年別アーカイブ：2020年

There is a famous sword master in Japan’s history, and his name is Miyamoto Musashi. Miyamoto Musashi（source：Wikipedia） I just recently wrote about living in “want to” and striving for one’s dream, and I decided to continue noting the importance of lifelong learning, which is also meant as my own reminder. Miyamoto Musashi wrote a book titled The Book of Five Rings, and the following lines are found in one of the five chapters, The Book of Water: Today is victory over yourself of yesterday; tomorrow is your victory over lesser men. Next, to beat more skillful men, train accordingly. … ...

There is this famously difficult piece called La Campanella by Franz Liszt. It is made to play with Liszt’s large hands and at a very fast tempo, so it is an extremely hard, actually, one of the hardest piano pieces that exists in the world. Recently, a TV program featured a mid-aged fisherman who fully plays it. He is a seaweed fisherman whose hobby was Pachinko (an arcade game or gambling machine popular among Japanese adults). He kept losing his money until eventually he stopped doing it, and thus, he was bored at home. One day, he saw Fuzjko (Fujiko) ...

The oil market is in turmoil. In addition to decreased demand due to the spread of Coronavirus, Saudi Arabia and Russia failed to reach an agreement regarding a reduction in oil production. Saudi Arabia has decided to go ahead and increase its oil production, which caused a sharp drop in the oil price to less than 20 USD per barrel. For oil importers, it is certainly preferable that the price of oil has fallen, but for oil exporting countries, it has a huge economic impact and will inevitably lead to political instability. To understand the context, there are several important ...

There are many false rumors going around about the Coronavirus. From how to cure the disease by gargling with vinegar or hot water to predicting the date of the state of emergency declaration, there are so many of them. We don’t know who spread these rumors and with what intentions (perhaps the first person starts with good intentions to let people know what is upcoming or help people be prepared, but then the information is embellished as it spreads). Similar types of false rumors were spread after the Tohoku Earthquake disaster. With SNS being the mainstream communication tool nowadays, false ...

As you grow professionally, your viewpoints change. You might have heard the expression, “move up the level of abstraction,” but when you do so, you start finding some kind of universality among the things that used to look different to you. Meaning, you become “smart,” because it means you become able to apply one principle to another more flexibly. In business, a manager needs not know every detail of the operation on the ground; in fact, that is just impossible. However, there are general principles in management and leadership.    Although, when your viewpoint changes, it becomes less easy to communicate ...

There is something typical about corporate training in Japan; from my experience, it is very common in Japanese participants that their motivation level is quite low. In fact, not a few people come to the training with their professional mindset “turned-off,” so I usually have to start by doing something positive to bring the “negative” motivation level up to, at least, neutral. If this goes well, and if the training turns successful, participants would be pleasantly surprised. Nevertheless, it certainly is not efficient to have to interact with people with low motivation at the onset. To begin with, joining a ...

Ms. Kaneko, my former French teacher who I mentioned in a previous post, one day mumbled, “Upon getting the ‘Standard French-Japanese Dictionary,’ one should start by reading the foreword. It can’t be read without tears.” Indeed, unlike the foreword of a usual dictionary, this one does have some profound lines: The predecessor of this dictionary, “Standard French-Japanese Dictionary” was published about 30 years ago in May 1957. Under what situation the editing of this dictionary has been done is found in detail in the introduction given by the late professor Shintaro Suzuki: In 1945, Tokyo was completely burned to the ...

I just tried fasting recently. Fasting is basically refraining from eating for a period of time. I have been interested in trying it, and since my weight is constantly on the rise these days, I decided to give it a go. Here is the breakdown of what I did: 2 days of pre-fast (preparatory) meals, 5 days of fasting, and 3 days of post-fast (recovery) meals. For the pre-fasting and post-fasting, non-plant proteins such as meat, fish, and eggs must be avoided. During the fast days, taking sips of diluted fermented drink, eating an umeboshi (pickled plum), and having a ...

Japanese companies are finally taking serious steps to apply diversity and inclusion in their business practices. Promoting diversity has various meanings, including female leadership and hiring persons with disabilities, but I feel that many companies have not reached a full understanding of what it entails. I think that what is happening now is that the population in the country is sharply declining, consequently causing a decrease in the labor force and thus giving companies no choice but to consider diversity as a way to supplement their workforce. I suspect that this may be the real motive for many companies. The ...

One of my staff members asked me why MindSeeds Inc. is named as such, and I thought, “now you ask?!” But this may be a good opportunity to explain what I meant by it. I have always been interested in committing to human resources development, but the words “mind seeds” were taken from a French poem titled Rondel de l'Adieu. Rondel de l'Adieu (Song of Farewell)Partir, c’est mourir un peu, (To part is to die a little)C’est mourir à ce qu’on aime : (To die to what we love)On laisse un peu de soi-même (We leave a part of ourselves)En ...