Knowledge-Cramming Education

To provide technological consultation for the company I retired from, I visited their office in Kawasaki. The problem they are facing now is an old and new issue. Old because we've had similar problems for a long time, new because we haven't had this particular problem.
I have always enjoyed solving this type of problems. It is like solving a quiz in a newspaper column or guessing a suspect in a whodunit: the whole process of gathering related information, inferring a theory (induction), applying it (deduction), searching for inconsistency, iterative process of correcting the theory and finally a conclusion. I feel even guilty to get paid for doing what I do for pleasure.
What surprised me and made me feel even happier was to know that they are now using the equipment I developed and designed when I was young (20 years ago)! The equipment was transfered to a company, currently called NuFlare, and, from what I learned, has been one of its three major products. Of course it has been improved since then but the basic design remains unchanged from what I designed.
This is the most rewarding part of being an engineer / scientist; something he achieved remains long in a tangible form.
There is a irreversible trend here in Japan that less and less young people have interest in technology, science or manufacturing or whatever they feel "troublesome", probably because of the education they have received. As the Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Negishi said, cramming education（詰め込み教育）might not have been bad at all. At least it taught us that only after a long-term efforts we can achieve something in a form we never imagined when in the middle of making the efforts. We may need a period when we are doing something very hard without knowing where it will lead us to.