ＮＨＫのアナウンサーの近江友里恵さんのファンです。といっても今年のお正月に実家に帰省していたときにたまたま「ブラタモリ」をＴＶで見て初めて知ったんですが。「ブラタモリ」自体、桑子真帆アナウンサーがアシスタントをしていた時代に一度見たきりで、それまでほとんど見たことなかったのですが、このときは、昼に「伊勢」「横浜」の回の再放送をやっていて、さらに夜には「鶴瓶の家族に乾杯」とのコラボレーションスペシャルで成田山に行っていた回の放送があって、そこに出ていたアシスタントの近江アナウンサーがなんかいい味を出していて、注目するようになりました。
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Yurie Omi
According to Wikipedia, “Yurie Omi (born July 27, 1988) is a Japanese female announcer, television reporter, television personality, and news anchor for NHK. Omi is one of the hosts of NHK morning news show NHK News Ohayō Nippon. She is also the co-host of NHK television series Bura Tamori aired from April 2016.”
I’ve been a big fan of Yurie Omi since the beginning of this year when I sat in front of the TV by chance at my parents’ house and watched her for the first time in Bura Tamori (I had rarely seen it before, though). This program is a travel show where NHK’s broadcaster strolls Japan’s particular town or area with Tamori, one of Japan’s renowned TV personalities, and a geophysicist, a local historian, or a curator, to investigate the place’s topics such as terrain features, history, culture, and civil engineering.
Why do I think she is so attractive? I think the reason is three-fold. Firstly, she sometimes shows goofy behavior in her TV programs, although she is actually very smart and good-looking. She wore her dress back to front in the news show. In Bura Tamori, she read the thermometer incorrectly. (She said the temperature of hot spring water was 940 degrees Celcius while it really pointed 94.0 degrees.) Such slight weaknesses mean imperfection, which is what Japanese people value in tradition. This mentality makes the Japanese regard her weaknesses as charming. Secondly, she acts or speaks less highhandedly than average so-called “joshi-ana” and TV personalities. They often show off, but she doesn’t. They often speak aggressively, but she never does it. Her attitude like this gives a favorable impression to many Japanese viewers. Thirdly, most of her personality looks so similar to mine that I find something congenial in her. I don’t think she is such a personality that is good at thinking on her feet and speaking off the cuff with a ready wit. Rather, she looks genuine, and she can only do diligently what she has to do with simple honesty. Such characteristics are just like mine.
For those reasons, I got fascinated by her. I watch every TV program she appears in. I get up at five in the morning on weekdays to watch NHK’s morning news show she hosts. In Saturday evening I watch Bura Tamori to see her traveling with Tamori.
In addition to watching her on TV, I had a chance to see her with the naked eye. One day I got the information that she was going to hold a lecture presentation at Nagoya on September 30 and was requesting for audience. I applied for it because it might be my once-in-a-lifetime chance to meet her up.
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Visiting Hong Kong / 香港へ
日本文が後ろに続きます。
A few weeks ago I visited Hong Kong to deposit part of my fixed amount savings, deposited in Japan’s post office and matured last month, in HSBC Hong Kong where I’ve had my bank account for 13 years, and to buy some gold which was a bit inexpensive than what you buy in Japan. Since nobody can predict what will happen to Japan and its economy in the future, I think it is reasonable to diversify assets both nationally and internationally to reduce risks of the loss due to possible economic confusion.
I found out two notable things through this trip. One is that Kagoshima is in fact one of the important gateways of Japan for some foreign travelers. From a Tokyoite’s point of view, Kagoshima looks like the southernmost far end of Japan, but for some people, it is not. I heard that a sales clerk of Chow Sang Sang’s Central store selling a gold necklace to me saying that she had ever been to Japan for leisure, entering Japan at Kagoshima Airport, and then moved east to Osaka, Kyoto, and Tokyo, where she departed. She also said that it was a golden route for travelers from China and Hong Kong. Those facts suggest that cities like Kagoshima, Nagasaki, and Fukuoka should look at Asian countries rather than Tokyo to survive in the future.
