1934.3.16

It has been 75 years since this area was appointed the Setonaikai National Park on March 16, 1934, as one of three oldest national parks in Japan. But after that, many important tidelands have been lost due to the industrialization during these 75 years. The way to Environment Conscious marine-oriented tourist resort has been almost closed during our parents’ and grandparents’ generations. Though the conditions are not so good, I want to believe that new segments in tourism become promising owing to rapid industrialization.  

The possibilities of Android applications.

In JR train stations many posters advertising tourist resorts are put on the wall. Most of Japanese people can perceive the message at a glance and pass by them without serious attention when not interested. But for foreigners who don’t have enough knowledge can’t get adequate information even if attracted by the photo on the poster. I think OCR bar code for foreign tourists should be marked on such posters that can be read by cell phones with Chrome terminal that enable to display the search results automatically. Typing any characters into keypad or pushing buttons may be troublesome in such situations. If the poster couldn't catch the moment, the scenery photo would be mostly forgotten.

Similar situation will appear also in car advertising and therefore applications in that segment may be promising. To catch design-sensitive car fans, real streets on the ground can be the most powerful showrooms of cars. If some foreign person happened to encounter a favorite type design unknown car running on the street, and its photo was taken with G-phone camera, the car name could be displayed by image processing program on the phone. Developing such application seems to be becoming more realistic since the appearance of Android.

Perhaps, application in the apparel industry seems to be interesting, if linked with sensitivity engineering.

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

Beyond the limitation of sushi’s popularity

The more sushi become popular in the world, an anxiety for the shortage of the fishery resource seems to be more realistic. Even if the resource problems are solved, the environmental load by transportation of raw fishes into inland part of continental Nations couldn't be negligible. Consequently, the rapid expansion of demand for extra-popular fishes, shortage of their supplies and the formation of expensive image will finally lead to downward transition of sushi’s popularity. Both good quality and low price consist only in sea Nation like Japan or UK. Forecasting such new phase, I think the chefs and restaurant owners may have to reconsider their strategies. There may be many ways. My idea about it is that the key point exists in the combination of cheap ingredients. Even if popular ingredients become expensive, combinations of cheap ingredients can substitute and exceed them. The originality of the combination would be a watershed. My favorite combinations are, cheap shells, Nattomaki and Arajiru miso soup. I feel such combinations are more delicious than any other expensive single ingredients. Those combinations are almost overlapped with the realm of traditional Japanese dishes. Perhaps, there may be fusion segments around the border between sushi and traditional Japanese dishes. And those segments may be environmental-friendly. The targets of investigations are, for example, miso soup's ingredients, varieties of soy sauces, introductions of new shells and seaweeds. The combination with Oden as a healthy side dish may be an interesting sales style. For tourism in this area, combinations with fishing charter boat seem to be interesting. Some fishing charter boat already give 'Fish-and-Eat fresh raw fishes on the boat' services. But, the innovations of the facility for sushi cooking on small boat may be required for tourism of the Inland Sea.

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.)