GOOD DESIGN AWARD 2009

On December 6th, Good Degign Award 2009 has been determined.
I've excited about a lot of good quality products with a tasteful design.

This is the best 15 products of "good design award 2009"

http://www.g-mark.org/english/archive/2009/best15/09A02016.htmlmark.org/english/archive/2009/best15/09A02016.htmlmark.org/english/archive/2009/best15/09A02016.htmlmark.org/english/archive/2009/best15/09A02016.html

They are clearly out of the ordinary.

Purpose of Good Design AwardsDesign leads to the creation of superior objects and conceptual embodiments. By addressing the environments that encircle our lives, design drives our own development and leads to a stronger and sounder society.Inheriting the Good Design Product Selection Program instituted in 1957 by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry, the Good Design Awards constitute a comprehensive, globally unmatched program of evaluating and advocating design in terms of its history and scale.Following on the success of over a half-century, the 2009 Good Design Awards seek the attainment of richly sustainable and prosperous living, industry, and society through scrupulously fair judging-grounded in humanitarian love-from perspectives of innovating lifestyle values, social values, and cultural values.

Some are very stylish disign, some are functionality superior.

This is one of 2009 awarded products. It's a plastic wrap, it has a really lot of ideas, the prevention of clinging, a paper edge, a marked for pushing point, intelligible explanation etc. Great!

Well, when I checked products, I saw the universal design products.

I'm also interested in it, but I didn't know the difference between them.
The Principles of Universal Design
"The authors, a working group of architects, product designers, engineers and environmental design researchers, collaborated to establish the following Principles of Universal Design to guide a wide range of design disciplines including environments, products, and communications."

1 Equitable use
2 Flexibility in use

3 Simple and intuitive

4 Perceptible information

5 Tolerance for error

6 Low physical effort

7 Size and space for approach and use

(from Center for Universal Design)

I've found out that Universal design is a movement as a study, and Good design is a commercial activity on purpose. Good design would grow in value by ensuring products quality, by the trusted institution.

This award would boost companies awareness of the design, and as a result, added up to offer a broader designs and enrich the quality of products.

Obtain a good price for fashionable designs. I'm convinced that Japanese design already rise to a world-class level.

However, I have a comment on it.

This website is the products of 2009 year awarded.

http://www.g-mark.org/award/search.html?result=true&lang=en

A good many products are selected every year, the total of awarded products is over 35,000!

It's too much. I'm afraid that it might loose the meaning of winning the award. I hope Good Design can keep the quality of the award.

ヘヴン(Heaven) ｂy Mieko Kawakami

This book is a new book everybody's talking about. It was wrriten by Mieko Kawakami. I've often read the articles about "ヘヴン", so I've been looking forward to read it. The author, Mieko Kawakami is 33 and a winner of the Akutagawa Prize in 2007.

The lead character, he is a junior high school boy who has been suffering from bullied.
One day he's gotten one letter, marked "we are family". And he gets some further letters. Letters come from Kojima who is a classmate, she has been also suffring from bullied. Kojima is dressed in shabby clothes on purpose. She identifies her dirty as a sign. He has cross-eye, and he feels inferior by it. She also identify his cross-eye as a sign, it's her bastions.
They can do nothing but follow the serious violence and bullying.
Kojima says about it," we enduring hardship are the justice. Everything consists of the results. There is no right and wrong"
And then, a dedicate friendship grows between them.
However, the consequence was so tragic.
But I didn't feel it by many beautiful and poetic sentences.

It is plain and poetic writing and I've finished to read about 2 hours.
After reading,I've felt bullying and bitter of living about "ヘヴン".
Bullying
In fact, I've never experienced bullying during school days, but after becoming teacher, I'd sometimes faced the difficulty of bullying.
I think bullying is a social issue. Bully also feel unpeaceful mind. Student's problems mirror the problems of adult society.

And, bitter of living!
When I was a student, I've never thought about such a thing"bitter of living".
If I thought about it, I would fall in the ground swell. Do they really feel like this?
Probably, they have a low self-esteem by bullying.
What am I supported to them? How heal the hurt mind?
They can do nothing but live as holding pain.
Let me know the good way.

Swine flue outbreak

Now in Shikokutyuuou city, Ehime Prefecture, in Japan, we are facing Swine flue outbreak.
Suddenly, leaded to widespread infection among students.
We, teachers are pressed for small jobs, like the communication with the absentees and the prevention of spread and change of teaching schedule and stop for shool lunch.
We have been working to prevent the spread of the flue since summer.
I feel imponent in front of the strong infection of swine flue.
Some grades are closed for a whole one week, and siblings of patients are not allowed to go to school. And, students and teachers are encouraged to obey strict rules.

For example
1 throughness of hand-wash and gargle.
at the arriving at school
after meeting and cleaning
at the coming back from outdoor
before school lunch
2 check students temperature in every morning.
3 wear a mask all day.
4 spacing of student's sheats.
5 form front-facing seat and eat school lunch in silence.
6 ban on meetings and singing and group activities
7 cut of the events, like a flea market by students
8 change of musical concert

There is a lot of lot of rules. We have to drive students home to do these rules.
I feel pressed from the severe crisis management.

