Study in Japan

Author: Isamu Hayashi

1

May 2, 1984, I arrived in Tokyo, Japan by noon by Chinese airline. This was a three and half hour trip from Beijing to Tokyo. When I got out from the luggage hall I found there was some one holding a white panel in the entrance on which my name and my college name were written on it. I went up and spoke with that person. That was Professor Kunihoko Ichikawa who would be my future teacher in Japan. He wore a gray suit and looked like he was 50 yeas old with a tall, thin body and sparkling eyes. He talked with me politely and let me ride his car with my big luggage. When he drove his car and left the Tokyo Narida international airport building climbing the high bridge connected to highway I had my first glance at Japan. At that moment I thought that I was really in Japan.

When we approached Tokyo, I saw endless tall buildings covering with land as well as sky. The highway was very crowded with bumper to bumper traffic. When we was passing Kabuki cho, Shinjuku district it was about 8:00m pm. I was surprised that there were so many skyscrapers, neon lights and it was so brilliantly illuminated just like the day time.

The first day I stayed in Professor Ichikawa’s home. His home was a detached house with its own yard. It was very neat, clean and elegant. His wife was a beautiful middle aged woman with white skin. She was refined and courteous. It seemed that she had been waiting for us for a long time. She invited me to take a dinner with them. After dinner she suggested that I took a bath and led me to the bath room. I entered the bath room and under a dim light I saw a Japanese style wood bath tub filled with hot water and steam was rising from it. Mrs. Ichikawa had prepared a lovely bath including a bath towel and even branch fresh flowers in a little jar.

The next day professor Kuji Takahashi came to professor Ichikawa’s home. He was not a tall man. There were deep wrinkles on his forehead. His eyes slightly narrowed. The smile on his face was normal and dull. That face was really an ancient Chinese face that I remembered seeing in some book or play. He discussed something with professor Ichikawa, but I did not understand a single word. Though I had studied Japanese language in my college and also had taken the Japanese reading skill class during my master degree course but now when I was really in Japan I still could not understand even a single sentence. Finally it seemed they had reached some kind of result. Professor Ichikawa turned to me and told me that they would like me to stay at the house owned by professor Takahashi’s sister. They drove me there later that day.

I met with professor Takahashi’s sister, Yuri Takahashi at her house. She was about 60 years old wearing a white shirt and purple colored skirt. She was brimming over laughing and talking with humor so brightly to me just like meeting with her old friend. That mood made me feel I was at my own home. Actually we met with each other once in Beijing. A student of Harbin Industrial University who was studying in Japan, Zhao Tong had arranged our meeting for me in Beijing. We met with her in Jingshan park, Beijing during her trip to China. It seemed that they had been very considerate about where I could be settled in Japan.

Yuri Takahashi led me to the second floor to see the room that she prepared for me. That was a two story house. The stairway was outside style. Getting to the second floor there was a deck surrounding by railing led to a row of suites. The second suite was for me. Inside that suite there was a bath room, a kitchen, and a bedroom. When I entered the bedroom my first glance was at a prepared bed on the floor. It was just a thick cushion put on the Japanese style Tatami floor with a wooly blanket covered on it. It looked very comfortable to me. There was a study table and an armed chair. Behind the chair there was a dark brown colored tall and narrow book shelf with nothing on it. There were two framed European style paintings decorating the wall. The room was entirely in Japanese style with the natural colored wood frame and the warm cream colored wall. Everything was neat and clean. I felt very glad for all of these things that she prepared for me. Though I felt excited and would like to express my feeling to thank her, what we could communicate was limited because of the language barriers. I had brought a quilt that I put in my big suitcase. I felt I no longer needed it any more.

Yuri Takahashi’s house was located in Sandagaya of Sibuya district. It was very near the Sophia University. I could take the Central Line of Japan Railway to the station of Yotuya where the university situated. There were only two stops to get there. (Sandagaya – Shinanomachi - Yotuya) It would take 5 minutes on foot from the house to the Sandagaya station, 5 minutes by train from Sandagaya to Yotuya station, and 5 minutes from Yotuya station to the Sophia University campus on foot. It was totally 15 minutes trip. If I preferred to go the whole way on foot it would take about 25 minutes to get the university.

