Honesty, Poverty, and Beauty

The Book of Proverbs in The King James Version
(Le livre du Proverbe dans le Roi James Version):

Pro 20:01 Wine is a mocker, strong drink is raging: and whosoever is deceived thereby is not wise.

Pro 20:02 The fear of a king is as the roaring of a lion: whoso provoketh him to anger sinneth against his own soul.

Pro 20:03 It is an honour for a man to cease from strife: but every fool will be meddling.

Pro 20:04 The sluggard will not plow by reason of the cold; therefore shall he beg in harvest, and have nothing.

Pro 20:05 Counsel in the heart of man is like deep water; but a man of understanding will draw it out.

Pro 20:06 Most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find?

Pro 20:07 The just man walketh in his integrity: his children are blessed after him.

Pro 20:08 A king that sitteth in the throne of judgment scattereth away all evil with his eyes.



"...But Jesus answered, "The scripture says, 'Man cannot live on bread alone.'" ..."

Divine Comedy 2007 (VII)

A Sweet Corner, focused on or forgotten
Lonely post waiting for another Flood

Steppingstones; incarnation against the bad luck

Divine Comedy 2007 (VII)
[Comédie Divin 2007 - VII]

1. Summer Holidays
The Weekly Diamond, a Japanese business magazine, has made public the ranking of popular sight-seeing-spots/tourist-towns in Japan based on an Internet survey (with Japanese respondents).

#........Town............Prefecture.......No. of Votes
1........Kyoto................Kyoto..............423
2........Shiretoko..........Hokkaido.........213....(peninsula)
3........Sapporo............Hokkaido.........207
4........Naha.................Okinawa..........195
5........Hakodate..........Hokkaido.........192.....(port)
6........Otaru................Hokkaido.........160.....(port)
6........Yufuin...............Oita................160.....(hot spring)
8........Furano..............Hokkaido........119.....(field)
9....Ishigaki-jima.........Okinawa..........109.....(island)
10......Aso....................Kumamoto......104.....(volcano)
11......Tokyo 23 Wards......Tokyo..........98

My recommendation for your visit in Japan is, of course, Nara with many ancient wooden religious structures and remained atmosphere you cannot even find in Korea and China.

Though poor people are the same all over the world, those with any notion on Japanese Civilization can better live even in New York and Paris than those without it.

If you are pious and free for travelling, you would probably have to see a country where the religions traced back to Abraham have finally reached at the End of the East.

But who guides you? So, choose a right one.


2. Handwriting on the Wall
Nomura Holdings, Inc. has reported on its after-tax profit during the second quarter of 2007 as 76.7 billion yen (640 million dollars).
(http://www.nomuraholdings.com/policy/privacy_hd.html)

However, it lost 72.6 billion yen (600 million dollars) due to adverse effect of US housing loan slumps, during the first half of 2007.

Nomura purchased claimable assets on US housing loans and integrated them into financial commodities to sell to corporate investors. Specifically, Nomura started to deal with US sub-prime loans in August 2005.

No other major Japanese financial companies are reportedly involved in transactions leveraging the US housing loan credit obligations.

Now, the dollar is getting weaker; the NYSE index is expected to go down but not further up; Chinese export might be suppressed through adjustment of monetary rates and due to product contamination; and the gasoline price has never shown any signs of going down.

Nomura's loss, though covered by its profit, may be handwriting on the wall for those involved in Wall Street. It is time we are going to enter another cycle of the world econmy, since even Russia has recently paid off due to the energy boom.

Maybe you had better have another way of investment.
But who guides you? So, choose a right one.

3. Switchgrass Fever
The last night the Fuji TV news program introduced President Mr. George Bush's recommendation for adopting a specific kind of plants, the Switch Grass (Panicum virgatum), as resources for new biomass energy.

President Mr. Bush is not acting like a voodoist, at least in this issue, since some Japanese researchers are also studying the switchgrass for prevention of desertification especially in China and Africa.
(http://crwp.mine.utsunomiya-u.ac.jp/~ichizen/F4C0A10C-8797-4A39-8A8F-4FEC150A323B/Nobumasa%20Ichizen.html)

American scientists are also developing better use and growth of the switchgrass.
(http://www.extension.iastate.edu/Publications/PM1710.pdf)

The plant is abundant not only in America, but also in Sudan, so interestingly.

President Mr. Bush may be remembered as a great leader who has first advocated the large-scale application of the miracle weed switchgrass.

