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  • The Words of the Year 2018

    I’m writing such an entry right now because I couldn’t post any entries in the end of 2018. When I tried to open the “add a new post” page, I had a 500 Internal Server Error and couldn’t open the page. Now I fixed it. It was because some of the plugins I installed in this blog system conflicted, so I deactivated the troublesome plugins and now I can post new entries. Thank you this article.

    I’m looking back what happened in the year 2018 as I usually do it in the end of every year, and picking out some short words representing the last year. The words of the year 2001 were getting a flat within the Tokyo metropolitan area, a position change at the office, and Soarer. The word of the year 2002 was America. The words of the year 2003 were the airplane and the musical. The words of the year 2004 were the blog, Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the GSM mobile phone. The words of the year 2005 were darts, the GSM and WCDMA mobile phone, and visiting Hong Kong again. The words of the year 2006 were the US stock and the mutual fund. The words of the year 2007 were changing my car and visiting Hawaii. The words of the year 2008 were England and Fukagawa. The words of the year 2009 were office position change, MacBook Pro and JR Seishun 18 Ticket. The words of the year 2010 were Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia, iPhone and the credit card. The words of the year 2011 were the car, the British culture and China. The words of the year 2012 were Oji, the mahjong, the flight attendant and Facebook. The words of the year 2013 were Ayurveda, Korea, high school alumniand Tsuyoshi Takashiro. The words of the year 2014 were England and Android. The words of the year 2015 were Maine, United States; Estonia and transfer of workplace. The words of the year 2016 were traveling to places in Japan, mapping and Jeep. The words of the year 2017 were Yurie Omi, NHK, shingles, and English exams.

    Now I’m picking out as the words of the year 2018: cashless, Japanese language and comeback.

    I’ve been in touch a lot with the cashless society since last year. I set up Apple Pay in the Wallet of my iPhone8, and stored my American Express Gold Card and Suica, a rechargeable contactless electric money card used as a fare card on train lines, convenience stores and other shops in Japan. Other than Apple Pay, I have used Line Pay, which allows payment using your Line account, mainly for the payments at Lawson and major drugstores. I use Origami Pay for dining at KFC and shopping at Loft department store. Today I rarely use cash for buying a can of soft drink at the vending machine, buying groceries at the supermarket, buying coffee at Starbucks, dining at McDonald’s, and passing through the wicket to take trains. All I need is my iPhone8 to do these things.

    I paid attention more to brushing up skills of Japanese language than to mastering English this year. I took the first grade of Nihongokentei test (This is not the JLPT N1 test!) and passed it. I don’t know how it helps in my work or life, though. As for comeback, I was appointed to a new position of the company I work and my workplace was relocated in November.

    Almost three months being passed since the beginning of the year 2019, I have already experienced a lot of things in this single year. I’m so excited.

  • Celebration 2018

    Celebration 2018

    Praying that
    This Imperial nation will be prosperous
    In the clear morning sky.

    Happy New Year 2018

  • Shofukutei Riko

    Shofukutei Riko

    Shofukutei Riko (笑福亭里光) is a professional rakugo artist who speaks Kansai-dialect rakugo stories. Rakugo is, as Wikipedia puts it, a form of Japanese verbal entertainment in which the lone storyteller sits on stage and depicts a long, complex, comical (or sometimes sentimental) story using only a paper fan and a small cloth as props.

    He was one of my classmates when we were in junior high school. Besides, he was one of my best friends. In junior high, I talked to him a lot, played with him a lot, belonged to the same club as he did, and resigned from the club together with him on the same day. He sometimes played rakugo on stage in school events. His performance was rising above the level of an amateur, so he was called shisho, a title used for professional rakugo storytellers.

    After we graduated from junior high, we went to different high schools. We didn’t see each other for ages.

    One day in 2012, I was staying in a hotel room watching an entertainment program on TV, where several rakugo artists who had just been promoted to the shin’uchi rank were on stage, and they were giving speeches in turn to show their thankful feelings for the promotion. The program reminded me of the classmate who wanted to be a rakugo storyteller. I wondered if he still kept up his hobby. Watching TV, I thought he might appear on such an entertainment program someday. To my surprise, he really did it in the very program that day.

    According to online sources, after graduating from university, he became a disciple of Shofukutei Tsuruko (笑福亭鶴光), a well-known rakugo artist, and began his rakugo career in 1998. He was promoted to the futatsume rank in July 2002 and became a shin’uchi in May 2012.

    I tried to contact him. Since he had a Twitter account, I sent him a direct message. He replied to me soon. We talked a bit on Twitter for a while. Several months later, we met face-to-face for the first time in more than 25 years. He had not changed at all since we saw him in junior high.

    Now I sometimes go to his stage to listen to his story and see him offstage. Last night I saw him in Shinjuku and went for a drink with him at an izakaya in the west gate area. He was fine. We talked a lot. I drank too much, and I have a hangover this morning, though.

    I think that being friends with public figures might help me have a chance to see the celebrity world, and maybe it would even change my life.

  • Going Driverless

    I used to watch Knight Rider on TV when I was a junior high school student. Knight Rider is an American TV series where a hero, Michael Knight, together with a talking self-driven car, KITT, beats the evil and sometimes has romantic experiences with a heroine of each episode. I thought that such a car was just a pipe dream at that time, but the dream will probably come true in a decade or two.

    The development of autonomous cars, or driverless cars, is widespread. Google started testing of the developing autonomous cars on public roads as Nevada state law allowed to do it and issued license plates to them in 2011. Following Google, Audi obtained the road testing license as well from the state government of Nevada in 2013. In the same year, the United Kingdom also permitted road testing of automated cars. In China, Baidu is also planning similar testing.

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  • Visiting Hong Kong

    A few weeks ago, I visited Hong Kong to deposit part of my fixed amount savings, deposited in Japan’s post office and matured last month, in HSBC Hong Kong, where I’ve had my bank account for 13 years, and to buy some gold, which was a bit less expensive than what you buy in Japan. Since nobody can predict what will happen to Japan and its economy in the future, I think it is reasonable to diversify assets both nationally and internationally to reduce the risk of loss due to possible economic uncertainty.

    I found out two notable things through this trip. One is that Kagoshima is, in fact, one of the important gateways to Japan for some foreign travelers. From a Tokyoite’s point of view, Kagoshima looks like the southernmost far end of Japan, but for some people, it is not. I heard that a sales clerk at Chow Sang Sang’s Central store was selling me a gold necklace, saying she had been to Japan for leisure, entering Japan at Kagoshima Airport, then traveling east to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, where she departed. She also said that it was a golden route for travelers from China and Hong Kong. Those facts suggest that cities like Kagoshima, Nagasaki, and Fukuoka should look at Asian countries rather than Tokyo to survive in the future.

    The other thing is my lack of ability in English conversation. When I talked to the sales clerk or any other people in Hong Kong, all I could say to those people was one-to-two-word sentences like “Yeah,” “No,” “Thank you,” “Oh really?” or something like that. Response speed in English was apparently slower than it was a few years ago. Clearly, it was because I hadn’t used English so much for years, as it is now irrelevant to me in the workplace. All I can do (and need to do) is to at least have my home Englishized to get accustomed to the English environment and to help me live in an English way.

  • Japan’s Northernmost End

    Though it was almost half a year ago, I visited Wakkanai, the northernmost end of Hokkaido. Since it was the beginning of January this year, it was extremely cold outside with plenty of snow, and the streets were very slippery.

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