the qualia journal

First day of Science Foo camp 2010 at Google campus. It was my first visit to the Googleplex. Impressive. The atmosphere of playfulness and ...

So here I am in Sunnyvale, California. It is 2:42 p.m. local time. In the evening, I will be attending the Science Foo Camp sponsored by Goo...

Throughout my life, I seem to have been enjoying the status of being a minority. In the junior high, I used to chase butterflies in the fiel...

I attended the wedding party of Ebizo Ichikawa, the young and great Kabuki actor. The Kabuki is a miracle, as it is both popular and artisti...

My favorite bar in Tokyo is "EST" in Yushima. The first time I visited this legendary bar, I was with Ken Shiotani, my fat philoso...

As I go about my life, I meet many people. Some are famous. Others are young. Many are experienced. A few are truly awesome. I seem to appre...

Responding to the invitation of a senior high school headmaster Mr. Kawasaki, I gave two lectures in Sapporo. After the strenuous but enjoyi...

The Dubliners by James Joyce is a sublime example of English prose work. Written in 1904, the classic masterpiece, however, did not get publ...

To express oneself, in particular as a matter of being understood by the widest audience possible and giving pleasure to many, is a hard uph...

Nowadays Japanese manga and anime enjoy much popularity and a high respectability. Manga and anime are considered the primary cultural expor...

When I traveled to Korea a few weeks ago, I had the joy of being in a land where I found myself helpless as a three year old child. Hangul, ...

My native language is not English. I started to learn English only at the age of 12. Then my struggle began, as English and Japanese are two...

Now I am staying in the Kayoutei onsen ryokan in Yamanaka Onsen, Ishikawa prefecture. This ryokan is famed for its magnificent breakfast, so...

One of the things that we sometimes fail to recognize in life is that in this world, the time passes. In a seemingly stationary world, as is...

Butterflies and moths can be distinguished by a number of ways. One of them is their flight patterns. Butterflies fly in a straightforward w...

I had a wonderful conversation with Mr. C.W. Nicol, the famed writer who resides in the Kurohime district, Nagano prefecture, Japan. Mr. Nic...

Partly because my best friend Ken Shiotani is one, I seem to be drawn to a fat man. Although when I first met him when I was 18, he was rath...

I made an entry about the fat ones in yesterday's blog. Even before I get the feedbacks (as the publication was delayed due to my stay i...

On the night that I became aware of the quality of the train noise, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, clickety-clack, I did not actually know ...

Although the fact that our phenomenal experience is "composed" of qualia should be evident from infancy, it is actually difficult ...