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Today’s story-teller is a scholar of German literature, Osamu Ikeuchi.

He wrote a column entitled: “24 Hours a Day” to talk about time.

Ikeuchi says that the world is unfair when it comes to money, power, luck and so forth, but time is given equally to everyone.

He says, “Then why don’t we settle the way of using the time as the philosophy in our lives?” You try to create time to spend for yourself. It does not require any money or labor. Anyone can do it if they feel like it.

In order to secure sufficient time for himself, he set 4am to 7am as his free time when he used to work for a company.

He spent the time for listening to music, writing letters and so forth to enjoy his free time.

At the same time, he reduced the time to spend with his coworkers after work. Because he only talks about work when he goes out with them. He realized he can talk about work with them during working hours.

And by reducing time to spend with his coworkers after work, he managed to set up a ‘brief detour course’ on the way home. The course was visiting second hand book stores, museums, movie theaters and so forth.

Ikeuchi says, “I quit my job as soon as I made enough money to survive. I didn’t want to spend any more time for the others but for myself. It was useful to learn how to spend time for myself by getting up early and taking a brief detour course on the way home from work.”

The NIKKEI 02/02/2011 by Osamu Ikeuchi (scholar of German literature/ essayist)

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