5 September 2003 (8 Elul 5763)
My father, accompanied by my sister, is coming to Kobe today to drop in at my apartment on his way from some important trip in Shimane back to Akita. Although I met him last time only a week ago in Akita, I am quite excited now because this will be the first time for him to visit not only this specific apartment in Kobe but also any apartment of mine. Since I left my parents' house in Akita at the age of 18, I have lived in several places in Japan and Israel.
My mother visited me twice when I lived elsewhere in Japan and her mother (my grandmother) was still alive and healthy. My sister came here with her husband when they got married several years ago. But somehow my father has never had a chance to visit me.
Although he and my mother have definitely influenced me more than anyone else, especially in my childhood, I have spent more than half of my life away from them. When I visit someone's place, I like to see his or her private library because it can tell me quite eloquently about his or her intellectual world. I am curious what his reaction will be when he see my library, which reflects what I could study thanks to his and my mother's financial and moral support.
12 September 2003 (15 Elul 5763)
Last Friday afternoon my father and sister dropped in on me in Kobe on their way home in Akita and Tokyo respectively. Although they could not stay here for so many days, the quantity of time was well compensated by the quality of time. The time we spent together in Kobe will remain as an unforgettable memory in my life, and has strengthened our bond.
He reminded me that actually he did visit me once, though only for a few hours, in the first week of my living alone more than 22 years ago, but as far as I am concerned, this is his first visit to my apartment for all intents and purposes. We did not have any special plan to do here; the very fact of spending time together was important and meaningful. Nevertheless two of the things we did together, though they are nothing special, have greatly impressed me.
Even in my childhood it was rather rare for us to eat outside together for various reasons. Before my father and sister came here, he told me that he would prefer eating in my apartment to eating outside, especially because he stopped drinking at the age of 40. Somehow, however, I managed to convince him to go together to a Japanese pub ("izakaya") though he did not drink, of course. As far as I can remember, this is the first time for us to eat outside in the past 20+ years. I now realize that the simple act of eating together, especially in settings different from the usual one, can make people closer to each other.
Although I have been aware of the positive effects music can have upon learners of foreign languages, I was not fully aware that it might be able to tighten the emotional bond between family members. Since three of us like to sing, my father and sister did not object to the idea of going to karaoke. I often heard that he sings very well, but never had a chance to hear him sing. Frankly speaking, I never imagined that he is such a good singer, almost on a professional level. I was especially impressed that he sang with so strong emotions because he is generally too shy to express his emotions when he does not sing. I was also happy (and surprised) to see that I could move him to tears when I sang songs whose lyrics might have touched his soul.
19 September 2003 (22 Elul 5763)
Although I myself said farewell to Microsoft Word (and its proprietary binary formats) some time ago, I am still haunted by its ghost hovering around me. For a number of professional reasons I constantly receive documents attached to email messages. To my great dismay, 99 out of 100 people send them to me in Word format, or to be more precise, in one of Word formats. Every time I receive such attachments, I feel as if my blood pressure rose as this symbolizes for me lack of consideration which is mostly coupled with insufficient computer literacy.
I am trying to be tolerant to them, not out of snobbism, but simply because I was a cyber-illiterate myself, and must have bothered cyber-literates until some time ago. I do not have many criticisms against Word per se as a word processing program, except that it is bloated, hence is very slow in handling huge documents. Rather, my reservations are about its formats. Because a document format is hidden from the eyes of users especially when they use a WYSIWYG word processor like Word, they generally do not pay attention to it. As for me, it was only after I was exposed to the ideas of XML and structured documentation that I came to clearly realize the problems of Word formats. Since then, I am trying to explain these problems to my friends, colleagues and students, but unfortunately, few of them have changed their blind faith in Word (by extension, in its formats).
So what is wrong with Word formats? Doesn't everyone have Word and save their documents in one of Word formats? The truth is that the fact that everyone is using Word does not make its formats suitable as a document exchange and storage format unconditionally. Besides, this assumption itself is not always correct; there are enough people who do not (or refuse to) use Word and its formats for legitimate reasons. As you examine the nature of Word formats, you will realize how problematic they are.
Word formats are unsuitable - I should even go so far as to say that they are the worst formats you can imagine - for exchanging and storing your precious documents, first and foremost because they are devise-dependent (i.e., dependent on a commercial program manufactured by one company), and their specifications are closed and proprietary. Furthermore, different Word formats are not always mutually compatible; you cannot even open documents in newer versions of formats (i.e., made with newer versions of Word) with older versions of Word. This means that as long as you use Word formats, you are locked in one specific program which you have to upgrade every two or three years, paying a lot of money.
It would, of course, be irresponsible to criticize something without showing alternatives. Here is what I do since I said farewell to Word. The surest format for storing and exchanging your documents, but only when the layout information is unimportant or irrelevant, and what matters is the textual data, is plain text format, preferably encoded in UTF-8. You can use any (Unicode-compliant) text editor for this purpose; my favorite is EmEditor. When it is necessary to specify the semantic structure of documents, I store them internally in XML (especially in the form of OpenOffice.org XML file format, whose specifications are publicly available) and exchange them with others in XHTML or PDF, which are also publicly specified formats.
I would like to take this occasion to publicly thank Andreas Bovens, a talented ex-student of mine in Japanese, for the insights he has been sharing with me about these issues.
26 September 2003 (29 Elul 5763)
I spent seven and a half years as a student and have spent ten years as a teacher in Japanese universities, so nothing about Japanese students should surprise me as I am supposed to be familiar with their ways of thinking and behavior. Every time I come back to school after a long vacation, however, I often feel as if I were exiled to a place whose language and customs I do not understand. This week the fall semester started in one of the universities where I teach. Quite a few students still succeed in "impressing" me anew after the interval of two months with what they think and do, or to be more precise, with what they neither think nor do. This may be observed in other countries, but I only know about Japanese (and to a lesser degree Israeli) universities.
If I am to choose one phrase to characterize average Japanese university students, it is social immaturity. And unfortunately, it seems to me that this tendency is worsening. Of course, I do not intend to say that I was exceptionally mature socially when I was an undergraduate student. On the contrary, I was socially rather immature then, and in retrospect, it seems to be the main reason why the first girlfriend I had in my life got disappointed with me and left me after only a few months. Legally, those who have reached the age of 20 are considered adults, but for all intents and purposes, most of the people have to spend five to ten more years to think and behave adults.
How does this social immaturity manifest itself among many of my students? The most conspicuous symptom is that they pamper themselves, inventing all kinds of excuses for not fulfilling their obligations. Ideally, I would like to be strict with myself and lenient with others. But I cannot always tolerate these students as I fear that they will end up wasting their life unless they stop pampering themselves. By being strict with them I am hoping that they will realize this danger. The sooner they realize it, the less time they will waste. Of course, no one can force them to do so, but we often need pressures from others to realize our shortcomings and mend them by themselves. And this is probably what education is all about.