Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

A regular theme of this blog is self-reflection. Just a few months ago , I was looking back on my past year as a 33-year-old, wondering what is the next step now that I had my fourth anniversary working with Blackpeak, graduated from my Ph.D. program at the University of Tokyo, got married, as well as became certified in Teaching English as a Second Language, Fraud Examination, and Anti-Money Laundering, all in the matter of one year. A new life project beckons, but at the time, I was unsure what that would be or where it would happen.

It has been more than 16 years since I graduated high school. Many memories of my old days as a public school student in San Diego are fading, not the least because I have practically never lived in the city since graduation. But a recent request to summarize some tips on how I managed to get from a no-name high school to Yale has triggered a need for me to do a relatively rare self-reflection on my four years. It is not an easy one since so many other things that happened in my life since 2006 have been much more memorable and noteworthy than anything I've done back then.

Many Western, immigration-centered societies, from the US and the UK to Australia and Canada, claim to value diversity steeped in equality. Laws are in place to mandate the equal treatment of ethnic, gender, and religious minorities in the workplace and everyday life, often enforced with a strong social taboo against visible, public, and blatant displays of discriminatory behavior against people of different sociocultural backgrounds. Of course, plenty of discriminatory incidents, some of which are well-known and questionable, occur in these countries, but there is a broad consensus at the grassroots level that discrimination is undesirable. Part of how the anti-discriminatory consensus came about in these countries relates to the educational system. Elite universities in these countries are well-known for their student and staff bodies made up of intakes from around the world. The Harvard brand name, for instance, is valued just as much in other countries as in the US, leading to the

Any first-time visitor from Japan to Taiwan should be forgiven for thinking how the two are so different superficially. Whereas small standalone residences dot the landscape in rural Japan, in the more urban, densely populated west coast of Taiwan, personal homes, if not in high-rise apartments, tend to be bunched together should-by-shoulder, head-next-to-head. And whereas Japanese houses can be demolished in a few decades to make way for new replacements, Taiwanese ones sit continue to be fully utilized even as their exteriors are covered with black soot and grime.

In the age of COVID-19, finding a romantic partner is no longer a niche activity. Starting with Tinder, dating apps gradually went from a novelty for digital natives, to a commonly accepted way to meet strangers, supercharged by various physical distancing guidelines during the pandemic that restricted changes for real-life encounters in physical events. While social desirability bias means precise data for prevalence remains unavailable, anecdotal evidence shows that many youngsters now see dating apps as the primary method to go beyond their immediate social circles in the quest for love. With their increasing popularity, dating apps have induced their own sense of fatigue among both newcomers and long-time users. The ease of expressing affection and initiating conversations with new people means that the cost of acquiring new opportunities for dates is drastically reduced. As a result, the value of each opportunity is decreased in relative terms. After all, if it is so easy to meet

Every few years, a movie would come out that extols the need for people to relax, escape the dog race, and enjoy the moment. As unrealistic as the prospect of workers, living paycheck-to-paycheck, suddenly being freed from the daily grind might be, the idea of being somewhere else (really, anywhere else) is such a commonly dreamt dream that such escapist movies continue to be made. To ensure that the remotest prospects of freeing oneself from the capitalist system of labor have at least some sort of tantalizing feasibility, the escapist genre would add familiar storylines and twists to bring the exotic down to earth.

The term "international exchange" can be ambiguous and all-encompassing. Everything from having foreigners presenting the basics of foreign foods and customs to kids in elementary schools  to much more serious seminars in which businessmen get together to discuss how to market their products in foreign lands can be defined under the umbrella of international exchange. In between these two extremes lie a plethora of community events, supposedly held by people with the casual, non-monetarily incentivized hobby of knowing about what's outside Japan.

What do you think of when you hear the words "Bollywood films." Perhaps singing? Dances? Beautiful actors? Exotic locale and clothing? A simple good guy vs. bad guy storyline? These are indeed all very important elements. Indeed, they are the most obvious visual factors that contributed to the global success of Bollywood films in recent years, especially where in locales as diverse as Southeast Asia and eastern Africa, where a large number of Indian expatriates reside and have created vibrant ethnic communities that have gradually pulled in the local majority populations through a distinctive cultural imprint. 

