The sky was blue throughout the day without any cloud at all. The left picture of Tokyo Tower was taken from my home. We rarely had such a clear view of the tower. In the evening I attended a big dinner meeting. Many friends of my age told me at the party that they walked in water almost every day at their nearby swimming pools. And also they advised me not to do breast swimming because it has some bad effects on lumbago. So I made up my mind only to walk in water at swimming pool for the time being.

A copy of a book, " The Lexus and The Olive Tree by Thomas L. Friedman"(Fairer Straus Giroux 1999 ISBN 0-374-19203-0) was sent to me a few days ago from an American friend of mine. When I met him in California last May, he asked me my impressions of my round-the-world- trip in January this year. I told him that everything in big cities like New York, London, Paris and Tokyo were becoming the same. (At that time I did not tell him in details. Here I show you some examples. At centers of these cities you may find the shops of the same world famous brands of luxury wears, cosmetics or hand bags. There are hotels operated by the same franchise system. You can drink cokes anywhere. You see many McDonald hamburger shops. The number of Italian restaurants has increased rapidly at every city. Meanwhile Japanese foods such as sushi, tempura, grilled chicken, baked beef on hot iron plate, noodles and even Japanese cake are available at every city.)

Mr. Friedman, the author, was born in 1953 and became a news reporter specialized in Middle and Near East just after the graduation of English university. He was given twice the Pulitzer Prizes. His first book, From Beirut to Jerusalem, won the National Book Award in 1988. He was nominated in 1995 as the foreign affairs columnist of New York Times. His articles were appraised high not only by media circles but by the public. In the book, he made it clear that the cold war was replaced by globalization.

In the preface, he explained clearly how things were going after Thai currency crash in 1997, Russian economic collapse and bankruptcy of hedge funds. He tried to report them as correctly as possible by asking advises from his broad circle of friends. The preface is worth enough for reading especially by Japanese who are always not familiar with latest world political and economic developments.

I agree with him advocating that the globalization (As I cannot find proper Japanese expression, I use an English word "globalization"even for Japanese edition) replaced the cold war. I have been of the opinion that even if you have invented a good system only for use in Japan, it would have no value unless the new system can be applied globally. Japan must hurry to change its systems to those acceptable to the whole world. For example, bank cards for ATM or portable phones can be used at any country. Internet providers must have local access points in every county, every city in the world. Systems which are applicable only in Japan should be put in trash box and new systems which can apply globally should replace the old ones. This book is a good text for Japanese. I hope top officials of the government and top executives of private enterprises would read this book as early as possible.

The author said speed is quite essential for globalization, Japan has to admit that it is much behind the U,S, in competition of globalization. It seems to me that this book was just for Japanese. I hope every responsible Japanese will read this at the earliest occasion.

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