＜prologue＞
I started a blog called “The Baby Boomer Generation’s Miscellaneous Blog”（Dankai-sedai no garakutatyou:団塊世代の我楽多（がらくた）帳） in July 2018, about a year before I fully retired. More than six years have passed since then, and the number of articles has increased considerably.
So, in order to make them accessible to people who don’t understand Japanese, I decided to translate my past articles into English and publish them.
It may sound a bit exaggerated, but I would like to make this my life’s work.
It should be noted that haiku and waka （Japanese short fixed form poems） are quite difficult to translate into English, so some parts are written in Japanese.
If you are interested in haiku or waka and would like to know more, please read introductory or specialized books on haiku or waka written in English.
I also write many articles about the Japanese language. I would be happy if these inspire more people to want to learn Japanese.
my blog’s URL:https://skawa68.com/
my X’s URL:団塊世代の我楽多帳（@historia49）さん / X
1. Getting started with blogging: How I, a baby boomer, started a miscellaneous blog
I think I’ll try writing a diary (blog) like young people do too, as an old man (me) should too.
「若者もすなる（するという）日記（ブログ）というものを、老人（私）もしてみんとてするなり（してみようと思う）」
I started writing by parodying the opening line of “Tosa Nikki” by Ki no Tsurayuki, a nobleman and poet of the Heian period…
I am 68 years old this year, a genuine “old person” (early elderly), and currently work as a “temporary employee.”
When I reached my first retirement age at the age of 55, I was happy to think that I could finally say goodbye to my salaryman life and enjoy a life of leisurely leisure(「悠々自適」), plowing the fields on sunny days and reading on rainy days（「晴耕雨読」）, or playing golf（「ゴルフ三昧」）.
However, although I was enthusiastic, I did not have much money, and in our generation, the (partial) pension payment starts at age 60 and I can only receive the full amount at age 65, so reluctantly I decided to get a job at my”second workplace（「第二の職場」）”.
I worked there full-time, but my salary was about 60% of what I had made before retirement, and when I turned 60, partial pension payments began, so my salary was reduced by another 20%, so I ended up with just under half of what I had made before retirement.
When I turned 65, I thought to myself, “Maybe I should stop working,” but I was still in good health.
One of my seniors also suddenly fell ill after quitting his job at a company and died young, so I thought to myself, “I can quit anytime, so I might as well see it through to the end,” and decided to get a job at my “third workplace” (my current workplace).
This is not full-time, but rather involves working a maximum of 14 days a month, so the salary is enough to earn some pocket money, but it is relatively easy on the body.
The work is the same as what I did when I was an active salaryman, and it’s just auxiliary clerical work, so it’s easy.
However, next year will be my final retirement age at my “third workplace.” I can’t extend it any further.
My eldest son started a blog a few years ago, and I’ve been watching him with interest. So I’ve decided that when I retire completely next fall, I’ll have the free time to start a blog in earnest.
2. Determination to provide useful information
From now on, I would like to write freely about events that have happened around me and what I feel on a daily basis, interspersed with information that I think will be useful to my readers.
I’m going to throw away my old “patience and restraint（「隠忍自重」）” and go with “retirement and free speech（「隠居放言」）” from now on. This doesn’t mean “irresponsible free speech(「無責任な放言」)”.
“Retirement and free speech” is a phrase found in the Weizi chapter of the Analects of Confucius, and means “to withdraw from the world, keep oneself pure, and say whatever one pleases.”
It is highly impossible for an “ordinary person” like me to “write” a “novels or essays,” much less “publish” it.
However, as times changed and the world of the Internet became as accessible as it is today, tweeting and posting on blogs became commonplace.
Nowadays, it doesn’t have to be US President Trump; anyone can easily “disseminate information” to the world, or, although this may be a bit of an exaggeration, to at least people all over Japan.
Of course, unless the content of the blog is interesting or contains information that is useful to someone, it may have some readers at first, but it will eventually be forgotten.
There is apparently a countless amount of “space junk（「宇宙ゴミ」）” floating around in the real universe, and in the universe of the Internet, uninteresting or useless blogs like the one above will eventually become something like “space junk.”
As a result, such blogs end up being mere “self-satisfaction” (in real-life book publishing terms, “self-publishing”).
That is very sad and frustrating. I want to start this blog with the intention of preventing myself from falling into such a tragic outcome.
I will always keep in mind the saying, “Starting a business is easy, maintaining it is hard.”
「創業は易（やす）く守成は難（かた）し」