In a flash, I realized how stupid I had been.

When you are young you do incredibly stupid things from time to time. Incredibly stupid seen with the benefit of hindsight, that is.

When I was roaming in Vancouver at the age of 15, my mind was filled with all these strange ideas.

I was originally drawn to Canada by the "Anne series" written by Lucy Maud Montgomery. Consequently, I was on the look out for anything related to Anne, no matter how faint and irrelevant the connection might be.

There was a shopping center at Oakridge, and once I wandered into it. There, I happened to notice that a store attendant lady was wearing a nametag of "Ann". I think that was the fish shop.

"Oh, your name is Ann", I said. The lady, noticing that I was apparently a young boy from a foreign country and having no idea what I was up to, just answered "Yes", and smiled.

At that moment, I think, something extraordinary happened. I was no longer living in a fantasy land, and was being exposed to the reality of the everyday life. I felt the living throb of the new world through the lady. In a flash, I realized how stupid I had been. The mundane scene of a shopping center appeared to glow in a newly recognized brilliance.

I did not now say "you're name is not spelt with an 'e'", by the way.

Equations for happiness could be simplified

After my initial sojourn in Canada, I repeated the visit several times, and learned to love British Columbia and the surrounding areas.

Life styles are different from country to country. One of the things that I really liked in Canada was the habit of picnic. It was also a very simple and unassuming matter. You simply brought some buns, hamburgers and vegetables. You flame the burgers out in the open, and make a sandwich. The vegetables are put into the dip and eaten straight away. No fuss, no lengthy preparations,
just taking it easy.

I learned from these outings in the parks that equations for happiness could be simplified, uncovering the trembling of the inner self open to the larger world.

And then the sunshine laughs.

I would like to embrace the clumsy in me, in everybody.

When your English is still clumsy, and you have a small vocabulary, you have a hard time among the native speakers. The most trying is when you are the single foreigner among the patriots. Worse still, in the English speaking world of the Americas people tend to assume that you are a speaker of their language as a default, regardless of your ethnic origin.

The most difficult task is to carry the conversation in a home party, where nobody pays an extra attention to the fact that you're from a country where English is not the first language. Then you develop a set of skills designed to make life comfortable for you and people around.

For example, you develop a skill in which you divert people's attention and direct the conversation with a short sentence.
It is rather like the technique described by Kurt Vonnegut in his essay "A man without a country." I quote:

As I kid I was the youngest member of my family, and the youngest child in any family is always a jokemaker, because a joke is the only way he can enter into an adult conversation. My sister was five years older than I was, my brother was nine years older than I was, and my parents were both talkers. So at the dinner table when I was very young, I was boring to all those other people. They did not want to hear about the dumb childish news of my days. They wanted to talk about really important stuff that happened in high school or maybe in college or at work. So the only way I could get into a conversation was to say something funny. I think I must have done it accidentally at first, just accidentally made a pun that stopped the conversation, something of that sort. And then I found out that a joke was a way to break into an adult conversation.

Kurt Vonnegut, "A man without a country."

When I was in Vancouver in the summer as I was 15, I tried to get into people's conversation with short jokes or "pointers" that make people take attention and smile. When I look back on my desperate efforts I would like to embrace the clumsy in me, in everybody.

I'll beat you up, heat you up, and eat you up!

t was the summer of 1978. I was a freshman at the senior high, and I was being bombarded by Trevor and Randy with English every day.

I sometimes suspect that being exposed to the unrestrained and spontaneous way kids speak might be a necessary process for one's language to mature. When you start learning a foreign language in the restrained and orderly manner typical to an adult, the music of language might remain stagnant.

It then befell on me somehow to cope with the free and dynamic conversation style of Trevor and Randy. After some while, I invented some strategies to counter the dynamo, and make the conversation flow.

I coined some own expressions to impress the kids. Kids respect people with their own words, you know. So I would go, for example, "I'll beat you up", and then follow, "I'll heat you up", and then say, "I'll eat you up", so that the verbs would rhyme.

