Recently in English Category

National Azabu Supermarket at Hiroo, where foods, groceries, books, toiletries and stationery imported from abroad were available, terminated operation as of today due to the age of its building.

The Hiroo neighbourhood is one of the places I visited very frequently because a training centre of the company I worked for was in that area. I visited there from time to time to have an English test or a training for English writing or business skills when I was a young worker. Every time I had classes there, I dropped in on the supermarket to see the shoppers coming from abroad, mainly the United States, who looked rich enough to afford the imported products sold there. To see such successful people encouraged me to make my best efforts to learn English and business skills for my success.

However, several years later the training centre was closed and moved to another place. Most of the products sold in the supermarket has become what I can get online for the same prices as in their home countries, without paying extra money at such an imported grocery shops. Besides, the United States is no longer the goal for successful persons, seeing the current circumstances of it.

The supermarket was a dream for me, and a wonderland that offered me a space of extraordinariness, but it ended the role as a symbol of success with the change of the times. Without the supermarket, I will visit the Hiroo area more rarely than ever.

We Japanese know that English is the world's de facto standard language everyone in the world need to learn to communicate with each other in this fast-globarising society. Mastering English is, nevertheless, one of the greatest hardships for most of Japanese who were born in Japan and raised by Japanese parents within Japan. They learn English as a mandatory subject in middle school, high school and even college for up to eight years, but very few of them have a good command of it.

Quite a few analysts have given comments why most Japanese are weak in English. Some say it's because English's structure of language is quite different from that of the language they usually speak. Others point out the problem with Japan's English education policies, relying overly on teaching translation techniques from English to Japanese rather than communicative English.

It is also said that English isn't necessary for Japanese people's everyday life. Even if English is taught in school, it's what they can forget after managing to pass the entrance examination of their highest education facility at long last. Once they finish studying for exams, they can do without English for life as long as they stay within Japan. Rather, showing off English is considered in many cases as rude, affected and disgusting behaviour by other average Japanese, especially elderly people who have less chance to learn English.

Why do average Japanese living in Japan hate such people who speak English fluently, though they may neither feel rude, affected nor disgusting to good painters, professional musicians, skilled karate masters, or those who are good at something other than English? Japan has been subject to America's control in business, economy, military, culture and everything else since WWII, and various kinds of things have been brought into Japan. People in Japan have been mesmerised by such American-style things and, because it has been noised about especially for the last 15 years that all examples in America are the global standard they should follow, they have made their best efforts to try to incorporate them in their daily life. However, a few things are what they can't manage to do it ---- English is the one. Affection to what they try to get in vain turns into hatred over time, and the hatred will be expressed at those who successfully have it. Due to such nature of Japanese people, most of them don't or pretend not to speak English well so that they won't generate unexpected resentment among people. Because it's considered affected to show off speaking English in public, they have less motivation to use it.

In my humble opinion, one of the important attitudes to master English is to stop admiring America too much. English is not a language for Americans only, but a lingua franca everybody in the world learns whether or not he is a native English speaker. You'll find out that American English mainly taught in Japan is not dominant in the world if you travel countries in Europe, Middle East or Southeast Asia, where British English is widely used in conversation and signs in public. People in the UK, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia use their own local English. Even within the United States, you'll see various kinds of people from businesspersons to hotel clerks, taxi drivers and newsstand workers who speak in various kinds of accents. Nothing is right and nothing is wrong. Nothing is fashionable and nothing is dowdyish. They are all English.

We should be a master of English, not a slave of it. We should learn it as not so much one of American cultures as an interface language to get our views over anybody in the world, regardless of his mother tongue, representing the nation we stand. The more Japanese can do it, the more they can influence in the world, resulting in the benefit of our country.

Last weekend was happy days for me because I deeply experienced a British taste last Saturday and Sunday. From the beginning I preferred the USA to the UK or other English-speaking countries, but my affection has been shifting to England for years since I happened to read Kaoru Mori's Emma, a romance manga of a maid in England in the Victorian Era who falls in love with a member of the gentry.

On the first day, the first thing I did is to see Oliver! by the Musical Club of Kokugakuin Tochigi High School playing for the school's cultural festival held in this weekend. Oliver! is, as you may already know, an English musical based on Charles Dickens' novel Oliver Twist. It's the story that Oliver Twist, who has missing parents and is in a workhouse, is forced to get out of the workhouse and gets involved in a group of pickpockets. He tries to pick a pocket of a well-off lady, who finally takes him in and brings him up, and then he gets happy.

As I already wrote in this blog many times, I've kept in touch with Mito Saigusa. She is a choreographer teaching dance and choreography to the students of this club. I come and see their performance for the cultural festival every year in order to see her too. Of course she was well this year as well.

