I took a good rest and did not run this morning. Last night’s weather forecast called for rain all day long in the Shizuoka area. It’s strange that if I don’t make up my mind to run tomorrow morning before I go to bed, I don’t have the energy to run when I wake up in the morning. They say that spirit is the heart, and I realize that this is true.
Maybe I’m just tired from the month of August. I’m not sure why, but I don’t have the energy to get up in the morning and start running.
The typhoon has passed through Japan, but the humid air from the south has been lingering in the rain clouds as if it is aimed at Shizuoka Prefecture. Yesterday, we were seeing blue skies and then suddenly it started raining heavily.
Fortunately, there has been no major damage caused by the typhoon so far in Shizuoka, but if the rain continues, there is a concern about landslides and other damage.
Tonight, the Ophthalmologists’ Association will hold a meeting on Zoom. Instead of getting together at the board meeting, they are going to discuss it online. Remote meetings are becoming more and more popular all over the world.
It’s a real explosion of remote meetings. You have to drive all the way to the meeting room for over an hour by train or car to get there, and when the review is done, you have to go back home for the same amount of time. When you think about it, remote meetings don’t waste any time, because all you have to do is to finish the preparation 5 minutes before the meeting, and once the review session is over, it’s over.
The person who must lead the meeting needs to spend a certain amount of time and effort in preparation, but in most cases, it is sufficient for the other members to simply attend. There are few opportunities to be asked for input or to speak.
So for many of us, remote meetings should be very effective. Once you’ve made it easy, you may not be motivated to travel to the venue.
Zoom and other remote conferencing software is still in its infancy, so it’s not enough to communicate with others. However, that too will gradually improve. We probably can’t stop this trend.
It is true that there are still some people who can’t participate in remote meetings because they are not good with computers. But this too will eventually be resolved in time.
As the need to gather for meetings decreases, of course people will travel less. It is inevitable that the number of people using public transportation will decrease. How much has the flow of people changed since the spread of the new coronavirus was brought under control? How has the shape of society changed? It is not only interesting, but at the same time, it is no exaggeration to say that this is a major change in society.
Since last night, typhoon No. 10 has been approaching the Kyushu area, and the TV shows are full of programs to explain the fate of the typhoon. Television reports show that residents are not staying at home, but rushing out in droves to safer hotels. This is the kind of action that has been taken by people who have been hit by the typhoon many times before.
It seems that many of the victims are still struggling to cope with this typhoon even though they have not fully recovered from the last one.
Here in Numazu, it’s just after 7 o’clock and there are still rain clouds in the west but there are faint blue skies in the south. The weather forecast for last night called for rain all day, so I took it easy and did not run this morning.
I was the doctor on holiday yesterday, so I will be working for two weeks without a break. It’s still hot and humid during the daytime, but as the sun goes down, the heat and humidity seems to have faded away.
The sports world is starting to get back to normal. Professional baseball games are played with a limited number of spectators, less than 5,000. J-League soccer is played without an audience. In professional golf, the men’s golf tournament started last weekend and we can finally see the success of the players along with the women’s golf tournament, which has already started.
The daily life that we took for granted has been changed by the new coronavirus, and we can realize how grateful we are for the things we take for granted.
Today is the white dew. It’s the fifteenth turning point from the first day of spring. It’s the second half of the 24 seasons before I knew it.
The rice in the paddies on both sides of the road are ripening and it looks like “the rice ears are hanging down to bear fruit”. It seemed like just yesterday that the rice planting was over, but now we are entering the harvest season in the blink of an eye.
There may be some parts of the country where typhoons may ruin the rice that has grown into a good crop. This year, the rainy season has been long and rainy, literally. Vegetables could not be harvested and the prices were high. After the end of the rainy season, the heat wave turned into a scorching hot summer and the temperature was too high to harvest the crops. Then came the typhoon.
Farmers may only have a few moments of peace and tranquility throughout the year.
I’m the doctor on holiday duty today. I’m a caged bird from 8:00 am to 5:00 pm. I’m the doctor on duty in the eastern part of Shizuoka Prefecture, so various patients come to see me. However, there are cases when people don’t want to go to the doctor’s office on weekdays because it is too crowded, or when they want to go to the doctor’s office on weekends because they can’t go to the office due to their work.
