Taro's Blog

In Japan, Taiikukai (体育会) is a kind of old boys’ network based on the sport you played in your schools. I just hated it. I am glad that I am not part of it. On the contrary, my younger brother, Sanshiro, is a beneficiary of the system. And another of my younger brothers, Jiro, seemed to be in the system whether he liked it or not.

外国人も不思議がる日本の体育会系。就職有利な時代は終わる?３つの理由。
冷泉彰彦のアメリカの視点xニッポンの視点 > 中高の体育会、アメリカ流にも問題点
日本の大学新卒就職における「体育会系神話」の成立と変容

If you were a successful athlete, you would receive lifetime respect from your network (as in Sanshiro’s case). If you have proved your perseverance by not quitting the 3-year torture of the after-school extracurricular activity (部活動) at high school, you are also the winner in life (Jiro’s case). From the viewpoint of Taiikukai people, I was a quitter, loser, and outsider because I quit competitive swimming (競泳) at the age of 15, or at the end of junior high school (中学校).

When I started competitive swimming at a local fitness club (スポーツ会館) during elementary school (小学生), my Swimming coach, Mr. Shinryo Meguro (目黒伸良), never behaved like a Taiikukai-kei (体育会系). Instead, he was following the state-of-the-art teaching method of swimming in the United States. He also organized the Swim Camp in the summer in Yonezawa, Yamagata (山形県米沢市), and the spring in Tokyo. 2 hours of training on 5 days a week was challenging, but it was also fun.

After Coach Meguro resigned for a personal reason, things got worse. His successor was a young Taikukai-kei who graduated from Jyosai University (城西大学). He was the opposite of Coach Meguro.　Bullying and verbal abuse crept in. He got angry for no reason. Swimming was no longer fun. He represented what Taiikukai was all about. I knew I should quit. Maybe meeting him was a blessing in disguise.

I have heard of the Toyota Woven City, but initially, I did not pay attention to its name’s origin. Suddenly, I realized it honors the founder of the Toyota group, Sakichi Toyoda, and his Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd, established in 1926. Sakichi is the great-grandfather of Akio Toyoda, Chairman of Toyota Motor Corporation.

In the 20th century, adding or replacing band members was a common practice. Nobody made a big deal except some hardcore fans.

• 1962 Ringo Starr – The Beatles
• 1974 Stevie Nicks and Lindsey Buckingham – Fleetwood Mac
• 1975 Michael McDonald – The Doobie Brothers
• 1975 Joe Walsh – Eagles
• 1975 Ronnie Wood – The Rolling Stones
• 1988 John Frusciante – The Red Hot Chili Peppers
• 1990 Dave Grohl – Nirvana

In the 21st century, things have changed. We had to replace irraplacables because they were dead or unavailable, but many fans resisted the idea. So, we carefully came up with a better concept. Instead of replacing, “honoring” the irreplacables, and injecting new blood into the bands. I thought that was a brilliant idea! So, now, we can still enjoy the legendary bands’ live concerts otherwise not available.

• 2008 Arnel Pineda – Journey
• 2012 Adam Lambert – Queen
• 2024 Emily Armstrong – Linkin Park
• 2026 Anika Nilles – Rush

When I discovered the Beatles, in my early teens, the legendary British band had already disbanded. Initially, I thought they were a comic act. Think about it. The name of the band was the Beetles (カブト虫). Their members consisted of John Lemon (レモン), Ringo (りんご) Starr, Paul McIntosh (マッキントッシュりんご), and George Harisen (張り扇). Their record label was “Apple Corp” (アップルレコード), and they sang “Strawberry Fields Forever” (「いちご畑よ、永遠に」). Or maybe I got confused with the Rutles. The existence of a Japanese comic band called Zutorubi (ずうとるび) at the time also confused me.

And there were Volkswagen Beetle (the bugs) and magic buses. Full of “Love and Peace”. Luckily, Apple Computer at the time was unknown (Apple II was not popular) in Japan. That changed when they released Macintosh in 1984, but that’s another story.

Fast forward to 2025, my son only knew Apple sells iPhones and MacBook Air. He probably doesn’t know what the Mac stands for. I will teach him that it was McCartney, not McDonald’s.

Fun Fact: “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)” was on the “Rubber Soul” album by the Beatles, released in 1965. “Norwegian Wood,” the novel by Haruki Murakami (村上春樹), was published in 1987.

