Thirty years ago today, an event that can’t be forgotten and shouldn’t be forgotten occurred in Kobe and its vicinity. Ten years ago, I posted both English and Japanese entries of what I had experienced, witnessed, and thought at that time; you can read them below:
Category: Human Rights
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Hong Kong Is Dead
Visiting Hong Kong has been one of my favorites since I first visited in 2004. I’ve done it eight times so far. I loved to stroll on Sai Yeung Choi Street South, where people were very cheerful and energetic, to enjoy wonton noodles, steamed duck, and gwilinggao at restaurants, to get Nokia’s brand new and second-hand smartphones and accessories at mobile phone shops of the Sincere Podium building in Mong Kok, and to open and use a bank account of HSBC Hong Kong. I saw the Big Buddha at Ngong Ping, visited a prison museum at Stanley, stayed at a hotel in Chungking Mansions, worshipped at Che Kung Temple, had a fortune-telling session at Wong Tai Sin Temple, and extended my journey as far as Macau and Shenzhen. All the memories of those places were impeccable.
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Prelude to WWIII
The second year of the Reiwa period began with a nightmare. More precisely, at the beginning of the year, nobody could predict what would be going on just two months later. I am talking about what the entire world is fighting against—COVID-19.
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The End of Globalization
When I started my career in the late 1990s, my employer encouraged us to adopt a global mindset to cope with Japan’s recession, the so-called “lost decade.” By 2000, the words “global” or “globalization” were used as keywords—and sometimes as buzzwords—for surviving the upcoming millennium, followed by the dot-com bubble. My coworkers and I were pressured to raise TOEIC scores, learn SWOT analysis, MECE, and other terms of logical thinking, abandon the obsolete Japanese work style, and get accustomed to the global—in many cases, American—way of thinking.
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