728 City of Zootopia

Living in Tokyo, a capital city, a metropolis, a great city which is so huge, intense, complicated and diverse, that I cannot even get the whole picture of it. For a long time since I was an infant I was living in a beautiful northern countryside blessed with plenty of green field and natural environment, and also recently have been inclined to admire a very different city of eternal glory, history and sense of sophisticated modernity, and I cannot find myself belonged to the metropolis. I appreciate the great town has been generously giving me a number of opportunity to meet fine people, to make friends, to have unique experience, to get job, and to learn to live, but anyhow I never feel myself fitted to it. It doesn't matter however. I find Tokyo is like Zootopia, a metaphorical capital city where every animal can live together and differently. The key is diversity, generosity, and most of all, the perception that the difference makes sense and will make a finest society. It's no easy just like in the Zootopia movie, to realize it and appreciated it. I have long been trying, almost struggling to find a way to feel like I'm settled and assured. But at the end of the day it's not that important to become a part of the city, because I don't have to, if I do not want to. I highly value the simplicity, calmness and sophistication so my feeling is often against the life in Tokyo. But I can wander around it see it with the eyes of stranger or I can march into it with balloons in my hand. The city is not a place to make yourself fitted into, but a place where you find yourself stand alone.  

727 Departures

I made a new turn, a new choice, a new start in my life early this year, and ended up with finding a new role that is simply, interesting. But I'm not the only one, and I found not a few friends and acquaintants who made choice to change their lives, in a much more impactful way than just changing a job as I did --- getting married, quitting job and leaving country, and deciding to refresh the whole environment and to change the place to live with leaving everything behind. 

Saying goodbye to a friend is always sad and tough. But I've just done a similar choice to leave my old work place, so I know how they might feel. I know how they feel about their life-changing signal and probably, couldn't help but to make a choice. I know it must be a real strong inner energy that makes it happen. I know this is not separation, but this is a departure. Very often without even knowing the destination, or even if it is not scheduled, we will have our own time for departure.     

726 Critics

In almost every aspects of our modern culture and activity, from cuisine to cinema, music, art, sports, military operation, food, building, fashion, book, leadership and management, baby, car, tax, workout, travel, pets..., there we never fail to find critics. But there is no critics of ourselves. This doesn't mean someone who just judge or criticize you. A true critics should be someone who can understand and appreciate the essential value of the object that is otherwise not always visible, and also can put it into the best words that everyone can easily understand. In short, it will be someone who really understands your value and makes it understood to others by plain words. If there is such critics just for you, it would be extremely assuring and helpful. But the real good thing is that you can be unconscious about your virtue, and be free from unnecessary, snobbish vanity.

725 Up in the Air

When we look up a rainy or cloudy sky we think "there is clouds over the sky", but it's not true. From the perspective of a pilot, (which I've learned recently) cloud is around the very surface of the ground, so it isn't over the sky, but it's over the ground. As there we can see always a sunshine up in the sky, over the cloud on the earth, the sky is always clear and bright with sunlight, and the cloud and rain are coming because the ground creates them, or needs them. Does this idea help you not to get disappointed on rainy day, doesn't it?

724 Sound Sleep

I've got to know, finally, the true meaning of sleep. Having been in a busy industry and surrounded by hard-working people who don't much care if they have to keep working with 3-4 hours of sleep as well as with a huge pressure. I used to be one of them and still there is a good chance for me to take the same path again and again unless I am really careful about conditioning myself. It's no wonder we should sleep. We should take a sound, healthy sleep. But the thing is we can do without it (at least we assume so), we can somehow manage to live our life without it. 

The most useful and insightful words that changed my mind, or blew my mind was that sleep is an essential function of not only our body but also our brain, or mind, to keep on our lives, to survive it under so many hazards and stresses. I was completely wrong to regard sleep is a only rest. It's not, as far as I learned, and in terms of the impact to mind, sleep is playing some very important role such as organization and reproduction of memory, emotion and knowledge. It's a maintenance, rest, detox, and natural cure to our body. The good thing about the theory of sound sleep is that you can try it tonight and know the effect tomorrow morning, as I did.      

723 Heads Up

I sense that not a few people have been well aware of the fact that smartphones and tablets cause us lots of health problem like text neck, headache, mid-back pain or bad sleep. It's a huge problem but it cannot be helped as long as the technology makes us use them as indispensable tools. Simply put, without losing the benefit and blessing of unlimited access to information over time and place, if we can use it less and less, I'm sure the better our life can be. 

So my friend came up with a remarkable idea to make the world a bit better, that is, to set a certain feature to all the smartphones and tablets (except for emergency) that they never react nor turn on unless we hold them just as high as the position in front of our eyes, (or maybe higher), so that our heads naturally get up and we do not harm our neck and back bones. Isn't it genius? 

722 St. Patrick's Day

I've never tried the famous green beer or seen the green river in Chicago, to celebrate the St. Patrick's Day on 17th March, but my sincere appreciation and affection for the natural green color of grass and trees might perhaps entitle me to be happy, to be a part of people enjoying the holiday.    

721 Frontier

After 13 years of working in financial industry, in a securities firm, an investment bank, a private equity fund manager, now I opened up my new way to become an advisor to the financial industry. I started my new role in a global professional service firm, which is to me a very first time experience. It's good because it's a frontier, a new business field to the firm as well as to myself. I feel a bit like a lone stranger sometimes, but the team sounds nice. My journey has just started.

720 Racing Cars

If the marriage relationship that allows us to finish one fantastic goal in the circuit, the friendship more likely to happen outside of the circuit field, without any goal, any flag, just to enjoy the ride. 

719 Be Good to Me

This spring is going to be a time of change.  One of these changes I found so far is that I noticed the way to understand what it is like to "care oneself". Over the years I was told hundreds of times that I should take care of myself, and I admit I couldn't fully understand the meaning. I think the reason was I have been "too true and serious" to being myself, to see the situation around me objectively, from a neutral perspective. That's probably because I have been really successful to link with my inner self and live with it. But the truth is, actually I have been gradually aware of it on the other hand, extremeness can be a hazard and I should learn to be more reasonable. 

However, somehow the idea of "take care of myself" or "have self-esteem" didn't fit to me. I have been living in a sort of extreme situation publicly and privately, and couldn't stop it. But "be good to me" is something I can understand, remember and get along with. It's better for me because "being good" is not a big deal. It's, for example, like to invite someone to take a seat on a finest chair in the room. It's a little bit of kind act that will bring a huge rest. 

718 Mountains

When I am flying in airplane I always look at the sky and totally get overwhelmed by the beauty of which we only can enjoy from the airplane window. But I noticed recently that there's more beauty other than the sky. I noticed this scenic view of mountains in the morning light. The surface of these deep forests looked somewhat soft and smooth as if they are made of fine velvet. The snow on the mountain tops added a subtle color and highlighted the ridge line. This is the "view from the sky."