Today’s random thoughts

I’m trying to write an article everyday these days. I don’t know why I have made this kind of goal. Apparently the goal is for nobody but me. Most people in this world would advice me that I should write in Japanese because you’re Japanese. It’s so true. But I somehow feel like writing in English and try to describe what I’m feeling out. Writing is sometimes thought to be as a translation process. Trying to feel and see something in your brain or mind and try to translate into certain languages. If you were Spanish, you would describe the emotion in Spanish. However, there is a cage in your language. Unconsciously, the word or way of telling story is posited by the language. We are all in a cage of our mother tongue.

But we sometimes can be released from the cage when we can capture things in a different languages or when we were able to express our feelings in different languages. That makes me feel really happy. I, of course, can use Japanese language the best, but unnamed feature of Japanese language makes me think twice to write something. That is a hint of sadness in Japanese. Writing sentences in Japanese, especially fiction, you would feel some sadness in Japanese sentences. Famous Japanese author Haruki Murakami is sometimes said like he wrote an American literature in Japanese. That actually true, I think. Because he could get out of the cage of Japanese storytelling format by adopting dry, hard boiled writing style like Raymond Carver or Hemingway. Moreover, he started writing his first novel’s first paragraphs in English.

Haruki Murakami is a person who I really admire and feel jealous. He used to read English paperback when he was a high school student, and he’s been a huge fan of cool jazz music or classical music, also he is known as a huge collector of these kinds of LP or CD music. I mean, he definitely has his own style to live. He is real and cool to his life it seems. I like writing. Writing makes me feel really chill. Everyday a tiny stressful things shakes my mind but thanks to write it out in memo app or some note, my heart soon becomes cool and real.

People often says it’s roughly by 30 years old when you finally realize what you wanna do in your life. By the way, I somehow dream like if I were really bad at living, it would have been much more easier to find what I’m good at out. It would sound a bit boosting but not at all, I do think so. Since I’m a person who can do the most of things with ok quality somehow, everything felt not too bad or not that good. Friends who seem really bad at living his life to me seems actually lead life that only they can lead.

But above all, now I feel reading and writing is my favorites, absolutely. Without no pressures from outside, reading and writing are my best pastimes. If I could live just by reading and writing and talking. That would be really great.

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We Should Spend More Time for the Real Experience, Not For Social Media’s Virtual, Free and Cheesy Experience

These days, I really feel something wrong on my usage of social media, or you could say, the relationship between me and my smartphone. Coming back from my workplace with exhausted feeling and lying on the bed without having supper, start watching a video clip whose thumbnail says “You Must Watch This Otherwise…”. Actually these videos are not boring in a way, but you can easily forget the content because you don’t even pay for it, and you are lying on the bed. Since YouTube might recommend you the next video like forever, YouTube videos hack your dream and you realize you fell asleep during watching and the sound of a video still go next to your pillow. Then I think, how awful, meaningless life I have lead these days.

Since it’s almost free to access any contents which seems worthy at the time, at one glance, smartphone is definitely a magic tool human has ever invented. It can be a TV, movie theater, book, newspaper, game, phone of course, radio, calendar, reminder, mail, dictionary, …you name it. So, you can fulfill your satisfaction with 5G speed. However, on another level, can’t we say these are “virtual” experience? We used to enjoy a kind of real experience. We needed to turn on the TV and watched one program with family members, we needed to rent a video from a video shop, we needed to look up a dictionary and found interesting words. However, these experiences has almost gone now. We can’t make a failure, which would be the best part of our experiences and learning.

If you are happy with today’s 5G, IoT kind of environment, that’s just great, so go for it. However, there must be people like me who feels rather uncomfortable for today’s too convenient, less experience situation. We can learn most from stupid and shameful mistakes. When you find yourself checking customer or viewer’s review, it can be said that you lose the opportunity of the real experience because you would never make a big mistake as long as you check the review. I do love review things, but you know, basically our life can be evaluated by any Amazon customer’s reviewers. So why do we always try to avoid making mistakes which is actually the only way for us to make our life really meaningful?