The house was also very near to Shinjuku where many tall buildings and big department stories were located there. It was just taken two stops on the Central line to the opposite direction. (Sandagaya – Yoyogi – Shinjuku)

2

I went to Sophia University by the JR central line the first day. As soon as I walked out the Yotuya station I saw the buildings of the university. The engineering department was in the No.1 building. Entering that building there was a row of professor offices along with the corridor downstairs. On the door of each room there was the professor’s name with an indicator under it. The indicator would show if the professor was in or absent. I quickly found the office of professor Ichikawa and confirmed its indicator showed he was in his office. Then I knocked on the door lightly. He answered the door and asked me to come in. He stood up from his chair and told me that he would show me around the department.

Professor Ichikawa led me to the laboratory of the control engineering department. There I saw their experiment projects. There was a simulation system of an industrial process control that was using the multivariable adaptive control theory. There were also several computers for the simulations of the adaptive control system. A few students were busily working on their projects with these computers.

It was suggested to me that I join the seminar of professor Ichikawa’s master degree students. Then we went back to his office. All his students had been gathered there. Professor Ichikawa introduced them to me one by one. There were 8 students in total. Among them there was a doctor degree student named Amano who was a tall man and looked slightly shy. There were another 7 students who were in their master degree course. They were Tominaga, Misawa, Suzuki, Amano II, Amano small, Takashima, and Sato. As soon as I entered the room I felt their curious and friendly sights coming from the different directions. I thought that they would be my Japanese classmates.

I was sitting there and was just listening to their discussion. It seemed that they were discussing some of the topics about the multivariable control theory. One of the students read a single paragraph of an essay and then the rest of the students talked about it in turn. Professor Ichikawa sometimes interrupted the discussion with some of his comments while he was hearing the seminar. I could not follow them. I did not know what they were exactly talking about.

After the seminar professor Ichikawa called another group of students and other teachers to join us. They were the professor Tamura, six of his master degree course students, several undergraduate students. Professor Yamane and assistant professor Sasakawa were also joined us. Some of the students had to stand outside the room because the room was too small to hold so many people. Professor Ichikawa declared that they would have a welcome meeting here for a new doctor degree student coming from China . At that time the attention of all the students turned to me. I felt a kind of friendly and expected feeling was running through the room. Professor Ichikawa turned his head to me with the smile and asked me to do a self introduction. I did a very simple self introduction in English. I talked about my situation and how I came to Japan . After a short silence the students asked me their questions one by one. They asked about the situations of the university in China , what subjects we had there, how long the student courses were, and what kind of the student life we had in China , etc. The atmosphere was very active. They all understood English and could speak English as well. After question and answer process some students brought beers and snacks. We began to drink, eat and free chat. After all these activities all the members stood up and clapped their hands with great sound. These strong and warm hand clapping made me feel the distance between me and them suddenly got to zero.  

After the meeting Tominaga, Misawa, and Amano II invited me for a cup of coffee.I followed them out off the campus and went to a small street near Yotuya station.  Many street lights illuminated the area and many small restaurants were open along the street. We entered one of the small restaurants. It looked like something between an ice-cream shop and coffee shop. We were sitting at the table and looked at each other in a friendly way. Though we could only communicate limitedly I was overwhelmed in this friendly atmosphere. I felt there were not any differences with my Chinese classmates in my college in China . Tomanaga looked like very gentle and cultivated and with a friendly smile to me on his face; At first glance I knew that Misawa was an active person. It seemed to me he liked to talk, when he was talking his facial expression was very rich and his smile was always with humor. Amano was a silence person and he was amiable with only a few words.

Tominaga said to me that he would like bring me to Tokyo Ueno Zoo and also he invited me to join their trip to the Fuji Mountain later that month. I was very glad that it was sure that my life in Tokyo would not be boring at all!

