Why the Instagram Egg deserves 53 million likes

日本語

The Instagram Egg

Have you seen the news?

"An Egg, Just a Regular Egg, Is Instagram's Most-Liked Post Ever"

This was the headline in the Food section (?) of the New York Times about two months ago. The news was that a photo of an egg - the universal symbol of the mundane and the ordinary - inexplicably got more Instagram likes than Kylie Jenner's birth announcement.

The Instagram Egg has 3 times more likes than Kylie Jenner' thumb and baby hand.

The egg is now Instagram's most-liked post ever. 
Kylie Jenner's baby post is second. 

Headlines from other news outlets:

"An egg has overtaken Kylie Jenner as most-liked Instagram post ever"  (CNBC)

"How an egg beat Kylie Jenner at her own Instagram game" (The Guardian)

(In the CNBC and The Guardian, the egg news was in the Technology section)

As of February 23, 2019, the Instagram egg had 53 million likes.

But WHY?

I can see your eyes rolling: "But why are you sharing this non-news here?"

Well, because I found this non-news mildly irritating. Not the news itself, but its tone. 

The tone was: There is nothing special about the egg. It's the most banal object in the universe. How the hell could it get so many likes?

The New York Times article nailed it:

"Is the egg encrusted in diamonds? Does the egg have a popular YouTube channel you’ve never heard of? Is a sexy celebrity holding the egg?
Nope. None of the above. Just an egg."

Just an egg??? 

Our hens (and a rooster) would not agree.   

If chickens could read a newspaper, the New York Times (and other papers) would be flooded with protest email messages. 

But our chickens don't read newspapers and are busy enjoying their retirement, so they appointed me their spokesperson to write an angry response for them.

Now I have the grave responsibility of translating Chickenspeak to English and list some of  the reasons why eggs deserve billions and trillions of likes.

The short answer is, because of the eggs' sheer number and importance in our lives.

LIST OF REASONS

Why an egg deserves 53 million likes

1. The world is flooded with eggs

About 1,953,493,339,000 eggs were produced on planet Earth in 2017. (According to FAO. [Footnote 1])

This is more than 1,900 billion eggs. One thousand nine hundred billion eggs. In just one year. 
This is in fact 1.9 trillion eggs. 

In other words, we produce almost two trillion eggs every year to sustain the population of 7.8 billion humans.

Isn't that a mind-blowing number.

2. We eat eggs a lot

Eggs are not just sunny-side-ups and omelets. Eggs are used in a lot of foods: in many types of bread, pasta and nan; in baked foods, cakes, pies, cookies, puddings, pancakes, ice-cream, marshmallows, waffles, candy bars; in mayonnaise, salad dressings, tartar sauce and other sauces, soups, batter-fried foods, meatballs, meat loafs, tempura and okonomiyaki (the last two are mostly relevant in Japan)... and the list goes on. 

In other words, we eat a lot of eggs. But we often don't know it. This of course doesn't change the fact that we eat them, and that there must be someone somewhere raising a lot of chickens that will lay those eggs for us - for that ice-cream or the pasta. 

Some of us maybe thinking "I'm not a big egg eater anyway." Well, unless you're a vegan or egg-allergic, you're probably a bigger egg-eater than you think. 

To sum it up, we use eggs in so many foods (and non-food products as well), that if eggs suddenly disappeared from the world, we would be in a lot of trouble. 

We would certainly be in more trouble than if Kylie Jenner disappeared, from Instagram or from the world. (Of course I don't wish her that. I'm sure her family would miss her.)

Which, our hens (and a rooster) insist, is a good enough reason to agree that the Instagram Egg, as one of the 1.9 trillion eggs we use every year (laid by some 6.5 billion hens [Footnote2]), deserve a modest 53 million likes.

Sequel

The Instagram Egg story does not end here though. The sequel was published in The New York Times on February 3 (this time in Style section). 

"Meet the Creator of the Egg That Broke Instagram"

Spoiler 1: The egg's creator was finally revealed. 
Spoiler 2: The egg has a name, Eugene (although it's supposed to be gender-free).

Long story cut short, the creator and his complices decided that they want to use Eugen the egg's newfound fame to do something good for the world. They have recently taken up a cause: mental health. 

This is wonderful news!