Then, here is my solution. I deleted almost all Social Media apps from my iPhone.

Even a Plane can fly in the screen

I felt I really need to do something for me to lead a meaningful life with real precious experiences. So, My decision is like this. I will spend more time with the real experiences which can be troublesome or a huge mistake. But then, I realize I can get much more healthy and great information for my life. I would not watch Spain’s sightseeing videos, but I would rather try to go to Spain. Instead of watching boring video clips, I would rather read books, travel with my car, and have lunch with my friends and family. That must be the best solution to have a good relation ship with social media or smartphone in this era I think. If you feel the same way, why don’t you try it together? Let’s face our life experiences more that is much much cooler and more interesting than virtual experiences.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

I feel so depressed with Social Media but…

Dear Social Media,

I’m so tired using social media and now I think I’m not in a good condition. 3 days of continuous holidays totally killed me, I mean too much rest can kill sometime. Too much holiday can kill you mentally and make you so depressed. Then you think of all the faults are on Social Medias. Why I need to worry about notification every time? Why should I watch worthless videos on YouTube? I admit there are some good videos, but I cannot remember them all. I have no idea how many videos I have watched, but that would be so depressing number.

Then I think I can finally understand the feeling a person who try to quit cigaret. They always say to me how hard it is to quit cigaret, but I couldn’t imagine what would it be felt. However, now I can totally understand that. Social Media is a new addiction. Social Media kills you. It’s so unhealthy. Sometimes, I suddenly feel so sad because I’m nobody in the social media. I feel like I have no impact in this life and world. But, it’s actually not true. In the working place, you’re shining in an actual human relationship. You can realize how you are contributing to the world.

However, if you use too much social media, you can’t think of you positively. World seems so dark in the bed, you felt so alone. You would be overwhelmed with the endless information like tsunami. Am I highly sensitive person? Maybe so. However, I can definitely say the over using smartphone can kill people mentally much worse way with smoking. I really think this is wrong. Why you try to prohibit smoking but social media or too much using smartphones? I know many people are suffering from this kind of mental trouble.

So, I’d like to quit watching YouTube seriously. I used to declare the same thing here, but it didn’t last for 2 months. So, this time, I’d like not to break the promise at least until 3 month like October. I don’t want to use smartphones as much as I can. Then, I ensure that I can change myself to the positive ward.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

Have you ever wished you’d made a different choice?

Hello and I’m 29 years old now, and becoming 30 in this December 23rd. Becoming 30 sounds like becoming a new creature or “evolving” thing in the Pokémon world. However, I still don’t know what kind of person do I want to be or what is my life goal. That’s 30 to me. You are nobody but want to somebody. That’s what 30ish me thinking these days.

A professor whom I really respect once told me that the most students would have realized their calling or ideal life style around 30 years old, then that became a kind of curse to my life. I need to find out what I want to aim by 30 or like that. But, please laugh at me. This is so funny but I still don’t see anything in the coming future.

Have you ever wished you’d made a different choice? My answer is yes and no. I can say that I’m happy living this life. But sometimes, I dream of myself being a totally different kind of protagonist of my life. What if I couldn’t have met my precious friends? What if I was brave enough to go New York and live as a standup comedian. What if I didn’t have a steady job like I have today? What if I became a cafe owner? What if I got married with ex girlfriend? What if I haven’t followed what my parents said to me? What if…

Actually, the process dreaming of my imaginary choices is such a fun thing. I’m feeling so good dreaming of different types of me in the same age to me, and wonder, do I have any kinds of regrets? No I don’t. I can’t say it with 100% of my confidence though. I can say with 75%.

Our life is created by countless choices or decision makings of my or somebody. We maybe are affecting each other everyday. We have no idea when we would die. So, maybe we need to try to change our life during we live, not after dead.

