My opinion of this week(297):

Workshop at Ranzan

About 25 members of TadML and Murayama PC Club members got 
together　at National Women's Education Center in Ranzan, Saitama
Prefecture.　The workshop itself was a big success as far as contents of 
presentation by four lecturers and level of participation by　attendants. 

Topics may be too plenty in a way but the primary purpose of the
meeting has mostly been attained according to my belief. The 
traffic access to the site was not necessarily so convenient but
not so bad. Accommodation facility and various facilities at 
PC learning room are very good in many respects. We wish the same
kind of facilities were available in our city or some places nearby.
   
I asked several members of ML to be lecturers at workshop. All of
them have done excellent jobs as I personally expected. 
Participation by attendants were also very satisfactory listening
presentation, making questions, trying several works with PCs and
so forth.

This was the first trial as such by PC club and ML but many 
participants expressed their hope that same kind of meeting will
be held in future. I wish we could expand such kind of workshop
participated not only by our clubs and ML but also by some other
PC clubs and MLs all over Japan.

2002/12/7

My opinion of this week(298):

Development of new infrastructure

As I wrote in opinion of this week last week, we held PC workshop at
National Women's Education Center in Ranzan, Saitama Prefecture attended
by some members of our PC club of our city and some members of our Mailing
List. It takes about an hour to drive to the place. The reason why we
held the workshop at such remote place is clear. There exists a splendid
PC and mulch media facilities and equipments there.

The information of PC for a instructor is shown at two big screens in front
of the study room. There are about 30 units of PC installed at each 
desks of students which are all connected to internet. Compared with such 
excellent one, there are even no pre-installed PCs at all in our city 
facilities.

In our city, there are only about 30 old note PCs which can be used for
some activities but internet can never be used by any means. They don't
even have a projector for PC which is very necessary for such PC class.
It is impossible for an individual to buy such expensive equipment for 
volunteer instructors.

Our PC club started in June this year and more than 30 members joined 
the club at once. We were so sorry that we could not increase members
any more for there are no PCs and any other facilities and equipments
to maintain club activities which can be borrowed from the city except
brand new class rooms. 

We recognized the fact that there are so many people who want to learn
PC and internet in these days. A very good class room is there, but there
are no any other facilities and equipments to do club activities. The only
way is to ask people who have note PCs to take along with them when the
club is held.

The result of the workshop at Ranzan was a big success. But we were all
disappointed again with poor infrastructure of our city.
 
Government advocate the importance of IT education and training these days.
PC education are now being made at schools that have some kind of good
facilities recently. But facilities for aged people at any cities seem to
be very poor in any respect. Our city hold some PC training courses from
time to time but they are quite limited in terms of quality and quantity.
There virtually exists no infrastructure at all to do IT education for
general citizens.

The city authority will say that they don't have any money and budget 
to have such facilities of the National site mentioned above. But I wonder
if that is true. The facilities and equipment at Ranzan is excellent but
the cost to install such facilities is not quite high when  compared with
that of building and their related facilities. Both central Government and
local government have spent a huge amount of money mainly on so called
Hakomono (buildings and other public facilities) in the past. When we
observe rate of utilization of such facilities, we see a lot of
waste compared with real needs of citizens.

Reexamination of public investment is now starting in many ways at
country level and local level. Now is time that a lot more public
money are to be spent more for improvement of infrastructure to develop
IT and many other new area these days.

2002/12/14
Tadashi　HAYASE

My opinion of this week(299):

Where to return 

"Kanji (Chinese character) of the year" is announced every year by Japan
Kanji Association at the end of year after making  questionnaires to people.
The Kanji of this year was "ki" or "kaeru" that means "return". 

One of the biggest topics of this year was the abduction made by North 
Korea. The  was exposed to the light of day after long years. Five abductees
returned to home from North Korea. That's the most impressive news for
all people of this country this year. In addition of this character, several
other characters such as "rachi (abduction)" , "kita (north)" and so forth
were candidates for the character of this year.

Japanese economy continues to be very stagnant and stock price came back to
lower level of that of pre bubble days. That's bad but cannot help avoiding.
Those years we worked for business firms were good and lucky in every sense.
The economy enjoyed high rate of growth. Salary and wages for all business
people also increased with high rate. There were no such uncomfortable word
as restructuring among all employees of business firms. Today, employees of
any business firms  face a lot of difficulty to survive.

Such a big change of environment means something for all retired men as
myself. All retired men must now think by themselves how they should live
in this changing world. 

One of key word to know this is "kaeru (return)" as I believe it. Every
people now consider to come back to:

 ・Origin where we start
 ・Basics for all of our conducts
 ・Origin of our motives
 ・Pure mind of children
 ・World of nature
 ・Homeland where we born

I tried to add the character of "tuchi (soil)" at last, but I did not do so. 
I convince myself that  it is a little bit early to write it down now.

2002/12/21
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(300):

Use of a foreign word

National Research Institute of Japanese Language appealed to use more 
full-blooded Japanese avoiding to use a number of foreign words expressed
in phonetic spelling by katakana Japanese characters. They introduced 
a number of such examples of Japanese translation by using chinese characters
and Hiragana Japanese characters.

I saw some of them are quite reasonable in translation but did not agree with
some other translation from my point of view. Many mass media generally
expressed their consent for what the Research Institute tried to say but
I had some doubt about their basic approach to the issue.

Many of such foreign words written in Katakana Japanese characters mainly
come from Western cultures and hard to translate them into Japanese because
there exists basic difference in cultural values and norms between each 
countries. That is not the issue of difference in languages but difference
in cultures which is hard to overcome just by translation of terminologies. 

I do not argue with the necessity of translating any foreign words into 
proper Japanese languages. But it is also true that any good looking
translation involves some limitation by themselves in many ways. 

According to my idea, one reasonable approach is to include two in a sentence
i.e. katakana expression of foreign word and Japanese translation whenever 
necessary , although it is a little redundant in a way.

2002/12/28
Tadashi HAYASE