3 signs that prove you are in good mental condition according to my mentor

Speaking of mental health, there seem so much unique ways that indicate your mental health condition that we don’t even know what kind of mental health is good for us today. To the Japanese school teachers, there comes “stress check test” in my email box and it is anyway offered to check and improve teachers mental condition. Huh. First of all, you need to find this ID and Password and please spare 10 min. For this test and you will need… taking the test is a huge stress to me now anyway.

Besides this, my mentor, who was an acclaimed professor in a Japanese university and is really famous, so I’d rather not mention his name though, here is what I heard from him directly when we happened to eat lunch in the UK.

There, he says, are three definitions or criteria to me to show my good mental health. The first one is you can enjoy having foods. If you are too stressed out, you would find the food’s taste boring. Secondly, you feel like to start new things, things like a hobby, studying or weekend plan. That means you have an afford to don something new. And thirdly, you feel like to write. It doesn’t only means to write to someone but also a diary or blogs. I personally think it means you are in a creative mood. Creating something really cultivate your heart Kurt Vonnegut once said.

Above all, I am totally non specialist for this kind of topics, but I instinctively can agree those things and I’d like to highly recommend you to indicate your mental health level by these. That is my personal stress check, and I’d like to propose it to the school education board near future to reduce stress of stress check!

The gap between summer and winter in Hokkaido

Now I’m feeling disturbed by a humid hot temperature right now 23:37 on this bed. It’s really difficult to sleep comfortably these days due to the high temperatures. But I know that Hokkaido’s summer will soon leave after a couple of weeks. Only now we feel so disgusting, but maybe next week, we look back today retrospectively, and feel a bit sad. But it’s ok. Hey winter! I really miss you now…

You should take a day off after 2nd COVID jab

Comparing the COVID-19 cases around the world, Japanese cases seems slightly lower, and it is somehow thought to be one of the reasons why Japanese COVID-19 vaccination is delayed. According to the government statement, those who request their vaccinations would be fully vaccinated by the end of November.

However, the pace of the vaccination, actually, depends on which local government you belong to. Since I live in not a big urban city of Japan, rather countryside’s small town, I could get the 1st one on July 6th, and second one on July 26th. It must be a rare case for 20s in this country, and I somehow could finally appreciated that I became a kind of public servant as school teacher.

By the way, what I want to write is so called “side effect” of it. In fact, this is totally my personal empirical opinion though, after a 1st jab, I could scarcely feel any side effect except a slight hurting on my arm where jabbed. It felt like a muscle pain that can be felt when you finished weightlifting by right arm after a long time.

However, 2nd jab HAS a side effect to me. I took the jab on 15:40 the day before yesterday, and the day was totally fine anyhow. And next morning I woke up as usual, and I didn’t set a day off, so I worked as usual. But, slightly you began to feel discomfort and feverish. Around noon time, I became such a tired and had some headaches. Then, I took afternoon off immediately, and jumped into my bed. That was around 15:00. And the next time I opened my eyes were at 5:00 am. During sleeping, I felt fever and trouble for sound sleep, but I just tried to sleep.

And now, today, I feel much better but a slightly dull. I think I will have been back to the. Eat condition by tomorrow. Therefore, if you are wondering if you take a day off or not after the 2nd jab, here is my advice. It is your choice though, you may not perform well on the day. Take care of yourself.

An Overnight trip to breathe correctly

Put essential things for traveling into a bag and leave your house suddenly around 14:00 yesterday. At that time, I realized I need to go far away and try to breathe correctly. I have a secret place to escape once or twice a year. The town is middle of nowhere, and needless to say, it’s ver small town. However, there are people who welcome me and spend greatest time together there.

Driving for two and a half hours, buying some books and a bottle of water, checking in a hotel and walk for a bar. Spending about three hours at the bar. The bar is the only purpose of this trip. You don’t need to think about the rest of the plan. If you could visit the bar, you made it all. Your soul is finally in peace.

Designing T-shirts as a hobby

Do you like T-shirt? Some say yes, and the others say no. To me? I love T-shirt. No other outfits would be as casual and comfortable as T shirt. It’s so simple but I have never seen Steve J wearing T shirt, but Mark Zuckerberg. He once told the audience of a public Q&A “I really want to clear my life to make it so that I have to make as few decisions as possible about anything except how to best serve the community. Anyway, T shirt is such a simple outfit.

