Do Not Stop Learning, Ever!

金閣寺

This afternoon, I finished reading The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, a novel by the Japanese author Yukio Mishima. This is the second novel by Mishima that I have read, after Confessions of a Mask, and I read it in the original Japanese.

Mishima is famous for his ornate and exquisite writing style, using a profound and literary vocabulary that is rarely used in modern spoken Japanese. He often discusses highly abstract concepts, making his works not easily accessible to general readers.

The Temple of the Golden Pavilion was no exception, and it was definitely not easy for me to read. Similar to what I did with Confessions of a Mask, I carefully perused the novel and stopped to look up the meaning of every unfamiliar word I came across with the help of ChatGPT. It took me a little over a week to go through the whole book, covering 326 pages in total.

From a language acquisition perspective, consulting the dictionary for every word you do not recognize may be dismissed by most linguistic experts as a bad idea. I can certainly understand that point of view, particularly for beginners and intermediate learners of a foreign language: the number of words you need to look up can simply get too overwhelming, bordering on torturous. The whole process can become excruciatingly tedious, not to mention woefully inefficient.

As for me, I can only practice this method with books in Japanese, English, and—to a lesser extent, Chinese—as I possess sufficient vocabularies in these languages to avoid feeling too frustrated to read a medium-length novel.

There were certainly times in the past when I found the act of reading painfully labor-intensive, even with Japanese books; it was only through repeated practice and intensive vocabulary building that I gradually overcame my fear of difficult words and began to genuinely enjoy reading, which only happened after I became an adult—I was definitely a late-bloomer when it comes to reading.

Now, with these languages, instead of finding it a tedious chore, I feel a great deal of joy looking up unfamiliar words, which have become relatively few and far between in most popular books as I have expanded my vocabularies. A virtuous cycle has finally emerged, whereby my robust vocabulary makes it easier for me to read, which in turn facilitates my acquisition of new words.

Regrettably, my French has yet to attain that level, so it’s probably not a good idea to insist on looking up every unfamiliar word I see in a book. With French, my primary task will continue to be learning the vocabulary from a dictionary with the Anki flashcard app until I can breeze through most popular French novels in the future.

By the way, the advent of digital learning tools like Anki and ElevenLabs, as well as AI chatbots such as ChatGPT and Claude, has undoubtedly been a boon to learners of foreign languages like me. However, this does not mean that we can skip the act of studying itself. If anything, acquiring basic knowledge such as vocabulary, grammar, and pronunciation has become even more important in this age of artificial intelligence.

This is because, as real human beings, we are increasingly expected to play the role of someone who ultimately checks and controls how artificial intelligence performs in tasks related to foreign languages, such as translations. AI can help us generate massive volumes of translation in sheer seconds, but we still need a set of human eyes to verify whether the productions comport with natural human language. Without the basic knowledge of language, we will not be able to perform this most human and critical function.

Returning to the topic of reading books like The Temple of the Golden Pavilion, I do believe that trying to tackle such abstract literary works remains relevant today, as a good foundation in reading comprehension directly ties in with strong critical thinking skills—a must for us to maintain the upper hand in our coexistence with modern technology. With this in mind, I am more determined than ever to keep nourishing and challenging my mind with the cultural riches left by our ancestors.

We've Reached the End of the Age of Reading

A few days ago, I read an article titled The Age of Reading is Over by Rose Horowitch in the August issue of the Atlantic magazine.

I perused it with great interest, as the subject of reading is a fascinating one for me, especially as it relates to the phenomenon that people are reading significantly less than before and the kind of impact it has on our intelligence, discourse, and ability to think logically. As it turned out, it exceeded my expectations: I found it very well written and informative, not to mention highly relevant in this age dominated by smartphones and artificial intelligence.

Back in 1995, when I was studying English in Seattle during my gap year from college, I was fortunate enough to come across Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death as a reading assignment for my media communications class.

Written in 1985, right in the midst of the golden era of television, the book’s overarching message was “the medium is the metaphor,” arguing that the medium used to convey ideas and information determined the quality—and by extension, the seriousness—of their contents. 

