Yuki's Web

Author: Masayuki (Yuki) Kawagishi

  • Election of Osaka Prefecture’s governor / 大阪府知事選

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    Today people of Osaka Prefecture are voting a candidate of the governor of Osaka Prefecture. The candidates include Toru Hashimoto, an attorney, Sadatoshi Kumagai, an ex-professor of Osaka University, and Shoji Umeda, an attorney.

    Hashimoto seems to be of great advantage to others because he often appears on TV and is the most well-known to people. But, in my personal feelings, I want Kumagai to win the election, because I had his “circuit theory” seminar when I was a university student 15 years ago and I’m familiar with him very much.

    Actually anybody is ok as I’m not an Osaka resident and I don’t have the right to vote.

    今日は、大阪府知事選の投票日です。弁護士の橋下徹氏、元大学院教授の熊谷貞俊氏、共産党の梅田章二氏が立候補しています。

    ワタシ的には、昔、大学で「回路理論」の講義を受けたことのある熊谷先生が馴染みがあるので応援したいところですが、やっぱり橋下氏が知名度的には有利なようですね。個人的にはどうも橋下氏は胡散臭く見えて仕方ないんですが、与党推薦・支持の上に同和対策予算削減を公約に掲げているということで世論もおおかた橋下氏マンセーのようですし……。

    ま、都民としてはよそのことなんでどうでもいいけど。

    【同日21:20追記】

    やっぱりというか、橋下氏が当選しちゃいましたね・・・。
    ま、橋下氏には大阪のためにがんばってほしいものです。

  • What I’ll do this year / 一年の計は

    Year's first visit to worship

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    New Year’s Day is a good time to decide what we’ll do this year. Many people set up their own goals of the year on New Year’s Day.

    I’ll buy a tabloid every day to read what’s happening in the world. It has a wide variety of topics, ranging from world affairs to sport, TV dramas and gossips. It is a goldmine of the knowledge people know, and a basis of common sense everybody has.

    I have been lacking of the ability to entertain people in a party or during lunchtime. I have only stiff and boring information like politics and economics that most people would be tired of, or maniac topics that only few people can catch up with. This year I’ll be “a normal man” that can talk with normal people and let them enjoy, by getting easy-to-read information from those papers.

    一年の計は元旦にあり、ということで、皆さん年始にはその年の目標など立ててみたりするものですが、私の今年の目標としては「スポーツ新聞を買って世間の出来事を知る」ことでしょうか。スポーツ新聞には世界の情報からスポーツ、TV、芸能ネタまで、世間一般に広く通用する話題が幅広くつまっていますから、みんなが知ってる常識のよりどころとなっています。

    私の欠点としては、堅苦しい話題やらマニアックな話題に偏りすぎていて、飲み会や昼食などで人を楽しませるような話題が貧困なことだと思ってるので、今年はスポーツ新聞を読んで、みんなが簡単についてこれる話題を幅広く仕入れ、「普通の人」として人と話せるようになることかなあ、と思ってます。

  • Welcoming 2008 / ２００８年を迎えて

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    Every year I do the Japanese traditional rituals on the New Year’s Day — making a wish for my family’s happiness to the gods and Buddhas we worship, eat special dishes that mean health and prosperity. It’s the New Year’s Day that I strongly feel that I’m really a Japanese.
    Another custom on the New Year’s Day as a Japanese is to set up what I’ll do this year. My goal of this year is to meet as many attractive girls as I can and have a meaningful, romantic experience with them 😉

    いよいよ平成も20年になりました。毎年この日は、家の神仏を拝み、おせちをいただくことにしています。日本人だということを強く意識させられる日です。
    今年はどんな出会いがあるんでしょうか。どんな素敵な女性たちに会えるのか、楽しみです。

  • Looking back 2007 / ２００７年を振り返る

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    New Year’s Eve is a good chance to look back what I did this year. Every year I remember big topics of the year on the last day of the year. The year 2001’s topics for me was moving my apartment within Tokyo metropolitan area and buying Toyota Soarer. In 2002, I made my first visit abroad (Washington, DC). In 2003 I started studying aviation (aircrafts and its operation), and encountered musicals and performing arts by small troupes. In 2004 I started blogging, visiting Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and had GSM cell phones distributed throughout those countries. In 2005, I began playing darts, studies GSM/W-CDMA mobile telephony , and visited Hong Kong again. Last year, I opened a Firstrade account and began buying US stocks and mutual funds.
    Although I had nothing special this year, some of my big events of this year would be (1) getting a new car, and (2) making my visit to Hawaii.
    Hope that 2008 will be a better and more meaningful year for me, my family, my friends and everybody around me.

