5/29/2005

The End of the Spring

I went to Yuto, one of the authentic Japanese traditional restaurants, where I ate hamabohfu in the picture, a wild plant which grows on the seacoast and creates a wind blowing in your body after you eat it. My experience has revealed wild plants have something special that cannot be found in vegetables grown in the fields partly because wild ones have survived by its own survival power in the environment, without any recourse to human care including organic fertilizers.
Hamaboufu heralds the end of the spring and the beginning of the season in June, in which it rains very often.

5/27/2005

Anti Binary Oppositions

A Japanese was killed in Iraq, who was employed as a bodyguard or something in a company. We will never forget two innocent Japanese have been killed in Iraq. Japan may have looked offensive to some in supporting the USA in the war and sending the army there, but we're adamant that the Japanese army was sent there to keep some area ivolved peaceful. I mean Japan was trying to play a different role in Iraq from the ones any other country did. You will see how many of Japanese dislike binary oppositions after studying about Japan. Our detachment from the oppisitions, which may seem to be vague, would be found in the history of Japan except in the first half of the twentieth century. Anyway, we will never forget those killings while I know some would think Japan was against them.

5/01/2005

Tragedy

Last Monday a tragedy happened in Japan. A train got derailed and crashed against a big apartment built along the rails, and about 100 persons passed over so far. Each of them had their own lives, which they expected to be continuing more....

A lot of stories have been narrated here concerning the persons who cannot tell us any longer about themselves and anything that they were going to do on that day and the days to follow. One of them was a girl, who lost her mother several years ago and had played the role of the mother in her family. She encountered the accident on the way to her first overseas trip to Korea since her mother's death.

An accident takes place anytime anywhere. Seeing that disaster, a Japanese is led to think he or she might have incurred that tragedy, while some of us thinks it was caused by mistakes of the motorman or the company that gave him a tight schedule or much pressure. I belong to the former.

I was most depressed when I heard a saying of a middle-aged man who was bereaved of his wife. He said, "I don't know why my wife encountered the accident because I didn't think she had done what God dislikes. We have been working diligently without committing any harmful things, ... I don't know why God gave it to my wife."

Some facts are difficult to overcome or accept. What should you do when you encounter such tragedies like the deaths of the persons you cherish most? Can you give me or him an answer?