The other thing is my lacking ability of English conversation. When I talked to the sales clerk or any other people in Hong Kong, all I could say to those people were one-to-two-word sentences like “Yeah,” “No,” “Thank you,” “Oh really?” or something like that. Response speed to English was apparently slower than that of a few years ago. Clearly, it was because I hadn’t used English so much for years as it is now irrelevant to me in the workplace. All I can do (and need to do) would be to have at least my home Englishized to get accustomed to the English environment and help live in an English way.
先日、香港へ行ってきました。郵便貯金の定額貯金が満期を迎えたので、一部をハンドキャリーして13年前に開設したＨＳＢＣの口座に入金するのと、現地で金製品を買うためです（日本で買うより安いのです）。この先日本がどうなるかわからない中、国際的に資産を分散しておくのが理にかなっているかと。
旅行記をフォートラベルに転載しました。
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Japan’s northernmost end / 日本のさいはてへ
日本文はフォートラベルに転載しました。
https://4travel.jp/travelogue/11321411
Though it was almost half a year ago, I visited Wakkanai, the northernmost end of Hokkaido. Since it was the beginning of January this year, it was extremely cold outside with plenty of snow and the streets were very slippery.
Wakkanai is deeply related to Russia, since this city is just 40 kilometers away from the southern end of Sakhalin. When Sakhalin was part of Japan in the beginning of the 20th century, the city of Wakkanai played an important role in connecting to ports of Sakhalin by ferry.
Defense is also important since it is very close to the border and there is such a risk to let illegal immigrants in and to let foreign ships invade this town.
Wakkanai is one of Japan’s cities symbolizing tragedy of the WWII. When the USSR began invasion to the southern half of the Sakhalin Island after Japan’s surrender in August 1945, nine young women were working at a telephone exchange in the island. They were encouraged to escape from the island to flee to Hokkaido as it was going to be a dangerous place very soon. They refused to do it and chose to stay there because they wanted to do their job until the last time. At the time when Soviet Union’s soldiers came to where they worked, they took their lives as they didn’t want to be captured and molested by the soldiers. The memorial monument for them is build on the hill of Wakkanai city. I was eager to see this monument, but I couldn’t do it since the hill was closed due to the heavy winter snow.
With one more day I could’ve visited the Cape Soya and see the Sakhalin Island over the Soya Channel. This would be a good reason for me to visit Wakkanai again this summer.
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Words of the year 2016 / ２０１６年のキーワード
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Although I was posting only two entries including this one in each language this year, the time seems to come to look back the year 2016. At every year-end, I make it a rule to list up the most impressive things and events I experienced or encountered each year in some keywords. Words of the past years are:
The words of the year for 2001: getting a flat within the Tokyo metropolitan area, a position change at the office, and Soarer.
The words of the year for 2002: America.
The words of the year for 2003: the airplane and the musical.
The words of the year for 2004: the blog, Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the GSM mobile phone.
The words of the year for 2005: darts, the GSM and WCDMA mobile phone, and visiting Hong Kong again.
The words of the year for 2006: the US stock and the mutual fund.
The words of the year for 2007: changing my car and visiting Hawaii.
The words of the year for 2008: England and Fukagawa.
The words of the year for 2009: office position change, MacBook Pro and JR Seishun 18 Ticket.
The words of the year for 2010: Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia; iPhone; and the credit card.
The words of the year for 2011: the car, the British culture and China.
The words of the year for 2012: Oji, the mahjong, the flight attendant and Facebook.
The words of the year for 2013: Ayurveda, Korea, high school alumni and Tsuyoshi Takashiro.
The words of the year 2014: England and Android.
The words of the year 2015: Maine, United States; Estonia and transfer of workplace.Now I think this year’s keywords for me are traveling to places in Japan and Jeep.
Traveling to places in Japan is what I did this year most. I flew to Hiroshima, Fukuoka, Osaka, Okinawa, and more for both business and private. I did visit abroad as well (Taipei and Hong Kong), but this year is the time for me to explore throughout this country.
Changing my car to Jeep also encouraged me to explore this country. I bought a 2013 Jeep Compass this summer instead of letting my VW Polo pass the bi-yearly car inspection for pretty much money. This newer car is very nice, and I’ve driven more than 3,000 miles for five months since I got it.
