Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

The recent Hollywood epic Babylon depicts the Californian movie industry at the cusp of technological disruption, as the power of sound engineering brings down the past dominance of silent movies of the past. Several protagonists, some established in the industry and others striving to find their place, see the trajectory of their lives change alongside the transformation of moviegoers' preferences. Over three hours of runtime, Babylon alludes to the ups and downs of the movie industry through individual jubilations, heartbreaks, and even suicide. 

Looking back at the performance of this blog, peak interest was achieved back in 2011, when the Great Tohoku Earthquake disrupted the normalcy for the entire northern half of Japan and showed just how even in the most stable of societies, major natural disasters can spark a wave of reflections on just how fragile human civilization can be. That series of posts on the aftermath of the Earthquake, including broken supply chains that led to shortages in normally well-stocked Japanese shops and the fraught mental state of normally calm Japanese people, among others, will always be a highlight of this blog.

Late last year, an article in the Atlantic magazine spoke about the disarray the world of social media services (SNS) is going through. With plunging usage at Facebook and corporate overhaul at Twitter, the platforms and the ways people interact with friends and strangers in cyberspace are due for a complete revolution. The article boldly predicted a world in which netizens are less dependent on SNS for social interactions, a change that is decades in the making and can make for some positive changes in the role that the internet plays in people's day-to-day lives.

Persuading people to buy a product is often much more about them than the products or services that are being sold. Yes, the products or services need to be explained in a way that fits their needs and solves their problems. But for any established product or service, there are multiple alternatives out there, many of which have similar functionalities at similar price points. The differentiation factor often comes down to how the salespeople can find some sort of emotional connection with the potential buyers, tapping into emotions just as much as logic to incentivize and motivate consumption.

Being a mother means doing whatever you can to protect your child from physical and mental harm. Being a top-level investigative journalist means doing whatever you can to find out and expose the truth. Both often involve going to extremes to achieve intended goals, often at the expense of the very safety and sanity of the undertakers. Yet, the fact that so many are involved in these crafts signal that motivation for continuing in them go beyond personal gains.

It is around 8pm on a weekday in a big shopping mall in Chiba. A few shoppers walk through its wide corridors and most shops, selling everything from high-end fashion to tacky knick-knacks, predictably feel rather empty as the peak New Year's shopping season has already come to an end. Yet, in one corner of the mall, next to all the cheap eateries, some two dozen people are lined up in front of a boisterous restaurant behind a food court. While the other shops in the food court served the usual Japanese and Western cuisines, this one made sure its Chinese background was both seen and heard loud and clear.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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. 

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.

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.

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.