Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

Every line of work ebbs and flows based on a calendar of deadlines. When no imminent projects are on the horizon, employees enjoy their downtime, taking vacations and going home early from the office. When clients call in with urgent requests, employees reluctantly do overtime, trying to get through all the tasks while their managers and customers breathe down their necks for constant updates. The deadlines vary greatly from industry to industry, with expectations being three months for management consultants to three minutes for the fry cook at McDonald's.

Home. It is a word that is often laden with so many emotions: a sense of belonging when there, longing when not, indifferent when ridden with conflict, joy-inducing when filled with loved ones. People say that what makes a physical place "home" is what is inside: the people, the neighbors, and that feeling of being safe from the elements and troubles brewing outside. For them, a home can be mobile and ever-shifting> As long as what one associated with the home can move together with the person, then the home can be anywhere, in any building.

One thing that this blog does not particularly do well is "specificity." Often, posts start with a concrete event that triggers a line of thinking, but then dive deeper and deeper into the philosophy and values behind the thinking, until the reader is left thinking, at the end of the post, what do the abstract thoughts developed across multiple paragraphs have anything to do with the event that triggered the post in the first place. And too frequently, I am inclined to agree with the readers: as a space to freely jot down my thoughts, the thoughts are prioritized over structure or narrative.

  移民問題は日本においてますます重要なテーマとなっている。日本は過去数十年間、高齢化や人口減少といった人口構造の変化に直面してきた。これらの問題に対処するためには、移民政策を考慮する必要がある。なぜなれば、移民は労働力と消費者不足を解消するために不可欠である。高齢化が進む中、日本は移民の流入により、産業界は必要な労働力と消費者を確保することができる。これにより、経済成長が促進され、日本の国際競争力が向上する。

It has been some days after the sudden ouster and return of Sam Altman as the leader of the world's current tech darling OpenAI. But even as the episode gets written into recent history, there are plenty of mysteries surrounding exactly what happened. Who are the folks who wanted Altman out so decisively, even though they, as the public, know that Altman is the face of the company and an influential voice on AI even beyond immediate company operations? And what exactly did they want to achieve through the ouster? Greater commercialization may be a culprit, but for casual observers, this is mere speculation.

The recent bankruptcy of the co-working space operator WeWork in the US spelled the end to a rather embarrassing saga in the world of tech. Under its flamboyant founder, the firm was once deemed a tech darling ready to disrupt the fossilized world of real estate management. For a while, it seems to have succeeded, offering up rental spaces to other tech startups hoping to bask in the glow of how tech can be utilized to solve legacy industries. Getting other tech firms to believe that it is an integral member of the tech world propelled WeWork to new heights in valuation.

The short corridors to the recording studio are heaving with people, running back forth, looking for cast members, and talking to staff members about what's next on the busy schedule. On both sides of the corridor are a series of tatami-covered waiting rooms, each fronted with a lockable door and a nameplate to denote who is inside. Some of the names belong to well-known celebrities on Japanese TV, and others, like mine, belong to temporary guests not used to being there. Some are no doubt nervous, even if they've been on TV for years. Others are calm (like me), and nonchalant about the prospect of being recorded.

The world is bracing for an AI revolution. Starting from the shock of ChatGPT's dexterity when it first emerged this month last year, both tech experts and the general public are now envisioning a world in which chatbots like it and its myriad competitors go from mere helpers to human work, to become central to daily operations of the global economy. With skills that range from crafting documents and conducting online research to brainstorming new ideas and putting together computer codes, it no longer seems unfathomable that chatbots replace millions of human workers around the world.

One of the most useful skills, in any industry and any line of job, is the ability to think on the spot. Some people can, right after listening to comments from others or even skimming through some dense text, immediately provide their feedback and critique. If the comments are relevant, insightful, and sharp-witted, they leave lasting impressions of being quick to think and capable of real-time communication. Having more meetings, like I do for my job , can be a good way to train the mind to react to information and reply more quickly.