Mental health is super important topic. Most people, including me, are probably not 100 % mentally healthy. Many of us have 1% or 5% or 83% mental issues. We struggle with stress and lack of sleep and lack of time to update blogs and to reply to friends and to travel and read books and climb mountains and study second partial derivatives. 
I'm truly happy that Eugene the egg is now going to help us find help. 

Now here's our chickens' proposal (translated for this article from Chickenspeak): 

Eugene the egg should promote mental health of chickens too!

Most of the hens who lay those 1.9 trillion eggs in fact suffer from poor mental health. There is no direct statistics about this, but it's pretty clear the hens are mentally struggling. The ones that struggle are those who spend their lifetime in a tiny wire cage where they can't do anything but stand or sit, which is a majority of the world's 6.5 billion population of egg-laying hens. It's 24/7 of physical discomfort and utter boredom. There's no doubt their physical and mental health suffer. 

To be clear, chickens surely like to stand or sit. Standing and sitting are wonderful activities. But chickens also like to walk, run, jump, fly, perch, peck and scratch the ground in hunt for anything edible, groom and dust bath (the last two are major social activities), and they like to lay eggs in the privacy of a nest. This is what being a chicken means. If they can't do any of these activities, they can't be a chicken, and that's stressful. Just imagine you were born a human but then couldn't do anything a human needs to do to feel like a human - sleep in comfort and safety, take a shower, go out for a walk, write a blog, reply to friends, travel and read books and climb mountains and study second partial derivatives....
If you couldn't do any of this, never, your mental health would suffer. Chickens are the same. 

So, what if Eugen the egg also campaigned for the promotion of mental health of egg-laying hens? 
The best start would be to let chickens do things they need to do to feel more chickeny.

That's the proposal of our chickens who, by the way, enjoy great mental health (as far as I can tell) and they wish the billions of their fellow chickens around the world could enjoy the same. 

Our chickens feeling chickeny.

Footnotes

Footnote 1
Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations gathers data on food production from all over the world. You can search their database, FAOSTAT, for virtually any agricultural item, including eggs. 

So how do you arrive at the number quoted in this article: "1,953,493,339,000 eggs produced on planet Earth in 2017"?
1. Go to this FAOSTAT link (FAOSTAT Livestock Primary)
2. Choose the following in the four Select windows:
Click "Select All" in Countries
Select "Production Quantity" in Element
Select "Eggs, hen, in shell (number)" in Items
Select "2017" in Years
3. Click "Download Data"
4. Open the Excel file that you just downloaded. 
5. Add up all numbers in Column L (Number of eggs produced in each country, from Afghanistan to Zimbabwe.) (Needless to say, use Excel SUM function for quick calculation.)
6. Multiply by thousand (because the unit of the column L is "1000" as specified in the column K.)
7. You should arrive at the number 1,953,493,339,000.
※The number 1.95 trillion includes only eggs laid by domestic chicken. Other birds - geese, duck, quail - are not included.

Footnote 2
The number of hens - 6.5 billion - is an estimate calculated by dividing the number of eggs (1,953,493,339,000) by 300, which is the average number of eggs that a normal hen of modern 'industrial' breed lays per year.
The actual number of hens on the world's egg farms is larger for several reasons, the biggest being the fact that the egg production cycle necessarily includes pullets - young hens before they start laying eggs. These are not included in the 6.5 billion estimate.
Also, the number 6.5 billion includes only domestic chicken (egg-laying hens), no other birds (no geese, ducks, quail).

A priceless goat milk deal

Just two kilometers from our farm, there is a very special place. It's grassy, it has rice fields on one side and a river on the other, and goats are grazing there almost every day of the year.  One of them took a picture with me!

A Goat and a me.

These are not just any goats. These goats' milk and yogurt I've been occasionally having for breakfast for the past few months.
After several virtually milk-less and yogurt-less years in Japan, this is a welcome change. I'm deeply indebted for this treat to the goats and to their owner Fujioka-san.

A Goat and Fujioka-san.

The special thing about these goats' milk is that it's priceless - literally. You can't buy it anywhere, no matter how much you'd offer. This milk is not for sale.

Ha!

There are two reasons why Fujioka-san will not sell this milk, or yogurt, or cheese, to you: one is a prosaic technical reason, the other is a philosophical one.

