The abstract goal is still far away.

I had a chance to meet my friends a few days ago. Recently, I often go drinking at a bar where many people come from other countries. This time, we chose the bar as the place we talk. It’s been about a year since we gathered before. Things have changed. One of friends has already gotten married for over a year, the other got his baby. Saying that each position as each life, I’m the one who hasn’t changed at all.

As you know, although I am an English speaker, I’m still on my way to my abstract goal that I imagine as well as other English learners are. Ahead of me, I can see a lot of things to do in order to achieve the goal. I couldn’t help laughing Musashi Miyamoto in one comic named Vagaabondo when I dropped by an Internet cafe for my dinner. There is one scene in Bakabondo like this; Musashi was desperate for tenka musou, which means “no one can compare something(in the respect of Musashi, the strength as a sword fighter) with him”. During his training and struggling, he climbed a mountain in desperation like his desire for strength was reflected. After he had stood right at the top of the mountain, higher mountains than where he stood lay ahead of him. “Oh, God gave me the right scene and idea at the right time…lol” thinking like that, I gazed at the scene for a while.

Back to the topic about talking with my friend. In front of them, I had an opportunity to talk with people who speak English. “Hey, your communication skills in English are definitely improved!” one of my friends told me like that.

Ofcourse I’m glad to hear that every time people say it to me, however, I’m a little bit disappointed with myself. One feeling rose up in my heart, I mean, it’s like the scene I wrote above. It’s the one Musashi Miyamoto got. At the very time he got his hand on the top of the mountain at the last time, last minute, he must have gotten great excitement. After the feeling, higher mountains lays ahead of him. That’s what I feel everytime. As long as someone point my improvement on learning English itself, I can see higher mountains even if I feel I achieved one top of a mountain I imagined.

Ofcourse I do understand…that I’m not satisfied even if I break through the wall right ahead of me and no one can no longer point my improvement itself on English out. The mountains wait for me like Musashi saw.

“I must call you…you’re KASU!” this line made me crazy.

I lately got serious articles in a row in this blog, so I think I should change the topics.

Recently, I don’t know why, one of my subordinates, who is 28 years old, got hooked on GUNDAM.

Ever since that, he gets something trivial on GUNDAM from many sources, such as comics or animations, and he throws out many questions to me as if he checks how much I know GUNDAM. Fortunately, the questions he threw were almost for beginners, so I just managed to answer them and I can show him my high-positioned skill as a superior…lol

I already wrote about GUNDAM before. (this is the article) Actually, ofcourse because of the amount of watching, among our generation, “the first GUNDAM” is said it’s the best. As a matter of fact, I like “Z-GUNDAM” rather than the first, however, the complication or elaboration of human relationship in “the first” beats “Z-GUNDAM” or “ZZ-GUNDAM”, I think. (However, in the respect of the complication on correlationship of the characters, I think “Z-GUNDAM” is the most complicated one.)

One of enjoyable parts on “the first” is said that there are many memorable and impressive lines in it.

(I just translated famous lines in “the first” by myself, so there might be some mistakes and you have better expressions than mine.)
“Let me show the abilities of your mobile suits!”
“I’ve never been punched! Even by my Dad!”
“Sadly, we’re definitely…under the warfare”
“What a wimp!”
“I must call them like this; They’re idiot!”

“idiot” in the last phrase for kasu in Japanese, you can see it in many situations, especially on the Internet. It is often written by katakana, which is one way to express in Japanese. Japanese is composed by kanji(chinese character), hiragana and katakana. kasu is originated from the meaning “the last thing which is left after doing something” and is also originated from the meaning “useless”. We often use kasu for an insult word. On the Internet, kasu is also used like this; as an abbreviated expression, “ks”. “Hey, you don’t understand it at all! ks!” you can often see such an expression.

In “the first”, Guillen Zabi, the second positioned executive of the Principality of Zeon, adopted this expression kasu in his speech. After that, he killed his father and also his superior, Degwin Sod Zabi. I don’t know why, but I was absolutely impressed with the scene when I first watched it. “He must be in public position. I don’t think many politicians proclaim their thoughts by using such an impolite word.” I, an elementary school student at that time, thought like that.

