My Amazing Mentor Yoshi-san

Last year I decided that what I really wanted to focus on was improving my Japanese; to get it back to the level it used to be at when I finished language school, or hopefully even beyond. I started taking 1-on-1 Japanese tutoring online, working with two different tutors with different backgrounds to broaden my exposure and also help with scheduling.

After a few months I was forced to drop one of the tutors due to scheduling conflicts and went searching for a new tutor, and that was when I found Yoshi-san. Most of the tutors on the platform are in their 20's, working little or reduced hours at their jobs due to the pandemic. Then there is Yoshi-san, a 70+ year old retired computer engineer with a history of teaching and working with foreigners in Japan.

I was intrigued by his bio and tried out a trial tutoring session, and I was instantly hooked. We talked about tons of great topics from 3D printing and Arduino development to aeronautical engineering (what his degree happens to be in) and automobile development (his first career).

One of the big reasons Yoshi-san is so inspirational to me is his drive to keep working on what he loves. He's been retired for over 10 years, he's in his 70's, but he still keeps learning new technologies, and innovating new solutions. The picture above is just his latest innovation.

The newspaper is delivered to the first floor mailboxes (pictured) early in the morning, but sometimes it's late. He would get so frustrated walking down all those stairs to get the newspaper only to find it hadn't been delivered yet, so what did he do? He created his own solution to the problem! He tried out various forms of contact sensors/triggers to kick off his circuit, found a solution to having poor reception with an antenna inside a metal box by tucking it in behind the mailbox name plate, 3D printed his own enclosures, and soldered up his own circuit boards. After weeks of work, today he got it all working.

I hope that when I'm 70+ years old I will still have the drive to keep on learning and innovating like my amazing mentor Yoshi-san.