Irish Shock

Ireland bans smoking in workplaces from today. :o)

Although I am a smoker, I agree to make such bills.
In also Japan, some local governments began to ban smoking on the street
such as Akihabara or so.
But I was shocked when I heard that the workplaces above include pubs.
I heard also that Irish people really love smoking not only cigarettes
but also pipes especially at pubs, I'm afraid that there might be a log
of outbreaks of anger of tobacco lovers. :o)

Meanwhile, today a coleague of mine from Spain told me that Spanish young
people like weeds. :o) According to his story, in Europe the more southern
we go the more smokers we will see. I'm wondering why southern European
people like smoking.

Orkut and Mixi

Recently, I was finally invited to join to Orkut and Mixi.
Mixi is, in a sense, Japanese version of Orkut.
There are at least two major differences between them.
One is that Orkut has "Community" but Mixi does not.
The other is that Mixi is rather "diary centric" design.
Of course, a user can put a URL in own profile page at Orkut, but Mixi asks what kinds of blog or diary system members use and checks their update by RSS!
Presumerbly, it's because Japanese people love making their diary be public and reading others so much.
Here, please don't ask me why Japanese do. :o)
In general, Japanese people tend to surpress to express their own opinion or thoughts.
In this sense, you might feel it's strange.
Here, I belive that they don't want to be silent but they just don't want to
ehave differently from others in company. This comes from cultural background
of Japan. As you can easily understand my point now, we can behave anonymously
in the Internet and that's why so much of Japanese love to express themselves
there."Community" of Orkut meanwhile doesn't seem to be functioning
as good as expected for me.
I think it has two aspects. That is, both encouraging participants to make
new friends and talk about partcular topics to their heart's content.
My point is that not so many communities are active, and I'm wondering
why they don't exploit that.
Do you have any idea?

The Da Vinci Code

We had three succesesive rainy days in Tokyo.
I don't like a rainy day because I'm discoraged and often cancel plans to go
out somewhere or to do something outside. :(
On such a day, it's a good idea to spend time reading books.
In these days, I'm working on a mystery novelby Dan Brown,
The Da Vinci Code.

I'm a buddist ;o) as is common in Japan and not familiar with Christianity.
ut, this novel is interesting because it focuses on the hidden history of
the Christianity. This book has more than 100 chapters and about 500 pages,
but it took me only two weeks to have done about two third of the book.
For my case, this is as fast as the case of Harry Potter, and I'm going to
study the history of western Christian world again after finighing this book.
There seems to be a lot of communities on such topics including
the Holy Grail or ancient secret society in Europe.

Meanwhile, Dan Bowns plain English helped me as opposed to J.R.R. Tolkien
case (except many French proper nouns). :o)

Belgian Beer

Last year, I had two things burnt with passion. :o)
One is River Dance, and the other is Belgian Beer.

My favorite beers are Timmermans Casis, La Guillotine, Pawel Kwak, Chimay Blue, Hoegaarden White, and many. :)
Especially, Lamvick beers are fruity and not so strong (but some beers are
extremely sour), so they are good for girls too.
Meanwhile, some girl friends of mine are heavy drinkers, and they expressed
little interest in Lamvick. :(

FYI.
Here is a brief list of bars we can enjoy Belgian beers in Tokyo. :)

+FRIGO (Shinjuku)
+BELGO (Shibuya)
+FAVORI (Ginza)
+Brussels
(Kanda, Kagurazaka, Harajuku, Shibuya, Shinjuku, Omote-Sando, Kamiya-cho)
+Champ de Soleil (Kanda)

+AGLIO(Shimotakaido)
+Billy Barew's Beer Bar(Ebisu etc.)

INNOCENCE

I watched "INNOCENCE" by Mamoru Oshii yesterday.
I'm not sure if there are readers of this blog, but
still I'd like to asｋ reader's impression of the film.

Its visual effect is really really fascinating. In this
sense, the film is great. Better than even compared
to "LAST EXILE" which was available recently
in Japan.

But what about the story?
Is it a love story?
Or, a speculative story about near future society? Presumably both.

But from the latter point of view, I'm not satisfied by
the plot and conclusion. Although I cannot disclose
the conclusion, but if you watched the seventh
story of S.A.C. at least, we might share the same idea about the difference
between a human and a machine. I'm still feeling
there might have been another kind of truth about
the murder by a doll in the prolog of the movie.

Meanwhile, there were many empty seats around
me. I wonder "INNOCENCE" also might be accepted
better in USA than in Japan like "Ghost in the Shell".

Title of this Blog

In Japanese, the title of this blog reads "Gin no Saji ha Nagerareta".
The title line of this page is not garbled :o), and it's written in Japanese Kanji and Hiragana characters.

It's a little bit difficult to explain the sense of the wording for non-Japanese speaking people, but
it's a compound phrase consists of the following.

(1) A famous book titled, "Gin no Saji" in Japanese by Kansuke Naka (1885-1965).
An English translation is available, and its English title is "The Silver Spoon."

(2) A famous words of Julius Caesar, "The dice is cast". In Japanese, we say
"Sai ha nagerareta", and "Sai" means "a dice".
Now, I believe it's obvious there is resemblance in sound.

(3) A Japanese phrase "Saji wo nageru".
Accurately speaking, the proper sense of the phrase is
"give up as hopless". I mean, relatively serious sense.
But, nowadays it's often used more light weight situation such that
one has a friend who is always acting up and the only resolution
is to accept the friend's behavior as is.

When the title came up with me years ago,
actually I was under complicated situation, and
the phrase expresses my feeling of those days well.