The cheapest product is always the most economical product.

If there is anyone who agrees to this agenda, that person must be a stupid. The value of a product should be assessed according to the needs of the people who want to get it. At the same time, of course, the quality of the product should be evaluated.

If we take this perspective, we should consider the reason why it is so cheap. The answer should be very simple: few, if any, want it. There is no good thing if few people want to acquire it. Maybe it might be very fragile, not easy to handle, or we can get much better product at the same price.

Either way! The cheapest product is cheap in the real sense of the word. It is, therefore, illogical to conclude the cheapest product is the most economical, because if we get a cheap product, we have to maintain it to work in a proper way. If not, it would cost us much more money to mend it.

Running cost should not be considered light. Even though the price of the product is cheap, running cost costs us much, it would be stupid to have it.

That is the reason I cannot agree to this proposal.

But I am afraid, there are so many people who tend to consider the cheap thing and try to get such a thing first, the result of which would be miserable.

I strongly advise you all, if you want to purchase something, the cheapest thing is the least economical.

Japanology Backward

Since I began my study of English more than fifty years have passed. And I have found the difference of mentalities between the Japanese people and Western people. The Japanese are very strongly individualistic while the western people are generally very group-oriented.  I am going to show you how much they are so by proving you with some examples.

When you get up in the morning, you eat breakfast.  On the table you can find your chopsticks, your rice bowl.  If you don’t find yours there, you surely ask for them. Suppose you are eating breakfast in a western family, there is no such things as (        )’s pair of knife and fork or (       )’s plate. This is because Japanese people have so a strong individuality that they cannot get satisfied with other’s tableware.  Western people are so weak in the character that they don’t care about whose dishes they are using.

After breakfast you turn on TV and watch The TV news. The announcer might say, “I am going to present you…”  Yes, for example, the personal pronoun for the first person singular is just “I”. Nothing more.  On the contrary in Japanese we say, WATASHI, WATAKUSHI, BOKU, ORE, WASHI, ATAI, SESSHA…almost endless.  Again the Japanese people are very strongly individualistic that they are not satisfied with just one persona pronoun, “I”.

On TV, you may see sports news. Just think about it. Japanese traditional sports are almost always non-team. Judo, Kendo, Sumo, Karate, Aikido and so on. On the contrary in western countries almost all popular sports are team sports, such as soccer, rugby, cricket, basketball, baseball, American football, volleyball and others. Again there we have to admit the Japanese like to be individualistic.

On your war to the office, you might see an old shrine, where an old man worships the god enshrined there holding his hands prayerwise. Yes, the Japanese people have a very strong personality so they can celebrate the god face-to-face by himself.  What about the western people? They go to church and pray and sing a choir in group. I am very sorry to say that their personality and character is not strong enough to stand fact-to-face with the god there.

Some other examples: Japanese specialty in sensitivity, WABI and SABI. You can see very easily they are perfectly the thing in each individual mind. It is next to impossible to experience WABI in a sightseeing tour group.

What about Japan’s national heroes? Without any exception all of them are just one person, not a group: MIYAMOTO MUSASHI, ISHIKAWA GOEMON, SUGATA SANSHIRO, GEKKOU KAMEN, ASTRO BOY…again this is almost endless.

On the contrary in the western countries the famous heroes are: Sherlock Holms and Dr. Watson, Robin Hood and his company, D’Artagnan and the three Musketeers, Snow White and Seven dwarfs, Santa Claus and his reindeers, Harry potter and Hermione. They are always act in a group, not individually.

I have given you enough evidence to show that the Japanese are very individualistic people while the western people are very group-oriented.

Ladies and gentlemen, what I have said so far is just nothing but a joke. Of course you know that. But isn’t it what we always do when we meet people from different culture or different countries?  We tend to say, the Japanese are…, the Americans are…, and the Germans are…. This kind of generalization is sometimes very useful but sometimes very harmful, because we are likely to OVER-generalize our one or two personal experiences. This might very often lead to miscommunication.

So let’s be courageous enough to meet people face-to-face, not through our over-simplified images, but through the contact with them as they really are.

A job that requires a lot of thinking is more difficult that a job than requires no thinking.

I have to say that, first of all, there is no job that requires no thinking. Every job as long as it is worth the name of job requires the use of mind to some extent. There is, however, a clear difference between a job that requires intellectual exploitation of our mind and a job that requires so-called physical memory.

We cannot say which is better than which, because sometimes so-called physical memory is of great use for our daily lives. Take a normal door, for an example. When we try to enter a room, handling the nob of the door, we are likely to push or pull the door, instead of sliding it. This is "physical memory".