Postman warned that the transition from the print media to television as the most prevalent means of consuming entertainment and gathering information would eventually rob people of their ability to engage in calm, levelheaded thinking based on facts; instead, they would start making decisions largely dictated by their visceral reactions to visual and auditory sensations.

More than four decades later, we can now see how prescient Postman was, as evidenced by people’s decisions in numerous countries to vote into office rabble-rousers running populist campaigns with empty promises and demagoguery.

Coming back to this Atlantic article, the journalist Rose Horowitch succeeds in reinforcing and expanding on Postman’s arguments by presenting intriguing and convincing data related to Americans’ reading habits, or the lack thereof.

For example, according to a recent survey, more than half of all American adults read less than one book in a given year. This is hardly surprising: in fact, the statistics are largely in line with those in Japan, where about 60 percent of adults reported reading less than one book per month, according to the Japanese journalist Toyoshi Inada’s latest book, People Who Can No Longer Read.

The article also mentions that bestselling books nowadays are written in sentences about one third shorter than those in books from a century ago, attesting to people’s inability to comprehend and digest complex sentence structures. People nowadays have a smaller vocabulary, perpetuating a vicious circle in which they face more challenges in understanding text, causing them to read less and have less opportunity to enrich their vocabulary.

Most alarmingly, Horowitch mentions that the Flynn effect, whereby the IQ of Americans had been rising steadily since the 1930s, started to reverse about 20 years ago, dropping about three points per decade. Diminution of reading has evidently made Americans less intelligent.

Another interesting perspective presented in this article is concerning the impact that artificial intelligence will have on people’s ability to think in the coming years—something that Neil Postman couldn’t have written about back in 1985.

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Claude have made the act of writing significantly easier than before. It’s undeniable that this development has brought immense benefits to society, provided that information and messages conveyed are accurate and based on facts. 

According to the article, the number of books released on Amazon has increased threefold since 2022, when ChatGPT was introduced to the public. Barnes & Noble launched 60 new stores last year—something unimaginable a few years ago, when the financial performance of this storied bookseller was at its nadir—definitely a welcome development for book-lovers like me.

However, the obviation of the grind of writing made possible by generative AI also means that people no longer need to expend that much energy on thinking, which is the most effective exercise to develop our intelligence.

Interestingly, recent technological advances didn’t just make the proportion of non-readers grow; they have also made it possible for a small segment of the population to enjoy more books than ever before.

I, for one, have grown to love books more in the age of smartphones and AI. With convenient gadgets like the Google search engine and dictionary apps, I can now easily look up unfamiliar words or concepts that I come across in a book, making reading more effortless and pleasurable. 30 years ago, I would have had to lug around a bulky dictionary to do all that. Evidently, technology cuts both ways, so it’s important to consciously place yourself in a position where you can benefit from its development.

As the title of this article aptly suggests, the age of reading as we know it may indeed be over, but as long as we educate ourselves and take appropriate measures to protect our intelligence, there is still hope that we can continue to enjoy the inexhaustible cultural richness bequeathed by our ancestors.

Revisiting ER!

(Image: Amazon.com)

A few days ago, I started watching the American TV series ER on Netflix. I have previously watched the entirety of the first five seasons of this Chicago-based medical drama, but my interest in the show fizzled out somewhere in the middle of Season 6, which I was watching on DVD, so I don’t know how the story panned out during the remaining seasons, of which there are many.

Probably, it was just as well. My sister once told me that ER got less and less innovative throughout the ensuing years—as she aptly put it: ER basically dies when Dr. Greene dies. It’s perhaps a good thing that I was spared the pain of witnessing ER’s decline as its storyline became progressively more stale and trite.

ER was added to Netflix’s lineup in Singapore only recently. I used to own the DVD box sets for Seasons 1 to 8, but I threw out the first five seasons in an attempt to declutter my apartment years ago—a decision that I came to regret greatly, as these opening seasons contained some of the most gripping and iconic episodes of this epoch-making medical drama.

I am elated that I can watch ER again in streaming—albeit for a limited time—and I’m determined to revisit each episode before the show leaves Netflix. It has motivated me to come home early from work every night so I can catch an episode before going to bed; it’s as if I’m on some kind of mission. 

