The fifty shades of Wuthering Heights

Watching Emerald Fennell's film based on the immortal Wuthering Heights in a Tokyo theater was a very unique experience. 

It was a work with a constellation of great acting from Margot Robbie, Jacob Elordi, and Owen Cooper, under Fennell's original interpretations of the classic.

The hallmarks of a creative spirit can be felt in the bits of oddities found in an otherwise canonical fictional worldview. 

Fennell's liberty at interpreting or rather creating on top of Wuthering Heights is perhaps the reason both for its box office success and critical turmoils. 

There are infinite possibilities, perhaps, in a work like Wuthering Heights, to be drawn into our own fountain of life at this time. The fifty shades of Wuthering Heights presented by Emerald Fennell finally had a tinge of rainbow.

Nagomi is an apotheosis of the diversity and inclusion ideology.

Matcha is so nagomi.

Not only in terms of the feeling that a cup of matcha brings, but also in terms of the constitution principles involving matcha, or powdered green tea.

Matcha, needless to say, is very Japanese. Consider the case of matcha ice cream then, a pristine example of the nagomi principle. You mix matcha (Japanese) and ice cream (Western), and the result is a heavenly sweet delight that fascinated Barack Obama when the future US president visited Japan as a boy.

Nagomi is an apotheosis of the diversity and inclusion ideology. Like many things Japanese, you don't have to be overtly politically correct or controversial. Just enjoy a scoop of matcha ice cream and you will be in the harmonious heaven of nagomi.

Kintsugi is a celebration of the diversity of life histories

Kintsugi is wonderful because you don't throw away something that is broken. You amend it, and a new vista is born, sometimes even better than the original.

You can apply kintsugi in your life, too. No matter what happens, you accept your imperfections, and carry on.

Through kintsugi, you become tolerant of your own and others's shortcomings. 

Kintsugi is a celebration of the diversity of life histories, and embracing of the enigma that is the once-and-for-all existence of one's soul in this vast and brutal universe.

Surrounded by heathers and flanked by the mother earth and the sky

I read Emily Brontë's Wuthering Heights for the first time since my college days.

I was struck by the sheer honesty about human nature, emotion, live, death, and love. Narrated by Nelly, who is of the world, we get to know the inner turmoils of Catherine and Heathcliff, who are half of this world but also of quite another universe.

I once had the great opportunity of visiting Howarth. It is wonderful to ponder the unlimited possibilities of human imagination. Surrounded by heathers and flanked by the mother earth and the sky, my soul gradually wondered yonder. 

I was Heathcliff, and I was Catherine.

I was so grateful that I was alive.

I weighed 85.9 kg on the morning of Tokyo Marathon 2026. To be precise, I took off some extra clothes compared to usual, so I must have weighed more than 86. 

This was a personal record of heavy weight Marathon running.

Even when I walked, I interpreted it as a strategic walking. I was not being defeated. I was just pacing intelligently.

I finished with a net time of about 6 hours 25 minutes or so. Both figures for my weight and time were personal highs.

After the finish line, I looked up at the blue sky, and felt almost like crying.

I was so grateful that I was alive and could finish my 10th or so full Marathon.

Meanwhile, people were being bombarded all over the world.