これまで数か月にわたって、NPOを立ち上げようと志す人を
支援してきました。
私の持論は、「NPOであっても、儲けなければいけない」と
いうものです。財政的な安定あってこそ、事業活動を継続
して行えるし、活動の幅を広げるためにもそれが必要だと
信じるからです。

「NPO」＝「無償ボランティア」ではありません。
片手に聖書（高い志）、片手にそろばん（財政的基盤）です。

今回支援させていただいた起業家の方にも、その点は強く
ご説明し、ご理解いただいたものと思っていました。その上で、
あれこれと今後のプランなども考えていました。
社会起業、なかでもNPOは、そのプランニングを考えることは
大変に楽しく、やりがいがあるものです。近い将来には、
社会起業家はもっともっとその数を増やすものと思われます。

・・・ところが、私の説明（アドバイス）は、結局のところ
相手の心には届いてはいなかったようです。
営利事業と、非営利事業は、やはり分けてやるべきだ、と
結論を出されたようでした・・・。

いい気になって、あれこれとプランを考えていた自分が恥ずか
しいです。

なぜ、もっと分かりやすく説明ができなかったのか・・・
なぜ、もっと相手の考えや立場に寄り添ったアドバイスができ
なかったのか・・・。

悔しく、そして腹立たしくてなりません。

それはそれとして、明日からも個人事業主としての毎日が
続きます。失敗を忘れるわけにはいかないけれども、とにかく
自分の信じる道を進んでいくしかありません。

が、がんばります～

September is the month that the 2nd term of school begins in Japan, and as the beginning of autumn season, many schools will start classes to practice for ‘undokai’(運動会,うんどうかい), a well-known Japanese school sport meeting where all pupils or students join and their parents also gather for cheering their children.
But recent days of over-scorching weather can risk harming children’s healths if sport classes are to be held outdoors.
Now we must consider to postpone ‘undokai’ to, at least, a period when temperature gets milder.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

This heat wave might change Japanese people’s way of thinking for living in summertime.
This summer even authorities come to recommend civilians that they should use air conditioners whenever they feel hot. Otherwise they preach their people to take care of ecology, global warming, and saving energy. But seeing people dying from heat one after another, this summer authorities are forced to tell people to resort to air conditioners in order to save their lives. Indeed this summer’s heat is unbearable with only traditional cooling devices, hand or electric fans. Like in Hong Kong or Singapore, in Japan there might become a norm to use an air conditioner as frequently as possible in summertime, for the sake of living a normal life.

Three years ago there was a severely hot summer in Japan archipelago too, but this summer’s hotness proved to be no less severe than that days.

And scorching sunshine will continue even in early September, that is to come.

Now in Japan there comes the season for catching autumn fish ‘samma’ (さんま,秋刀魚) on the sea. But so far this year fishers have seen and caught these highly popular fish much less than usual years in this decade. Not being clear whether it is an outcome of unusually high sea water temperature caused by this summer’s hotness, but much less catch of samma has caused their prices to skyrocket on retailing markets in the towns. Samma have had a reputation of a cheap but very tasty fish, and they have come to be one of cultural symbols of Japan’s autumn. Will we see, though, even samma cease to be an easy-to-get food at last?

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

Japan’s summer is not only hot, but also wet. So it is almost unbearable when continuing longer. Once in summer season many popular songs which praised joyous summertime used to pop up and rise on the hit chart. But nowadays that seems to be almost ceased. For Japanese summertime might come to be felt as a kind of torture season, like Antonio Vivaldi’s musical description of dismal summer in “The Four Seasons”, in which ‘Summer’ is the only movement that is written only in minor key, that depicts a severe hot season and nothing joyous and to be praised, unlike spring and autumn, or even cold winter.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

Department stores were one of the symbolic venues of Japan’s economic growth. It sprung early 20th century and produced meny fads from there. Famous stores like Mitsukoshi, Daimaru, and Sogo built symbolically decorated big stores in the center of large cities such as Tokyo, Osaka, and Kyoto. They sold the latest fashions to Japanese consumers who aspired to acquire and simulate werstern life style. Hankyu Hyakkaten Umeda headquater store in Osaka was famous for providing ‘kere-raisu’, now internationally known Japanese style rice with curry, in its big restaurant in early Showa era.

Now Japan has suffered from dismal development rate and shirinking population, so consumption of population hasn’t been so much robust as past century. Add to that, consumers’ taste has more and more got diversified and to go shopping in department stores have been less and less necessary. As a result department store companies decide to shut down unprofitable stores and intensify their resources to main ones. Kyoto Hankyu Hyakkaten is one of them to be decided to remove. When its final shutdown moment, many consumers gathered to see its end, which was famous for people as a place to be designated when they are to gather and meet in the center of the city.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-Curd)

Daimonji Okuribi is the famous evening festival during Obon (お盆), Japan’s traditional summer leave period in mid August.
In the evening fires are lit on five hills around Kyoto city. Fires put on each hill write characteristic letters or figures (two of them write “大 (dai)” in Kanji), who can be seen from many places of the city. Fires are dedicated to deceased ancestors, whose dead souls are believed to come back temporarily during Obon, and return to Ano-yo (あの世, dead man’s world) when Obon ends. Five hill’s fires are put on as living people’s goodbye salute to their ancestors’ returning souls. So this festival are called “Okuribi”, that means ’sending fires’.