On a rather chilly October afternoon, a half-empty stadium feels a bit gloomy even for the most ardent fans. A massive soccer stadium, home to the professional male and female teams for Chiba, was half-sealed off to make the crowds look a bit bigger (and likely the game a bit easier to manage). During the 90 minutes of the female team's game against visitors from Nagano, fans had to stare at the opposite side of the stadium, completely devoid of souls under the cloudless sky, as shouts and drumming of the team's (semi-official) fan club members echoed through the empty stands.

It is a genuinely odd thing to be tasting injera  in a nondescript suburb of Tokyo for the very first time in my life. But the fermented spongy flatbread made with Ethiopian staple grain teff was certainly the star of the show at the small Ethiopian restaurant. The place certainly was not easy to find. Located among rows after rows of mass-produced two-story residential buildings, interspersed with noisy highways overhead and little-used rivers, there is a small house that was only notable for the small menu board outside and a colorfully printed menu on its front wall. 

You have seen the advertisements. "A job that you look forward to a Monday!" "We are a workplace filled with passion!" "Grow together...toward the same goal!" Every job advertisement seems to beckon potential new hires with the promise of motivation to do the job. And recruiters, consultants, and each college professors seem to agree with the passion-centered outlook. They encourage individuals to seek out jobs that prioritize personal growth through enjoying the job and the relevant learning process, over salary, stability, work-life balance, and other operational knick-knacks.

My wife often complains that my writing is not concrete enough. To her, my articles always seem to be circling around concepts and theories, with a dearth of concrete details that can make those abstract ideas grounded in the realities and experiences of day-to-day life. It is a point that I have to grudgingly concede on multiple occasions. Ideas are great to think about as mental exercises of "why" and "how come," but if they have any relevance as grounds for actionable plans, supplementing them with the "what" and "how" is imperative, and frankly, quite difficult.

みなさんは「旅」という言葉を聞く時、どのようなものがまず頭に浮きますか？見たことのない美しい街並み、食べたことがない料理の味、そして想像もしていなかった運命の出会い。それが私にとってまず思いつくことです。旅からは、日常生活では得られない未知と触れ合える刺激を期待し、出発から遥か前よりその期待でワクワクを感じています。実際に旅でその期待が満たされるかどうかはわからないものの、ただ単に何か違うものを経験できる可能性があるだけでも毎日のルーティンに久しぶりの新鮮さが現れることを感じます。

Doing sales to potential clients has never been my strong suit. Fresh out of undergrad, I used to work in sales for the Japanese e-commerce firm Rakuten, where I truly struggled with the high-pressure tactics and the rigorous performance evaluation based on KPIs. It was no wonder that I left Rakuten less than a year after I happily joined the firm, directionless and somewhat traumatized by the experience doing sales for the firm. Ever seen then, all of my jobs have been "back office," handling operations and content creation with no direct interaction with end clients.

虽说我常常以“三种语言同样流利”自居，中文绝对不能说是我的强项。自从五岁离开中国后，我的中文教育大部分都是通过阅读不同教材自学，加上在家里随便讲讲。除了几个月在台湾的工作，以及大学假期在北京和上海的实习，我从不成在完全说中文的环境里长久居住。

The French-style village on the southern shores of Chiba prefecture tried its best to look out of place. Even though traditional Japanese wooden houses are visible from its backyard, its colorful houses, uniformed staff, as well as pools and baths interspersed with European decor attract plenty of Instagrammers seeking to create a sense of a Frech holiday just a few hours drive outside Tokyo. The fact that the little French-style resort established in 1980 is booked full on the weekends despite lack of public transportation show that the average Japanese citizen's desire to go abroad remains strong.