3

The first thing that I faced when I arrived in Japan was the language issue. For understanding the Japanese language as soon as possible I had to put my greatest effort on it. I planed to buy a small tape recorder for recording the discussions during our seminar so that I could be able to repeatedly listen to it after school. I went to the electrical shopping street, Akihabara. Akihabara was an area near the JP station of Akihabara on Yamanote line where I could get there by transferring train at the Idabashi station of the JR central line and then it only took one station to get there. That street was filled with all kind of electrical stores. There were some big scale stores that occupied the whole 5 to 6 floor building, middle scale stores, and the small shops all along the street. I could find all kinds of electrical appliances, medical devices, computer hardware and software. There were big, colorful neon signs, store name boards, and advertisements everywhere. The large variety of advertisements on the wall, on the surface of the street, and hanging on the buildings were blotting out the sky and the earth. That nearly made me dazzled. The whole street was blocked. No any vehicle was allowed to pass through. A sign was hanging on the middle of street: the heaven of pedestrians. There were many people on the street. Though it was not the situation that I could say people was jostling each other in a crowd, it was the situation that the street was filled with people everywhere. Inside the stores there were many people as well. I was very excited, everything was attractive to me. I was entering one store after the other. Finally I found a special counter for tape recorders upstairs in a big store. There was large variety of tape recorders. The shop staff was very polite. That was much different with the situation in Beijing, China at that time. He showed me all kind of the smaller tape recorders and explained me every detail in English about each type of those tape recorders. I chose a small typed, black color tape recorder made by SONY and purchased it at the price of 10,000 Japanese yen.

In the university our seminar would be held four times a week. The discussion was on two essays of the control theories. The essays were selected by professor Ichikawa from IEEE journal (Institute of Electrical Electronics Engineers journal). These essays were on the advanced topics about the newest theories of control engineering. One of these essays was written by the author, Goodwin. It was on the mathematical model analysis of multiple variable control systems. On Mondays and Wednesdays our seminar was for the discussion of Goodwin’s essay and on Tuesdays and Thursdays for discussion of another essay. The time we spent for our seminar was two hours but everyone would spend much more than that time for prepare the seminar. Because we should understand the contents of the essay before the meeting by reading the paragraphs and deriving the results. The essay mentioned the results and the simple process how the results were derived. Most of time the details were omitted for simplicity. What we should do was to finish the whole deriving process. This was a difficult and a very time consuming task for every student. It required us to follow the author’s idea to prove the result mathematically step by step. Usually for the two hour meeting, perhaps only two or three paragraphs of that essay, we might spend more than 10 hours to prepare for the meeting. In order to For understand the basic concepts of the author’s essay we might read several other essays written by that author and look for possible related references. This activity was very time consuming.

When I was in my master’s degree course in the North-east Heavy Machinery Institute in China there were more practices than theories. My project was micro-computer application on industrial processes. In the Sophia University most of my tasks were learning the control theories. That made me feel like to climb a steep mountain, I needed more effort and power to go forward. The good thing was that I could read the essays in English and in Japanese relatively easier than communicating with others in Japanese. Without big difficulties I had begun to study by myself. Each time before the seminar I read the related essay several times and tried to derive the theoretical result step by step, and wrote down my notes on my notebook. After the meeting I would listen to the record over again, try to understand their discussion and then made my notes. If I could not understand one time I would try another time. If I could not understand the second time I would try the third time. Sometimes I tried over and over again until reaching the better understanding. This kind of study usually made it hard to go to bed earlier than 2:00 AM. I was lucky that I could fall into sleep as soon as I lay down on my bed. I did not need get up early in the morning because I only needed to go to school in a limited time. I could arrange my own schedule freely.

Professor Ichikawa told me that there were some kinds of language programs in our university that could support the foreign student. He suggested that I might apply for the Japanese language course. Following his instructions, I applied the Japanese language course provided by the university. Soon the university approved my application and gave me permission to join a Japanese class on Ichigaya campus. This Japanese language course was held twice a week. The first day that I joined this course I found that all of the students except for me were from the west. The course started from learning Chinese characters (Kanji). I was coming from the nation that invented the Kanji. To other students I was a person who could be their teacher for Chinese characters but in this class I was supposed to study with them from the beginning A, B, C of kanji. How could I sit there! I went to the class only twice and then I quit it. At that time it was very clear to me with my partial understanding of Japanese there was no way could improve it except by learning it by myself.

