My opinion of this week(389):

Participation of Delivery Service by Japan Post Office Agency

At the bottom of this column, I put advocacy advertising made recently by
Kuroneko Yamato Corporation. In this opinion ad, Kuroneko asserted the 
unfairness about participation of Japan Post Office Agency to delivery 
service using convenience stores chain. Koroneko insisted that Japan
Post Office Agency should stop contracting Lawson, one of such big 
convenience chains. 

I believe that Koromiko's protest is very reasonable. Such delivery system
is a kind of business model developed by Kuroneko after making a lot of
difficult and creative efforts in delivery service market. Several other
private firms participated in the same kind of business. Consumers have
enjoyed a number of convience by such delivery service which public post
service could not provide in the past. 

It is fine for Post Office Agency to participate in such service after they
are completely privatized,　Kuroneko said. But it is not fair and even 
unlawful that Post Office Agency to participate in such business while 
enjoying a monopolistic position in various postal services. For example,
any private post service is not opened yet for private delivery service 
firms including Kuroneko.

Kuroneko said that they are paying  almost 50% of tax for profit they get
from their business. On the other hand, Post Office Agency are managed by
public fund, namely tax paid by people and corporation. They still 
monopolize many of postal and delivery business fields as a matter of 
fact. It is possible that they would monopolize again such delivery 
service developed by Kuronoko so far by using such monopolistic position.

Is this what Prime Minister Koizumi is trying to do by his privatization
policy of Japan Post Office Agency? I never think so.

2004/10/2
Tadashi HAYASE

Opinion Ad of　Kuroneko Yamato Corporation

My opinion of this week(390):

My happy PC life

I was surprised a little bit to find the fact. Eleven years has passed since
I wrote my first book titled "How to enjoy PC Life after 50 years of age". 
I was still a business people 11 years ago, but I was just devoted much of
my life to working on PC and PC communication. I strongly wished to write
a book about how exciting they are to tell my experience to many other 
people. I did it by publishing the book in October, 1993. 

PCs in those days were not like those of today. Operating System was MS-DOS.
Most of people who use PC today will never understand the description about
PC written in this book. It is entirely out of date for sure.

At the end of the book, I wrote about the dream of "Multi Media PC". PC
world in those days was waiting for such high speed, high performance PC
equipped with TV, audio device, telephone, and other communication devices.
Such PC was named "Multi Media PC".  

Well, the PC just in front of me on the desk is exactly the one called
that way. Operating system of today's  PC is never like MD-DOS. High 
speed, high capacity in any respects equipped with TV, audio device, CD
and DVD devices. Playing and recording CD and DVD are mostly standard 
specification for any recent PCs. Specifications and performance of those
PC is far beyond the performance imagined in "Multi Media PC". The greatest
difference is of course, the existence of internet today. Any single word 
of it is never found any where in that book.

That is wonderful happening as a matter of fact. But what I am doing by 
those devices today is not quite different from what I was doing 11
years ago. It is true that I can do any sort of jobs much faster and much
more efficiently than those days in the past thanks to the new devices. 
But why I can do them faster is mainly because I was doing the same kind of
works  by using old devices in those days. The experience itself is more
important base for why I can do many works much faster.

What is then the content of works I am doing everyday by using PC and 
internet? Well, I would like to describe it concretely rather than 
abstractly. It is to enjoy exchanging a number of information, views, 
opinions, works and others on worldwide news, daily happenings,pictures,
drawings, music, travels, so and so forth. We can constantly exchange
many of such works and information by on line network  and at community
circles such as PC club and English Speaking club. I wrote how people can do
it concretely in my second book titled "How to enjoy intelligent PC life"
published in October, 2001. 

The book was written based on many of experience which our net friends 
shared in everyday's  activities in the net. 

Nothing is more enjoyable and pleasant than what I am communicating with
many friends in the net. I believe many of our comrades in the net feel 
same way.

I wish I could expand this enjoyable network many more ways from now on.