Spending years in "basic" education from elementary all the way to high school can give students an absolutist view of right and wrong. In math and the sciences, answers that adhere to the principles of existing "laws of nature" and rules of computation are correct. In humanities, those that align with historical precedents and the opinion of "expert" teachers are not to be questioned. Such thinking promotes the idea that there is always a right answer, and that answer can be reached by reading books, asking teachers, or conducting research with experts.

The attack on Israel by Hamas is the literal definition of terrorism. After breaking out from heavy defensive barriers separating Gaza and Israel, Hamas fighters explicitly targeted civilians for murder and abduction, with the equally explicit goal of capturing attention. In causing terror and getting global recognition for it, Hamas has certainly achieved its objectives loud and clear: a world that has only been weeks ago absorbed in the war in Ukraine has almost shifted attention to the Middle East overnight. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict, dormant as a political issue for years, suddenly reappeared as a global agenda.

Japan is full of foreigners. With COVID letting up, plenty are making their way to the country as tourists eager to see its sometimes exotic culture. Some are even attempting to establish themselves as workers in its economy and members of a growing migrant community. Yet, despite there being so many foreigners, it is very easy for the average Japanese to avoid contact with foreigners. Besides curt interactions with staff members at convenience stores and restaurants, the vast majority of the Japanese population need not meet foreigners to live out their daily lives.

Shopping for groceries in a Japanese supermarket can be surprisingly time-consuming. No, this is not because of operational issues. Japanese supermarkets are generally structured for convenience, with wide passages through aisles of goods labeled and grouped in categories for easy finding. Rarely do shoppers need to interact with the staff to locate commonly purchased products. The large number of aisles and checkout lanes also ensure that customers can grab what they need to buy and immediately get ready to exit.

College admissions consulting has a straightforward premise: those who are experienced in the admissions side (through a combination of getting into top universities themselves and years of experience helping others succeed) provide expert advice to high school students who are going through the process for the very first time. In any conversation, who is the teacher and who is the student is supposed to be very clear. The high school student, or more precisely, their parents, is paying for the time to be taught how they are supposed to present their near future in a way that is attractive to university admissions officers.

Several years ago, this blog concluded in a post that the meaning of a doctorate is related to a particular career option, not a reflection of the Ph.D. holder's intellect. The time was my early days of coming back to academia, right after a couple years in the East African outback for an American non-profit. The idea of getting back into the books after two years in the maize fields still felt new and exciting. Being an academic was still a viable option, made worthy of consideration when thinking about the joy of doing fieldwork in countries around the world.

Walking down the street, having lunch by oneself, staring at the sky...life is full of moments that seem to be in between more important events. Yet, even as one physically takes a break in between those important events that require full concentration, one's mind never really does. The mind always wonders, for a purpose if needed, and aimlessly, when there is no particular urgent need. Some would define aimlessness as boredom, and try to find some aim to end the boredom. Scrolling through social media on the train, knitting a sweater at night, writing this blog...they can all constitute intentional attempts to be productive.

Distrust in the state and supposed professionals run deep in Russia. For an ordinary Russian, the need for "fixing things up yourself" is ingrained , as there is too great of a chance that unscrupulous individuals with fake licenses charge too much money for not much professional results. From fixing homes to administrating medicine, many Russians do it by themselves, assuming that their amateurism is still more efficient and less deadly than the risk of paying money to the wrong people and facing the deadly consequences of their falsified expertise.

The "Happy Birthday" posts on Facebook seem to be sparser than usual. As the average user of the social media platform becomes older, it has become more and more difficult to keep them engaged and communicating with their equally older friends. After all, older people are busier. They have children to attend to, subordinates to manage, and more responsibilities at work to ponder over. What is more, with more of a stake in work and private life, they are much more cautious about their public image, and try to avoid leaving digital footprints. So many of them have Facebook profiles that stay the same for years.