When Mr. Bush was the governor in Texas, it is said that he strongly supported introduction of wind force power generation which seems to be now successful as business in Texas.

President Mr. Bush may be right, this time, too, as it involves desertification effect especially useful for China and oil-rich but war-torn Sudan.

Indeed, American voters can be described in a future history-textbook as having chosen a right one, if the switchgrass works well before the oil reserves are depleted in 40 years or so.


4. Dogs
Jesus Christ never kept a dog.

I do not specially blame those who love their dogs more than other human beings.

However, you should not have dogs fight each other, though such a practice and business can be seen in most of countries in the world.

I like to see wolves. And, there are three types of wolves: the first that never likes human beings and human environment, the second that likes human environment but not human beings so much, and the third that likes human beings and thus human environment.

There is no difference between DNAs of a wolf and those of a dog. Indeed, a dog is a spiritual creature, but it is not humanly spirited. It has only a spirit of a wolf that likes simply human environment or human beings; but it can have a spirit of a wolf that never likes human beings and human environment.

You need a guard against dogs in case. You need a guard against the villains who look like the first type or the second type of dogs.

Truly, you have to choose a right one, though love is not a matter of choice.


(This Sunday, eligible voters in Japan are expected to go and vote for its Upper House Election. You may think it is very irrelevant to you, if you are in New York or Paris.

But, even weeds can be a key to the future; even a dog reveals what mankind is and what Jesus Christ's teaching is; even poor people's broken dreams in the U.S. affect Japan's top financial company; and even a sight seeing trip to Japan can be an expression of your faith in God.

The election that might decide the fate of Japan's Prime Minister or the top opposition leader can have an influence on you even working in New York or Paris, since it may have some influence on me, according to God's will.

Have nice holidays, since the summer sun is burning upon good girls here and there!)



"...Be Ready for Whatever Comes, Dressed for Action and with Lamps Lit..."

The Last Heroes of The Imperial Navy

NG1: defocusing
NG2: no miracles (aucun miracles...?)

NG3: stepped on too much

The Last Heroes of The Imperial Navy


Last night, Ms. Hiroko Kuniya presented, in her moderated TV program of NHK, an interview with Mr. Kaneto Shindo, a 95-year-old Japanese active film director.
(http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/kaneto+shindo)

Despite his age, he was incisive and humorous enough in responding to Ms. Kuniya.

He recently produced a new movie titled "Oka-ni Aga-tta Gunkan" which literally means "On the Land, Got on, A Battleship."
(http://www.oka-gun.com/)

In the last days of WWII, when he was 32 years old, Mr. Shindo got drafted for the Imperial Navy in desperate military situations, since the Imperial Military (samurai spirited war machine) was almost determined in principle to fight until the end on its mainland.

(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imperial_Japanese_Navy:

It was the third largest navy in the world by 1920 behind the United States Navy and Royal Navy,[1] and perhaps the most modern at the brink of World War II. It was supported by Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service for aircraft and airstrike operation from the fleet.)

Director Mr. Shindo made the film based on his memory and experiences in those tragic days. It is not a story of a hero in combat, but it shows how he and other old conscripts were treated badly by younger superiors who blindly followed irrational customs and orders of the Imperial Military.
* * *

August is a special month for Japan, since on August 15, 1945, the Empire of Japan stopped its battle against allied forces. It is also in August that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were attacked with atomic (nuclear) bombs. So, there are three major events to commemorate victims of the war in August every year.

Yet, it is a big surprise that Mr. Shindo made a film in which he took a part as a guide for the past.

As his wife, an actress, died 13 years ago, Mr. Shindo is now living alone. He said that loneliness keeps his spirit and thought in a favorable state; when he has his head in the clouds without any focus, he often remembers many things of the past, especially his mother, so wistfully. So, he said that he wanted to produce another film on his mother.
* * *

If you really want to live until 95 in a good style and a high spirit, you may like to see how it looks like by referring to the movie or the NHK TV program recorded somewhere.

(As Jesus Christ died in his 30's, I think I should wonder why I am still allowed to live in this godless world; am I whirling up bodily to Heaven at least micron by micron per second along with the expansion of the whole universe?

Or, should I say with a determined will of life to all the pagans, "See a miracle and be gone!"?

And...Oh, there is Eroica Variations, of course, composed by Beethoven, so pleasant in a music file folder of my PC as appropriately copied from a music CD... )



"WHO IS ABLE TO GIVE HIM ADVICE?"

