先入観やら投資収益率・Prejudice and RoI
タイトルから判断すると全く関係ない話を無理矢理く付けているように見えるだろうが、まあ、付き合って下さいね。今日は近くの公民館主催の「子供スポーツ祭り」と題したイベントが我がグリーンフィールドで開催された。最高に気持ちのよい秋晴れ、気温が25℃前後で、裸足で走り回って天然芝生の本当の良さを経験するのにもってこいの一日でしたが、皆が運動靴を履いている。親の一人に「皆裸足しになってもらって下さいね、そうすると芝生の良さが分かるから」と言ったら、なんと「ちょっと難しい、怪我するかもしれない」と今まで聞いたことのないアンチ芝生発言が飛び出た。裸足でグリーンフィールドの芝生を踏んで怪我をしたことがあるかと言う問いに対してないと答えた彼に「子供に先入観を押し付ける失格の親だ!」と僕。 反抗的な態度でも仕方なく裸足になったとたん「ワー、気持ちいい」と思わず叫んだ。芝生信者が一人増えた。すぐ全員が裸足になり、2時間ほど土の校庭では想像できないほどの笑顔で思いっきり走り回っていました。子供全員が「学校の校庭をこんな芝生にしてよ、おっちゃん!」と大声で叫んでいた。その間中、僕は冬シバの種をまいていた。2万平米に撒く時間は4時間。大変だと思う人に対して、いつもこう説明することにしている。金融業界では投資を検討する時、予想投資収益率を検討する。一年間1回4時間のこの作業が投資だとしたら、4,368時間(6ヶ月間)中冬シバできれいな青々としている絨毯の上で遊べる収益を得られる。なんと投資収益率千倍以上!株の世界なら、違反行為でしかえられない収益だけど、芝生では毎年得られる。芝生って、凄いよね。From the title, you probably think I have gone off on some bizarre tangent but please humour me, there is method in my madness.The local residents' association held a kids sports day at Greenfield today, a perfect early autumn day, clear blue sky, temperature around 25C, a gentle breeze blowing across the lake, a few yachties out enjoying themselves. All in all, it was a perfect day for all visitors to go barefoot in the park and experience at first hand (foot?) just how good it feels to run around on well-tended grass. But being Japanese and wary of this strange substance, they all had their sports shoes on. When I suggested to one parent that they may find it fun to be barefoot, he stunned me with this reply: "Can't do that, we may get injured".When he admitted that he had never been injured running barefoot at Greenfield, I accused him of being a failure as a parent, in that he was instilling his children with his own prejudices.Making clear that he did not like my attitude, he grudgingly removed his shoes, only to exclaim (almost involuntarily) "Wow, this feels great!"Another addition to my grass religion!! Pretty soon, everyone was racing round barefoot and having the sort of fun you would never see on a dirt school ground. I won't even bother to tell you that all the kids screamed at the top of their voices that they would love their school ground to be in grass like Greenfield.While they were playing, I was busy sowing the ground with winter seed, a process that takes 4 hours for the 20,000sqm of our ground. When asked if this is not a tiresome task, I always offer the following explanation. When making an investment, you always look at the prospective return on investment (RoI; see the title!). In this case, I make an investment of 4 hours, and get a return of 4,368 hours of pleasant use of a green playing surface for the 6 months from mid-autumn to mid-spring. The RoI is over 1,000 times.A return of this magnitude on a financial investment would be almost certainly the result of something illegal, but we get the same return every year from our winter grass investment.God, I love grass!