With a population of slightly under 1 million, Chiba city ought not to be a major market for public events. Yet, the city has no shortage of public spectacles that are accessible to the masses. The city has professional basketball, baseball, and soccer teams, each with its own dedicated facilities. It also has large convention centers, community halls, and other event spaces that can accommodate thousands of people at once, enabling it to be the host of concerts by popular musicians, product exhibitions by various industries, and other ad hoc gatherings such as fireworks and traditional festivals.

Two days ago, I officially entered the 34th year of my existence. As it was a weekday, there was little in terms of celebrations, with the day marked by work as usual, and the night marked by preparations for the next day. Thankfully, as a married man living with my wife, I was not alone for my birthday. Despite her usual working-until-late schedule, she celebrated the occasion with me with some late-night food and watching YouTube videos. Given the circumstances of my life in Chiba, the continuing COVID-19 pandemic, and another workday the day after, I could not have asked for a better low-key celebration.

Jobs tend to be very hands-on. Employees are required to actively work on various projects, and the success of the projects is based on the output that is delivered to the clients. Creating the output requires employees to get their hands dirty, chipping away at a list of tasks for completing the project, and communicating with team members to coordinate the splitting up of tasks. No one gets to simply sit around and read without producing anything. Passiveness at work is, to put simply, not a job description of any productive employee.

As the war in Ukraine continues, Western states are now taking even more measures against ordinary Russian citizens. It has been several months since major Western firms pulled out of the Russian market, leaving ordinary Russians with fewer choices in their supermarkets and fewer ways to move their money across international borders. Now, news has emerged that multiple EU states have prohibited the granting of new visas to Russian citizens for the purpose of travel and studying abroad, making it ever more difficult for those wanting to leave Russia to do so legally.

Foreign residents make up a little more than 2.5 million of Japan's 130 million people, making up less than 3% of the country's population. And these 2.5 million foreigners include many that have been in the country for generations, born and raised to speak no other language fluently than Japanese and identify their cultural allegiance with no other than the mainstream Japanese one. Among those who do not identify themselves as culturally Japanese, the foreign community is diverse, spanning dozens of nationalities and ethnicities, not to mention professional, social, and religious affiliations. 

During my long tenure as a Ph.D. student at the University of Tokyo, I took many odd jobs, both to supplement my income, learn about some new industries, and kill some time while waiting on professors' feedback for my research. One of the more interesting was acting as a test proctor at the university . With many other part-time workers, I had to show up to the testing centers, watch young students line up for their turns, and nervously go about their examination tasks. It was heartening to see the next generation of youths taking solid steps toward their eventual graduation, in a decidedly nerve-wracking atmosphere.

Living in Japan, it can be hard to imagine that humanity is still growing. Even as the country is shrinking by more than 600,000 people a year and face a dire shortage of manpower in the decades moving forward, the world is hitting 8 billion in population, based on recent estimates, driven by continuing population growth in Africa, South Asia, and the Middle East. With India set to overtake China in population in a few years, and several African countries moving up the world's most populated rankings, the corresponding center of human gravity is bound to shift over time.

It is a bit surreal to watch the news about record-breaking temperatures in Europe from a hotel room in eastern Hokkaido. While parts of the UK and France are suffering their first-ever 40C weather in history, the northern island of Japan is still in the cool mid-20s, made chillier with frequent rains and winds, and untempered by the high humidity of the country's more southerly regions that draw up the wet-bulb temperature to uncomfortable levels. There is much to complain about the inconvenience of a rural backwater like eastern Hokkaido, but the summer temperature surely is not one of them.

It has been a few days since the assassination of former Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe during a parliamentary election campaign speech in Nara prefecture, and the news cycle has somehow moved on. The headline news of the day centered on renewed worries about the "7th wave of COVID" with the spread of the new Omicron BA.5 variant on the domestic side and the continuing political turmoil of Sri Lanka on the international side. While press conferences by law enforcement and the church Abe was allegedly involved in still made the news, they have become afterthoughts as people move on with their lives.

