Welcome to the English section of my fortune telling site. Since I put up my signboard "Bilingual Palmistry" in English, many clients who are very good at English have come to both my office in the coffee house and my office in the fascinating building. This section is for Japanese who can handle English as well as native speakers. The topic here is not limited to fortune telling. I may rewrite the topics used in my Japanese site.

We often say that the present situation is advantageous or disadvantageous. However, in reality, there is neither advantage nor disadvantage in any given situation. Regarding the situation as disadvantageous makes it disadvantageous. It all depends on how we accept or how we grasp the situation.
To be born poor or handicapped is not "unfair". It becomes unfair only because we perceive it as unfair. The key to overcoming this is to always regard the present situation as your starting point, your best starting point. The next step is to think about where you can go from here. As soon as you accept that the present is the best, it really becomes the best. If we perceive the present as the worst, it becomes just that. The situation you find yourself in is not the major problem, but rather your perception of it. With the right mental attitude you can make any given situation your best. By right mental attitude I mean to have a sense of gratitude regardless of the situation. If you feel grateful for it then the situation becomes your best situation. ( a trial translation from a Japanese book, the Discovery of the Providence by Yasuyuki Sato who is an excellent teacher of self help but unknown to westerners ) 12/5

Sometimes I enjoy watching family video with my young daughter. The other day, we saw a wonderful video that depicts America in the mid nineteenth century. It was "Little Women" or "Wakakusa Monogatari". It is based on Louisa May Alcott's famous novel and stars Winona Ryder as Jo, Claire Danes as Beth, Susan Sarandon as their mother, and so on. The music by Thomas Newton lends marvelous atmosphere to the story. I highly recommend seeing this video if you have not yet seen it.

The story is about the four daughters of the March family. The central character is Jo March, who wants to become a writer. Among the sisters, it is Jo that reflects the author herself. The story begins during the Civil War. The sister's struggle to become adult women can be compared with Banyan's Pilgrim's Progress. Louisa May Alcott was very influenced by this work.

The story takes place in Concord Massachusetts. At that time American transcendentalism, a philosophical movement innovated by Ralph Waldo Emerson, was flourishing. Although not conspicuous, the ideals of transcendentalism are subtly reflecting throughout the story. For example, enduring poverty, yet giving a neighbor immigrant family their Christmas breakfast. To understand this further I checked the original version of Little Women.

At the beginning of the story, three of the daughters are grumbling about their poverty. Only the third daughter, Beth accepts the situation. -- "We've got Father and Mother, and each other," said Beth contentedly from her corner. -- It is this viewpoint that enriches the story psychologically, expressing the wholeness of human emotion. Both sides of human nature, self-centeredness and selflessness are manifested here. 11/10

       Last Friday I handed in my rebuttal documents to the Patent Office in Kasumigaseki in order to refute a rejected trademark. The trademark was for my original meditation diagram. After this business, I began to feel an ominous hunch, and felt I needed to call Mr.Baba. Mr.Baba was an elderly lawyer. He was the father of my middle school friend, so our acquaintance had been a long one.
      Due to his advanced age I wondered if he was still practicing or not. I called his office but as there was no answer, I visited his office in Toranomon and found it completely dark. I called his family as soon as I returned home. I then discovered that he had suffered a stroke a few days earlier while he was at work in his office. It was a sudden death. The funeral will be held this coming Monday.
      Since I learned of his death I have been thinking about him and his life. As far as political views were concerned, he sympathized with communism, which was not my style. However we could share a common interest in classical music. In his later years, after a long appreciation of both Mozart and Beethoven, he developed more of an interest in Johan Sebastian Bach. As Bach was my favorite composer, I gave him some information, told him which CDs I considered to be the best, etc.

Now I would like to send him one of Bach's best pieces, the final chorus of St. Matthew's Passion: "We kneel down with tears…. And the weary soul finds rest. Sleep gently, and sleep in peace. The eyes fall into doze with supreme satisfaction." Until his last days, he was like an eternal youth, seeking after truth both in humanity and in art. I cannot but help believe in reincarnation for I feel I will see him again in future lives. 10/11

I first became interested in fortune telling while still a middle school student. Where I grew up, near Waseda University, there were a lot of bookstores. One day, when I was browsing I found a book of Face Reading written by Saigan Ohwada. The book was full of pictures of human features. After purchasing this book, I started my own research to discover if there was any truth to it. The faces I examined were not my school colleagues but adults coming into contact with our household and the middle school teachers I knew. The result was so amazingly accurate. For example, I found deep crow's feet (wrinkles at the outer corner of the eye) on my father's face. According to the book, it means that a bad wife annoys the husband. It just so happens that my father was tormented by my mother's unyielding character. 9/26

　　I have another English web site called "The Paradigm of Christ" that you can access easily: http://www.actus.org/. People from all over the world have sent me comments about my philosophical writings. Some comments are positive, others are negative and narrow minded. Today, I had a real good comment from someone in the States. Brief though it was, it certainly moved my heart. I 'd like to share my joy with my visitors. It is as follows: This is the most amazing philosophical site I have ever seen. I am very glad that I have found it, and it brings together Christianity with modern philosophy. It's extremely brilliant. 9/21

　　　A middle aged woman who works as a cook visited my office last night. She was not really satisfied with her outsourcing status. These days, outsourcing is popular even in the world of restaurants' kitchen. Wherever she goes, she cannot but come across those cooks arrogantly proud of themselves assuming that they themselves are the best cooks in the world. Pride and prejudice are the archetypal quality of human nature. Thus, humbleness and innocence are always important as I have suggested in the diagram I developed. 9/7

I have a small daughter named Rayna. She is going to be five years old in December. Last Sunday afternoon, for the first time in her life, she saw a movie on the big screen. It was “The Prince of Egypt”, the story of Moses in the Old Testament. As she is so accustomed to watching animated videos, she seemed not so surprised as we expected. When we were small, the experience of seeing movies in the movie theater was much greater. In the theater, I used to ask my father “Is that a good guy or a bad guy?” Even if I did not understand the story, I understood that there was a conflict between good and evil. 8/31

As soon as you click, you will see if there is any new information or not. This is a quite effective web strategy. My Japanese site was used to set up this way accidentally. This allows the visitors easy access to new information. I noticed this only after one of my clients came back to me after four months and told me that it was her daily routine to open my site just to see if she could find anything new. 8/30

　　　When I was a middle school student, my second uncle who was at that time a student at Hibiya high school loaned me a book named "Anne of Green Gables" I assume that many of my clients have read this book. The story was so interesting for me that I couldn't pu it down. Then I went through the second and the third of the series. Here is a web site dedicated to the translator by her grand children.

http://club.pep.ne.jp/~r.miki/ 8/29