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  • Words of the Year 2016

    Words of the Year 2016

    Although I was posting only two entries this year, one in each language, the time seems to have come to look back on 2016. Every year-end, I make it a rule to list the most impressive things and events I experienced or encountered that year in a few keywords. Words of the past years are:
    The words of the year for 2001: getting a flat within the Tokyo metropolitan area, a position change at the office, and Soarer.
    The words of the year for 2002: America.
    The words of the year for 2003: the airplane and the musical.
    The words of the year for 2004: the blog, Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the GSM mobile phone.
    The words of the year for 2005: darts, the GSM and WCDMA mobile phone, and visiting Hong Kong again.
    The words of the year for 2006: the US stock and the mutual fund.
    The words of the year for 2007: changing my car and visiting Hawaii.
    The words of the year for 2008: England and Fukagawa.
    The words of the year for 2009: office position change, MacBook Pro and JR Seishun 18 Ticket.
    The words of the year for 2010: Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia; iPhone; and the credit card.
    The words of the year for 2011: the car, the British culture and China.
    The words of the year for 2012: Oji, the mahjong, the flight attendant and Facebook.
    The words of the year for 2013: Ayurveda, Korea, high school alumni and Tsuyoshi Takashiro.
    The words of the year 2014: England and Android.
    The words of the year 2015: Maine, United States; Estonia and transfer of workplace.

    Now I think this year’s keywords for me are traveling to places in Japan and Jeep.

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  • Words of the Year 2015

    Words of the Year 2015

    It’s time for me to look back this year and list up the most impressive words I experienced this year. Words of the past years are:
    The words of the year for 2001: getting a flat within the Tokyo metropolitan area, a position change at the office, and Soarer.
    The words of the year for 2002: America.
    The words of the year for 2003: the airplane and the musical.
    The words of the year for 2004: the blog, Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the GSM mobile phone.
    The words of the year for 2005: darts, the GSM and WCDMA mobile phone, and visiting Hong Kong again.
    The words of the year for 2006: the US stock and the mutual fund.
    The words of the year for 2007: changing my car and visiting Hawaii.
    The words of the year for 2008: England and Fukagawa.
    The words of the year for 2009: office position change, MacBook Pro and JR Seishun 18 Ticket.
    The words of the year for 2010: Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia; iPhone; and the credit card.
    The words of the year for 2011: the car, the British culture and China.
    The words of the year for 2012: Oji, the mahjong, the flight attendant and Facebook.
    The words of the year for 2013: Ayurveda, Korea, high school alumni and Tsuyoshi Takashiro.
    The words of the year 2014: England and Android.

    And this year’s keywords for me is Maine, United States; Estonia and transfer of workplace.

    Maine, United States is where I visited in September for pleasure. I drove the US roads, went shopping at supermarkets and pharmacies, rode America’s domestic flights, and was excited in many ways. That experience encouraged me to look back at the United States from the United Kingdom, which I had been interested in for almost a decade. 

    Estonia is the country where I applied for the e-Residency card. Before I did it, all I knew about Estonia was that it was what Baruto, a former sumo wrestler, was from, not being able to tell it from other Baltic countries like Lithuania and Latvia. I found out that that country was one of east Europe’s most IT-advanced countries. I think it’s a good idea to visit Estonia next year.

    Transfer of workplace is that I was transferred to the office and position in December, leaving a previous workplace where I had served for more than six years. 

    Anyway, this year is coming to an end. I managed to live safe and sound, without being suffered from any diseases. That being said, I’m getting older and older, and my body is gradually worn out. That’s why I’m going to check my body thoroughly and maintain it from scratch, which is going to be my next year’s task.

  • Visiting Maine

    Visiting Maine

    I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine, this September. I watched a musical play, Carousel, at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, performed by its musical club, a few weeks earlier. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.

    There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were with Delta Airlines.

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  • Becoming an e-Estonian

    Becoming an e-Estonian

    Estonia, one of the Baltic countries that became independent of the Soviet Union along with Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1990s, is an IT-conscious country with a significant number of IT-related startups, including Skype. The Estonian government is doing its best to make a “digital country” by inviting IT engineers to some offshore development sites in Europe’s IT market.

    The government issues Estonian citizens an ID card, similar to a Social Security Card in the United States, which enables holders to offer one-stop services, including taxation, online banking, issuing medical prescriptions, and more. In addition to offering an ID card for real residents, it introduced the e-Residency scheme, which is available not only to residents of Estonia but also to people who don’t live in Estonia. In this scheme, an “e-Residency Card” is issued to the “e-Residents” of Estonia, and similar services to those for real residents are offered “electronically” with the card via their computers.

    Application for an e-Residency Card is easy. First, visit the application page on the e-Estonia website at https://apply.e-estonia.com/. And then you can apply for the card by filling in the required information on the website and paying €50.99 online with a credit card. You can have the card sent to any Estonian Embassy outside Estonia, so you can pick it up at the nearest Embassy without flying to Estonia. About one month after submitting the online application, the card will be ready, and you will receive an email notification.

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  • Taco Bell in Japan

    Taco Bell in Japan

    Today I went to the Taco Bell in Shibuya, which opened last Tuesday as Japan’s first Taco Bell store, and hundreds of people had waited in line for more than two hours in front of the store on the first day only. Today there was a long queue, too. A staff member at the end of the queue said I would have to wait up to two hours to be served. It was a bit tough for me to wait such a long time, but I couldn’t help but do it to enjoy the American taste I’d ever had in New York, where I had traveled for a business trip.

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  • Twenty Years from the Earthquake

    Twenty Years from the Earthquake

    Today in 1995, a big earthquake suddenly hit Kobe and the Hanshin-Awaji area, killing more than 6,000 people and destroying millions of households and buildings in that area. At that time, I lived in my parents’ house in Nishinomiya, Hyogo, a city in the eastern vicinity of Kobe. This entry is the record of what I experienced there when that disaster happened twenty years ago.

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