As seen above, there are many interesting lines in “the first”, so even now, many people still love “the first”. However, in the respect of the theme songs in a series of GUNDAM, I do want to introduce better one than the first’s. (As I wrote before, in the respect of GUNDAM itself, I love “ν GUNDAM”)

Here it is, the opening song of “Z-GANDAM”. Now, how is Hiroko Moriguchi doing?

This is another song Hiroko Moriguchi sang in another GUNDAM story(GUNDAM F91).

I would like to show you my favorite GUNDAM, please check it.

You had no contradiction in what you said?

It’s been for about over 5 years since I started blogging. In the first blog, I wrote my every little things in my life, such as impressions about movies I watched, original stories I made and so on. During the blog, I had noticed I had fun of discussions with other bloggers on some topics by exchanging each articles. Now that it’s based on my policy of activities on blogging. That is “Bloggers should express their thoughts in their own articles rather than comments”.

However, I sometimes face someone strange while exchanging each opinions. Although I put my idea up in my aricle, they feel they are insulted to themselves. It becomes too troublesome.

A few years ago, one famous blogger in Japan wrote about ijime in school. Ijime leterally means “tease”, and it becomes serious problems in Japan. With progress of technologies, the style of ijime has been changing. Now that the young check ura-site(a sort of hidden bulletin board in order to write someone’s insults) and sometimes write other’s topic in order to set others up. They meet each other with smile on their face in a real life, though, they attack each other when they are into the bulltein board in a virtual life. Some people can’t keep their mind and commit suicide.

The famous blogger tried to write about ijime because one confession in a letter was posted against one public institution at that time. He struggled to prevent someone bothered from suicide, so he wrote his own article.

It was not bad to wrote the article trying to stop someone’s suicide, however, its way was definitely bad. He claimed that he wanted to spread his own article by reprinting, not trackback. In his blog service, there’s one characteristic system called “reprinting”. As long as you run the same blog service, you will be able to reprint other’s article by pushing the button named “reprint”. He claimed that everyone who had the same blog’s service should reprint his article.

The button called “reprint” had many problems, we discussed them between bloggers at that time. The most important problem of it was the one on copyright. Moreover, once the article is reprinted, the original author can no longer stop spreading by reprinting. We (including me, ofcourse) claimed that spreading articles by reprinting was not good, even if those contents are ethically good. No one blamed him on his intentions against ijime, but unfortunately, he treated himself like he was insulted.

“Lives can’t compare with anything.” said He. We definitely didn’t write about how important lives are. We just reffered to his approach.
“You just widen our focus on topics.” said He. We just wrote “There are legally some problems on the reprinting system in the blog”.
“You don’t try to understand what I’m saying. You have no reading abilities.” said He. We totally understood what he’s saying, so I tried not to put the topic on ijime during discussions.
“There’s legally no problem in my articles and approach. I read and checked the copyright Act. Maybe you all haven’t understood what copyright is yet? You should read the copyright Act and improve your own reading abilities.” said He. Oh, my god! If we had had no reading abilities at all, most of blog readers would have started blaming us. He was the only one who couldn’t get any acceptance about his opinion on copyright from blog readers.
“You all are talk shit! That’s enough!.” said He. Wow, who is talk shit?

Because of exchanging articles on this matter, I had a chance to acquire knowlege on copyright, however, I was surprised with him. Some people sometimes treat merely exchanging each opinions as blame for themselves. He was totally like that.

Sadly, I recently faced such a situation again. It’s definitely been a long age. “Your sentences are too comlicated.” Oh…actually, I’ve been a sort of a writer on one technically professional categories for over ten years. If I wrote unreadable articles or documents, all clients and negotiating rivals would complain on it and I would not be able to run my business anymore. Who stepped down from conversations? I just put some ideas and answered some questions. Who threw fuckin’ words to me by phone and in sentences? Who said “You won’t hear other opinions.” ignoring your own words.

