The proposed solar-electric lighting system provide lighting inside the main prayer room, as well as lighting to the monastery's retreat homes.
Critics often call the Japanese businessmen self-serving economic animals.
Whatever the case, we decided to prove to ourselves that we are just like most other peoples in the world. We feel pain when we get hurt, but would like to help if there are others whose needs are greater than ours. While the prolonged worldwide recession, especially Japan's, continues to show no signs of sustained recovery at the end of the first quarter of 2001, we are also confronted with the sad prospect of seeing a rapidly widening digital divide and thus widening income gaps among the countries of the Asia-Pacific region as well as between the large urban centers and the forgotten remote rural communities in which most Asian continue to live. While the quest for funding for sustaining the activities of the Virtual Foundation Japan continues, we already have two success stories in Nepal since 1999, and are ready to move on with an ambitious new project this year. In the meantime, the private citizens' club we organized in Tokyo two years ago turned itself into the membership club of the Virtual Foundation Japan in 2000, and its members want to do something meaningful in life other than what they do for living as individuals.