Tag: BookReview

I have rarely seen the books written by Japanese in the book store in the U.S. I was proud when I found this book on the shelf in the book store because I would like American to know there is quite a few great business man in Japan. They don’t talk or write themselves too much, especially in English. However, as for service business, they have best knowledge and ideas in the world, I believe.

The author Hiroshi Mikitani is the founder and chief executive of Rakuten, the third largest e-commerce market place company in the world. You know, the largest e-commerce market place is Amazon. The difference between Amazon and Rakuten is, Amazon concentrates on direct selling to costumer but Rakuten seeks for co-prosperity of merchant and costumer. So Amazon is interested in sales but Rakuten is interested in distribution.

This is famous story in Japan. He decided to ‘Englishnize (from the book)’ his company. He designated English as the official languages in his company. Almost all Japanese top company said he was ridiculous but he had done. After that, the diversity of human resource in Rakuten has vitalized, which is good for future of this company. And his company quit Keidanren which is strongest economic lobby in Japan. The member of Keidanren consists of top Japanese companies, like Toyota, Canon. They themselves think they need to change themselves, but only his company quit it to claim.

On this book, he also describes his policy about management. He has strong faith in ‘Kaizen’, but not as a manufacture, as a service business. He also emphases the speed. The speed of changing, action. I strong agree with him. One of virtue of Japanese is perfectionism but he asks his employ “Don’t think, then act, think to act”.

He is business man so that he is not my role model but I respect him on my own way. I admit he is one of the greatest Japanese.

This is classic Science Fiction written by Arthur C. Clarke. This story was made into the movie by Stanley Kubrick. This story was rare case, book and movie came out almost same time, actually movie appeared before the book.

This book was published July 1968. Apollo 11 landed on the moon in 1969. Imagine if we could landed on the moon in 1969, what would happen at 2001? People who live at that time think that 2001 should be more advance world than we are. We couldn’t go to Saturn or Jupiter in 2001, even in 2012. However, the story was well prepared and tried to be realistic and plausible based on scientific fact.

Sometime in the future, there was the basement on the moon. The geologists found the strong magnetic anomaly on the on the moon. They dogged that place, then they found TMA-1 which was made just when human being was born which had been 3 million years ago. TMA-1 was a like signal to notify that the human being reached the moon. The destination of signal was Jupiter. So human being knew they are not alone. But, the others would be us or them?

To survey the others, human being launch the space ship to get to Jupiter.

Human being sent 5 people. 3 were sleeping during journey. 2 were operating for space ship. During the journey, unexpected things happened.  The supercomputer HAL killed the 4 people.(HAL was derived from IBM by displacing one letter.) Why? You should read book to know in detail, but in short, HAL was smart enough to confuse between his enthusiasm for mission and actually being taught (programmed). Unfortunately, HAL decided to kill the people on board to reach his goal. Only one man Bowman survived. Interestingly, this book was carefully described the future. But, there was no concept about internet or networking. HAL was super smart but was alone not connected, which is unlike our world.

But finally, Bowman could get to Jupiter  What did he face? Did he become first man to meet the others? What were they like? What would happen to him?

I like this phrase form preface of this book.

But please remember: this is only a work of fiction. The truth, as always, will be far stranger.

Clarke, Arthur C. (2012-12-10). 2001: A Space Odyssey (Arthur C. Clarke Collection: The Odyssey) . RosettaBooks. Kindle Edition.

Norwegian woods by Haruki Murakami

I love this book. This is almost part of my life. I have never counted, but I believe I have read this more than 20 times in English.

The story starts when the main character Toru was on board in Germany airport.  He listened the orchestra version of ‘Norwegian Woods’ by Beatles unexpectedly, which reminded him his story about lover and best friend who killed themselves. He started writing his story.

 Toru had the best friend Kizuki in high school. Kizuki had the childhood sweetheart Naoko. Since Naoko and Kizuki are childhood sweethearts, they are close, so close, and too close. They grew together as if they complement each other. Toru was very important for them because he was only important point of contact with outside society.

 Kizuki did suicide without suicide note when they are high school students. Since then, Naoko has no idea how she interacts with outside society without him.

 Naoko and Toru enter different University, they lived in Tokyo without knowing each other. They met unexpectedly, and they started dating naturally. They became close slowly. One day, on her 20^th birthday, Toru celebrated her birthday. Naoko was so talkative, kept talking and talking, so that he finally missed his last train to the dorm. On that day, they slept each other.    