2004/10/9
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(391):

Duty forced shop

Six of our PC club members went to Singapore to enjoy sightseeing for
four days. I visited Singapore two times before when I was a business
people to attend international meeting of the firm I worked for. It is 
first time to visit there for sightseeing. We made sightseeing one day
at Singapore and one day at Malaysia. So it was really very busy trip.

But we enjoyed it very much and learned many phases of social life and
cultures different from those in Japan. I will have another opportunity
to write about them. I would like to write about DFS we encountered 
during our trip at this time.

Singapore is a small country, as large as island of Awajishima in Japan.
There are not so many sightseeing area as a matter of fact such as grand
natural spots and historically famous spots as in other famous sightseeing
countries.  Visitors who expect such spots may disappoint about the fact.
Many of visitors from Japan may come to Singapore for shopping purpose as
they go to Hong Kong. There is a big DFS(Duty Free Shop) in downtown 
Singapore, of course.

Interesting enough, the tour bus took us to DFS every times on the way and
back our sightseeing tours during two days. It is not unique itself at all
for we see the same when we take sightseeing bus in Japan. Well, it may be
alright for tour buses  to bring us to DFS. But their service is too much
or is beyond ordinal promotional performance in many ways. They never let
people go free at the entrance of first floor. They always bring all 
guests to 4th floor, the top floor of the shop. After guests are provided
shopping cards together with some discounts tickets, coupons or something
they are freed  at the entrance. 

They can't go down directly from there to the first floor. They have to 
go through the whole floors by using escalators to get to the first floor.
The escalators are placed so that people must go through the whole shopping 
area in order to get to next escalator to go down. Escalators in Japanese
Department stores were used to be placed the same way. But placement of
escalator is not any more like that in recent Japanese department stores.
It is now more customer oriented.

Although it is not the case of DFS, we were quite surprised to have another
experience about shopping while we were staying in Singapore. The tour bus
took us to a jury manufacturing factory and shop during the course of
sightseeing. Soon after all visitors stepped into the shop, the exit door
was shut down. They closed the door by using a steel shutter. Visitors were
completely forced to stay in the shop for a certain period of time just like 
hostages. Most of visitors were Japanese. A few American like families who
have no interest in buying juries , went out from a different entrance by 
saying something strongly to a manager of the shop. All of Japanese  who had
no intention of buying juries just waited very gently just like goats.

I got angry a little bit but I was so surprised to see the fact that the 
management of the shop and tour firms continued doing such kind of thing 
everyday with such a terrible sense of treating people like that way. The 
shop itself is not SDF but shoppers could get discount of tax at the airport
when they leave. 

I think it is not Duty Free Shop at all. It is SFS (Shopping Forced Shop) as
it is. 

The group of our people visited here not for shopping but for sightseeing 
or some other purpose. So we are generous enough to pardon such terrible 
treatment by watching it very objectively with some interest. But I would 
like to warn those shops and the management of tour firms that all Japanese
visitors are not necessarily seeking for just buying brand goods. Some 
people may have some big doubts about what they are doing right now.

This kind of approach to Japanese visitors  may have a bad reputation sooner
or later, as far as I observe it. I may be exaggerating a little when I say 
that this is not good for understanding about Singapore among Japanese 
visitors.

2004/10/16
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(392):

Concern for inflation

Japan had suffered a good deal of damage due to so many typhoons 
in this year. One big suffer by typhoon reported TV news yesterday
is tremendous increase of price of vegetables in the market. People
must have been surprised to hear that the price of one piece of 
lettuce jumped up to 1000 yen. The price of half cut cabbage became
500 yen according to the news. 

Such kind of trend will last for a while toward the end of this year 
according to the report.

There may be no other way to solve the problem but to import 
inexpensive Chinese vegetables although there are some concern about
the safety of their products. There may be no choice and we must forget 
about the issue for a while.
 
Fortunately, crop situation index of rice is nearly about 100 which is
not so bad, although the index has also been worsened somewhat by
recent typhoons. 

