Maid Cafe

Hello, everyone~!

As I was browsing through the websites that I visit regularly, I found an interesting website of a cafe in Los Angels, which obviously are inspired by the Japanese Otaku culture. (Have you heard of that?)

I've heard that a Japanese term "OTAKU" can be understood in the US just like "SUSHI." I don't know if it's true, but by looking at the website like this, it makes me want to believe that.

It's ROYAL/T Cafe.

A lot of cafes just like this are everywhere when you go to Akihabara.(It's a region in Tokyo, and famous for big electronic stores. Needless to say, it's known as heaven for geeks, Otaku in Japanese.)

And related to today's topic, "maid cafe"(meido-kafe) is one of the things that is famous when it comes to Otaku culture. Though I haven't tried to visit there, I once looked up for it because I and my friends did a presentation about Otaku's communication. The word "OTAKU" originally means "out-group", and when you hear it today, it's basically about a person's character. There are several fields of Otaku such as Anime Otaku, Manga Otaku, Game Otaku, and so on.

I'm wondering what it would be like to visit Maid Cafe in LA!

Just for Fun

Hello, everyone~!

Before taking part in today's chat, I decided to update my blog. As I told you previously, I have several books that I finished reading and I would like to talk about it.

Today's book is called "Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary" written by Linus Torvalds and David Diamond. If you're familiar with computer things, the spelling of one of the author's name, Linus, reminds you of the open-source software, Linux. (Relax! I didn't realize it either when I came across the book for the first time. Hahaha...!!) The fact that my favorite author called Banana Yoshimoto recommended this book on her web diary encouraged me to give it a try. (By the way, the picture you can look at on the left side is the English edition and the link brings you to Amazon.com. I read the Japanese edition.)

The book is basically about how his habit to play with his computer has turned out to be one of the great inventions in the history of the IT industry. Moreover, he rebuilt the business style and working style and he made us realize the basic and simple fact of human-being, we love to do what each of us loves. Moreover, we are likely to be good at doing what you love and it often ends up being able to do your best.

So, even though he often is asked why he's successful or how he intended to make it happen, his answer would always be that I do it just for fun. When you hear the story like his, what comes to your mind would be the fact that not everyone would be like him. And that was exactly what I thought after reading the book. However, I can imagine it would be awesome that everyone makes his/her own living by doing what you love. I really hope that it would be realized some day, and I do think that the birth of the Internet encourages everyone to do what you love to do as your job.

Alright, it's finally the time to chat!

For those of you who are coming to the chat, see you there!

For the rest of you, see you soon! ^^

A New Thing I've Been Learning Through The Semester

Hello, everyone~!

As July is about to end very soon, I recall the exciting feeling that I had last year about going to AGU 2006 program! I presume this year's participants are already excited about it, too! Even though I would not be there, I'm already looking forward to talking to you through the online chat, reading what you guys do in the US on blogs, and hopefully meeting you guys face to face in Japan after coming back!

Well, I would like to talk about the thing I've been learning lately, CCNA. Have you heard of it? It's a training program conducted by Cisco Systems, and the word "CCNA" stands for "Cisco Certified Network Associate". Some of you might wonder why on earth I'm learning about this kind of thing because the department I belong to(which is International Politics, Economics, and Communication) and the things I've studied have nothing to do with IT or something like that. However, contrary to people's expectation about what I've learned, don't you think it's great for me to be able to have knowledge about networking?

As more and more people have realized how important it has been and will be for us to always connect with each other, I think it would be useful to have knowledge about how we can get connected with each other. That's why I decided to take the class. I would not get a credit when I finish the class, but I absolutely think it is worth learning not only because it's for free (Yay!) but also I have given the opportunity to meet the people from the departments such as Integrated Information Technology and Electrical Engineering and Electronics. Some of them are graduate students. They are the people I wouldn't have encountered if I just go and attend the classes in Aoyama campus, so it's quite interesting for me to talk to them and I'm really grateful for their knowledge about what we do. Most importantly, every time I have difficulties doing the tasks and resolving the problems, they always help me!

These things are the devices and the cables I deal with in the class. There are personal computers, routers which helps information go to the right places, and the cables which connect the devices physically. What I learn is to connect them with each other properly, and to learn about how to operate them through the software. These days, being connected through the Internet has been taken for granted, but we won't be able to get connected unless the infrastructure for it has been properly developed. So, I think not only engineers but also the people who connect to the Internet need to learn about this kind of thing. ^^

I'm a bit sad that many of my friends had no idea about what I talked about today on this blog, but I guess that's how students with majors in the school of humanities would respond because in my opinion they basically don't need to know the thing like that. Moreover, they are likely to regard the people who are familliar with computer as "Otaku" (In English, I guess it's "geek"). So despite the fact that they usually get connected through the Internet, they don't think that having knowledge about computer is cool or useful....I just don't know why. As for me, I definitely think that being good at using computer is great and very fun!

Anyway, I've enjoyed what I'm learning and that's all that counts!

Alright, that's all for today!
See you soon~