  On that night, Naoko ejaculated so much, she desired for sexual sensation for him. But, the problem is this didn’t happened when Naoko was trying to sleep with Kizuki. Naoko and Kizuki loved each other but they could not sleep each other because she never ejaculated. Naoko did not love Toru at that time, but she sought sexual sensation for him. She was upset after having sex. She started confusing. After that night, she moved without notice to Toru.  

 She went to sanatorium for mental health, trying to rehabilitate. Toru visited several times to see her and talk. She could not recover. After Toru find girlfriend Midori, Naoko killed herself. She could not find the reason why she lives.

This is kind of sad story. What I learned from this book is if I love someone so much and devote all of me, sometime may remain unrequited. That is O.K. I will face with.

The other character is also important, fanny, and interesting.

Reiko is roommate of Naoko. She has cute wrinkle. Naoko talk everything to her. They are so close. She was excellent pianist when she was young but her finger became stop playing because of her mental problem. Her dream to be pianist was gone. He became a piano teacher and married her student. One day, her student who is junior high school student girl sought for sexual relationship to Reiko. Raiko rejected. But the girl was liar and lesbian by nature. After that neighbor’s rumor had spread Reiko was lesbian and force student to have sexual relationship. This made her crazy again.

Nagasawa is senior person at Dorm that Toru lived. He is student of University of Tokyo. He has legend. It was said that he had had sex more than 100 women. He swallowed 3 slugs. These legends were almost true. Toru and Nagasawa sometimes went to girl hunting to have sex. That was easy for them because Nagasawa is very rich, handsome, smart and great talker. And He has great girlfriend Hatumi. But he doesn’t care for her, sometimes cruel.

As for his personality, his self-discipline was stricter than any other person. I like his words the way I do.  

1. “Don’t sorry for yourself, only assholes do that.”

2. ”Tell me Nagasawa” Toru: asked, “What is the standard of action in your life”』
Nagasawa : ”To be gentlemen” 
Toru : “To be gentlemen? A gentlemen?” 
Nagasawa: “You heard me” 
Toru : “What does it mean to be a gentlemen? How do you define it?” 
Nagasawa: “A gentlemen is someone who does not what wants to do but what he should do”

Hatumi is Nagasawa’s girlfriend, she is great girl. He believes Nagasawa becomes normal. She also killed herself.

Midori is Toru’s female friend and became his girlfriends. She is crazy girl.  

Storm trooper is Toru’s roommate at dorm. He is serious person by nature. His dream is to make map at national institutions. Because of his seriousness, everyone in dorm tease him. His story is fanny, always amuse everyone.      

 This book describes the social behavior of human being on social networking service. The writer is Paul Adams who is working for Google service and Facebook. As far as I know, he has the best knowledge in this field. Throughout reading this book, I strongly realized that it is difficult for Japanese to think in this way.  

 The web is entering its third phase of development. The first phase was documents linked together. When we found the website, we couldn’t interact with other people. With the second phase we started seeing opportunity for interaction with others. Some website had reviews, and ways to leave. Now we are entering the third phase, where websites are being rebuilt around people. Social behavior is key feature.

 The first thing you have to remember is the number of people we are interacting in our life. There are clear boundaries based on the connection we have. These are 5 15 50 150 500. We interact with 5 people with the strongest ties. Next beyond this is 15, this group is known to social psychologist as the sympathy group. It’s all the people whose death would leave you distraught. Beyond this is 50 people. These are the people who you communicate with on at least semi-regular basis. Beyond this is 150 people these are the people whom you can maintain stable social relations. You know each other, and you know which of them know each other. The next group is about 500. These are our weak ties friend of friend, people we meet occasionally, or people who met recently. These are people you know but don’t feel close to.

 The next thing we have to think is how these group influence us I want to focus on 15 people, we connected with strong tie, such as family, closest friend. They are the people we trust the most. Strong tie is very important for maintain our well-being. I also want to focus on 150 people, but they sometime may become strong information source.

 This book also describes the summary of recent development of neuroscience. I believe that we are going to understand how our subconscious works recently. We are not rational.  Understanding social behavior in this new age is very important, whatever you do for living, whoever you are. This book is map for starting your experiments to understand new human relation in our world which cannot exist anymore without internet.

To tell the truth, the title of book didn’t make any impression on me at first. But this book was unexpectedly good.

Recently, I have some difficulty to read books. I don’t know why. I used to read a lot of books in Japanese. I was obsessed reading, reading 40 -50 books per month at most!! So, I thought I would like to do that also in English. Because I think that reading is most basic skill in life. Of course, talking face to face with people around you is much more important though. Anyway, I haven’t succeeded yet in English. My reading speed has become slow after came here in the U.S. Why?