At the same time, the thing really matters to me is the role of message board. T shirts sometimes contains many unique messages or graffitis or doodles, anyway, designs. And where there is a design, there is a message. Therefore, if you wear T shirt, you are wearing a message at the same time. So, I’m fond of wearing a unique design which contains unique message. And now, one of my dream is to create my own design T shirt.

And here are some sketches. Which do you think should be actually created?

Movie Review: “BELLE(竜とそばかすの姫)” the latest film of Mamoru Hosoda

Japanese summer needs Mamoru Hosoda’s movies

Hello world. I’ve been living in Japan for 28 years though, now I realize that one of the best things when you live in Japan is you can see the latest great Japanese animation films from the very opening day. There are many sever criticisms about the situation of monopoly of animation films in today’s movie scene in Japan. When you ask Japanese “what is your favorite Japanese movie?”, I bet 80% of its answer would be animation films. That doesn’t necessarily mean Japanese not-animation films are boring though, the power of animation seems to be at its peak.

The day before yesterday was the opening day for the “BELLE” (『竜とそばかすの姫』, A dragon and a freckled princess in Japanese). I have been a huge fan for the director of the movie, Mamoru Hosoda. I fell in love with his 3 must-see legendary movies of “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time（『時をかける少女』2006）”, “Summer Wars（『サマーウォーズ』2009）”and “Wolf Children（『おおかみこどもの雨と雪』2012）”, and I realized HE is the true genius after the post-Hayao Miyazai’s era.

However, following 2 movies “The Boy and the Beast（『バケモノの子』2015）” and “MIRAI（『未来のミライ』2018）” somehow didn’t hit my heart like the previous works did to me. According to an interview that my mother watched and told me, Mr. Hosoda was trying to send messages for the generation of his children age. Therefore, me like 28 years gloomy not young child felt somehow tasteless or sense of lack of something. I remember vividly the time I persuaded a girlfriend and told how great his films are and went to see MIRAI together and I had been thinking “It’s not been fun…, but from now it would be really exciting…!!” and the credit came and I was so disappointed that I began to doubt the credibility of his films these days.

But, after all, he was great film maker now I can say. The BELLE was a great one. I can’t say it would be better than the 3 legends though, I think it is very very close to the legends personally.

I think the story would be described as this equation

“The beauty and the beast” + “Summer Wars” + “The Girl Who Leapt Through Time”/ 3 = “BELLE”.

If you are a fan of his films, you can find a lot of clues or scenes from his other movies. Some would say it’s Deja-vu and boring, but I would like to say that’s the great factor of great directors. Only great directors can make a form as classic, I think. But, it was different from Summer Wars and these 3 titles. I could cry a lot and the message was strong not enough to make me feel scolded. The balance was great compared to the previous 2 titles.

I don’t think this is a spoiler though, one of the absolute message of this film is about “problem with online smears” or “a war between 99% of people who just watch vs. 1% of people who actually do something”. I personally don’t prefer to write dirty or negative comments on some video or articles, this film would be great textbook for such problems.

Anyhow, I definitely enjoyed this film and something has changed since I watched the film. So, thank you so much Mr. Mamoru Hosoda!

How to deal with my Sleeping Hours?

Basically, I need to sleep for 8 hours to charge my energy fully. However, you cannot take a full charge everyday because you are somehow busy. You must be busy to cook, take a bath, watch movies, read books, and be lazy. Without laziness, I think I would be dead. Sometimes I feel we need space in our lives like a margin of a book. You cannot live completely the same schedule because you are not a robot like a Roomba. As for me, I sleep for 7 on Monday, 6 on Tuesday, 8 on Wednesday… or like that. I cannot make my sleeping hours stable because I have a lot of thing to enjoy in a night.

Sometimes, I want to watch a movie, read a book, talk with a friend over the phone. I want to accept this me. But, at the same time, I found myself a bit less performative when I have 6 hours sleeping time. Just 2 hours makes a huge difference to my performance. My brain feels a bit tighten. I tend to forget tiny things. And I tend to get upset easily. These things exactly means that I lost a certain space in my brain. And unfortunately, you cannot recover the dullness by a day’s 8 hours sleeping. That is really tricky. Once you felt lack sleep, you tend to have it for 2 to 3 days. Oh my.