Compared to 10 years ago, the number of holidays has certainly increased, so if you are in a position to take a day off, you can take a day off work, but in the case of a medical institution, someone has to make up for it. In the case of Numazu Medical Association, the number of members of the ophthalmologist’s association has increased compared to 10 years ago, so the burden of each member has decreased, but the number of holidays has also increased, which makes it harder to schedule a shift.
When I read the records of a medical association long ago, I was surprised to read that when the clinic was closed on a holiday, patients were shouting at the clinic, asking why the clinic was closed. Were medical facilities open all year round at that time?
■ Yesterday, I finished work in the morning and thought about going to practice golf for an hour or so in the afternoon, but I gave up because of the heat. I’ll never forget it. That was August 15. I practiced golf that day, which was also a Saturday, for an hour or so after work, but at the end of the day I had a slight heat stroke and felt dizzy. It was hot anyway.
There have been a few times when I’ve had a mild heat stroke while running during the day. At its worst, I had hyperventilation syndrome and had a hard time recovering.
But that day was the first time I almost had a heat stroke while practicing golf. And I realized that I couldn’t take it easy under the strong sunshine anymore.
Yesterday, it rained heavily for a while from 4pm, but it stopped raining before 5pm, so Sun and I took a day trip to a hot spring to get rid of our fatigue.
Today, Typhoon No. 10 is approaching Okinawa and Kyushu area, and when I look at the TV column of the morning paper, the evening broadcast is full of typhoon reports. I hope there will be no serious damage, but as this is a natural phenomenon, we can only hope.
■In this morning’s Tokyo Shimbun, “This is the special report section”, there was an article titled “Anger of the sex industry not subject to sustainable benefits”. The article says, “The sex industry is being erased from society. According to the article, ‘People working in the sex industry are angry that they have been excluded from public support following the spread of the new coronavirus. Some are considering filing a lawsuit on the grounds that the lack of payment of sustainment benefits for small and medium-sized businesses is contrary to the ‘equality under the law’ under Article 14 of the Constitution. The officials are asking for ‘the same support regardless of occupation or social standing.”
A man who runs a temporary reflex shop in Tokyo that provides massages and other services to customers said.” The young people who work there also have their own circumstances. We operate with the same thoughts and responsibilities as a regular company.”
A college sophomore who works at the store testified.
“My parents divorced when I was very young. She has been working at a convenience store since she was a high school student, where the pay is low. I chose to work in sex work to pay off the money I borrowed from my relatives to pay for my school fees as soon as possible and to make it easier on my mother, who raised me alone.”
With one in seven children living in poverty, our country is among the lowest in the developed world. Likewise, the high number of young women living in poverty is another characteristic of our country. One in three women who work and live alone are said to be living in poverty.
Perhaps Chief Cabinet Secretary Suga, who ran for office on a platform promising to continue the Abe administration, is blind to this situation. Or perhaps he is asking the people who are suffering from this situation to “just be patient with the situation as it is. Or perhaps he is telling the people who are suffering from this situation, “Please be patient with me as you are now, as long as I am the prime minister.
It is a desperate situation. The politics has to change. No, the voters have to change the politics.
そこで慌てたのが Microsoft です。 Windows 上でなくてもネットスケープさえ稼働すれば、どんな基本ソフトのパソコンであっても不自由はない、という状況が生まれることを恐れたのです。そこで他社が開発中のブラウザソフトを買収し Internet Explorer と命名して Windows に無料添付したわけです。
こうなるとパソコンの利用者はわざわざダウンロードしなくてもすぐに利用できる Internet Explorer を使うのが人情というものです。 Netscape はプログラムを無料公開することで対抗しました。しかし敗れ去ることは目に見えていたのです。
現在ブラウザの事実上の定番は、インターネットエクスプローラーではなく Google 社が開発している Chrome というソフトです。マイクロソフト社は事実上自社でのブラウザー開発を中止して、 Chrome を利用して自社なりの味付けをしてエッジという名前をつけて添付しています。
これまでのブラウザ戦争を振り返ってみて考えてみると、 Chrome が勝利したことは驚くべきことです。 Chrome が単なるブラウザーではなく、それによって Google が提供する様々なサービスを利用する窓口になったことが勝利の秘密ではないでしょうか。
私の利用状況もまさにその通りで、ほとんどの作業を Google のサービスの中で完結しています。まさに Google に囲い込まれてしまったのです。クラウドサービスの進歩が、こうした状況をもたらしたはずです。
I ran this morning. I ran 7.19 km on my usual course, which brings me to 85.63 km with 26 days to go, having accumulated 14.37 km in two runs this month. My average pace is 7 minutes and 29 seconds per kilometer, so it’s not fast, but I feel a sense of satisfaction that I’ve completed the run.
