It is my great honor and pleasure to write about my 50-year academic journey in the field of Regional Science. Without my encounter with Professor Walter Isard and Regional Science in the late 1960s, my life would never have been the same. Before talking about how such an encounter happened, let me briefly explain how I grew up in Japan. I was born in 1943 in a small coastal village at the western end of the main island of Japan. Since the end of the WWII in 1945, my village had housed a small unit of the American occupation army (until 1951). I grew up there, chasing American soldiers on jeeps for chocolate candies. Given that Japan was so poor at that time, I did not even dream of going to the USA someday. Japan, however, started growing very rapidly in the mid-1950s, initiating the construction of major public infrastructures such as a super express railway system, called the Shinkansen, and a turnpike system. As a young boy, I was fascinated by such big construction projects, and naturally chose to study in the Civil Engineering Department at Kyoto University. At college, however, my interest shifted gradually from the construction work itself to the planning and social evaluation of these major infrastructure projects. Until my graduation from college in 1966, however, I had never heard of Regional Science. My association with Regional Science started soon after becoming a research assistant of Professor Kozo Amano in the Civil Engineering Department. One day, Professor Amano, a former engineer at the Japan National Railway, told me that he had a big job for me. He said, “As you know, a super express railway, the Shinkansen, has just been completed between Tokyo and Osaka. The Ministry of Transportation wants to extend it all over Japan. However, the Ministry of Construction wants to develop instead a turnpike system all over Japan. So, you should develop an econometric model of the Japanese regional economy, and compare the economic impact of the nationwide development of the Shinkansen network with that of a turnpike network.” At that time, my knowledge of economics and econometric models was absolutely zero. So, I asked Professor Amano, how I should go about it? Then, my boss brought two books from his bookshelf, saying that, they might be of some help. The two books were ‘Location and Space Economy’ and ‘Methods of Regional Analysis’. I first skimmed over Location and Space Economy. I felt something quite interesting with the book, but decided that it was too theoretical for my immediate job. So, I browsed the other thick book, Methods of Regional Analysis, and immediately found that this was exactly what I needed. Using various methods explained in the book, I developed an interregional econometric model of Japan. It was a huge interregional econometric model, estimating recursively the nationwide impact of developing the Shinkansen network over a 25-year period, compared to that of building a turnpike network. With the help of three professional computer programmers, I finished the computer calculations on time, and managed to report the results successfully at the joint meeting of the Ministry of Transportation and the Ministry of Construction in Tokyo (part of the work was subsequently published in the Journal of Regional Science in 1970). As such, my first serious association with Professor Isard's work was through Methods of Regional Analysis. After finishing my first job, however, I became very hungry for theories, which made me remember the other book, Location and Space-Economy. So, this time, I read the book more carefully. Somehow, I was quite fascinated with the book. But, to tell the truth, I was able to understand very little of it. I wanted to study more seriously the foundations of spatial economics, and confessed this desire to Professor Amano. He told me: “if you are interested in learning such things, you should go to the Regional Science Department at the University of Pennsylvania”. I had never heard of this university, but it did not matter, and I asked, “how can I go there?” Then, he brought me a copy of the Journal of Regional Science from his bookshelf, and showed me its backcover, saying, “Look!, the Department of Regional Science is offering a scholarship grant. Why don't you apply for it?” Although I had little hope, I applied for the grant. One month later, to my great surprise, I got a letter from Professor Isard informing me that I got the grant. That marked the end of Phase 1 of my research career and the beginning of my 25-year association with Penn. In the early summer of 1968, I headed for Penn brimming with renewed enthusiasm and high expectations of learning more about Location and Space-Economy from Professor Isard. Upon arriving at Penn, I found that the entire curriculum of the Regional Science Department in the graduate school was well organized beyond Methods of Regional Science and Location and Space Economy. The department, however, was rather s