This year's show satisfied me much more, because its scene was in England in the 19th century so it was just for me. I was very happy with that.

After seeing Oliver! I left the high school to drive to British Hills, the educational facility located in Fukushima Prefecture operated by Kanda Institute of Foreign Languages, with Medieval British-style buildings in a 50-acre land. Each building is furnished with the fixtures modeling the era of the building. From the beginning it was only for the students of this Institute, it's been open to public for several years. More than a half of the staff working there were non-Japanese, ranging from Englishmen, Australians, New Zealanders, Canadians and more. As the official language in this area is English, even a Japanese attendant talks to you in English, because British Hills is for teaching English to guests.

A two-hour drive from Tochigi took me British Hills. It was almost on the top of a mountain, more than 20 miles far from the nearest motorway exit. Once entering into the site of British Hills, almost all traffic and informational signs on the road suddenly turned into English, just like crossing a national border into a different country.

I purchased a prepaid SIM card with 3-day broadband service at M1 counter in Changi Airport. Unlike normal mobile phones like Nokia, iPhone didn't receive an APN or other network setting information needed for internet access. The M1 counter lady said I needed to bring the iPhone to the M1 shop at Paragon and have it installed settings there.

I asked the MRT station staff where I could get to Paragon and she answered I should go to Orchard station, so I took MRT train to Orchard.

Here's Paragon. It was very large.

M1 shop was on the B1 level. When I waited in line in front of the shop, a shop girl came to me and asked what she could help me. I told her I wanted to activated internet service for my iPhone. Then she led me to the front of counters in charge of activation or other services and gave me a paper printed a queue number to let me wait until the number was called. Tens of minutes later I was called by a counter girl. The activation took a little more time because my iPhone hadn't been purchased at M1 shop but in Hong Kong. Anyway the activation was successful and I could have access to the internet with my iPhone.

After activation I went to Little India.

There were dozens of gold jewelry shops on the streets selling golden stuff and buying items with gold. I wonder if there are many such stores in Asian cities.

There were plenty of Indian restaurants as well. The below is one of the local restaurants. People were eating foods put on a banana leaf by hand, like people in India do.

Because Singapore is very close to the Equator and today was almost autumnal equinox, the Sun passes the top of the sky. This video is when the Sun was on the top at solar noon. Vertical sunshine can never be experienced in Japan.

I'm going for trip to Singapore and Malaysia until next Thursday because we have the "Silver Week" in Japan, with two national holidays (next Monday and Thursday) and three days of leave. For me this is this year's second trip to foreign countries. As I have 20,000 miles of United Airlines' frequent flyer program, I can get a round-trip ticket from Japan to south Asia. I chose Singapore because Singapore is the country where I enjoyed six years ago and I have looked forward to visiting again. This time, I'm going to visit Johor Bahru and another city of Malaysia because they are close to Singapore and maybe I can have easy access to those cities.

I'll bring unlocked iPhone bought from Hong Kong other than regular cell phones I use on a daily basis, so as to use it at cheaper costs by replacing Softbank's SIM card I always use in Japan with prepaid SIM cards I'll get at destination countries. Skype is installed on the iPhone so that I can receive calls at any time regardless of countries I'll be in, even if a phone number will be frequently changed.

United 803 to Singapore

The plane departed Narita at 1735 and arrived at SIN at 2330. It was earlier than scheduled. Seven hours' flight in the economy seat of United Airlines was kind of tough and I had severe back pain when I got off :(

Arrival Gate

Immigration

Arrival Level

As written several times in this blog, I like to visit US military bases in Japan when they are open to public. They are usually off-limits to Japanese civilians, but open a few times a year for friendship festivals. Once you pass through the gate, you can see the same landscapes in the United States as seen on TV which you can't see while off base.

Why do Japanese people find so amusing about what are seen in the United States? Going to the United States is, for most of them born after WWII, a dream and an exciting unordinary experience. They long, they attempt, and some lucky ones carry out, to do it. Yet most of them have not enough time, budget or physical strength to take a long leave from their employer, buy airline tickets for hundreds of thousand yen, sit on a plane for many hours and stay for one week in the mainland America or Hawaii. Visiting a US base in Japan is a one-day trip, costs only train fares to it, and offers visitors almost the same experiences as going actually to the mainland USA.

Yokota Air Base, Camp Zama, Atsugi Naval Air Facility, Yokosuka Naval Base, Negishi Heights, Sagami Depot, Naval Support Facility Kamiseya and Ikego Heights are all I've been, out of 85 US military facilities within Japan.

