8th March

According to some of medias in America, President Biden plans to hold a summit meeting between America and Japan in next month at the earliest, meeting him in person. 

Universal Studio Japan in Osaka announced that they would start new attraction area, Super Nintendo World, on 18th March. The company has postponed the beginning of this area because of COVID-19. The most noteworthy point of this area is that you can indeed ride Mario cart, which is popular game of that game company. 

表現
早ければ1月にも: within (in) January at the earliest, as early as within (in) January.
首脳会談：summit meeting
直接会う：meet in person

Woven City-Toyota began to build a new experimental city1

I'll summarize an article in Asahi newspaper and translate it into English to improve my skills.

   On Jan. 23, 2023, Toyota began to build 'Woven City' in Shizuoka prefecture. This new city is designed as experimental city. It will be a future city full of advanced technologies. The company plans that new dwellers will come to the city in 4 years.  

   It is expected that people there can daily use advanced technologies. For example, if they need to move, they use 'e-pallet', which distributes the needed number of cars at a needed time. This service will save time to wait and will serve the spaces in the cars as lockers preserving clothes, foods and parcels. In addition, there will be other attracting services; automatic delivery, censors checking health, power plant generating electricity by hydrogen. Toyota plans that the city will have a population of more than 2,000 people.

   Asahi newspaper says that Toyota has strong awareness of crisis that they will not be able to survive only by selling cars. Toyota hurries to transform into a mobility company offering various services concerning mobility. 

   This project was originated by the President. According to the executives, the amount of money he has invested is surprisingly large. Just as his grandfather changed a company of weaving machines into Toyota, so he would like to change his property into the future by investing to Woven City. Some employees are worried that he begins to pursue his own benefits. However, he says that he can't control the company because he doesn't have much stock enough to do so. Some executives says that they will make strict rules and that any problem will not be happened.

   'Woven City' is named after an imagination of a city of which roads are crossed like a woven cloth.  Toyota affiliates with many companies. After all, the project is so large. The largest company is NTT, one of the Japanese largest telecom companies. The president of this company shows hostility to GAFA.

Continue...

2021-2-15 p6

 I'll briefly summarize a part of time published in Feb 2021 just for improving my English skills.

In this section, the paper says about Aung San Suu Kyi, who is a political activist in Myanmar. The military in Myanmar, which had dominated the country before she  took the reins of government, captured her. Although she is seen shameful because of her correspondence about the Rohingya problem, many Burmese people loves her and they starts demo agains this happening. However, some people think that it is time that people give up depending on one person and start real democracy in the country.

To tell the truth, I have not known about the problem of Rohingya. Therefore, I read an article about this and I think this problem is associated with the philosophy of place. Now, I'm reading place, which is about the philosophy of place. In this book, historical facts and ideologies make designated territories place-like. This problem is that case. The historical belief of them about the place is important fact that gives them place-like sense. When we think about refugee problems, it is important to think about "place".

Place_4_Regions and nations as places

 I'll summarize a section of the book "Place" written by Tim Cresswell. 

In this section, the author explains how place or identities in it is created in political areas. He concluded that people who try to construct political entities make effort to give historical and identical meanings to their designated territories to make them more place-like. Almost all people believe that they are connected through the idea of their nation as place.  National ideology and belonging, which make a nation place, make them think in such a manner. In addition each regions in a nation also have such ideology which are made by politicians.In addition, he also quotes the statements of Anssi Paasi that 'regionalization' involves the 'formation of the conceptual symbolic space'.

Place_4_"A nice place to live"

 I'll just write a note about philosophy of place.

In this section the author introduces about the importance of memory and heritage in the production of place. In order to explain this, he takes two examples of real location;  Rancho Santa Margarita(RSM),which is the example used in Till's paper, and Crawley in Britain.
The first place was subject to gentrification. However the method used at the town is different from ones of New York, in which gentrifiers tried to withdraw local people to make the place more attractive one for middle-class. In RSM, people called "neotraditionalism" were working. This type of people placed words such as "community" and "history" the center of the plans. The planners created the place through the community by providing a sense of historical continuity and stability. Here the idea of place with the history is used to get people to buy houses in RSM. The actual buildings are mass-produced by large company. To sum up, "good place to live" is created through the promotion.
In the past, the second place was "New Towns" in London. Appleby, who researched this area, indicates about a man, who is responsible for naming streets in the town.  He named the streets based on English history and sense of the countryside. His naming is appropriate for the anti-urban ideas of the planning movement's founders. 
In both places, the places are made through the planners'  preferable sense in order to connect the material structure into well-know mythological histories.

I think this examples are associated with what I've thought about Japanese development of countrysides. In Japan, many planners of countrysides try to capture the historical meaning of the attributing villages to promote them. To be honest, I don't like such activities. That's why most of the local people have never thought about such meanings. They have other ones. I think if their own towns are promoted by such planners, they feel that they are displaced like that local NY east side people felt. 

2020_12_14 p27

I write this article to improve my English skills. 

I'll summarize an article of TIME in 12/14 and give my opinion.

American president Biden is trying to make the world back to the one it was before the Trump Administration. This is very hard work. That's why some relations between America and some other countries are deteriorated because of Trump's policies. Relations with China are at a half-century low. The NATO alliance is weaker than it has ever been. However, Trump leaves behind an opportunity as well as such challenges for Biden. It is a chance that Biden can remake American foreign policy since 9.11 or Cold War. Sullivan says that the immediate strategy starts with renewal at home and builds to reinvesting in alliances and rejoining institutions. 

note

appease: なだめる

moribund: 瀕死

take the reins: 権力を握る

vex: 苛立たせる

surreal: シュール

convene: 召集