Just some casual notes.
【Castles in the sand】
"Castle built on sand" — meaning something fabricated with no substance — but the phrase itself sounds unnecessarily cool.
Anyway, the venture scene is full of companies that are castles in the sand. Not only gray and shady — plenty of founders with zero morals who commit crimes without blinking.
As everyone already knows, a recently hyped listed AI venture had a completely insane deal scheme sailing through as normal.
As someone on the edges of marketing expertise, what shocked me most personally was this video influencer Tabata published: 〜【Exclusive scoop】Fraudulent IPO "Alt": we obtained decisive internal documents on the window dressing!
No way a scheme like that could hold up (and yet there are founders who believed it would, ran it, and felt they'd hit their budget!) — that hit me hard.
Same with everything else: the principle should be that things that go well easily basically don't exist.
Sometimes I hear people pitch a business plan — "I've been thinking this, and if we do it this way it'll work" — and looking back, those usually fall apart.
This time that venture was the one in the spotlight — rare for a listed company, maybe — but the world is full of companies doing gray and black things.
I barely get venture-scene news and I'm totally out of the loop — and even then, every so often I hear that so-and-so founder is actually this-or-that.
All I think is, "What an idiot — I'll stay away." But human bias is terrifying. Even if that sketchy person gets called out and flares up, they quietly come back afterward. And people around them casually flatter them again.
If you asked why, they'd say something like, "(Even if they did something wrong) they deliver results — aren't they amazing?"
In the SNS era that tendency only gets stronger — and every time I see this kind of stupid phenomenon, I get confused: "Am I the one who's wrong?"
It isn't only people who make media headlines — this happens inside communities you're part of too. Bizarre and complicated. Not irony — I find it scary. A few things like this piled up lately, so I wrote it down.
【One step ahead】
Recently I talked with a senior I hadn't seen in a while.
If I put the first impression in one phrase: he was one or two moves ahead.
We had a bit of debate, and I felt skillfully steered toward what he wanted to say and the conclusion he was aiming for.
Walking home alone I thought, "Ah, that topic had other angles I should have raised." And then: yeah, I got steered well.
Of course that's just my own mood — he probably had no such intent.
But when this pattern leaves everyday conversation — say, an important business moment — it gets dangerous.
Looking back, I've made this kind of mistake more than once.
Fixing it afterward costs real time and money. I was too inexperienced to see it then.
People with enough experience really do have a kind of ability to dominate discussion — a hard-to-name persuasiveness — and if you just go with the flow of the talk, you get steered.
Quite abstract, but it was a moment that made me reflect: don't coast — use your head.
【Hanshin Tigers】
Last one. I'll write about my beloved Hanshin Tigers.
Sorry to everyone who hates the Tigers. And sorry again — writing this was fun so it got long, but there's less insight here than in the other topics.
Anyway. I'm a Hanshin Tigers fan, and this year they're running away with the Central League, so I'm delighted.
For people less familiar: even if you don't know baseball, you can feel how cult-popular the Tigers are — but before they won Japan in 2023 for the first time in 35 years, they hadn't been Japan champions for about 40 years.
(Pro baseball has two leagues; they won the Central League in 2003 and 2005, but never reached Japan No. 1.)
Relative to the fanatical popularity, they're an old powerhouse but not a perennial winner. I know nothing about soccer, but people say Urawa Reds feel similar.
That Japan championship was only two years ago; last year they finished a close second; this year they're alone on top of the Central League.
A few years ago I'd check the scores and think "Ah, this year's done," "Lost again!" — plenty of irritation — so I stopped even looking at results.
The vibe was roughly "I guess I root for Hanshin" — but they've gotten strong again, so I subscribed to DAZN and started watching live, and I even follow farm-team prospects alongside the majors.
This year they're strong, so score alerts almost never irritate me — which also means fans who've stuck with Hanshin through the bad stretches are amazing. Truly.
And fans who support lower-ranked teams right now are genuinely precious to those clubs.
