Yearly Archives: 2015

When I was a junior high school student, I liked listening to radio programs. One day, I was listening to my favourite live program in bed, but something was different. From time to time during the program, they provided small pieces of information about a big incident. It was when a domestic JAL flight crashed into Osutaka mountain on August 12, 1985.

I frequently check Japanese internet news, and the 30th anniversary of the JAL crash was one of the hot topics in last few days, like this news site. Another hot topic was broadcast even in Canada: restart of first nuclear plant after the Fukushima disaster. As mentioned in this internet article, the majority of Japanese today oppose using nuclear energy. The reason is obvious; they don’t want to repeat an incident like Fukushima Dai-ichi. In other words, they think that nuclear energy is dangerous as proven in the Fukushima disaster. But is it really that dangerous? A fact that most people outside Japan don’t know is that there are three nuclear plants in the disaster area. “Dai-ichi” means “No.1”, which means there is “Fukushima No. 2” nuclear plant. There is another one in the area, and some facilities in those two nuclear plants ware used as shelters right after the disaster.

What makes Fukushima Dai-ichi different from the other two? The answer is not widely known. Fukushima Dai-ichi was designed and built by an American company, and believe or not, they simply copied their nuclear plants in U.S. which were designed based on the risk factors in U.S. One of the major risk factors in U.S. is hurricane or tornado. To protect important properties from tornadoes, whether it is in a house or in a nuclear plant, people in U.S. keep them underground. Based on this concept, the emergency generator of Fukushima Dai-ichi was installed underground where one of the major risk factors is tsunami. As a result, the emergency generator was severely damaged by the tsunami which triggered the incident, while emergency generators of the other two plants safely shut down the nuclear reactors. Those emergency generators are installed upper floor to protect them from tsunami. It seems obvious who has the responsibility for the incident. However, for some reasons, the U.S. company is not accused.

Recently I read a Japanese internet article about the JAL crash, and I found it connects the JAL crash and the Fukushima disaster. The cause of the JAL crash was revealed a while after. The airplane had experienced a minor incident and the rear part was damaged, then it was repaired and used again. But it was not repaired properly, and it caused the crash. One thing I had not known and the Japanese internet article told is that the airplane was repaired by a U.S. company that built the airplane, and it was not accused. It’s a power game.

Today, August 15, is the anniversary of Japan’s World War II surrender. It’s been 70 years since the end of WWII. After the war, Japan had been occupied by U.S. for some years. (yes, for “some years”. We do not celebrate our independence day for some reasons and honestly, I don’t know how many years it was.) However, Japan is still somehow forced to obey U.S. They defeated Japan 70 years ago, but it does not mean that they are still freed from accusation of causing death of hundreds of Japanese citizens. But sadly this seems a reality.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I do a part-time job with my car; I go to Pearson airport to pick up Japanese students who come to Canada to learn English, and bring them to their host family’s place. I often enjoy conversation with them. One day I met a girl who came from Western Japan, or Kansai. I noticed her Kansai accent, but she did not use Kansai dialect. She told me that she had spent some days with a group of people who came from Eastern Japan, or Kanto, who spoke “standard” Japanese, and they told her “your language is odd”. It’s not a good attitude, but sadly it’s not uncommon in Japan. She said that since then she hesitates to speak Kansai dialect when talking with people who use “standard” Japanese like me. Then I told her that I had decided to leave Japan and live in Canada, and one of the reasons is that Canadians recognize difference. If you do something different from other majority of people in Japan, people typically say “you are strange“, while in similar situations in Canada people say “you are different“. She seemed to like this notion.

A while after that, I found that Angelina Jolie spoke out even further. As written in this internet article, she told kids “different is good”. This is what she actually said:

When I was little, like Maleficent, I was told that I was different. And I felt out of place — too loud, too full of fire, never good at sitting still, never good at fitting in. And, then one day I realized something, something that I hope you all realize: Different is good.

How encouraging is it even for adults? The audience’s enthusiastic reaction assures us that people can be proud of “being different”.

This may sound odd, or may rather sound natural in a sense, but the notion of “being different” differs depending on the situation. Her speech still implies that being different is normally considered to be something negative even in North America. The situation in which her classmates told her “you are different” and the situation in which my design classmates told me “you are different” ware probably very different, and the message she took and the message I took must have been different as well. But in either case people can be proud of being different.

So, I have not written anything for about 6 months, half a year. Reason? I’ve been tied up mostly due to the depressing full-time job and a demanding side business, that was, translating an entire company web site. Now, I’ve submitted the translation, and whether the job is depressing or not depends on me, or in other words depends on how I take it. So, it’s time to regain myself. Actually I have not felt I am myself for a while.

Yesterday, the first “effective” weekend after submitting the translation, I went to ROM: Royal Ontario Museum. As I wrote in an old post, I love visiting museums, and ROM is one of my most favourite ones. Whenever I go there, I find or “discover” a different thing or things to be attractive to me. This time, it was a cup used around 1800 BC. Its shape is not significantly different from today’s typical mugs, but it is not hard to imagine that the time people spent on making a cup of hot beverage at that time was remarkably different from today; filling a kettle with water was not a matter of turning on a water tap and boiling it was not about turning on an electric stove. However, people did it in a few millenniums ago in their daily life, I suppose. I don’t know if the owner of the cup did it by him/herself or had a servant do it, but I suppose, at least want to believe, that it was worth spending time on preparing for relaxation in their life style.

Now, how much time do I spend on relaxing in this 21st century when many things can be done quite quickly?

As I mentioned above, whether the current job is depressing or not depends on me, depends on how I react to it. I know it. I logically understand it. But it is quite hard to actually take it in that way. I feel I’m depressed. But life shouldn’t be like that. I should regain myself. Since last week, I clean my room and organize things in my room little by little. As I wrote in the previous post a half year ago, it is not “the right” way to be myself by making a comfortable room, but this is at least a good start.

I know it is odd to talk about my New Year’s resolution in March, but it is to “ignite my intellectual curiosity”. Working for an uncivilized company often makes me forget that I am an intellectual being. When I looked back the year 2014, I found that I did not do many intellectual activities. Let’s make this year a year to redefine myself and regain myself. Going to ROM and see what interests me is one way to rediscover myself. Relaxing in a comfortable room is another way to rethink of my value. Let’s see what I can do from here.