Something is wrong. Oil price is rising. More than doubled in a year. This causes everything to go up. Fuel price rises. If you go fishing you need fuel. Fish prices rise. As fuel becomes a lucrative commodity, it comes to pay if you make …

We use Kanji a lot unwittingly without much attention or appreciation. But there are amazingly few peoples in the world who use ideographic characters (表意文字) that represent meaning instead of sound. Even picture-like characters of hier…

Flap flap flap. Hands are dancing. Flittering and fluttering. Supple fingers are dancing Softly and gently Yet quick to pick up the beat. Flap flap flap. Delicate fingers are dancing to the beat of the drums. Boom boom boom. Drums are beat…

The dawn has but just broken when I went out on the balcony. Morning chill... Sky is heavy and grey. Clouds hanging over low. Dark... Surrounded by towering trees, the small garden remains in the deep abyss of the night. Emerging out of th…

The day lies before me and I have nothing to do. The moment... I feel as if I had a complete freedom. I can do anything. I can go anywhere... Possibilities, potentials, future, alternatives... Always they mean happiness until they condence…

A sumo wrestler, 若ノ鵬, was decided to be fired. Here is the reason. He lost his wallet somewhere and someone picked it up and handed it over to the police. So far so good. The problem was, there was found a marijuana stick in the wallet.…

Great! It's cool today. It's likely we can't call today "manatsubi", hot day with the temperature exceeding 30 degrees Celsius. Last night, when I got out of my house for jogging, there was a flavor of autumn in the air... subtle... but su…

The "artificial selection" reminded me of one thing. This gonna be a bit long story. When I was a small child my father somehow subscribed a science monthly magazine named 「科学大鑑」. It was filled with interesting pictures that I had ne…

We are making sweet corn species prosperous just because we like it. Growing what we like and discarding what we don't is like what Nature does. We call what we are doing "artificial selection" as opposed to "natural selection(自然淘汰)". …

Every year our family enjoy the taste of corn my wife's family sends us by the boxful. Here's one thing I am aware of recently. Corn is becoming sweeter. The first time when I noticed so was several years ago when my wife's family grew a n…

My parents in law always waited for us to come. My father in law passed away this spring so this time my mother in law was alone looking forward to seeing my family. She is a real single-hearted, warm hearted little woman who had exclusive…

Early morning grave was quiet and mysterious, even refreshing. The scent of incense. Light purple smoke trailing, evavanescent to a deep nothingness, diffusing to an infinity.

It's a lot cooler here in Ibaraki. Everyone is kind and hospitable. I just sit back and enjoy the Olympics.

Last Monday, when I got on a train, something was different. It was eerily uncrowded. All passengers were seated comfortably in the well-airconditioned car. I tried to remember what day of the week it was. Monday. Not Sunday. Is it a bank …

Kousuke kitajima, Japanese swimming star, won the gold medal at the Beijing Olympic Games yesterday. He also smashed the world record, sending us into ecstatic frenzy. As I watched TV I knew that nearly 10 world records and as many Japanes…

The sound of fat rain drops hitting the roof woke me up. It was almost first rain in a month or so. In the twilight zone between slumber and wakefulness, I imagined the rain moisturizing half-withered hydrangeas in my garden. I seem to hav…

Last week I went buy pants for the first time in a couple of years. I have many. I do not think I need more. But my wife seems to have a different opinion and kept telling me I need a couple more and unfortunately there was a bargain sale …

Due to heat, lack of sleep, and daily night run, I felt weak all day today. Hope tomorrow will be a better day.

Woke up at 4 am. My shoulder... felt dull and heavy. Not so acute... but... enough pain to disturb sleep. Sleepless... sat up on the bed a while to wait the pain to pass. Then usual vain effort to fall back to sleep. Half successful and ha…

I have been a bit more forgetful than other people ever since I was born. I used to always come back from school soon after I left home, to fetch my homework, shoes bag, or whatever I had to bring to school for the day. Sometimes school ga…

I hit on something to write here yesterday. But today I forgot what it was. I recognized my forgetfulness being worse these days and I came up with a banal but bright idea. Always carrying with me a small notebook and pencil in my pocket s…

Air was heavily saturated as if to materialize at any moment. The heat barely held it in the air. No perspiration deprived any amount of heat from my skin. The oily liquid just stuck where it oozed out. I wiped it out with an already soake…

I found a cobweb bridging two trees in my garden. All of a sudden I felt like feeding the spider which did the splendid job of weaving such an intricate structure. I put a large ant on the web. When the victim walked the web trembled. The …

My deceased father used to always tell his children never mix up freedom with indulgence. But again where should we draw a line between them? I am not sure whether he knew it himself. I never asked him. Perhaps it's different from one pers…

Greed is greed however successfully we conceal. Why conceal then? Deep down inside we know greed is not beautiful. Or is it a consequence of our education? Were we not taught greed is bad? Christianity? Buddhism? Somehow we stopped thinkin…

Several years ago in winter, when I was on a business trip in San Francisco. A chemical plant in California suffered an explosion that spewed fumes of hydrogen sulfide (the substance that gives off "rotten egg" smell we usually have in 温…