Maybe he understands that — first-year manager Kyuji Fujikawa, leading the runaway-first-place Tigers, keeps thanking the fans in post-win manager interviews.
Watching Fujikawa, I think managers who convey gratitude to fans with real heat, repeatedly — beyond surface thank-yous — might actually be rare.
I basically don't watch sports other than baseball and combat sports, but pro baseball has games six days a week — so it feels like gaining a hobby I can enjoy almost every day. That makes me happy.
Sports watching has drama, you can enjoy the data, and excluding going to the ballpark it costs almost nothing — great content.
Baseball especially: each pitch is independent with its own cat-and-mouse, offense and defense are cleanly split, and every play is easy to savor. There are stars, of course, but who gets the spotlight changes every time — that's fun too.
(※ In that sense, American football probably has a similar kind of fun. My knowledge stops at Eyeshield 21, but offense and defense both run play-by-play with schemes — the discipline should make it even more enjoyable.)
Come to think of it, I've heard that compared with team sports like basketball, a star player's contribution to winning is lower in baseball.
Basketball has five players and the star is always involved on both ends, so whether the star is there allegedly hits wins more directly.
Speaking of watching sports, I also like combat sports — but even when there is tactics, you often can't enjoy it through data much, and because it's continuous flow, the cat-and-mouse isn't as clear to amateurs. Different in that way.
In every sport, pros are a handful of geniuses — but of course it isn't only talent; mentality matters, and that's what makes it interesting. That's where drama is born, and it gets more fun.
For the Hanshin Tigers, for example: third-year college grad (Chuo University) Morishita, hitting third.
He's been a regular since his rookie year — a batter who can deliver when it matters.
In year one (the Japan-championship year two years ago) he was already a regular, showed a distinctive clutch strength in the Climax Series that decided Japan No. 1, and contributed hugely.
Watching him, you feel how much mentality matters on top of talent.
Basically every prospect starts in the minors, gets a look at the majors, shuttles between them, and somehow sticks — but he stuck from year one (※ he dropped to the minors once or twice in year one, but came right back up).
You can feel the resolve: he will not go back down. There's no "I'll train in the minors for a while" vibe. Wonderful.
He has the "heat" to tear up after making an out in a big spot — and also a healthy dryness of "just do what you have to do" / "worrying is wasted." That combination impresses me.
People who can hold those two apart — not only athletes — are rare. Players like that feel reliable. And he's a type Hanshin didn't really have; fun to watch.
A few days before I wrote this, Morishita had been in a slump but went 3-for and helped win the game.
That day, after the game, manager Fujikawa said something to the effect that regulars who've been through hell have a high bar for what's "normal" (and conversely, plenty of players don't clear it) — and that landed.
More than talent or skill, I think he means the mental standard — and it's excellent.
On raw potential alone, anyone who's made the pros should already have a high bar.
By the way, there's a "game-winning hit" metric — a hit, walk/HBP, or sac fly that ends up deciding the game — and Morishita is currently No. 1 across all teams (No. 2 is fellow Tiger Teruaki Sato, aka Satoteru).
Also, my favorite is leadoff man Chikamoto — excellent mentality too. Not a home-run hitter; more of a hit-manufacturing machine.
Outwardly a cool type where heat is hard to see — but his preparation is thorough. In practice he once said something like, "I deliberately drop my form and practice while I'm not feeling it. Only practice in that state has value" — which surprised me.
For him everything is decided in pre-game prep; the game is just outputting that prep — an interesting automatic-mode way of thinking.
That's all. Or rather: watching sports where you can feel professional mentality is fun — was that the point (?)
P.S.
Totally unrelated, but sharing a recommended digital-detox tool.
I found it while mindlessly watching YouTube.
A video with the fun title "Quitting YouTube addiction is actually easy", introducing an app and a tool.
Watch the video and you'll get how to use them and why they work.
① The app ScreenZen
② The Chrome extension UnTrap for YouTube — install these and you cut way down on unconsciously opening SNS, and that irritating loop of wandering forever after you've already looked once. Recommended.
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