It was raining all day yesterday and Sun and I were planning to go for a day trip to a hot spring, but we decided against it due to the strong rainfall. This was due to typhoon 9. We decided to go out for a day trip to the hot spring this weekend.
However, the typhoon No. 10 is coming soon. It seems to be a huge and powerful typhoon, and there are fears that it will be a repeat of Typhoon Ise Bay which made landfall on September 2, 1959 and caused record damage.
As a result of typhoon No. 9, temperatures rose over the Sea of Japan on September 3, with Sanjo City in Niigata Prefecture recording 40.4 degrees Celsius. This is the first time in recorded history that the temperature was in the 40s in September. This is due to the so-called “fane phenomenon”.
Once the rainy season ended, however, it was extremely hot every day. One after another, people died of heat stroke. And in the blink of an eye, we’re worrying about typhoons. It really feels like the climate has swung from one extreme to another.
In July, it rained almost every day, and I had a hard time achieving my goal because there were few early morning opportunities to run. In August, however, the heat wave was so intense that long runs, even early mornings, quickly gave me the feeling that I was going to suffer from heat stroke. In both cases, I was walking a tightrope every day, and I was in danger of not achieving my goal.
Nevertheless, I managed to achieve my goal of running 100 km a month and I have been able to continue to achieve the record since January, when I lost it last December.
This goal has been a big part of my daily discipline. It would be easy to think of quitting now, but then everything I do becomes a chore and I’m sure my muscle strength will fade away in no time.
Last weekend I played golf in Karuizawa, but on the way home, I got stuck with a bag that felt very heavy when climbing the stairs at the station. I’ve had many times when I’ve felt like it’s hard to climb the stairs, but this was the first time my bag felt heavy. Maybe it’s a sign that my upper body muscles are getting weaker.
The lower half of my body has been working out by running, but I haven’t done any upper body strength training. I do some swinging with a golf club, but that doesn’t seem to be enough to compensate for my decline. There’s no point in getting impatient. The only thing I can do is to change my training little by little.
■このブログも2ヶ月ほど英語版を作成しています。 自分自身の英語力だけでは、もちろん英語に変えることはできませんので AI （人工知能）の力を借りています。
Google 翻訳であったりDeep L であったり、その時々で異なるのですが、英語版を作ることは、むしろ分り易い日本語を書くためにも、とても良い勉強になると思います。
書いた日本語の文章は当然のことながら、自分の頭の中では筋が通っています。そもそも自分の頭の中で筋が通っていなければ他の誰もが理解できるはずがありません。ところが自分では筋が通っていると思って書いた文章を AI に翻訳してもらうと、私程度の英語力でも明らかに意味が通じない翻訳になることは多々あります。それは AI の力不足なのではなくて、そもそも私の日本語の文章自体がとても理解しにくく筋が通っていないことが原因なのです。
「これはペンである」という中学校で習う英語の第一歩となる文章を AI に翻訳させれば100%間違えることはなさそうです。私が書く文章は文学ではありませんので、一番大切なのは自分が書こうとしている内容が、少なくとも読む人間に理解してもらえるかどうかということです。
今朝はいつものコースを少し長めに走り7.18 km を記録しました。残り28日で92.82 km と画面は告げています。今月は連休の時にSunと二人で北海道に旅行する予定です。ということはその間積み重ねが出来ませんので、他の日に余分に走っておかないとまたギリギリ追い詰められてしまう可能性が高いのです。しっかりカレンダーとにらめっこをしながら計画を練るしかありません。
I ran this morning. I took a break yesterday as I achieved my goal of running the 12 km left until the 100 km run in August, which I did on 31 August. It’s still very hot and humid during the day, with some parts of the country experiencing highs of 35 degrees Celsius or more for more than two weeks.