Yesterday, most TV news reported only about the increase of price of 
vegetables. But the effects of typhoon was not limited only to agricultural
products. The price of many other goods including building materials will
increase sooner or later. Although it has nothing to do with typhoon,
price of crude oil has already increased so high which will provide big
effect on increase of prices of goods in market.
 
So far Japanese economy is said in a deflationary spiral. But it seems 
that the situation have changed now. Japanese economy may face some
inflation stage from now on due to increase of price of such basic 
materials such as agricultural goods and crude oils. 

Needless to say, serious damages by typhoon is a minus factor of economy.
But it will provide a good opportunity or pump-priming effect as well
for economic growth as a proverb says:"Turn the potential disaster to 
one's advantage" 

But consumers have to be very careful now. We have seen many cases of 
opportunistic hike in retail prices happened in the past. Some retailing
business may start unfair price increase taking this opportunity. 

We have had some bitter experience as such in energy crisis of 1970. 
We will never repeat such mistakes again for we can get today many more 
correct and exact information faster than before. Consumers must be smart
enough not to stockpile goods which are said in shortage in the market. 

Government, all public authorities must make every effort to avoid such 
situation happened in 1970.  All mass media are requested to watch 
carefully what is going on in the market. 

2004/10/23
Tadashi HAYASE

My opinion of this week(383):

Lesson of Niigata Cyuetu Earthquake

One week has passed since the magnitude of 6.0 big earthquake happened 
at Cyuetu district of Niigata Prefecture. Total 100,000 people suffered
from the earth quake and 35 people died. About 80,000 people are still
spending at emergency evacuation area or their own cars apart from their
own home. We can easily see how big the earthquake was when we looked at
the shape of mountains and roads that are so seriously destroyed. 

This inner land type earthquake happened at this time in such 
underpopulated province. The damage could have been much larger if that
happened in more densely populated area. 

We are frightened with the guess that if this happened in such densely
populated area like Tokyo. It was a miracle that Shinkansen bullet train 
had no serious damages except derailment. Watanabe san of our ML 
explained to us that good luck was the result of very quick action
of train operator to start stopping  the train at once  when he felt some
irregular condition at that moment. ATS (Automatic Train Stop System) was
not necessarily big help after all. 

I am convinced that in any of such emergent situation, judgment and
action of human being is very necessary, although many of security
systems today are mostly depend upon machines, equipments and systems.   

How to protect some big accidents and natural disasters and how to meet 
such disasters once happened are depend upon the behaviors of each
individual. But it is mostly the issue of politics and administration as
well.

We observed the typical bad example as such at Kobe earthquake happened
in 1995. The then Murayama Cabinet was too slow to meet the situation. 
The then Governor of Hyogo Prefecture made very late decision to send 
Self Defense Force to meet with such serious circumstance. It is said
that the disaster could have been much less if many of those political 
and administrative actions were faster. 

Based on the former experience, several rescue actions were much faster
at this time. The SDF was moved faster. Two years old boy was saved 
after 90 hours later from the buried earth by the special rescue team
trained for that kind of purpose. 

In Japan, we have so many earthquakes unfortunately.  Many of such
big earthquake will surely happen in the future. It is very necessary 
for each individuals of this country to prepare for such disaster in 
everyday life. Overall disaster prevention training at individual level
is very necessary at first. 

But only individual training is not enough, of course. Some integrated and
coordinated training by country, prefectures, cities and each communities
are very necessary. It seems that such integrated training still lacks to
a great extent when we see what's going on after the earthquake at this 
time.

As a matter of fact, I have never experienced such training held by
the city I now live in. Any of such plans have never been presented for
citizens in the past.  

I believe it is very necessary for the country, prefectures and cities
to conduct such integrated and coordinated security training as soon
as possible. We must spend our valuable tax for that kind of purpose
rather than spending for many other unnecessary purpose. There exists no
ruling and opposition front as far as this matter is concerned.

What is the function of the nation? It is to protect life and wealth of
the people. 

If so, the top priority for all law makers and administrators is to
start tackling this issue with their best effort. 

2004/10/30
Tadashi HAYASE