    今年もいよいよ最後になってしまいました。毎年、大晦日になるとその年の出来事など振り返るのですが、
    2001年　都内一人暮らし、職場の異動、ソアラ
    2002年　アメリカ
    2003年　飛行機、ミュージカル
    2004年　ブログ（文芸業界）、アジア（香港・シンガポール）、GSM携帯電話
    2005年　ダーツ、GSM/WCDMA携帯電話、香港再訪問
    2006年　アメリカ株・ミューチャルファンド
    ときて、今年のトピックとしては「クルマの買い替え」「ハワイ旅行」といったところでしょうか。
    花の33歳も終わってしまい、少し枯れ始めてきたような感もなきにしもあらずですが・・・気を取り直して魅力アップに力を注いでいきたいと思います。
    ともあれ皆様（誰やねん）よいお年を・・・

  • 帰省

    飛行機で帰省しました。

    Mt. Fuji

    バックにちょうど富士山が見えました。偶然のキレイな景色につい1枚。
    今年も残すところあと1日です。

  • Christmas illuminations / クリスマスのイルミネーション

    Christmas Illumination
    Christmas Illumination
    Christmas Illumination

    Illuminations displayed in front of houses near my apartment. Thanks to Shuji Nakamura who invented a blue LED, we get more variations of decoration with lights.
    近所の家がイルミネーションで飾ってました。青色LEDのおかげで、昔よりイルミネーションのバリエーションが増えたように思います。発明者の中村修二さんに感謝です。

  • Navigation / カーナビ買いました

    garmin_nuvi250.jpg
    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    Last week I bought a portable navigation device (Garmin nüvi250) for my car because I had bonus this month and I did “holiday shopping” like an American. Although many cars in Japan have in-dash HDD car navigation systems costing over 300,000JPY with a receiver for Vehicle Information and Communication System (VICS), they were too expensive for me to afford. Nüvi250 has only a GPS receiver and power cables to be connected to a cigar socket or PC’s USB port, so it’s very cost-effective, costing only 38,500JPY! (about one tenth of the prices of traditional HDD car navi) More than that, it is not only sold within Japan but used worldwide, because Garmin is an American company. Nüvi250 is widely distributed in UK, European countries and the USA (in the USA, nüvi200 is sold instead of 250).

    This device is simple and does not provide traffic information to avoid jamming routes, but GPS reception accuracy is very good. It displays an accurate position of where you are driving, keeps track of your driving routes, and calculates routes to destination very fast. Road maps are very simple, and easy to see while driving. It is very useful for 38,500JPY navigation device, as long as you use it just as a navigator.

    As it is removable from your car, you can carry it with you anywhere, on the street or on the train, and you can install it to a rental car in a district far from your home town or even in a foreign country, just by plugging the power cable to its cigar socket. When you leave your car, you can put it off the car and in your pocket. There are no risks to be stolen.

    Navigation is navigation. No functions more than navigation are necessary. PNDs are the most reasonable navigation system of today and more and more devices will be released in a few years, because you have only to pay the reasonable prices for necessary and sufficient capabilities.