"I'll beat you up, heat you up, and eat you up!" Trevor and Randy, especially Trevor, got a kick out of my clumsy invention and started to imitate me.

Everything was so unexpected.

When I was 15, I traveled to Vancouver. It was summer. That was the first time that I ever went abroad.

Although I had by then studied English for three years at the junior high, my language skill was still poor.

Verna came to pick me up at the Rembrandt hotel. When we arrived at 7580 Railway avenue, two boys dashed towards us. They were Trevor and Randy.

Trevor and Randy wanted to play with me the moment we arrived. So we played the Game of Life. What followed was the most trying time in the history of my learning English as a second language.

Adults make considerations for the fact that I am not a native English speaker.

Kids don't. Trevor and Randy bombarded me with questions and comments like a rapid fire, and I had to respond in kind. The first ever game of life played in English was a milestone in my upbringing.

Everything was so unexpected.

Please can I have a T.V. show which can be enjoyed in 30 minutes

When I was young I used to have many objections against the so-called blockbuster films from Hollywood. I liked films by Yasujiro Ozu, Andrei Tarkovsky, Ingmar Bergman, Ermanno Olmi, Víctor Erice, and so on. The more popular ones almost never thrilled my soul, to be honest, cross my heart.

In Tokyo, the films that I love were shown in a few theaters, while the blockbuster films were shown everywhere. I used to walk around the Tokyo streets with my like-minded friends, and complain that I never understood the foundations and rationale for the popularity of these things.

That was then. It is now. I can now see the motives behind the blockbuster films, apart from the obvious one of making money. I admit that good things might come out of the popular trends, though my emotion still resonates with films of minority sensitivities, like the ones I mentioned above.

One thing I realized in the meantime is that I rather like American T.V. series. The discovery came on the airplanes, when I watched the installed video. These T.V. shows, shown typically in the concise duration of 30 minutes or so, were more to my liking than the extended two hours format of the typical Hollywood films. I could appreciate the effort that went into making a concise, slim script which can entertain people in a short time on the air.

I am thus unconsciously always on the look out for good American T.V. shows. There is one important condition, though. The episodes must be self-contained, to be viewed individually. I cannot take the kind of shows which keeps going and going, as a continuous single story. That would be eventually worse than the 2 hours format of the films.

Please can I have a T.V. show which can be enjoyed in 30 minutes more or less, please.


Seinfeld is a typical American T.V. show that I like. The episodes are self-contained.

A plum blossom seem to symbolize a distant past long forgotten

The other day, walking along a Tokyo street, I noticed that a plum tree had started to bloom. While my mind was being deeply shrouded in the winter atmosphere, nature had already begun the preparation for the rejuvenation in the great cycle of life.

Until several years ago, I used to live near a very large park. It was my custom to go for a jogging there. It took about 15 minutes to go around the park. At one corner, there were tens of plum trees. In the cold weather of January, these trees started to bloom, and gave comfort to the lonely soul which was making physical effort, to no practical avail apart from good health.

Near the plum trees, I sometimes witnessed an old man, with a bicycle on his side. He used to practice singing, with a bottle in his hand. Occasionally, he would drink from the bottle, and go gurgling, apparently in an effort to refresh and enliven his throat.
As I was always running past, I could only take a snapshot vision of this gentleman of this intriguing behavior. When I chanced upon him, I considered it as a bonus.

I wonder if the gurgling gentleman is up and well these days.

As I was passing the plum tree the other day, all these memories came back to me in a flash.

The smell of a plum blossom seem to symbolize a distant past long forgotten.

The cloud has already arrived

People talk a lot nowadays about cloud computing. When put in the strictly algorithmic context, there may be many targets and obstacles, still to be reached and dissolved. In terms of the way information is traded between human brains and nurture cultural environment in that process however, the "cloud" has already arrived, if without a resounding fanfare or a vengeance.