The Scenario of a Dollar Crash

People on the river are happy to give!

Rolling on a river!...

(roulement sur un fleuve...?)

The Scenario of a Dollar Crash


In the Bible, there are passages meaning the following situation:
"While people were drinking, chanting, and dancing, the God's anger was upon them, and thus no Angels stopped occurrence of a great tragedy upon them."

(I am not going to refer to the situations in the U.K. recently observed with dangerous fire and massive water for them to repent, but my holy concern is mainly on the Japan-US monetary relationship.)
* * *

CNN broadcast, on this Tuesday morning in Japan, live the You-Tube-based debate by Democrat politicians, all running for US Presidency.

Most of the Japanese media have acknowledged dominance of Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton who, according to a female newscaster, looked so majestic.

However, I suppose if some US female TV personality or critic moderated the debate, the outlook might be different, since those politicians, except Ms. Hillary Rodham Clinton, would be surely overshadowed.
(Of course, Oprah and Michael Moore can co-moderate the next session or future debate for 2012.)
* * *

The most serious issue on the U.S. is possibility of a dollar crash, which no ordinary US citizens seem to fully comprehend, while they are a kind of surfing on wealth the global de-facto dollar standard system has brought on them.

Mr. Mototada Yoshikawa, in a book coauthored by Mr. Hideyuki Sekioka, presented one scenario of a dollar crash.
(Both the authors are prominent critics on economy, especially the economic and political relationship between Japan and the U.S.)

The scenario Mr. Yoshikawa presented is:
1) A general trend of oil price increase
2) Further instability in the Middle East
3) Price hike of gasoline in the U.S.
4) Further demands for Japanese hi-tech cars
5) Accusation by the US auto industry against Japan for whatsoever reasons
6) Accusation by US Congress against Japan in line with US car makers
7) Speculations for the higher yen and the lower dollar in Wall Street
8) Harmonized actions in Congress to approve the higher yen and the lower dollar
9) Global money market being driven to cope with the weaker dollar state
10) A kind of chain reaction for the dollar to go down in value

Finally the crash of value of US Treasury bonds leads to the halt of circulation of money and credit among US financial communities and eventually citizen lives. One third of Japanese companies will be severely damaged while an unemployment rate in the US will surge to 30% or so (here figures based on my rough assumption only), since both the export and import will be devastated, resulting in no availability of cheap materials and goods from abroad to the U.S. market.

In reality, the Bank of Japan, in collaboration with the US Government, has been making great efforts to sustain the value of the dollar for decades, which ordinary US citizens have never realized and appreciated.

(This kind of complicated aspects of Japan-US relationship has been traditionally understood only by top-level executives of the US Government.)

To be a US President means to have enough background to handle this level of matters that could gravely affect 120 million Japanese and 3.7 billion Asians as well as 6.6 billion mankind.

You have to choose a right person, while expanding your scope to the world and the future with 5,000 year civilized history.
* * *

Traditionally in Japan, children are told a spooky tale at a hot night in the summer for letting in some cool air.

Indeed, US voters, taxpayers, and consumers as well as veterans should keep a cool head with the dollar crash story.

After all, I hope that there will be neither AlQaeda attacks on the US nor a dollar crash, for Japan is so strongly on shares with the U.S.


(If there are two persons in a　kind of selfish relationship, usually one is bad and another is a sort of victim, no matter how they look like fighting for their own right and cause. That is why a sound friendship is so rare; and even man and wife is not an exception.

Japan and the U.S. must carefully avoid falling into any such analogical relationship.

It is not a game for win-win with so many victims behind the scene. Indeed, Japan and the U.S. should sacrifice themselves for mankind in case, unlike some other more sinful countries such as the U.K. as symbolized by the Princess Diana's case in 1997.

Otherwise, you cannot assume that you are so blessed by the God even before 2008.)




"...For those will be 'The Days of Punishment'..."

The Summer Vacation

A Cicada (Une cigale)
Swimmers (La personne qui nage)

The Summer Vacation

For most of humble Japanese schoolchildren, hunting cicadas in a nearby park and playing in a public swimming pool are enough for spending the summer vacation.

Jesus Christ said that unless you became like a child, you could not enter Heaven.

Thus, my recommendation is for you to hunt cicadas in a nearby park and play in a public swimming pool for your vacation, if you live in Japan.

If you can be content with it, you will be blessed in this summer.

