Star Watching

 Albireo

photo:  http://spaceinfo.jaxa.jp/ja/binary_star.html

Many people are eager to go all the way to world heritage sites, but they even don’t seem to notice that there is a breathtaking view just above our head.  It’s the night sky.  I think that it’s a shame for all of us to lose the opportunity to see it because of the light pollution in big cities.

Last weekend, I got out of the town and headed to the mountain area to enjoy watching stars in spring.  It was a new moon night and the best time for observing stars.  Although it was raining when we got there, we were very positive that the sky would clean up by midnight.  And, as we expected, the rain stopped.  Besides, the rain washed away the dust in the air and sky became nice and clear, which we seldom have a chance to see.  How lucky we were!

Some experts operated a few telescopes that were connected to computers.  They input some data of the location of stars that we want to watch so that telescopes would automatically start searching them.  It’s like an auto pilot system for airplanes.  Unless we use computers, it will take a lot of time to focus on the targeted stars because some of them are just itsy-bitsy spots in the sky.

We explored the night sky up until dawn.  The stars we watched at night were various.  Albireo, which appears to be a single star to the naked eye is actually beautiful double stars through a telescope.  The Saturn is an observable bright star with your naked eyes if you don’t expect to see its ring.  Some galaxies such as M57 ring nebula, M27 dumb-bell nebula, globular Clusters are really exciting because they are beyond my perception of time and distance.

The Milky Way on that night was incredibly clear and we were able to see the white belt that flew from the Swan to the Scorpion.  We also saw some artificial satellites flying across the sky while we were looking up the Milky Way.  The more I know about the night sky, the more I like it.  It’s very addictive.

Milky Way
photo:  http://kai-kuu.jugem.jp

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Women’s Notebook

The government is now planning to introduce “women’s notebook” （女性手帳）as one of the countermeasures to the falling birthrate.  It is to promote young women learning right knowledge about their reproduction mechanism and also to encourage to give birth to a baby by the time they reach their mid 30s.

Raising children is not an easy task and there is no doubt that women should go through the process while they are still young.  Besides, as they get older, their eggs get older as well and the chance of pregnancy definitely drops down.  As far as educational aspect is concerned, the government attempt is understandable. 

However, I’m still uncomfortable with this “women’s notebook.”  For me, it seems that the government is trying to push women to take some responsibility for the declining of the birthrate.  It’s not just women’s problems, though.

In the first place, what caused the birthrate to decline?

Women have been encouraged to work more in their workplace.  And with the Basic Law for a Gender-Equal Society or 男女共同参画社会基本法, women are expected to occupy 30% of managerial position in various fields of the society at least by 2020.  Working women’s 30s is a very important period to build their career.  That’s because women have some sort of fear that they may loose the place where they are after coming back from maternity leave. 

On the other hand, men seem to be less confident and less responsible for making their own family.   Looking around me, girls are sometimes complaining about their boyfriend.  One girl said that her boyfriend is dilly-dallying getting married because he isn’t a regular employee, even though they have been dating for many years.  And another girl said that her boyfriend is indifferent talking about becoming a father.  Maybe, men are not mature enough to build up their own family.

Apparently, it’s not just for women who have to tackle with the declining birthrate.  Men should also get involved in it as being a good partner with women.  And, one thing for sure is that we need to respect any decision that a married couple makes, whether they want to have a baby or not and when they want to have a baby.  We are not living for the sake of nation’s policy.

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Tsukishima and Tsukudajima walk

I went for a stroll around Tsukishima and Tsukudajima.  On the face of it, these areas look quite modern with many condos, but there is still something nostalgic in the air. 

■Monja street

When it comes to Tsukishima, it’s nothing but monja-yaki.  I bet that 80% of restaurants in Tsukishima are monja restaurants.  It always smells yummy on so-called monja street.

I found a very interesting object in the back street of Tsukishima.  Here is a question.  Why did they put a floating bridge that combines two houses?  I guess that a young man and a young woman who were next door neighbor each other must have gotten married. How convenient it is!   What is your take on this?

■where a lighthouse was located

Tsukudajima used be a small fisherman's village. 

This lighthouse is a replica of the old one.

■Tsukuda Kobashi bridge and a canel

The huge chimney that you can see over the Tsukuda kobashi bridge is for sentou, a bathhouse.  The residents of the condo must be very happy to have a bathhouse on their premises.  

There is a basin under the bridge.  Interesting contrast with high buildings. 

■tsukudani shop

No Tsukudajima trip is complete without dropping by a tsukudani shop.  Tenyasu, which has 170 years of history, still remains Edo atmosphere.  I bought some tarako (cod roe) and katsuo-no-kakuni (tuna).  Best partners for cooked white rice. 