Firstly, I thought this is because I am reading in English which is my second language, but that is not important. Only I should have to is keeping eye on my momentum and enthusiasm for reading. These are tips (Be careful, this is not only from this book),

1. Read what you like, what you are really into.
2. Do not be afraid to stop reading when you realized you don’t like the book.
3. Track your reading. Count the number of book you read per month.
4. Read what you are reading now. Resist temptation to read the next before finishing reading.
5. Read favorite author, category, or genre at same time.
6. Do not read too difficult or too easy. You have to know yourself.
7. Place books and keep the book in hand everywhere you go.
8. Always keep the next book in hand when you are out.
9. Use audiobooks when you are walking, driving, doing something.

Reading what you don’t like, reading what you are forced to read, reading too easy or too difficult books, these can easily kill your momentum and enthusiasm. I recommend you 3, if you track your reading, like ‘January was 20, February 15, March 12’, you can know your reading pace. I recommend also 8, when you finish reading, your enthusiasm for reading the next culminate. But this enthusiasm would have gone soon. Let’s start reading the next as soon as possible.

And keep this phrase in your mind,

No matter how busy you may think you are, you must find time for reading, or surrender yourself to self-chosen ignorance. – By Confucius

We are living busy life. We have many excuses for keeping us away from reading. Try to make time to read the book we love every day.

I like this phrase.

Watch your thoughts, for they become words. Watch your words, for they become actions. Watch your actions, for they become habits. Watch your habits, for they become character. Watch your character, for it becomes your destiny. –Unknown

In this phrase, the most important word that you have to watch in your 20’s is Habit. I believe that 20’s is good and last timing that we can build strong habit because throughout 30’s using our habit we have to actually challenge our most important task in our life.  So in your 20’, you have to find how to avoid your bad habit and how to build your good habit. This book will definitely help you.

Each an action in the habit, we can divide into 3 steps, these are cue, routine, reward. If possible, best way to change habit is not changing cue and reward. Changing only our routine is best way. For example, we may have a drinking habit but we want to quit drinking. We enter our favorite restaurants with your friends, and the waiter would ask your order (cue). We replace order beer (old routine) to coke (new routine). If we feel good when you drink coke (reward), we can change our drinking habit. I don’t think that these replacements are always available though we have to think about something else. 

This book provides some examples of how habit works. Habit is so strong, sometimes dangerous, and sometimes social. But habit has possibility to change our life, body, work and even society. I believe you will see yourself on characters on book. They definitely changed their habits with some reason. You will see.

This book gives us hints how we can observe our habit and change habits, whichever good or bat. If you get your good habit in your early 20’s it just gets better and better as the years roll on. I believe. Only we need to do is do again and again. But now I (and you will) understand how habit works and how to change in the long run. I believe the habits I got keep changing my life every day. Why don’t you check this book out and start acquiring good habits instead of bad habits?

The reason why I chose this book is clear. Recently I saw the video which Yoshimoto edited. In this video, Japanese famous veteran comedian Shin-suke Shimada explained how to become professional comedian. He clearly said “Talent is crucial, but no one can change his talent. “. This video inspired me. I was interested in talent the people have.

So the question is” What is talent? What made successful people different from the rest of us? Where does the greatness come from?”

The answer I got is also clear. The answer is “Deep practice × 10000 hours = world class skill”. What I mean is talent is the capability to be absorbed in practice deeply for 10000 hours. I agree with this equation. This equation reminds me the word I met when I was 21 years old. Japanese economist suggested that people need 10000 hours to be professional. Because I believed him, I executed what he said. Finally, I could become professional physicist. Unfortunately, he did not mention Deep practice.

Now I believe Deep practice is also essential. Next question is “how can we practice deeply?” There are three rules to practice deeply.

Rule 1. Chunk it up: Start practice from a small amount with slowly. Do not practice too difficult things, every time we should focus on is practicing little bit harder things we can do and review what we can do already.

Rule 2. Repeat it: We have to do the same practice again and again. Build the habit to practice.

Rule 3. Learn to feel it: We have to have the strategy or sense to your practice or goal. For example, if we want to be musician, first thing we have to do is getting a clear sense of tune. I mean, we had better quality ear to listen music to recognize your mistakes when we play music instruments.

I agree these rules from my experience of learning music, physics, English, marathon and so on. Now, if we understand these rules, think again your plan. Let’s do it!!