This year I experienced many more things than before other than what I listed here. A number of celebs and famous persons, such as David Bowie, Prince, Charmian Carr, Thai King Bhumibol Adulyadej, George Michael, Carrie Fisher, and her mother Debbie Reynolds, have died for a single year. Disasters and terrorist attacks hit all over the world. Politicians and people of many countries have been moving from globalization to nation-centric mindsets. Nobody knows what will happen next year. I think all each individual can do to protect him-or-herself would be to put all of his or her assets in many places in the world and prepare for moving wherever he or she needs.
今年は結局、このエントリを入れて各言語それぞれ２エントリしか投稿しませんでしたが、もう今年を振り返る時期がやってきたようです。
２００１年のキーワード：都内一人暮らし、職場異動、ソアラ
２００２年のキーワード：アメリカ
２００３年のキーワード：飛行機、ミュージカル
２００４年のキーワード：ブログ、アジア（シンガポール・香港）、ＧＳＭ携帯電話
２００５年のキーワード：ダーツ、ＧＳＭ／ＷＣＤＭＡ携帯電話、香港再訪
２００６年のキーワード：米国株、ミューチャルファンド
２００７年のキーワード：クルマの買い替え、ハワイ旅行
２００８年のキーワード：イギリス、深川
２００９年のキーワード：職場異動、ＭａｃＢｏｏｋ Ｐｒｏ、青春18きっぷ
２０１０年のキーワード：台湾・シンガポール・マレーシア、ｉＰｈｏｎｅ、クレジットカード
２０１１年のキーワード：クルマ、イギリス文化、中国
２０１２年のキーワード：王子、麻雀、ＣＡ、Ｆａｃｅｂｏｏｋ
２０１３年のキーワード：アーユルヴェーダ、韓国、高校の同窓生、高城剛
２０１４年のキーワード：イギリス、Ａｎｄｒｏｉｄ
２０１５年のキーワード：アメリカ（メイン州）、エストニア、職場異動
だったのですが、今年のキーワードは国内移動、ジープ
にします。
国内移動は、広島、福岡、仙台、大阪、沖縄といった国内に今年は公私ともによく移動しました。海外にも行きましたが（台北、香港）、今年は国内に目を向けた年といえるかもしれません。
ジープにクルマを買い替えたことも国内移動に拍車をかけたかもしれません。今までのポロを高いお金をかけて車検を通す代わりに買い替えるという選択をしました。まあアメリカの車に一度乗ってみたかったというのもありましたが。夏に買い替えて、この５ヶ月ほどで５０００ｋｍほど乗っています。
上記にあげた以外にも、今年はいろんなことがありました。デヴィッド・ボウイやプリンス、ジョージ・マイケル、「スター・ウォーズ」のレイア姫のキャリー・フィッシャーと母のデビー・レイノルズ、「サウンド・オブ・ミュージック」の17歳の人から井上竜じいに至るまで、セレブや有名人がかなり多く亡くなりました。熊本でも地震があり、糸魚川で火災があり、災害やテロが世界中で起こりました。来年も何がおこるかわかりません。個人としてできることは、自分の資産をできるだけ世界中に分散して、必要なところにどこでも移動できるように準備しておくことぐらいではないでしょうか。
Updated April 11, 2017 / 2017年4月11日更新
I’m adding one other word of the year 2016: mapping. At first, I joined Waze to make a map for the sat nav app, and then I became a mapper of Openstreetmap. Mainly I have added English name tags to ways, buildings, and points within Japan for the convenience of foreign people who may use Maps.me or Magic Earth and only read English. That’s why the keywords of the year 2016 are traveling to places in Japan, mapping and Jeep.
