Into the World:
The Random Thoughts in My Mind

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.