Watching on TV the Toyota "prince" CEO crying in front of the Toyota dealers, I felt like witnessing something very Japanese. In the western countries, showing tears is considered as a sign of weakness. Leaders should be cool, collected, r…

Got up with a bit of a headache. Walked my dog around in my neighborhood first thing in the morning. She released herself and emptied her bowels. Without a garden to let her walk around, we have been taking her out several times a day sinc…

Getting warmer. I submitted my tax report today. Strange association, tax with spring, in my brain. Only once a year in the spring but repeating it for 6 years finally made me used to filling out the tax papers, it seems. It was easy this …

Mother Teresa said "Be a good Muslim, if you believe in Islam". This reminds me of the word by a Hindu guru, Ramana Maharsh when he was visited by a Christian woman who wanted to convert from Christianity to Hindu. "Let me teach you to be …

Need to pay the electricity bill? Don't worry. There is a convenience store five houses away. Wanna get away from your hectic everyday life? No problem, there is a Izakaya pub within 3 minutes' walk. Ditto with drugstores, beef-bowl restau…

We cannot say our country is overtly religious, but we can boast of our gods at least in number. 8 million（八百万 やおよろず） is most probably the worlds' record for having the most god population in any one nation, though I don't believ…

Here's some notes if you gonna see a 3D movie. Take your seat not far from the screen. Our seat was a bit too far from the screen, so the screen frame came into our view. We were always reminded that the 3D events were happening just insid…

As I was carried away with the movie, sometimes wowed by the breath-taking reality of 3D pictures, suddenly I wanted to know how this wonderful special effect was working. I took off the 3D glasses. The picture blurred just as I thought. T…

Fantastic! is the exact word to describe the movie Avatar. It was indeed a fantasy with... just...just great revolutionary 3D effect. The story (spoiler warning!) is about avatars of the native humanoids (human-like creatures: for those co…

I hope this is not the case with you but here is something to keep in mind if you ever go jogging at night. The other day I jogged for the first time in 2 months, the period during which we moved to our temporary residence. The house is lo…

Snowed last night. This house I'm living in temporarily is closely surrounded by neighboring houses so that I could not see from windows the snow falling. I just sensed it from the heavy, wet, coldness in the air and imagined it accumulati…