The recent Barbie movie has in many ways caused a (positive) uproar among the world's feminists. The movie portrays the world of the titular character in which women hold all the powerful roles, while men (the many "Kens") are relegated to positions of mere "boyfriends" whose identity is defined solely by their relationship with the Barbies. The protagonist Barbie's belief in the superiority of the system, coupled with observations about, unlike in the Barbie world, many females remain lowly in the real world, serves as a powerful reminder that female empowerment still has a long way to go but is a worthy dream to pursue.

"I don't think I have anything unique to say about myself..." I get this comment a lot when I speak to teenagers . Not that I am surprised. Not only did I not know what the future held when I was a high school student, I could not confidently that even now, 35 years old and half a dozen jobs later, I can clearly pronounce my passions in professional or private life. Scary as it might be, even more than twice as old as some of my students, I am often not in a position to provide them the one thing they are looking for – a simple, straightforward answer to narrow down their career choices based on their existing interests.

Strategic plans on Word documents, business analyses on spreadsheets, colorful PowerPoint presentations...my image of white-collar work, based on the various past jobs I've had, had always been associated with written materials. Plenty of internal and external communications, through phone calls and meetings, certainly did take place, but ultimately, the results were reflected in written form, to be submitted to the higher-ups as email attachments, easily digestible and transmittable to a wider audience both inside and outside the company.

"I'm gonna go to Harvard." It is almost every day that I come across a student with such ambitions in this job. Replace the name "Harvard" with some other top-ranked, well-known university in the US and the UK, and the sentiment practically describes every student I speak with. There are different reasons that students aspire to a spot in one of the world's elite educational institutions. Some are grounded in the cold, hard logic of high financial returns, while others are bound by the emotional belief of pride and prestige. Whatever the reason, the goal remains noble, motivating, and worthy of encouragement.

When my wife first showed me that Worcester sauce goes well on a meat bun, I was a bit skeptical. A classic sauce of England on a classic snack of the Orient. It sounds like too much of a clash of civilizations without hard evidence on the palate. But with the first bite, I was surprised. Yes, we know that Worcester sauce goes well on grilled meat, but even through a soggy steamed flour covering, the sauce can still evoke the satisfaction of a (thankfully much healthier) steak. Defying culinary categorization at the get-go, the combination transcends international boundaries of what tastes good.

I've never been a purveyor of novels. Their often made-up stories simply did not sit well with my interest in facts, expressed through news articles and research reports analyzing the ins and outs of contemporary affairs. Novels, and their focus on the emotions of individual protagonists, just felt so small, maybe even irrelevant, in the larger trends of our world, represented by wars, pandemics, climate change, and bold moves by executives at globally renowned multinationals. Average Joes and Janes, to me, simply mattered little, on their own, to those larger-than-life forces that shape human civilization.

  今週リトアニアで開催されている北大西洋条約機構（NATO）の首脳会議では当然、お隣、ウクライナでの戦争が主な課題である。ウクライナが領土の奪回で軍事支援が必要である中、NATO各国はどのようにさらなる支援を打ち出すか、そしてウクライナがNATO加盟までの道のりについて議論を重ねている。だが、NATO各国がウクライナ情勢に没頭する中、岸田総理は去年に続き、二年連続でNATOの首脳会議に参加している。日本からもウクライナに引続き支援することを表明すると同時に、NATOがアジアに目を向けることを言及している。

  伝統、それは文化の物理的な形として代々受け継がれられた。人々は伝統を守ることによって、そのコミュニティーの一員であることを実感し、社会的なアイデンティティと地位を確保した。そして、コミュニティーのさらなる発展、継続のため、より多くのメンバーを集めることにインセンティブを感じ、日々努力をしている。やがて伝統は定期的に人を集める行事として形を変え、文化に貢献するだけではなく、貿易や観光資源として地元の経済に大きく価値を提供することになっている。

Hours ago, the US Supreme Court (SCOTUS) ruled that affirmative action – the practice of some of the country's most prestigious universities to openly use race as a factor in promoting diversity of admitted students – is unconstitutional. As expected, among watchers of higher education in the country, this decision has triggered immediate and widespread discussions. The impact of affirmative action policies, especially among overrepresented minorities like Asian Americans, has been noted more than a decade ago when I was a university student. With the policy's formal abolishment, changes to universities' admissions may be significant.

