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summer trip to shizuoka, Mt Fuji, etc

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We went back to my hometown shizuoka-city from 9 Fri. to 11 Sun. Before starting, I had a kidney stone and had a very hard ache from 5 to 8 night (at 9 morning, the kidney stone went out of my body), so we went back by shinkansen bullet train. My son liked it very much because it was the first time to ride this train for him. After arriving at shizuoka, my father and mother and my two cousins welcomed us at shizuoka-station, then ate lunch at shoan which my wife liked very much. I like kakiage-don which contained much pinkish shrimps Kakiage(tempura) but this day I orderd maguro-don(tsuna-don). At this shop, there were oden which was popular at shizuoka-city and I liked it very much, so I orderd them. Next day, we went to "mizube no rakkou" at ushizuma, where we went last summer. This place was opend at summer time and my son liked it very much. It also costed zero yen ! After that, we went to fujinomiya-city to watch shiraito falls and Mt. Fuji. W

Iga ueno city, Ninja museum

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We went to Iga-ueno city to see Ninja show. Recently, my son likes ninja, and he practice how to make syuriken by origami-paper at kindergarden and Iga-ueno is the place where I wanted to go, so we went there at 21 July. It was about 1.5 hour by car and we arrived there about 1 p.m. and ate lunch at okonomiyaki shop " Ito ". This shop is like normal house, and we make okonomiyaki by ourself and we order big size okonomiyaki and big size yakisoba and cost 1230 yen ($12) and tasted very good ! After eating, we went to NINJA MUSEUM of Igaryu . And inside this museum, there hold Ninja show (needed extra cost 300 yen per person) and the last show started at 3 p.m. so we safely watched the last show. This show was very good and after watching this show, my son tried syuriken.  After this show, we walked through this museum and there were tour-guide so they navigate us and telling the story of ninja's life.

The exhibition of Dinosaur and taisho ward walking

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Recently my son likes dinosaur because TV program for children is broadcasted every Sunday morning and he likes this program very much, so we went to the exhibition of dinosaur. This exhibition was held at Osaka-dome (baseball stadium) skyhall 9th floor and this day, idle event was held at same time, so many young women was gathered and very crowded around this stadium. This dinosaur's event was not so crowded but many families had came. After that, there were another moving dinosaur (t-rex) and my son was crying ... After enjoying this event, we drop to the shopping center next to this stadium and afterthat, we walked around taisho-station (osaka dome is located near taisho ward). This area is famous for okinawa shops and it is about 10 year interval before we visited this town . I like this town's atmosphere and it is next to the sea so there are ferryboat for commuting.

The Incredible Human Journey by Alice Roberts

In japan, we can see this book  at almost all the book shops, and this month, NHK is broadcasting this BBC TV series. I planed to see this first episode, but missed by  going outside, also missed rebroadcasting 2 days before, so checked the web and found this first episode. I think that this TV series is very intersting. The story is not special story, but it describes this kind of story very easily and very interstingly by using many wonderful video and CG. And furthermore, her storytelling is very good. And also her book is very good one, I think. As seen from amazon book review, amazon japan review is not good evaluation compaerd with amazon.com review, but my opinion is almos same as the latter. Maybe in japan, the book publisher and broadcaster (NHK) is closely related (like this special site ), but such good scientific series might be good for young people, also for middle aged people like me.

hotaru watching at Uji-city

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We went to Uji at Kyoto-prefecture to watch hotaru(firefly) at Uji city park.  (Jun. 15 sat). Last year, we went to watch hotaru near our home, but this place was damaged by last year's heavy rain, so I was searching another hotaru-watching places by internet and finally I found this place. Uji-city is located next to kyoto-city, and it is near my home (about 30 min by train or 1 hour by car) and it hosts world heritage " byoudou-in " and other good temples. I like this place because there is a uji-river and scenary around this river is very beautiful. At first, we went to tea-shop " uji iemon " at 1:30 pm. This day, weather was very bad (heavy rain) but it was very crowded so we had to wait about 1 hour to enter shop! Maybe one of the reason why might be that this day (15 Jun) was the first day of uji-river cormorant fishing. After finish eating, we went to uji city-park. This park always ended about 5 pm, but this 3 weeks was speci

Noam Chomsky -about education

As I read the book " Reversal of the intellect ", there are some writings saying that the education for test is very harmful and he also mention about education system of John Dewey because he studied at school of its education philosophy. I also agree its opinion because test score is just a indication of understanding, memorizing and there are no other meaning. But as I wrote this , score or ranking is sometimes main goal for study in japan and it is ridiculus. Reading books and find something that we didn't know is fantastic experiences. And thinking about the origin of university or college, I think it all started from people' s curiosity. In case of japan, maybe at the begining of meiji-era (1868-) , young people wanted to know abount unknown things or about foreign countries and were gathering and studied at small cram schools and those were the roots of many japanese universities. But the times goes by and the original desire for wanting to know turned out

About TPP

Now in Nikkei newspaper, there is a column of Carla Hills and I like this articles. This nikkei column is called "watashi no rireki-syo" meaning that someone is chosen and  he or she write down their life story every day during about 1 month. I liked these columns because there are some good wisdoms. In today's article, she recalled about the memory of US-Japan car trade episode and she said that she insisted  fair competition is good for both country and both companies, and if there is some restriction about trade (custom), it brought company's weakness in a longrun. It is very good concept. But why she at that time? because in today's newspaper's top article are TPP, and nikkei newspaper strongly support TPP. But anyway, her concept is very splendid, I think so.

Curiosity and education

In today's newspaper nikkei, I found the article that university of tokyo join the online education "Coursera". Recently, circumstance of education is changed rapidly, because we can learn many things from good quality of materials like i-Tunes university, coursera,edX, Kahn. In japan, MBA course are becoming popular among business people, newspapers said, but paying such high tuition is hard for many people. But by using such materials, we can learn by almost free (needs internet access fee but very cheap in japan and tools like i-pod are recently cheap). Seeing this ted video, it seemed very intersting and learning platform will be important. I think that education is most important thing for human beings, but in japan, many people seek the name of university and licences etc. Maybe that's why they don't know the fun of learning. I like studying when I was child and I am very gladful for my parents to give me a circumstance of studying and most impo

Riemann Hypothesis

As I wanted to see the TV program "NHK kouhaku uta-gassen" , a TV program of music broadcasted at 31 Dec. annualy, I searched  NHK on demand . This TV program was pay program but I found some intersting TV programs on free, and one of them is " Riemann Hypothesis ". It was broadcasted at 2009 and length is about 1.5 hour. I think that this is very interesting program. I like math and I read several books about Riemann Hypothesis but this mathematic concept is very difficult to understand. This TV program translated this difficult concept to very easy way using CG technology. Some blog  said badly about this program but I think that it is very good because explaining this theory in plain terms needs some mathematic background and knowledge and maybe this TV director have such sense, I think.

Very good period of time for studying

For what purpose do we study? There must be many reasons for each persons. My reason is same as when I was a child (about age 3) until now. I want to know many things, simply curiosity. This is all that motivate me. I simply choose my school and company simply because it might give me much intellectual excitement. If this level might be low, it is boring. Nowadays, there are booms to learn, for example studying at some school like MBA school, etc. Of course it is very good thing, but like me who had little money for free and want to stay my own home with my family and play with my son, IT tool is very excellent things for studying. Because there are huge amount of excellent videos,text,etc for free in English. The amount, quality, its level of materials is very higher than things of Japanese (of course there are good things existed, but there are huge gap between them because people all over the world use English) And cost of IT environment is very cheap now. Foe example in my