One problem, however, is the sheer plethora of ER’s episodes: with each season containing 22 to 25 episodes, it makes those recent Netflix shows with eight to nine episodes per season look like child’s play in comparison. Even if I limited myself to the first five seasons, at the rate of one episode per day, it would take me roughly three and a half months. 

Imagine going through the entire 15 seasons—that’s practically an impossibility for me, given my busy schedule. At some point, I would need to tell myself to relinquish, with the aforementioned Dr. Greene’s death probably being a good point of reference.

ER first aired in 1994, decades before the advent of streaming services such as Netflix and Apple TV+. Given the dearth of other choices in the way of visual entertainment, I suppose viewers back then could easily follow a season of a television show straight through without much distraction. Our attention spans have become much shorter in the past decade or so, as we are surrounded by so many more entertainment options.

By revisiting ER, I could probably train my ability to focus my attention on one production, which could be a rare asset in this age of soundbites, Internet memes, and short TikTok videos—never mind that decades ago, scholars were lamenting that people were spending too much time in front of the idiot box instead of reading.

Curiously, in Japan, children are now encouraged to read manga comic books instead of staring at their smartphones and tablets all day long, whereas decades ago, reading manga rather than text-only books was largely frowned upon. I guess that as technology advances, people’s attention spans can only get shorter, not longer, but that may not be such a bad thing, after all—it likely means that our brains are being optimized to adapt to our new surroundings. But I digress.

Watching the early seasons of ER brings back some old memories, not least because the air dates of Season 1 coincided with my one-year experience of studying English in Seattle from 1994 to 1995.

I still remember vividly what living in America felt like back then and, although ER is based more than 2,000 miles away in Chicago, the general vibes of the show are definitely reminiscent of what I experienced in the Emerald City. I was completely engrossed in my English studies and had a great time being immersed in American English.

By the way, it’s great to see actor George Clooney playing the role of Dr. Doug Ross in the early seasons. This was his breakout role, and he went on to become a huge Hollywood star. When I first watched him in ER more than 25 years ago, I didn’t quite get his appeal. However, when I watch the show now, I am completely dazzled by his irresistible charm.

Recently, I watched George Clooney perform in the Netflix feature film Jay Kelly, where he showcases his finesse as a seasoned actor. He has definitely matured like wine over the years, and I am happy for him that he has achieved so much success.

As of today, I have watched the first nine episodes of ER’s Season 1, so I’m not even halfway through the first season. I can’t wait to revisit the ensuing episodes and vicariously experience the joys and sorrows of these passionate and dedicated medical professionals, while reminiscing the good old years that have gone by.

No Need to Rush to Buy a Property

(Image: いらすとや)

A few days ago, I informed my landlord of my consent to renew my two-year apartment rental contract which will come to full term at the end of July. Given the ongoing inflation affecting almost every aspect of our lives, I was more or less prepared for a price hike, so it didn’t come as too much of a surprise when my landlord proposed an increase of SGD 400 per month—in fact, I was expecting an increase of around SGD 1,000, so I was actually relieved that it wasn’t that much. In the end, I managed to knock it down to a SGD 300 increase, and agreed to continue the contract.

I first came from Tokyo to Singapore to live and work in 2002 at the age of 28. Ever since my arrival here, I have rented the same apartment and never moved, so I’ve had the same landlord for close to 24 years. We have maintained a cordial relationship throughout, based on mutual trust—something we value greatly, and it will take a lot for me to leave for another place.

My place is a studio apartment that comes with a living room and kitchen, a bathroom, and a bedroom, occupying an area of around 50 square meters (approximately 540 square feet). It’s nothing fancy, but one thing I really like about it is its convenient location—situated just 170 meters or a two-minute walk from the nearest subway station, right in the middle of a busy commercial area of Singapore.

When the weather is nice and I’m feeling strong enough, I go to my workplace on foot instead of by bus, spending around 25 minutes each way, giving me a good amount of exercise. While walking, I make a point of reciting the French sentences that I’ve learned in recent days.

Real estate has been a fascinating subject for me for quite a few years, and I have read extensively on this topic. The more I read, the more convinced I become that there is really no need for me to rush to buy a property, especially given that I’m not interested in making money from property investment.

