The entrance ceremony of my university

Yesterday was the entrance ceremony of my university.
University stuffs had planed to welcome freshmen and their family at the ceremony.
Several students groups gave performance in a open space. All of us put together to express our feelings of welcoming them. It was very nice.

Number of freshmen who came with their parents seemed increasing compared with the freshmen ten years before. I think some of the parents want to observe the atmosphere of the university where their child would spent four years to study. Some parents seemed to want to share of the excitement of their children to enter the new world. Those parents frolic and took photos with each other.

I want to stimulate them to spend an effective time in our university.

The exhibition of Charles Darwin

I went to the National Science Museum with my children to see the Exhibition on Charles Darwin.
He discovered the theory of evolution.
The exhibition shows us the process whereby he developed his theory.

Before his time, people thought that humans were special and completely different from other animals in quality. He developed the theory which states that humans are the animal which stands on top of the tree of evolution.
I think his theory made a profound change in the paradigm.
He published his theory twenty years after he had constructed his idea.He might have been afraid that people wouldn't understand his paradigm change. He needed couredge to publish it.

I was very impressed that the great theory was presented so timidly at first.

The students' reunion five years after their graduation

Yesterday I met with some of my students who graduated from our university 5 years ago. About two months ago, I happened to meet one of them on a train. She told me about the recent situation of her classmates. I asked her to plan an opportunity to meet together and she carried it out.
6 ex-students got together. Some of them entered a graduate schools and got masters degrees and two of them decided to enter a doctor course of their graduate school from this spring. Some of them worked as paramedical specialists in a hospital.The most impressive one was the students who had been mentally ill while he was at university, had experienced several jobs to seek his the best one to keep his mental condition good and finally decided to work as a farmer growing and selling mushrooms.
When they graduated from university, the Japanese economic situation was so severe that many of them couldn't find a suitable job, but they found their way and seem to be lively five years after their graduation. I felt very happy to know it.

World is too small!

My daughter talked about one of her close friends in her school.
She was interested in her father because he is a professor of a famous university in Japan.
When I heard her family name and the faculty of the university her farther was working for, I found that I knew her father.

I met her father twenty years ago at a matchmaking session.
My friend introduced a man who was a son of her boss.
Matchmaking has a strong meaning in Japan. When people start to meet with each other after matchmaking, it means that they have a intention to marry.
In my case I didn't have strong feelings for him. Neither did he so we didn't meet again.

He will never know that the world is so small because my family name changed when I married.
But it is very funny story.

Spring is approaching

I went along the Nogawa river by bicycle to go to workplace.
It was not so cold on that day. I could feel that spring was approaching very near to us.

There were several children took off their shoes and socks and walked into the river.
I thought there must be something in the river. For example eggs of a frog or small fishes which has just been born. I wondered the water had already become warm, but there were a certain amount of children walked in the river in many places so they may feel the water wasn't so cold.

While riding along the river, there are many cherry trees which were planted in line with the river. I found that the tip of a branch of the tree become whitish. That indicated that cherry bud started to be active.

I was refreshed to feel the gradual change of the seasons.

Talking about "a energy management program" in the English class

I have an English lesson with a teacher in Kentucky.
At five o'clock in every Saturday morning we have a lesson via Skype.
The lesson is very interesting for me because it is not only a training of speaking in English but a good opportunity to talk many kinds of topics that we don't talk about in a daily life.
Sometimes attitudes toward a topic between the teacher and I are different. The difference is thought to come from our difference of cultural background.
When the teacher feels this kind of difference, he asks me to explain further about my thinking. In the course of the explanation, I can often make my thought clearer. I like this process very mach.

In the last lesson, we talked about "a energy management program" for an executive of a company reported in the website of the Harvard Business Review.
According to the article, there are many company executives who work 12 to 14 hours a day. They tend not to have enough time to eat, to exercise and to spend time with their families. This program is made for this kind of people to change their lifestyle to provoke more energy to improve their productivity and to live a happier life.

I had relatively little sympathy for this program but I couldn't explain the reason enough at the class. The teacher said he seemed this program natural. I thought our difference toward this program might come from cultural difference between us.

Now I'm going to try to explain in this blog why I didn't like this program.

The first reason that I couldn't feel sympathy was that this program was organized only for increasing the productivity of one's work. Companies provide this program to the workers to raise the productivity of them, but this program imposes the workers to change their whole lifestyle including their private time. I don't want the company to say something about my private life.
When a worker takes this course by himself without any relation to his company, I think it is no problem.

The second reason that I don't like this program was that I had a question if we could be happier when we control of all our body, mind, soul and split? I think a person who is straggling to manage all the things he has seems to be attractive though he himself might have an anger or anxiety in his mind. Worries are not the things to be deleted and we had better cope with these negative feelings. I think it is more like a human.
I think this program presuppose human mind too simple.

Cedar pollen started to flow.

I am allergic to some pollens flowing in spring season.
There are a lot of Japanese cedar in the mountain side of Tokyo. Their pollen seemed to start flowing a few days ago.
I have sore throat and often give a sneeze.
This situation lasts until May every year. This season is really gloomy for me although everything becomes bright and starts grow at the air of spring.