Good morning! everyone. What new thing shall I do today? I feel thrilled at the thought every morning. This is rather like waiting for fun than trying to think, because most of the cases it's on the spur of the moment. Contrived new things…

Yesterday I took time out from my writing work and went to the library to return 4 overdue books. The library was built quite recently and looks modern with a huge, maybe 10m high and 20m wide glass window on one side instead of a wall. It…

The day before yesterday I talked about how Japanese omit the subject of a sentence. This reminds me of something. Read this phrase. "Looking down from the plane, the islands were like ants." Is there anything wrong? For most Japanese peop…

Now I am writing a report to my client today. This is what I have to do to earn my living. Writing a report on the result of my reserach is in itself not so bad. I enjoy reseach actually. But once it becomes my job, it suddenly loses its c…

国境の長いトンネルを抜けると雪国であった。 The novel 「雪国」by a Nobel Prize laureate 川端康成 begins with the sentence. When Edward Seidensticker, deceased professor of Columbia University, translated this sentence into English, he found…

It was very warm yesterday. Also windy. Weather report said it was the first spring gale (春一番). Today cold weather comes back again. About this time of the year we have a type of weather we call "three cold days, four warm days (三寒四…

The other day, as part of my one-new-thing-a-day campaign, I spoke for the first time to a 28 year old American guy working in our office. We kind of hit it off and our talk wandered into Blu ray DVD. He said this new DVD battle shows that…

Whenever I ride a west-bound shinkansen, I try to take a window seat on the right side of the train. Around 10 minutes after the train leaves Shinyokohama station, the top half of Mt. Fuji begins to show among the ridged terrain of Tanzawa…

I'm exited, because today I am going to Nagoya by Shinkansen bullet train. Come to think of it, when I first went to this large city it was with my father when I was 12. It took 5 hours from Tokyo by express train. Now by Shinkansen, it is…

I have been thinking about the advantage of aging since the day I could not go up to the attic. (See? I'm always thinking.) First of all, when you get older, you don't have to sleep long. You can do more things in a day technically, only i…

I am a bit techie today. HD-DVD(High Definition DVD; by Toshiba) lost the battle with Blue Ray Disk(by Sony) yesterday. Don't worry if you don't understand those jargons. You can enjoy high resolution movies anyway. As a matter of fact, it…

I took up jogging again. When? Yesterday. Why? Because I watched Tokyo city marathon on TV. Watching people running with tear-jerking episodes, I would like to be the one to have that sensation. I declared to my family that I will apply fo…

Japanese people often say "I studied English from high school to college for more than 10 years and still I cannot speak English." This leads to the conclusion "I may not have linguistic talent or I am not linguistically minded." But wait …

I must confess. Yesterday I wrote that I would go up to the attic and set up the fumigatory to kill ticks. Actually it was my son that did it. I thought first I would leave the diary uncorrected and let you believe that I did it. But today…

Tick Battle I'm pretty busy today because I have to kill ticks. A few weeks ago a mouse appeared from a hole in a wall. We covered the hole with a veneer board to lock it up inside the wall. Around this time, my mom suffered itchy bites al…

Oh come on, it's not such a big deal! Kumi Koda is a sexy pop icon in Japan but have got an object of bashing recently. From what I heard, she said at a radio talk show to the effect "My manager has to have a baby soon because when we turn…

Almond Jelly On the way to the library there is a small chinese restaurant that I had been curious about but had no chance to go in. Yesterday my sister in law came to my house and we went out to have lunch there. 小龍包 seemed to be the s…

John Updike John Updike is one of the writers I liked when I was in college. I liked him because he cuts out one scene from our daily lives and shows it to us in a way that we feel we should stay where we are for some time, instead of just…

International Exchange Festival Yesterday, when I went to the library, there was something international going on. Many exotic-looking gaijins were walking to and from a hall. Unable to resist my curiosity, I asked one of them what was goi…

Congratulate me! I got an email telling me I was at last given citizenship of Hatena(blog provider) as a reward for keeping diary for 30 days. Yesterday I wrote the 30th. So what? Maybe I was given a privilege or two to do something in the…

Vicious circle When I left you yesterday, I raised a question "Why do we crave for convenience?" Here is my answer to you. "It's because we crave for convenience." It may sound strange but it's true. I suspect the human race is a lazy spec…

Obsession The other day when I got off a train and wanted to walk toward stairs, there were so many people on the platform. I was a bit in a hurry but I couldn't make my way through the crowd. So I was moving an inch a second along with th…

Head Start Well, I'm pretty happy today. Okada-Japan got off to a promising and auspicious start with a 4-1 victory against Thailand in the first game of a long and hard trip to World Cup. Congratulations! You football fans, join me in pra…

Try a new thing a day The other day when I wrote about a change I remembered something. As we grow up we get into habits, do the same things, eat only what we like, have the same expectations, talk with the same people at the same places t…

As the gyoza mystery further deepens, "China-quality" is the word more and more often heard of these days. Last year in US, there arose so many problems concerning Chinese products that they seem to have started using this word as a synony…

Food poisoned The mystery surrounding china-made frozen gyouza, or vegetable and meat dumplings, tainted by a fatally poisonous chemical called methamidophos is scandalizing all the Japanese. The detected level of the chemical proved to be…

It's snowing again. This time heavy. Looks like 5cm deep. It has already totally changed the scenery around. Colorless. Black and white world. Feel like I'm looking at a sumi-e, chinese old ink brush painting. TV news is reporting that som…

Well, this is a bit filthy talk but I had an intestine inspection yesterday. Don't take it easy. It was a one-day ordeal. It actually starts the day before, when you take laxative pills right before going to bed. It works so beautifully th…

Yesterday I wrote that the days are getting longer day by day. That reminded me of one thing. Whenever I travel to Europe, I realize that the dawn is very late. For instance in Paris on the midwinter day, the sun rises as late as at 8:40 w…