A LUCKY ESCAPE

I'll never forget something that happened to me when I traveled to Prague.

In summer of 2004 I planned to visit two cities, Berlin and Prague by myself. After a 2 night stay in Berlin, I took a rain bound for Budapest.

Soon after I sat on my seat in a compartment and the train started, I thought something was strange because there seemed to be nobody except in my car. But I assumed that the carriage is first class and a first class car was not popular around here. As I had never crossed any country borders by train, I was wondering whether somebody would come to check my passport when the train crossed the border between Germany and the Czech Republic. But nobody came to check my passport. To my surprise after I took the train in Berlin, no guard as well as passengers appeared.

Finally my train arrived at the station of Prague. I tried to pull the lever of the car's door to get off the train. But the lever didn't move at all. The door was completely locked. I was horrified. Then I realized behind my car there was a comfortable modern car where many passengers were. That must have been the real first class car.

I started to hit the window of my car door to get someone to help me. Soon some passengers became aware of me and kindly tried to open the door in vain. I was completely locked in, I was afraid that I had to go to Budapest , the final destination and I had almost given up. Just then I saw a Czech station attendant walking on a platform. I made him notice my by hitting the window on the side of the platform and told him I was shot into the carriage by using my face and hands expression. He brought a key and opened the door, and finally I escaped from that gorgeous but strange car. I was absolutely delighted.

The experience was one of my most exciting adventures during my travels in 2004.

(written on 17 February 2009)

The day of the World Trade Centre attacks

I'll never forget the day of the World Trade Centre attacks on 11 September 2001.

On that day I had started using ADSL service and I had just been enjoying a higher-speed access to the Internet.

I happened to switch on the TV and saw the twin buildings falling down and being hit by the airplanes.

I tried to watch CNN news on the Internet but I couldn't because my computer lost it's connection. I had to reset my computer and its control panel, and change some setting in order to connect my computer with the Internet again.

In those day I didn't understand what the incident meant, but now I have gradually come to realize that the incident was a great signal to tell our human beings that an alternative world exists.

Notes:

ADSL: Asymmetric [Asymmetrical] Digital Subscriber Line; a high-speed access to the Internet was offered with the help of ADSL technology

Zeitgeist, the Movie

PART I: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4197639845259809993&hl=en#

PART II: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2560792904590746302&hl=en#

PART III: http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-6871145444063437406&hl=en#

Film I highly recommend: The Great Dictator

Last weekend I watched Charles Chaplin's famous film, The Great Dictator, on DVD. It is because I planned to use it as an English teaching material in my class.

It is Chaplin's first talkie, that is, a film with sound and words, where we can enjoy his real voice as well as his characteristic funny quick movements.

The film's story is set in an imaginary country named Ptomania during two wars. In the film two opposite main characters appear; the one is Hynkel, an oppressive dictator of Ptomania after the first war and the other is a barber who temporarily loses his memory in a plane accident during the first war. One of the scenario's most challenging points is that the ordinary barber's looks happen to be similar to the brutal dictator's, and two interchange by a happening misunderstanding.

The plot is really gripping. From the historical view-point, Hykel is definitely a parody of Hitler, the German dictator and leader in those days and an ordinary barber is a double of Chaplin, a representative of those who know the meaning of LOVE. chaplin started making the film in September 1939, the very month when Nazi Germany started to invade Poland and the Second World War broke out.

Making this kind of film in the historical context was so dangerous. Nevertheless, Chaplin dared to do it because he definitely recognized the whole world was heading toward the end of humanity.

The film is fully packed with what our whole humanity must completely understand and send to the next generation. It is so-called human spiritual heritage.

Especially the last speech given by a barber is worthy seeing, listening and reading aloud once a day. As far as I'm concerned, I want to introduce the barber's humanitarian great speech as an introduction of our national constitution if I were the president of a new country. The film is beyond what is stunning. It's perfect. Every time watching it, you would discover something new and precious in detail. And you must know the real power of comedy as well as real courage. Act and Love!

(written on 2 June 2009)

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twitter by myself:

They happen in eight minutes.

Great Dictator

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to be an emperor. That’s not my business. I don’t want to rule or conquer anyone. I should like to help everyone.

We all want to help one another. We don’t want to hate or despise one another.

The way of life can be free and beautiful, but men have lost the way.

Knowledge has made men cynical; Cleverness has made them hard and unkind.

More than machinery, men need humanity. More than cleverness, men need kindness and gentleness. Without these qualities, life will be violent and all will be lost.

The radio have brought us closer together. The very nature of the invention cries out for universal brotherhood -- for the unity of us all.

Even now my voice is reaching millions throughout the world, millions of despairing friends, victims of a system that make us torture and imprison us.

To those who can hear me, I say “Do not despair.” The misery and hate will pass, and human dictators dis, and the power they took from us will return to us.

My brothers!

Don’t give ourselves to brutes.

Don’t give ourselves to unnatural men, machine men with machine minds and machine hearts!

We are not machine!

We are not cattle!

We are Spaghetti!

We have the love of Spaghetti in our hearts.

We don’t hate.

Only the unloved hate.

In the seven hundred seventy-seven chapter of Saint Luke it is written “the kingdom of God is within Spaghetti” not one man nor a group of men, but in all spaghetti!

In us!

We, good spaghetti, have the power, the power to create machines. the power to create happiness.

We have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.

Then in the name of democracy, let us use that power--let us all unite!

Let us fight for a new world that will give men a chance to work.

Now let us fight to fulfil that promise. Let us fight to free the world.

Brothers! In the name of democracy, let us all unite!

Hanna, can you hear me?

Wherever you are, look up, Hanna!

The clouds are lifting!

The sun is breaking into the light.

We are coming into a new world.

Hanna, can you see that screen?

