maiko-san

Early in November I visited the museum in Kyoto University to see my grandfather's exhibition of calligraphy. As it was early in the morning, the display room was not crowded. Thanks Heaven! I could enjoy watching his various calligraphy, "Haiku", "Tanka" and a long letter to his deciple by the name of Tanabe Gen. At first professor Tanabe belonged to Kyoto School Sect which my grandfather founded. Gradually he drifted apart and in the end criticised my grandfather's way of thinking. My grandfather wrote to him about an Austrian philosopher Husserl. I felt sad since I could not read his writings. It's all Greek to me. However two writings made a good impression upon me. First of all, I was taken aback when I saw "Ken-kon Itteki" (乾坤 一擲)which is literally translated, "sink or swim" He quoted it from an old great Chinese poet, Kanyu(韓諭). It means that "Let's throw the dice! Let's try it no matter what the results would ...

From time to time I chat with an American by the name of William Anderson over Skype. Our conversation goes like this. I say, "Hello, Bill. How are you doing this evening?" He says, "Good morning. I am making coffee and still yawning. It's cool and beautiful there." He likes talking about his family and his work. His wife named Peggy goes to House Depot nearby to complement Bill's salary. Bill is 63 years old. He works for Illustration and Graphic Company. He has some fun projects to do at work and he's looking forward to digging into them. He has a 20-year-old son, who always plays a Japanese game "Pokemon" and "Cosplay" with his friends in the garage. His son seems to be the apple of Bill's eye. He asked me, "How's your German Learning going?" I told him that I have been a bit dissapointed at Germany, because they don't want to tell from the bottom of their hearts how they feel about the Holocaust. They deli...

Angela Merkel celebrated a landslide victory with her Christian Democratic Union having fallen short of an outright parliamentary majority. The scale of truimph is due to the collapse of the Free Democratic Party, which has supported CSU/CDU coaltion ever since the end of the Second World War. Now FDP has no qualificattion to represent the Bundestag. On top of that Merkel had merely stand back and watch opposition parties' suicide.They eat each other and paid the price for failure to come grip with reality. What is new to us, is that the advent of  a party, AfD (Alternative for Germany) which popped up last April. It is interesting to know that one of their policies is to get back to the old currency of Mark instead of EURO. Do the Germans really want to walk out on EURO? Rumor has it, that the EURO crisis would be solved if the Germans took up Mark. For dibillitating countries like France, Greece and Ireland could discount the value of EURO and have competitive exporting capabili...