the qualia journal

On August 9th, 1945, an airplane approached Kokura, a city in the northern part of Kyushu island. My mother, a girl of 9 then, lived in Koku...

I have not figured out how and why yet, but I do observe that creative people sometimes have very strong visions, bordering on the hallucina...

I regard this blog as an experimentation in the expression of things I encounter during the course of my life. I started to learn English at...

The speeches of some people reach us as heavenly music. With some people under certain situations, every second of listening to becomes a to...

I admit I used to be very clumsy in my youth. During my senior high school days, I found it difficult to talk to girls naturally. I attended...

Laughter is very much related to the emotion of fear and uneasiness. The classic act of a man tripping over a banana skin involves the dange...

When I was a kid, I used to eat a lot of bad things. Outlets of dagashiya, which literally translates as "junk sweets shop", used ...

Garigarikun is an ice cream bar brand popular in Japan. A few days ago, after the usual rounds of jogging in the park, I felt like eating on...

In an artistic piece of sublime joy, you can sometimes discern a hint of pain. Take J.S. Bach's Air on the G string for example. The mus...

Despite the ups and downs, I have kept my habit of going for a run in the park forest near my house. A few months ago, I sprained my right a...

The emergence of a new contagious disease makes one ponder on his own mortality. Humans today tend to think that they are to live "fore...

I have been to Salzburg quite a few times, visiting my very good friend Gustav Bernroider at the University of Salzburg. The stroll in the g...

One of my best friends, Ken Shiotani, went to University of Tokyo for many years. First he finished the master's course at the mathemati...

I have some practical recollections to catch up after this long pause in writing. It was back then. I was there. I visited Scotland in June ...

One of my favorite Picasso pieces is to be found in the Guggenheim museum in New York. My encounter took place almost a decade and half ago....

It has been sometime since I made the last entry into this blog. I don't know how this long absence has taken place. I have been busy, g...

Some years ago, I was just starting my research career in the brain sciences. I was attending a series of international conferences in Iizuk...

Things that ever happened in my life remains as the connection pattern between neurons in my brain. On the first day of my elementary school...

I had only the faintest idea, if any, what Salt Lake City was actually like. Naturally I remembered some fragmentary scenes from the 2002 wi...

I was in Kobe, delivered a lecture at an academic conference. After the sessions, I found myself near the Rokko mountains. The spring was fi...