Attended a symposium held in Conference Center Shinagawa yesterday and met some old acquaintances of mine. I had a good time catching up on recent news of each other. One of them was a CEO-turned-professor who is now teaching at ETH (Swiss…

Toll-free highways are making headlines of controversy everyday. There are so many stake-holders concerning this new proposal from the Democratic Party. Truck drivers are worried about heavy traffic caused by more family drivers on highway…

She was 97 when she died three days ago. She was once a nurse who took care of my uncle when he was hospitalized for a serious bone marrow inflammation and was on the verge of leg-loss. Watching her dedication, my grand mother liked her. A…

I accidentally watched an NHK program (cannel 2) last week in which someone was talking about how our positive thinking works good for our lives. His look was ecstatic, convincing enough for us to believe that there is no lie about what he…

Imagine you went to a store and there were no price-tags on the products, how hard it would be to stick to your budget. That's more or less how we buy electricity. Tokyo Electricity sends me a bill every month. As you see in the picture be…

Today's newspaper says that English is going to be a compulsory subject in elementary schools. This stupid idea is said to have come from deep reflection on our weakness in speaking and writing skill in English. Although it is true that re…

It was last week that it happened, when I drove to my wife's hometown with my family. On our way, there seemed a car accident somewhere ahead of us. The express way got jammed. Then, as usual, I began to feel uneasy feeling a slight urge t…

I was once asked by an American "why do the Japanese not apologize when they should?" He had just started his stay in Japan a couple of months before. It was rather a shocking remark for me because I had long thought the other way around. …

Drug abuse of celebrities are making sensational headlines. When I wondered why it was so hard for people to stop using drugs, I remembered a book I read many years ago. The book was titled "Food of the Gods", written by Terence Mckenna, a…

Very beginning of this year, on the morning of this new year's day, I told my daughter it was about time she got independent and lived alone. She said she had been thinking of the same. She left home and started her new life in a small apa…

When I got out of my house and started running last night, in front of me high up in the sky was a moon. Beautiful blue gibbous, now in a waxing phase. I like gibbous of the moon perhaps because it reminds me that the moon is really solid …

There is a small movie theater in Nakameguro. I found it when I went to the pension office. It had a funny name, "Kin-kero theater". In the meantime, it so happened that my mother got two tickets of a movie for free from her elderly club. …

Scorching hot days! I hope you all are somehow getting by^^. Because of this heat I have been neglecting my jogging routine recently. Yesterday for the first time in the week, I ran 4 km at night when I thought the temperature was cool eno…

The other day I got a letter urging me to apply for age pension. It sounded strange that I must "apply" for what I paid. My wife said it was not funny at all since it was like I need to do something to withdraw my money from my bank accoun…

A dull, lukewarm wind is blowing under the gray sky. It's dark for a morning. In the garden there is a pair of starlings(ムクドリ) walking around on the overgrown lawn sometimes digging with its sharp beak for, possibly, worms. They never …

I saw spotty (I named him) when I came home yesterday. He was inside the gate of my house, lying, black spot on his nose, and looked relaxed. When he saw me coming closer, he reluctantly got up and left the place. Looking at him, suddenly …

She came to my house 15 years ago when she was a kitten. She happened to stray into our house. She was winsome, affable and amiable. It wasn't long before she joined a member of our family. We named her Liz. She was strong. She was a queen…

My house is 37 years old now. Father built it when I was a graduate student. I remember how I felt comfortable to live in the new house when compared to our drafty old house. My grandfather built the old house. It was a 400 square meter bi…

Last week I was in Nagoya for meetings with an automotive company. The giant industry is suffering. Suffering from the depression of course. But through the talk with some people working there, I found the problem something more structural…

"Chess is to go (碁) as double entry accounting (複式簿記) is to philosophy." Trevanian said in his book "Shibumi". Well said! Trevanian. Chess and shogi are like siblings. They are pretty much straightforward and have a clear-cut goal of …

We tend to think inadvertently that everything lasts forever. We take it for granted and never appreciate it. Then all of an unexpected sudden it ends. It feels absurd. Why did it end? We feel betrayed. There is no explanation to it but...…

Since I have a warped belly button^^, instead of ipod, I bought the other day an mp3 music player made in Singapore. It was not bad but I had something to ask about the software bundled with it and called the number written in the manual. …

Is mathematics a kind of language? He asked. I said yes. Then he said. "Is mathematics a discovery? or man's invention?" I answered "I figure mathematics as a method is an invention of human beings but what mathematics deals with is a disc…

I teach my students how to make a presentation in English. This is a good method to teach how to make slides, together with providing them with an opportunity to speak in English. (Yesterday I did it myself to show supposedly^^ a good exam…

3 days ago, all of a sudden, right before I went to bed, when I got up from my chair, I felt a stinging pain in my lower back. I didn't care so much and slept. Next morning I found it a bit hard to get up on the bed because of the pain. It…

North Korea tested a nuclear bomb yesterday. Come to think about it, this April, it launched a rocket which flew over Japan to somewhere no one knows. Although the communist country insisted that it was a communication satellite, it can be…

Yesterday my wife took me out to see a movie titled Gran Torino, saying it was critically acclaimed. These days movies have become a casual and purse-friendly entertainment especially when you are old. If you are a married couple and one o…

Plato thought that this world is like a shadow projected on a wall in a cave. We live in the cave just looking at the shadows. We think the shadows are our only reality. But what is it that cast the shadows? Plato thought it is the real re…

Rain in the dark. Soothing the mind. Through the darkness of the night. Rain keeps falling. Cleansing the heart. Washing the past away. Rain in the dark. Warm and Serene... Like in the womb of the primordial, where we came from... where we…

Hello Everyone, I hope you guys are doing well! I continue writing elsewhere where there are almost no readers^^. Sometimes I miss you all. When I came back here for the first time in a couple of weeks after I closed the blog, I was impres…