漱石忌（Soseki ki）： Death anniversary of Natsume Soseki

Today is the death anniversary of Natsume Soseki (夏目漱石:　Feb. 9, 1867-Dec. 9, 1916). He is one of the most famous novelists at the Meiji era (明治時代:1868-1912). His well-known novels are Kokoro (こころ,1914), Botchan (坊ちゃん,1906), I Am a Cat (我輩は猫である: wagahai wa neko de aru, 1905) and his unfinished work Light and Darkness (明暗: mei an, 1916). They are translated into English therefore you must have read them.
Soseki is his pen name which is the similitude of sour grapes or strong character. His real name is Natsume Kinnosuke (夏目金之助). He was also a scholar of British literature and actually studied in UK from 1901 to 1903. However his life in UK seems miserable. After returning to Japan, he replaced Koizumi Yakumo (小泉八雲) at the First Higher School and later he became a professor of English literature at Tokyo Imperial University.
His portrait appeared on the front of the Japanese 1,000 yen note from 1984 until 2004, therefore if you have visited Japan before, you may have seen them.

名前（namae）： Name

How do you name children's name? In Japan we have kanji (漢字) characters which have meaning. Parents name their children's name by selecting a good combination of the kanji character, and making wishes on their names.
For example, my name Kimiko is written as 公子 in Japanese kanji character. Kimi (公) means public and ko (子) means child or girl. So my parents wanted me to be someone for the people. Girls name of our generation usually have ko at the end of the name.
Popular names are different depending on the era. In today's paper there are the ranking list of the popular names of babies who were born this year. Boy's No. 1 is Hiroto (大翔) and girl's No. 1 is Rin (凛). Hiroto has been No. 1 for 4 years in a row. There are three boy's names which have the same kanji character sho (翔) in top 10. Sho literally means to flap. Rin means handsome.
Popular names are influenced by the famous sports player or personalities. From next year there must be so many Ryo (遼) because of Ishikawa Ryo (石川遼), the youngest leading prizewinner golfer.

大雪（taisetsu）

Today is taisetsu (大雪), one of nijyushisekki (二十四節気), the 24 solar terms. The last one was shosetsu (小雪) on November 22, and the next one is toji (冬至) on December 22. Tai setsu (大　雪) literally means big snow, and it is the time when snow starts falling heavily. Actually it was very cold today.

Today's big news of the newspaper was the professional golfer, Ishikawa Ryo (石川遼), 18 years old. This was the second year for him, but he became the leading money winner (賞金王：shokin o) of the year. He received yen 183,524,051. He is the youngest prizewinner in the history. He greatly renewed the Japanese youngest record of prizewinner of 26 years old when Ozaki Masashi (尾崎将司) achieved in 1973. Besides this he was awarded 9 titles including MVP and Most Impressive Player award. This was also the most in history.
Congratulations!