High adaptability

I recently knew that 22th Feb. had been approved as the Oden day by Japan Memorial Day Association. When the Oden sales by convenience stores started, there was a criticism that such an excessive service was deviated from traditional way of commerce. I also felt the strangeness when I heard it and thought that such sales style wouldn't last long. But after many years have passed, I understand that the service completely fits in the modern store-commerce style. The reason of its success can be explained by the concept of the 'ADAPTABILITY of a dish'. Highly adaptable dish has a power to fit in any style of stores and potentials to keep the sales even under completely different cultures. Perhaps, Oden has the same level of adaptability as fried chicken or fried potato that also seem to be very popular in convenience stores. I once bought both Oden and fried potato at the same time on the occasion of visiting convenience store. The birth of such peculiar combination of two different food cultures may not be a coincidence. That’s the encounter of two food menus of ‘high adaptability’. The future of Oden in the world would be beyond our imagination.

Word-Group theory.

When using search engines, I strongly feel the absence of a theory which can be named like Word-Group theory.　Text mining methods are already developed but that's incomplete. One of the key factors in Word-Group theory may be the 'Singularity' of a word in the context. And the 'Entropy' of each sentence also can be defined. By defining such kinds of indices, the search efficiencies may be improved. The most important conclusion of this theory may be that categorical classification and management of extravagant texts, the border of which change rapidly are inefficient and defining good indices is indispensable for making good search engines. The risk of wrong categorization may not be negligible. The spaces between the real threads of spider’s web are not so narrow.

The advantages of using Baidu search engine

I found that in some cases the Baidu search engine can reveal nice filtering effects that can eliminate unnecessary search results more sharply. In one case, I was able to get enough search results by using only Baidu, while other search engines can’t eliminate extravagant unnecessary search results. This may be concerned with the characteristics of Japanese language. Japanese words are mixtures of Kanji, Hiragana and Katakana characters. In some situation Japanese people avoid using Kanji and exchange Kanji words for the Hiragana expression on purpose. Such frequently-Hiraganized words may be difficult to discriminate from other Japanese Hiragana particles in the process of search engine algorithms. That can be one of the reasons of low sharpness of the word-filtering. Baidu search engine seems to be advanced a little in this point. Perhaps they have to solve the problem that the permutation of each Kanji characters can have every different meanings in the sentences written in Chinese. For Japan the evaluation of frequencies of Hiraganizing or Katakanizing is indispensable for creating good search algorithms.

(Above illustration is from the CD attached to the Book 'Selections from figured paper in Kyoto and Japanese patterns' published by Impress Japan.)

An essential condition for sea nation

Before I came to live in this area, I thought that the sea existed OUTSIDE of our living place. The world we live consists of only land and if we throw pollutant into the sea, it goes out to another planet. But after spending years in this area, I notice that the sea exist INSIDE us. The pollutant returns back to our living place. Understanding this simple principle may lead to being a good sea nation.

(Above illustration is from the CD attached to the Book 'Selections from figured paper in Kyoto and Japanese patterns' published by Impress Japan.)