Or, do you think you can meet any holy person in a 300-dollar-per-day resort hotel?

I suppose 100 dollar is a limit.


"...The Good Ones Go into the Buckets and the Worthless Ones are Thrown Away..."

Earthquakes and Awe of God Common to Japan and the War Area

Artificial Water Fall
(Une chute d'eau artificielle)


Earthquakes and Awe of God Common to Japan and the War Area


On Sunday night, Japan's Fuji TV news program reported on some victims of the recent earthquake, namely, mostly innocent, handicapped, humble, very old, very young, or good-natured people, though they have made Japan the second largest economy in the world in these decades, inevitably without relying on the vast land and abundant natural resources, as so fatally missing at this holy End of the East.

One of them is a schoolchild in the lower grade who has been haunted by a fear of another possible earthquake. Since the earthquake that happened last Monday, the little girl always checks where her mother is and cannot sleep in her room on the second floor of her house. She rather sleeps at an entrance of the house at night with a backpack always placed by her side or carried on the back.

When the earthquake hit the region near the Sea of Japan, it is said that even an adult was so heavily jolted, pushed up, and a kind of thrown from the ground or a floor or luckily forced to hold on anything fixed nearby.

The earthquake disarrayed and knocked down all furniture and every other thing inside most of the houses in the devastated area (which includes a nuclear power plant and a key component supplier to Toyota Motor), if a house was not destroyed.
* * *

If you experience an earthquake once a year, regardless of its magnitude so long as you can feel it watching a floor and a ceiling of your house being shaken, you would surely come to be held in awe to the nature and a god.

If you never experience an earthquake so often, you may lack a notion that there is something in this world that you cannot, too clearly, control, cope with, or even predict unlike other natural disasters, since an earthquake is related to billion-year-scale movement of continental plates or in-land crush of a fault mostly unobserved from the surface of the ground. You can be more easily humble to the concept of the God.

I think that the little schoolgirl will in Niigata Prefecture grow up as an exemplary Japanese citizen in future with sound and adequate awe in the nature and God.
* * *

Some Japanese virtue should be really formed and grow through this process of experiencing earthquakes and the deep fear they invoke. Put simply, to understand Japanese mentality, you have to experience earthquakes in Japan.

Indeed, the U.S. could not understand mentality of Chinese and Koreans, resulting in failure in the Korean War and subsequent death of millions of people in China and North Korea under inhumane regimes.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mao_Zedong)

The U.S. could not understand mentality of Chinese and Vietnamese, resulting in failure in the Vietnam War and subsequent death of millions of people in Cambodia and neighboring areas under inhumane regimes.( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pol_Pot)

If the U.S. can not understand mentality of those living in Afghanistan and Iraq, their military operations today might result in failure in the War on Terror and subsequent possible death of millions of people in the Islamic region.

But, the war between the Empire of Japan and the U.S. during WWII was an exceptionally well organized war between the two civilized nations in Asia/Pacific. The U.S. could rely on Imperial Japan's civilized functions in the war, which allowed for rational approach on the U.S. side unlike the above three subsequent cases that requested and still request more deeper understanding of mentality of those the U.S. was and is fighting against.

(Truly, the military of the Imperial Japan never intentionally targeted US citizens even in its attack on Pearl Harbor. Comparison of the 9/11 terror to the Pearl Harbor attack really misled the U.S. to wrong strategies against AlQaeda.)
* * *

According to the world earthquake information , not only Japanese but also those around AlQaeda in the north of the Pakistan/Afghanistan border seem to have felt a warning in a form of an earthquake last week.
(http://earthquake.usgs.gov/eqcenter/recenteqsww/Maps/region/Asia.php)


Truly, they should listen to Japanese if they remember the great one that occurred a few years ago in Northern Pakistan.



(If you are to ask a question to possible US Presidential Election candidates, you had better ask how much they understand mentality of Muslims and AlQaeda.

For example, Mr. George H.W. Bush once said that AlQaeda was nuts.

Do you think that Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton can understand Allah enough, so that she can handle the ongoing war while preventing possible death of millions of people in the Islamic region after near-future withdrawal of US troops, like in the cases of the preceding wars in the Korean Peninsula and the Indochina Peninsula?

I mean if you can do more, you have a mission. You can be greater. Yes, you can.)



"THE SON OF MAN IS THE LORD OF SABBATH"

Around 4 p.m.

"...How Happy Are Those Who Believe Without Seeing Me..."