2016年のキーワードとして地図作りを追加したいと思います。この年はオンライン地図の作成にはまった年でした。はじめの頃はカーナビ用にWazeを使って近所の地図を作っていて、そのうちOpenstreetmapのマッパーになって主に日本国内のウェイや建物やポイントに英語のnameタグを追加する作業をやっています。なので2016年のキーワードは国内移動、地図作り、ジープにします。
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The end of globalisation / グローバル化の終わり
日本文が後ろに続きます。
When I started my career in the late 1990s, my employer encouraged us to have a global mind to cope with Japan’s recession so-called “the lost decade”. By 2000, the words “global” and “globalisation” were used as the keywords — and sometimes buzzwords — for surviving the upcoming new millennium, followed by the dot-com bubble. My coworkers and I were pressured to raise TOEIC scores, to learn SWOT analysis, MECE, and other terms of logical thinking, to abandon obsolete Japanese work style and get accustomed to the global — in many cases American — way of thinking.
In 2006, those ideas were changed. Seeing the Livedoor scandals and accompanying the downfall of dot-com millionaires, Japanese people found out that the American way did not work. Instead, they began taking a second look at their own country and reviewing the good things of it. The company I worked for focused on the products for domestic customers rather than overseas ones, with “the Japan quality” as its corporate philosophy.
Starting in the 2010s, people’s inward-oriented views were changing global again. Japanese enterprises were going out overseas, not only to the United States at that time but to the Third World such as India, China, Russia, Brazil, and Southeast Asian and African countries. I had more and more opportunities to get involved in the services offered to such customers going to those countries to meet their needs and demands.
The first half of the 2010s was the year of transportation. Low-cost carriers helped people fly abroad at low airfares. Everywhere you can see people travelling to and from all over the world regularly.
Yet you see that people’s favour of the global-oriented mind or the local-oriented one swings from side to side every five or six years. That being the case, such a globalised world will come to an end shortly. The event that happened this week in the United Kingdom showed that the most symbolically. The referendum determined the UK to leave the European Union it had joined in 1973. Other European countries like France, Italy, and Spain begin the preparation of such referendum whether they should leave or remain in the EU by some people tired of enormous numbers of immigrants from the Middle East and accompanying terrorist attacks occurring inside Europe.
Likewise, in the United States, Donald Trump, saying that a wall should be built on the border to shut out Mexicans and Muslims, has the enthusiastic support of the conservative and relatively poor American population. Even Hillary Clinton, one of the rival candidates of Trump, says that she is against the US to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership. In Japan, some nationalistic extremists carrying patriotic flags with them are making a hate speech on the street, saying that the people from neighbouring countries should get out of Japan and go back to their own country.
I think that now is the turning point of the era and there will be no more “globalised World” from now on. People of each country will pay attention only inside their own country. A dispute or, in some cases, an armed clash may begin between some countries. Such an era will last five or six years, at least Trump or Clinton’s presidential term. What we can do right now might be to look at such the World and to have as many options as possible to be able to cope with the future fluctuation of circumstances.
私が就職したのは、90年代終わりごろの「失われた10年」と言われた不況の時代の日本で、会社からよく「グローバルマインドを持て」と言われたものでした。
