Because it is very clear, if you study the history, that it was not their land untill only very recently. Their land belonged to the people who lived there and were forced to move from where they used to live.
If they say to their children, "if you take something from others against their will, you have to return it", they have to return their land to those who it belonged to.
I hear Australians have returned some land to the natives.
I can see that they felt that things were not quite right from the ethical viewpoint of the second half of 20th century.
A friend of mine says "that is called loser's psychology".
We, the Japanese, must return Hokkaido, the nothern island, to the Ainu, though. I feel guilty.
Wars for resources forever ???!!!
]]>A bit about Japan.
My son, 7 yrs old, told his teacher, a woman in her 50s but very sporty, that his friends often pat or even kick him.
She told us that these things among boys should be tolerated to some extent.
A couple days ago, Japanese public TV (called NHK) started to show English football. I saw ManU vs Blackburn which was interrupted by my wife.
The NHK is showing "Doctor Who" too but only the ninth doctor series.
]]>The book goes,
In the summer, cricket sings and plays and laughs at ants who collect foods for winter.
Winter came and cricket runs out of food and shivers.
Meanwhile, ants were preparing their party underground.
One ant says "something is missing for our party. ??? entertaiment!"
The other says "Cricket!"
The ants went to the cricket to invite him to sing songs at their party.
They enjoyed the party very much, especially cricket, of course!
Warm place and plenty of foods!!! But...
party was over and cricket got sad as he had to go.
When cricket was about to leave reluctantly, ants said
"why not stay with us for the whole winter and play music for us!"
"oh! yes! thank you!!!" "you are welcome!" !!! -END-
????? what is this book all about?????
You should do what you are good at and exchange your products/service?
The book was published by "Jolly Learning Ltd".
]]>http://www.ism.ac.jp/~yoshino/arito/eg/top_e.htm
Q64. Some people say that although there are many different religions in the world, each with their own beliefs, their teachings really all amount to the same thing. Would you agree with this or disagree?
____________________1.Agree__2.Disagree__8.Other_9.D.K.
1992_ITALY__1,048____60.9______27.7_______-______11.5
1987_FRANCE_1,013____57.8______33.0_______1.0_____8.2
1987_FRG____1,000____61.8______20.7_______0.4_____17.1
1993_NL_____1,083____70.1______22.3_______1.5_____6.1
1987_UK_____1,043____71.2______24.5_______0.9_____3.4
1988_USA____1,563____56.5______39.9_______1.0_____2.7
1988_JPN____2,265____63.3______16.4_______0.5____19.9
Now, 20 years on, maybe "Disagree" has increased?!
(I don't know how different people think now.)
Basically, though 20 years ago, I am surprised at the fact that 2/3 of Europeans (+Americans) agreed with the proposition.
The Japanese exchange Christmas presents, go to Shintoism shrines for New Year, get married in Shintoism shrines/christian churches(regarded as fashionable), and have funnerals in buddism temples.
No wonder they "agree".
]]>http://www.ism.ac.jp/~yoshino/arito/eg/top_e.htm
Some results are below.
Q62a. Do you have any personal religious faith?
________________n____1.Yes___2.No____9.D.K.
1992__ITALY___1,048___87.8___12.0____0.2
1987__FRANCE__1,013___64.4___34.8____0.8
1987__FRG_____1,000___74.8___21.8____3.4
1993__NL______1,083___57.1___38.7____4.2
1987__UK______1,043___64.2___34.3____1.4
1988__USA_____1,563___85.3___13.9____0.8
1988__JPN_____2,265___36.5___63.5____-
Q37. Home is the only place where I can relax and feel good"?
(year and n are the same in the question above.)
________1.Yes____2.No____8.Other__9.D.K.
ITALY___73.6_____24.7_____-_______1.7
FRANCE__65.4_____29.7_____3.3_____1.6
FRG_____56.1_____37.5_____2.0_____4.4
NL______31.6_____65.5_____0.8_____2.1
UK______50.7_____48.0_____0.4_____0.9
USA_____44.8_____54.4_____0.1_____0.7
JPN_____80.3_____16.3_____0.6_____2.8
One thing shocked me a little is that he and other children (and people at large) often use the expression "loser!"
It sounds very strong to me.
We usually think that when one won, one should not say that one won too much because someone lost and that is the rule.
In sumo wrestling, a japanese traditional sport, you will be warned if you display your victory. A mongolian Yokozuna-champion was once really critised very much. (judo, kendo, the same, but being internationalised, things are a little changing.)
Calling someone who lost "loser" after you won over them is impossible.
Is it because the english have been always winning against their enemies in wars?