Hiroyuki Takahashi (高嶋 弘之), who was the Project Manager at Toshiba EMI for the Beatles at the time, officially admitted that he purposely mistranslated “Norwegian Wood” to “ノルウェイの森” because it sounded better.
「Norwegian Wood」は、直訳するとノルウェー木材や、その家具とかそういう意味らしいんですが、「ノルウェーの森」というタイトルをつけました。意味は違っているのですが、ただこちらの方が曲の雰囲気に合っていると言われることもあります。

The Beatles 日本公演50周年記念特集：読売新聞 > マイ・セットリスト (2016)

Kudos to him! I agree that “ノルウェイ産の木材” wouldn’t cut it. He was aware that the original meaning was “a piece of wood,” perhaps “from Norwegian furniture”. Aha, that was probably an odd piece of wood that came out of the Ikea flat-pack furniture.

The protagonist of the song was an English working-class young white male in the early 1960s, and probably did not care whether it was Swedish or Norwegian. Interestingly, Ikea opened its first stores outside of Sweden in Norway in 1963. 

In the same article, I also liked the comment on the song by Tim Hitchens, who was the British Ambassador to Japan (2012-2016).
“Norwegian Wood” managed, when I was a teenager, to summon up the infinite possibilities of adult life; confident women, overnighting with others. And I liked the bad pun at the end “I lit a fire, isn’t it good, Norwegian wood”. I have always enjoyed (and still use) bad puns.

So, I listened to the song carefully for the first time. Wow, I saw the world that I overlooked (or overheard) while listening to the song a million times in the past. The lady, an “awoken” white professional who was into Yoga and Indian philosophy. She got rid of all of her furniture, made her room empty, and sat on the floor. It could be possible in the late 1960s, but in the early 1960s, it was highly unlikely.

OK, she was moving out from her old place. All the furniture was gone and leaving her room empty. That night was the final day of her rental agreement. Perhaps her friends already helped her disassemble and pack Ikea furniture pieces back into their “flat-pack” boxes. The protagonist happened to find a piece of Norwegian wood on the floor.

The next morning, the protagonist found that she was not coming back. He did not know her new address, nor did not have her phone number. She abandoned him. “I lit a fire” meant a fresh start. This bird (she) has flown to an unknown place, and the protagonist had to move on.

Alternatively, she was of an ethnic background, such as Indian descent or Pakistani, if the use of the Sitar, a musical instrument from the Indian subcontinent, suggested. If so, “Norwegian Wood” referred to a room with cheap pine wood paneling, popular in London in the 1960s, as Sir Paul McCartney commented.

Sitting on the floor with no furniture blew John Lennon’s mind at the time. He could not adjust to the different culture at the time, so he left her. If so, this bird was the protagonist himself. He made a fresh start of his own will. But the experience left him with a deep impact and realization that there were women in diverse cultures. No wonder he divorced his caucasian wife and married Yoko Ono in the late 1960s

One of my favorite YouTubers, Rick Beato, made an insightful video regarding AI. He is a music guy, but also has an engineer’s mind. He pointed out my blind spot. “What you eat is what you are,” literally.

I Fried ChatGPT With ONE Simple Question

In summary, the outcome from AI is limited by the dataset that the LLM of AI was trained on.

ChatGPT is 48% Wikipedia. 0% YouTube. That means, except for the second-hand information that was posted in other data sources that ChatGPT is aware of, the knowledge on YouTube will not be considered at all.

On the contrary, Google Gemini has 19% YouTube. I will switch my go-to AI from ChatGPT to Gemini.

Betel Nut Beauty (檳榔西施) is a term used to describe young women who sell betel nut leaves on the roadside in Taiwan. The betel nut leaves are addictive and keep you awake. Typical customers are male taxi drivers and truck drivers. After their consumption, they spit the red fluid on the road. It’s disgusting. Betel Nut Leaves (or Kratom Leaves) contain Codeine, a chemical commonly used as cough medicine in East Asia. Today, Codeine is used as a recreational drug in the United States thanks to globalization.

According to this YouTube video, the Americans drink less alcohol and misuse more prescription drugs, such as Opioids and Benzodiazepines. It also mentioned that the UK and Australia follow the US trend.

One unique characteristic of Japanese society is that it is often left behind in global trends, or lapped in a circuit. The Japanese laws still prohibit people from using cannabis (marijuana). Recently, Suntory’s chairman, Takeshi Niinami, was forced to resign due to allegations of cannabis usage.

While prohibiting cannabis and online casinos, the Japanese people still drink hard and openly smoke cigarettes in public places compared with Americans, the Pomies, and Aussies. We Japanese people often jokingly describe Japan as “a Galapagos Island, culturally.”

