As you all realize, Nova is now at stake of bankruptcy and share price of the company dropped sharply in recent one month. However there is an interesting phenomenon that occurred recently. That is even though the issued number of stocks is around 65 million, there were more than 60 million trades of NOVA stock in one day. It is an amazing number, because it is said about 80% of issued NOVA stocks are owned by the Saruhashi family who started NOVA. In other words, there must be only about 10 million floating NOVA stocks in the market. Does this sound strange? I’m now keeping my fingers crossed that Nova doesn’t conduct illegal stock trading in the market. In addition to that in the latest 2 weekdays NOVA’s stock price surged more than 2 times.

How to analyze this phenomenon is very difficult. However it is clear the rich group or corporation wants to manipulate the Nova stock price to get huge benefit. Behind the scene, the investment group might have some information which we can’t get, such as NOVA’s affiliation with HIS or other companies.

If Nova can get a partner that can support NOVA financially, I think NOVA can revive in a strong and rapid way. There are lots of factors to backup my theory. One is that NOVA has a lot of knowledge how to run the English conversation curriculum. Secondly, Nova’s TV online teaching named “Ginga-net” is nationwide and it is said there are about 200,000 online learners. Thirdly, Japanese education has become to emphasize English conversation and even in elementary school, there are mandatory English lessons. Fourthly, by using Ginga-net, NOVA can teach English, Chinese and other languages to all over the world, especially China has a lucrative market. The estimated number of Chinese English learners is more than 10 times of the number of Japanese English learners.

From now on I’ll continue the close observation of NOVA’s share price and the latest news announced by the NOVA. Once there are some hints of buying Nova shares, I won’t miss them.

Many stock analysts say that this Japanese stock market plunge is due to strong yen against Euro and American dollar. However, I have a little bit different opinion. Of course, strong yen is not good for big companies that have huge market abroad. But the biggest reason for the plunge is rather due to the people who got into panic when they saw the rapid plunge. Those people sold their stocks because they didn’t want to lose money any more.

In addition, I’m now planning to have a drinking party with my old friends who graduated from the same university with mine. If this plan is realized, it is a lot of fun to talk about the stock trading which is our common interest and interesting anecdotes in our good old days. In addition, if more than four members gather, we might play mah-jong which we played a lot in our university days and even after we became business men.

I think friends are very important. Of course money and health are important too, but they can’t replace the joy and comfort which we can get from our friends.

Anyway, I’ve make up my mind to start reading papers related to my research.

Everybody! Have a great summer vacation!

Anyway, he allowed me to write the thesis in English. At least I will have opportunities to improve my English and presentation in front of many students and 3 or 4 professors. It must be good experiences.

By the way, the professor heard my explanation of my research for about 3 minutes and said angrily “I can’t understand it at all! You should explain each your research in 5 minutes.” Each my thesis has a complicated algorithm and evaluations, thus it is hard to explain it in 5 minutes. However there is essential part of my each research. I have to concentrate on the essential part.

Anyway, I’m now just thinking the professor is rude and I can’t get along with him. Because of him, I spent gloomy weekend.

However I should stick to my motto specially in this tough occasion. That is “Every time you encounter a difficult situation, never avoid the difficulty and do your best.”

However Mr. Abe declared the continuity of his position and most of the ministers, who are supporting Mr. Abe, supported the Mr. Abe’s continuity as the Prime Minister. In my opinion, many voters didn’t vote LDP because we don’t think Mr. Abe is appropriate as the Prime Minister. Therefore if LDP doesn’t change Abe, LDP will be defeated in lower house election as well as upper house. Of course, there must comes the heating debate in LDP, whether or not Abe should continue his position.

However, even though LDP excuses this defeat in various ways, Mr. Abe’s resignation is indispensable, I think.

Of course there is only one substitute who can replace Mr. Abe. The name of him is Mr. Aso. Though this replacement might not be sufficient enough to understand voters, there is no other choice, I think.

At least I’m now worried about the effect of this unstable politics to the Japanese economy, especially the stock market.