Or just that is the world standard (shared at least by the english and monglian) and we are minority as is often the case.
]]>I don't mean that japanese women run faster than japanese men or women football team is stronger than the men's team.
but i mean that japanese women got the first olympic gold medals in swimming, volleyball, figure skating and marathon earlier than japanese men as far as I know.
japnese women do better in tennis tour than japanese men.
In football, too, the women's team does well though only very small number of women play football in japan.
(generally, football was not popular untill only recently.
the (men's) professional league was established only 15 years ago. no women's professional league.)
My hypothesis is that sexual difference between men and women is smaller with the japanese (or mongoloid, in general) than with europeans or africans and this is the cause of the fact above.
Men do better in most sports when they are more masculine while women do so when they are less feminine.
According to medical research,
black girls have their first period earlier than others and then whilte girls and finally yellow girls, and
black men have largest balls and then white and finally yellow.
(length of poles may be a little difficult to measure.)
Of course, individual differences are large.
And ther should be more factors to decide success in sports.
There is autotrader "journal", but it was not very cost-effective, as far as i know.
i recommend you to use the "website only" option.
Prices people give to their own cars are usually too high for others to buy.
Reasonably-priced cars are sold soon after the prices are offered.
So most of the advertisements you find in their website are those left without buyers, often more than several weeks because their prices are not attractive enough for the cars.
By the way,
Even too-high prices invite many e-mails
which usually say something like,
"i am interested in your car,
but i am living in spain(or somewhere else) and so someone on behalf of me comes up to you to pay you for the car and send it to me. So, tell me your final price as soon as possible. i am really interested in your car"
yes, very many. (why buy an ordinary second hand car in UK to send to Spain for not-reasonable price???)
i happen to have a neighbour in car business, and he told me "This is called "money-laundering". Ignore them."
Sometimes i think, could i get 1k pounds more?
but i am not a gambler.
]]>we visited places related to the beatles like penny lane and strawberry field, and so on.
it is formidable thing that people there are not trying to make money using the relation.
there would be many suvenir shops in our country.
]]>I'm back from moscow.
The weather was fine almost throughout 25-30th.
So, BBC was right(see pevious post).
Under Brejinev it was a quiet city.
Under Gorbachyov and Elitsin it was the emergency period.
Now under Putin, it is the contrast between the past like old 5-storeyed buildings or Czech?-made trams and the present like tall, glittering buildings or traffic jams by very large number of western cars.
Food is better and cheaper(e.g. shashlyk, pirozhok) in Moscow than in England. I bet.
But hotels are expensive.
I stayed at my friend's flat, but this time getting visa gets very troublesome and can be costly.
I am going to Moscow tommorow.
I will stay there with my family 25-30 August.
Some weather forecast like that of BBC says it will be fine there throughout this period but others like yahoo says it will be rainy throughout.
Under Brejinev it was a quiet city.
Under Gorbachyov and Elitsin it was the emergency period.
Now let's see what under Putin.
Unbelievably rude to them, four British people, three men and one woman, crossed the road on horseback in front of them.
One killed and two seriously injured, woman unharmed.
In return, Satsuma was seriously bombed by the British navy. Anglo-Satsuma War.
Interestingly, human losses were more serious on the european side.
5 killed in Satsuma and 13 killed among the British including the Commander of the flagship.
Among those samurais who attacked three men in Namamugi village, was an ancestor of mine.
]]>In the morning last Satureday, I happened to see with my 6 year-old son a cartoon program called "Robotboy" on CITV (ITV for children) channel.
I didn't know how they could broadcast this kind of program in this 21st century.
Evil, mean, small and short-sighted Dr. "Kamikazi" who speaks with samurailand accent and sometimes really in samurailand-language, with his silly subordinate sumo wrestler is knocked over by the hero Robotboy!
(I have to admit that Dr. kamikazi looks like a man I know back home but that is not the point.)
So,
I wrote an email to them asking why they try to grow ethnic and/or racial prejudice in British children and aked them to stop broadcasting it.
Today, they gave me an email which says below.
Thank you for your email and comments which have been noted.
Regards
Duty Officer - jh
What do you think I should do next?
Will they do something beyond sending me the email above?
What is the most important thing in fighting is "rhythm", according to "The Book of Five Rings" written by MIYAMOTO Musashi, the greatest samurai sword master and also a painter.
His picture (with a sword in both hands) is shown as my photo.
He lived in 16-17c, mostly the Age of Civil Wars.
But, in the beginning of 17c, TOKUGAWA Ieyasu unified samurailand.
Since then, total peace continued more than 200 years under TOKUGAWA family.