First, the prosaic reason. In Japan it's forbidden to sell unpasteurized milk or products made from such milk, like unpasteurized yogurt or cheese. (Unless it's imported  cheese, in which case it's okay. Smells like double-standard? Yep, that's what it is.) Of course, if you have goats, you can have raw milk for personal consumption, but you're not allowed to sell it.
In the process of pasteurization, milk is heated in order to kill microorganisms present in raw milk. The official reason is food safety, the real reason is extending the shelf life, which enables mass production, mass distribution and mass consumption of milk.

Unfortunately,  pasteurization kills not only the 'bad' microorganisms, but also a lot of the 'good' ones (the "probiotics"), as well as some very good enzymes, vitamins and minerals.
So pasteurized milk has less bacteria,  but also less nutrition and poorer taste.

The milk from Fujioka-san's goats is raw, which means it's valuable, and unsellable.  The only way how to get it is: Step 1, become friends with Fujioka-san; Step 2, if possible, have something useful to barter. With this predicament, I feel lucky to have our hens, because I can barter their eggs for goats' milk and yogurt.  It's been working for a few months now and I couldn't imagine a better deal.

The topic of bartering leads us to the second, philosophical reason why this milk is not for sale: It's because Fujioka-san prefers non-monetary exchange. If you're wondering why would anyone prefer bartering to hard cash, you'd better ask Fujioka-san directly. My attempt to explain his theories, relying only on my poor memory, would lead to inexcusable distortion.

Speaking for myself, bartering feels good - much better than buying stuff in a big, impersonal store. The best thing about bartering is, obviously, the fact that it doesn't involve money. When money - with the exact price and the notion of "cheap" and "expensive" - is not involved, other dimensions can come to the foreground, most importantly the object and the subject of the barter deal. The thing and the person. Everything that is usually invisible, hidden behind the price tag, is now part of the deal. Your bartering partner is not a stranger but a friend. The two things that change hands are made with attention and pride, and are appreciated by the other side. Also, the amount (what would otherwise translate into an exact "price") is fluid. This time I have fewer eggs than last time,  but Fujioka-san has more milk, and that's fine. Next time it might be the other way round, or maybe not. Nobody is calculating. Bartering is flexible, because it's not about money.

But what I most appreciate about this milk is not that it's raw, or that it's bartered, although these two features certainly make it very special. My appreciation has more to do with the goats.

The reason why I haven't been consuming much milk or yogurt in Japan is not their unavailability. There is plenty of milk and yogurt in grocery stores and they are cheap, but knowing the reality behind Japan's dairy industry, I simply didn't feel like buying any.
Fujioka-san's goats are outside eating grass on most days, and the baby goats spend at least the first month of their life with their mum. As far as I know, neither of this can be said about generally available mass produced milk and dairy products, where cows are kept inside the barns, eat grain rather than grass, and calves are separated from their mums soon after birth.

To me, bartering milk provided by goats grazing just two kilometers off my place is much more fun than buying anonymous milk in the supermarket. One thing I should work on now is to go and say hello to the goats more often. Now that I have quite extensive knowledge about goats' favorite types of grass, I'm pretty sure I could bribe them into a friendship :)

Small scale wind power

(日本語の記事はこちらです。)

Wind power, as a type of renewable energy, can be sold via the feed-in-tariff system in Japan.

Compared to solar power, wind power has drawbacks such as noise and more frequent malfunctioning because the blades of wind turbines are rotated mechanically by wind to make electricity. Knowing these drawbacks, I didn't have very high opinion of wind power before.

However, last summer I happened to find land that was potentially a good site for a wind turbine. Seeing the possibility of building a small wind farm, I decided to learn more about it.

Wind turbine

If the electricity is just for your personal use, any wind turbine is fine, but if you want to sell electricity to the power company, in Japan you have to use one of the wind turbines certified by the authorized institution.
As of February 2016, there were 13 certified wind turbines, many of them products of non-Japanese makers.
As mentioned in the Footnote *1 in the above link, the average wind speed of 5 m/s is necessary to achieve the annual energy production described in the table in the link.

For example, if the average wind speed is 5m/s, the model GW133 by Gaia-Wind Ltd, listed in the table, can be expected to generate 27,502 kW of electricity annually.

One kilowatt hour of wind power can be sold to the power company for 55 yen. A simple calculation shows what income in Japanese yen this would yield:

27,502 * 55 = 1,512,610 Japanese yen

Of course from this sum we have to deduct costs such as taxes, security monitoring costs, insurance and annual maintenance (which, in case of wind power, is indispensable), so the general view is that there is not much profit left.