There are many downsides to remote work. The lack of camaraderie developed over small talk with coworkers, the lack of a group setting that stimulates creativity and concentration, the lack of clear division between professional and private lives...But suppose there is one consistent positive for remote work. In that case, it is the ability to get peace and quiet when necessary, for meetings, working alone on urgent tasks, or simply avoiding toxic people that ruin cordial workplace atmospheres. For those who enjoy getting things done without being interrupted, working from a home office can be a godsend at such times.

Not a day goes by in Japan in recent weeks that the topic of unusual weather hits the news. From record heat (40 degrees in June!) to clearly changing weather patterns (shortest rainy season on record) to difficulties of regular people handling the weather (the government urges people to cut back on electricity consumption), it seems as if this year will be a year to be remembered in future generation as the year when global warming and climate change went from mere slogans of a faraway land to real difficulties for everyday lives during the ever-longer, ever-dryer, ever-hotter summers.

The tech industry, as it has with many other fields, has revolutionized the process of mating for the younger generation. Ease-to-use dating apps, led by pioneers like Tinder, have now proliferated, with each service increasingly targeting niche markets, based on socio-cultural backgrounds, sexual orientation, shared interests, geography, and lifestyle. Better user interfaces have been accompanied by better algorithms. Automation takes over the painful process of deciding who are potentially suitable matches among an almost endless stream of candidates when so little firsthand information is available about them.

For many future English teachers, the first step is to get evidence that they have the right mind and skillset for instructing students. For many countries, their claim to be fluent in the English language, based on their nationality, cultural background, or visual looks, no longer suffice. With ever-tightening visa restrictions for English teachers, what used to be high-paying summer jobs for students from the world's best English language universities are now reserved for those with the right papers, in the form of diplomas, certificates, and training results, to show know-how in the art of teaching.

The term “global warming” is an effective moniker to convey the cross-border nature of an environmental problem. By emphasizing that the planet as a whole is becoming hotter due to human impact, it begs people from all nations and all corners of the globe to solve the problems that they all face as residents of the same planet. The power of the moniker is such that it has largely become a common belief among the believers of global warming that the issue is neither caused by nor can be solved by one particular group of people located in a specific place on Earth. Yet, a closer look at how the world has approached the issue of global warming reveals a gaping discrepancy in how it impacts different countries in different parts of the world.

Financial districts are some of the most sanitized neighborhoods in any city. Filled with skyscrapers and men in matching suits, they are marked by an atmosphere of seriousness associated with important business during weekdays and the complete absence of life on the weekends. Visitors gawk at the beautiful constructions of modernity but rarely would one find oneself at home in these neighborhoods. After all, they are defined as living but toiling.

Accessing academic articles as an individual unaffiliated with any academic institution can be financially daunting. Academic journals put out by major publishers require expensive access fees to access their content. Many aggregation websites, not the least Google Scholar and JSTOR, either have their own subscription fees, lead back to sites with their own fees, or are not comprehensive enough to reveal all the most relevant and up-to-date research in a particular field. While universities have the financial resources to provide their researchers with access to many of these databases, individuals cannot hope to do so.

For those with some familiarity with the Japanese language, honorific language is one of the big challenges of using the language for daily interactions. Sentences with the same meaning can be written and spoken in multiple ways, with different wording used to show differing levels of respect for the intended audience. When speaking to those of more advanced age and higher social status, one is expected to use honorific language that shows deference and respect. Failure to do so is not just rude but makes the linguistic output feel awkward and out of place. 

Today, the Philippines ushered in a new political age as the country elected a new president with a controversial background. Ferdinand "Bongbong" Marcos, the son of the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos and his famously shoes-loving wife Imelda, was elected in a landslide victory, with analysts predicting the continuation of the outgoing president Rodrigo Duterte's attempt to create more balance in the country's foreign policy between the US and China. Indeed, Rodrigo's daughter Sara was elected as the vice president in a transparent partnership with Bongbong all but ensuring policy consistency under the new administration. 

