I am writing a doctoral thesis now and feel mentally tired quite often. Even if I do not write a doctoral thesis, there are so many dreadful things in the world. There are various ways of healing. It is effective for me to go out to beautiful and calm nature spots that are not so congested. When I go to such places and breathe deeply, I can relax mentally and physically. I feel heartwarming and think “Let us work more and harder!”   I could finish my doctoral thesis because I went to such places once a week last year. So, I would like to introduce such healing spots from my experience.   Firstly, I recommend going to the Institute for Nature Study and the National Museum of Nature and Science in Shirokane (very close to Tokyo METRO station). It is not well known among international students and is different from other parks in Tokyo. It is a real forest, not a garden like Koishikawa Koraku-en Garden or Shinjuku Gyo-en (the National Garden). There are passes and bridges for taking a walk, and various plants are growing like forests. We can forget being in Tokyo because tall trees are standing to hide towns. We cannot enjoy such feelings without going to the mountains, which take three hours to reach. It is just a place where we can enjoy walking, forgetting our daily lives.   We can enjoy its beauty every season, but the time of the autumn leaves is the best. There are many gardens or temples that are famous for their autumn leaves, and the leaves of those trees are pruned so that they do not grow tall. However, the trees in the Institute of Nature Study are not pruned and there are a lot of tall autumn trees. I think it is the only place in Tokyo where we can enjoy tall, red autumn trees. If you would like to enjoy walking, I recommend you go to the Tokyo Metropolitan Teien Art Museum. You can enjoy modern architecture and history there, and the garden is very beautiful.     I recommend you secondarily to go to Sankeien in Yokohama. Minato-MIRAI and Yamashita-Park, both in Yokohama, are famous. But I will be tired more because those places are popular spots. Sankeien, however, is located in a quiet place, ten minutes by bus from Yamashita Park, and is not crowded. It was released by a businessperson named Hara Sankei in 1906, and it is very big and worth walking. It is very beautiful, especially when plum blossoms are fully bloomed. Harbor views of Tokyo Bay from Sankeien are good also. The most highlighted one is its buildings, which were relocated from Kyoto and Kamakura. All of them are valuable historically, and I recommend them to people who like to know Japanese architecture and history. You can see many luxurious houses around Sankeien and may be interested in modern architecture while taking strolls.   The last place that I recommend is the place where I would like you to go in cherry blossom season. Some people may dislike going to famous spots that are famous for their cherry blossoms because of their crowded conditions. But the cherry blossoms alongside the Shakujii-River is different. Its beauty is just the same as that of the Meguro-River. But the Shakujii-River side is not so crowded. The river is very long, but I recommend you take the course between Otonashi-Shinsui Park (Sound Nothingness Water Park) which is very near Oji-Station (Tokyo Metro), and Naka-Itabashi Station (Tobu-Tojyo Line). The park is strange or peculiar because this river was constructed using the old waterway of the Shakujii River. It is worth going only for this reason. When you walk along the river, you can enjoy cherry blossoms for five kilometers. As there are no Yatai (food stands) and few people like Meguro-River, you can enjoy cherry blossom while being relaxed. You will be healed fantastically if you walk while watching cherry blossoms and listening to your favorite music.      You may feel persistent stress every day. But let’s refresh and heal ourselves yourself by watching beautiful scenery.      SGRA Kawaraban 737 in Japanese (Original)     Oksana KAKIN / 2021 Raccoon     Translated by Kazuo Kawamura English checked by Sabina Koirala

I have “Problem Based Training Class” at my university. Students raise various social questions in English and try to find solutions. The vacant house situation is one of the issues which were taken up recently and I found this issue is not only for students who live in the provincial area, but mass media has taken up recently very often also.   Financial Times (electronic edition) reports in their “Japan’s Empty Villages Are a Warning for China” (October 30, 2022) that the number of vacant houses in Japan is increasing, and Chinese people are afraid that their real estate bubble would “Japanize”. However, I think there is no similarity in the vacant house situation in Japan and China. Then, how does China study from Japan? I did not have any special awareness of this article at that time. But the vacant house problems in both countries have made me uneasy now.     The reasons why it became vacant in Japan, are: There is no person to live with after old residents passed, away and being almost untouched condition. Now I notice such houses between my house and the nearest station in the same situation. I can say such an area is a vacant zone.   