Mt.Fuji

Today was the last day of business in this year for me. December like a storm ended. I made business calls to a few offices and makers yesterday.
One of them told me.
" Oh! Are you Ms.O? I'm sorry. I'm already drunk. We're having a year-end party now.
Are you talking about new job? Do you have some commissions for me? All right. All right. I will do everything in my power to assist you. Maybe in the New Year. Today is the last day of business in this year for us..."
The other said.
"Hello. I'm really busy now. We're doing a general cleaning. (I heard the noisy sound. Probably people moved desks and chairs.) We finished up our business of this year. What do you want?"
I lost the will to fight.
This morning, there wasn't any traffic jam on the way to the office where I work and the bus wasn't crowded I understood it was obvious that 28th was the last day of business in Japan.

But it wasn't bad to work on 29th. It was fine, clear day today. I saw beautiful sceneries. I saw a flock of white egrets on the river from the bus and I also saw a gray heron. It stood alone at the center of the river. I thought it was the type of bird that loves to be alone.
I saw Mt. Fuji which was covered with snow. I was charmed with the grandeur of the scenery. Because I saw it in Odawara area, I felt like I approached it. Mt. Fuji seemed it was ready for the New Year.
And today's the Pacific Ocean! In this month, I saw it almost everyday from Seisho Bypass. It was best scenery in this month. I have no word to express it.
When I went back home from work, I saw stars. The sky was cloudless, I could see stars clearly. Because the place where I live is hilly area and there isn’t any big neon sign or shop, light sources don't disturb star lights. In short, I live and work in countryside.

Some issues are still pending. For the time being, I'll forget my job.
To go a Korean restaurant with my friend.
To go an Indian restaurant with my friend.
To find a good Okonomiyaki restaurant with my friend.
To undergo an automobile inspection or to scrap my car. That is the question.
I haven't talk with a person who I want to talk with.

I have many things to do until the New Year comes.
I haven't made New Year's greeting cards yet. Of course, I haven't sent my friends them.
I haven't cleaned my room yet. Maybe tomorrow, I will try.
I didn't have a forget-the year party. What a pity! It's not possible.
I didn't take CASEC test. I have to do it until 2006 ends.
But what I want to do first in my winter vacation is having a sound sleep.

Good night. ( I need not to get up early tomorrow morning. Yeah!)

The earth

Our client needs about 4500㎥ of soil to raise the ground level for their building and they are looking for it. Don't you know that we can get an earth dug out of the construction site from public works free of charge? We got information about it. It is that there is about 1000㎥ of soil and users hasn't decided yet. So today I and our client went to a construction site where a farm road is being built along the foot of a hill. We checked the quality of the soil.

We had been worried about whether the soil was suitable for the ground. It was the loamy layer of the Kanto Region. The earth was red and little clayey. I picked up a clod of the earth and crushed it in my hand. Of course, it was wet but doesn't have a slimy touch. The grains of the earth were not too small. And inside of the clod there was an air. We judged it was no problem in this heavy rain. Because we dirtied our hands, we washed our hands in rainwater which was dripping down from umbrellas.

I always draw lines in a space of PC screen which is even and flat. But real space is not homogeneous. All places are original. They always have their own characters.
In Manazuru peninsula, at 23m under ground, there was a lava bed. The peninsula was made by the eruption of Mt. Hakone long long time ago. And in the case of our new building site, at 2m under ground there is ground water and under this layer are gravels because the site is situated near a river. Strata teach us the history of the place.

We always use high- tech equipment like PC, CAD soft to draw plans. But we cannot avoid having a conversation with nature for building. I imagine that primitive human did same thing. Our ancestors must have asked Mother Earth for her advice like me.
Can I build here?

I don't like heavy rain and claps of thunder too. Mother Earth is in a bad mood now.
I can't sleep.

Philanthropy

I watched a TV program having dinner last night. "At that time, the course of history changed". http://www.nhk.or.jp/sonotoki/sonotoki_list.html
Because I'm weak in history, TV sagas and period dramas of NHK are always my history teacher.