    今月のボーナスで、先週カーナビを買いました。といっても日本のクルマに多い30万円もする据え付け式のVICS付HDDナビなどとても買えないので、今はやりのポータブルナビ（PND）というやつです。米国のGarminという会社のnüvi250で、GPSレシーバーの付いた本体をシガーソケットに挿して使うタイプで、お値段はなんと38,500円！（普通のHDDナビの十分の一です）米国のメーカーなので、日本だけでなく、欧米など世界中で使われています（米国はnüvi200という名前です）。

    シンプルなので、交通情報や渋滞情報を出してくれたりはしませんが、ナビとして使う限りでは、38,500円のものとしてはこれで十分です。GPSの捕捉精度も良く、位置を正確にとらえてくれますし、ルート計算もメチャ速！ 地図もシンプルで見やすくなっています。
    取り外し可能なので、道を歩いていても、電車の中でも、どこへでも持ち運べます。遠くの場所や海外でも、レンタカーに乗るとき、シガーソケットに差し込むだけで使えます。車から離れるときは取り外してポケットに入れることができるので、盗難の危険もありません。

    ナビはナビ。ナビゲーション以上の機能は必要ありません。PNDは今日最も合理的なカーナビゲーションシステムだと思います。必要十分な機能に適正な値段を払えばいいわけで、今後数年でますます増えていくことでしょう。

  • Virginia Tech, Nebraska and Sasebo gunshootings

    Today’s news is repeatedly reporting that a man broke into a sports club building in Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan, firing a shotgun at random and resulted in killing a man and a woman and injuring six people. It was said that the Japanese shooter shot himself to death. A victim happened to be there for waiting a friend.

    In Japan or in any other place, slaughters by persons touched in the head can occur everywhere. It might be fresh in mind that a Korean guy fired a shotgun and killed 33 persons in Virginia Tech. In this month, eight people were shot to death by Robert Hawkins who shot at random at a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not true that you think “Japan is safe and foreign countries aren’t.” Anywhere you are, there are no safe places these days.

    We should keep in mind that life and death of us is just destiny and we can’t expect when we die. Death suddenly comes to us—maybe today. When you walk on the street, you may be hit by a drunk driver’s car, a hard block a mad guy throw from the building by you, or a people himself who attempts suicide by diving from the top of the building. When you are waiting for a train on the platform, a mentally-unstable woman may suddenly push you off the platform on the rails in front of a train rushing into the station. When you are riding on the train, the train may crash. When you are driving, an oncoming car may come to you to collide. When you even are in your house, an earthquake may happen and the ceiling may fall down on you. It’s unpredictable if you may suddenly lose your life.

    What we can do to live our lives with no regrets is “not to put off till tomorrow what we can do today.” If you have something you want to do, do it right away. You may want to leave anything unfinished when you go to bed at night, not to regret even if you can’t wake up forever.

  • Looking back myself / 自分自身を振り返る

    日本文が後ろに続きます。

    I attended a two-day “career management seminar” that the company I was working for hosted for the employees who had started their career a decade ago. An instructor who had been sent from Japan Management Association guided us to look back what we had done for the ten years, to recognize what our current strengths and weaknesses were, and to design what we should do in the future.

    Through the sessions I found out that my characteristics I had thought of was a little different from that the people around me had done. I thought I was completely lacking communication ability to keep in tough with others, but my boss and my colleagues working with me do not think so. At the same time, they think less highly of my schedule management ability. It was what I did not expect, but they hit the mark.

    Anyway, it was very meaningful that I could find out what I currently am, and I’m very thankful to the company that gave me the chance to help me think of my future career and to talk with friends I didn’t see for many years!

    勤続10年目の社員を対象にした会社主催の2日間の「キャリアマネジメント研修」なるものに参加してきました。日本能率協会のインストラクターの方のガイドによって、今まで10年間何をやってきたのか、今の自分の強み・弱みは何かなど知り、将来何をすべきかを設計していくという内容でした。

    自分が思っていた特徴と周りが思っているのとは少し違うようです。私は人とのコミュニケーション能力は完全に欠けてると思ってたんですが、周りはそうは思ってないようです。同時に、私のスケジュール管理能力については自分で思うほど高く評価されてないようでした。意外でしたが、的を射ていました。

    ともあれ、今の自分を知ることができたのは非常に有意義なことで、将来のキャリアを考える機会を与えてくれた会社には感謝です。あと、長年会ってなかった友人と話をする機会を与えてくれたことにも。