２０００年までには、「グローバル」や「グローバル化」という言葉が、次なる新たなミレニアムを生き抜くためのキーワード（ときにはバズワード）として、ドットコムバブルとともにやってきました。当時は、ＴＯＥＩＣのスコアを上げさせられたり、ＭＥＣＥだのＳＷＯＴ分析だのロジカルシンキングの手法をマスターさせられたり、とにかく日本的な古いワークスタイルを廃して、グローバルな（といってもほとんどアメリカのですが）考え方に慣れるようにハッパをかけられたものです。
ところが２００６年にライブドアショックがあり、ＩＴ長者たちが凋落していくのを目のあたりにすると、人は、アメリカ式のやり方ではうまくいかないと気づき、また日本を見直し始め、日本の良いものを再評価するようになりました。会社でも「日本品質」とか言い始めて、グローバルサービスよりもドメスティックなほうに目を向け始めたころでした。
２０１０年代になると、今までの内向き志向がまたぞろグローバルに向かい始め、日本企業がまた海外進出するようになりました。今度はアメリカだけじゃなく、インドや中国、ロシア、ブラジル、東南アジアやアフリカなどの第三世界に出て行って、会社のサービスもそういう企業のニーズや要望に沿うようなグローバルサービスが増えていきました。
また２０１０年代は移動の時代でもあり、ＬＣＣの台頭によって低価格で海外に行けるようになりました。外国と行き来する人を見ることはどこでも日常的になりました。
こうして見ると、グローバルとローカル、人々の志向は５～６年ごとに行ったり来たりしているように見えます。その伝でいくと、そういうグローバルな世界というのはもうそろそろ終わりそうに思います。今週、英国の国民投票でＥＵ離脱を決めたのは、その最も象徴的なものではないでしょうか。ほかにもフランスやイタリア、スペインなど、移民の流入やそれに伴うヨーロッパ内のテロに悩まされている国で同様の動きがあると聞きます。
同様に、アメリカでも、ドナルド・トランプ氏が、国境に壁を造り、メキシコ人やイスラム教徒をシャットアウトしろと言って、保守的で比較的貧困層のアメリカ民衆から熱狂的な支持を受けています。対抗馬のヒラリー・クリントン氏でさえ、ＴＰＰには反対するなど、保護主義的な主張をしています。日本でも、旗を持った過激な愛国主義者たちが通りに繰り出し、隣国人は出て行けと言ってヘイトスピーチをするようになりました。
思うに、今は時代のターニング・ポイントで、これから「グローバルな世界」はなくなっていくでしょう。民衆は自分の国のことだけを考えるようになり、そこここで紛争や、場合によっては武力衝突が起こるかもしれません。これから５～６年、少なくともトランプ氏かヒラリー氏の大統領の任期の間はそうなると思います。できることは、そういう世界を傍観しながら、将来状況がどう変わっても対処できるように、選択肢をできるだけ多く持っておくことではないでしょうか。
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Words of the year 2015 / ２０１５年のキーワード
日本文が後ろに続きます。
It’s time for me to look back this year and list up the most impressive words I experienced this year. Words of the past years are:
The words of the year for 2001: getting a flat within the Tokyo metropolitan area, a position change at the office, and Soarer.
The words of the year for 2002: America.
The words of the year for 2003: the airplane and the musical.
The words of the year for 2004: the blog, Asian countries (Singapore and Hong Kong), and the GSM mobile phone.
The words of the year for 2005: darts, the GSM and WCDMA mobile phone, and visiting Hong Kong again.
The words of the year for 2006: the US stock and the mutual fund.
The words of the year for 2007: changing my car and visiting Hawaii.
The words of the year for 2008: England and Fukagawa.
The words of the year for 2009: office position change, MacBook Pro and JR Seishun 18 Ticket.
The words of the year for 2010: Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia; iPhone; and the credit card.
The words of the year for 2011: the car, the British culture and China.
The words of the year for 2012: Oji, the mahjong, the flight attendant and Facebook.
The words of the year for 2013: Ayurveda, Korea, high school alumni and Tsuyoshi Takashiro.
The words of the year 2014: England and Android.And this year’s keywords for me is Maine, United States; Estonia and transfer of workplace.
Maine, United States is where I visited in September for pleasure. I drove the US roads, went shopping at supermarkets and pharmacies, rode America’s domestic flights, and was excited in many ways. That experience encouraged me to look back at the United States from the United Kingdom, which I had been interested in for almost a decade.
Estonia is the country where I applied for the e-Residency card. Before I did it, all I knew about Estonia was that it was what Baruto, a former sumo wrestler, was from, not being able to tell it from other Baltic countries like Lithuania and Latvia. I found out that that country was one of east Europe’s most IT-advanced countries. I think it’s a good idea to visit Estonia next year.
Transfer of workplace is that I was transferred to the office and position in December, leaving a previous workplace where I had served for more than six years.
Anyway, this year is coming to an end. I managed to live safe and sound, without being suffered from any diseases. That being said, I’m getting older and older, and my body is gradually worn out. That’s why I’m going to check my body thoroughly and maintain it from scratch, which is going to be my next year’s task.
