Last night, there was a special TV documentary program on TV called, "If the world was a village of 100 people". It was a TV documetary about street children and child labor around the world and their daily lives. As I watched this TV documetary, I thought about many things. And I also remembered an incident that I had experienced when I was a child. It was a winter of when I was 12 years old. At that time, I was living in the U.S. with my family because of my dad's transfer. Every summer, we go away for a week. But that year, we went away in the winter. The destination of our trip was Mexico. We went to Mexico City and Cancun, which was not yet a popular resort town yet. When we arrived at Mexico City, we saw many homeless people on the streets. But that wasn't too surprising sight to see for us, because there are also many homeless people in NYC,too. But as a child, I was shocked to see many young children(before going into grammar school) selling goods and begging in the city square where many sightseers visit. Then we visited Cancun. There are many Mayan ruins in the surburbs of Cancun. So my family hired a taxi driver for 2 days. This driver was a man who came to work from Acapulco, because the popularity of Acapulco as a resort city was going down then. Although he didn't speak English too well, I remembered him as a very friendly and nice man. It was on the second day that it happened. We got on in the car, just like the day before. But compared to the day before, the expression on the driver's face was a bit gloomy. So my dad started to talk to him. Then he said, "My mother had passed away last night." My parents were very surprised to hear this. They told him not to worry about us, go back to our hotel and drop us off. Return to Acapulco and stay by his mother's side. Then he said things that I still can't forget. He said, " My mother was born poor. She worked very hard through out her entire life. But still, she was poor until she died. My mother will be happier if I stayed and worked today than be at her side. So I'll return to Acapulco after today's work is done." As a child, up until then I was never troubled with my life both physically and mentally. So this incident was a very shoking and close experience for me. After this experience, my concious had changed a bit. I became interested in current affairs around the world and started to participate in many volunteer activities. My sister then 8 years old when she experienced this, is now a graduate school student making researches on child labors and child abuses around the world. As I watched the documentary on TV last night, it made me think that maybe that experience had changed conciousness of both me and my sister. And I also thought that Japan is too peaceful! There are thousands of children in the world who want to go to school but can not because of poverty and other adult affairs. Japan is carrying a problems on NEETS and children who refuse to come out of their rooms. This is in a sense, a very luxurious and foolish problem. As a world becomes more convinient and richer, it seems like we're losing something more important one by one. And the thought of this makes me very sad.