. We went down one flight of stairs, and through a couple of rooms that led us to a special room. In front of the door was a white pad that looked like a door mat, and a box of blue plastic slippers. We changed into slippers (as is the custom in Japan) to remove the chance that we would track debris into the meteorite room. After attempting to slip my American size 9 feet into a pair of large (size 7) Japanese slippers, I followed Yani into the room. The sticky white pad did its best to pull the slippers off, but only the dirt was left behind.

Inside the room were walls of cabinets and file drawers. On a large table in the center of the room sat a polarizing light microscope. We started with thin sections. Yanai pulled out a drawer lined with slides, and chose a few. He sighted the microscope onto several distinct chondrules. The bright colors jumped off the slide into a three dimensional kaleidoscope of blues, reds, greens, and purples. We talked about the work he does, and the research that comes from the NIPR collection. In the back of my mind, I was excited about seeing the larger meteorite specimens, but I knew that viewing the thin sections would be instrumental in my understanding of the real science that took place upstairs.

Above the table, tacked to the ceiling, were several large pictures I was having trouble figuring out. Then I realized that they were images taken from inside a crevice, looking up toward the sky. One of the images was looking down the crevice. Once I had the perspective, I could see a large snowcat lying on its side at the bottom of the crevice. Yanai was either driving or a passenger (I don't remember) in this machine when it broke through the thin ice that often covers crevasses. The many-ton steel visitor to the Antarctic had now acquired permanent residency. I believe Yanai broke his arm, and was one of the lucky ones who rode the cat down into the ice shelf. Following a quiet minute of reflection for Yanai, and story-assimilation for me, we turned back to the microscope. After a few more thin sections, Yanai pulled open a wooden drawer. Inside were plastic bags, each with one meteorite specimen and an ID number. We started with what I thought were the really rare specimens. At that point, I had not noticed the large metal safe in the corner. First, a golfball sized, partially crusted Ureilite, then a Howardite. Our gloved hands rolled the specimens around, and I began to take pictures of many of the specimens. However, the batteries in my flash unit decided to take a vacation at the moment, and I had left my replacements back on the store shelf. Oh well, I've been in this position before (in the meteorite room of the Smithsonian, with a chunk of Nakhla before me). I dropped my shutter speed to between a 15^th and a 30^th of a second and shot away. Luckily, the Japanese are not known for their great coffee (just the factual five dollars a cup) or I would not have been able to hold the camera still enough. Later, I knew, I would have to balance the color of the greenish florescent lights when reprinting the images.

We looked at several more meteorites, and I clicked away at them with my camera. Then Yanai got a sly smile on his face and asked if I wanted to see a moon rock. Yanai read the tenfold increase in the size of my eyes as a yes, and opened the safe. He produced a plastic bag containing a baseball sized fragment closely resembling the lunar specimens I viewed in Washington D.C. However, Yanai then brought out what I thought was a calcium-rich achondrite. This was another lunar meteorite named Asuka 881757, but as Yanai pointed out, this specimen was different from all those returned from the Apollo and Lunar missions, and all other lunar meteorites. This specimen was made of a completely different kind of rock, and therefore, was from another part of the moon. This fact made it the only representative sample of this material we have here on earth. Yanai treated it as such. We examined this specimen and discussed it for a while. Then Yanai asked if I would like to see a Mars rock.

The moon rocks went back into the safe, and out came a small dark-colored rock. He took the piece of mars and held it up toward the light. "This is one of the most valuable rocks on earth," he proclaimed. I was not in a position to argue. The rock had a distinct Nakhla look, with larger green crystals. We both stared at the rock as if it were going to tell us something. Even though Yanai works with these specimens almost every day, I could tell by the way he handled the specimens, he knew of both the importance of the specimens to humankind, as well as his position in the world of Meteoritics. He cared, and his job mattered. Images came to mind of what I had seen in other large collections. Images of missing specimens, empty boxes in the drawers, small piles of rust in the cabinets, and specimen labels with no home. I snapped back to reality when Yanai asked me if I would like to see the microprobe. Off with the slippers, and upstairs we went.

