Category: Life

It’s been a while since I posted a journal on my blog here. I’ve been doing well as always! How have you been?

Just to let everyone know that I’ve been vaccinated since mid September. That means, I am ready to do my job as a tour guide! In Japan, we have much fewer people who tested for COVID-19 than that we had before August this year.

Up until now, more than 70% of us Japanese have been vaccinated and people are now free to go out for shopping, gathering, sightseeing and so on as long as they are careful not to get infected to the virus. We are trying to get back to the normal life that we used to do before the pandemic, though we have to put a mask on and keep our hands clean and get vaccinated.

Now is the time for you to enjoy sightseeing before we have another restriction such as “State of emergency”. So, should you are looking for a reliable tour guide, please feel free to contact me via email / WhatsApp / LINE

Email: schingo.tk@gmail.com
WhatsApp: +81 90 1976 1812
LINE: Hashizaki Schingo / 090 1976 1812

We have a rainy season usually from June to July here in Kyushu. It can last for 1 month – 1.5 months depending on the year’s meteorological conditions, which we can never know.

We had comparatively longer rainy season but with less amount of rain this year, which started in the middle of May and ended in the middle of July. Yes, it went on for 2 months this time round.

But actually it turned out the rainy season hasn’t finished yet. We are having very unusual rainy days in the middle of August, which have brought floods and landslides in many villages/towns/cities across Japan. I am deeply saddened to hear the losses of the people who died in these disasters caused by this unusual rains. We need to be prepared anytime.

My family and my neighbours are all safe here in Gokanosho. Though some of the roads are blocked due to landslides, we can even go out for shopping to the nearest town Hitoyoshi and Yatsushiro, which takes us 1 hour to get by car.  Unfortunately, the the only road directly leads us to Kumamoto has been blocked due to a landslide or something.

Anyway, I am safe here and have been surviving  somehow. Makes sure to call/email me if you are planning on a trip to Japan in the future. Until then, stay safe and healthy!

August is about to be over. It was really hot and less rainy, unlike this July when we had a lot more rains than usual years. Everything is worse this year, I believe this year 2020 is the worst for my 44-year-life.  We have had COVID, business depression (to come), natural disasters and so on…

The only one good thing happened recently for me was that we couldn’t host the Olympic games in Tokyo this year. You might say “What are you talking about? You should be happy if you have it for your business!” Yes, that’s true, but our government used to aim to have 40 million foreign tourists visit Japan in 2020 and Tokyo Olympics 2020 was supposed to be a trigger to it. My point is that 40 million would be obviously too much for our country, to begin with. Our government focused only on the number of tourists, not the profit from them and quality of businesses. We had around 30 million foreign tourists in 2019, which was considered successful for the government and a few business people. But some of us know many of those who were making quite a lot of money here in Japan were Chinese business people who don’t follow our law or pay taxes to our government. And unfortunately Japan didn’t face this problem but faced people like us and control our small businesses strictly. I’d say this is corruption of power in the government, by those who stay under the umbrella of PM Abe. PM Abe had a real strong leadership with clear and understandable policies, but they all ended up being abused by his FRIENDS. Now he is going to resign soon for his chronic disease, Ulcerative Colitis, that once forced him to resign from his first position as PM and Cabinet in 2005.

I don’t blame him, he tried to be a great leader with a strong leadership, who we rarely had before him. But also he triggered the change of Japan’s society in the worse way, the great difference between the poor and the rich, by letting his friends act freely. Power corrupts easily during a long-term administration, as we saw in history. I learnt it by deriving knowledge from Chinese history such as “Records of the Grand Historian of China”.