When I write this journal, for example, I put the resulting chunk of words into the internet, which the kind-hearted people access and read each day. It may seem a small thing, and it is a small thing in the context of human civilization as a whole, but the trading is here and now, where the like-minded are shrouded by a common medium materialized by the daily communication of information.

The Amazon kindle automatically archives issues of periodicals on the web, relieving the machine of the need to store incrementally heavy information. This is a particularly explicit instance of cloud computing. A similar process is already here for the human brain.

You know pragmatism is different from utilitarianism.

I had a chat with my philosopher friend Ken Shiotani over lunch. He was lecturing in Hosei University, and I caught him as he was waiting for the elevator in the hall.

These days, I make a point of having a time for discourse during the time of my day, as otherwise my intellect would suffocate and become just practical.

Our conversation on analytic philosophy led to Shiotani's appraisal of philosophy in the United States.

"The Americans have an inferiority complex towards the Europeans as regards philosophy", Shiotani said. "As a result, they stress pragmatism as a philosophical fruit borne out of their own tradition".

"Isn't it great," I countered, "that they have their own problems, and find it, define it, and elucidate it?"

"That's right," Shiotani said, "whereas the Japanese philosophers traditionally just import the Western philosophy and translate them, pretending they are their own. Unless the Japanese philosophers identify their own problem, their contribution in history would be limited."

Then Shiotani suddenly remarked. "You know pragmatism is different from utilitarianism."

"You mean, being pragmatic does not just imply a concern about the utilitarian significances of a particular system of thought, but rather, pragmatism is a whole organic network of methodologies involving epistemology and ontology, a particular way of looking at the world at large?"

"More or less. That's the gist of it"

It was lunch time, and our conversation had to end prematurely.

It is nice to go out of your way a little bit and have this window with your best friend of 25 years, towards stimulating my soul.


Ken Shiotani arguing about pragmatism over lunch.

Ilya Farber

I met with Ilya Farber on Sunday afternoon. When I first heard that he was staying in Tokyo from Friday to Monday, I was amazed at his hectic schedule. Then I learned that he is actually on transit from the U.S. to Singapore, where he is now teaching at SMU.

We found ourselves seated in a soba restaurant. In the next couple of hours we talked about the neural correlates of consciousness, the pros and cons of analytic philosophy, problems in university life here and there, the prospect of consciousness studies in the future, how to liberate qualia from mysticism, and the joy of life in Singapore.

Ilya is such a fascinating person to talk with, so witty and full of love.

I learned that Ilya is fond of Japanese culture, his favorite manga being Ranma 1/2.

It is rare to get on a conversational jet coaster to ride from Dennetian arguments to the creams of pop culture within 10 minutes.

It was so fun.



Ilya Farber in a Tokyo restaurant.

The parameter space for the character heterogeneities

The functions of molecules such implicated in social contexts as vasopressin and oxytocin would naturally depend on the biochemical and biophysical contexts into which these molecules are placed. Therefore, the contexts ("keyholes") are more important than the molecules ("keys") themselves.

The more robust existence of empathy in female subjects might be related to the balance of oxytocin and vasopressin, but they would remain a indirect cause, the direct cause more explicitly accounted for by the specific neural circuits involved.
Keeping in mind these reservations, there are some arguments for the explicit treatment of these molecules as socially active parameters.

If there was an instance where these molecules are in effect traded between individuals through some measures, that could lead to an effective construction of their social functionality.

The intricate interaction of these "social molecules" would ultimately lead to, for example, differences in character. Therefore, the parameter space for character heterogeneities might be effectively written in terms of the parameter space of these social molecules, in addiction to a description by the specifics of neural circuits.

Relatively mild

I don't like wearing a coat even in the middle of winter, as I dislike the feeling of suffocation as one enters the indoors.

