The time has come to summarize what I’ve seen, done, and experienced over the past year in a few words. Unfortunately, I haven’t had many new experiences this year. As I’ve grown older, the opportunities to try new things have diminished.
The words of the year 2024 are Murasaki Shikibu and ChatGPT. As you know, Murasaki Shikibu was a Japanese woman who authored The Tale of Genji, a novel written in the early eleventh century that later became world-famous. This novel is considered the oldest known work of fiction written by a woman. This year, Japan’s public broadcaster NHK produced a year-long drama (taiga drama), Dear Radiance (Hikaru Kimi e), with this remarkable woman as its protagonist. The drama centers on the life of the woman who would later become Murasaki Shikibu and primarily explores her romance with Fujiwara no Michinaga, the nation’s most powerful figure during the era when she wrote the novel.
Although there is no historical evidence that Murasaki Shikibu and Fujiwara no Michinaga had a romantic relationship, she is portrayed in the drama as encouraging him, her lover, to seize ultimate power and govern wisely for the sake of the Japanese people. In return, he uses his authority and wealth to provide her with the financial and material support needed to write The Tale of Genji. While she was of too low a social rank to become his legitimate wife, their bond is depicted as being far tighter than his relationship with his lawful spouses.
The drama features captivating performances by Yuriko Yoshitaka as Murasaki Shikibu and Tasuku Emoto as Fujiwara no Michinaga, drawing in many viewers, myself included.
When it comes to CharGPT, no year has involved me more deeply with it than this one. While many other generative AI tools like Claude and Perplexity became available this year, since the advent of GPT-4o, I have most frequently turned to ChatGPT — for inquiries, seeking opinions on social issues, and even drafting the English translations for this entry.
Someday, I might even have ChatGPT create the entirely of this entry from scratch. Of course, that would require considerable skill in prompt engineering.
This year began with a series of national crises, including major earthquakes and tsunamis, aviation accidents, and fires, casting great uncertainty over the future. Yet, it seems I’ve managed to make it to the year’s final day. I hope to continue adapting to the changing tides of the times and strive to live my best in the coming year as well.
I have long been fond of airline flight attendants not only because of their charming appearance and graceful behavior on board but also because of their professionalism as security personnel who protect the cabin and passengers during emergencies. Their dignified appearance, backed up by their readiness to risk their lives to fulfill their duties in times of emergency, fascinates me.
Aspiring candidates must undergo months of rigorous training after joining an airline to become a flight attendant. During each part of the training, which includes training in emergency behavior, they must take several tests to ensure that they have mastered the skills required in each course and pass all of them. Even after becoming a flight attendant, they must undergo recurrent training, including emergency training, once a year to maintain their skills. They are suspended from flight service for a certain period if they fail.
Flight attendants, who have overcome such difficulties, are different from the average waitpersons who solely serve food and drinks in a restaurant, and they fascinate us with unparalleled professionalism. They demonstrated their professionalism to the fullest when the Japan Airlines Flight 516 was involved in an accident on January 2. When the Airbus A350 aircraft went up in flames after colliding with a Japan Coast Guard Dash-8 aircraft on the runway at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport, 12 JAL crew members calmly calmed the 367 panicked passengers as they saw the burning exterior and smoke entering the cabin, assessed where the doors safest to evacuate were, opened the doors and developed the emergency escape chutes according to the predetermined procedure, gave precise instructions to the passengers on how to escape, and helped all of them make it out alive. The crew evacuated after checking inside the burning cabin, ensuring that none of the passengers were left behind. Their selfless airmanship was impeccable.
The fact that all of the JAL passengers and crew survived the accident was due not only to the flight crew’s professionalism. The passengers’ high level of discipline also helped this miracle. None of the passengers acted selfishly, ignoring the cabin attendant’s instructions. They gave up their carry-on baggage, which included toiletries, car and house keys, laptops, tablets, expensive cameras, and New Year’s otoshidama from relatives. Although it must have been a wrenching pain for them, it was unavoidable for the safety of all passengers.