In our everyday lives. we depend on those physical memory more than our "intellectual memory". If we take this perspective and observe our lives, it is not always the case that a job that requires a lot of thinking is more difficult than a job that requires no thinking.. for a baby to get as much physical memory as possible is something essential to survive in this world. If we take the baby's ways of living, the vital device for the baby to just physical memory, not intellectual one.

Of course a job that requires a lot of thinking has its own value. Even though we survive in this world, the next phase waiting for us to enter requires how to live a "better life".

So isn't it the safest way to say there is no job worth doing without thinking?

It is more important to study science and technology than to study the arts and humanities.

There is nothing worse than the topic today.

Science and technology concentrate on how to handle the world existing around us, while the arts and humanities teach us the "value" of the world surrounding all the people on the earth.
Science and technology belong to the times and age they are produced and developed. On the contrary the arts and humanities are beyond the human history, because of the essential value they have inside themselves.

So to think much more highly of science and technology than the value-concentrated field of the arts and humanities definitely lead us to nowhere, because it will not answer the very basic question, "why we live".

Science and technology will resolve the problems of "how we live better lives" in a very simple way: in the visible way. The visible way of interpretation of the world around us is also very understandable. The way provides us with a happy-go-lucky way of accepting the situation we are living in. But there is a possibility that might lead us to a serious misunderstanding that the human beings are almighty. It is a groundless supposition that men can do anything he likes if we can develop the proper techniques.

The more the science and technology develops, the less accurate perception toward the inner, core structure of the existence of human beings we have.  It is the relationship of inverted proportion. This not-to-the-point view of men has left us nowhere. Just think of the atomic bomb created and developed in the US during the WW II. The scientists concerning the nuclear bomb development always said and says even now that as for the use of nuclear power as the bombs they are not responsible. The President of the US and the best and brightest around him are. But is that right?

We have to study the arts and humanities and should have well-balanced view of human beings. That is the only way left for us to have a bright and fine view for the future of mankind.

It is not possible to eliminate poverty.

I am afraid this topic is very highly philosophical. Poverty takes various forms. Being poor materially is the one form quite understandable, but what seems to be more important for poverty takes is being "poor in heart".  This is because being materialistically poor could/should be recovered in some way or other in the future through the efforts of human beings while being "poor" at heart doesn't seem to be healed in men's history.

What does it, then, mean to be "poor at heart"?  It tells us we can live having nothing in our mind which we can be proud of. In this tough and hard world having proper self-esteem is one of the vital effects that might enable us to survive there. But I would say real self-esteem doesn't come from material richness. Or rather we tends to lose our proper self-esteem as we have more and more properties and money. Why?

We can answer this question quite easily. Just think about the thing you have got so far. Is there any thing that lasts forever? Have you got any thing that you can enjoy forever? Definitely not.
There is nothing new under the sun. So what we have got in this world has its own lifespan. We forget the time we enjoy it by possessing it. It is the destination our material possessions will go in the future, no matter how far away it seems.

On the contrary, if we have something precious in our heart, it will stick to our memory almost forever. If it is a precious memory, it will continue to help and support you in a hard time of your life.

We human beings know this truth very well, but we are likely to forget about it. because our mind is stained by the original sin. It has made us blind to the real value of the things.

So we can safely conclude that as long as we are suffering from the heritage of Adam and Eve, we cannot enjoy the true and real joy. This is because we also conclude it is not possible to eliminate poverty in this secular world.

It is important to keep up with the latest fashion.

"There is nothing uglier than the latest fashion. That is why we have to change it in half a year." said Dr Johnson, and I am afraid it is true.

In all over the world there are so many "fashion shows" like "Paris collection" or "Milan collection", and theses days "Tokyo collection" has come to get attention. It has made me feel puzzled why there are so many styles of clothes every time which seem to me almost the same!

My remark would be a great offense to the designers who give so much time and energy, manpower, teampower to the creation of new type of fashion each time. The variety and difference of these styles may fascinate females but not always males it seems.

So the point is whether we ware those clothes tailored on the style shown on the stage of those fashion shows.

They are somewhat masterpieces of the designers so even we see them kind of awkward and out of the normal sense, if they could get the audience's attention and as the result have become a topic(s) of everyday talk of the people, that's all that they want. They need nothing more.

To stick to the latest fashion itself does not make any sense. The audience's big attention is all they need.

That's what the latest fashions are all about. 

So you don't think too much about the lates fashions.

But there is one thing to remember. Even though it seems to ridiculous to keep on following the latest fashion, the fashion itself is supported by those enthusiastic followers both in Japan and in Europe.

So it would be advisable to see them if you alike or not.