Looking at the festival’s feature of fire at night and the dead souls’ comeback, it may somewhat resemble western world’s Halloween. But Daimonji Okuribi doesn’t have a horrifying connotation like Halloween has, at which icons of ghosts and monsters prosper and stroll in neighborhoods.

When Obon passes, Japan’s summer ends. But very hot days still continue.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

Over 700 years ago in August a typhoon that also came into Japan are said to have repelled a foreign enemy’s invasion and saved Japan, which was still under-developed in the light of global standard at that time and didn’t have advanced war technologies that more developed neighbor China acquired. Mongolian global empire decided to invade Japan too, and it sent great expedition fleets two times, in 1274 and 1281. Both expedition failed, main cause of whom is still under discussion, but in contemporary records written by Japan, Korea, and China there seems to have been strong sea storms in campaigns and many Mongolian fleets are said to have sunk, and particularly in the second expedition (Ko-an no eki, 弘安の役) its damage decisively defeated the invader.

Japanese attributed this storms to thanks to Gods’ help, and called them “Kamikaze”. This word, that means “divine wind” in literary translation, is well known worldwide now, though for a infamous reason.

The second “Kamikaze”, struck Mongolian fleets on the sea off Kyushu island severely, came Just in August. And August is just the peak month that typhoons strike Kyushu and its offshore area. So it is said to be highly probable that at least the second “Kamikaze” was a typhoon. It couldn’t be necessary for a typhoon to be particularly huge in order to have contemporary fleets sunk. A common typhoon should be enough to destroy fleets at that time, because Mongolian generals must have had no knowledge for maritime battle and the danger of sea storm, so they must have had little care of what occurs when fleets stay on the sea near Kyushu in midsummer. In Ko-an no eki campaign, Japanese warriors fought well and prevented invaders from landing several weeks, so keeping their enemy staying on the sea for a long time in summer was probably one of the inadvertent cause of their victory.

In Japan typhoon season had just begun. Until nearly October Japan can be struck by typhoons, small or powerful. They might be “divine winds”, but they don’t necessarily bring good fortunes to us.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

But in the original Greek story of Aesop’s fable, a different creature is taken for one of protagonists. A cicada shows up as a fiddler instead of a grasshopper. When this tale spread in northern Europeans, they didn’t know what was cicada, that can be found in Mediterrenean area, where Greece lies, but can’t be seen where they live. So north europeans changed a protagonist of it into an insect they were familiar with.

In Japan, like in Greece and unlike in north Europe, cicadas (蝉,せみ) can be found everywhere in summertime. Probably Japan has a culture that shows the most affection to this noisy insect in the world. In Tanka, Haiku, poems and other kinds of literatures cicadas are taken so frequently for a symbol of Japan’s summer. In TV dramas and movies it is a cliche to indicate summertime that a shower of cicadas’ buzzes is heard in the backgound of each of the scenes.

There are kinds of cicadas that can be seen and heard most:

Abura-zemi (あぶらぜみ) – sings with a loud sound, that people compare to a sound of frying something in oil.
Kuma-zemi (くまぜみ) – sings with a high pitch. This species was only seen in warmer areas such as Kyushu island in the past, but nowadays we can see it almost anywhere in mainland Japan, whose reason is said to be due to warming of Japan’s climate.
Minmin-zemi (みんみんぜみ) – sings like “meen, meen…”, so is named “minmin”. This species’ sound is one of the most popular one, though in cities in western Japan it is relatively rare to be seen and heard.
Higurashi (ひぐらし) – sings with a pleasant sound around sunset and dawn. This is the one which has been one of the most favored insects for Japanese people, from ancient to modern days.
Tsukutsuku-boshi (つくつくぼうし) – sings with a charasteristic sound in late summer to early autumn. This species’ sound indicates the end of summertime, so the end of happy summer holidays for children.

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-curd)

From daytime to night we have suffered from high temperature.
How did you feel when you came to Japan first?
Were you disgusted against Japan’s too hot summer? Japan’s summertime gets hotter and hotter in recent decades.
Or were you surprised at Japan’s rather chilly winter? It is true that there are countries that have colder winter than Japan around the world. But since Japanese people traditionally tend not to heat their rooms and houses up so much in winter, people tend to keep enduring coldness in their rooms with poor heating systems – they really do their “gaman(我慢,がまん)”, endurance, in winter.

Japan’s traditional houses are planned fot the foremost purpose of getting summertime’s hottness over.
Houses in Japan are for the most part made of wood and paper, except for tiles on their roofs.
Instead of walls, they have “shoji(障子,しょうじ)” and “fusuma(ふすま,襖)”, that can be removed away in summer and make wind go through fully.
Under their floors there are spaces that can be ways for airs going through and make rooms cooler.
This design, though, makes tempetrature in their rooms go under more in winter.
“Shoji” and “fusuma” can’t keep cold winds from intruding, because they have full of niches in themselves.
Under thier floors cold airs also makes their ways, and rooms get colder from underneath.

Japanese people have got accustomed in coldness in their traditional houses, that is, they do “gaman” in winter. Indeed, winter in Japan, except for northern tip of it, is not so severe and we can get over if we do “gaman”. Japanese people have their tradition to live in their houses designed to keep hotness in summertime mild and do their “gaman” in winter with poor heating systems.

But modern apartments and condos in urban areas, unlike traditonal houses, keep summer’s hot airs in their rooms and don’t let them go. When living in them, we can’t do our “gaman” any more, against out tradition…

(Oda Mitsuo, the president of Asian-Curd)