In China, an image of vacant houses is the one that has no residents despite being built for speculative investment purposes in high-rise building areas. There is no difference in the meaning of the words “vacant house” in Japan and China. But the origins of the words “vacant house” are quite different. I have distinguished these the words “vacant house” in Japan and China in this way.    There are so many “no occupancy” high-rise apartments in China and such areas are called “鬼城”(ghost town). Many people in Japan know these words. However, in Japan, the words “ghost town” mean a trace of the place where people have lived, and residents have disappeared. Of course, some residential areas have a few vacant houses, and some areas are called ghost towns when all residents disappear. The number of statics (every five years) by the Ministry of Public Affairs for vacant houses shows 13.6% in 2018 and this figure reached a record high in these 20 years.   I realized now that vacant houses mean just the same for non-Japanese and non-Chinese. A vacant house is a vacant house. According to Financial Times, the Japanese economy are keeping continue without any economic recovery after the collapse of the real estate bubble in the 1980s, and the FT worries about the present excessive investment in housing projects in China. Yes, if we will go back to the Japanese Bubble Period, we might be able to find similarities in the vacant house situations in China.   The FT warns further that if the real estate market in China would continue in such a present situation, they may repeat the same failure as the collapse of the real estate bubble in Japan. The reason why the population of China began to decrease. In Japan, the population has begun to decrease already and there are a lot of elderly. The increase in vacant houses is one of the reasons and there exists an inheritance problem also. If they cannot clean up their inheritance problems, they must keep their houses to be vacant. Such vacant houses cause the deterioration of public security and delay in urban development.   Now real estate problems include a wide range of issues both in China and Japan. Then, what does China learn from Japan? The excessive debt problem of China Evergrande Group (CEG) is still fresh in our minds. And excessive financing to real estate prices and soaring prices of real estate became distinct. Those situations are very similar to the collapse of the real estate bubble in Japan. After the regulation of CEG, we saw a lot of companies suffer from cash flow or are burdened with their debts. People who purchased real estate from CEG began to distrust CEG and cancel their contracts. Social confusion spread among ordinal citizens. Mr. Shin-ichi Seki, Head Researcher of JRI (The Japan Research Institute, Ltd.) says “China has already learned from Japan”. Weekly Magazine “Economist,” says also “China has made interest rate reduction and deregulation of financing to real estate companies already”. (September 13, 2022) I hope matters would not become worse.   Real estate is considered precious property both in Japan and China. (Of course, such thinking is not limited to Japan and China only.) As I feel strongly that people in both countries believe building houses revitalize their economy. In Japan, we see the news about depopulation, declining birthrate, or aging society almost every day. However, in such a situation, houses are being built new every day. It is not an exaggeration. According to the data from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure and Transport, the number of housings starting in 2022 increased by 0.4% from the previous year. We can say China is not an aging society. But the population began to decrease last year for the first time.  I hope both countries should reconsider comprehensively the balance between the population forecast and the supply of new housings.     SGRA Kawaraban 736 in Japanese (Original)     XIE Zhihai / Professor, KYOAI GAKUEN University   Translated by Kazuo Kawamura English checked by Sabina Koirala

My life was a stream headed North. I was born in Nantou (南投)County in Taiwan. Nantou County is the only county that has no sea. It locates in the center of Taiwan and has a famous tourist spot “Sun Moon Lake (日月潭)”. Except for such tourist spots, it is not bustling and there is an image of the countryside. I enjoyed my childhood in Caotun (草屯), and moved to Taichung (台中) to go to a prestigious junior high school and high school. I went to an elite university in Taipei (台北). I headed for the North and urbanity. I am now in another further northern island country and living in the international big city Tokyo.   I do not forget a day when I was impressed with snow in Tokyo for the first time in my life. I used a humidifier for the first time because I felt an occurrence strongly of various health problems like skin drying when the temperature becomes low. I was surprised at the length of the night also when the sun sets at 16:30 in winter. When I encounter people who came from many countries, using complicated railway networks which seem to be a labyrinth of a different world, I realized that I am living in a big city.   