2018年、台湾政府は2030年までに台湾を英中バイリンガル国家にする 計画を発表 し、英語教師の雇用や訓練、英語教材の作成や利用を目的とする、台湾各地の学校、政府機関に対する 3400万米ドル の初期投資をすることにした。首都台北では、大学とのコラボによる英語教師の研修プログラムが推進され、2021年までには小学校から高校まで含む 51校 がバイリンガル教育対象校と指定された。台北はシンガポールを模範とし、海外人材も在住しやすいグローバル社会を目指している。

近年、日本やアジアの大都会で歩き回ると、所々で外国人の存在を見かける。見た目で明らかに地元の人ではないことはすぐわかるが、彼らは頑張って現地の言葉でコミュニケーションをとっている。世界はグローバル化によってこのような国際移民の数が増加している。2020年世界経済フォーラムの 統計データ によると、同年において出身国以外に住む人口は2.72億人に達し、1995年の1.74億人を遥かに上回っている。新型コロナヴィルスによって海外移住は一旦困難となったものの、今後の世界状況をみると、母国を離れ、他国で常住し、仕事や学習に励む人々が増える傾向は止まらないと思われる。

As the war in Ukraine enters its second month, the damage being suffered by Russia is expanding from the battlefield and economic numbers to the daily lives of individual citizens. Media reports in Japan, at least, are speaking about Russian residents of the country being hurled abuses and asked to leave, while Russian-owned restaurants seeing downturns in clientele unless they put up high-profile campaigns in support of Ukrainians. The issue is grave enough that the Japanese foreign minister had to release a public statement calling on Japanese citizens to not abuse Russians in the country just because they are Russians.

For the UN to become an independent force capable of devising and implementing its own agendas, the organization needs to step above national interests. To do so, it must aggressively push for compromises that align with the interests of all sides in any particular conflict. Only with such initiative-taking can the UN not succumb to one-sidedness when conveying international legitimacy. The task of the UN is not to offer moral high ground to any particular side, but to establish objective forums to discuss how conflicts can be halted in a positive-sum fashion.

I am happy to announce that after several months of dating and living together, I have recently decided to submit the required documentation to officially register my marriage to my wife in Japan. Given my previous jealousy toward the same woman's professional success, for us to come this long way so quickly was as surprising to our parents, relatives, and friends, as it was, in some ways, to ourselves. With COVID still raging on, the decidedly low-key affair, without an elaborate proposal, wedding, or honeymoon, is markedly by an unremarkable sense of smoothness and nonchalance among all parties involved.

As the war continues to rage on in Ukraine, the international community has used existing international forums to hash out exactly how to respond to the escalating violence. One of these forums is the UN. Certainly, the organization has so far seen some actions, including strong words from the secretary-general in condemning the war itself as well as resolutions that frame the war as a violation of international norms and humanitarian principles on the part of Russia. Yet, overall, the UN has been largely absent in the war, compared to the EU and NATO.

It seems like an endless parade of visual destruction. Videos after videos show destroyed Russian tanks and other armored vehicles strewn by the Ukrainian roadside, some with parts blown off and some even laying upside down. separate videos show aerial videos, of drones unleashing their payloads on the columns of armored vehicles below with devastating impact. News articles, in line with these videos, speak of the latest anti-tank weapons, from Turkish drones to British shoulder-launched missiles, that have slowed down the advance of the Russian army.

Before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics began, the Japanese media provided a very subdued report on the preparation of the Games. Consistent with the politics focus nature of Western media outlets covering the Olympics, the Japanese news media reported on the extent to which the Chinese authorities have tried to execute the Games amidst uncertainties surrounding COVID-19. Any and all sense of Olympic unity that was gathered at the Games quickly dissipated after Russia promptly invaded Ukraine after its end, prompting speculation that China asked Putin to hold off the invasion until the Games ended.

As the continuing Russo-Ukrainian War upends the lives of Ukrainian people, with the world following their plight on both traditional and social media, a much less noticed upending of ordinary lives is also happening in Russia. Western companies, from McDonald's and Microsoft to Accenture and Ikea, are rapidly shutting down their operations, depriving the country's residents of the products and services that they have grown used to since the same firms entered and expanded in the Russian market in the aftermath of the Soviet Union's collapse.

