the qualia journal

The decision of the Nobel committee to award Mr. Barack Obama the Nobel Peace Prize was laudable. Some people might say that it has been pre...

When I was a kid, I found it really difficult to swallow the pills. It was not that the pills were particularly large. These were ordinary p...

Without even knowing it, one becomes a prisoner of one's own prejudices, I thought. I was in a Tokyo bar as the typhoon number 18 approa...

I went to the Superdeluxe club in the Roppongi district of Tokyo. I was late, having finished my work for a broadcaster at 22 hours. As I ar...

The return of Soseki Natsume from the two years' stay in London, in retrospect, was a watershed in the cultural history of modern Japan....

It is often said that the stream of consciousness was discovered by the great American psychologist William James. Needless to say, the stre...

I have been up and doing recently, for quite a long time. Galloping has to stop somewhere and sometime. Now seems to be the time for reflect...

(Continued from yesterday's entry of "Tiger Jeet Singh".) I hear that Tiger Jeet Singh is now a successful business person bas...

When I was 10, my then best friend Toshikazu Shimamura took me to see a Professional Wrestling match. The fight was between Antonio Inoki an...

In the suburb of Matsuyama , off the coast, there is a small island. It is famous as Soseki Natsume referred to it as the "Turner Isla...

My second day in Matsuyama , and I have been pondering the friendship between Soseki Natsume . and Shiki Masaoka . Soseki is the father of ...

I am in Matsuyama, for matters concerning the great writer Soseki Natsume. On the way to Matsuyama airport, I was reading the book "Osc...

I had an interesting dialogue with my best chum Takashi Ikegami, at the Aoyama Book Center in Tokyo. It was meant as a launch event for my l...

Giving a talk is part of my life. I am invited to give a talk from various quarters, but I cannot comply with most of them. I have to say no...

I gave a talk at the Imperial Hotel, Tokyo. The hotel is preparing itself for its 120th anniversary. I was invited to speak on serendipity,...

I think I was a dirty brat. During the elementary school days, I used to take a bath with a book in my hand. Often, I did not wash at all, a...

I was invited to a dinner party in honor of the Archbishop of Canterbury , Dr. Rowan Williams , at the British Embassy in Tokyo. I was intr...

The brain is able to adjust its functions according to the particular context in which the subject is expected to do well. For example, cram...

Yesterday, there was a shooting for the "Untitled Concert" (Daimeino nai Ongakukai) program conducted and introduced by Yutaka Sad...

Being assertive is important in life. Without putting forward one's values and opinions in an explicit way, nothing changes in the tranq...