Consequently, I opt to wear a T-shirt, and then only a sweater, which is full of small "holes" by their nature through which bitter winds would inevitably blow.

When I went to Hakata the other day, it was snowing and the temperature was very low. As I ventured out of the hotel to have supper, the bitter wind was blowing through my sweater onto my bare arms with an astonishing force. It was at then that I felt a "danger" for my life.

Undaunted, I just hurried on to the restaurant, with my arms gathered around the chest area to protect and shield.

Once I was in the restaurant, I was OK.

Unrepentantly, I go about in the winter Tokyo today with my T-shirt and the sweater. People are astonished to see me without a coat. It can certainly make you alert, reacting to the changing weather. And it is just great once you are inside, without the nuisance of having to get rid of the coat.

It is just the winter of Tokyo that I have to withstand, which is relatively mild compared to, say, one in Russia.

Nobel Peace Prize for Google!

Nobel Peace Prize for Google!

http://twitter.com/kenmogi　

Out in the Open.

Google's recent decision and moves as regards their operation is laudable. I here pledge my fullest support.
The online manifesto by Jonathan Rosenberg, Senior Vice President of Google, "The meaning of open" spells out important ethics and philosophies for how to proceed with this important medium, the internet.

At issue is the competition between an open system and a closed system. When open and closed system co-exist, sometimes the closed system might seem to have an edge in the short run, as they are more efficient in the limited context.

As time goes by, however, an open and free system would win over the closed and controlled system, because a global optimum can be searched and found, as opposed to the suffocation of the closed and controlled system.

In the contingent universe, we must all be aware that it is impossible to control an organic and dynamical system, after all. The very idea of controlling information to the liking of the regime is childish and is bound to fail.

By putting oneself out in the open, one's spirit gets the freedom to grow out of proportions. Only then we can do justice to this precious thing, life.

Until I reached an intimidating speed

I am in Hakata now. My mother was originally from this region.

When I was a kid mother used to take me to the Kyushu Island. Summers in Kyushu had a profound effect on the buildup of my personality. The dialect, distinct and powerful, was a joy to hear and tickling to imitate.

When I look back on those trips on Shinkansen trains, which typically took hours, the transition itself was a joy, and I long for the breath of fresh air they brought.

Nowadays, it is less than two hours on the airplane, and the sense of transition has diminished.

Walking on the Hakata streets at night, I unconsciously looked for signs of change, both internal and external, and shuddered at the absence of the drastic. I needed to run, until I reached an intimidating speed. I've got it here inside still, the wind tells me.

The strange destiny of the Love Theme

It is quite fascinating how a particular piece of culture is accepted on a foreign soil. The Japanese have never understood, for example, how and why the Sukiyaki Song was so well received in the United States, compared to many other popular songs of the days.

The opposite is true, of course. The Japanese have embraced lots of foreign influences, in our own particular way.

The film "Godfather" was released in Japan when I was 10. Although many motifs of the film was beyond my comprehension at that age, the theme tune of the film Godfather ("Speak Softly Love (Love Theme from The Godfather)") struck a cord within me as a child. The powerful melody somehow sound similar to Japanese "Enka" songs, very emotional and full of life.

Through a mysterious process, youngsters in Japan who ride motorcycles as a group adopted the Love Theme as their marching music. These "Hells Angel" youths would use the opening melody of the Love Theme as a fanfare, by putting several music horns on the motorcycle.

Somehow, the image of the motorcycle gangsters dashing through the night streets, with the fanfare of the Love Theme played repeatedly, has entered the popular culture of this nation.

When I think of the strange destiny of the Love Theme thus played out, I cannot help but marvel at the rich and subtle way cultures on the planet are mutually connected and evolve as a organic whole.

Now out in the world

Mystery is generated and deepens when you can experience something at a particular place and time only. Misere, composed by Gregorio Allegri, was one beautiful example. It was only to be heard in the Vatican, at certain special occasions. The copying of the score was forbidden, with the understanding that those violating the embargo will be punished with excommunication.