I told myself that I can do this. Yet, the Word document remains blank. “I need a sentence, just a simple idea to get this thing off the ground.” The mind was reaching a state of frenzied desperation, even as the fingers remained motionless on the keyboard. They say they do not accept “garbage” for output. But have they never heard of the saying that one man’s trash is another’s treasure? Maybe what I think is the mundane would be interpreted as extraordinary when read elsewhere.

The elevator going up to the third floor of the nondescript office building in front of Chiba Station was old. The doors closed so slowly after the third-floor button is pressed that I had to wonder if the maintenance work, and indeed if the whole thing will just stop working in its equally slow accent to the third floor that at some point, users will be trapped for hours. The building itself looked to be falling on hard times too, with unidentifiable companies of unknown business scopes occupying its equally unidentifiable office spaces.

My girlfriend is a stunningly successful career woman. A self-trained computer game and blockchain programmer, she is fluent in multiple programming languages, successful as a cryptocurrency trader, and soon to be fairly well-off when the startup she works for and holds stock in it completes its IPO. Her wide networks in the programming world mean she frequently finds herself at the receiving end headhunting messages with highly competitive compensation packages. But with the high demand for her skills, she finds no trouble finding better work anyways even without the headhunters.

Japanese and Chinese social media are respectively inundated with reactions to the misfortunes of two different athletes competing in the ongoing Beijing Winter Olympics. On the Japanese side, the ski jumper Sara Takanashi was disqualified for using a jumpsuit that violated competition rules. She apologized profusely on social media after the disqualification for contributing to Team Japan failing to secure a medal in the team event. On the Chinese side, figure skater Zhu Yi fell during her routine, contributing to China not medalling in the team competition. Videos made rounds of her crying after the fall.

Recent increases in the number of new COVID infections make for some grim reading. The city of Tokyo saw an unprecedented 20,000 cases per day for two consecutive days, with no sign that the number of infections will decline. Japan as a whole recorded 3 million cumulative cases of infections, only two weeks after hitting 2 million. With much of the population not yet receiving the third shot of the vaccine, little is there to slow down Omicron and whatever other variants that COVID will evolve to next in its quest to continue dominating the daily lives of people around the world.

Plenty of articles these days mention the correlation between social media and mental downturns at a personal level. Anyone using any social media platform would be bombarded by texts, pictures, and videos of others enjoying both their professional and personal lives. On the professional side, social media is inundated with boasts about the latest promotions, product launches, and other notable career highlights. And in private lives, others seem to be all having beautiful kids, getting married to beautiful spouses, and visiting beautiful locations for carefree vacations. It is not easy not getting jealous.

Previously, I wrote about my current plan to move to a new apartment in Japan, and all the hassles associated with fending off different moving companies as they offer ever-more competitive prices for trucking my few belongings somewhere just some ten minutes away by car. But after all the belongings went to the new apartment and set up in their proper locations, it was what end up being just one of many small paperwork-filled procedures that entails the end-to-end process of getting a new life set up in a new residence, Japanese style.

The small poster next to the main entrance of the neighborhood gym is clearly designed to be seen by all who try to enter its premises. In big red letters, it states that the gym absolutely prohibits tattoos and that anyone found with one will be reported to the police and be escorted off its premises. Regular members of the gym who are later discovered to have tattoos, the poster says, will have their membership immediately revoked. The gym proudly presents itself as a "clean" destination free of body art, and the poster at the entrance symbolizes it.

COVID-19 is a time of great instability. As one variant after another hits the global economy, many companies suffer from volatile costs associated with changing travel policies, supply chain disruptions, and clients being unable to continue business relationships. Many employees end up paying dearly for the suffering of their employers. For those unfortunate enough to be in the most volatile industries like restaurants , whole departments, workplaces, and business ecosystems have disappeared alongside jobs of individual employees.