Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

As the 2020 Tokyo Olympics draws to a close, major media outlets in Japan and around the world are already coming up with compilations of these Games' greatest moments. Particular to the Japanese case is a sheet abundance of crying on the part of both the athletes and commentators (many of whom are former athletes who participated in past Olympics). In media interviews, athletes shed tears of joy when they won medals, and plenty more tears of regret and disappointment when they lost close matches or just missed a medal. As commentators cried on-screen with the athletes, the media outlets hope that the audience cried with them.

If there is one keyword that describes the athletes that competed in the 2020 Tokyo Olympics, it could be "diversity." Perhaps an unprecedented number of minorities among minorities found themselves on the biggest stage of their athletic career, making news not just because of their performance, but also for their very identities. The examples are numerous. From a Haitian-Japanese lighting the cauldron at the opening ceremony, to a transgender competing in women's weightlifting, to the very first ethnic Hmong competing for US Gymnastics, there are many competing, who, many just a couple of Olympics ago, that would not be present.

For some people, the legendary American gymnast Simone Biles is currently in the news for all the wrong reasons. Before the Tokyo Olympics started, the news was all about her dominance in her sport, revolutionizing the field of women's gymnastics like no one before she has ever done. Given those news articles, people rightly expected her to win gold medal after gold medal in Tokyo. Yet, instead of winning gold medals, she has recently been in the news for suddenly dropping out of the team and individual all-around competitions, citing issues with her mental health.

It was a traditional sight in front of the local community center. Several pairs of mothers and their young daughters were walking from the nearby parking lot, dressed in the summer kimono of different colors highlighted with graceful floral patterns. They were perhaps heading into a classroom that would show the young daughters how to properly dress and undress in these traditional Japanese dresses, no longer used in daily life but still a common sight in summer festivals like firework watching, night prayers at Shinto shrines, and just any traditional summer outings for traditional holidays.

Even at first sight, Sapporo, the capital city of Japan's northernmost Hokkaido prefecture, looks different from your average Japanese city. The center of the city forms a perfect grid, with the streets running north-south or east-west so straight that, if it were not for the streams of cars on them, one can easily see from one end of the city to the other. And these streets, at least two lanes in each direction (if not wider) are designed for easy navigation by cars and other vehicles, rather than facilitate easy crossing by pedestrians just wondering around to get a taste of street life. Shops and restaurants are neatly packed into rectangular buildings on rectangular land plots, rather than spilling onto the streets.

There is nothing remarkable about the Korean restaurant around a corner of the residential suburb that I live in. Toted as a family restaurant, the small space, with a row of counter seats facing an open kitchen is usually run by an elderly couple with little Japanese skills and their middle-aged children. In a neighborhood with few options for Korean food, the restaurant gets a steady stream of customers, at least on the weekday nights that I have visited. Given that many Korean dishes require lengthy preparations of putting together and boiling the ingredients, the proprietors of the restaurant were constantly occupied.

It is interesting to witness a piece of history right in the neighborhood that you live in. In this residential suburb of Chiba city that I live in, there is a little wooden Japanese-style house sitting in the corner of a small backstreet, surrounded by similar houses populated by normal people. Yet, in this little wooden house, decades ago, lived Aisin Gioro Pujie (愛新覺羅溥傑), the younger brother of Aisin Gioro Puyi (愛新覺羅溥儀), the last emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty that ruled China until 1911. After the fall of the Qing Dynasty, he came to Japan as a member of the royal family of Manchukuo.