National Center Test

On last saturday and sunday, national center tests for university were held in Japan.

I took the center test more than 10 years ago. Oh memories!

In the past, an academic ability of Japanese students are No1 in the world.

But now, it have declined.

It can't be helped , I think, because academic ability will grow in economic growing coutries, not mature country like Japan.

if we want to become No1 again, we have to become poor again??

First Snow

Snow!

Yesterday first snow in this season falls in Tokyo.

I live in Okayama (more country than Tokyo) and I have never seen much snow recently.

In my childhood, we could see more snow and we can play snowball fight every year!

Now I can see much snow in ski resort only.

It is a result of global warming trend......

Coming-of-Age Day

In Japan, the 2nd Monday is the day of "Coming-of-Age" .

Ceremonies are held and many new adult men and women join them.

Adult means 20 years old in Japan.

However, in recently every years, some accidents of violence are occured by excited young men.

2o years old is really adult ?

Japanese Character

In Japanese language, there are three kinds of characters.
They are called as Hiragana, Katakana, and Kanji.

All of them are originated from Chinise character.

Hiragana and Katakana is close to Alphabet in English, because they are sound-express character.

Kanji is ideographic character and there are more than 10,000 characters,

and I (and probably most of japanese) can't know all of them.

It is one (and main) reason why japanese language is hard to learn.

So I respect foreigner who can speak and write Japanese very well!

World map

In most of Japanese world maps, "japan" island is located at the center of maps.

As a result, central area of map is occupied by the large sea "patific".

The United State is in most east side, and E.U is in most west side.

Therefore, For japanese it is hard to understand that "Asia" (include Japan) is called as "Orient" and U.S.A is called as "Western".

Mouse year

According to the "Eto" , this year is "mouse" year in Japan.

The word ”Eto" means the oriental zodiac, and each year is given one of 12 animals name.

It is suitable to the "mouse" year that fire happened in Tokyo Disney Land on January 3rd.