A year of life, reshaped.Some memories are too much to forget.Some scars cut too deep to heal.You tried everything you could —even the desperate things —and still, some stories refuse to end well.They may not be your epitaph.But you carry them to your grave.
The work on my first journal paper is wrapping up, so it feels like time for a recap. To say the past year has reshaped my life and mind — again, I mean — would be an understatement. When this blog started a year ago, I was at a low point in my life, trying to find a way up — and I believe I have been giving it my honest best ever since.
Who am I?
Life
Japan is a magical country, and I still like it well enough: clean streets, smiling passers-by, a life where nobody bothers you.
I enjoy every dinner my juniors invite me out to, every freshman I teach, discussing research with them or just helping someone get unstuck. Especially the helping — it is exactly the help I once hoped for in my own student and research days. The looks on their faces make me feel… fulfilled? I’m not sure.
This past year, quite a few friends came from different countries to see me — some stayed a while, some were just passing through or traveling. I even went to hatsumode (初詣, the first shrine visit of the Japanese New Year) with new friends I had only just met. I’m glad I’ve grown more outgoing and, relatively speaking, gentler, able to get along with all kinds of people — unlike the younger me, who expected something back for every good deed and got angry at every small setback.
The heartening thing is that treating people this way has brought more “actual” return than before: juniors dragging me out for dinner; students calling me sensei, keeping me company through the lonely and sad hours; the time with the younger ones turning research life into small adventures. An old close friend told me about losing her father — and it reminded me that my own life is not the worst one, even after everything that happened. I really should be grateful.
Work
Research at TUIS has not been smooth — the new field is not easy. But I am confident: research is the one thing I know I do well, responsibly, and with pleasure.
The first two months went to fundamentals, then reproduction, then exploration — and to this day, failures and mistakes are almost my daily companions, and from time to time my mood rises and falls with how the research is going. But such is research. At some point my professor told me, “I feel you may be doing a lot of work, but you are progressing too slowly.” I could answer with full confidence: “I am progressing the right and responsible way.” He came to understand, later. I don’t want this research to be just a “deep learning problem,” solved while knowing nothing about the field around it.
I push code and ideas to my professor on weekends, sometimes at midnight — which kept surprising him. This summer, with most of the work done and the paper moving fast, he finally saw what I was doing all along: making sure the work is fully researched, fully tested. The way I kept rejecting my own earlier approaches and updating the testing protocols showed him how serious I am about research.
Now it’s time to move on to VLM/MLLM methodology — a new field again. I’m still confident I can do this one even better.
Why English?
I genuinely enjoy learning English — the thing that first showed me the world outside, and the one area where I’ve outperformed most of my peers. From middle school to the present day, I can confidently say I’ve made more progress than many international students and Japanese locals.
I use English daily — papers, research, code, chatting with friends — and I still have to, and want to, improve it: the one grind I can do without frustration. As a Chinese person, I appreciate the beauty of Chinese and Japanese characters, while taking pride in my growing ability to recognize beauty in other languages.
So, who am I?
Still the kid who wanted to be a scientist — just further down the road than a year ago.
I kept last year’s answer exactly as it was. You can go read the sad person who wrote it.
He made a promise.
And as far as I can tell, he is keeping it.