Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

What I am writing might include inappropriate things. 

Recently, the world is in turmoil. High temperature caused big forest fires in Brazil, California, Australia and other parts of the world, much more frequently ever before. 

The pandemic by novel corona virus shut down or suppressed many of human activities. Over 1 million people died since the outbreak. No good medicine is discovered yet. 

How are we going to deal with such matters?

Are we just being frightened? 

Or maybe we’ve got a chance to rethink our way of life. This pandemic and big climate change forcibly changed our lifestyle.

California decided that the state would allow only electric cars in new car sale market from 2035. 

More people work at home using internet. No time loss for commute. Seems like pre-industrial era, where most of people work at home or near their residence as farmers or craftsman. Internet enabled us to do similar things to what we do in office or school. Why not have we done that even before the pandemic? 

Due to the high unemployment rate and unstable job market, people lost their jobs or get less income. To mitigate this situation, some economists propose “Basic Income” measure in which the government provide minimum level or less amount of income for living to all the people of the nation monthly. 

In Japan, this year 100,000 yen (900 US $ worth) money was  provided to all the Japanese nationals once a few months after the pandemic broke out. 

The presented measure is to do it monthly all time around but abolish unemployment benefits, social welfare and retirement pension. But no homeless people on the street. 

Such things would never have happened unless the pandemic broke out. 

Because we are forced to stay home and work from home, we have to think of alternative way of living. Pandemic forced us to realize how vulnerable we are, and how fragile our world is.

As for the eco-crisis we’ve already faced a long before the pandemic, it has become obvious that people do not need to drive, ride or fly a long distance just for the business or study. Energy for transportation can be drastically eliminated. 

Global warming might cause another pandemic by melting of permanent ice in Siberia or North Pole. This pandemic might become prep-school for another greater ones. 

We all have to be serious about the world ecology crisis. We must act now and keep doing it. 

Even after the vaccine or cure medicine is discovered, we would never go back to the life we had in pre-pandemic era. 

Good lesson and good chance! 

Actually, I do not eat beef at all, not even Australian beef.

But American beef is MUST NOT. It is poisoned by mad cow disease.On 23 of April Japanese famous beef rice bowl restaurant franchise, Yoshinoya discovered beef with back-bone imported from Californian beef factory. The backbones are classified as dangerous part that can contain mad cow disease.

American beef import has been restricted since mad cow disease case was reported in the U.S.

Even after the restriction was loosen, a lot of beef with backbones which might contain poisonous disease that can affect human brains were found in the custom checks. Every time that case was reported, the beef import was banned.

The U.S. government insensitively pressured Japanese government to import their poisonous beef whatsoever. Then Japanese government gave in. But the thing is Japanese customers are walking away. Restaurants in Japan advertise that they are not using dangerous American beef. Some supermarkets have stopped selling American beef.

Instead, Australian beef are getting popular because of safety. Australian farmers are not using meat and bone meal to raise their cows. They are using natural grass. Good! The restaurant I often go and eat advertise they use only safe Australian beef. Now they are doing Angus beef steak campaign.

Well, even America tries to threaten Japanese government, people are not that stupid. Not only beef but trust in other American goods is declining.

Remember, we can do boycott campaign of other American goods if we want as long as the U.S. government is insulting us. Just like Chinese are doing to French for Tibet issue. Actually I am doing that to protest America's "Third Atomic Bomb" to our land.

This is the campaign statement.  

Stupid America! How ignorant they are! They are not our friends any more.

By the way, I am actually not eating beef at all as previously mentioned. I am becoming vegetarian recently. Not because of religions or love for animals. It is due to health and ecology. Vegetables work fine in my stomach.

Cattle grazing is very harmful to the environment. Amazon forests are disappearing because of grazing. Deforestration and methane breath from cows are causing global warming.

There are estimated 1.5 billions cows on the earth. If the crops for feeding the cows are switched to feed humans, the world starvation problem would be resolved. We are wasting so much food and starving many people in other parts of the world just for the luxury of the good tasting.

It is time we change our lifestyle to save our planet. American lifestyle is most harmful to our planet. Just cut it off!

Answer to Pritcht,

China is not part of Japan, nor Japan is not part of China. Both are separate independent nations. Do more research on the world geographies.

I rented a DVD of animated movie "Cars." The story was one rising racing car "Lightening Maqueen" got accidentally stuck in a forgotten town on route 66. He met cars in the town and learned how to live life. Funny and heart-warming story. Pictures were very detailed and beautifully drawn.

The world of cars living like humans was a great idea.

Looks like cars are living things for Americans. Yes, I know that because I used to drive in the U.S.

My car was '89 Mitsubishi Galant Sigma. 3 liter, 4 door sedan. Kind of luxurious car. I loved that car. I named him "Nobunaga" after famous Samurai lord in 16th century.

Everyone who drove my car said "moves smoothly like Cadillac." I was glad to hear that just like I was the one who was given such compliments.  

I drove from San Francisco to Los Angeles. 7 hours, that was longest drive in my life. The roads were wide. 1.5 time wider than Japan's. He was very nice friend to me.

When I left the U.S. and sold him to new owner, I gave him beer for the farewell.

Well, I guess that is the memory of 20th century. This is 21st century. People are well-aware of environmetal crisis. Cars are releasing green house gas. Also, what we have to pay attention is crude oil is running out. The oil is said to be run out in 40 years. That is why oil price is getting high recently.

We need to use public transportation instead of private cars to reduce emission. Not the time to enjoy driving.

It is critical time to think about future of our precious earth. Change the current lifestyle for our humankind to survive in this century and next century.

That is the main theme of 21st century.

Hope all of us have a happy new year.   

It is getting cold lately. A winter is coming close. I do not like winter except that I can go out and ski.

I have good memories of skiing.  

During my college days in the U.S., I visited Colorado to ski 3 times. The same ski resort, Steamboat.

It was college's students ski tour. In the first time we travelled by Amtrack. I remeber it was more than a half day trip from Auckland. Crazily long and boring. 2nd time and 3rd time we went there by plane. Less than 4 hours.  

On 1st time trip, since I had never skied before so I took 1 day ski lesson and that enabled me to ski very well afterwards. Steamboat was a huge ski resort. Even I stayed there for 5 days, I couldn't ski on all of the courses there.

The photo was taken there.

Other place I skied than Steamboat was Zermatt in Switzerland. I skied there in August seeing the view of Matterhorn.

But not as good as Steamboat, because the ski zones were limited because it was summer.  

Well, now I get older, I don't think I want to go out and ski somewhere. There are many good ski resorts in Japan. But not as good as Steamboat or Zermatt. I don't want to get in crowded ski bus or trains to get to a crowded ski resort.

As it gets cold, I would stay longer at home watching DVDs. I rented an old Charlie Angels' drama episode that Angels went to Veil in Colorado to bodyguard a foreign important person. Kate Jackson (or lookalike) skied chasing a criminal very well.

That brought me back Steamboat memories, too.

Skiing is what you have to do NOW. As the whole earth gets warmer, more and more ski slopes are being closed. We wouldn't be enjoying skiing in near future. Maybe we should ski on artificial snow ground.

I was lucky I could enjoy skiing on real snow. It was high quality powder snow. I remember I could not make a snowball out of it.