Let’s celebrate every choices more. Our life is full of choices and that makes the life much more interesting or fun to live. As long as not a crime, we can do anything that we want to choose. And for that, thinking about today’s question would be a meaningful one. Please try with your version.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

Rocket Start Type vs. Last Spurt Type

End of the fiscal year makes us really busy and stressed out. There are so many things left to be done. Murderous March is literally killing us in Japan. March is also known for the season of hay fever, so the creativity of Japanese really drop seriously in this season.

We all tend to think like “why should I do this with crying… I should’ve done this much more earlier” in this time. So, how can we change this kind of regrets? There is a “Parkinson’s law”. Let me quote from Wikipedia.

Parkinson’s law is the adage that “work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.”[1] It is sometimes applied to the growth of bureaucracy in an organization, but can be applicable to all forms of work.

In other words, we tend to put off our works as much as we can. When you asked a work and it’s deadline is April 1st, you would try to check if it’s 16:45 or 23:59. Then, you suddenly realize it’s Thursday, you would offer him/her alternative deadline of Friday 23:59. Moreover you could think like he/she cannot check the work on Friday night, so how about April 4th? Or like that.

The most of us, sadly, are such kind of type of people. We don’t want to work hard naturally. A book author once called this kind of people “las spurt type person”. Hmm… maybe so. And he also says, if you really want to be a person who will do things as soon as possible, you should become a “rocket start person”. This is the person who will do a 80% of work immediately and try to do 20% in the rest of time until the real deadline.

Do you want to change? No pain, no gain.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

Big Mac calls me

“Big Mac Set” in Japan

Never forget the time when I knew the word “Big Mac” for the first time in my life. I was 9 or 10 years old at that time. The city where I lived was the whole world, and everyday was full of new things and findings. My grandparents were so fine that they even hang me out together. My grandma often scolded me with tiny things (wearing T shirts in a cold day made her mad), but the sizes she cooked was my favorite forever.

The day when I know Big Mac was the day when I went to see a movie with my friend. The name of the movie is gone, but exact that time, he introduced me a story about NBA players. He was so fond of Disney, NBA or such American cultures. So, he said to me, “Have you eaten Big Mac already? NBA players often goes to McDonald’s after their games and try to eat Big Mac with team members. Since I knew it, I’m a huge fan of Big Mac. So, have you tried already?” He asked. I was so naïve then, I had eaten just plain hamburger or double cheeseburger. Then I though, alright, let me try it.

From that day, my life has changed. Big Mac was so delicious that perhaps I have been eating about 400 Big Macs before. I even eat it in the US, UK, South Korea, and Singapore. The truth is that you can enjoy the same taste wherever you are. That is Big Mac aka global Big Mac. I’m still falling love with Big Mac. No matter how you experience stressed out feeling, just take a bite at it, and you can only concentrate on Big Mac. Then, problem solved. Just drink a coke and all you can think of is when you would eat French fries next.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

A Perfect Timing for Reading Books in My Busy Daily Life

There are so many books to read in my house

Reading books. When you hear this phrase, what would be your reaction? Actually, my reaction was differ from when I was a teenager. I thought reading books or new paper and watching NHK (Japanese kind of BBC) are worst boring thing in my life at that time, and I simply couldn’t believe why adults are enough to be bare with such super boring look things. For instance, each letters in both books and newspapers are shockingly small for me at that time, and any TV program of NHK looked so serious that I unconsciously thought the personalities were AI robots (AI could do better, actually. Then I thought).

Time passes, and people can really change. One of the great meaning of education is sometimes described as this “changing”. Now I really owe my professors who have taught me because thanks to them, I changed so much, and now I can’t imagine the life without reading books (but watching NHK still…) . In my opinion, the first ten books you try to read will the hardest experience in your book life. The way to finish your book seems climbing Mt. Fuji or Everest. But somehow, you bare with reading, reading and reading. At last, when you finish reading 10th or 9th books, you would realize, “I had totally misunderstood about what reading books is!”.