■ Sumiyoshi shrine

The first Torii of Sumiyoshi shrine is located just beside the riverbank.   It means that people in Edo visited here by bout.  It’s just like the God of safety marine transportation! 

■The Sumida River

My second favorite bridge, Kachidoki bridge, is seen over Tsukuda Oohashi bridge.

■at the bottom of Chuo Oohashi bridge

A bicycle that lost its owner is now having a new beautiful partner.  What a nice second life!

■Amazake yokocho

We left the Sumida River at around Sumida ohashi bridge and headed for Ningyocho to get a train back home.

It was a nice break to have a cup of amazake, at Amazake Yokocho in Ningyocho.  It’s a sweet drink made from fermented rice and it’s also good for your refreshment after walking long time.

■sukiyaki Imahan

“Isn’t it a good idea to have sukiyaki dinner at Imahan in Ningyo-cho?”

“Sounds soooooo good.” 

In the end, we bought just-fried-sukiyaki-croquettes at the deli corner of Imahan and ate at the shop at once.  Umm, yummy!

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Looking up the night sky

In the night of April 22, the Lyrids meteor shower peaked.  I was ready to look up the night sky, but unfortunately, it was cloudy and I couldn’t see any bright showers. 

I’m not an astronomy maniac, though.  I like just watching the night sky every so often.  I don’t know exactly when it was, but I never forget the moment when I saw the Milky Way very clearly.  It really blew my mind.  There were, literary, astronomical a number of stars there and I felt as if they were twinkling and making some happy sounds. 

There was another opportunity that made me look up the sky.  One day, Tsuruhiko Kiuchi, an amateur astronomer who found two new comets, showed us Comet Swift-Tuttle, which he rediscovered, coming closer to the earth.  I saw a comet, which had a long white tail, with his big telescope for the first time in my life.

I was lying on the grass in the meadows when the Perseids meteor shower peaked some years ago.  It was just like a 3D spectacular.  Shooting stars were moving toward me one after another and one of them had a long red tail that lingered in the sky pretty long.

The night sky is enjoyable even if there aren’t any astronomical shows.  Just looking for star signs and galaxies are fun enough for me.  One summer night, we found a small luminous body moving across the sky slowly when we were relaxing on deck chairs after a BBQ party.  Someone said,  “Is that an airplane?”  “No, planes should have red and green lights.”  “Then, UFO?”  “It will be fun if it’s a real UFO, but UFOs are supposed to fly randomly.”  Our conclusion was that It was an artificial satellite or the International Space Station. 

The reason why I like looking up the night sky is that we all came from the space originally.  And I believe so.

Photo: wired.jp / courtesy Luis Argerich

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March comes in like a lion, ３月のライオン

“Thermae Romae,” “Himizu,” “Moteki,” “Space Brothers,” “Helter Skelter,” “Jin,” “Brave Hearts, Umizaru.”  Do you know what these have in common, they are all recent big hits?  The answer is that they are all based on comic books.  These are just some examples and you can easily find a lot more movies like them. 

Comic books are real treasures for the movie and TV drama industry.  However, I have hardly read any comics for all but two decades and I’m not well up in them.  Then, I have just started reading some major comic books at hand to see what their contents are actually like.  As a matter of course, soon I realized that some of them are annoying with amount of onomatopoeia and I thought they are just waste of time, but some of them are actually not bad. 

“March comes in like a lion, ３月のライオン” written by Chika Umino is great!    It’s a shogi-themed manga, but I think it should attract both men and women in all generations.  Story goes like this.  Rei Kiriyama, a 17-year-old boy, is leading a lonely life.  He lost his family in an accident when he was a kid.  He became a professional shogi player for living, still holding a big pain deep in his heart.  One day, he met Kawamoto three sisters and finds what he lost little by little.

I got goose-bumps in shogi match scenes.  In shogi, games end when a looser declares “I’m lost.”  That’s a rcruel rule.  Umino depicts how players stick to winning the games with the characters’ background stories.  Players sometimes have to resort to tricky tactics.  They have no choice but to do it to win the game because winning means getting a place for their own.  By the way, Manabu Senzaki 8 dan supervises the descriptive notations in the story and most of them are from the records of historically famous matches.  That makes the story very realistic. 

I was always wondering why manga geeks liked quoting a lot of famous phrases from comic books?  I thought that geeks should be more creative and start making their own phrases, instead of borrowing other people’s phrases.  However, now I feel a bit different because I found some good phrases in this comic and wrote them down in my notebook.  Power of manga could be very strong.

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