Wind conditions

Needless to say, wind power depends on how much wind blows. Without wind, wind turbine is just an ornament.
It's crucial to know how much wind blows at the potential site, so I decided to check the wind conditions there.

The minimum required wind speed of 5m/s is about the same as the wind that keeps tree leaves constantly moving.

In order to monitor the wind conditions, I had a monitoring pole set up at the site, as shown in this video:

At the top of the pole, a small propeller is attached, which monitors the wind conditions.

The propeller is a commercially available product called Wind Tracker/Wind Logger, made by Logic Energy. It can measure wind direction and speed.

It's a low-cost product with a proven worldwide record. For more information, you might want to check this blog of a friend who works in Logic Energy:

http://www.windlogger.co.uk/blogs/news

On this blog you can also find introduction of our solar sharing project.

The graph below shows the result of the first 12 days of wind monitoring with this device.

These data show that there are large variations in the wind speed, which is not very good for a wind turbine. More importantly, the average wind speed was only 3.79m/s, which is much lower than the necessary 5m/s. Too little wind is not a promising sign for the project.

However, wind conditions should be monitored for at least six months, so I decided to be patient and continue monitoring before jumping to early conclusions.

(This article is a translation of the original Japanese post by Nobuo.)

"Mega solar" construction regulated to protect scenery: Yufu

(Japanese article is here.)

The town of Yufu in Kyushu decided to protect its landscape against uncontrolled growth of large scale solar power generation facilities.

Yufu, in Oita prefecture, enacted ordinance that regulates construction of large scale solar power plants (called "mega solar" in Japanese).

The move aims to prevent destruction of Yufu's scenic landscape by large and unsightly stretches of solar panels.

Yufu's newly adopted regulation is so unusual that it was reported in online Sankei news, regional edition of Yomiuri Shimbun and other media.

The "Ordinance on harmonization of natural environment and renewable energy generation operations" requires companies that plan to construct solar power facility larger than 5,000 m2, to notify the town and provide explanation to local residents' council. Town authorities may ask to review the plan if detrimental effects on landscape are anticipated.

In addition, places of extraordinary natural or historical value and of outstanding scenic beauty may be designated as "inhibition zone,"where companies may be asked to refrain from any renewable energy development projects whatsoever.

This is the first ordinance regulating solar power generation in Kyushu, and it is an unusual measure nationally.

The town of Yufu, with its famous Yufuin-onsen, is among leading tourist destinations in Kyushu. Along with hot springs, beautiful scenery too is a valuable tourism resource that helps attract visitors.

(Yufu. Photo by Takasunrise 0921. Reproduced under GFDL+creative commons2.5)

Recenty, several plans for large scale solar power generation projects  have successively emerged in the town.

Local residents, fearing that such projects would have disastrous effect on their town's landscape, opposed them, but solar power plant construction on private land cannot be regulated under Japan's current Landscape Act. That is why Yufu started working on its own ordinance proposal in December 2013.

The proposal passed unanimously in the town council on January 28, 2014, and was enforced on the following day.

Boom in solar power construction in Japan was sparked by the launch of renewable energy feed-in tariff (FIT) system in July 2012.

We - Bo & Su - will also benefit from this system in our solar sharing power plant & farm that is now being designed.

FIT system has been a powerful boost to the spread of renewable energy, but (just as any other system) it is not perfect.

Installation costs of solar panels are high, but with high purchase price of panel-generated electricity, guaranteed for 20 years under the FIT scheme, it is now a very profitable business for those who can afford the initial investment. Unfortunately, companies that joined solar business do not care about lives and feelings of locals who suddenly must live next to big and sterile solar panel desert.

Solar power was - and still is - meant to help us reduce our dependence on fossil fuels and nuclear energy. It wasn't meant to be a villain, but insensitive "mega solar" business will only stir resentment among people.

Japan's government should act to put a stop to unrestricted growth of mega solar power plants.

But if government is too slow, then local authorities should follow Yufu's example and establish their own municipal regulations that will protect their landscape.

The best place for solar panels is either on the roof or about three meters above ground in solar sharing. I believe these are two most people-friendly ways of utilizing energy from sun.

Solar Award 2013

The inventor of solar sharing Akira Nagashima received Solar Award 2013. He was one of three winners in the "Challenge" category.

The award ceremony was held on December 12, 2013, at the venue of Japan's major environmental products exhibition Eco-Products 2013.

