Including my nine years as a student, the majority of my life has been at Hokkaido University. After my retirement from the university in 1994, I served at two private universities in Okayama Prefecture - Okayama University of Science and Kurashiki University of Science and the Arts - before retiring from university work in 2002.
I think maybe the English don't want to try something and look stupid, because they are a bit reserved.
As a lifelong Republican who served in the Army in Germany, I believe it is critical that we review - and overturn - the ban on gay service in the military. I voted for 'don't ask, don't tell.' But much has changed since 1993. My thinking shifted when I read that the military was firing translators because they are gay.
Rather than serving in the U.S. Senate for almost 20 years or having so many other wonderful life experiences, I could have served a longer sentence in prison for some of the stupid, reckless things I did as a teenager.
Before holding elective office - 12 years in the Wyoming House of Representatives and 18 years in the U.S. Senate - I served a different type of time. I was on probation for a federal offense committed as a teenager.
I served three terms in the U.S. Senate and was co-chairman of the National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform in 2010. So I know a bit about how Washington operates, and I have had plenty of experience doing the work of running for office.
Throughout my career I have done it my way and used my stubborn streak. I thought the best way to captain was to shut out all the noise - I did it with my batting and thought 'that has served me well, so why change it?'
When I was about to turn 50, I went into a kind of personal revision and observed my own priorities and what led those priorities in my life. And many things that, in a way, were profound.
My father had a difficult relationship with success, maybe because he never obtained it. But he was very wise about it because he observed how you can become rotten fruit once you get power.
Some would suggest that there has been a dramatic change in our perception of the world and ourselves within the world. Others have observed that there has been an almost complete about-face in a relatively short span of time.
