A grandson in London sent me a following e-mail this morning responding my request for informing his experience of the solar eclipse:

"Yes today, August 11th at 11:11am, the solar eclipse could be seen in the UK. It has been approximately 70 years since the last time it happened in the UK and last one of this millennium anywhere in the world.
A total eclipse could be seen in the south western region of England
such as Devon and Cornwall but London was able to see around 95 per
cent of the eclipse. However the weather forecast for UK today was cloudy, therefore the eclipse was not very noticeable.
I was in Reading and between 11:00 am until 11:30 am it was darker than
usual but not totally dark. It was a strange atmosphere. It was like looking through a pair of light coloured sunglasses or tinted windows of a car.
The eclipse fever had taken over UK and it was in the media constantly.
I spoke to some of my friends and some of them said that they could
hardly see the difference and it was not dark at all.
I thought it was slightly disappointing."

There seems to be much difference of effects between total eclipse and partial one.

The 8/14 issue of Weekly Diamond ( a weekly business magazine) reported that Minato-ku (ward) of Tokyo was rated as the best city to live among a total of 694 cities in Japan according to their research. I, who have been living years in Minato-ku, was surprised by the report.（The Metropolitan Tokyo has 23 special wards. In this research, they made survey on each of these 23 "ku"s as equal as on other cities in Japan.)

Comfortablity and economic power of Minato-ku are rated the third. But its growth rate is the 222nd. 56 cities are selected on the condition that the points of these three items of each city must be above the average.　They calculated the average of statistical deviation values on these three items. Then they made a ranking of cities with the result that Minato-ku became No.１．Ｉｔ is difficult to understand but I presume their survey has a statistical ground.

The symbol of Minato-ku is Tokyo Tower. The most part of Minato is within a radius of 15 kilometer from the tower. That means you can look down the whole city of Minato from the tower. In the reverse, you can see the tower while you are walking on streets inside the "ku."

The most of famous amusement and shopping centers in Tokyo are out of the ku except Roppongi. But the inhabitants in the ku can get to these places very easily by riding on subway and/or JR trains or buses. The people can also enjoy exhibitions at arts museums, operas and classical concerts at music theaters and Kabuki play, although the most of them are outside of the ku. Of course it is very convenient for commuting to the business centers. And also there are many established high- and middle- schools and even kindergartens. There are many things we can enjoy our lives here.

However the most urgent and important problems for the people are city noises and air pollutions. I think they failed to utilize these data for their survey. The din and bustle of city are roaring not only at daytime but through midnight. They become quiet for about two hours just before dawn.

When I rebuilt my home 15 years ago, I asked an architect, a friend of mine, that dual glass windows were desirable for shutting city noise, But he insisted to have a thick galss was enough for the wall. In fact, the first three years or something like that, the noise was cut off fairly well. As the noise became louder, I had to renovate our bed room with dual glass windows.

Carbon black powder is spread on my car in the garage always. Not only at the garage, but the black powders infiltrate into living rooms on the second floor. If you do not clean the furnitures, televisions and shelf for three days, black powder dust are on them. If you wipe them out with a towel, it became black with dust. Some people said this pollution was caused by asphalt powders. The others said the dust was black smoke caused by diesel engined vehicles. A few weeks ago, I asked a construction company which built my home to do something for the problem. But they said there would be no effective way for controlling the infiltaion of black dust.

Frankly speaking, I never thought Minato-ku was good place to live. So it was beyond my understanding that it was rated as the best city in Japan.

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