Air travel is a privilege allowed only to those who can share responsibility for safety with crew members and passengers with high ethical awareness. As passengers on board an aircraft, you may want to remember to respect the flight attendants in charge of security and help them facilitate their duties. You may want to check your baggage as much as possible to minimize carry-on baggage to conserve overhead bin space. If you have carry-on items that are small enough to put under the front seat, you may want to do that rather than put them in the overhead bin to give up space for more oversized baggage. If you have large and heavy baggage, you may want to put it in the overhead bin yourself rather than make a cabin attendant do so.
When sitting, you should permanently fasten the seat belt and turn off or set all your electronic devices to airplane mode. Keep your shoes on and stay awake when taking off and landing to be ready to take action quickly should any emergency occur. It would be desirable to wear pants with pockets to keep valuables inside in case of evacuating without having any bags. In colder months, wearing a coat is a good idea to increase the room for putting things inside.
When a cabin attendant serves or lowers your in-flight meal or drink, it is a good idea to say “thank you” to her, looking her in the eye and smiling. The thank-you word will boost her morale. If you have to ask a question or even make a complaint, you should do so in a gentlemanly and calm fashion. When disembarking after landing, saying “thank you” with the utmost gratitude to the cabin crew who stand and see you off is desirable. Especially if you are getting off a delayed flight that forces them to work late at night, the word of thanks to them will be most comforting. They are busy from start to finish. You may want to be considerate to them, though it’s true for everyone, and to help them fulfill their duties. You should strictly refrain from stopping a busy cabin attendant and forcing her to write your logbooks.
Again, the flight attendant is the security personnel responsible for the safety of the passengers. Whosoever annoys her, whosoever looks down on her, whosoever looks on her to lust after her, whosoever yells at her, whosoever touches her body or otherwise molests her is not fit to be on an airplane and should immediately get off board and use transportation appropriate to status.
An airplane cabin is a solemn salon reserved solely for humble and modest passengers. Only those ladies and gentlemen deserve the smiles of the “angels on board.” Passengers’ continuous awareness is required to keep their smiles.
On New Year’s Day, as I do every year, I paid a New Year’s visit to a local shrine to pray to the deities enshrined there for the development and prosperity of the Imperial nation and the happiness of all the people, to buy a shrine calendar to check my good fortune around my star for this year and to draw an omikuji to predict my fortune for this year. Then, I gathered around a festive meal with my relatives to celebrate each other’s health and pray for a safe and peaceful year ahead…until we heard the news of the earthquake and tsunami centered on the Noto Peninsula in the afternoon.
As reported worldwide, on New Year’s Day afternoon, a magnitude-7.6 earthquake centered on the Noto Peninsula, followed by intermittent aftershocks, devastated the cities of Wajima and Suzu and surrounding towns. The following massive tsunamis swept away some parts of those towns. Residential houses and commercial buildings were destroyed. The morning market in Wajima was burnt down. Dozens were reported dead, and rescue efforts are underway for hundreds of people believed to be buried alive. Those who escaped death fled to shelters, enduring the cold and inadequate water and food rations. They will have to live in squalor for years to come until they can rebuild their homes.
Sakaguchi Shigeru, the mayor of quake-ravished Wajima, says the city desperately needs food and supplies. He says they have 10,000 evacuees but only 2,000 meals and are deficient in water. The SDF is doubling its officers in Wajima from 1,000 to 2,000 to assist. pic.twitter.com/7IhO33ArCa
On January 2, a Japan Airlines airplane collided with a smaller plane of the Japan Coast Guard at Haneda Airport in Tokyo. All crew and passengers of JAL miraculously managed to evacuate off the plane alive, but 5 out of 6 crew members of the JCG were confirmed dead.
On January 3, a believed-to-be-mentally-ill young woman on the train approaching Akihabara, Tokyo, stabbed at random several men near her on the same train simply because she wanted to attempt to kill somebody. The victims were hospitalized, but all of their lives were not in danger.
A woman who says she’s in her 20s has been arrested for stabbing at least four men on the Yamanote line at Akihabara Station in Tokyo. There are no fatalities. Other passengers restrained the assailant until police arrived. pic.twitter.com/LZOiHRmYz9
It’s time to wrap up the words of this year. As I do every year at the end of the year, I’m looking back at what has happened to me and what I have encountered over the past year, and I’m listing them up in a few short words.
The words of 2023 are flight simulation, fitness, TOEIC, and voice recognition.
