I often see babies cry in Japan.  It’s not hard to find them crying especially where people gather like supermarkets, department stores, or any public places.  Actually babies cry very often and cry loudly.

As I’ve been away from Japan for a long time,  I can compare how different from some other countries.  I stayed in Hawaii and NZ before coming back here in Japan. I scarcely saw babies cry loudly in the public in such countries, but soon after being in Japan, babies’ crying voice began to attack me anytime I go out.

I can’t tell the correct reason for this, but probably Japan is also a stressful society for babies too.  In Hawaii or NZ, society goes slower than Japanese life speed. And the adults aren’t stressed much not like the fact of Japanese adults.  Babies cry when they get stressed, if this was true, the stress makers for babies are always adults or society of the parents.  As far as the stress is serious for their parents, the babies would probably get really stressed by them without knowing.

So we see a lot of babies cry in Japan.

But it’s not fair to blame their parents only. Actually we were not stressed much in Hawaii or NZ when we stayed.  That’s because the houses are separated far from the next door, and we didn’t get pressure from the neighbors.  Those countries are not populated much, but Japan is crowded at any places.  It’s natural that we adults also are stressed to live in this competitive society of Japan.

To survive in this society, we have to tell the children ” Study hard, work hard, behave well, and live hard ! “.  It’s really hard for kids to live without any stress.

So I need to give up this if I keep living in Japan.

Someone asked me if I wanted to go to New Zealand for slower life.  I answered NO. Japanese life is speedy and often harder, but I prefer choosing the life of Japan.  I know NZ life is easier and it’s not stressful, but for me, to be honest, it’s boring to live there.  I know I am already deeply infected by speedy life virus of Japan.

Today I found a lot of spam feedbacks on my blogs.  There days many of them are not identifiable at a sight.  It means spams are upgrading !

I often think spam making is a real waste of time.  It’s making nonsense story and nonsense links with others, they are doing it just for the money. As soon as it’s identified as spam, the work of the spam makers did ends with nothing valuable for people.

Maybe some of the spam really work for making money. That’s why they still do it.

From my point of view, this is a real waste of my life time. If I wanted money first, I would choose more valuable for life and people because I know I wouldn’t regret it even if it would be in vain.  But if I produce spams, which are nonsense things for life, it means I know what I’m doing is no value for my life and others.  Then when it’s done, I will definitely hate what I ‘ve done even when spams make some money.

It’s a matter of idea about life time. 

Time is a limited resource.  If we consume it without a plan, we will absolutely regret what we can’t take back.  I think spams are such things.

Give my best regards to spam makers.

I like an animation movie, Spirited Away. In this movie, there are 2 songs that I really love.

First one is called ” A name of life “, Inochino Namae in Japanese.

This movie has the record of the box office of Japan.  It’s said that total viewers are more than 1000 people in Japan, so 1 out of 10 went to the theaters to see this movie.

Both vocal version and instrumental version are very nice.

In the same movie, Spirited Away, one more song is unforgettable. This song is sung at the end of the movie and it releases our soul to the real world leaving the world of spirit.  This is really beautiful and has something sweet and sad, but also gives us a gentle hope of tomorrow.

I enjoyed the songs today.

I love the Beatles. If it were not for them, my life would have totally been different. First of all I didn’t learn English like this much.

It was already 40 years ago when I first heard of them, and still the sound of them freshly catches my soul.  Maybe many of the people in the world feel like me.

One of the reasons Beatles never disappears is that their music range is really wide. There are love songs to political songs, and for teenagers to grown persons too. Some words of songs are easy to remember but some are too difficult to understand.  All of the directions of human sense is included in Beatles music. This is what only genius can do.

I’m rather old as a rock music fan. Recently I like Jazz or Classical music too. But listening to the Beatles, their music brings me to the top gear speed in body, soul, and brain works.

Today’s favorite was Norwegian Wood.  Rubber Soul was released in 1966, which means John was 26 and Paul was 24 then !  This can’t be a young man’s music at all, this song reaches the grown people’s mind too. Just amazing.

After Rubber Soul album, Beatles creativity had the big bang to give us Revolver, Sgt. Pepper, Magical Mystery Tour, White Album, Let it be, and the final masterpiece, Abbey Road.  They did them all in their 20′s age time.