I began to watch TV everyday. Everyday at 7:00 PM there was a domestic and international news program in NHK (Japan national TV station) channel. At 9:00 PM there was movie program in the Fuji TV station. At 12:00AM there were the old movies or foreign ones. These were all very attractive movies that I could not watch the whole version of them in China such as ‘Across the Angry River’, ‘Watching my Home Town’, ‘Sand Ware’, and ‘Love between Live and death’, etc. There were also many movies that I had never known in China, such as, ‘A Man is Always Painful’, ‘The Dancing Girl of Yizu’ and etc. When I was deeply attracted by these movies I suddenly found I began to understand their conversations. I was so excited for it. I found that when I understood the situation I could understand what they said. It seemed this was not true by the common sense. Normally only you would understand the words first and then their meanings. I found that when I understood the situation and clearly knew what the actor was supposed to say and then I could grasp the meaning of the words immediately when the actor spoke. Watching TV certainly helped me to improve my Japanese.

4

After I arrived in Japan I had called Shoko Yamada who once worked as a foreign teacher teaching Japanese language in my college in China. I had attended her lecture during my master degree course though I was not a registered student in her class.

She came to my residence the 5th day that I came to Tokyo. I went to Sandagaya station to welcome her. She was a lovely young lady, around her late 20s with white skin, medium height, very bright with a warm heart. She could speak perfect Chinese. By my understanding she once worked in a big book store named Chiyoda book store in Kanda book store street, Tokyo before going to China, and after two years teaching in China she came back to her previous store again.

After entering my room she said to me that this was a very good environment and the best location for staying in Tokyo. We talked a lot about how to live in Tokyo, about her work and about my study at the university. I was very glad to have a chance to talk to a native Tokyo person in my native Chinese language. Finally our conversation began to focus on my current situation. I told her that I am facing two difficulties. One was the language barrier and another was the economical difficulty. As an exchange student my tuition fees had been waived by the Sophia University but I had borrowed some money for the first year expenses. After I got to Tokyo I found that this amount of money was not even enough to pay the expensive living costs in Tokyo for a year. This amount of money could only pay my rent for one year. At the beginning she looked surprised about my financial situation but after a while she said to me that solving this issue was not an easy thing, but we could talk later concerning this problem and the solutions.

I invited her to have dinner with me at my home. She insisted that she would like to invite me to go out to dinner. Then we went out to the small street nearby and found a small restaurant. We ordered the Japanese noodles. While we were eating we talked and talked with great joy. After eating we went to a coffee shop named Lunoaru in French, there she told me that she could teach me Japanese each week. She told me that she was just starting to reading a book. Its name was ‘The Great Land’. It was about a story of a Japanese war orphan’s life in China. It seemed she liked China and she was interested in everything about China. I felt she was really a lovely lady!

The next morning after Miss Shoko Yamada visited me I met Mrs. Yuri Takahashi the room downstairs in the residence building. She was smiling to me and told me that she had known my situation from Miss Yamada. She told me that she would like me to concentrate on my study in the university and not be bothered by the financial issues, for this reason she would not take rent from me. She said to me her father was a chemistry scientist with a doctor degree who invented a method of taking cod liver oil from a whale. She hoped the Chinese students like me could finish my study successfully at her home. This greatly moved me. I thanked her for her kindness.

Before I came to her house there was also another Chinese scholar who was came from Harbin Industrial University and had stayed at her house for two years. His name was Meng Fan Hua. He got his Ph.D degree in hydraulic control engineering in the Sophia University. According to Mrs. Yuri Takahashi Mr. Meng was the 74th generation son of Mengzi, the great philosopher of ancient China more than two thousands years.

My upstairs next door neighbor, Zhao Tong was another student working for his doctor degree in Tokyo Industrial University.

Mrs. Yuri was very proud that so many Chinese students were staying at her house and she was always saying that her house was a preparation school for doctoral degree students from China. She told me that when Mr. Meng first came to her house her mother was still alive. Her mother said to Mr. Meng that she always wondered why the Chinese students came to Japan to study. What could they study from Japan? We Japanese people learned everything from China for many generations. China was our teacher!

Mrs. Yuri’s heart was very, very big. It contained the history and the relations between Japan and China, and the older and younger generations of the two nations.