The TV program was a story about a beautiful woman who was called " a flower of Rokumeikan". Because her daughters were mentally handicapped and she visited the boarding school for mentally handicapped to give her children a chance to study. And she married a man who managed the school and after her husband died, she didn't close the school in spite of a huge debt.
It seems that handicapped children were still discriminated against in Meiji period and the government didn't care of them. The TV program was short but I can imagine that to manage this kind of school was a hard job for her and her husband.
The woman was born in a rich family and probably she had lived free from care. Such a woman accepted her heroic destiny. But I imagine she was happy because she could marry a man who had same resolution. Even if she can live free from care, she cannot be happy if she and her husband don't have something in common with each other. Their resolution came from Christianity.

Christmas season has come. It's a celebration of Christianity. I don't know much about it and I don't understand the meaning of philanthropy yet. In Japanese, the word of philanthropy has an image that a person is looking down from a height. The word sometimes means hypocrisy. Why?

The school for mentally handicapped near my house was established around Christian beliefs. And I know there are many homes to help people who want to escape from domestic violence in Japan. They're also established around Christian beliefs. The government recently noticed the problem was getting serious but there isn't any public institution like those. Because of Christian beliefs, people practice philanthropy and people who have troubles get their home. We should know the fact.

I'm ordinary Japanese. I ate a piece of cake on Christmas Day and went to a temple at the New year's Eve and went to a shrine at the New Year's Day. We Japanese seem to be a Buddhist but sometimes I think we believe science. Nobody would believe our ancestor was Izanagi and Izanami who were Japanese God. Even if the person didn't study science, he/she believes our ancestor is monkey. Our religion might be science.
Buddhism is peaceful but it doesn't give us motivation to help people who are discriminated. Buddhism is a religion for dead person or the life after the death. Buddhism teaches that if we don't forget to repeat of Namuamidabuthu, we will be rescued in the next world. But I want to be rescued in this world where I'm living now. Buddhism or Shinto hasn't given me new resolution or philosophy. Why?

I think that believing Christian might believe all people are a child of God. And I notice that we don't have no match for philanthropy. Science is useful and explains everything. But it cannot be religion and it doesn't have a power to move people's heart.
We need a religion for people who are living.

Times like these

I don't know the reason why but I had a bad headache during the day yesterday. But as I drank alcohol more, I got better. And on the way home from the party, I entirely recovered. It is a wonder that a glass of plum liquor with hot water is good for health.
(It doesn't seem three glass of beer before plum liquor are good for health.)

Probably every year something new incidents happened in my life. It cannot be ordinary. But even so, I have to say that 2006 was a special for me. Many incidents which exceeded my expectations happened. Some of them taught me that life was full of mysteries and told me who I was.
Looking back on them now, some of them were failures and some of them were treasures for me. Anyway I passed trough them. They fried away into the distance. To tell the truth, I'm little tired.

Now I calm down. I can finish this year feeling relaxed. I'm glad to think so.
I'm grateful to my friends for helping me out. Sincerely.
I feel like I'm back where I started.

I know last two weeks will be crazy because one of our clients made an unreasonable demand. They ordered us a hard schedule. But it's not a problem. It's suitable for this year. I will run through December. I'm sometimes called "teacher". In December, teachers, masters and mentors are doomed to be running in Japan. So I have no choice but to run toward the new year.

The day after tomorrow

I'll eat all of it and not leave even if it's little dirty.
If you are dougting me, I'll cut my throat and give you it.

Mr.Children. I sometimes feel their lyrics are too serious and dramatic on bright days in spring or early summer. But when I listen to them in my car on my way home from work at midnight, the songs appeal to me. Because of this heavy rain, I felt like that I was in the depth of the ocean. Their lyrics gave me the power to see in the dark. The coelacanth in their songs moved my heart.

