Enjoying the Diversity of the Internet World

Recently I'm addicted to lang-8.

Lang-8 is an SNS, where people, who are learning foreign languages, help each other. I, who am a native Japanese speaker and am learning English, make corrections to Japanese, which Japanese learners write. And I'm given corrections on my English by native English speakers.

I can get to know people on lang-8, whom I couldn't even imagine getting to know before. Three people regularly make corrections on my journals and leave me comments.

The first is a Senegal girl. She is quite girlish and likes Japanese anime. She calls herself "an African Sailor Moon".

The second is a British girl. She is a "tsundere" with a great wit.

They are quite contrasting, but both of them are cute and charming, kawaii, in their own way.

The third is a young Brazilian man. He is a very curious and intellectual individual. We've read many of same books, and talked up about them. I don't have many friends in real life to talk with about my favorite novels, around me. It's amazing that I can make friends on the other side of the planet, and talk through the Internet.

They are very colorful and I've realized that the world is a vast place and there is a great variety of people are living. In Soseki Natsume's novel "Sanshiro" Mr. Hirota said "Tokyo is bigger than Kumamoto, and Japan is bigger than Tokyo. And then the inside of your head is bigger than Japan". I like this phrase, but the inside of the Internet is really bigger than inside of my head.

I watched a press conference about the accident at the Fukusjima Dai-ichi nuclear power plants, and I found only middle aged Asian men side by side wearing the same work clothes. It looked strange. Although there are such a wide variety of people in the world, why are there only such similar people in Tepco?

The CEO of Areva, which is a nuclear power plant company, came to Japan to help dealing with the accident. The CEO of Areva is an energetic businesswoman, and is quite contrasting with the CEO of Tepco, who is a tired elderly man.

Reading foreign newspapers, they really admire that people in the disaster area are keeping order, but on the contrary Tepco has quite a bad reputation. They don't trust them at all, so people living in Japan don't either.

Tepco apparently lacks an international sense and has been neglecting to care for afflicted people . One of the reasons why they do so is a lack of diversity. Tepco has only similar people, who think in similar ways.

I'm really enjoying the diversity of the Internet world and the deference between people in it. It stimulates me and makes me creative.

Japanese society and companies need diversity now.