Flight Simulation
As I wrote in the past entry, I’ve enjoyed flight simulation since I bought a gaming PC with Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020 installed, a control yoke, thrust levers, and rudder pedals. I’ve continually downloaded and used terminal and en route charts and documents provided by the Federal Aviation Administration and Japanese aviation authorities. I flew a Cirrus SR22 in the early stages to learn the flying basics. Several months later, I changed the plane into a Beechcraft G58 Baron twin-engine airplane to develop advanced flying skills. These days, I fly Boeing 787 Dreamliner between airports, both in Japan and the United States.
Fitness
As I turned 50 this year, I had more and more opportunities to feel testosterone deficiency. Reading that strength training was the best way to supplement it, I decided to join a fitness gym and begin training regularly. I had several fitness gym chains nearby to choose from. Out of those gym chains, I decided on Anytime Fitness and became a member since I was attracted to it having franchises worldwide. Members who have been members for over a month can enter and train at any Anytime-Fitness-branded gym worldwide. Since I joined, I have sometimes used several different Anytime Fitness gyms besides what I usually use, from a gym a little farther from the home-ground gym to that in my homecoming prefecture and that in Taipei.
Of course, training once or twice a week for about six months is far from the muscular body of a bodybuilder, but it seems to be compelling enough that my shoulders, arms, chest, and thighs look a little tighter, and I no longer find it hard to climb stairs.
However, I have been overeating after workouts and have gained weight, and my body fat rate has gotten much worse, so it seems that a different approach is needed to improve these things.
TOEIC
The TOEIC stands for the Test Of English for International Communication and is one of the standardized English tests administered by the Educational Testing Service, a New Jersey-based non-profit organization, to measure English proficiency, mainly in business situations. The TOEIC L&R test is a listening and reading test on paper and one of the most well-known English tests, particularly for Japanese and Korean businesspeople, as an indicator of English proficiency for better or worse. It measures test takers’ performance in listening and reading sections. Their performance in each section is shown as scores ranging from 5 to 495 points, and total scores range from 10 to 990 points. The higher the scores they take, the better their English ability. If you have 900 points or more, at least traditional Japanese companies like the one where I currently work would evaluate you as a high English performer.
My highest score so far is 915 points, which I earned in 2017, but the score is so old that I need more recent scores. I took the test several times in the last two years, all with scores hovering around 830 to 895 points, except the 900 points I got this October. The reason why I can’t take 900 points or more so often is apparent. It is because of my lack of listening ability. It would be imperative to make my lifestyle more “English-oriented” to get more used to English.
Voice Recognition
I joined a new service development team for AI-based voice recognition services in July of this year. I never knew the team members before joining the team, but the job in this team is a new and exciting challenge.
2023 is the year when the COVID pandemic ended, authorities lifted many restrictions and mandates, and people regained more freedom to participate in activities nationwide and overseas. Although unrest is still underway in several places worldwide, I hope people will be happier with many good things next year.
I visited Taipei last week. It was the first time I went abroad in four years, as the coronavirus pandemic beginning in 2020 had prevented people from getting in and out of borders. Since the border opened this year, I wanted to travel somewhere overseas. I chose Taiwan for this trip because I wanted to see the whole exhibition of the National Palace Museum in Taipei. I also wanted to enjoy Taiwan before it was too late due to possible unrest in Taiwan, which is likely in the near future.
The passport control procedure at Narita Airport was more advanced than four years ago. There were automated gates instead of passport control booths. A small scanner was in front of each gate. The procedure was to place the page with the passport photo face down on the scanner, to face up to the camera in front of the gate, and to wait for the gate to open. The gate doors opened shortly to let me go beyond. No pages of my passport were stamped. If you wanted your passport stamped, you could stop by a conventional manned booth a little further to ask for a stamp.
There were more shops and restaurants between the passport control and boarding gates. The Tax Free Akihabara was more spacious than before. The food court provided various kinds of Japanese foods. A large souvenir shop sold light meals, travel toiletries, and Japanese art and craft products.
The airline I took this time was Starlux Airlines, an emerging Taiwanese airline founded several years ago. It was not a so-called low-cost carrier, and in-flight meals were complimentary.
Since the outbound flight arrived late in the evening and the return flight departed early in the morning, I decided to use a capsule hotel attached to the airport for the outbound and return flights instead of staying in Taipei City. Changing lodging night by night meant that I had to carry my luggage at all times, so instead of using a carry-on bag, I packed all of my personal effects in a 20-liter backpack, always on the move with it.
