Chapter1: Meeting Dr. Hideki Wada and Why I decided to go to the top university in Japan

I was born in Nagasaki, a rural town in Japan. You may know it as Nagasaki. That is because this is the city where the atomic bomb was dropped during World War II. I am a third-generation A-bomb survivor. I am very grateful that my grandparents were lucky enough to survive and that I have my life today.

I already consider myself lucky just to have been born.

Furthermore, I lived in a town in Nagasaki, "Yokoo," to be even more precise, where I lived until I was ten years old and rode the bus to school for an hour and a half every day. Rent, in dollars, was about $250 a month for a family of four living there. When I stood in the position of paying rent in San Francisco, U.S.A., the price difference was unbelievable. I was born on the edge of the island nation of Japan.

After being born and raised in Nagasaki for 18 years, I was fortunate to attend the University of Tokyo, the best university in Japan. There are many challenges in the Japanese education system. First of all, classes should be converted from Japanese to English. This is the first thing that needs to be done. I have also struggled to listen to and speak English since I came to the US. When I am depressed because I can not convey what I want to convey in English, I listen to English movies that Akio Morita speaks in English.

However, one wonderful thing about the Japanese education system is that it is open to poor people. Even if you are a child from a poor family, the tuition is high enough to allow you to go to the best universities in Japan. When I went to the University of Tokyo, I could pursue higher education with only about $5,000 per year in tuition. Probably, the price is one-twentieth cheaper than top-tier US universities( Stanford, Harvard, and so on ).

This is thanks to the fact that the government also invests taxpayer money. It is incredibly inexpensive compared to the tuition fees at top universities such as Stanford University and Harvard University. So I could go to the University of Tokyo and find an opportunity to work at a startup to pay for my tuition, a chance that more than paid for my education.

I started working at a startup in my junior year of college, but my skill set was such that I could not do blind touch then. As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn't have my own computer or cell phone at home, primarily until high school. So I cannot use my laptop well then.

My university's selection process was in the economics department, and thanks to the fact that Japanese universities are more likely to accept you even if your school's selection process does not match what you actually do at the company, I was given the opportunity to write a program and market software within a tech startup within the University of Tokyo. I started working in this startup as a part-time employee and was later promoted to an employee by the president. Like the startup I later founded, this startup was acquired by a Japanese-listed company, and I am still grateful for this precious experience.

This may be controversial, but it is easy to get hired after graduation, as I shared my experience in Japan, even if your school major does not match your work major. I learned this only after entering an MBA program in the U.S. It was a big culture shock to understand that it is expected to apply for and be hired for a job that matches your major.

I would be happy if everyone could learn more about such a Japanese university system, and I would be glad to see more Japanese universities interacting with each other without closing their doors to Japan, so if anyone is interested in accessing the University of Tokyo, Top University, don't hesitate to get in touch with me.

Then there is my mentor, who entered the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Tokyo, the most challenging university department in Japan, entered there, became a psychiatrist, and wrote a book titled "Examination is the Point," which tells how to learn for less affluent children like me while running a cram school, and became a film director. His name is Hideki Wada. I was 18 years old when I read the book he wrote, "Examination is the Point," but I did not meet my teacher until about ten years later when I started running my own company as an entrepreneur. I met Dr. Wada for the first time when the whole world was being affected by COVID-19.

I picked up a book by Hideki Wada at a used bookstore in my rural town. This was a turning point in my life. I was fortunate. I was born and raised in an environment where the Internet was not as prevalent in homes as it is today, and although I was born in 1988, I didn't have my own cell phone and computer when I was in high school. That is why Hideki Wada's book was so valuable to me.

To summarize what Wada-sensei wrote in his book, "It's not that I'm not smart. It's just that I'm not doing things the right way." It's not that I'm not smart. It's just that I don't know how to do it. Even the math problems at the best universities in Japan can be solved by looking at the answers and memorizing them. This approach, also taught in the book "Important to Study Efficiently to Get into a difficult universities." gave me hope even though I had scored an "E" on the mock exam of the best university in Japan and had almost no chance of passing the exam in a year. From this point on, I decided to give it a try. This first congratulations from my teacher, Dr. Hideki Wada, makes me think I can do it. It is still alive and well. It is an endorsement.

And I think there is not much point in spending time thinking from scratch on something that can be answered quickly by asking an AI a question; it would be much faster to ask an AI a question, learn using the answer it returns, and then think about applying it from there.

Rather, the value is in actively learning and practicing what AI cannot do. Is the pointlessness of prohibiting children from using AI the same as how we responded to PCs when they came out? I think the same thing can be said. What position do we take when new technologies emerge? The future will change greatly depending on how we respond to the new technology.

Back to the story, I explain why I decided to try the method that even this first math problem of the best university in Japan at that time could be solved by looking at the answers and memorizing them. I thought it was better than doing nothing, and the fact was that I could not solve the math problems of the best university in Japan at all, even though I had already studied diligently.

Furthermore, why did I enter the "best university in Japan"?

My real reason for attending the University of Tokyo, the top university in Japan, was because I promised the girl I loved. Such a trivial reason was more genuine and palpable to me then, and I could will myself to do it. I am not good at singing, don't have good looks, and am not fast on my feet. There is no reason why I can attract her.

I thought that if I could get into the most challenging university by studying hard and wasting a year when I got the worst grade at the Tokyo University pre-exam, I could tell her I was very serious about her. Even if I confessed my feelings to her, there was almost no chance of getting her to go out with me, and it was also something I thought about because I had no pulse.

Go to a good university, get into a good company, or become a bureaucrat and have a stable family.

I think it is suitable for those with the will to do so, but at least when I was 18 years old, I did not have the slightest motivation or will to do so.

I did not intend to go to the University of Tokyo for that reason. Even if there was no good reason at first, isn't it an excellent start to be curious, to try starting a business, and to aim for a good university? I think that you will indeed find a reason to look into more people after that.