A World Heritage site – Shirakawa-go

I visited a World Heritage site, Shirakawa-go the same time last year.When I went to the place, there were a lot of tourists who were not only Japanese but also other foreigners


This was a most beautiful sight of Shirakawa-go. Traditional houses look like miniatures from this view point .


This was a traditional house which shined by the morning sun. Once upon a time people were doing silk farming in this house.



This was a traditional inn which I stayed at.










Recently Shirakawa-go has become popular among young Japanese because of a video game. If you know Japanese culture well, you can easily come up with this video game's name.

Playing with Kanji, Chinese characters

Japanese people sometimes are playing with kanji, just like in this movie.
If you are studying Japanese language, I will recommend this funny movie.



There are a lot of original kanjis which do not exist in a dictionary. But we can understand their meanings because each part of kanji has each meaning.

The most interesting kanji is in the last part of the movie. Can you imagine how to describe “Gundam – a very famous robot- ” in kanji.

Pandemic, swine flu

I learned English words regarding disease, pandemic, swine flu.

No infections have been reported in Japan now, and the Foreign Ministry has not banned trips to Mexico or issued travel warnings to people planning to visit the country. However, the ministry urges people to consider putting off going until the epidemic has finished.

Japan have started a long holiday week, Many Japanese travel abroad every year in this holiday week. But People start to consider putting off traveling abroad.

Pharmaceutical company's stock prices are rising, on the other hand company's traveling agents are decreasing because of swine flu.

I have started to follow a twitter account, CDC emergency.
http://twitter.com/CDCemergency

Most popular ramen shop in my town

When I was viewing cherry blossoms, I found out which company contributed the biggest amount of money at the cherry blossoms festival.

The company was a Ramen shop, Ryuu-shan-hai. Ryuu-shan-hai made the biggest contribution.Ryuu-shan-hai is most popular ramen shop in my town and has many branches, and has become profitable now.



This Ramen tastes spicy and has a miso flavor.
miso; fermented soybean paste

Cherry blossom viewing

I went to famous cherry blossom viewing sites over the previous weekend.


Eboshi mountain, which is regarded as one of the top 100 cherry blossom viewing sites.These cherry trees are a distant relative to the trees in Washington D.C. cherry trees.



Uesugi Shrine, Another cherry blossom viewing site.




This is a konnyaku dumpling which is my hometown's local specialty.
This is soy sauce flavoured.

* konnyaku ; a gelatinous food made from devil’s―tongue starch

One favorite song 'alive'

I listen to one song over and over recently.



The song is in Japanese style. This song is calm and has an old Japanese atmosphere. I like this atmosphere.

The singer's name is Miku Hatsune. She is not a human being, just a computer program. I will write about her in the near future.

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I run Oitama cycling road 3 times a week , about 30 km at a time by bike.

The road is pretty beautiful, but few people know and make use of it.

It is not common for most Japanese people to go a long distance by bike.

Today I will publish some pictures of Oitama cycling road.


There is no who uses it except me.


Cherry blossoms have started to come into bloom.


These are traditional Japanese houses.


Many swans come flying.

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Hanami, cherry blossom viewing

The cherry trees are about to be in full bloom this weekend. I am going to go cherry blossom viewing by bike.

My hometown is regarded as one of the top 100 cherry blossom viewing sites. There are about 1,000 cherry blossoms trees, and more than 25,000 people come to my town every April to enjoy flower viewing.

I’m looking forward to viewing cherry blossoms.

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Flowers for Algernon

I am now reading a famous sci-fi book, Flowers for Algernon, in English.

I think this book is the most famous sci-fi book in Japan. And I love it.I have read this book about ten times. It is moving and makes me wonder what happiness is.

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(07)The study of mistakes

Many Japanese dislike making mistakes. they say that mistakes are bad things, so they ignore mistakes, and do not learn from mistakes.

''He made a mistake because of his carelessness, and He was lazy or an idiot.'' this attitude has conceal many accidents happen. I can relate many famous examples, such as the Amagasaki rail crash, Tokaimura nuclear accident, and so on.

Some Japanese people started trying to change this thinking. they set up an academic conference research for the study of mistakes in 2002. In this conference people did research to prevent accidents. One researcher's opinion is interesting. I will introduce Kenji Hayao's opinion.

He said that there are three principles which people have to learn to prevent mistakes.

1.Everyone makes mistakes.
2.People often hide their mistake because they afraid to be criticized.
3.Do not criticise someone's mistake, we have to get the facts and know the causes of accidents. Then we will have mechanisms to prevent mistakes.

He said if we do not learn these principles, There will be another tragedy in the near future.

I think the biggest problem in organizations is that member of organizations do not tell the truth. In many organizations people do not tell the truth because the atmosphere of the organization causes people to be silent. This is an atmosphere of blaming people who make mistakes. Organization leaders firstly have to change the atmosphere to prevent accidents.

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(06)The time when the Japanese language will die.

A few month ago, Two famous Japanese bloggers, Mochio Umeda and Dan Kogai introduced a book 'The time when the Japanese language will die. (Nihongo ga horobiru toki)'. The book was bookmarked extensively by over 1000 people. This book said which language Japanese people should choose when they talk and write about intellectual matters.

Now English is widely used in the field of science and business. The book said English will be used not only in these fields but also in other fields. One hypothesis is that in the near future intelligent Japanese people, they will choose to use English. The reason is that English is used in all over the world and the Japanese language is only used by 120 million people. If they use English, they can learn many things and communicate with many more than if they use Japaneses. English will become like Latin which was used by many people all over the world as a vehicle for learning.Japanese will also choose English as a universal language. If this tendency continues, Japanese people will not use the Japanese language. This is the main argument of this book.

I think Japanese people will choose English as a intellectual language. In former article I wrote that there are relatively few Japanese language audio books however there are many audio books in the English language, so I decided to start learning English. Similar situation will happen in many fields in the near future.

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