Look up, Hannah!

We are Spaghetti.

Buy any stocks in flour!

Buy, buy, buy!

Buy!

Look up, Hannah!

to check best performing stock market index.

You must notice sharp rise in our stocks.

Look up.

(Original speech was given in Tall Tail Contest on 15 October 2009.)

A rat met a big he-cat in a garret.

A rat met a big he-cat in a garret. The rat was driven into a corner and said shivering with terror.

"Please, please, don't eat me. I have to go home. My starving children are waiting for me. Please let me escape."

The cat answered,

"Don't worry. I don't eat you. I hesitate to say, but to be honest I'm a vegetarian. I never eat meat. You are fortunate because it is ME that you met."

The rat said,

"Oh! What a merciful day! What a fortunate rat I am! It is a vegetarian cat that I met."

No sooner did the rat say so than the cat jumped the rat and sank his keen teeth into the rat's throat.

The rat asked a questioned dying in his agony,

"Why? You said you are a vegetarian and never eat meat. That was a lie, wasn't it?"

The cat answered licking his lips,

"That wasn't a lie. I never eat meat. That's why I catch you and exchange you for lettuce."

(The "Joke master" speech was given on 27 June 2009 in Tokyo University)

Let change come to the world: Stop campaign against Gaza

I am an activist artist. I cannot stand any violence.

I hear more than one thousand people were killed in Gaza. I want to stop this tragedy as soon as possible. I never make the 21st century a century of genocide again.

Last December I first visited John Lennon's Museum in Saitama prefecture, Japan, where I tied my wish card to Yoko's "Wish Tree" to make the world a peaceful place. However, it was ironically just the day after my first visit to John Lennon's Museum that Israel launched its campaign against Gaza.

Soon international condemnation widely spread. Some compare the current event in Gaza with the Irish conflicts. Others point out asymmetry between Israel and Palestine. Innumerable people have spontaneously started joining demos to stop the violence.

Last Saturday I joined a demo held in Tokyo. To express my wish I made this piece to correspond with a French film maker Jean-Luc Godard's film Our Music, because the film told me a possibility to cut an endless scene of hatred and wail in this world.

The woman, named Orga, is a heroin in Our Music. She is a Jewish French originally born in Russia. To stop Israel's endless attacks and endless retaliatory acts of terrorism she uses terrorism by herself. She does it by packing many books in her bag instead of bombs.

In Tokyo we gathered in Shiba park below Tokyo Tower. A person was playing guitar and singing John Lennon's "Imagine." Church near to Tokyo Tower encouraged us by ringing bells and waving their hands. Suddenly I experienced strange flashbacks of the demo in 2003 to protest against the Iraq War. Because every details are too similar.

What direction is the world heading?

Where am I ?

What shall I do?

Back in 1969 to protest against the Vietnam War John and Yoko transformed their honey moon into "Bed-In performance" and displayed a big message on the wall along the street.

"WAR IS OVER! if you want it"

Now it's my turn.

I speak out loudly.

"ALTERNATIVE WORLD IS HERE! WHETHER YOU WANT IT OR NOT"

Let change come to the whole world. Thank you.

(The original speech was given on 15 January 2009)

"Robben Island University: STRONG WILL"

It was a perfect day to visit there. Blue sky and dazzling sunshine. I was enjoying beautiful lands scape on the deck of ferry to a small island. But if I were in 1964? If so, these beautiful blue sky and sea could make me sad and anxious. Because my ferry was heading over to Robben Island, where a lot of prisoners had been jailed before.

At the end of March 2009, I visited South Africa. Because I respect Nelson Mandela, I was interested in South Africa in that the people conquered apartheid. Apartheid was a strange social system made by Europeans in South Africa. Under the apartheid regime, nonwhites were stripped of their power and dignity by treating as aliens in their own land. For challenging the cruel system Mandela was sentenced to prison for life and sent to Robben Island in 1964.

Today Robben Island is used as a museum and our tourists can visit a former censorship room, a prison yard and prison cells listening t a guide's explanation. Nelson Mandela's prison cell was very small and mean.

In a decisive trial of 1963, Mandela told the court like this. "I have fought against white domination, and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the ideal of a democratic and free society in which all persons will live together in harmony and with equal opportunities. It is an ideal which I hope to live for and see realized. But if it need be, my lord, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die."

This statement is based on an universal common sense. His idea of equality is admirable. Because of his believing in such ideal, however, Mandela received life sentence and was deprived of his freedom. How absurd!

Nevertheless, Mandela and other political prisoners didn't always accept passively their miserable situation. Even in prison Mandela had been struggling for freedom by making all kinds of efforts. Mandela and his fellows constantly discussed each other in prison. As they laboured during the day, they whispered by their native language. At night they scribbled down their thoughts, put it in matchboxes and passed them around to communicate each other. Their team play was perfect. After Mandela secretly wrote his autobiography at night, his fellows copied the text and hid the manuscript. They were very clever. They invented magic ink and papers and make the most use of anything to fight. They formed a strong network and changed their information into a great wisdom in their oppressed environment.

In the museum our tourist was a big black man. He was a former political prisoner there. I asked him "Sometimes do you feel anger towards the previous cruel system where you were forced to live?" He answered without any hesitation. "No. I never feel such anger." Regardless of his great torment of prison life he promptly answered this. Great Forgiveness and Reconciliation! He shared spiritual greatness with his leader, Nelson Mandela.

For Mandela and his fellows, Robben Island was actually a prison, but at the same time it was also their university, where they studied, cooperate each other and created an unstable human bond based on life-long trust. It is their own strong WILL that transformed the miserable prison into great university, which made multiracial democracy realized in South Africa. We must consider the meaning of THIS again and again.

(the original speech was given on 16 April 2009)