The airplane cabin was clean, with brand-new wide seats. Flight attendants were professional, and in-flight meals were splendid. A retractable tray table, a small rack for a cell phone, and a USB port were equipped on each seat back. A touch-screen LCD on the back seat provided multilanguage information and in-flight entertainment, including movies, in-flight meal information, and various flight maps. What I liked most was the cockpit mode, which displayed our plane’s current position over the map, current heading, current altitude, and current ground speed in knots.
The airplane flew for four and a half hours and arrived at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport at 11:30 pm, a little delayed from the scheduled arrival time. The immigration process in Taiwan didn’t change from what I’d had last time. I passed my passport to the immigration officer sitting at a booth, who scanned my index fingers’ fingerprints on the scanner in front of the booth, stamped my passport, and told me to go.
Arriving at Terminal 1, I had to take a train to Terminal 2 to get to the capsule hotel where I would stay the night.
Finding an ATM at Terminal 2, I withdrew NT$5,000 with my US Bank ATM card and went up to the fifth floor with the escalator nearby to go to the capsule hotel.
I found the entrance of the capsule hotel on the left side. Entering the entrance, I saw the representative of the reception. He looked into my passport and asked me to pay NT$1,800 as the fee for that night in advance. I passed my AMEX card, but he said it wasn’t available. I paid NT$1,800 in cash because I happened to have the money withdrawn just before.
After payment, he took me to the shoe-changing space and told me to remove my shoes and put on slippers in the locker where my room number was printed. I had to have these slippers on while I was in the hotel. He guided me to the automated door, opened it with a card-shaped room key, and let us go inside to lead me to the cell where a bed where I would sleep was installed.
A cloth shade was the only shutter that separated each cell from the outside. The sounds of other people packing and unpacking, doors opening and closing, and even snoring could be heard, making it noisy and difficult to sleep. The bathroom was shared. A placard instructed to dispose of toilet paper in a wastebasket on the side of the toilet, not flush it after use. There was a shared shower room, but no bath towels were provided (though the receptionist would’ve lent them to me if I’d asked in advance).
The following day, I checked out of the hotel and took the train to the Taipei’s city center.
There are two kinds of trains: the Commuter train and the Express one. The Commuter train stops at every station to Taipei Main Station, the terminal station. The Express train is faster because it stops at only major stations and skips others. The Commuter takes one hour from the airport to the Taipei Main Station, while the Express takes just 40 minutes.
An endless walk at the Taipei Main Station to change trains, a Red Line MRT ride to Shilin station, and a dozen-minute bus ride from the station took me to the National Palace Museum.
The National Palace Museum in Taipei is famous for exhibiting Chinese historical masterpieces collected by the Qing Imperial Household, such as chinaware, bronze potteries, arts, calligraphy, ceramics, lacquerware, and jadeites. The two must-see items are the Jadeite Cabbage and the Meat-shaped stone.
Time to revisit the most popular treasure in Taiwan's National Palace Museum ~ the Jadeite Cabbage, carved from single variegated piece of jadeite, ingeniously taking advantage of variegations & defects, just 18cm (7in) high. Locust & katydid hide in leaves (at R) (Qing Dynasty) pic.twitter.com/FDlHHoKICb
The exhibition areas of the National Palace Museum were too large to visit and see all the exhibits in a single day. I spent all the two days allowed for this trip and could finally see this vast collection of exhibits.
The museum ticket was valid for one day, so even if I left the building once, I could enter again on the same day. If I wanted to have a meal during my visit, I could use the restaurant in a separate building or eat at Sanxitang, a restaurant on the fourth floor of the same building as the exhibition halls.
I had lunch at Sanxitang because the food provided there was less expensive than that served in the restaurant in a separate building. It cost nearly NT$1,000 for what I ate for lunch, though.
The appeal of Taiwan’s food was not limited to such fine cuisine. The food served at night market stalls was also delicious and cost less than NT$100 per dish.
This is a rice bowl topped with fried chopped fish, squid fillets and fish paste marinated with starchy sauce. It was served at a Lin-Chiang Street Tourist Night Market stall in Xin-yi District.