A philosopher once said, “Ultimately, reading books means reading yourself”. And I totally agree with it. By improving your reading skill, your skill to live with clear thoughts or meaning would improve too. You can get words that can describe or explain your confused imagery of your mind. Everyone must be translator in terms of translating your own heart into your mother language. So, yeah, reading books is great. And this is thought to be one of the best my life changing event so far.

Since I was a university student (my major was English Literature), I read a lot from the time (actually not that much though…). However, after becoming a high school teacher, I couldn’t easily find the time to read, and had been frustrated about that. But now I became 29 and I could get the pace of work, the frequency of rearranging my room has much decreased for now. And I could finally find the best timing for reading books in my daily life.

First is after a supper. You feel full stomach and feel dull to wash the dishes, than I put them in the kitchen sink, and put some water in the dish. Then, you can start reading books with satisfaction. Sometimes it lasts for 30 minutes to read, or 2 hours to read.

Second is while talking bath. Soaking half of the body in warm water, and reading with drowsy feelings. My ideal time is for 20 to 30 minutes because you would feel really dizzy at that time.

Third is just before sleeping. With a warm light of your bedside lamp, you can read any books and that would definitely makes you fall asleep within 15 min.

However, sometimes you find yourself so tired in a weekdays and maybe you would have many schedules to do for weekdays. So, for such people like me, the true best timing for reading is Saturday and Sunday. Cancel any schedules and let’s read for all day. You could read 3 books if you really love to read in a day. For somebody, only Saturday and Sunday seems a bit sad and not enough. But, man, the desire for reading would rather decreased if you are free everyday, I think for myself.

Anyway, thank you for reading as usual, and have a great reading life.

Writing Challenge for February

So, the time flies. The 2022, which seems just started, has actually 11 months for now. One of the reasons why you feel something passes so fast these days is because you are less fascinated or excited about a tiny thing or event compared to children who react anything with energetic reactions. Then, one of the great reaction you make would be “Wow. Is it already February?”. So it goes.

Without saying, life is so short. Especially when you live in a pandemic situation, you are forced to realize how the previous normal days are precious and filled with a lot of possibilities compared to today’s unclear stressful staying home or lock down season. However, we should not spoil this precious moment even in this time. There must be many things that we can do to improve our lives.

Therefore, I would like to declare things I want to change from this February to update my life into 2.0 or something like that. Some of them would not be achieved though, I’d like to share here with you and make a bit of pressure on me.

1. Read many books. I’m a huge book lover, so I purchase several books once a week pass. However, the problem is the ratio of digestion. The priority of reading books sometimes came next to watching YouTube or Twitter things. Now, I almost quit watching these SNS thing, unless I think I would do that kind of activities with real intention or need to use them. So, naturally, I would read books instead of using smartphone from now. I’m really looking forward to seeing the result.

2. Keep journaling this blog everyday. I had tried many times but I couldn’t achieve this kind of goal because I was too lazy to do that. But, I somehow created an ideal environment for that. What I did was to get rid of any stressful step to write. Now I bought a small mobile keyboard, so I don’t have to open my laptop to connect WiFi, but just connect this device with my iPhone.

3. Turn off my iPhone before I sleep. I don’t know why but I feel I should do this to make balance.

Let’s see. These are my goals for this month. I would like to reflect myself in the end of this month. Thank you for reading and see you.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.

This Is How You Lose Your Day

There is a day you feel you win the day, and there is another day you feel down and are completely lost. Life is difficult to live with complete happiness as you know. You cannot live a life always filled with a smile but filled with desires, jealousy, tiresome, and such negative feelings. You want to conquer such negativity, but actually, you should embrace such feelings to admit yourself. I know that. But, life is not that easy. You don’t have to be depressed, but you can feel down.