With the increasingly widespread use of the internet, it is becoming increasingly common for it to be used as a source of education. While prestigious high schools and universities continue to value the importance of face-to-face camaraderie among students and teachers, as well as real-world social experiences of offline activities on their campuses and communities nearby, plenty of educational services providers have emerged to offer online-only classrooms. By giving people more freedom to choose when, how much, and with whom to study, these online courses seek to transcend the physical and financial limitations of brick-and-mortar school campuses.

Where does a white-collar worker get most of their work done? The answer these days might be obvious at first sight: somewhere with good internet connections, a reliable power outlet to charge electronic devices, as well as a comfy chair and desk that does not make hours of deskwork not stressful on the back and the hips. Logically, the more routine around this setup, the better. After all, what can be a better desk than one that has proven itself, day after day, that does not cause back pain. What is better than wireless internet that has a track record of not disconnecting spontaneously over weeks and months?

Flip through any media covering the latest startup world; it is not hard to assume what is considered "success" in this space. Firms that can achieve massive growth, general excitement from investors for further investment, and leverage additional resources for further development are the poster boys of the industry. Logically, such media coverage focuses on how growth enables scale, which in turn allows certain products and services offered by such successful firms to fulfill thus-far untapped needs of customers worldwide, introduce new conveniences, and improve lives.

In real life, I am not fond of salespeople. When I receive an unsolicited sales call, I tend not to pick up. If it is from someone I do not know in real life, I would block the phone number. When I receive sales emails and text messages, I largely ignore them. I would like to have control over how, when, and about what topics I speak to others, on my own terms. Being rushed, or worst yet, manipulated, to make a decision will likely lead to increased skepticism and a greater possibility of a "no." My feelings about sales have been so strong that I assume that others largely have the same attitude.

For many companies, managing staff performance has become more systematized as the organization expands and becomes more complex. A system of KPIs, individual contributions to company targets, and regular meetings with managers ensure some sort of standardization as to how each employee is measured against their peers and the expectations of their roles. To ensure objectivity and trackability, the performance targets are often quantified in easily comprehensible and comparable ways. 

"Political correctness" seems all the rage in modern social discourse. Whether or not one supports its aim to punish any and all public figures found to have engaged in any wrongdoing in the past, plenty of individuals, both famous and not-so, have had their careers derailed due to their dark secrets revealed to the masses. The power of what some come to term the "cancel culture" have ensured that everyone thinks twice before saying or doing anything in public, lest their actions and words be interpreted as hurtful to any social group in the future.

A trip from my parental home in the northern suburbs of San Diego to the city center is quite a journey. Swapping through multiple trains, buses, and even a few Ubers, not to mention walks and wait times, each journey quickly becomes a two-hour-plus ordeal, physically draining due to the blazing sun of southern California and visually unappealing due to the constant sights of multilane freeways and shrub-filled canyons. Even in a car, the journey is not shortened by much, as rush-hour traffic has cars piled up in queues every time there is a red light.

The railway station was certainly a nondescript one. A little hallway straddling the railway leads to a flight of stairs opening up to a small traffic circle. Besides the station itself, there is a small park and a few late-night eateries and bank outlets. Nothing out of the ordinary for a very provincial town a good half an hour away by the slow train from the nearest big city. However, on the curbside is a small bus stand, equally nondescript, that advertises a once-every-half-an-hour service to an outlet mall on the outskirts of this nondescript town. That's where I met the Taiwanese couple.