5

The normal seminar had been finished. All the students had gone from professor Ichikawa’s office. Professor Ichikawa asked me to leave for a while. He would talk about the study plan for me.

“Sai San, I suggest that you take some of my classes about the modern control theory and get related points. Though this is not absolutely required for your course but I think it will strengthen your knowledge. Here are two of my books about the modern control theories. You can use them. I am just starting to give lectures in the class A and B of control theory. You can take both of these classes.” He said and then gave the books to me.

The books were in Japanese and their titles were Control theories Part I and Part II. One was green cover, another was red brown colored cover. I was very glad to have these books from my teacher. I thanked to him and asked.

“What my thesis should be? ”

“I am still discussing your thesis with my assistant teacher Muto. He will come back from Canada later this year. We will decide your direction after he coming back to Japan. At any rate you still need to get familiar with our topics and some of the fundamentals. Please take time for those things now.” “I have asked professor Tamura to arrange an assistant work for you. I think it will help you to get some extra financial support. You can ask professor Tamura about the details now if he is in his office.” He continued.

“Thank you.” I said to him.

I left his office and knocked on the next door.

“Please come in.” Professor Tamura’s voice was coming from the inside.

I got into his office. As soon as he saw me he began to tell me about the assistant work.

“The work is that No.1: monitoring the examination and No.2: mark the examination papers. The subject is liner algebra. There are about 100 students taking part in this exam. The examination date is tomorrow morning 9:00 a.m. Are you sure you are able to do this work? ” professor Tamura asked while smiling.

“Sure.” I answered decisively.

“Ok. The room number is 208. Remember tomorrow morning 9:00 a.m. University will pay you for doing my teaching assistant work.”

“I will be there before 9:00 a.m.” I said to him and left his office.

Next morning when I entered the room 208 professor Tamura was already there. He was standing in front of the blackboard and watching the students coming. I said good morning to him and was standing beside him. At just 9:00 a.m. we started to pass the exam papers to each student. The room was an elevated stair style classroom and its space was very big. After passing the exam papers professor Tamura told all of the students with a loud voice the time limitation of the exam. The exam was two hours. At that time the whole room was very quiet. I walked from the front to the rear and then went back and forth watching the whole room. All the students lowered their heads on their papers.

After the linear algebra examination I collected all the papers and put them into my bag. At home I began to mark the papers. There were about 20 questions on the linear algebra examination paper. Firstly I did all questions by myself to get correct answer for each question and then I check each paper with my answer list. It took long time to finish this work.

University paid 12,000 Japanese yen (about $120 dollars) per month to me for this teaching assistant work. The examination was only held twice in half an academic year. So it was not a heavy work for me.

6

Every week I have a meeting with professor Ichikawa. He asked me to report my situation to him weekly about my study. One day he asked me to mention my studies in China in details.

“What was your master degree thesis?” he asked repeatedly.

“My master degree thesis was about industrial process control system design. The title was Microcomputer Tension Control System. We have a rolling mill in our laboratory as our testing object. It could manufacture the 300 mm aluminum strip with the thickness of 0.6 mm. The machine was consisted of three parts: the rolling part, the unrolling part and the rolling mill. The machine was driven by DC motors and a hydraulic system. The rolling mill presses the aluminum strip from the thickness 1.0 mm into 0.6 mm with a uniformed quality of shape without any waves on its edges. This was realized by controlling the tensions of the aluminum strip between the rolling part and unrolling part, and rolls pressures inside the rolling mill. We have the tension sensors before and after the rolling mill to measuring the distribution of the tension along the intersection of the strip. These sensors sent back the signals into the microcomputer through its A/D ports. Inside the microcomputer the program calculated the differences between the feedback values and the setting values, and used the differences as the input values of the PID regulator (proportion, integration and differential amplifier) . The PID regulator would give out the optimal output value to D/A port as microcomputer’s output to the power generation part. The power generation part was the SCR (Silicon Control Rectifier) system. It took the analog signal outputs from microcomputer as its input and generated the DC voltages to control the DC motors, realized the tension changes between the rolling part and unrolling part, and the pressure changes between the rolls of the rolling mill. The whole system was a closed loop automatic control system. The center role was the software part of the microcomputer system. The experimental results were excellent.” I mentioned the master degree project and then showed him my handwritten thesis. There was a diagram that could demonstrate the major idea very well. In my thesis there were more than 120 hand written pages. It was dated October 10, 1982.

