I found my name on room tag still now. I was very happy to see it, and I remember so great time here as researcher.

I returned to Ann Arbor for the first time in 7 months. The air was nostalgic. I realized that I had been here for a year until the end of last August. Entering Ann Arbor, I remembered many things from those days. I looked around town and remembered many things. I was nostalgic, passing by the kindergarten and elementary school where my older daughter went, the Day-care where my younger daughter went, and eating at a restaurant where I used to go after meetings at the university.

This time, I visited the University of Michigan with three other researchers and had a research meeting with Dr. Stephanie, who has been a great help to us. We had a very productive time, discussing ideas that came out of the meeting and analyzing the data, and we were able to move quickly toward submitting a paper. We are already almost ready to submit one of our research topics for publication. It is great to be in an environment where I can concentrate on my research. I can read a lot of papers and get a lot of ideas.

Dr. Teasley gave me a lot of comments during the sabbatical as well, and we have made progress on the data analysis, which is now in very good shape. Now we will do one more data analysis and write the manuscript. We had a very productive discussion. Thank you very much. I will continue to collaborate with Dr. Stephanie and I hope to go back to Ann Arbor for more discussions. At the end of next year, Learning Analytics and Knowledge will be held in Kyoto with Dr. Ogata as chair of the executive committee. I hear that he will be coming there as well, and I look forward to frequent discussions.

The day before I left, I also had the pleasure of meeting Dr. Thomas Finfolt. Dr. Finfolt was the professor who signed my acceptance letter as sabbatical. He was the Dean of the School of Information at the time but is now the Vice Provost for the entire University of Michigan. He was very busy, especially in March. It was a pleasure to meet him even though it was a holiday.

We hope to make another visit to Ann Arbor in the coming year!