If children have a fever, we immediately call up their mother.
They can't work. Previously, swine flue will strangle the economy because it will disrupt people to work. The economic costs of swine flue in the world would be many times higher than previous estimates.

And now, a lot of parents rush in hospitals, even if child's symptoms isn't severe, because of the fear from the imformations to become severe. As listenning the swine flue news, I'm getting to feel that swine flue is a life-threatening disease.
I'm convinced that hospitals would be crowded severely.
Besides the goverment often significantly alert priority list of the vactination with influenza vaccine. Medical institutions are running short of influenza vaccine. I feel really sorry for them.

People say,"Humans don't have immunity against a new flue.But Fortunately, almost students already recovery from symptoms. It's not severe.
Some people's immune systems are strong enough to stop the virus from replicating. And not all people who have a virus become ill, some are only carriers.
Originally, virus can live by the host of virus, so if the host died, the virus would die too. The virus should create a mechanism not to kill the host. I think that it is necessary to find out the cause to become severe.

After all, now I just be powerless in the new disease outbreak.
I should take care of myself.

For now, I want to boost the immune system's ability to fight infections.
I try to care my lifestyle habit, good foods and healthy lifestyle.
For foods, taking mushroom and yogurt and green and yellow vegetables.
And try stress free.

Mister donuts

After work, before 8 pm, I went to GranFuji which is a big supermarket to check books, for making a purchase plan of school library.

I ran smack into an English classmate at the book store. These days I have some accidental meetings like a charm. I've felt a curious connection as a friend.

After that, I went to Mister donuts.Mister donuts is one of donuts chain shops in Japan, and it's my favorite place.

When I lived in Matsuyama, I went to there at Saturday morning to eat a donut in lieu of breakfast. After coming back Shikokutyuou city, I can't go to there like Matsuyama, because it's located far from my home. And so now, I sometimes go to there at Friday night.

To tell the truth, I don't like eat donuts, but there are times when I get intense carving for going to there, like addiction.

As taking a rest at there, I feel really relaxed. Maybe, Mister donuts reminds me of good memories. And some how, I come up with good concepts.

Just now, Mister donuts was having 100Yen sale, every donut is only100 Yen. Usually, one donut is 120~130Yen and a cup of coffee is 298 Yen, But now, even a cup of coffee is just 200 Yen. In addition, new release donuts are very soft and raisen dough, they are cutting indegreeents for cutting costs.

I've found a sign that the deflation rate is increasing.

Recently, I'm offen impressed with the efforts of company to reduce price. How do they make the price includes all the costs?

Now, business is slow, and then the salary go down, and then business is more slow down.

We're going into a deflationary spiral. Not only Companies but retail shops, all commerce would be dumped into the dustbin by the severe cost competition.

In the end, we might get good services, high quality and low price, but we should recognize that they involve a lot of sacrifices.

Go on a stationery shop

I think that today's Japnanese stationery shop is no only selling place stationery goods, but like an amusement park. They are stuffing the elements of play.

Today, I visited on my favorite stationary shop"BUNRAKU", is located near JUSCO KAWANOE.

It's small shop but display products very organized and deal with hot-selling products.

Japanese stationeries are evolving to polarization.

One is more detail and specialized. Todat, I got a diary of 2010. It has beautiful decolations on its cover and inner, very fancy and pretty. I fall in love with it.

The other is more simple and practical. Almost of them are for business person.

My favorite exploration in BUNRAKU is to find eco friendly goods!

I can find something new eco friendly-products every visiting.

Today I got a red oil pen and a refill.

Recently, there are a lot of refills even for highlighter pen.

I want to support such a company which creating eco-friendly products.

Sleepiness and insomnia

This weekend I was very sleepy all days.
During last week I had been staying up lately, by 1 am and waking up at 4 or 5 am, to make a teaching plan on Dec 30.
I was doing well even the shortage of sleeping time.

But this weekend, when I woke up at 6 am on Saturday, I felt a little fatigue and sleepy and it continued all day. So, Saturday night I went to bed more early and woke up at 6 am on Sunday morninig, and then, I felt fatigue again, besides it was more strong.

I was wondering why I've felt exhausted, even if I took enough rest.
One reason is that there is the missunderstanding of my biological clock by the irregular rhythm of life.
Making the rhythm of life into habit, our body make up a kind of a movement. The movement would drive smothly by the regular rhythm. In the other hand, it would confuse by the irregular rhythm. I guess, especially it would be connected to the wake-up switch.

The second is that the lightness is getting weak.
I've heard that sun could reset our body clock. Surely I often feel cloudy day. And recently, I've noticed some children have seasonal affected disorder. Eyes are sensitive acceptor. So, we might be infuenced by lightness as I thought.

The third is that today's temperature is comfortable for sleep. I think that there is sleep- inducing temperture.

The forth is that moderate fatigue cause drowsiness.

After all, I've found a lot of causes.
The other way, these ways would have good effects on the prevention of insomnia.