Here in Numazu, by the time we start work in the afternoon, the heat is unbearable. Even so, the morning and evening conditions have changed. When I return to the living room after work, it’s not as unbearable as before without air conditioning.
This morning I ran my usual course a little longer and logged 7.18 km. The screen tells me that I have 92.82 km to go in 28 days. This month Sun and I are planning a trip to Hokkaido over the holidays. That means I won’t be able to build up during that time, so I’ll have to run extra on other days or I’ll likely be pushed to the brink again. The only way to do that is to check the schedule and make a plan.
Prime Minister Abe is stepping down and his successor will be elected soon. This morning’s Tokyo Shimbun’s “Kochira Special Report Department” mentioned one thing that has grown during the seven years and eight months of Abe’s administration: the expansion of government-manufactured hate. It is the “expansion of official hate”. The article goes on to say
The spread of exclusivism coincides with the steps taken by the second Abe administration, which took office in December 2012. In February 2013, the government excluded Korean schools from the free high school program.
That same year, hate speech, in which people used abusive language such as “kill the Koreans living in Japan,” became a social problem.
In the article, journalist Osamu Aoki said
The post-war origins shared by conservative political circles that the country’s leaders made a mistake in policy and caused a great deal of trouble. The fact that this has been lost as the population of the generation that knew about the war has dwindled is probably another reason for the hate infestation.
The economic power of China and South Korea has grown by leaps and bounds, and the days of Japan being the only prominent economic power in Asia, as before, are over. Only in this regard has the Japanese people’s mental balance, which they clung to, been shattered.
As long as slavery to the United States continues, the mental condition of the Japanese people, who have become obsequious toward the east and stubborn toward the west in order to achieve mental balance, will not change.
As long as both of these conditions are not overcome, a truly independent modern Japanese nation will never be born.
Well, today is September, and with only four months left in the year 2020, two-thirds of the year is over, and with the birth of our first grandchild in January and the Tokyo Olympics, it was supposed to be a very rosy year, but in reality, it turned out to be a complete reversal of expectations. Fortunately, my grandson is doing well and growing up quickly, but our society is in turmoil.
On August 28, Abe resigned, another surprise, and as of September 1, his successor has not yet been chosen. I remember those days when Prime Minister Obuchi died of a sudden illness.
History repeats itself. The first time as a tragedy and the second time as a comedy.
It seems to me that this is exactly what happened.
We need to sum up the less than eight years of the Abe administration. If you watch the TV programs that pick up the voices of the city and others, some people cite the fact that things have remained the same as “good to be stable” as a golden opportunity to make a great point.
The world was changing at a tremendous rate during this time. The new coronavirus covered the world and every country was struggling to cope with it, but Japan may be the only developed country that was manually compiling statistics on the number of infected people based on faxes.
Unbeknownst to us, Japan has become one of the laggards among the developed countries. The new coronavirus threw cold water on the people of Japan, who thought they were the most advanced nation in Asia. The symbol of this was the two Abenomask sheets.
It wasn’t the start of a particularly foolish policy to counter the new coronavirus. We had been dealing with it in the same way before that. It simply didn’t get ripped off. Many voters were completely oblivious to this and believed the media’s praise of Abe. It’s really a horrible thing.
In hindsight, there are many times when I look back on history and wonder what a foolish thing we did, but at the time, most of the people supported it.
So if we don’t always ask ourselves if this is the right thing to do, then our society as a whole is going in a terrible direction. Conservatism is an attitude of constantly asking oneself whether this is the right thing to do.
Taro Yamamoto shouted to LDP members in the Diet, “That’s not conservatism, that’s self-defense” and he hit the bull’s eye.
In less than eight years, the quality of the Japanese people has really deteriorated. Hate speech is a prime example.
Each and every one of us must take this situation seriously, face our own hearts, and change the future of our country.
Now that Prime Minister Abe has resigned, this is the last chance we have.
