The office and this website will be closed today. I would like to thank you for your visiting my webisite and your support in this year. I will resume my webiste from 5th January 2004. The very best to each of you and our planet for the coming year.
*I will update the diary of 25th next year.

My wife is now passionate about a new television drama program, which was recently produced in South Korea. The drama, entitled “Winter Song of Love,” is now being re-aired on NHKBS. It was originally aired a few months ago and received very high ratings. Due to its success and the many requests that followed, it has returned, and has been airing from 10 pm to 2 am every night for the last ten nights as a special program.
　The leading role is played by a young South Korean actor, Bae Yong Jun. He is popular among Japanese housewives, and on the Christmas Eve’s evening edition of the Yomiuri Shimbun newspaper, a large portion (five columns) of the paper featured an advertisement with his name and photograph for a book titled “Korean Drama Cinema Guide”. This is the first time I’ve heard of anything like this happening before, so it appears that South Korea and Japan are genuinely bridging a gap on a personal level, which I find to be very hopeful.
　I believe that the current friendly relationship between Japan and South Korea owes much to last year’s very successful co-sponsorship of the soccer World Cup, especially since we visibly supported each other’s team. I feel that the people in South Korea approved of the fact that the Japanese cheered from the heart for the Korean team when South Korea went on to the semi-finals. I learned that when done right, that international sports competition did inspire friendship among participating countries.
　I am pleased to add that my books are very well received in South Korea and that they are selling twice as fast than in Japan (please see the diary dated October 6 through 11). A week ago, a one-hour program about me and my work was aired on the KBS, which is equivalent to Japan’s NHK in South Korea, and we’ve heard positive feedback about the program. In addition, a new compact disk which contains only Korean music with crystal photography is to be released soon. Finally, I received a request from a publisher to write a new book for the Korean public.
　I am considering accepting this offer and have hope that this would contribute to bringing our two peoples closer. I believe understanding and the friendship formed at the personal level does create the basis for improved relations as neighbors.

As I wrote on Dec. 20th, I am writing the new photo collection of Water and Prayer and planning to complete it soon. The content of this book most likely will be:

Chapter 1 The sign of prayer
Chapter 2 The treasure box of prayer
Chapter 3 The power of words
Chapter 4 The power of prayer
Chapter 5 Postscript

What is different from the other books is that until now, it was Messages from Water but with this, I am putting emphasis on the messages I felt through the water crystals. That is calling to the theme "let’s bring back peace to the world" and to do what we can to achieve that.
　From February of next year, I will take this book starting with the seminar in Hawaii, and going around the world to call for as many people as possible.
　Everybody, have a great Merry Christmas. This photo is a Christmas gift from me. Please use this freely (excluding any commercial use). It is a water crystal photo with the label "fortune".
　Also, we are accepting applications for the Hawaii seminar. We are waiting for people’s participation.

To tell you the truth, I was stuck somewhere for about a week to write up the manuscripts of our new photo album ‘Water and Pray’. I concentrated on developing an idea and writing, this diary was suspended during my retreat. I apologize visitors who were looking forward to reading my diary during my absence.
Today, I have been to Kurume (a city in Fukuoka) to give a lecture. ‘Fukuoka Seminars for Women’ organized my seminar in this time. They have awareness-raising activities for women in the community. Their activities have lasted for more than 10 years. The organizer, Ms. Yumi Nakamura (she may be an ordinary housewife), is a very nice person. She is a little younger than I. My seminar was their 30th seminar. In the past seminars they had gorgeous lecturers, such as Mr. Susumu Nishibe and Dr. Teruo Higa. I was impressed that they succeeded to invite the such high-level lecturers even though they act in a local city.
I consistently notice that women practice the seminars such as local citizen’s college lecture in almost all cases, and almost all of such seminars have long history. Many of the seminars have 15 years or 20 years of continuance. Since I sometimes organize my company’s seminar and go through the difficulty of gathering people, financial management, and selection of a good lecturer, I can guess the hardships of the organizers. In addition, many of them may be volunteers. I cannot help respecting their service for the cultural development of local community.
By the way, I mainly talked about the theme of our new photo album in my seminar. The themes are ‘pray with folded palms’ and ‘keeping pride and awareness of being Japanese’. For example, I insisted that we should sing our national song ‘Kimigayo’ with confidence, and we should start to make use of hemps again. The seminar was, as it were, enduring test of the ideas I have developed in this retreat week. About 200 audiences listened to me enthusiastically to the end. The seminar was successful. People in Kurume gave me a passing grade.
We publish ‘Water and Prayer’ in Feb. 11th. Don’t miss it!

I received an e-mail from one lady who had attended the last day of my Tohoku seminar tour held in Tokyo at the end of this September. She wrote that she was so moved by my seminar and wanted me to be a guest speaker at their monthly seminar in December.
　I readily took the offer because it was by a company mainly with women and I loved the company name. The name is as shown in the title above. My wife has always been telling me that I am living on dreams. So, I thought it was a good time to actually get one for a bite.
　The seminar was to be held at a meeting room of the Ichigaya Lutheran Church. Because of the site and the company name (the same as the title of famous speech by late Martin Luther King Jr., an assassinated black minister), first, I thought they might be Christians. However, later, I learned that they weren’t. They were just young women with a lot of dreams. They got together and started a company. This sounded also very nice to me.
　It’s been long time since people started calling the 21st century to be a century for women. However, for some reason, not many companies have been set up solely by women from the beginning. I personally wish them good luck with their company.
　I heard a good story from Ms. Iwasaki, who is managing the company. After the seminar, she gave her greeting and comments. She said that she was so moved by the story that the crystals of water shown the letter of “SARS” became all squashed, however, its crystals changed to be beautiful ones when the same water was later shown the letter of “love and Thanks”.
　At first, I thought she might be impressed with the power of love and gratitude. However, I proved to be wrong. She constituted that water was telling us that we could start it over anytime again. She convinced me.
　I internalize these good stories people gave me and carry them to my next destination to deliver. I am a messenger among citizens.

