Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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. 

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.