I forgot to tell my son about the days of the week in Japanese. It relates to the planets in the Solar System: Sunday = 日曜日, Monday = 月曜日, Tuesday = 火曜日, Wednesday = 水曜日, Thursday = 木曜日, Friday = 金曜日, and Saturday = 土曜日. In the English translation, Sunday = “Sun Day”, Monday = “Moon Day”, Tuesday = “Mars Day”, Wednesday = “Mercury Day”, Thursday = “Jupiter Day”, Friday = “Venus Day”, and Saturday = “Saturn Day”. (Sorry, Uranus and Neptune. You were reserve players.) Please read this article Names of the days of the week in Wikipedia, for further explanation.

Wait, there is something weird going on. OK, it’s no brainer that Sun = 日 (Sun), and Moon = 月 (Moon). However, why Mars =火星 (Fire Planet), Mercury = 水星 (Water Planet), Jupiter = 木星 (Wood Planet), Venus = 金星 (Metal Planet), and Saturn = 土星 (Earth Planet) in Japanese? The hint lies in the Wuxing (五行) philosophy of the ancient Chinese. The Buddhist monks (佛教僧侶) brought the knowledge of Wuxing (五行) from China to Japan like other things, such as Buddhism (佛教), Zen (禪), Vegetarianism (素食主義), Buddhist scriptures (佛經), Kanji (漢字), Paper (紙), Inksticks (墨), Incense sticks (香), Buddhist robes (佛袍), Tea (茶), Tofu (豆腐), Noodles (麵條), and the Architectural techniques of Buddhist temples (佛教寺廟的建築技術), etc.

Interestingly in the Chinese language, Sunday is 星期日 (Day Sun), Monday is 星期一 (Day 1), Tuesday is 星期二 (Day 2), Wednesday is 星期三 (Day 3), Thursday is 星期四 (Day 4), Friday is 星期五 (Day 5), and Saturday is 星期六 (Day 6).

Are 月曜日, …, and 土曜日 invented by the Japanese? Or did the ancient Chinese invent 星期月, …, 星期土 first, but they abandoned it? Some people discussed it in the Reddit forum. I do not know the answer yet.

Japanese media often lack understanding of retained earnings (内部留保) and mislead their readers with a distorted perception.

企業の内部留保、６００兆円　１２年連続で過去最高―投資や人件費、活用に課題・２３年度末 (Retained earnings reach 600 trillion yen, the highest level in 12 consecutive years – Issues remain regarding investment, labor costs, and utilization – end of fiscal year 2023)

They portrayed it as the cash in the assets in the balance sheet. Wrong. In the article above, the writer suggested that there were issues with investment, labor costs, and utilization. The writer was simply ignorant. It simply indicates that a corporation has consistently made a profit in the past years. Mr Sugawara (脱・税理士スガワラくん) warns us with his YouTube video.

ネットの記事やテレビの解説に騙されないでください！内部留保の本当の意味を教えます！ (Don’t be fooled by online articles or TV commentary! We’ll tell you the true meaning of retained earnings!)

I was watching the interview with 堀江 貴文 (Takamumi Horie) on YouTube. Mr Horie, also known as ホリエモン (Horiemon), and たかぽん (Takapon), is a smart individual and a successful entrepreneur. He started On the Edge (later, Livedoor) and has been my hero.
【前編】堀江貴文/福岡の田舎町に誕生した神童/超短期間での東大逆転合格/プロ野球参戦潰してきた巨人ナベツネ/楽天・三木谷と直接対決で敗北の理由は老害の機嫌

1995 was remembered as the year the Internet was born for us. (ARPANET was already conceived in the 1960s in the United States, but access had been strictly limited to the US armed forces.) In November 1995, Microsoft released Windows 95 with the Internet Explorer (IE) browser. In 1996, the IE popularized Internet access. The pre-Internet era ended in 1995. The Post-Internet era began in 1996. Thus, I consider that the Year 1996 was the Internet Year 0001. That makes 2025 the Internet Year 0030.

In the pre-Internet era, we had to connect to the computer network proactively. We had to subscribe to a service provider, prepare a modem, connect the modem to the landline phone line, and then had to pay per usage. As I look back, the beauty of the era was that we were NOT connected to the Internet all the time.

Today, we are continuously connected to the Internet24/7/365. That’s overwhelming sometimes. I insist that the disconnection from the Internet is a necessity; perhaps, 2 weeks per year without an internet connection is a must. I remember the 2-week cruise vacation in December 2022 with my son was so memorable because we chose not to connect to the Internet.