My secretary brought my attention to a strange letter. I knew it came from overseas because it was an airmail letter and the address was written in Roman alphabet. There was no sender address, and the postmark seems to indicate it was mailed in Switzerland.
　I looked inside and found it very surprising. It was a small booklet in an accordion-fold, consisting of five crystal photographs. I took one look at them and knew instantly that they were not photographed by us. I look at all the photos we take and remember every single one of them. Crystals are just like my children.
　As I was wondering what they were, I found the logo of Nestle, then Vittel, and Perrier, which were the brands of water distributed by Nestle. It also included a below description written in English, French, German and Spanish.

My first reaction was, “What is that?! Who took these pictures!” and next I thought “They are not even forming good crystals at all”. Then I felt angry because it desecrated the technology of photographing crystals. Obviously, their technology is immature and they do not have good eyes to evaluate the crystals. I could not believe that a globally well-known company like Nestle would publicly use this level of photo as their products’ brand image. We have taken photographs which are much more beautiful than these, however we refused to use them as commercial advertisement (and that is why we are always struggling financially).
　However, after a while, I regained my coolness and changed my idea. I decided to think positively that this incident showed me that my technology of photographing crystals was being acknowledged and finally reaching the level of global economy. I then asked my staff to contact the public relations department of Nestle Japan and told them they were doing this without any idea, and also sent an advisement email to Nestle, headquartered in Switzerland.
　We will just observe the future development of this case, however, if they insist that their crystals are beautiful, I would have no choice but showing you how exceptionally magnificent the crystals of some Japanese mineral waters are. I will let you know of any progress on this matter.

I play "Imagine" by John Lennon and display the photo of this song's water　crystal. This is how I set up the venue for the opening of my seminar. This was an idea of Mr. Kizu, a member of our staff. "Imagine" is his favorite song, only second to a song by Akihiro Miwa. For half a year I have kept this introduction, which is being received very well.
　The water crystal for "Imagine" is special and worthy of contemplation. It seems to exactly represent the lyrics. Each crystal is independent and yet, all is in wonderful harmony.
　I am going to the USA next year in April and May. The USA version of "Water Knows the Answers" will be published and the publisher asked me to travel almost all over the country. It will be a month long tour. I will be visiting New York in early May. I recently met with a staff member of this project when she came to Japan. She suddenly had an idea and said "It would be great if Yoko Ono would support us. Do you have any connections with her?" She was just putting it out as an idea and I answered no.
　Soon after that, we discovered an internet message linked below. It's "A Thanksgiving Wish" from Yoko Ono dated November 27th. Wow! She is talking about me! I am looking forward even more to going to New York.

My mother passed away in January 6, 2002. My daughter Yoko wrote a diary in her homepage for her grandmother. The text below is the diary dated January 7, 2002, written by Yoko in Holland. This is my favorite text. Today, I went to my home in Yokohama to attend my mother’s 2nd-year memorial service. Here, I would like to show you Yoko’s diary, mourning my mother.

Having come back to Japan, a hectic week has passed by, and now, I somehow got away with the jet leg. So my life is slowly coming back to its original routine.
　But because of the long business trip, there are still piles of things that need to be done. It seems as though I'm a workaholic by nature, so I created more and more work, bringing it all on myself.
　In amidst of all, I thought of another wonderful plan. This is to go to Hawaii with others in next February. I name it 'Heal yourself to heal the world!' tour. What it is, is a plan full of activities just like the ones that are done 《here》. For me, I prefer not to have so many people, just around 40 - 50 people, in order for others and I, others, and our staffs to really get to know each other deeply. Therefore, it also has some essence of a foreign version of 'hado' workshop to it.
　Moreover, it is a tour that will fit perfectly for those:

1. who want to heal certain pain that does not go away in the hot summer Hawaii.
2. who would like to express words like "I love you, thank you" that you often do not mention in Japan to your beloved husband or wife (those who had interest in hugging but since in Japan it is a little embarrassing and hard to do).
3. who want to talk to the dolphins and touch them.
4. who would like to watch the Pleiades, the Big Dipper, the polestar, the mars, the southern cross, or your constellation closely.
5. who want to learn more about Japanese and American history along side with Hawaiian history.
6. who would like to get to know 'hado' people of Western Hemisphere (since we are planning to invite people outside of Japan).
7. who want to know if this man, Masaru Emoto holds some truth or if you want to know more of him.
8. who think that the direction of his/her future job can be decided.
9. who are not so busy and wanted to see what kind of tour this was.
10. who do not like cold, and want to go somewhere warm.

For people who fit under any of those categories and can make it, do you want to be in Hawaii with us?