The award committee recognized Nagashima's innovative idea of combining farming and solar power generation - a concept he named solar sharing.

Solar sharing is a new trend attracting attention of solar industry as well as farmers. Until recently, the options for placing solar panels were limited to either rooftops or the ground. Solar sharing opened up an entirely new possibility: installing solar panels over the farmland without imposing any limits on the agricultural production below.

Solar Award, established in 2012, selects outstanding ideas, projects and initiatives that contribute to the promotion of renewable energy in Japan. Widespread use of renewable energy can help achieve two goals:

1. increase Japan's energy self-sufficiency

2. breathe new life to Japan's declining countryside (through decentralized generation model)

Solar Award 2013 winners couldn't be more diverse. Here are some randomly picked laureates:

Dye sensitized solar cell ("Technology" category)

Solar cell that can accumulate electricity when exposed to light. The cell, which utilizes next generation technology, is a promising step toward solving the problem of solar energy storage.

The cell was developed by Prof. Hiroshi Segawa and his laboratory at the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology, the University of Tokyo.

AeLL - an environmentally engaged "idol unit" ("Culture" category)

A group of four idol girls who, besides singing and dancing, also pick garbage on the Mt. Fuji, harvest potatoes and install solar panels in their new AeLL village in Minami-Alps City, Yamanashi prefecture.

... and many other interesting winners.

Tamaden: Can community solar power plants be successful for-profits?

Tamaden (多摩電力合同会社 =  Tama Energy LLC) is a company whose business model is framed around Japan's renewable energy feed-in-tariff system.

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It's simple:

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1. Tamaden "borrows" a roof from a facility in Tama region, Western Tokyo. The facility can be a school, a private company, a nursing home - any type of institution as long as they have a suitable roof and are interested in renewable energy.

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2. Tamaden issues bonds (たまでん債 = tamaden-sai) - financial products for those interested in investing in local renewable energy enterprise. (The bonds are issued through a trust company, in this case  トランスバリュー信託株式会社 = Trans value trust company.)

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3. As additional source of financing, Tamaden gets a loan from a locally based financial institution, in this case 多摩信用金庫 =Tama Credit Union.

4. Tamaden installs solar panels on the borrowed roof and connects them to public grid.

5. Tamaden earns revenue from selling solar power to the grid (hereby the use of nation's feed-in tariff system)

6. From that revenue, Tamaden pays rent to the roof owner, dividends to investors who bought the bonds, and pays back the loan.

That's it. In theory, everything works perfectly. In reality, it works moderately well. In its short year-and-a-half history, Tamaden has launched two solar powerplants: one on the roof of Keisen University (恵泉女学園大学, 30 kW) and the other at Yuimaru Hijirigaoka (ゆいま～る聖ヶ丘, 67 kW), both in Tama, Western Tokyo.

This model does work, but whether it works as a for-profit enterprise is another question. When I visited Tamaden's solar plant on the roof of Keisen University and heard Mr. Sadatsugu Ohki, Tamaden's vicepresident, explaining their journey, my impression was that Tamaden is a bit struggling. The single biggest headache seems to be financing - How to slice the pie?

The pie - revenue from solar power sales - is too small for so many eaters, and its size is pretty much fixed. Installed panels can only generate so much electricity.

Revenue from electricity sales (売電収入) is economically viable if an individual or a company can keep all or most of the profit from electricity sales. Then the income is substantial. (Whether this model is socially responsible or desirable is another question. →　Consider mega solar power plants that are wonderful moneymaking machines for corporate investors, but bring little or no benefit to local economy.)

But if revenue from electricity sales is to be divided between the company that installed the panels (salaries and company running costs), the financial institution (loan repayment), the roof owner (rent), the investors (dividends) and whoever else comes in between, inevitably someone will end up hungry. After a due share is paid to the roof owner, the investors and the bank, Tamaden is left with specks that can hardly cover employees' salaries.

There are also other issues, for instance finding the right roof. In a city full of buildings and roofs, finding the right roof is surprisingly difficult. Few roofs fulfill all requirements necessary for solar power generation. The roof must be big enough (installation area of more than 100m2), suitable for solar panels (the roof must be sunny and able to bear heavy load of several tons, the building can't be too high, etc). Roof owner should also have the prospect of staying in the same place for next two decades (few private companies can promise this).