“It sounds very interesting. How long did take you finish this project?” He asked.

“About two years.” I answered.

“Why so long?” He asked.

“Because the whole process included many steps: design the microcomputer system (selecting modules and constructing the computer system); learning the assembly languages (Motorola M6809 microprocessor), programming and system testing. It took a long time to finish” “It’s a good job!” He said and continued.

“What kind of subjects that did you finish in your course?”

“I have mathematics such as complex function, probability, Laplas Transform, and also circuit theories, logic circuit theory, and modern control theories, etc. as the fundamentals.” I mentioned.

“Did you learn any thing about the adaptive control theory?” he asked.

“No.” I answered.

“It doesn’t matter. The adaptive control theories are just a branch of the modern control theories. You will have chance to learn it here.. ” He said.

“Here we are mainly focusing on multi-variable adaptive control theory. And before that we have the exact model matching theories as the fundamentals. I have six essays about the exact model matching theories.” He told me and then handed me some of the copies of his assays.

All his assays were published in the journal of the Japan Measurement and Control Theory Association.

Then he turned the topic to my Japanese. He asked me.

“Do you feel your Japanese has been improved?”

“Yes. I feel my hearing is improved, but I still feel some kind of difficulties when I am writing Japanese.” I said to him.

“Please pick up some of the paragraphs from the English assays that we are using currently and translate them into Japanese every day. I will help you correct your translation.” He said to me.

“Every day!” He added.

From that day I started a Japanese translation practice Marathon. Every day I copied a piece of English article and pasted it on the notebook, then translated the paragraphs from English into Japanese. After that I put my notebook on the table of professor Ichikawa. The next day picked up the previous one and put another notebook on his table. In side my notebook my translation sentences were corrected by professor Ichikawa with red colored circles, arrows, and lines along with the Japanese words or phrases. Sometimes even the whole sentence was rewritten by him. Reading carefully I could easily and clearly understand where my mistakes were and what the correct expressions were. Most of my mistakes were on the usage of Japanese prepositions.

With the time passing there were tens of the notebooks were full of my translations along with professor Ichikawa’s red ink corrections. Through this kind of practice I began to have a clear concept about Japanese language and to be able to write something independently in Japanese.

7

The Yamanote line of the Japan Railway, one of the busiest surface railways, is circling around the central area of Tokyo. The major stations on Yamanote line, such as Tokyo station, Shinjuku station, Shinagawa station, and Ueno station locate in the east, the west, the south, and the north points of it. The JR central line slices this round circle through middle of it and separates it into two parts. Tens of subway lines are going through the underground tunnels in three different layers and passing through the center area of Tokyo and then radiating to the other regions. The JR line and many other surface railway lines are also radiating from this central area to the far region of the 23 districts and 26 cities of the whole Tokyo area. Each transportation station is connecting with big or small business or commercial buildings, and underground shopping streets. The freeway network system of Tokyo with the three layers as well, surface, middle height, and higher elevated ways, is covering the whole Tokyo area like a web. Tokyo is real a big metropolitan.

Shinjuku is one of the commercial and business centers of Tokyo. There are several surface railways and three layers subways connected to Shinjuku station. This makes it become an important transportation node of Tokyo. More than 500,000 people are in and out of it every day. In the west part of the station area there are Keio and Odakyu department store buildings connected to the station through their underground floors, and there are many skyscrapers, such as Mitzui building, Sumitomo building, Yasuda Marine Insurance Building, also connect to the station through underground shopping streets. The whole area is become a huge multiple layer commercial and business world. Outside the east entrance of the station there were Isetan department store, big Kinokuniya book store, noisy Kabuki Cho and many, many shops and commercial buildings, criss-cross vertical and horizontal streets.

In the east entrance of Shinjuku station there was a multiple shop commercial building with more than ten floors named ALTA. It was a kind of building shared by many small stores. It was also a land mark at which many people liked to gather there. A very big television was amounted on its wall. It was endlessly showing the daily news and all kinds of advertisements. In the opposite direction there was Yodobashi Camera store. It had a large striking bill board that anyone could see it from anywhere in this area.