今年の振り返りのキーワードをあげる時期がやってきました。
２００１年のキーワード：都内一人暮らし、職場異動、ソアラ
２００２年のキーワード：アメリカ
２００３年のキーワード：飛行機、ミュージカル
２００４年のキーワード：ブログ、アジア（シンガポール・香港）、ＧＳＭ携帯電話
２００５年のキーワード：ダーツ、ＧＳＭ／ＷＣＤＭＡ携帯電話、香港再訪
２００６年のキーワード：米国株、ミューチャルファンド
２００７年のキーワード：クルマの買い替え、ハワイ旅行
２００８年のキーワード：イギリス、深川
２００９年のキーワード：職場異動、ＭａｃＢｏｏｋ Ｐｒｏ、青春18きっぷ
２０１０年のキーワード：台湾・シンガポール・マレーシア、ｉＰｈｏｎｅ、クレジットカード
２０１１年のキーワード：クルマ、イギリス文化、中国
２０１２年のキーワード：王子、麻雀、ＣＡ、Ｆａｃｅｂｏｏｋ
２０１３年のキーワード：アーユルヴェーダ、韓国、高校の同窓生、高城剛
２０１４年のキーワード：イギリス、Ａｎｄｒｏｉｄ
だったのですが、今年のキーワードはアメリカ（メイン州）、エストニア、職場異動
にします。
アメリカ（メイン州）は、今年の９月に旅行で訪れた場所。憧れのアメリカの道路を初めてドライブしたり、スーパーで買い物したり、モーテルに泊まったり、コインランドリーで洗濯したり、国内線の飛行機に乗ったりと、短い旅行期間ながらもいろいろ体験させてもらいました。これまでイギリスに傾倒していたのですが、イギリスは去年２度も行ってちょっと飽きてきたというのもあり、やっぱり日本人にとって目標の国といえばアメリカなのかな〜と、再度アメリカに心が傾きつつある今日このごろなのです。
エストニアは、９月に大使館に行ってｅ−Ｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｃｙカードを申し込んだ縁です。それまでエストニアといえば元力士・把瑠都関の出身国というぐらいの知識しかなく、他のバルト三国のリトアニアやラトビアと区別つきませんでしたが、東欧きってのＩＴ先進国というのを初めて知りました。折しも日本でもマイナンバーカードがこれからのトレンドということもあり、マイナンバーの先輩国としていろいろと体験してみる価値がありそうです。来年は実際にエストニアに旅行してみてもいいかもと思ったりしてます。
職場異動は、これまで６年以上もの長きにわたって担当していた業務から外れ、12月に新しい部署に異動したというもの。まあ異動自体は初めてじゃないですがだいぶ久しぶりなので。
ということで、今年も残すところあと１日で、３年間の厄年からもようやく明けることになります。幸いなことにたいした病気もせずに済みましたが、だいぶ体もガタがきているのも事実なので、来年は本腰入れてボディメンテナンスをはじめてみようかなとも思ってます。
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Visiting Maine / 回転木馬とロブスター
日本文が後ろに続きます。
I think it’s too late to write this entry, but I visited Portland and Boothbay Harbor, Maine in this September. I watched a musical play Carousel at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School performed by its musical club a few weeks before. Carousel is a musical that features a love story of a young girl and a barker in Maine, filmed in 1956. That inspired me to visit this state and, if I could, eat some lobsters and clambakes.
There were no direct flights from Tokyo to Maine, so I chose flights from Tokyo (Narita) to New York (JFK), and from LaGuardia to Portland (Maine’s largest city). All flights were Delta Airlines.
今年の９月の國學院栃木高校の文化祭。いつも観に行くミュージカル部の今年の公演は「回転木馬」。じつに10年ぶりです。
「回転木馬」（Ｃａｒｏｕｓｅｌ）のあらすじは10年前のブログ記事の内容にも書いてありますが、この作品の舞台となっているのはアメリカのニューイングランド地方・メイン州。ロブスターが名産といわれている場所だそうで、一度行ってみたい気持ちが頭をもたげてきたので、実際にメイン州まで行ってみることにしました。
日本語の旅行記はフォートラベルに転載しました。
https://4travel.jp/travelogue/11320820
Day 1: Tokyo to New York City and Portland, ME
The flight to JFK was noisy by Chinese passengers around my seat chatting all the time. A middle-aged Chinese woman next to me even talked to me in Chinese though I didn’t understand it. She was too helpful to me, lending a neck pillow to me and even giving me some local sweets (I couldn’t eat it because I didn’t know what was contained).
