I recently watched the movie “My Sister’s Keeper”. It is based on a novel with the same title, however the movie differs from the novel slightly. It is about a girl, Anna, whose DNA was 
genetically designed so she could be a perfect donor to her older sister, Kate, who has leukemia. In the movie, Anna, age 11, decides to sue her parents seeking to win control of her own body on the grounds of medical emancipation as she no longer wanted to give her body parts to help her sister due to the potential impact it would have for her own life. Despite this serious theme, I found the movie enjoyable and somewhat uplifting. It was also thought provoking; would parents really go as far as having another, genetically designed baby so they’d have a perfect donor to their dying child? Where is the line between wanting to do everything within their power to help, and going too far? (more…)
How Coaching Can Help Save You Money
(Dear English readers of my blog – this is a story about how getting a coach for myself saved me lots of money. This post is in Japanese only)
今日で4年と2ヶ月勤めたみなと学園を退職しました。思えばあっという間の4年間でした。実は、みなと学園に勤め
るまでは、子どもがいなかったこともあり、私はその存在すら知りませんでした。2005年の夏頃のことですが、私は定職についておらず、大学に戻って博士号でも取ろうかと考えてはいたものの、時間もお金もかかるし、そこまで投資する価値のあるような情熱をかける研究テーマもなかったことから、一歩踏み切れずにいました。そんな時、趣味のスウィングダンスを通じて知り合ったアメリカ人の友達がコーチングの仕事をしていることを知りました。彼女はハーバード出身の秀才で、コーチングの専門は大学・大学院入試のエッセーを書くことや、大学院生が論文を書く際のサポートをすることでした。そこで、博士課程への進学を決めかねていた私はコーチングを受けることにしたのです。実際にコーチングが始まると、自分のやりたいことが次第に明確になってきて、3回目のセッションで、勉強して新たに学位を取るよりも、教育関係の分野で仕事をしたいということがはっきりしました。 (more…)
Last night I attended “4th Annual Making the Most of Your Personal Strategy New Year Kickoff” event where a group of women got together and each of us created a vision board for 2010. This event was hosted by Ms.Angie Swartz, a founder of Six Figure Moms Club. She is a radio show host, an author, and a social media specialist who owns her own company called “Square Martini Media”. Moreover, she is also a source of inspiration to many of us working women and mothers. At the 
beginning of the event, she asked who had attended this event last year, the year before….and I realized that this was my 4th time attending this event. She again hired Dining Details to cater the food for the evening – the owners and chef couple Julie and Robbie cooked scrumptious appetizers and desserts while we enjoyed sipping wine, chatted among ourselves, flipped through magazines and cut out images that spoke to us for our vision board. It was a fantastic opportunity for us to connect, and take time to think about what we wanted to focus on this year. (more…)
We all have experienced events in our lives which have affected us profoundly. When we talk about those events, we often use this phrase ”It totally changed my life”. Events such as living 
abroad, going to Zimbabwe to work on an HIV/AIDS project, the experience of giving birth to babies, attending a self-development courses….all of which are my own life changing events. Life changing events are not always pleasant – I am certain that some people would say that losing a family member or a close friend affected them significantly. I know many people who have said that the 9/11 event changed their lives. For me personally, losing Miroku would qualify as one of such events. The other day, I came across a phrase; One of the simplest forms of prayer is to say “Life is a gift from God”. When I saw it, I thought, “yeah, don’t I know it” with a mixture of gratitude and sadness. A part of me is very happy that I do (know that statement to be true), but a part of me feels that I wish I would not be aware of that so keenly. (more…)
New year or not, I almost always have some kind of goals to work on, but as I wrote in my last blog post, I did not feel like making any big resolutions for this year. Instead, I adopted this simple 
rule that I will do at least one thing that has a positive impact in my life, everyday, and so far it has been working out great. It has been only a week into the New Year, and I am finding so many things I do daily which have a positive impact in my life. My personal favorite is “not having sweets at the office”. It is the time of the year when people come back from different places they visited over the holiday and we have endless supply of sweets that tempt me – chocolate, cheesecake, cupcake, you name it. It has only been three days since I got back to work, but so far I am keeping it. (more…)
As many of you know by now, I grew up in Japan. Here in the U.S., the New Year holiday is relatively quiet in comparison to the Xmas holiday. Where I come from, in contrast, the New Year holiday is a great deal, even bigger than Xmas. The first few days of January are called 
“O-sho-gatsu” and it is a time for the entire family to get together and eat well, kids receive “O-toshi-dama”(money in a small envelop) from family and relatives, people visit temples and shrines, and watch special new year sporting events such as a famous long-relay marathon takes place between Tokyo and Hakone on January 2nd and 3rd. Most businesses are closed at least for 3 days, if not longer. It is also a time to ponder upon the upcoming year, where people wish all the best and good luck to each other and to themselves. Even though I appreciate the weather here in San Diego, I always miss Japan very much at this time of the year. This year, my mother is visiting from Japan and she cooked all the great food I would have had in Japan, and while it is not exactly the same, I still enjoyed the first day of the year 2010. We spent the morning at the Balboa park, visiting science museum and did a mini-train ride with the kids, followed by a picnic lunch. After coming home, I worked out at a 24 hour fitness club which I had not been to since I became pregnant last October. I know, it’s such a cliché to want to start anew in terms of doing exercise and I was afraid that it might be very crowded, but the gym was almost completely empty and I was pleasantly surprised. (more…)