The subject of my research is a Confucian scholar Ogyu Sorai (荻生徂徠) in Edo Period. He was ejected from Edo (Tokyo) and spent his teens and early twenties living in Nanso Town (midlands of Chiba Prefecture). After returning to Edo in the latter half of twenties, he was enlightened to be in a situation surrounded by “enclosed districts (廓)”. He compared his “Experience in Nanso” with thriving Edo in his front. And he concluded that the influence on  the people by “ customs (風俗) is big. Because their insight comes from the environment in which they are living, and their own experience. As a result, he emphasized the importance of their ability to understand “native customs” relatively apart from their present “enclosed districts”.      As I have changed the living places, I could acknowledge the difference between “native customs” and the limitation of “closed districts”. Though various information is flowing freely and quickly now, people’s ways of living and interests are different. Needless to say, there is a big difference in culture and concept of value once they cross borders.   Before I came to Japan, I had a simple impression of Japan. I shared the Taiwanese common images of Japan like “foods are salty” and “people are polite” etc.  Although these conclusions are not wrong, the complexities of Japanese culture are summarized in a very rough style. “Salty” may be applied to ‘Ramen’ or ‘ton-katsu (pork cutlets). Japanese home cooking is relatively lighter seasoning than that of Taiwan. I think traditional Japanese cuisine does not pursue heavy seasoning. As to Japanese politeness, they keep a certain distance in human relations. Sometimes, I feel the difference between their principles and real intentions.     Through my living in Japan for years associating with a lot of Japanese friends, I understand now that we cannot comprehend “the others” simply. And, at the same time, I feel I could comprehend various phenomena in “ourselves”. For example, when Japanese friends asked me “what are the characteristics of Taiwan foods?”, I noticed the meaning of this question for the first time. My conclusion was “Taiwan foods are sweet”. We can see discourteous behaviors often in Taiwan. But I think it comes from an atmosphere that does not pursue “conformity” with humane societies.   The purpose of comparison of “ourselves” and “the others” is not a judgment of their superiority or inferiority. Based on the understanding of the actual situation of “ourselves and the others”, to understand the others, we speculate “the others” by our features. And, to acknowledge ourselves, we contrast ourselves from the features of others. Through such understanding, we can relativize “the others and ourselves” and release both from “enclosed districts”. As I changed my living places very often, such understanding is very beneficial for me and useful for my comparative study of the history of thoughts also.     SGRA Kawaraban 733 in Japanese (Original)     CHIANG Hsun-yi /2021 Raccoon, Studying at ph. D course in Humanities and Sociology at the University of Tokyo   Translated by Kazuo Kawamura English checked by Sabina Koirala

This Spring, I will start my new life after finishing seven years of training in the doctoral course. I spent ten years in Japan studying abroad and like to look back on these ten years.   I came to Japan at the age of six. I moved to Osaka from Beijing because of my parents’ job and lived for two years in Osaka. I remember my homeroom teacher in my elementary school learned Chinese to communicate with my parent well and my classmates were kind to me. So, I wanted to come again to Japan when I left Japan.   Thirteen years later, I could make my second visit to Japan in 2011 spring, just after the Great East Japan earthquake. As an undergraduate in biology, I came to Yokohama for an exchange program. I lived in a foreign country by myself for the first time fearing aftershocks of the earthquake. But I could spend fulfilling days due to interesting classes and practices. I had a chance to visit a laboratory to which I belong now an introduce my teacher, and they accepted me luckily after the doctoral course.      After graduating from the university in Beijing, I started my new life in Tokyo in 2014 spring. I did not expect to spend nine years at Keio University. As the doctoral course was not so difficult, I kept taking the usual lessons and used my remaining time for experiments. Though there were challenging projects, those projects went smoothly and I was getting good results. As I could enjoy getting data from brushing up way of experiments, two years have passed in the blink of an eye.     I proceeded to the doctoral course without hesitation because I liked to pursue an academic path. However, there were various changes. Project did not go smoothly because experiments did not go well. I could not get good any results despite my repeated tries and errors. The balance of my lifeworks began to collapse when my good seniors, who have taught me about experiments, graduated. When I made my research presentation, severe designations aggravated me further. There was a time when I could not do anything by the reason that research and personal relationships were unpromising. I got sick. I could not get out of bed in the morning and could not go to the research laboratory.   In such situations, it was my husband that supported me emotionally. He came from China and stayed together until I got over. I took time to recover and started new project from scratch changing the way of research. It was the third year of my doctoral course and made up my mind to enjoy my research life. My husband resigned from his job in China and started his research doctoral course as new research life in Japan at the same research laboratory.   