Another issue is that the fixed price per kilowatt hour of electricity sold to the grid (売電単価) is getting lower every year - last year it was 42 yen/kWh, this year 38 yen and next year even less. This means that profit per kWh from future plants will be lower, but the costs of paying roof rent, dividends, loan, and salaries, will be the same. 

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However, these are universal problems that everyone trying to build community power plant has to consider. Here I want to focus on the question of slicing the pie, because this question specifically applies to Tamaden and to the question in the title - can a community power plant be a successful for-profit-enterprise?

My visit to Tamaden prompted me to believe that for-profit probably won't work. So is Tamaden doing it wrong and should it quit? No! Tamaden is trying to build sustainable community power plants and that's definitely a right thing to do. Renewable energy build by the people for the people is a new field where everyone is beginner, and trial-and-error is the only possible approach. Tamaden is doing us a favor by accumulating know-how from their own trials and errors, and so smoothing the way for those who come next.

From the outsider point of view, there are two different ways how to solve Tamaden's problem with financing:

1. Find another pie to slice - additional source of income.

Organizing on-site excursions, such as the one I participated, is a source of income, but obviously too small. At the moment, though, I can't think of any other realistic source of income.

2. Go non-profit.

If the initiative is socially desirable but not profitable, settle for a non-profit approach with volunteers instead of employees. The obvious challenge is how to sustain high motivation of volunteers who have other full-time jobs. Keeping volunteers' morale using solely the psychological reward of doing the right thing has its limits. But people in Tamaden must know the pros and cons of profit versus non-profit better than anyone else.

In fact the second option – going
non-profit - is what Tamaden is doing right now. As Mr. Ohki, who showed us around the
Keisen solar plant site, said:

“We have to constantly remind ourselves that
our goal is not moneymaking.”

Tamaden, a limited liability company, works closely with non-profit Tama Energy Association (多摩エネ協 = 一般社団法人　多摩循環型エネルギー協会). Indeed, Mr. Ohki's business card featured his position as a Tamaden vicepresident on one side, and as a member of the board of directors of Tama Energy Association on the other.

Other Tamaden employees also overlap with Tama Energy Association members.

So what is this article about if the problem is already solved? Well, I can't help feeling slightly betrayed - something is shown as a successful business model, but in fact it is a successful non-profit model.

Other than that, I'm keeping my fingers crossed for Tamaden in finding their next roof and spreading citizen-driven renewable energy projects in Tama and elsewhere.

Ganbare Tamaden!

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Martin: Living off the grid

My friend Martin is living off the grid. He covers all his electricity needs from a 100 watt solar panel. The panel generates, on average, 330 watt-hours of electricity a day.

For comparison, electricity consumption of my refrigerator is about 1000 Wh a day (calculated from the nameplate annual consumption 370 kWh. This was the first time I actually read the label).

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Martin does not have a fridge. Neither air conditioning nor television.

His electricity consumption can be roughly summed up as: using a laptop computer, using two LED lamps, using washing machine once a week, and an electric fan in summer.

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When Martin wants to charge his laptop, he doesn't plug it into electric outlets on the wall like the rest of us. Martin's electricity comes from a lead-acid battery, which stores electricity generated by the solar panel in the garden. The panel is outside just behind the window, attached to a bamboo stick and facing south.

 

That panel has been Martin's only source of electricity since he discontinued contract with Tokyo Electric Power Company a year and a half ago. He gets no electricity bills.

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In the first days of his solar power life, Martin was playing around and trying things out. For example how long could he use a microwave? Answer: not long. The battery was empty in 5 minutes. All electricity used up, he had to spend that evening in darkness.

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Needless to say, there is no microwave in Martin's place anymore. Just in case, he bought this emergency headlight↓on the picture for potential evening blackouts. But as Martin gradually got smarter in adjusting his energy usage to the available watt hours (more on sunny days and when the battery is fully charged, less on cloudy days), there's only very occasional need for the headlight.

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So is Martin an ascetic hermit or a radical hippie? Neither.

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Martin is a scientist by profession. He came to Japan from Germany as a doctoral student in 2010 to do research on photovoltaics. He completed his degree last year and is now working as a researcher in one of Tsukuba's institutes.

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I was at Martin's PhD thesis defense and I felt like Alice in Wonderland, lost in a parallel universe whose inhabitants were casually talking about "droplet epitaxy" and "coupling of quantum dots" in the pursuit of "developing strain free material systems for IBSC research." That's the wonderland behind future photovoltaic technology.