We entered a room full of books, computer monitors, and people staring at me. Yanai introduced me, and I bowed. A woman was sitting at the microprobe busily spinning dials. She was using a photograph of a meteorite thin section as a map. Different points on the picture were marked for microprobe analysis. The map was developed on another computer where specific mineral grains on a thin section picture were noted as ones to probe. The picture was colored, though not as vivid as the image a polarizing light microscope produces.

Then an unusual thing happened. When I inquired about the mapping process, one of the men walked over to the woman's workstation and without asking, grabbed the map from its position right in front of her. She sat upright and waited patiently, her work stopped. I received a complete explanation of the process, of which I remember little, since I felt so uncomfortable with the attention I was given at the expense of her work. After the map was no longer necessary to show me the process, it was set on a counter more than an arms reach from the woman. She walked over to it, picked up, and went back to work without saying a word. Had this happened in America, well, that's another story.

The equipment in this room is used to identify the minerals found in the NIPR's meteorites. This information, along with many more pictures is published in catalog-form for other researchers to view. The process for computerized microprobe analysis is rather interesting. First, specific points on computerized thin section pictures are studied visually. A black and white printout of the color image shown on the computer screen is marked with the places requiring further study. This becomes the map. Small circles are drawn on the printout, and each circle is identified with a number. When this process is complete, the map is given to the person operating the microprobe. At this stage, the actual specimen is placed in the microprobe chamber, and a microscopic image of the specimen is viewed through an eyepiece. Cross-hairs are lined up on the mineral grain in question. The cross-hairs mark the point of microprobe analysis on the specimen's surface, and they are aligned by turning three different axis dials. Once the cross-hairs are correctly positioned, the coordinates for that particular mineral grain are locked into the computer. This process is repeated many times, and once complete, the computer does the rest. The coordinates are listed on the computer screen, and when the analysis starts, the dials spin on their own, and data flows to the printer.

Finally, it was time to leave. Yanai and I walked back to his office, and he disappeared for a moment. He came back with a small collection of pictures and two red books. The pictures were of specific meteorites I had looked at downstairs, and the books were the catalogs the NIPR produced for other researchers to view the collection. He inscribed one of the books for me, and thanked me for stopping by. I too was very grateful, and after many bows, and a few handshakes, I left this wondrous place and wandered back into bright sunlight and the complex maze of streets called Tokyo.

Earlier in the trip, I visited Hiroshima. At one point, near the ground-zero area of town, I looked for a construction site. I couldn't find one, but I did find a place where a underground water pipe was being serviced. Nearby grew at tree with distinct tumorous-looking trunk.  Since nobody was around, I hopped down into the hole to look at the soil profile. I could clearly see what I was looking for. The soil profile left after the bombing was made up of glassy-green fragments, and volcanic ash-like debris. I felt, for a moment, like Loren Eiseley in his essay "The Slit" in his book "The Immense Journey." Eiseley wrote of viewing bones during an excavation, and he thought of the bones as his ancestors. My great uncle was in Hiroshima during the bombing. He survived. His daughter, my aunt, chose not to have children because of how my home-country's actions here during the war may have affected her father. Now I was here too.

My interest in tektites and natural glasses brought me into this pit. I thought of the asteroid theory of tektite formation. I held a piece of unnaturally produced glass in my hand. I knew all about this one. I knew exactly when it formed, its temperature at formation, and even the exact size and origin of the object that made its formation possible. Although I find the mystery of tektites frustrating, I wished this layer was also of unknown origin.

Throughout this journey through Japan, I found the people and meteorites outstanding. I remember thinking this was one of those moments in life where many pieces had to fall into place for this wonderful event to happen. The entire time I was in Japan was one wonderful or powerful moment after another. Yes, sometimes the best things in life to collect are memories.