the Namesake

It is about time I explain to you all about the namesake of this blog.

My blog is titled "蒼穹〜イフテンゲル” and it means "Azure". The first characters are Japanese and the latter is in katakana but it is actually Mongolian.
I borrowed this from the title of the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies' Mongolian Language Study Alumni Journal.

To make a long story short, my mother's father (thus my grandfather) attended the school that preceded TUFS before the war.
I've never met my grandfather because he was already passed away by the time I got around to this world. Well, he passed away long time before I was born, in fact he passed away when my mother was only in high school. That is why I always refer to him my "mother's father" not my "grandfather".

I do not know anything about my mother's father except stories told to me by mother and her relatives. Yet I feel very attached to him, that he was the reason why I am here in this world.

Here is the only objective (meaning not from a relative) documentation about him that I've known. It is from the above mentioned Alumni Journal.

「戦後燃料不足の時代にオガライト（家庭用燃料）を開発し、従業員１００名の工場を経営。温厚で芯のある人柄であった。昭和４１年病没」("During the era of fuel shortage post WWII, he developed home-use fuel named 'Oga light" and ran 100 personnel factory. He was a gentle person and a man of principle. passed away in Showa 41 (1966)"

The goal in my life is to try be called that after I am gone.

My grandfather's name was KURACHI Kazutoshi 倉智和年.