I read a newspaper article the day before yesterday. It says that all of ices in the Arctic Ocean will melt in summer in 2040. http://www.sankei.co.jp/eco/ I'm terribly shocked at the news.
I'm not interested in the news that a Japanese baseball player cannot contract with an American baseball team. I think we don't have time to talk about such a silly thing.
We can't afford it. If the day after tomorrow like a movie comes, we will be busy to survive that we hardly the time to enjoy watching baseball game.

Coelacanths don't know the news. They haven't seen human being.
If a rise in water temperature brings them to a crisis, what do they think about the result of human folly? Do they forgive us?
Coelacanth, where are you headed now?

A wise decision

Well. I got an e-mail from the section chief this week. His composition is always not clear. And the e-mail was especially long and vague. I couldn't understand what he wanted to say. So I wrote down questions and handed it to him and I explained.
His conclusion was in effect that women in our section need not wear uniform. His long composition was excuses of his conclusion. He explained the process and why our section changes the dress code. What is he afraid of? I told him.

You need only three sentences to inform us of it and as you know, we two women in your section haven't put on uniform since 6 years ago.

Probably they got to the conclusion without grasping the essence of the problem. They might think that they got used to it and it doesn't seem so bad at all. To wear uniform is one of habits. To wear a suit is a habit. And not to wear uniform and to wear a work jacket is also a habit.
I learned that for people who don't understand reason, a habit had stronger power of persuasion than an argument about it.
I heard that Japanese are not good at building up argument of abstract idea like philosophy. Actually were famous philosophers born in France or Germany?
It was not that he made a wise decision. He gave me a vague composition and hoped us would guess his thought from his e-mail. I thought that it was a way to avoid his responsibility. I confirmed the meaning of his composition again and again.

Kiyokazu Washida (鷲田清一) is the first philosopher who philosophized about clothes in Japan. Before he wrote essays about clothes, people had thought that clothes were worthless as a subject to study. But in his books, he explains that clothes are an opportunity for self-expression, another skin, a boundary between the body and the outside, a symbol for experience and idea of the person, an appearance which others are looking, and a shelter for delicate feelings. Clothes are not only a fashion. They are worth to philosophize. Mr.Washida doesn't use difficult words. His essays are easy to understand. Since I found him about 3 years ago, I've been a fan of him. So I always think the meanings of uniform. Probably someone decided the dress code but nobody exactly can explain about the meanings of it. It's only a habit.

It's a pity that the opportunity to debate on clothes with them was lost by his wise decision. Because of reading the books written by Mr. Washida, I have a confidence to win the debate. But I'm sure that's good news.
Did I write too long? The conclusion of this composition is
I made it!

A cafe

When I'm busy, I don't have any ideas which I want to write and enough time to think about something. I'm sad.
Unlimited time when I'm having tea, a pot of tea is better if possible, in a café with nice music and chair makes me feel comfortable. I need having a good time like this to keep my balance and to think things over.
Though there's a station of Tokaido line, there're few good cafes in Hirathuka city.
Starbucks Coffee Shop is next to the ticket gate and recently Saintmarc Café opened. The others are not cafés but old coffee shops. Because of the narrow roads, the shops cannot put their tables outdoor. District capitals are entirely different from cities like Aoyama and Omotesando inTokyo. An open-air café needs not only enough space between the shop and the street, but also something to watch. The scenery around, for example, a beautiful row of houses, a fountain in a plaza and pedestrians.
The people in a café are like an audience and the people who walk by a cafe are like characters in a play. To establish relations between "to watch" and "to be watched" is essential for an open-air coffee.
I saw nice cafes in Venezia and Amsterdam. Because the background were old calm buildings and canals, people who are in a café stood out, So it seemed that people cannot be lazy and should look smart in chic clothes which are suitable for the background. We feel like we're characters on a stage. Their surroundings are important for cafés.

I watched a TV program about Disneyland yesterday. I went there a few times but I thought that the imitation world is oversupplied their services and it wastes a vast deal of energy to afford people amusement.
Because I'm an analogue type person, if I have a pot of tea with milk, nice music, comfortable chair, a pencil, an electric dictionary and a paper, I can enjoy a good time.
I hope that nice cafes open near Hirathuka station.