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Martin's private world is much more comprehensible to the laymen, and the room in Tsukuba he's renting, with tatami floor and the bamboo shelf and pumpkins at the front door, is very cozy place that people like to visit.

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Martin came to Japan in 2010. In March the following year, Great East Japan Earthquake accompanied with tsunami stroke the country, followed by Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactors' meltdowns. This event literally changed the course of history in Japan.

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Tsukuba is 180 km south from Fukushima Daiichi plant. It's quite possible that if Martin came to Japan in different time, he wouldn't be living the life he is living now. Fukushima disaster impacted us more deeply than we're willing to admit.

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This was the first time that some people started to ask the question that is so rare in advanced economies:

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What is "enough"?

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How much is enough? We have the concept of too little. People who live on less than 1 dollar a day have too little and need more. But in modern economy whose ultimate goal is infinite growth, there's no concept of "too much" or "enough." (What is "enough"? is originally Fritz Schumacher's question in Small is Beautiful.)

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When we - not as a nation but as individuals - try to figure out what is enough for us, how much stuff we need to be happy, we usually look around to see what others have, and from that we refer to what we need. If most people around us have a house and a car and a new model of iPhone, we conclude that we need a house and a car and a new model of iPhone. I call this "dependent thinking."

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The opposite of dependent thinking is independent thinking. Martin doesn't need others to decide for him whether he needs a fridge or a TV set.

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As soon as basic needs are fulfilled, happiness is a question of attitude rather than the amount of stuff. That's what I learned from Martin.

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A Japanese article about Martin in local newspaper is here.

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Kondadai - forest in the city

(This article is not about solar sharing, but the topic is at least as important.)

Kondadai is a piece of forest about 4 km from Tsukuba station in the city of Tsukuba, Ibaraki prefecture.

Kondadai is one of few remaining patches of wild land in Tsukuba. Despite being surrounded by houses and fields, this small jungle has ecosystem rich enough to provide habitat to birds of prey. Hawks (ohtaka) and buzzards (sashiba) are both classified as "near threatened species" on the Red List of Japan's Ministry of Environment. Presence of endangered hawks has helped prevent development in the area so far, but future is uncertain.

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Besides rich natural environment, there are also cultural assets in Kondadai - ruins of Konda castle. They are very mysterious ruins though - buried under the grasses, you have to fully employ your imagination to spot them.

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Kondadai is now protected thanks to the efforts of Kayoko Takahashi and her Association for the protection of Kondadai ecosystem 金田台の生態系を守る会. On Sunday Nov. 10, 2013, I took part in a study walk through the forest, regularly organized by the Association.

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Kondadai is, in a way, a classic story of conflict between two forces: nature conservation versus urban development. In the story, developers are blamed for insensitive destruction of nature in the name of progress, and environmentalists are blamed for hindering development by uselessly trying to protect every tree and bird.

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But when I was walking through the Kondadai forest on Sunday, I was thinking of it as neither The Environmentalist nor The Developer. Instead, I tried to look at Kondadai through the lens of a local resident.

I naturally took the resident view because Kondadai reminded me of Brezina, a forest park in my hometown back in Slovakia.

This is Brezina in January 2013 - the last time I was there.

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I grew up in Trencin, a small town in western Slovakia, in a typical housing area of 7-store apartment buildings built in communist era. You could find similar neighbourhood all around the country, there was nothing special about the place. What made it unique for me was the forest park Brezina, 5 minutes on foot from our apartment.

I used to go to Brezina for a walk since kindergarden through elementary school to university. As a student, I would walk 45 minutes to the station through the forest instead of taking 20-minute bus. Today, whenever I go back to Slovakia, the first thing to do is to go for a walk to Brezina.

I can't imagine my hometown without Brezina. Beloved by the residents, it is one of the greatest assets of the town. It's value far exceeds the economic value of the trees or the land, or the housing that could be created in its place.

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I don't live in Tsukuba any more, but if I did, I would love to have a place like Kondadai close to my home.

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If Kondadai was gently turned into a forest park, without driving away hawks and owls and squirrels but available for people to rest and children to play, it would be of priceless value to people living around.

As the last oasis of trees and silence in central Tsukuba, it should be worth protection even without the near threatened hawks nesting there. Preserving Kondadai forest would would not only protec the flora and fauna, but would make central Tsukuba a more enjoyable place to live for humans.