One of my friends had introduced me to do a part time job here. The first day I came here my friend led me to the building maintenance office in the basement. He introduced me to the manager, Mr. Takeda. Mr. Takeda was a short, thin and middle aged man. He seemed like a kind person and a good talker. He was excited for having me, a doctoral student from China working under him. He asked me to clean the 8th floor of that building.

When I went to that floor I saw it was a studio of the 8th channel of the Fuji TV station. The floor was huge. It seemed that it was some kind of wood floor. There were other two people that worked with me. One of them was also Chinese who came from Harbin. He told me that here was where Mr. Tamori produced his nude program. Mr. Tamori was a famous comic actor in Japan. I have seen some of his TV program. It usually broadcasted at midnight. The special point of his programs was the interview to the famous Japanese actors or actesses.

The floor cleaning work was very hard. The area was large. We cleaned all over it for about two hours and then waxed its surface. I was steaming with sweats

After the simple lunch we started again. Mr. Takeda asked me to clean the stairs. He showed me how to use a kind of special metal powder to put on the towel and then use the towel to clean the stairs. Mr. Takeda also worked with me. While we cleaned the stairs he told me that he once studied in the United States for economics in the 1950s. That was why he could speak English well. We talked about some thing about computer. He gave me a book named ‘The 5th Generation of Computer’ in Japanese. The time passed very fast. The first time I worked in Japan was a happy experience, but when I came back home I was exhausted and could not do anything any more. Working was very hard!

I wanted to develop some kind of resources that might support my study in later years in Japan. Working in Japanese society as a part time physical labor worker would be at the rate of 600 Japanese yen (about $5 US dollar) per hour at the year that I worked in ALTA.

8

The last day Mr. Misawa had taken his turn to give his lecture to the seminar. The center issue of the discussion was the decoupling topics of the multiple variable control system. Because some of the concepts and methods were fairly new and their proving processes were very complicated, our discussion was developed slowly and sometimes there was a long time pause between the discussions. I did not fully understand most of the concepts in that meeting. After the seminar I gathered all my questions and wrote down on my notebook

The next day in professor Ichikawa’s office there was the regular meeting between the professor and me. I asked the questions one after another to him.

Professor Ichikawa told me that when and why the decoupling issue was raised and who has been working on this field until nowadays and what are the major methods and concerns that they tried to use to solve the problems. Then he focused on how the yesterday’s author solved one of the issues in this field and how to mathematically prove his method. Some of the questions were fairly complicated and were really not easy to be answered, but he tried to explain the concepts as detailed as possible.

We could see a multiple variable system as an unknown black box with multiple inputs and multiple outputs. In order to design a controller to regulate it into optima situation, the decoupling is one of the basic steps to analyze the mathematical relations between input variables and output variables.

Imagine that there were multiple ropes tangled in a cluster. We tried to figure out which end related to which end. The decoupling was just a process to study and determine the relations between them.

Professor Ichikawa gave me a very clear lecture. After hearing it I began to see the rough picture of the decoupling issues. That made me very happy.

Professor Ichikawa said to me.

“I am little bit tired of talking too much today.”

“Thank you very much.” I said to him. I left his office with a great satisfaction.

I had been working at ALTA for 6 hours only on Saturday and Sunday since last time. This Saturday I went to ALTA again. Mr. Takeda assigned me to clean the floor. This time I was told to use a broom only to clean the trash on the shopping area from the first floor to the 7th floor. I am holding a long handle dustpan and a broom to start from the first floor. There were many customers passing by me and wandering around the stories in the building. I lowered my head and only paid attention to the ground. Actually inside the building there was seldom any big trash on the ground during the shopping hours, sometimes occasionally some one threw out a piece of paper or a cigarette butt on the ground.

While I swept the ground I also needed to take care of the wall, particularly around the elevator. The surfaces of the walls inside ALTA were made of glass mirrors. The wall around the elevator was constantly becoming dirty because when the most of the customers pushed the button they also left their finger prints on the wall around it. So every time I started another new floor the first thing was to check the wall around the elevator and clean it with a towel.