Yokota Air Base (Fussa, Tokyo): the only US Air Force Base in the Kanto Plain. There is the biggest Friendship Festival in late August every year, with the most stalls selling the most kinds of products. Visitors enter from the Supply Gate to the festival venue. Some hangers are open for a stage and stalls. Restaurants and food courts are not open.

Camp Zama (Zama, Kanagawa): opens twice a year, in early April for cherry blossom festival and early August for bon odori festival. Although no buildings but a food court, a theatre and a bowling centre are open to public, you can walk around in almost all open areas in the camp site. Soda vending machines (both Japanese and American) are available. ATMs are also available and you can withdraw cash with an ATM card issued in the US or an international ATM card. You can have access to mailing boxes so if you have mail with an American stamp affixed you can put it in the mailbox to send it to an address in the US for the same fare as in the mainland US. Food stalls are lower in number so you'll have to wait in longer lines to get foods.

Atsugi Naval Air Facility (Ayase, Kanagawa): opens a few times a year, in the cherry season, on the Independence Day of the USA, and in August. Entrance is narrow so you have to wait in a long line to get inside. Bag check is strict at entrance and there is sometimes a dog inspection, where a working military dog checks your bag put on the ground to smell it to check if there's nothing suspicious in it. David O. Taylor Field, a wide football field, is usually open for a stage, food stalls and a playground. In many cases, the apron area of the air facility is open and some carrier-based planes are displayed.

Yokosuka Naval Base (Yokosuka, Kanagawa): opens a few times a year, in the cherry season, in summer, and more. The entrance is the narrowest so there is the longest lines in front of it. You have to wait for more than two hours! Besides, the exit is narrow, too, so you must wait for a long time to get out. McDonald's and a food court are open to visitors in the base. There are various kinds of stalls, ranging from American foods to American sweets and cookies.

Negishi Heights (Yokohama, Kanagawa): opens in late April and in late August. The Community Center building, Negishi All Hands Club (a bar and restaurant complex) and the open space around them are available for visitors. An ATM is on the first floor of the Community Center and visitors can freely use it. US mailboxes are available too. There are fewer visitors than in any other US bases so you can have access to food stalls without waiting so much time. Bowling lanes, arcade games and a movie theatre are available for visitors. Billiard and dartboards are available at All Hands Club, but darts are not allowed to bring inside the venue.

Sagami Depot (Sagamihara, Kanagawa): opens not every year. I was there in September 2007 for Music Festival. Admission fee was 500 yen. High-pressure Japanese officers at the entrance refused my taking pictures of the entrance gates. Visitor's areas were strictly limited but there were no signs indicating where visitors may stay. Some visitors lost their way in a restricted area and captured by military police.

NSF Kamiseya (Yokohama, Kanagawa): opens in late March or early April. The festival venue is an open space where food stalls and a playground area are set up. People wait in long lines in front of the food stalls.

Ikego Heights (Zushi, Kanagawa): opens in May. The easiest-to-access site of military bases in the Kanto Plain, within a 5-minite-walk from the nearest train station. The festival venue is only within a football field, where food stalls and a playground area are set up. Visitors should stay within the field and aren't allowed to go any other place. There's no need to wait in front of food stalls so much time.

In addition to the musical SHOW BOAT by the Musical Club, one of the Cultural Festival's attractive displays I wanted to visit was the reports of "Kelso Heartland Homestay Program" by some students who visited the United States. Devin Kelso, born in Mount Vernon, Iowa, working for Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School as a communicative English teacher, hosted the home stay program with his family.They arranged the host families in Mount Vernon to encourage them to accept each of the participants.

About a dozen of high school and junior high students took part in this program. They spent about two weeks with the host families, learning English, and taken to cities around Mount Vernon for shopping, camping, barbecuing, and sightseeing. Every picture displayed on the boards showed that the students had been very excited to experience unknown new culture.

They brought back plenty of American items as well as American mind. They are really nice.

According to an article of a local newspaper, Devin Kelso began this program to encourage Japanese youths to have such experiences that he did when he was 15. He visited Mexico with his father and learned many things there. He found out that his Spanish he had learned at school worked well, and that the people were getting along well without English.

I thought the students were very happy to see the world of different culture when they were very young. I hope I could participate in this program some day ;-)

Extra: the pictures of trains from Tochigi to Tokyo.

I've made up my mind to close the website "HIMEMIKO*WEB." It was one of the toughest decisions I've ever made because I've kept this website for almost ten years.

