the qualia journal

It is difficult to characterize a particular era, especially when one is living in it. The last couple of decades have been marked by many u...

The novelist Yoshinori Shimizu once wrote a masterpiece titled "Don't talk about entropy on your date". This humorous short st...

The great Fireworks Festival of Nagaoka started, I learned on my last visit, after the city was burned to ashes during the Second World War....

I recently met a few pupils who had extraordinary characters. And they can't go to school. Chatting with them, looking at their faces, t...

As can be observed from my earlier blog entry ( Red bag was the object of desire ), I was fond of coffee flavor as a child. Coffee, however,...

Ever since my infancy, I knew one thing for sure. My father was not the type of person who would ride on a motorbike. He might drive a car (...

One of the things that really surprises and impresses me is the resilience of people who have been afflicted by the tsunami disaster. In par...

Youth is about wondering, not knowing why or how, and making many mistakes. As I look back, my college days were full of wonders and mistake...

Once I was in the restroom of a railway terminal. It was what some people would call "no.2". As I was sitting there, I noticed tha...

I stayed in England for two years, and have been returning to the country ever since. I found the English true to the reputation world wide....

Once in a lifetime you notice an entirely new universe, and see that stars are shining in a great constellation. In the naive belief that th...

When I was at kindergarten, there were two kinds of bags for milk money. Each morning we would bring 50 yen for the milk provided at lunch. ...

It is rainy season in Japan now, so that every day is almost certainly wet. I can't say I enjoy this time of the year so much. I am a wa...

Other people are mirrors. In them, you see the reflection of your own self. Sometimes the reflections are distorted, but they are still help...

Since the Great Eastern Japan Earthquake on 11th March 2011, I have visited the tsunami-afflicted areas twice. Once I was drove a hired car ...

It was in the earl days of May, 2011, that I found myself finally on a Tohoku Shinkansen train bound for Sendai. It was a trip mixed with ap...

After leaving the city of Hagi, we went on a seaside route, heading towards the hot spring town of Nagatoyumoto. "Yumoto" (literal...

It was Thursday, 24th March 2011, the 12th day after the earthquake. Early in the morning, I headed toward the Haneda airport, which Tokyo r...

It is the 11th day after the quake, and the grim reality continues to penetrate our existence. Natural disasters are always bad enough. Loss...

We need to keep diversity at any cost, even at a time of difficulty such as this. Stiff upper lips, with occasional smiles emanating to all ...