Category: Yokohama
Self-reflection Mid-2022
“The outer world is a reflection of the inner world. Other people’s perception of you is a reflection of them; your response to them is an awareness of you.”― Roy T. Bennett, The Light in the Heart Hi international friends, Can you believe It’s already July? We’re officially halfway through 2022. And the middle of the year could be a perfect time to self-reflect and evaluate what you have been through during the first half of the year. You don’t necessarily have to be hard on yourself for not fulfilling your new Year’s resolutions. Not only will Self-reflection allow you to better prepare yourself for the second half of the …
Back to Photography
“There’s nothing like deep breaths after laughing that hard. Nothing in the world like a sore stomach for the right reasons.”― Stephen Chbosky, The Perks of Being a Wallflower Hi international friends. It’s really been a while since I last posted the last photographic journal outside of my neighborhood. Because of the surging number of covid cases, I haven’t had any opportunities to go to cities, including the central districts of my home city, Yokohama. But thanks to my friend who invited me to hang out in the city, I brought my Canon DSLR along for the first time in more than a year. Even though I had had some …
Scars of Modern Life
“The marks humans leave are too often scars.” ― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars I’ve been insecure and anxious for the past ten years. Maybe it’s my whole life. Frankly, I’m not good at managing my mental and emotional ups and downs. Just like anybody else in this modern world, I’ve been through a lot. In our modern world, unless you’re living in a remote dense rainforest far away from human civilizations, we barely face physically dangerous situations. We, however, could experience other forms of injuries, such as emotional pain, rejection, and distress. Some researchers found evidence that those emotional pains could be as harmful and dangerous as …
Pray for the World
“Prayer is not asking. It is a longing of the soul. It is daily admission of one’s weakness. It is better in prayer to have a heart without words than words without a heart.” ― Mahatma Gandhi Pray. That’s all I can do for now. Just Pray. Pray for your family. Pray for your friends. Pray for someone in the world who may be suffered from unimaginable pain, poverty, and loneliness. A couple of days ago, shocking news reverberated across my country. The bodies of a man, woman, and two children were found in a car parked at a convenience store’s parking lot in Yokohama. The police believed it was …
Find Your Own Swahili
“The Swahili word safari means journey, it has nothing to do with animals, someone ‘on safari’ is just away and unobtainable and out of touch.” ― Paul Theroux, Dark Star Safari: Overland from Cairo to Cape Town Hujambo! This means ‘How are you?’ in Swahili. Yes, you’ve read it right. It’s Swahili. Swahili is a lingua franka of the African Great Lakes region and many other areas of the continent. The exact number of Swahili speakers remains unknown, but estimately there are 50 to 100 million speakers all across Africa. Today, I’d like to use Swahili as a metaphor to discuss the true essence of learning. So, why do I …
The Fish That Tries to Climb a Tree
“Not all those who wander are lost.” ― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Fellowship of the Ring Albert Einstein famously wrote, “Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” I’ve been this fish ever since I graduated from college in the US. Thanks to my bad decisions and many failures over the course of my career during the 2010s, I switched between several workplaces. But I never found a place I felt I could belong to. A big chunk of my regret is that I spent the final years of my 20s …
Old Is New
“Some day you will be old enough to start reading fairy tales again.” ― C.S. Lewis We’re already in 2021. Still, the pandemic shows no signs of slowing in every corner of the world. The same is true in my neighborhood, and I can’t travel across Tokyo, Yokohama, and Shonan, to enjoy urban photography to document our daily lives. Since we’re in a second covid state of emergency, our lives are restricted. And this current circumstance brought a significant change in my blogging style. Fewer photos from Tokyo/Yokohama and more photos from my neighboring areas/my room. And I’ve had enough of them. So, I need something I can get my …
Transporting into the Future
“The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams.” ― Eleanor Roosevelt The 2020s is the decade when so many of our favorite anime series and Hollywood blockbusters take place. While Ghost in the Shell (1995) depicted a neon-lit cyberpunk Tokyo, Her (2013) set in a techno-perfect Los Angels not in a distant future where a man can date his operating system. However, at far as we know, the very first year of the decade, 2020, is not what we expected. As we spent most of our time at home, we haven’t experienced anything 2020-ish. We expected a cyberpunk-themed car accelerating on the night highway leaving …
As a Citizen of the World
“You may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one. I hope someday you’ll join us. And the world will live as one.” ― John Lennon Yesterday, my dad told me about a conversation he had with my mom. “I’m not sure how much longer I will live,” he said. “Don’t say that,” said my mom. “My life would be horribly boring without you.”They were watching a TV program about the elderly, and they somewhat projected themselves deeply into elderly people facing their death featured in the program. Together for forty years, they’re inseparable now. Since my dad spent most of his career in the elderly care industry, …