JFK Airport was busy, and there were long lines in front of the immigration. It took almost an hour to pass the immigration counter. I expected a free WiFi service in the building, but all hotspots were encrypted and payment was needed to get passwords to access to them. So I was IP-unreachabel until I had a new SIM card activated at Hudson News of that terminal. There were no vending machines of AT&T’s pay-as-you-go smartphone in that terminal.
I had to take a shuttle bus to LaGuardia Airport. I had to wait for a long time to get in the bus because busy traffic around JFK delayed its arrival at that terminal I was in. After I waited for more than 30 minutes, the bus managed to arrive. It took me to LaGuardia Airport, and let me off at the terminal B while I had to check in at the terminal C, so I had to walk thousands of feet on the walkway to the terminal C dragging my suitcase.
Thank God I managed to get to the boarding gate without missing the flight to Portland because it was delayed about one hour.
I had dinner within the food court of LaGuardia Airport. It was a combo of roasted beef sandwiches, a bowl of Manhattan clam chowder and a glass of white wine, costing about $50 including a tip.
After dinner, I bought Barrons at a local newsstand and got to the gate C12, where the next flight was supposed to be ready. Actually it wasn’t ready when I arrived, because the aircraft was so delayed that it didn’t arrive yet.
When the gate was ready, the staff told us that the aircraft was too small for our carry-on baggage to get inside the cabin. He gave each of us a baggage claim tag and put the same-numbered one to the corresponding baggage. He told us to leave our baggage on the shelf in front of the ramp before getting on the plane.
It took about one hour from New York to Portland, Maine. Getting off the plane, the passengers who had left their baggage were told to wait in the boarding bridge in front of the door to pick their baggage up, instead of picking it up at the baggage claim area.
It was 50 degrees outside. I felt it was much colder than New York and Tokyo. I took a taxi cab to take me to the motel. It was already midnight when I got there.
Day 2: Boothbay Harbor, ME
It was the video that I recorded next morning the motel where I stayed. It was very refreshing for me even to eat breakfast at such a standard American motel.
I walked 3/4 mile to the rental car office by the airport to check out a car I had made a reservation. I wanted to go to Boothbay Harbor, about 30 miles away from Portland, where I heard that Carousel was filmed.
It was a minivan that was assigned to me as a rental car. It was Nissan’s Quest, a bit larger and more difficult for me to drive as I usually drive a small car in wrong side of the road ;-p The maneuver of the car was a bit confusing because driver’s seat was on the left, a steering wheel was on the left, a gear stick on the right of me, a rear-view mirror on the right of me, and everything but the gas pedal and the brake pedal was on the opposite side to what was in a car I drove in Japan.
Driving in the US was a bit confusing, but it wasn’t so difficult. It was not so exciting as I expected, as roads in Maine weren’t so wider than normal country roads in Japan and I didn’t think it was quite different from that in Japan except that I was driving in the opposite side of the road.
It took about an hour from Portland to Boothbay Harbor, driving US1. Here are some pictures and videos of Boothbay Harbor.
I ate lobster rolls and steamed live lobsters at Shannon’s Unshelled and Boothbay Lobster Wharf.
That’s Carousel Marina, named after the musical film Carousel.
And this is Carousel Music Theater near that downtown Boothbay Harbor, where a musical troupe performs a show along with dinner. Actors and actresses of the troupe are waiters and waitresses as well, and they serve dishes for visitors as well as sing Hello Dolly‘s numbers and other oldies songs on stage.
Backyard is a footpath around Penny Lake.
Day 3: Portland, ME
Next day I walked around downtown Portland.
A guided tour with a boat was available at a wharf. I paid $24 to apply for a 90-minute lighthouse tour.
That’s Berlin Wall.
There was a restaurant at the wharf.
It’s fried clams. It wasn’t so nice though….
Day 4: Portland, ME to Detroit, MI, Seattle, WA, and Tokyo
I flew back from Portland to Tokyo via Detroit, MI, and Seattle, WA.