There was another worker named Chu also doing the same job as me. He was an old Chinese man, looked like he was in his 70s. He came from Hebei province of China as the Japanese relative. He told me that he came to Kagoshima of Japan several years ago and moved to Tokyo in recent years. It seemed that he had been working here for some time and knew everything here.

After Japan was defeated in World War II and the Japanese retreated back to Japan lots of Japanese children and relatives were left in China. In recent years those people began to seek the way to go back to their motherland. It seemed that Mr. Liu was one of those people.

“I will visit the Soap Land today.” He said.

“My wife let me to go. The visitors are from the 16 year old boy to 70 year old man. They all visit there.” He added.

The word, Soap Land means whore house.

“Is your wife a Chinese?” I asked.

“My wife is a Japanese. I married her in China. She is a daughter of a squad leader in the Japanese army.” He proudly said to me.

He told me that he once worked in the army that helping the Japanese troops in China. He also told me how they raped some Russian women in turn during the war. He said that these women’s bodies smelled badly. While he raped them he had to hold his breath.

I did know when and where his story was happened but I wondered why he would be able to leave China without being punished by the criminal trial after the war. After I came to Japan I was always wondering why I could not meet any one of the bad people that I had seen many times in anti-Japanese war movies produced by the Chinese. I finally met one of those guys here in ALTA.

My cleaning work was continuing during the day. When I went to the building entrance I saw so many Japanese young people standing there waiting for their friends or lovers. They all wore very clean and neat clothes with the shining shoes. Gentleman’s shirt was so white and lady’s ear rings were so shiny it made me feel out of place in my cleaning uniform. The light music was coming from the opening roof of the building. It was indeed a good spot for the youth to meet their lovers.

On the ground there were quite a lots of cigarette butts thrown down by those impatient waiters. In the blue colored cleaning uniform, I was holding the broom and swept each of the cigarette butts into the dustpan. I did not feel shame because no one knew me for sure!

When I finished my work at 5:00 and went to the basement room. Mr. Takeda introduced me to another worker, an old Japanese lady, named Suzuki who was just coming to work. We greeted each other. Her modest and courteous smile appeared on her face, quiet and with less energy. I thought that she should be a poor Japanese old woman. Then we all opened our private lockers and changed our clothes. After I changed my clothes I said goodbye to them and went out.

I was wandering on the road and soon lost my way. There were so many buildings with some kind of similarities that I was not yet familiar with. I turned around and around and did not know where I was. Suddenly I saw there was a big movie theater over there. The big bill board of it showed the recent movie. Beside the theater there were some of the smaller streets illuminated very bright. I found there was some thing like a name card laid on the ground. I picked up it and looked at it. On it there was a Japanese sentence said that: 45 minutes entirely burn for only 5,000 Yen! On the back of that card there a sketch. The sketch was a woman opened her two legs to a man and that man lowered his head on her body. When I approached to one of these streets I saw all the shops were soap land. That would be so-called red light district. At the entrance of one of the soap land there a young man standing there and repeatedly called the customer loudly.

“Welcome! Please come in!”

“Welcome! Please come in!”

There was some kind of photographs hanging on the walls like restaurant menus. It seemed that was the menu of the girls.

I turned around soon to go other direction with the question in my mind. Would that old man Chu survive from that entirely burn by the Japanese girls? I passed the intersection and went out to a big street. I saw the street name was Yasukuni Street. When I turned my head to see the street that I had passing by I saw at the entrance of that street there was a big arch. The street name was written on the arch with big characters and surrounded by decorated sparkling lights. It was No. one Street of Kabuki Cho. I remembered that the first day I came to Tokyo professor Ichikawa drove me passing here.

Many people were passing around me hurried to their business. I went across the Yasukuni Street and then went through one block and finally reached the east entrance of Shinjuku station. From here I began to remember the route that could take me back to my home.

When I went back home I was almost exhausted, but when I remembered there would be a ‘Western Movie Theater’ program provided the Fuji TV station I hurried to open TV and turned to the channel 8. Today would be the American movie ‘Dead Wish II’ acted by Charles Brownson.  

(To be continue ...)