Welcome to Costa Rica/ Manila/Tokyo Report!

For a year, I've been writing "Costa Rica/ Manila Report" in Japanese since I set out for the MA program for international peace studies at the United Nation’s mandated University for Peace (UPeace) in April 2007. It was right after I bid a farewell to my super busy days at a management consulting firm in Tokyo.

The report started as a handy tool to update what was happening around me for my family and friends in Japan. However, the way I now I see it is something different; while it still is an important means for me to communicate with my family and friends back home, it has become somethig extremely crucial that connects me to the world as well as to the Japanese society, from where I’ll never be able to detach myself.

For me, to realize that how everything in this world is inextricably connected to each other was completely mind-blowing experience that changed my whole view of life. Although it was rather a gradual process, it was amazing how things started to make sense so naturally. While I was aware that words alone, especially of mine, could never grasp the whole complexity of the world, at that time, I really felt the need to convert my feelings into something deliverable. Since then, writing has helped me greatly to understand more about the world as well as myself, even though sometimes it ends up in leaving me in more confusion and chaos.

“Interconnectedness,” I mean here, is about sensing the sweat of farmers harvesting at a huge banana plantation in rural Costa Rica when you buy imported cheap bananas at your neighbor supermarket. It is also about extending your imagination to a 3 year old Filipina girl patiently waiting for her mother, who only comes back home once a year at Christmas time for 2 weeks, when you see a cleaning lady at a public bathroom in Tokyo.

I believe that this sense of “interconnectedness” is what enables people to nurture “sympathy” within them towards things around, and that is what can change the world. I do not hesitate to say that this is the central and the only theme of the whole report. The beauty and complexity of the world, and our responsibility that is entailed are what I wish myself to be always aware of. It is also something that I’m willing to struggle rest of my life to thrust into the consciousness of my society, one of the most beautiful and materialistic societies in the world.

Some may as well think that I’m overly presumptuous or idealist. But I cannot escape from being one, as a person who was extremely fortunate to be given an opportunity to take a little break from the hectic days in metropolitan Tokyo in order to reconsider what I really want to pursuit in my life.

Now, I'm more and more excited that I can finally share this space with my friends without borders of language. I’d like to thank my classmates at UPeace for patiently keep encouraging me to start one.

As you may already see, this report is not necessarily about my daily life, and therefore, it may not be updated as often as the “normal” blog should be. Moreover, things here are mostly the translation of my original blog in Japanese, “Costa Rican/Manila report”: http://d.hatena.ne.jp/sayakot/?of=0. Therefore, please be noted that some of the articles are written on the assumption that the readers are people living in Japanese society.

Finally, please feel free to make any comments or requests for clarification or anything. I sincerely wish that this online space will grow to be a global platform of interconnection.