If I were to buy an apartment, that would be purely for hedging purposes, against potential increases in rent in my retirement. Once I buy a place, I would most likely stay there for the rest of my life, so I’ll make sure to choose a convenient location in close proximity to clinics, shopping malls, and subway stations.

Since I will be retired, at least I won’t be bound by considerations for being close to my workplace. Luckily, Singapore’s subway system is still expanding, so more choices will become available for me as I wait and observe the property market. Given my age, I won’t be able to take out that big of a mortgage, but that’s alright with me—I’d much rather pay with cash than overleveraging myself with a sizable bank loan.

Incidentally, purely out of curiosity, I have been closely following Tokyo’s property market. In recent years, real estate prices there have gone through the roof, where a new 70-square-meter apartment in Downtown Tokyo costs more than 30 times the average annual household income. That’s too exorbitant, in my opinion—those vertiginous heights can only be explained by a property bubble, which is bound to burst within a few years.

If for nothing else, we cannot ignore the demographic trend of Japan’s aging and declining population, which will eventually catch up with Tokyo’s seemingly invincible property market. As things stand now, Tokyo is full of high-rise condominiums. Some real estate experts and demographers are already warning that those high-rises will become progressively more difficult to maintain due to wear and tear and with residents either moving out or dying of old age, leaving the remaining residents with a bigger financial burden to keep their building standing. Rational thoughts tell me to be prudent about buying a property in Tokyo, despite my adoration for that magnificent city.

Since I’ve decided to continue my apartment contract in Singapore for two more years, the least I should do is focus on growing my liquid assets as much as I can, through working in my current job for steady paychecks and deploying my cash in the stock market, while continuing to acquire new skills to stay relevant in this AI-dominated era. There is no telling what the future holds for me, but I will keep striving to improve my prospects for the coming decades.

How Badly Do You Want to Improve Your English?

Last night, I finished reading the novel Mina’s Matchbox written by the Japanese author Yoko Ogawa. I briefly touched upon this novel in my previous journal entry, in which I mentioned that I had found it to be a heartwarming story in the first few chapters. I don’t want to present any spoilers here, but suffice it to say that it stayed a beautiful story to the very end, and I loved every character in the book increasingly as the story progressed, including the two animals who played rather significant roles. In the end, I liked Mina’s Matchbox better than Hotel Iris, a novel by the same author that dealt with a much gloomier subject.

Incidentally, I didn’t know about Yoko Ogawa up until a few months ago, when I first heard her name mentioned in a YouTube video introducing popular Japanese novelists to Western viewers. Although I am originally from Japan, I am not very familiar with Japanese literature, so it was nice to hear this introduction to a few outstanding authors who are globally popular. When it comes to modern Japanese fiction, Haruki Murakami may come to mind for most people, but in fact there is a robust literary scene in the Land of the Rising Sun, with numerous excellent authors yet to be discovered by international readers.

As mentioned previously, I read Mina’s Matchbox in its English translation and not the original, because I wanted to learn English words and phrases while I enjoyed the story. The English version is 280 pages long, and I read it in its entirety while making sure to mark and look up every word and phrase I was unfamiliar with. It took me 8 days to complete the task—in total, I looked up 208 items in the dictionary, averaging out at 0.74 items per page. This may sound like an excruciating grind to most English learners, but I found the entire process rather enjoyable, as I felt excited at the prospect of my vocabulary expanding rapidly.

I may not be the most efficient or talented learner of foreign languages, but one thing I’ve got going for me is my fixation with acquiring an extensive vocabulary, not only for English, but also for Japanese, my mother tongue. Whenever I open a book to read, I always make sure to have my smartphone dictionary close at hand, so that every time I come across an unfamiliar word or phrase I can look it up immediately. Instead of frustrating me, this repeated act of consulting the dictionary brings me instant gratification at each occurrence—not unlike the sensation of fitting a piece of the jigsaw puzzle into place. This whole process makes me love reading even more as I devour one book after another.