It’s perfectly ironic…we tried to find ways to polish our something up. I just suggested “it’s important for us to focus on how we should improve.”. That person suggested “it’s important for us to focus on what we talk.”. Talk can grow discussions and debate. Ironically, despite the fact that the person wanted to talk about something and we started exchanging our opinions about the way to do that, the person stepped down with his/her anger. Before the discussions itself on topics we’re ready started, he/she refused to talk on how we did. It’s perfectly…ironic.

You can know when you get the first sake by seeing green colored sugi-dama held.

I have one class volunteer interpreters in Chita peninsula hold now. When tourists from other countries visit Chita peninsula, volunteer interpreters give some help to them while taking a tour. I’d like to join in the activities, however, I don’t know if I’ll be able to manage to do them, so joining in the class, I think I would check if my skills can handle them.

The first topic in the class was sake in Japan, which is one of beverages including alcohol. In English, you might pronounce “sake” like “seik“, however, sake in Japanese is literally pronounced like this; “sake“.

I went to one museum called sake no bunkakan in order to acquire knowledge on sake.

I think using yeast is one of human’s great innovations. sake, tohu, wine, beer, cheese, many things are related to yeast. I, however sadly, don’t know how important for food yeast is and how yeast is related to food. Basically, I defenitely don’t know how to brew sake.

It’s going to be a long story to write “how to brew sake” on this article, so at first, I’ll write instruments and topics I found in sake no bunkakan.

This is a photo of the building of sake no bunkakan.

You can see something circlar in the middle of the building. This ball is called sugi-dama or saka-bayashi. sugi-dama is made with Japanese cedar. In Nara prefecture, there is one shrine called Oomiwa jinjya, which is one of oldest shrine and enshrines oomono-nushi, who is simbolized as God of sake. In Oomiwa jinjya, people treat Japanese ceder as the tree God dwells, so every entrance of tsukurizakaya(facilities brewing sake, this saka-dama is hung.

In autumn, the time craftsmen finished brewing sake in that year, saka-dama is replaced with the newer, green-colored one. Like the more the time goes by, the deeper the taste of sake becomes, the color of saka-dama changes its color from green to brown.

Japanese ceder also has preservative capacity, so it is used in many instruments of brewing sake.

No one wants to be “old maid” in power games.

After the general election held in August in Japan, the LDP(Liberal Democratic Party) seems to get lost in the forest named “Who becomes the president of the LDP?”.

During over-50-year dominance by the LDP, Yohei Kohno was the only president of the LDP who couldn’t become the Prime Minister. This time, someone who is supposed to be the president of the LDP is supposed to be the same as him.

Even me, as an amateur on politics, it’s understandable that politicians of the LDP have difficult in raising their hand under circumstances. It’s totally a headwind for them, however, someone in the party should be in charge of the president. “Ummm…it’s like an card game…an old maid…” thinking like that, I read newspapers everyday.

Ever since August 30, I’ve been thinking someone young, such as Nobuteru Ishihara should become the president of the LDP. Although it’s actually going to be tough time for him, we have one proverb like this; “The position can make you grow”. Ofcourse I think we need to warmly watch for him without negative views. I think the new president of the LDP should keep his/her position this time so that the LDP can obtain trust from voters. It needs a long term, I think.

But unfortunately, Nobuteru Ishihara stepped down from the race. “He doesn’t think it’s about time. Besides, it’s said that he’s a bit weak in his mental way. Once someone older says something tough, he easily gets down.” my father said it with laughing. “Because of his father, Shintarou Ishihara.” he added it. Ishihara Shintarou is famous for an hawkish politician. He is also a strict father. “Pay much respect for the elder made him a wimp?” thinking like that, I watched his talk about stepping down on TV. Actually, I guess he wanted to raise his hand but people around him didn’t let him do it. “Be patient. Please wait until the time has come. At least two or three years, you have to wait for it.” I guess someone must say it to him.

Today, I heard that Sadakazu Tanigaki declared his candicacy for the president of the LDP. I don’t know if he, whose appearance is bureaucratic rather than politician, will be able to go through this tough situation.

“He’s smart and intelligent, but he has no charisma.” my father said.

Ummm…If all politicians of the LDP had had their enough charisma, they would have not gotten such results this time…