From now on I can negotiate the schedule with the professor who might give me the doctor degree. Of course there are lots of efforts required to get the degree. But at least I’m now at the starting point for that. However there is a big question to myself. “For what purpose will you use the doctor degree? Will you become the professor in the future?” As a matter of fact, I have no confidence to become the teacher, because I have no experience to teach students. Besides I think I have no skill to cooperate with other people to accomplish something. I have been a “lonely wolf” in my research section.

Try hard and get your new target.

By the way, even today I didn’t receive the acceptance notification for my paper from the organization. I’m tired of waiting for it.

I hope I’ll receive another good news from the organization soon.

I’m also very concerned about the Eiken result. This result is disclosed tomorrow afternoon. As I mentioned in the previous diary, I think I have 50-50 chance to pass the exam.

By the way, yesterday I went to NOVA and had friendly talks with other students and teachers. It is very fun to learn English and make friends through NOVA. I’m now trying to buy new NOVA stocks, though I already have some NOVA stocks. I’m still in the red in terms of NOVA stocks. But I think it is possible NOVA will gain momentum by students’ eagerness and supports from other companies.

Anyway, from today I’ll do my best to complete another paper and submit it by the end of this month. Work hard!

By the way, I’ll go to Washington D.C. in coming November to participate in a conference and present my research in English. There are lots of rumors that terrorists are now planning to attack America and some of them recently successfully sneaked into America to prepare for it. But there is a saying “You can’t get cubs unless you enter the cove.” Go ahead and get the chance!

Thank you.

Last Sunday, I went to Kanda and took the interview test. I reached there around 1 PM though the due time for the test was 2 PM. I entered the waiting room around 1:20. Before me there was only one girl waiting for the test. Surprisingly she was still 11 years old. And I realized from her registration form that her current address is in America. Of course, she can speak English, but is a girl in elementary school interested in social issues that are dealt with in the Eiken test?

The cute thing for her is that she read the book in which there are small talks in English, and she laughed to read it. And the cutest thing is that she wrote “Kanda” in Hiragana without using Chinese characters “Kanji”.

Even though the test was supposed to start from 2 PM, the organizer said that “Previous group is now behind schedule, so please wait for a moment.” Finally we were led to the interview site after 3 PM. At that time an old man sat in front of the 11-years-old girl and me though he came Kanda after us. He didn’t say any formalities to us, so I felt disgusted to him. As the result, my turn was around 3:30. When I saw the girl goint out from the interview room, her face was redder than before. I thought that the topics for the speech were too difficult for an elementary pupil. But in America, even in the kinder garden pupils learn the politics and make debates about various problems. So the topics were not so difficult for her. I was thinking about that kind of things immediately before I entered the interview room.

Finally I was called to enter the room. I made a brief introduction of myself. In order to relax, I made a unique introduction by saying “I came from all the way from ****”. As a matter of fact **** is not so far from Kanda, it is about 1 hour train trip. Foreign interviewer said “it is not so far.” I replied “Not so fat, but ------“ There were no words followed.

Anyway, I had to pick up one speech from five options, I chose “artificial intelligence into the work place”, because it was the top of the 5 options. I tried to construct the speech in my head. But it was difficult to sum up my ideas in about 30 seconds. Without summing up my ideas I started my speech. The first thing I referred was artificial intelligence defeated the Chess champ in the world chess tournament. By mistake I said it “chess world cup”. I assume interviewers could understand the meaning. I followed that artificial intelligence (AI) should be applied not only to these game fields but also to other work places. However, I had no idea how to apply it. Thus without hesitation I came up the idea and mentioned that at first we have to investigate how we can apply it to the work places. What kind of fields are the good targets for applying it. Next I followed that the good point of AI is deep analysis in the limited amount of time. Then I followed that works which requires future prediction such as investment section is the first target for applying AI. Finally I summed up my speech. 5 seconds before I finished my speech the time keeper’s bell rang.

In terms of speech length, it was OK.

I received 5 questions, from the two reviewers: a Japanese and a foreigner.

“What jobs are not suitable to apply AI?”

“AI can be applied to the education?”

“AI can be applied to Stock trading?”

“AI plays a complementary role in the Stock trading?”

“AI can reduce job chances for people?”

I answered these 5 questions as correctly as possible. Some questions were a little bit difficult to catch. In that case I posed for a moment and asked the interviewers to repeat the questions.

God bless me (^^)