Recently, in addition to books, I practiced the same method while watching the English-dubbed version of the latest Japanese Netflix series Straight to Hell. This 9-episode series is a part-fiction, part-biographical story centered on the life of Kazuko Hosoki, arguably the most famous fortune-teller to have emerged from Japan. 

Hosoki used to make regular TV appearances reading fortunes of guests to her show using her unique astrology-based fortune-telling method. More often than not, she uttered unkind or even violent remarks straight to the face of her guest, causing distress and consternation to concerned parties and viewers alike. Yet her show, while controversial, proved to be a big hit, boasting high ratings and earning her millions of dollars.

I could have watched this series in Japanese, but I watched it in English, again for language-learning purposes. Netflix’s dubbing is of very good quality, and I was able to get into the story and enjoy it without feeling any strangeness whatsoever. This time, I listened to the dialogue attentively for any English expression I didn’t comprehend, and interrupted the viewing at each occurrence to look it up in the dictionary before continuing the video. Much against my expectations, these interruptions didn’t take away too much from my enjoyment of the story, so I intend to keep practicing this method for the time being.

If you are not a language-learning enthusiast, this method of consulting each unknown item in the dictionary may strike you as rather odd or even masochistic, and I fully comprehend that position. I guess it all comes down to how badly you want to improve your proficiency in a foreign language. There will probably come a time when I finally stop employing this extreme method, but for now I will let nature run its course and keep practicing whatever method suits me the best.

Learning a Language is Hard Work!

Mina's Matchbox

Friday was a public holiday in Singapore for Labor Day, so I didn’t have to work. I stayed up late the previous night and indulged myself by watching one video after another on YouTube. I can’t remember all the genres of videos I watched, but the ones I distinctly remember are somewhat morbid and cruel, like a video of a bull frog swallowing numerous cockroaches at amazing speed, or that of dozens of rats being trapped one after another in a hole, where they were squeezed together and unable to get out.

I also watched a video of a Japanese woman who keeps a crow in her house as a pet. While she was explaining how to take care of a crow in a human residence, her pet crow named Happy was right beside her—it fluttered its wings vigorously and hopped around restlessly, croaking from time to time to get her attention. It was a bizarre video, to say the least, but both the owner and Happy looked happy, literally, so I see absolutely no reason to criticize her for keeping an unusual pet.

I didn’t start out wanting to watch strange videos, but once I clicked on the attention-grabbing thumbnail of a random video, other videos of a similar nature kept being pushed to my screen by the YouTube algorithm. I ended up watching them non-stop until around 5 a.m., when I finally succumbed to my sleepiness and went to bed. Having wasted hours watching videos of so little intellectual value, I felt a bit guilty, but it was fun all the same.

The next day, I got out of bed at around 11 a.m. Determined not to repeat the same mistake of watching silly videos ad infinitum, I poured myself a cup of strong coffee and picked up a book to read. This time, I chose a novel titled Mina’s Matchbox, written by the female Japanese novelist Yoko Ogawa.

The story revolves around the life of a 12-year-old girl called Tomoko who, due to her mother’s job circumstances, temporarily moves around 100 miles to the east to live with her cousin Mina’s family. The novel is about 280 pages long, out of which I have read around 120 pages so far. It reads like a heart-warming story up to this point, with every character in the book nice and kind to Tomoko. However, it’s still relatively early in the story, so I have no idea what the future holds for her.

Incidentally, I am reading the English translation of the novel, as I want to study a few English words and phrases while I enjoy the story. Stephen Snyder’s skillful translation flows very smoothly, and I find the text pleasant to read.

As is always the case with English books, I come across several words I’m unfamiliar with, and look them up one by one in the dictionary on my smartphone. Looking up words while reading a book may sound like a grind to some people, but I find the experience rather enjoyable as I get to acquire new knowledge and deepen my understanding of this beautiful language.

As an example, from this novel I’ve learned words like platypus—a mammal native to Australia with a bill shaped like that of a duck—and rhinoceros beetle, an insect particularly popular among Japanese schoolboys. I know the Japanese words for these creatures, but up until now I didn’t know their English equivalents as they rarely come up in my conversations with native speakers, if at all.

