You may know a very famous town called Akihabara in Japan. The small shrine in this picture has its roots in Akihabara. In Akihabara, there is a big shrine where the God of fire is living. So this small shrine is a tiny branch shrine in my street. You can see a master of the shrine in front of that, and he is praying for peace in my street. And you can see some buildings behind the shrine, which are houses of residents in my street. Actually, this shrine is built on the water way, I don’t know the reason why. That thing is very rare in Japan. On January 8th, we had a very small annual festival in this place. About 20 neighbors were gathering in front of the shrine, to pray for God. The shrine master dedicated a short sentence called “Norito”, which are the celebration words for God. Because there were many fires in Japan before wartime, we have a tradition praying to the God of fire, to prevent fires.
What will you call this vehicle? Ladybug? You may be surprised to hear about it, I mean this vehicle has no driver. I saw this vehicle in front of the railway station in my city. So I tried to check it inside this vehicle, but I could not find the driver. Namely, this is a self-driving vehicle. And this is a bus in my city. It seems that the bus is running in the street as an experiment by the city hall. And this bus is running about 20 kilometers per hour. It’s very slow. If you want to go somewhere in a hurry, you have better to ride a bike rather than this bus. And, when I’m driving in the street, this bus is a bit disturbing. Although, it’s not avoidable because you should not clash with this bus on the street, isn't it? Anyway, self-driving is incredible. Do you want this bus in your town?
It’s said that the Japanese language is difficult to learn. I’m not sure if it’s true or not. Originally Japanese scripts are written vertically and this type of vertical script is rare in the world, I heard. I attached the picture of my New Year’s card here. The sentence on the card is written vertically. Actually you can write Japanese scripts both vertically and horizontally. But I love writing it vertically. In my opinion, vertical Japanese scripts are more beautiful than horizontal ones. However, you cannot write Japanese scripts vertically on a PC. These words on the card are what I want to send you. It means “Have a great new year” Happy New Year.