It was in November 1998 that I founded the website. After I had read a comic book Hi no Tori by Osamu Tezuka I wanted to know about Princess Tōchi, who was starred in the book. I looked for the information about her throughout the internet but not so much information was found. Then I started to set up a website about her, after the research with many books, documents and other resources. Because no good HTML publishing applications were sold at that time, I made the HTML pages putting tags manually in the text files and uploaded them to the web server using a simple FTP uploader. I registered the website named 十市皇女～山吹の常処女～ (Tōchi no Himemiko --- an ever virgin with Japanese yellow roses ---) to many search engines to make it easier to be found.

After the registration to the search engines, many people came to see my website and left messages to me because there were no other kinds of websites that introduced this ancient lady. I replied all of the messages, and I got in touch with countless of men and women who were interested in her and Japanese ancient history. I had some meaningful experiences with a few of them, including even romance.

In addition to human communication, the creation and the maintenance of the website helped me to improve technical skills related to HTML and HTTP. I made simple bulletin board systems and guestbooks using CGI scripts, and made them communicate with a database.

There were many personal websites in the early five years of 2000s, because web browsers with higher functionality like Netscape 4.x or Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.x were released and web surfers could see more expressive web pages with large-sized images and motion videos. Many people uploaded their own information they wanted to give in public for lower costs. Most of the information was creative, and helpful to people, from a different viewpoint from that of old-fashioned mass media.

My website has been also informative and has helped many people of the same taste. In 2003, my website introduced not only Princess Tōchi but other 16 princesses who lived in the same era as Tōchi. In 2004, my website, renamed into HIMEMIKO*WEB, started giving information in both Japanese and English so that much more people all over the world can understand what I meant.

However, the mass media and big companies with much more funds began to take part in sending their information over the internet a few years ago. Many individual webmasters, being inferior to those companies in funds, time and amount of own information, were losing the reason-d'etre of their own websites, because the new websites those companies created were better and more informative by excellent web designers and engineers, and were maintained 24hrs/365days by special maintenance teams.

Also, the web-related techniques became much more complex and confusing for individuals. DHTML, Ajax, and many new techniques appeared one after another to make websites informative and interactive, and there have been too many things-to-be-learned for us to catch up with. We are busy, and we have no such time to master them all.

At the same time, the Web 2.0 policy is being popular and now we have many alternatives of expressing our own information more easily, instead of learning those dreadfully-difficult technology from scratch to maintain personal websites. Blogging is the easiest way of introducing yourself, by choosing a blogging service providers and creating your own account, or by installing a general-purpose blogging system like Movable Type to your server and changing a few settings as you like. If you know something useful and share it to the public, you can write it in Wikipedia. Google, Yahoo! and YouTube also have some nifty options to share information. If you want to just communicate with others, you can sign up to a popular SNS like MySpace, Facebook, mixi, GREE, etc., and join communities.

In such circumstances, the good old days of personal websites is now over. From now on, it's better to share information in other ways. That's why I'm going to close HIMEMIKO*WEB. (Another reason is that I've become too busy to have time to update it frequently :-)

Of course it doesn't mean that the content of HIMEMIKO*WEB turns invisible forever. The text, the images and other information used there will be transfered to other media, like Wikipedia and Google Maps, and you can get my idea in various places. I'll never throw away the data I've made for years.

I'm very excited to meet the new style of the internet and get acquainted with many new things and people in the next ten years. It's hard to follow the flow of change, though.

Before watching the musical show Sunday afternoon at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, I visited a classroom where the English Club had a demonstration in the cultural festival.

When I entered the classroom, a schoolgirl belonging to this club and a directing teacher welcomed me. They encouraged me to try to have the "dictation quiz," where you listened to several short English sentences a native English speaker spoke over the audio cassette recorder and you wrote the actual words of the sentences. Its difficulty ranged from Level 1 to Level 6. Level 1 was the easiest and Level 6 the most advanced. Of course I chose Level 6 because I was proud of my 20 years of English experience.

I was guided to a desk, asked to be seated on the chair, and handed an answer sheet. Then the schoolgirl pressed the play button of the casette recorder. The cassette recorder spoke 13 short sentences like "This engine is powerful." and "Wealthy people like to travel by ship." These sentences was repeated twice, and I had to handwrite what I heard over the cassette recorder.

When the quiz was over, the answer sheet was collected by the teacher. He immediately checked my answers and summed up how many sentences were correctly dictated. He told me that I could write 11 out of 13 sentences accurately.

I found that to write accurately what to hear in English was not easier than that I thought. It is almost impossible to accurately hear very short words like prepositions, so it's important for dictation that you "predict" those words with all of your knowledge on English. If you can predict missing words and write entire sentences with what you hear, it proves that you can comprehend the sentences.