My First Japanese Talk

I’m using that term “talk” cautiously, because I’ve had public effects and appeared on TV in Japanese before, but in terms of “standing at a podium giving a prepared presentation in Japanese,” my first time was October 21st, 2025.

A small audience of older Japanese people sitting on folding chairs in a gymnasium-style hall. — The Crowd

The Hikari Community Development Support Center, which hosts local clubs and plans public events, invited me to be part of their annual local seminar series. I think my book and city newspaper column caught their eye, but it might also be that two former students from my business English days are on staff.

Whatever the case, I was scheduled to speak from 10 to 11:30, with a short break in the middle. I prepared a two-part talk, “Rediscovering Yamaguchi Prefecture.” The name is a play on my old TV segment, and featured since if the things I love most about this place.

Mostly, it was some of my favorite pictures taken here. Most of them are on this site somewhere.

I also included a segment on local sake, of course.

I’d say it went pretty well, but my Q&A segment ended up being way too long because I was just too damned tired to keep talking. And no one wanted to ask questions.

Anyway, they took a survey of the audience afterwards and the reaction was really good.

A Japanese language survey. — Survey response rate 96% (50/52 people)
Seminar rating: 42% Very Good, 54% Good, 2% Average.

I had a bunch of 2L sized prints left over from photo club meetings that I put out for people to take home and almost all were give afterwards, so that’s felt good, too.

It was a lot of fun, but lord, how draining…

Across the sea

I stepped out of the gym and the sky was on fire. I had to race to the beach to get an unimpeded shot.

A shot over the sea of a brilliant red and orange sun setting over an island. There are clouds blotting out much of the sky. — Seto sunset

Waterside

In the foreground, a white egret swoops downward onto a concrete embankment. Beyond it to the right, a small black-backed wagtail takes flight to escape. — Routed

Two mottled brown and beige ducks swim atop a small river. Some reeds are in the back. Their heads are pulled in tightly, their bills pointed downward. — Routed

Book Review – Jibuntoka, Nai Kara

It is probably a bit silly, reviewing in English a book only available in Japanese, but maybe if I can get people interested, it’ll get translated.

「自分とか、ないから」の表紙。黄色いバックで、いくつくかの仏教の偉い人がいる。 The Japanese cover to Jibuntoka,nai kara. — 自分とか、ないから/There is no me, really

Anyway, this is a book about “Eastern Philosophy” (really, almost exclusively Buddhist thought) written by failed Japanese comedian Shinmei P. It’s real core, though, is its emphasis on introducing the important ideas that offered the writer himself ease during his worst lows.

And he did have lows. Much of his life story is in this book, but he started out at an elite university as a great student, but it was all show. He killed it at interviews, but then couldn’t manage to work in teams so failed as an employee.

Everything he tried was a failure. His marriage, his entertainment career, everything. And he eventually ended up holed up in his room, reading philosophy to try and figure out the emptiness he felt.

Apparently, this book was born from an article he wrote about how, after reading fifty books about Eastern Philosophy, his own identity just stopped mattering.

And that is what guides his selection of thinkers (and I apologize for calling the Buddha, Siddhartha Gautama himself, a “thinker”) here. It’s all about emptiness, the negation of self, and the pursuit of freedom from attachment.

The good thing is, this book was overseen by an actual professor of religion, Kamata Tōji, so it’s not just a goofy listicle style of book (although it is that, too).

Personally, I found it a really accessible intro to some important Indian, Chinese, and Japanese figures in the history of Buddhism.

I really liked it, and it wasn’t that hard at all to read. Good stuff!