High School Class Reunion Party

My new year started with a high-school class reunion party on January 3rd at Himeji Castle Hotel. Thirty years have passed since we left Tatsuno High School, where it had 10 classes at each grade, and 450 students, of which I was one. One hundred fifty old boys and girls out of 450 (which is 1/3 participation ratio) plus our former teachers got together and enjoyed the party. The details are posted on a blog site (unfortunately in Japanese) by party organizers at http://blogs.yahoo.co.jp/tatsuno_31s.

Thirty years have carved out several figures:
1. Our teachers have retired or are getting retired soon in a few years. They were younger, at that time, than the old boys and girls in 2009. That reminds me to think about that our days are being counted.
2. Generally speaking, it seems boys have got older in their appearance (say, spare tire, lower belly, or losing hairs) than girls. Boys’ fatal disadvantage is that they (including myself) can’t use cosmetics! Let me point out that girls cannot decorate their tone of voices. The tone of voices in 1979 was of high-keys!
3. I forgot many old girls who were next-door neighbors. It was a shame on my memories.

I really enjoyed chatting with my old friends, by recalling back episodes in my high-teen period. It was a fun and also a kind of bitter chocolate taste.

Apart from that main topic, I’ve got one observation on our communication structure.
Here in Japan, we don’t have a nation wide social network system (SNS) like Facebook in spirit of “connecting and networking the people in general.” In Tokyo area, around 30 (out of 450) high-school graduates are registered to a mailing list and using it for communication in our daily life. The entire connections of our old boys and girls, however, have not been well-organized yet so far. Of course, we are connected by high-speed optical wired networks and broadband wireless networks with cellular phones. The issue is a lack of application-layer communication organizing system. SNSs are very popular for younger generation, say generations X and Y. The coverage is limited for elders. The communication structure can be improved further by introducing a facebook-like communication organizer. Here is a good research topic to tackle.
Related to this topic, I had an interview from a tech writer last year. The interview was well summarized into the communications of the ACM 2008 December issue.
See, for your information, http://mags.acm.org/communications/200812/?pg=20