A hundred sacks of rice

Where is the spirit of "Kome hyappyou (a hundred sacks of rice)" ?
In 1870, Nagaoka region of Japan was wracked by famine and was supported 100 sacks (i.e. 6000 kg) of rice in assistance. But the grand councilor Tora-saburo Kobayashi used it to build a school and consequently produced many outstanding people. The former Prime Minister Koizumi loved this episode and quoted it frequently.
Now, Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) and Ministry of Finance (MOF) are in conflict with each other over the total expenditure on education. MEXT demands 5% of GDP for it but MOF refuses the request definitely. Did they forget the episode completely ?

Ken played a matching card game (namely, concentration) on the website of "Thomas the Tank Engine".
http://www.thomasandfriends.com
To my surprise, he solved it instantly with a great deal of concentration. Perhaps he has a potential to be a researcher, but I never recommend him to go into academia. I am afraid that the environment for education will get worse more and more in Japan.

Bookends

Word 2008 for Mac does not work with Endnote, a bibliography software, due to lack of VBA. I need it to write scientific reports, so I tested a reference manager software Bookends. It is fully compatible with Word 2008 on Mac OS X 10.5 and I purchased it online (99 USD) right away. It is very useful software as well as Endnote.
In this month, I bought Adobe creative suite 3 (design standard edition) too. I am setting up my research environment on mac. I hope I can continue my research in the future.

Office 2008 for Mac

I purchased Office 2008 for Mac and installed it into my Macbook. I found that this version of Office does not support macro on visual basic for applications (VBA). I installed the service pack 1 for it but I could not run it yet. The Office development team announced that VBA will return to Office Mac in the next version. But why do not they do it in this version ? And why did they remove such a needed tool ? The Office 2008 for Mac features the compatibility with Office 2007 for Windows. So it is ridiculous that we cannot run VBA macro on Mac. Since I failed run Office Mac 2001 on SheepShaver, I have no other choice to run it on Windows. In addition, I could not add custom error bars to a chart in Excel 2008, although this problem was resolved with service pack 1.
I know that office 2007 for windows and Windows vista are inferior products too. I wonder if Microsoft will get along in business as well as ever.

Swimming, shopping, and ping-pong

On Saturday, May 11, I went swimming together with Mari and Ken. The domed gym has some indoor swimming pools: a 25 m pool, flowing pool, and a children's pool. We enjoyed swimming in there.
The next day we went shopping to Ikebukuro city in Tokyo. Mari bought a suit for the wedding of my brother. I bought a suite, Adobe Creative Suite, for my computer. It cost about 79k Japanese Yen (800 USD).
Last week, Mari decided to enter a sports event of her University. She played ping-pong with me on Tuesday and Wednesday. She ran a favor on Thursday and did not participate in the event on Saturday.

Bat and ghost

One month has passed after our moving. I and Ken go together to my research institute everyday and I put Ken at a daycare in there. Near the daycare, there is a pond with willow trees and some flying bats in the dust. Ken saw the bats and asked me to capture the image with my cell phone. But I could not get any obvious image of such a flying animal. See the photo, that is not a phantom.

In Japan, one might see a ghost under a willow. People fear bats as ghosts, but Japanese bats are benefical because they eat harmful insects.

My brother and his wife

My older brother got married on Feb 3 of this year and will hold his wedding ceremony on May 31. He brought his wife to our parents' house last weekend and there Mari and I met her at the first time. I hoped to talk with them over drinking, but Mari insisted to go back our home on the day. So I do not know well about who she is, but she was good-looking. She and the girlfriend of my little brother are of an age with Mari. In addition, Mari gained weight so much after our marriage. I guess Mari do not like to be compared with her.

Golden week

From May 3 to 6, it was four-day weekend called the Golden week. Both Mari's parents and my parents are living in Tochigi Prefecture, and so we visited them at once in this weekend. My father was angry with me because I had sent a mail that I was doing a job of window cleaning but not research. And Mari blamed me for that I showed a bad attitude toward her grandparents.

We went to a farm for strawberry picking on May 5. There we were allowed to eat strawberries as much as we want; however, the time was limited within 30 min and we were not allowed to take it out of the farm. Ken ate few strawberries although we paid his full fee, and he liked to force me to eat green strawberries. We bought a lot of strawberries at a stand near the farm, not in the farm. I made strawberry jam again together with Ken.