Political article translation Heading for elections, political parties tend to avoid claiming policies which impose a burden on the public. Some of them ask a favor of their constituencies by announcing a pork-barrel policy. To deepen policy discussions in the Japanse Parliament, it is better to avoid frequent dissolution of the Lower House whose main purpose seems to maintain a current regime. The opposition parties claim to impose a “restriction on the right to dissolve”, referring to the UK which has also a parliamentary cabinet system The UK, in 2011, enacted the Fixed-term Parliaments Act by which a snap election can only be called under certain conditions, such as when a two-thirds majority of MPs vote in favor of the dissolution. However, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, seeking to get Brexit done, passed a special law with the majority MPs' supports in October and dissolved the House of Commons. In the turmoil originated in the 2016 referendum, such political movement is contrary to the spirit of restricting on the right to dissolve.

In winter During winter, I prefer spending time indoors to spending time outdoors. The reason is that I may catch a cold. In Tokyo, air is dry and cold in winter. This condition makes me vulnerable to catch a cold. In fact, every winter flu is prevalent. To be healthy, it is better for me to stay at home within warm air.

Summary #2 The lecturer questions the traditional custom of secrecy of payment. Usually, we don’t know how much our colleagues are paid. The lecturer points out that there is an information asymmetry between employer and employees, and it causes market failure. He mentions that employers can get benefit from this situation, because they can easily reject pay raise requests from their workers. He introduces two statistics. The one is that two thirds of 70,000 employee in the US in 2015 felt that they were underpaid, even though they didn’t know how much their colleagues were paid. The other is that in 2011 females received 23% less salary than males did. Then, the lecturer suggests that we should introduce the payment transparency which makes employees know others’ salary. He supports this idea with mentioning that in the companies with the payment transparency employees worked harder, were more engaged, and were less likely to quit.

Summary #1 The lecturer noticed in South America that children of foragers were more independent rather than children of European citizens were. The foragers’ children could make fire, catch fruits by climbing up trees, and prepare food with a knife. These children have contributed to the society by doing some work. At the same time, the children have spent a lot of time with their families and other children of different ages. This environment has nurtured their leadership, teaching skill, social skill, and problem solving skill. On the other hand, the lecturer was concerned that children in modern cities were less independent and lacking these abilities. These children might be separated from other children of different ages, taken away opportunities of making mistakes. Finally, the lecturer suggested that it might be better for our children to provide them opportunities to play with various age friends, room to make mistake, and more time children spend in an unstructured way.

Diary Tokyo was chilly today. I had lunch with my colleague at a cafe near my office. Happly he announced me that his child was born safely. What good news it is. After the lunch, I handed him a money gift for the birth. In the afternoon, I went to a clinic and got a vaccination for flu.