This March, we completed our research work taking four years and obtained a Ph.D. During these four years, everything did not go well smoothly as mentioned above. I encountered problems almost every day and got setbacks sometimes. I realized it is important that we keep the balance of our hearts calm to support our hearts in overcoming difficulties, and not mind little things around us. Usually, emotional support in our daily life would be family. But it will not cover its works. I feel emotional support both in daily life and work are necessary equally. I could overcome my difficulties with my partner’s support who understood both in private life and work.      Another important thing that I keep in mind is I do not care for little things in daily life using unnecessary energy. It will be a waste of time and energy to have hope and fear alternately for every result of the research. We cannot be depressed by any news or SNS information. It will be efficient to analyze everything logically, not emotionally. When I use my energy too much, I will be tired the next day. So, I understand it is effective to keep my condition at a certain level suppressing a waste of my energy. I may be said to be “not expressive”. But I do not care about it.       I feel now that I have been blessed with help from a lot of people. I experienced both successes and failures. However, such experiences lead me to my growth. So, I like to challenge myself with immediate projects without forgetting to feel gratitude.         SGRA Kawaraban 732 in Japanese (Original)     LI Dian / 2021 Raccoon, Studying at Graduate School of Medicine, Keio University,     Translated by Kazuo Kawamura English checked by Sabina Koirala

It was the 2013 autumn that I came to Japan for studying abroad. As I liked to study in Japan from the beginning, I applied for an application and was selected luckily as a government-financed scholarship student. I started my research life at graduate school in Tokyo. It was not easy to live surrounded by foreign languages and continue my research in a foreign language. However, I do not remember I have been in a difficult situation with language. There are two reasons.   The first: I had the experience to study the Japanese language in university before I came to Japan and communicated with teachers and foreign students. Thanks to such experience, I could be familiar with Japanese life comparatively smoothly.   The second reason: I transferred schools often in Guizhou State when I was little. It was languages that I struggled with first because there were several languages in Guizhou State though it is one state. As Mandarin Chinese was not so popular at that time, it was usual that we use several dialects not only in daily life but in the classroom also. So, time and elaboration were necessary for kids to adjust to the local languages.   What I realized through my repeated change to schools was that speaking languages are different depending on the place. Common knowledge in certain places is not common in other places. I have had a kind of feeling that, in my childhood, what people trust in their ideas or ways of thinking is not absolute but relative.   Lu Xun (魯迅) said, “I venture out to find different people in different places walking the different roads.” Following his words, I chose to study abroad in Japan and could meet several “different” people luckily in Japan. Being supported and under the corporation of such “different people”, I could finish my doctoral thesis on the Corona Virus. And I got a bachelor’s degree and took the first step as a researcher.   As I wrote a doctoral thesis with limited time and talent, I do not think it is enough to find materials and analyze textbooks. I think I could consider other viewpoints and the point of the issue. Such reflection will be the next issue for me.     What I realized often in my study abroad life is I have no homeland to which I can return. As I spent in Guizhou in my childhood, Guizhou maybe, roughly speaking, be my homeland. However, I left Guizhou when I went to university and spent six years in Tianjin and eight years in Tokyo. I kept living in distant lands from Guizhou. Without realizing it, Guizhou, my native land, became one of the places where I have lived for a short while.   However, it is not unlucky. Because I could get plural hometowns by losing my native land instead.   There is a book titled “Mille Plateaus” written jointly by philosopher Gilles Deleuze and psychoanalyst Pierre-Felix Guattari. Those two thinkers say in this book that the histories of human languages, cultures, and natures are not held up by a single theory. In other words, human beings are alive in various languages, cultures, natures, and histories. Deleuze and Guattari advocated a theory of “diversity” or “plurality”.   I think a theory of “plurality” means not only the simple fact that human beings have diversity but human beings have hidden potential which can change the world also. And I like to keep my standpoint practicing “living in plural hometowns” having a certain responsibility.     SGRA Kawaraban 731 in Japanese (Original)     CHEN Xi / 2021 Raccoon, Specially Appointed Researcher at East Asian Academy for New Liberal Arts of the University of Tokyo     Translated by Kazuo Kawamura English checked by Sabina Koirala