The rest area of the massive public bathhouse in a nondescript suburb of Chiba felt almost like a converted hotel lobby. Rows after rows of relaxing armchairs faced a massive ceiling-to-floor window, facing a cove and the open skies. The sea's waters felt tranquil at night, with occasional fishing boats bobbing on the surface. The cove is curiously flanked by shopping malls, parking lots, and a steel mill, all sprouting activities even as the evening winds down. Farther off in the distance are the skyscrapers of Tokyo, lit up in the night sky. A cloudless day brings bright moonlight that completes the whole picture.

People have stereotypes about other countries. These stereotypes help people make sense of countries they have no first experience interacting with. It can be exhausting to navigate the almost endless nuances of sociocultural, political, and economic differences. Shorthand labels, however crude and oversimplifying they may be, provide, at times, practical starting points for people to build knowledge of a topic that they have little background in. For those who are emigrating to another country or coming into contact with people of another nationality for the first time, having a starting point is certainly better than not having one.

The father was quite dismissive. And this is after more than an hour of conversation concerning the student's situation, peppered with specifics of what classes to take, what extracurricular activities to undertake, and how to prioritize many tasks related to applying to overseas universities. While it is never certain what others mean when they say certain things, my approaching the conversation as an advisor of university admission matters and overall time management needs certainly did not leave as strong of an impression as the fact that I am ultimately attempting to sell something.

It has been a little over two months since I officially switched over to a new job . The position involves daily communication with various students dreaming of going to top schools around the world, as well as their often anxious parents, with the ultimate aim of selling consulting services that improve every aspect of their university applications. The first weeks on the job have been about learning the different services on offer, what would be enticing and persuasive from the perspective of potential clients, and how to verbalize the benefits our services ultimately provide.

Good education is a human right and a public good...so many youngsters are taught to believe. For the youth, it seems to make sense: they go through mostly free compulsory education in which everyone undertakes studies using the same curriculums mandated by local or national governments, often with visual requirements to behave and dress the same way (even if there are some unsavory side effects) on top of learning the same things. For them, education is, more or less, a practice in equalization, providing a largely egalitarian hue on the biggest time-spender of their young lives.

This blog has had a persistent issue with how Asian men are portrayed in American mainstream media. To this day, the post about the perceived lack of "manliness" among Asian men is the most viewed of the blog's history spanning more than a decade. In subsequent years, this blog followed the rise of K-pop as a phenomenon that gradually changed how Asian masculinity is defined in both Asian and non-Asian culture, sparking a boom of clean, often non-muscular Asian men being perceived as a more down-to-Earth alternative of the domineering, violence-prone attitude of the Western "alpha male" trope.

What do you think of when someone asks what your "dream" is? For me, it is something that is entirely detached from reality. I dream of becoming the president of the US, never mind that I am not allowed to because I was born outside the country. Maybe going to space? Never mind that I have neither the physical nor intellectual attributes to start that journey. The point of a dream, for me, is not anything related to its objective likelihood. It represents the heart's ultimate desire, without bothering with the rationality behind how to achieve it.

In his manifesto for sales in the internet age, Daniel Pink declares that the wealth of information the internet has put in the hands of the average netizen has revolutionized the relationship between salespersons and their potential clients. With netizens now able to find minute details of any product or service, their alternatives, and user reviews, salespersons no longer have exclusive command of information relevant to what they are selling. The resulting erosion of information asymmetry has made it difficult for salespersons to sweet-talk clients into paying higher prices for subpar offerings.

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.

This blog started in 2010 to chart my life out of four tumultuous years as a student at Yale University. Those four years were at times traumatizing and left me with emotional scars that, at times, led me to conclude the very worth of going to Yale in the first place. The struggles of not only classes at a high level, but the social expectations of Yale students all being future leaders, lead to pressures to succeed in professional and academic ways that many, including myself, were not mentally prepared for. Some students excelled in such pressurized environments, while many others lost their ways.

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.