the qualia journal

I met with the Hungary born mathematician Peter Frankl for a radio program at NHK Peter is a fascinating character. He is also known for his...

I attended the rehearsals for the opera "Hansel and Gretel" by Humperdinck. The conductor was Seiji Ozawa. The rehearsals were hel...

I live in Tokyo. I travel on the Shinkansen (bullet train) to the western cities (e.g. Nagoya, Kyoto, and Osaka) of Japan quite often. In ...

Yesterday, I was giving lectures at University of Osaka. Walking along the street, I saw two common bluebottle (Graphium sarpedon) butterfli...

"Kaen-doki" ("Fire flame earthenwares") are found in various part of Japan, and are estimated to have been made 4000 to ...

I went to Vancouver, Canada at the age of 15 for one month to study English. My host family (Verna and Jim) lived in Richmond. They would of...

From time to time, when I am walking around for example, I have this strange feeling. I had one last night, as I strolled on the dimly-lit s...

Right now I am in Hakodate. I gave a lecture at the Future University Hakodate. The night fell. I was at a Sushi restaurant with my friends....

As a kid I used to collect and study butterflies quite seriously. My butterfly mania was quite famous in the neighborhood and school. One da...

When I strolled in Cambridge U.K. for the first time back in 1993, I was fascinated by the ancient ambience of the academic city. As I appro...

My mother originated from the southern island of Kyushu. I was about five when my parents took me to the hot spring city of Beppu , a few ...

I don't know how it is, but I can breathe easily when there are rooms for extreme people. Extremity is an art, and requires a certain le...

Now I have kept this journal for one month in a row, starting from the 6th of June entry "A double sin" . There were two entries ...

The paintings by El Greco (1541-1614) always struck me as very original, ever since I glanced upon one in an art museum. Giorgio Giulio Clov...

I was talking with my best chum Yoshi Tamori. Yoshi is a mathematical genius. He likes to talk about iterations and infinities. One of Yos...

I did not understand the philosophy of the hibutsu (secret Buddha) until I chanced upon one a few years ago. To treat a Buddha statue as a h...

When I was 15, I learned about the Game of Life invented by John Horton Conway. The idea immediately fascinated me. I used to calculate g...

Albert Einstein famously said that "imagination is more important than knowledge". If I may add a humble something to the words of...

I travel quite often on the Shinkansen . It is quite efficient, and is an indispensable infrastructure for the contemporary life of Japan. T...

Soseki Natsume , in his beautiful collection of essays "Inside My Glass Doors", recalls a woman who visited him at his domicile to...