Anyway, yesterday was a day like that. I went to bed without achieving some of my daily routines. Watching YouTube videos that seem at least fun to me at the time but actually not that worthy to watch, and gradually sink into the deep ocean of sleeping, realizing I lost the day, the feeling of regret that I couldn’t do something I should have done. Believing to keep doing something almost every day makes you somebody, I would think like that.

But anyway, that is life. The point is that you should not feel down that much and pretend you feel really down. As long as we are fine enough to smile at anyone, it’s totally OK. Then, I remember the line of a very famous Japanese pop music “Donna Tokimo (At any time)” by Makihara Hiroyuki. This song is full of great quotes.

Original Version

“消えたいくらい辛い気持ち 抱えていても 鏡の前 笑ってみる まだ平気みたいだよ”
Even though you have a painful feeling of wanting to disappear
Smiling at a mirror, I think you are still okay. (Translated by myself)

Searching the song, I found that there are some other language versions. I hope you would check out and feel positive again soon. Thank you for reading!

English Version
Spanish Version

My Ideal Daily Routine that Makes My Condition Really Good

My birthday is getting closer day by day. December 23rd is my birthday and I’ll be 29 years old this year. Facing the huge wall of the 30s, I’ve been feeling something a bit of matureness or sophistication about my life. My mentor once told me when I asked him “When will I finally be able to find my calling?”, he (a university professor) told me like “looking my students graduated from my university, they seem to have found such things by 30 years old”. Then, “the 30 years old” became a kind of “curse word” to me. Anyway, that’s another story.

Today, I’d like to list up my ideal daily routine which I have invented and revised and I think it’s the latest and updated routine, which makes my day almost perfect if I achieve those. I somehow end-up with this routine to make myself healthy, I would keep brushing up my lists.

1. Toilet Cleaning
After getting ready to go out, I’m cleaning the toilet. Those who are really rich often tells advice like this, but you have no idea why you should do this for getting rich. However, your feeling must be refreshed and cleaned like your toilet. So, I have no reason, but I would really recommend you this habit.

2. Updating blog
Keep doing every day makes you grow. Practice makes perfect. As an English teacher, I’d like to use English as a tool to express my feeling, and when I look back at how many articles have I posted, I can get confident.

3. Study English
If I were a professional baseball player, I need to practice every day. If I were a craftsman, I would research everything about my job. So, what about me? What is the duty of being an English teacher? You need to prepare really seriously about your classes, and brush up on your English ability. But, it is also true that most teachers in Japan are very busy unfairly. It’s so easy that you blame the system or government, and I also think it’s important. However, that would never be an excuse not to study or prepare for classes with this negative feeling. Therefore, I’d like to do my best for brushing up on myself in my career.

4. Cooking
Cooking can be a therapy for your soul. There is a famous book called “Chicken soup for the soul”, but to me, cooking or eating well directly means good for your soul and body. In Japan, the verb Eat is described as 食べる, and this Chinese character 食 consists of 人(human), 良(good). In short, Eating makes you good. What a wonderful word. If you eat well, your life must be well.

5. Swing Practice of Kendo
My hobby is Kendo (Japanese traditional martial arts), and I want to be stronger. The beginning of my training was slightly late (from 26 years old) though, I will never excuse this. I should just keep practicing using YouTube live channel or some motivation arousal tips.

6. Eat a lot of vegetables
People my age tend to eat too much meat, intake oil, and drink too much. All I need is to eat more vegetables and work out more frequently.

7. Taking Online English Lesson
I’m taking an online English lesson on Rare Job. This is just fun for me. You don’t use English that much (hardly ever for the most Japanese, ironically), so this online service provides me a lot of chances to speak English. Moreover, you can sometimes talk about your private issues with tutors, so it’s also a kind of counseling too.

Hope you have a great routine and my list can inspire your daily habits.
Thank you so much for reading this article.

Thank you very much for reading the article. I would prefer your comments or some other topic requests for me to write. Please write a comment or give me an email through contact page.