Thank you for your visit! This is Hiroshi Okamoto a.k.a MD.

Simply put, this multi-lingual blog is about any kind of learning. By promoting audience’s learning and motivation, I hope to contribute to better world.

Request for lecture, coaching, article writing, interview and general questions are also welcome.

In case you want to continue, below is the detail on the introduction of myself and this blog content and title.

【About author】

To summarize, I am a Global Educator, Performer, and Life-long learner, as shown in the below image.

＜Educator＞

Currently, I mainly work in the international education development. Till today, I have supported over 40 countries across 5 continents through a wide range of organizations to promote quality of education (United Nations, International NGO, government institution, school). The duty countries included Mongolia, Chile, Mauritania, Kenya, the US. Previously I worked in Kenya, Mauritania, Mongolia, Chile, Micronesia, Denmark and the U.S.

When I say educator work, people often ask me “did you like studying at school?” or “Did you have favorite teachers?”. The answer to those is simply “No”. When I was a student in Japan, I was far from “good student” as I did not like studying at school and my grade was below the average. Although I was very curious and asked many questions during classes, teachers would tell me “reduce your questions”, “do it later” or even “don’t ask questions”, so my image towards teachers was rather limited and even negative. Also when I am in the curious mode, I did not mind doing something different from others, so I also experienced semi-bullying. So honestly I didn’t have good memory at school.

On the other hand, I loved learning what I was curious about outside school, teaching something, and playing with children, so I decided to major in education to provide children with precious and joyful learning time at school and gained 5 educational licenses and experience of teaching and training teachers.. Many years later, instead of me teaching in the classroom, I am working on providing education access or improving quality of learning in developing countries. That shift in my career was triggered through my performer background.

〈Performer〉

So far, I have been involved with performing activities of musician, dancer, actor, chef, designer and presenter.

I realized that teacher is also performer, when I was working as an educator at day time and street dancer at night time. My mind started wandering like this: “mmm the class room is like a stage” →”Teachers who attract children are like actors”→”Good teacher is good actor, and vise versa!”.  Then I decided to go to New York to study acting to become better teacher. I was given a roll resembling Jackie Chan as an Asian actor with dancing and physical capacity. For some reason, I also participated in “Bathing suit cool guy talent contest” and won the 1st prize through mixed performance of cooking, dance and story telling.

As I liked creating (and eating!), then I became a chef and really into it. Behind the fancy dining floor of the restaurant, the most of kitchen workers are Mexican working under difficult condition without visa. Through them, I learned Spanish, Latino’s easy-going atmosphere (the one that Japanese classroom would not accept) and heartbreaking stories (e.g. leaving their families and crossing borders under dangerous condition). They were also the ones who inspired to go for educational development career in developing countries.

Since then, I have pursued joyful and creative learning and developed/implemented several education programme based on my performer background (teaching literacy through acting, hip hop education, presentation without letters, teacher training module on creative teaching, etc.)

Believing in the notion of “Good teacher⇄Good actor”, I have gone through different performer activities, but in retrospect, ever dot was connected. And the core of energy which pushed me to do those was curiosity and passion toward learning.

〈Life-long learner〉

Although I had no previous background,I could learn a variety of skills so far: (in the U.S.) English, acting, cooking and Spanish; (In Chile) French, self-hair cut and how to make office desk; (In Mongolia) Chinese and Mongolian language and beatbox and; (In Mauritania) currently Arabic and how to make great Natto; (traveling more than 60 countries) many soft skills to make up my own way. Through these, I became “addict to learning”, as the more I learn what I did not know, the more I want to learn. Looking back on my school days in Japan when I was not learning spontaneously, I came to believe the importance of life-long learning. For example, I became polyglot to speaking more than 5 languages (each of which needs constant improvement) through self-study outside formal education.

Life is once but learning is endless, so I would like to learn as much as I want before putting period to my life. For that, I really need to stay healthy pyisically and psycologically. That is why I am practicing what I call “3E”ーEat well, Exercise well, Energize well (sleep, learning and meditation). To promote learning for myself and others (one of the energizing pillars), I started this blog and the following services.

〈Contact and Request：Please send any message through contact page〉

• Lecture：I offer demand-driven lecture based on needs assessment and post-survey (Previous lecture example: Tokyo University, Tsukuba University, New York University, middle schools, high schools and other educational institutions)
• Life coach：I offer life coach service in a wide range of areas including learning, life skills, career and life purpose.
• Writing article
• Translation / Interpretation / Language lesson
• Interview

【About this blog】

So you got some idea of who I am. To explain about this blog, please take a look at the blog log below.

As the subtitle states, this is about Curiosity (？), Creativity (◎—⬜︎), and Learning(！), and logo shows each symbol.

〈Curiosity〉

I write quite randomly about anything I became curious about and interested in. It includes local life in developing countries, travel, language, life skills,  life organizer, how to create things, education, art, culture, etc.

〈Creativity〉

Creativity is like muscle. The more you use, the more it expands. Through drawing the suitable illustration on the entry and writing, I wish to maintain/improve creative skills.

〈Learning〉

At first I started this as my own diary without publishing. But gradually, I decided to write for audience, and increased the languages (currently four languagesーEnglish, Spanish, French and Japanese). Each entry includes “learning from this time” and I hope to keep learning on the languages and contents.

In fact, this logo is strongly related with symbol of myself (do you see the link?)

 

【About the blog title “MD NO SUSUME”】

「MD」： My performer name
「NO」: It is possessive word in Japanese
「SUSUME」：two meanings in Japanese: (1) Recommendation and (2) Moving forward

Thus, through experience in local life in developing countries and travel as well as a variety of learning, it is my (MD NO) recommendations (SUSUME) for moving forwards (SUSUME) for myself and ideally for the readers.

That’s it. Thank you for reading. If you could leave your comments and/or subscribe, that would motivate even more!

—————————-