Anyhow, I need to deal with this. I should keep living up. Tomorrow is Friday. Friday makes everything brighter. The only time do you see the goal, you can try your best sometimes. So, I want to make the most of it tomorrow even I feel a bit of sleep deprivation. If I could do my work more faster and more efficiently.

Kendo practice after the end of the state of emergency

Kendo is one of the Japanese traditional martial arts and thought to be today’s best sports which represents bushido tradition. Japanese samurai used to practice their way (Dou) of ken (sword in Japanese), so it is called Kendo(剣道). Recent Japanese smash hit anime “Damon Slayer” characters are featured with such martial arts, so the popularity seems to grow these days.

I don’t know how many state of emergency was proposed in this 15 months though, we needed stopping kendo keiko (practice or lesson in Japanese) from 2 weeks ago. That was really sad though, actually, I hadn’t practiced by myself until yesterday. But today, I could play kendo with relatively good condition. The memory left inside the body was deleted in a good/ bad way, so my form or way of doing kendo was not bad actually, my master said to me.

“All you need is to hit a shot with your heart and body set together in 0.1 second. Don’t hesitate to relax for the fight, but you need to focus the 0.1. In the moment, I can live my life.

All I need is discipline and constant work

Discipline and constant work are the whetstones upon which the dull knife of talent is honed until it becomes sharp enough, hopefully, to cut through even the toughest meat and gristle.
Stephen King

So, this is a story that I really need this kind of lessons in my life here and now. Lazy is the best word that can exactly describe true myself. On holidays, all I’m doing is just reading wired books and watching endless recommended boring videos on the bed, and maybe getting depressed deliberately. I don’t know this medical term for this phenomenon though, don’t you often try to charge or update connecting with your bed by spoiling a whole Sunday? Somebody said to me that that is a crouching form for the great start from Monday. Well said I thought, but what does it really mean?

When I was pressed by work, I actually hardly have motivations for studying or updating this blog. All I want to do is just sleep as soon as I finished my supper. I don’t even manage to brush my teeth in that situation some day. But, maybe then, I lose against me, myself. Then, maybe I can lose confident. Keep doing something is really hard, but then it’s really worthy. I know, I know of it. But, you know, should I rush for the goal? Or can I take a time to go there by step by step? I’m not sure.

Somebody posted on Facebook several years ago and it still intrigues me

However, such things can be realized after keep doing constant works. I’m writing a newsletter for my homeroom class everyday for 1 year and several months though, it became my huge confidence. The true power would be nourished by a paper thickness, was said by Kendo master. So, you need to keep doing everyday. I swear I never ask the reason why I keep doing. I will keep doing because it is my hobby and play.

Watching “Nomadland” as “Easy Rider” in 2021

I could finally watch Nomadland for the first time after it won the best picture of Academy award. The title “nomadland” reminds me that it is the word that we should think of again from different perspectives especially in this collapsed capitalism era. Maybe we are living in the end of capitalism world. There are so many bullshit jobs and meaningless ways of life depending on capitalism. People or families are divided into tiny pieces enough to enrich company’s benefits as much as possible, and more people are connected online, physically people were more disconnected. Such a disappointing world we live, sometimes I feel. The world became so complicated that nobody wants to live anymore.

Therefore, the title of it “Nomadland” really intrigued me. No idea I had about the information before watching it, the movie was exactly the movie I imagined. It was kind of an “Easy Rider” 2021 revised ver. as depressing but hopeful way. The both were road movies, in which you feel like you are able to see the real America. A woman in her 60s, after losing everything in the Great Recession in 2008, embarks on a journey through the American West, living as a van-dwelling modern-day nomad.

Bob: One of the things I love most about this life is that there’s no final goodbye. You know, I’ve met hundreds of people out here and I don’t even say a final goodbye. I always just say, “I’ll see you down the road.” And I do. And whether it’s a month, or a year, or sometimes years, I see them again.
A favorite quote from Nomadland

This film doesn’t seem to have an actual plot or storyline. We will watch the circle of Fern (the protagonist)’s life. The circle that seems to continue forever, but really fragile. The vans many characters use would be symbols of their lives. One of the character describes Fern’s van as “Ratty”, and she really got upset, that is because she thought the van is the same to her. The old van which had weathered bumpy roads must be a metaphor of her life. It is easier driving with vans than driving with motorbike though, something is uneasy in today’s world, that is what I could see thanks to the movie.