Clement Nyirenda

One of the lovely Japanese friends that I have here is Shimpei Mori. I got acquainted with him in 2002/03 when he was working as a JICA volunteer at Mikolongwe in Malawi. At that time, I was working as a staff associate in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the Malawi Polytechnic. Almost every week, Mori used to visit Eiji Kutsuoka, his fellow JICA volunteer, who used to work in the Department of Architecture at the same institution. Because I was so close to Eiji, with time I got connected to Mori and a few other JICA volunteers as well.

Some time in August 2009, Ki-Africa, a Japan based pro-Africa non-profit organization, invited our group of a few Malawians to a cooking party for African foods. We were specifically asked to teach the Japanese people who attended the event how to cook nsima, Malawi’s stapple food, and beef (nyama ya ng’ombe), in the Malawian way. The event took place at Hacchobori in the Chuo Ward of Tokyo. 

Last weekend my family was invited by Soni Youn, our Korean friend, to watch the Tokyo Bay Fireworks from her workplace, Next, on the 15th floor of one of the buildings on Triton Square facing Tokyo Bay. The Japanese people have a great love for fireworks, and they occur throughout the summer in various neighborhoods of Tokyo. But this show is the biggest of them all.

In Japan, child allowance is provided to every family (that includes gaijin as long as they are staying legally) in which a child is in the 6th grade of elementary school or less and annual income less than a certain threshold. You may apply for it anytime. You can get the application procedures from your ward.

On Wednesday, July 22, 2009 the earth will witness the longest total solar eclipse of 21st century. It will be visible from a narrow corridor through northern India, eastern Nepal, northern Bangladesh, Bhutan, the northern tip of Myanmar, central China and the Pacific Ocean, including the Ryukyu Islands (Japan), Marshall Islands and Kiribati.

Last Thursday, I went to Tsukuba University for the 2009 Fuzzy Systems Symposium. I presented a paper entitled “On the reduction of reverse traffic in a Fuzzy Logic Based Dual Explicit Congestion Notification Mechanism for TCP/IP networks”. Although I was at the Symposium for only a few hours, I managed to interact with several seasoned researchers including Professor Michio Sugeno, one of the early Japanese researchers in Fuzzy Systems.

The lightweight but highly skilled Mongolian rikishi, Harumafuji defeated yokozuna Hakuho in an all-Mongolian playoff on Sunday to win his first Emperor’s Cup on the final day of 2009 January tournament.As I mentioned in this post, this guy gives the Yokozunas a good run for their money. Congratulations, Harumafuji!

The African Festa 2009 event took place on May 16-17 2009 at the Red Brick Warehouse (Akarenga), Yokohama city in the backdrop of the 150th Anniversary Celebration of the opening of the Port Yokohama. The Africa Yokohama Festival took place at the same venue last month.