Fujiko Hemming

I listened to Fujiko Hemming's piano performance by CD. The other day, one of my co-workers recommended me her piano performance. The co-worker told me a lot about her with ardor. I had already heard about her great works by some other friends. Curiously enough, everybody, especially beginner of classical music listener praises her for her great performance.

For whatever reason, I haven't listened to her piano performance so far. So, I became curious about her and borrowed some CDs and her biography at my library. The first impression of her performance was quite good. She produce really relaxing sound and she has warm heart. And she doesn't have aggressive and actressy sound at all.

These days, I am annoyed by listening to too aggressive and actressy sounds by other pianists sometimes. About 20 years ago, people used to love thrilling piano performance. I think you can say Martha Argerich is its pioneer. Her performance was really thrilling with faster tempo, especially her Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky's piano concertos were amazing. Most pianists used to try to imitate and follow her performance and work on making their tempo much faster to be thrilling performance. Paradoxically, their performance ended up only being noisy and aggressive with fast tempo, not thrilling. I think nobody could catch up her level after all.

Now, in this kind of environment, Fujiko might be a pioneer in new style of piano performance. Her performance is really comfortable and relaxing. In this chaotic days with a fear of war and terrorism, I guess people really need a music filled with comfort and love, like Fujiko's performance.

My unknown hobby

I like collecting rare coins. The other day, I saw a very rare 5 yen coin in the cash register when I was paying at the cash register at a convenience store. I've been collecting the rare coins since I was a child, for about 25 years. But I encountered and got only 6 coins in the meantime. They are very rare coins. There are my own rules for collecting rare coins.

- Don't ask a cashier to exchange coins.
- Don't get rare coins at old coin shops.

So, that is why I couldn't ask the cashier to exchange it. The rare 5 yen coins were made from 1949 to 1958. The difference between normal one and rare one is the font type. The rare one has calligraphic fonts and normal one has Gothic fonts. It seems you can hardly tell the difference, but you can tell easier with matte brass color at first sight.

Soft Bank's new cell phones

I'm thinking about buying a new cell phone, or rather I'm interested in new cell phone. But, I won't buy new one immediately. I will use my current cell phone for a couple months at least.

Now, I'm interested in Soft Bank's new 812SH, which has just come out this February.
Its design is rather good, and it has some fascinating new functions such as S! Cast (weather icon), S! FeliCa, a PC Site Browser, 20 color variations and so on. The S! Cast(Weather icon) is very convenient! By looking at the main display, you can check the weather of the area where you are. My current cell phone doesn't have it.

And you can transfer the cell phone's e-mail data to your computer. (It's unconfirmed though, but I think it's 90 percent sure.) Equipped with a 2-megapixed CCD camera is not so bad. The more I research this model, the more I want to buy this one!

What do you think about this new model?