Because of the peace, economy and culture got prosperous.
Samurais became Bureaucrats.
What shocked me most here is that I was fined 50p by library for returning a book with three days delay.
I would be told just "please return books in time next time" or nothing with smile back home.
Motherland of Adam Smith!?
]]>Children were often devided into 5-6 smaller groups to do some activities, such as cleaning school, making something in art class, and eating school lunch.
It is basically fun to chat with friends, eating school lunch.
But for children who has a poor apetite and for anyone faced to food they don't like, it was time of agony.
At school lunch, every child is given the same portion.
They are told to finish it.
What is more, they are told that they can't go playing unless everyone in their group finishes his/her lunch.
Some girls were slow to eat. They were demanded to eat faster, faster, by naughty boys. They sometimes wept.
Poor girls!
School lunch of our days (30 yrs ago) was far from tasty.
Every child has something he/she can't eat, doesn't he/she?
For me, too much hard boiled egg whose yolk became green was difficult to eat.
It made me sick that boiled eggs riminded me of chicks.
I was once growing chicks bought at a stall at the fete of a nearby shrine.
Scrumbled egg wasn't difficult to eat though irrational.
At that time, sometimes we were fed whale meat.
It was cooked different ways, fried or boiled, basically.
It made me sick too.
My mother never cooked whale meat, so it was totally unfamiliar taste to me.
Now, whale meat is a rare thing, it is never served at school lunch which is poorly financed.
In a small number of places where there is a long tradition of whaling, people may like it, but in most of places they don't.
UK tvs seem to often show exaggeration.
It is apparent that samurailand people eat too much "tuna".
In primary and junior high schools in our country, children eat school lunch which is cooked at their school or munucipal school lunch centre.
School lunches consisted of bread, milk, and some dishes which include fish/meat and vegetables when I attended these schools in the 1970s.
What is interesting is it was always bread but not rice.
After the unconditional surrender, we were told to import wheat from the disneyland-country.
It was seriously argued that bread makes you cleverer than rice and that is why we lost.
Science may have advanced and now children eat more rice than 30 years ago.
But people eat less rice back home.
After all, they won.
]]>We don't look at each other in the eye back in samurailand.
We do so sometimes, but not so often as here.
Women may do more often.
When a man looks at other man in the eye, he is challenging the man to a kind of duel.
It is very stressful for me to look at people in the eye here.
If I get accustomed to the habit here, that will be a problem back home.
And name!
Only my parents, my wife and a few friends call me by my first name back home.
It is not offensive but makes me feel very strange that a total stranger calls me by my first name here.
Bye,
]]>Sorry for Rooney.
By the way,
What is the most strange thing in English language is the expressions like...
he is one of the best players in this world cup, she is one of the most beautiful women in the world, and so on.
Is he or she the No 1 or not.
Many goldmedalists?
Isn't "the best=the No 1"?
one of the best???????
Isn't it like, "what I say is wrong"?
Please, anyone, tell me why you don't feel it strange?
]]>It is hot!
Samurai must not wipe the sweat in official occasions.
Because it is rude. But why?????
By the way,
orders of specification of time, location and person is wrong in European language speaking countries(?), at least in England.
35 Joke street
Joke city
JK7 7Jk
UK
is like looking at a person, first holes of his/her nose, then nose and mouth, then face and finally whole of him/her.
day/month/year
is like a quize in TV show.
1st hint...
What happened on 7th?
you don't know? then 2nd hint...
what happened on 7th/11?
No, it is not my birthday.
Finally, what happened on 7/11/1917?
Yes, that's it!
We have to speficy things from larger to smaller, don't we?
]]>In samurailand, classrooms are cleaned everyday after classes by school children themselves in elementary, junior-high, and high schools.
Classrooms, corridors, and even tolilets are cleaned by themselves.
They sweep the floor, wipe desks and dust blackboard rubbers.
Children of years 1 & 2 in elementary schools are exempted from the job. Their rooms are cleaned by older children.
I did and my daughter does there.
I had no question about it though nobody likes it.
But here in England, they don't.
Why not?
They do?
]]>Rather than 50 cm deep we may better say 50 cm high, as the pool is surrounded by concrete wall and the surface of the water is above knees, which would be very dangerous at the time of earthquake and never exist in samurailand.
Every day a few old men come to the pool and remotecontrol theire boats.
Old men should play shogi or go or raise bonsai.
Industrialised since long.
]]>No wonder people aren't afraid of the nature and don't worship it.
Did they do before?
]]>I am an old samurai.
Samurai must not speak much.
See you,
]]>