The more we headed to the west, the more I felt there were Japanese and other Asian people around us. In Detroit, there were signs written in English and Japanese. I don’t know why there were Japanese, and no other foreign languages in the signs.
In Seattle, I saw many Japanese tourists walking in the concourse, while I saw very few foreign people in Maine (99% of people in Maine I saw were Caucasian Americans!). I realized that the West Coast is the gateway to Japan!
I expected Microsoft Store or something like that in Seattle Tacoma Airport as Seattle is home to Microsoft, but there were no such stores in the concourse. Maybe American airports were not willing to sell local products. I didn’t find any local bourbon whiskeys in duty free shops, where they sold normal alcohols sold in standard international airports.
The departure information for the flight to Tokyo didn’t appear in the display, so passengers for that flight couldn’t get any terminal information of it. I didn’t know why.
I managed to get to the terminal S8 where the flight to Tokyo were going to depart, as I had TripIt in my smartphone and updated flight information came into it.
Actually I wasn’t so interested in cosmetics or expensive liquors sold in duty free shops, but I wanted to get American sweets, drugs and commodities sold in Hudson News. I bought them as many things as I could, because Seattle was the last stop and it was the last chance to get them in that country. I paid almost $100 there for candies, pain relievers, handy wet wipes, travel goods and more. I think I spent too much money.
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Becoming an e-Estonian / エストニアのマイナンバー
日本文が後ろに続きます。
Estonia, one of the Baltic countries which became independent of the Soviet Union along with Latvia and Lithuania in the early 1990s, is one of the IT-conscious countries with significant numbers of IT-related startups, including Skype. The Estonian government is doing its best to make a “digital country” by inviting IT engineers to some offshore development sites in Europe’s IT market.
The government issues Estonian citizens an ID card, just similar to a Social Security Card in the United States, which enables holders to offer one-stop services including taxation, online banking, issuing medical prescriptions, and more. In addition to offering an ID card for real residents, it started the e-Residency scheme, which is available for not only residents within Estonia but people who don’t really live in Estonia. In this scheme, an “e-Residency Card” is issued to the “e-Residents” of Estonia, and similar services to those for real residents are offered “electronically” with the card via their computers.
Application for an e-Residency Card is easy. First, you have to visit the application page of the e-Estonia website at https://apply.e-estonia.com/. And then you can apply for the card by filling in the necessary information in the form of the web page and paying €50.99 online by credit card. You can make the card to be sent to any Estonian Embassy outside Estonia so that you can pick it up at the nearest Embassy without flying to Estonia. About one month from the online application the card will be ready when you will receive notification by email.
エストニアという国が今ＩＴ立国として注目を集めているようです。バルト三国としてソ連から独立したのが１９９０年代前半、それ以来日本人にはなじみの薄いこの国ですが、スカイプやその他のスタートアップ企業で知られているほか、政府ぐるみでヨーロッパのＩＴ市場におけるオフショア開発拠点としてＩＴエンジニアを多数呼び込んでいる「デジタル国家」を作ろうとしています。
政府は国民にＩＤカードを発行しており、このＩＤカードはちょうどアメリカのソーシャルセキュリティカードや日本でこれから始まろうとしているマイナンバーカードのようなもので、これで納税、オンラインバンキング、処方箋の発行などなど、ワンストップのサービスを提供しているとのことです。さらに、エストニアの住民だけではなく、国外に住む外国人に対しても「電子居住（ｅ−Ｒｅｓｉｄｅｎｃｙ）カード」というのを発行し、エストニアの電子住民としてコンピュータを通じてリアルな住民と同じようなサービスを「電子的に」提供しようとしているとのことです。
電子居住カードの申し込みは簡単で、まずｅ−ＥｓｔｏｎｉａのＷｅｂサイト（https://apply.e-estonia.com/）でオンラインで手続きをし、５０．９９ユーロをカードで払います。このときに受け取り場所に最寄りのエストニア大使館を指定すると、エストニアに行かなくても大使館で受け取ることができます。申し込んでからカードができあがるのに約一ヶ月ほどかかり、できあがるとメールで通知が来ます。ちなみに申し込みから通知まですべて英語でＯＫです。日本語はちょっと無理ですが…。
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