McDonald’s was also one of Taiwan’s popular restaurants. Visitors were to place their order at the large touch screen instead of going to a cashier and being asked for their order by the clerk. I ordered a Big Mac combo for dinner. The Big Mac tasted almost the same as what I ate in Japan. Coke and an apple pie tasted a bit different. An Egg Mac Muffin was a bit softer.
While walking around Taiwan, looking around a bit, I noticed an important fact: Taiwan is a small island, but it is mountainous and has many ups and downs. It is tough to invade and occupy such a place from the outside because the islanders can easily hide from invaders, and it is easy to target them. Even if an elite army attacked in large numbers, they could hold out for several months. Chiang Kai-shek was right to flee to this island in 1949 after the defeat in the Sino-Chinese Civil War, as the Chinese Communist army had not been able to attack the island until now.
As I wrote in this entry of my blog, I became interested in flying an airplane last year; I had been interested in airplanes and aviation 20 years ago, but at that time, I was more fascinated by the women flight attendants who took care of the passengers in the cabins of airplanes than by the flying itself. This time, I was seriously interested in piloting the plane itself.
Of course, I don’t have the time, ability, or financial resources to attend flight school or have a flight instructor train me to get a certificate to fly an actual airplane. What I am trying to do is just a simulated flight using a flight simulator. Nevertheless, the version of Microsoft Flight Simulator released in 2020 is much closer to flying a real airplane than the previous versions, so mastering how to fly in that simulator is enough for me. Most reassuringly, nobody will die or be injured if I make a mistake in the controls.
In the months since late last year, I taught myself about navigation, including using wind triangles to determine true airspeeds and tracks from winds and courses, airplane structure, basics of aerodynamics, weather theory, maneuvers, and facilities and signage at airports. The Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s free online resources such as charts, handbooks, and other publications, and the airplane manufacturers’ online Airplane Flight Manuals and Pilot’s Operating Handbooks (AFM/POH), were excellent teaching aids. Aviation-related websites, such as SkyVector, Aeronautical Information Manual, and FlightService also helped a lot.
After learning all I could about airplanes, I bought a reasonably inexpensive gaming PC and installed Microsoft Flight Simulator 2020. I then purchased a control yoke, rudder, and thrust lever for flight simulation software and connected them to the PC. I went through the flying tutorials in that software and learned the basics of piloting. Much of what I had learned about airplanes up to that point came in handy. I chose the Cirrus SR22, one of the most used aircraft in primary flight training, and practiced for a few months before switching to a twin-engine Beechcraft G58 Baron. The Civil Aviation Academy in Japan uses these aircraft types to instruct students who wish to become professional airline pilots. I’ve flown for hundreds of hours between major airports in Japan and the United States (and made dozens of planes crash in the process, though).
I am now simulating IFR (instrument flight rules) flights from one large city to another using mainly the Boeing 787 Dreamliner. Learning to use the Flight Management System is challenging, and navigating an airplane properly by correctly programming the FMS with information on departure and arrival airports and en route airways is very difficult. Still, I am delighted when I can complete a flight to landing. It is still profound, and there is much to learn, but it is a great way to relieve daily stress.
In the mailbox beneath my apartment room, I found a letter from Central Pacific Bank, a Hawaiian bank I’ve kept my account for almost 15 years, saying that it had changed the policy for customers with Non-Resident Alien (NRA). According to the new policy effective April 1 this year, the bank will deduct $20 of monthly service charge from accounts of NRA customers if they don’t keep at least $10,000 in total in their accounts.
The last day of each year is when I look back at what happened, what I encountered, and what impressed me much throughout the year. Then I summarize them up into some words as “the words of the year.” For example, the words of the year 2020 were Synapusyu, the handgun, and computerprogramming. The words of the year 2019 were Hokkaido, Mercari, and Grand Cherokee.
Sadly, I haven’t experienced very many things that impressed me this year. Owing to the COVID-19 pandemic, the state of emergency was issued nationwide in most months. As a result, I could do nothing but stay home all day long, go out shopping at the nearest supermarkets, or drive a car just a few miles away from my house.
Even on such monotonous days, I did some new things. Summarizing this year, the words of the year 2021 were Google Maps, Yurie Omi’s resignation, Tokyo Games, and death games.