Then, the young Mozart came along. He was 14. Listening to the Misere in the Sistine Chapel, he later wrote out the entire score from memory. As everybody now knows, Mozart's memories were extraordinary. Mozart had only to make minor corrections on a second visit to the Chapel. It would have been impossible for anybody else to accomplish this feat.

Through the genius of Mozart, the mysterious music of the Vatican was now out in the world. The Pope, after Mozart was summoned to Rome for investigation, praised his musical genius, instead of excommunicating the charming fellow.

Pondering the significance of this famous episode, I wonder if all creative genius is not like it. Bringing to the world a marvelous gem hidden jealously in some obscure corner of the world, only to be experienced by those who were fortunate enough to be in that location by chance. Genius is about highly strung sensitivities and prodigious memories.


Misere of Gregorio Allegri. Made open by the service of Mozart.

As is materialized on his belly front

My best philosopher friend Ken Shiotani is rather big, weighing 120kg according to his recent report. In this slim overconscious civilization, you might think that his belly is rather embarassing to exhibit and see. Actually, quite the opposite is true.

People love to watch Shiotani's belly. What is more, people like to touch it.

When we are chatting in a Tokyo restaurant, as I am a very good friend of his, I can poke Shiotani's belly at any time, in a casual manner. It is rather nice, the rubbery feeling. Shiotani also doesn't seem to mind as he is used to my doing that from student days.

When people observe me doing it, they would like to do the same, and eventually do so, with invariably satisfying results.

Apart from the issue of being politically correct, I strongly suspect that there is something about fat bellies that make people around happy. While naturally concerned about my best friend's health, I respect his way of living, as is materialized on his belly front as well as in his philosophy of time, and doubt, for one, the body fascism that seems to be so rampant today.



Ken Shiotani seen in the front.
In the back you see my another soul friend Takashi Ikegami.
This was on Taketomi island.

Strange dancing.

My body is stoutly built, and my legs are not that long. Therefore, I am not a good one for dancing in the style of ballet.
However, I quite like watching other people dance. Once I went to see Jo Kanamori dance. It was a wonderful performance.

Jo Kanamori leads the dance company Noism. I went to see a Noism performance in their host town of Niigata. I was so inspired by their dancing, that when I returned to my hotel room I began strange dancing.

I tried to imitate what I have seen, but of course my bodily movements fell short. In addition, my dance might have been less of a comic performance compared to the immortal silly walk. Conclusion: Mine was a physical activity without any meaningful purpose.

Undaunted, I keep doing the strange dancing from time to time. Nothing to show. Nobody to see. Just me and the air around me which receives the strange vibe.

The world at large is never to know.

The great novel "Sanshiro" ends thus.

---------
Yoshiro moved closer to Sanshiro. "How do you like 'Woman in Forest?'"
"The title is no good."
"What should it be, then?"
Sanshiro did not answer him, but to himself he muttered over and over, "Stray sheep. Stray sheep."

Soseki Natsume "Sanshiro", translated by Jay Rubin.
-------------

So finally, it was about a painting. To the casual onlooker it is just a painting of a woman with a fan, posing in the forest. It is nothing but the "Woman in the Forest".

To Sanshio alone, the painting is the focal point of his never-to-return youthful wanderings. The encounter with the enigmatic woman, the romance, the agitations, dreams, heartbreaks, and the eventual catastrophe in the form of the marriage of the woman to a total stranger.

The novel starts with the encounter of Sanshiro with Mineko by the pond, and ends with the fulfillment of the creation of the painting in the final scene. The painting hides many secrets and tears under its shining surface.

The intimacy is private, and the world at large is never to know. Nobody is to hear Sanshiro's sighs. Then the novelist comes to the rescue.


The Sanshiro pond in the University of Tokyo Hongo campus, named after the famous novel.
It was by this pond that Sanshiro met Mineko.