Past and Future 2 What is difference between those who stick to the past failures and negative experiences and those who can easily forget or accept them. Life is really depending on how we capture the incidences. We do not need to forget everything as we need to learn from it, but the later might feel happiness.

Education Education influences how people think, behave and live their lives. This is not because of the content they learned about but because it affects the way of thinking. We will expands our perspectives, accept our weakness and appreciate the beauty of the life. Otherwise you might stick to and believe in one idea. I saw many people answer 1 + 1 = 2, but many times this is not the case in reality. Education brings you more happiness, excitements and new ways of thinking.

Can I say like this? I stay at the accommodation facility provided by my company. or I will stay in the accommodation at my company

Is this correct? I intend to stay in a hotel for a week to look for a lent room. Then, I will move to the lent room.

Past and Future In my life, I met, have lived and worked with those who are highly educated, have a high level of competencies as well as disciplines after I graduated from my master's course. By meeting them, I expanded my perspectives, knew my weakness and grew more. I grew up in a very rural, underpopulated and aging town (or even community) until I became 18 years old. To be frank, many people in the village are not much educated and sophisticated. (In particular, regarding inter-personnel and communication skills) I did not notice about it at my early ages, but once I came back here, I am gradually accepting it. I have many weakness and desire to improve myself more and more. Sometimes I am afraid that these weakness are inherited with the environments where I grew. The environment and systems make you how to behave and live. I normally think that the past does not much decide your future, but your vision makes your future. But these visions and predictions are often based on the past. We might need to expand our living zones, experience more things and meet more people. So it enables you to visualise desired future, which are beyond your past experiences.

My grand mother and my family From 13th to 15th August, Japan has a cultural / religious ceremony, called OBON. During this period of a year, we believe our ancestors who passed away, come back to our home from the heaven. So we prapere a special dishes, and many family members get gather . This year, I visited my grandmother, who will turn to 90 yea's old soon, but are still energetic and smart. She always prepared traditional sweets called ANKO-MOCHI for our family. I know many foreigners do not like it bt I love it. It is made of rice cakes with ANKO that are made of sweetened black beans. Whenever I came back to Japan, I eat this and feel I am at home. The more I experienced working outside country, I sometimes find it difficult to level the conversation topics with my family. but I can still talk with the my 90's grand ma about whatever I experienced outside, my works and my life.

Communication I venerate one of my colleagues. Her communication skills are superbe. She is a good listener and easily change communication approaches depending on audiences.

Japanese society: Gender I knew it, understand it and got used to experience it, but was still shocked about it. My father is already nearly 60-year-olds. He does not need to go for work anymore, but does not know what to do without his work (which made me so sad.) He comes back to home from his work around 7 pm. The first thing to do is to sit down in front of TV, switch it on and start browsing his computer until my mother calls him for a dinner. After he takes a dinner, again goes back to his usual position; in front of TV. On weekend, he enjoys going out for fishing, and riding motorbikes. He cannot make any meals and never spend time doing houseworks. My mother, she comes back to home at around 6 pm. She starts preparing a dinner, and try to make it as efficiency and fast as possible before my father comes back. Otherwise, he might be very angry. She prepares all dishes from breakfast to lunch box for him, even she works outside as equal as my father does. When I was around 10 years old, when my mother asked him to help houseworks, he made furious and broke all the dishes in my house. And it happened many times, so she never be against him. She spent the whole weekend doing all houseworks and taking care of me and my brother. This made her to have less hobbies. Without doing houseworks, she now does not know what to do for free time because she never had much free time. (again which made me so sad.) I would say my father is not mad and not unusual in Japanese society unfortunately. Just after the 2nd world war, this is a very typical picture of Japanese family. I did not realise it until spending time outside Japan, but once coming back to Japan, this kind of experience naturally happens in any places at both work and home. I would say they are innocent and naturally do it without any intentions. That's why this is a serious challenge. The key point is everyone has the same chance to do what they want. It should not be determined based on their gender.

What is your life for? The life is not for the future, but for now. You need to live on each process. People are running for something and seem to be so busy, but do not know where they are heading for. I would like to stay focused on what I really want in my life. In my early 20's, I visited around Middle East, Africa and Latin America by myself. It is now more than 50 countries, but I stop counting them. Today I was organising these albums on my backpacking and reflecting these experiences, and somehow I realised I was really running, running, and running. (or may be looking for something.) However, my uptakes from these trips were little in many ways. Because I did not live and digest a time, but live fo the future. Now I prefer to digest and reflect things that happens around me, taste good foods slowly and enjoy staying with who I really love.