Maybe this music big ban would not be happening again on the earth. They were chosen by the God of music just like Back, Mozart, or Beethoven.

Norwegian Wood still has a deep emotion of the composer, John Lennon. Then John was young, but still John’s soul of this song leads us to the place where we should be.   Real things last forever.

Japanese National Flower is Sakura, or Cherry Blossom.  Now it’s time of cherry blossom in Japan. It tells the arrival of new spring, and Japanese wait it over a long winter time.

Cherry blossoms around April in Japan with the steps of warm climate. With the flower, we go to schools of new year term, and company starts the new year.

In this season, Winter was long and very cold.  Today, I felt a little warm wind and it’s a news of the coming of Spring.

I really like the season of Sakura.

I often play the piano when I feel OK.  Also guitar and Ukulele are my favourite music instruments, but probably I like the piano above all.

I started playing the piano when I was 25 years old. So it’s very late.  I still remember the first motive for my piano passion, which was the encounter with Bill Evans.

In Japan, there were many Jazz Cafe or Coffee Shops with Jazz music when I was then young. Now many of them are gone and Jazz already became an easy listening music.  Back then, Jazz was still like a mental journey with the improvisation by the players.

Bill Evans gave me the deeper emotion of music. When he plays even on the records, everything around me stopped but my emotion only moved.  That was a strange awakening to Jazz, and it made me go to piano shops.

I like playing Bill Evans numbers, but copying them are not interesting.  Notes are made only by his play of improvisation.  Copying them is kind of losing individual.

But when I play the piano, I certainly think of him and I imagine how he feels if he played the number I play. He never disappears from me, and today again, he came up in my heart over my piano play.

I know that Chinese people still have mental damage because of the last war. Of couse Japan can’t forget it.  And Asian countries sometimes have troubles with Western countries too.  To be honest, I think we should look back the history more from objective research because the process of the troubles, or reasons of the troubles often are not what they seem to be for our eyes, they are often different from what we learnt at schools. But I don’t write about it here anyway.

If we see the last results only, actually we nations have small or large troubles.

But when I listen to this song played by Joe Hisaishi ( Japanese ) with Chinese instrument players and Western Violinist, I can’t find any troubles. What I see there is complete harmony played by different nations with their own music instruments.

When people play music, they try to focus on the pleasure of sound only. Their mind don’t have any room for trouble discussion as they want the ecstasy of harmony.

Like that, here they are all same human. They are sharing the same time. They have the same climax time in the music.  They are true friends in the music even if they are Japanese or Chinese, or Western.

I like music when I see the humans original aspect. People know how we are same kind, but we often see the difference first. Its a shame.

Nobody wants to start wars. But we still have wars in the world, just like we had in the past. Who starts the wars ?  It’s apparent that they are not searching for a human harmony.  They who start the war should listen to this music !

Keiko Maruyama(photo)  is a singer/songwriter of Japan. Now she is not that active, so some old fans only know the songs of her old time.

Her songs are very sophisticated and they made gentlemen of Japan feel happy at the time. This song is Douzo Konomama, or “Please leave as it is” in English translation.  Song is backed up by bossa nova rhythm and the melody is really beautiful.

Still this song is comfortable to our ears.

The video is made with image photos of Megumi Oishi, an TV talent of Japan. She was announcer of Japanese TV for the first time, but her good looking image soon captured the hearts of Japanese young generation.  She soon changed her job, and now she is still a beautiful model of Japan.

When I was younger, much younger, this song ” Anohi ni Kaeritai” was a hit number among high school stundets in Japan. Maybe it’s more than 30 years ago.

Songwriter of this song is Yumi Arai, she became Yumi Matsutoya when married. 

Now she’s got a lot of hit songs in Japan, but this song was one of the very first stage songs of her career.  We can see her talent in this song already, and her name is now much more famous than the time of this song.

I liked this song then.

 I’m not young, not that old either.   When I was a high school student, this song was very popular.  This song is made by the inspiration of a movie, Strawberry statement, and the title is Ichogo Hakusho wo Mouichido ( Strawberry statement again ). 

The song is really melancholic enough for us to remember the time of this song. Then, students of Japan are still struggling for the future.  The movie, strawberry statement, was telling about that kind of youngsters in the USA.

Still, it’s a good song, and I will not able to forget it as it has such a lot of memories on us.