It is words like these that remind me of the importance of active, deliberate learning of words in a foreign language, instead of passively waiting for them to be acquired through natural exposure. You can live for years, if not decades, in an English-speaking country without coming across terms like rhombus and parallelogram, but that doesn’t mean they are unknown to native speakers—quite the opposite, as these concepts are imparted to schoolchildren through compulsory education.

I wish I could claim that I have acquired most of my English proficiency through natural means—otherwise known as comprehensible input—such as having conversations with native speakers and entertaining myself with native content like comic books, television series and movies. It would certainly sound cooler than memorizing words with flashcards and doing countless grammar exercises.

However, the reality is that language acquisition for adult learners can only be effectively achieved through conscious and deliberate efforts. While reading books and watching shows and movies in a foreign language can be a great deal of fun, learning a language to a very high level of proficiency is not always fun and games. How fluent I can become in English ultimately depends on how much hard work I am willing to put in. I hope to stay mindful of this fact while I enjoy reading novels like Mina’s Matchbox.

Sounds Too Dystopian? It's the Reality in Japan!

A few weeks ago, I read a nonfiction book titled People Who Can No Longer Read (本を読めなくなった人たち), authored by Toyoshi Inada. It documents how reading has become much less common among Japanese people in recent years and discusses the reasons behind its decline, as well as the effects it’s had on people’s vocabulary and how they acquire knowledge and information necessary to survive in this era. I read it with great interest and found it extremely thought-provoking.

According to the latest statistics, more than 60 percent of the Japanese population aged 16 and above read fewer than one book per month. Moreover, a vast majority do not read magazines or newspapers and rely solely on free Internet sources such as YouTube and X for news and information.

Inada argues that the advent of the smartphone in the late aughts and the attendant ascendance of social media has led to a gradual change in the way people acquire knowledge and information. Nowadays, it’s no longer common for young people to visit websites affiliated with traditional news media such as newspapers or television stations to get the latest news; instead, they find out what’s going on in the world through Line News and X’s Trending section—two of Japan’s most popular social media outlets. 

Young people rarely have newspaper subscriptions and, rather than proactively searching for specific news topics, they passively consume whatever headlines appear on their phones as determined by the algorithm of their preferred social media. Although many of these pop-up headlines come with a web link to the relevant article, most of them can’t even be bothered to click to read it, leaving them only superficially aware of what’s happening around the world—and they repeat the same process day after day.

As a result of consuming only bite-sized pieces of text on their smartphones, most young and middle-aged people have lost their ability or patience to understand lengthy articles in Japanese, causing them to stay away from books in favor of videos and podcasts. These days, if they want to get a good understanding of a certain subject, they won’t pick up a book to read; instead, they will find relevant YouTube videos and watch them at double speed.

Moreover, not reading books has led to a substantial diminution of their vocabulary, leaving them incapable of understanding words that are only slightly advanced or profound. When you come across in a book too many words you don’t know, you will no doubt be frustrated and eventually give up reading it altogether, creating a vicious circle in which people will gradually lose their only effective means to access knowledge and wisdom.

Inada also argues that one of the reasons Japanese people read less than before is that Japan has become considerably poorer compared to its economic heyday in the mid 1990s, when its GDP per capita was roughly on a par with that of the U.S. Fast-forward to 2026, the Americans are two and a half times as rich as the Japanese. People used to be able to buy books without worrying about their price tags, but it’s no longer the case now—books have become luxury items that can only be afforded by rich people.

The phenomena described in this book might sound too dystopian to some people, but I am convinced that they are indeed taking place in Japan. During my recent visit to my hometown, I was dismayed to find that one of my favorite neighborhood bookstores had substantially shrunk in size due to poor business. I also noticed that whenever I got on a commuter train or sat down at a Starbucks for coffee, more often than not I was the only person reading a book—most of the others were either looking at their smartphones or tapping away on their laptops.

All this makes me sad, but at the same time I feel fortunate to be still fond of reading in this age of smartphones and artificial intelligence, and be able to afford most books. This is a privilege I should never take for granted. There is nothing much I can do to reverse this deplorable trend in Japan, but the least I can do is help Japan’s struggling publishing industry and bookstores by purchasing books and enjoying them to my heart’s content whenever I travel there.