The 34th Annual Meeting of the Japanese Society for Investigative Dermatology (JSID) will be held at the JAL Resort Sea Hawk Hotel Fukuoka in Fukuoka City, Kyushu island, Japan, from December 4 (Friday) to 6 (Sunday), 2009. This meeting venue is located in a resort area close to the Fukuoka Dome baseball stadium. This meeting will be organized mainly by the Department of Dermatology, Kurume University School of Medicine. From 2004 to 2007, the JSID Annual Meetings were held in association with the Annual Meeting of the Japanese Dermatological Association as Dermatology Week in either Yokohama or Kyoto. These events were successful because both basic researchers and clinicians enjoyed both investigative and clinical dermatology for 5 consecutive days. Then, in May 2008, the International Investigative Dermatology Meeting, which combines the Japanese JSID, US SID and European ESDR, was held in Kyoto, Japan. For that reason, the Annual Meeting of JSID was not held in 2008. Starting in 2009, the JSID Annual Meetings will be held independently, and the 34th JSID Annual Meeting will be the first of such meetings. Concerning the date of the meeting, because the SID meeting is held in May and the ESDR meeting is held in September, it was decided to hold the JSID meeting in December every year. Therefore, dermatological researchers will be able to present new data which cannot be presented in either the SID meeting or the ESDR meeting. In the JSID Annual Meetings, all abstracts are reviewed by experts in each field of dermatological research, and excellent studies are selected for plenary sessions or concurrent oral sessions. The presenters should be honored when their papers are selected for oral sessions. I do hope that many young investigators will present the results of their long and extensive basic studies, and that there will be many vibrant discussions during the meeting.

The most important issue is that the 34th JSID Annual Meeting will be changed significantly to a more international meeting. The JSID asked many societies of investigative dermatology in Asia and Oceania to participate in our meeting, and we have already had several positive replies from those societies. Thus, the JSID Annual Meeting is expected to become a meeting not only for Japanese investigators but also for investigators in various countries of Asia and Oceania. In addition, several young European researchers selected by ESDR and JSID will attend the 34th JSID meeting, and, after the meeting, they will stay in some Japanese institutes for a few weeks to communicate with Japanese researchers. Furthermore, the SID also made an offer to the JSID to have SID members attend our meeting. For this purpose, Starting with the 34th JSID meeting, all oral presentations in either plenary or concurrent oral sessions will be spoken in English, and all posters will also be prepared in English. While all discussions in plenary sessions have to be done in English, the discussions in concurrent oral sessions are allowed to be done in Japanese as well as English. Thus, dermatological researchers from all countries are welcome to the JSID Annual Meeting.

At present, most Japanese dermatologists tend to become clinicians and do not necessarily want to do basic research. What can we do to encourage young dermatologists to do basic research? The time when young dermatologists engage in basic research of one dermatological theme should be very important for them to have deepknowledge about one skin disease. By this experience, young dermatologists can establish their subspeciality for which they will do many investigations and treat many patients for a long time. In addition, if young dermatologists treat their patients with a deep basic understanding of the skin disease, it should be the first step for them to become physician-scientists. To attend the JSID Annual Meeting should be very important for both the establishment of a subspeciality and the process of becoming a physician-scientist.

In the morning on the third day (Sunday, December 6, 2009) of the 34th JSID Annual Meeting, the third JSID Forum will be held in the same place. The main theme of the forum is "Hair Research and Stem Cells", and many hot topics from the studies of hair and stem cells of the skin will be presented. The name of the forum will be changed to JSID-Asia-Oceania Forum, because the speakers who are working in this research field are invited not only from Japan but also from other countries in Asia and Oceania, including Korea, China, Taiwan and Australia. The invited speakers from the US and Europe will also present their newest findings. All the attendees in this forum should get many new ideas for their future research. I do hope that many dermatological researchers will participate in this forum also.