Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

The author of the book is Japanese sports journalist who worked as a part-time teacher in a chartered high school in Reno, Nevada 2006.

The students come from very poor families and dropped out from regular school. Most of them live with single parents.

They do not have good knowledge nor manner. They grew up in a very bad environment where parents don't have money and time to take good care of them.

The author witnessed the reality of America's poor bottom class. The author himself grew up in the similar environment in Japan so he somehow felt mutual with them. He had guts and loved students so he worked hard to get them know how wonderful and necessary it is for them to learn new things so that they can make a new way of living getting out from ghetto they were in.  

The author taught them Japanese culture as Sumo, Manga, fairy tales. On one class he told them Japan's most famous fairy tale "Urashima Taro" a story of a fisherman who saved a turtle from bullying by children on the beach and later be guided by the turtle to the palace under the sea. But when he came back to the ground, so much more time than he felt had passed, he had no one to know him.

He asked the students what they think about the story. Students were very much impressed by that and one of them replied to him "the story gave us a lesson that we shouldn't expect return from good thing we do."

Recently in Japan, books on America's poor class have been published like the below ones I've already introduced on this blog.

Super Class society, The truth of America 

Empire of Poverty (Hinkon-Taikoku), America!

This one is especially unique since that is hands-on experience of the author as foreign teacher who taught his home culture to troubled students abroad.

I wonder if this book is made into film some day. It should be like "Freedom Writers" or "Take the lead."

The lyric starts with "We met at the Ski lodge, and we fell in love."

I like this song because this reminds me of my ski trip this year.

I've visited 6 ski resorts this year from January to March. I really enjoyed.

The last ski slope I visited was Shiga Highland in Nagano Prefecture. That is where my favorite ski film was shot.

In 1998, winter Olympic was held there.

I skied from one ski slope to another crossing mountains. It was a blizzard day. Very hard to ski but I enjoyed it.

See the below video clip or this site.

Next day was very clear day, so I just enjoyed skiing on the slope. See the below video or this site.

The song matches with the below video.

Not just skiing, I enjoyed bathing in hot spring bath. That is the way Japanese skiers enjoy skiing.

Getting cold on the ski slope and then taking a hot spring bath afterwards. It made me really warm.

Speaking of warming myself, I got warm by trip to Okinawa in late March.

Warming myself seeing emerald green sea. See this site or the below.

 

Yes, I was warm this year's winter.

Now after my long vacation period was over, working hard in concrete jungle.

That is totally different world. I don't know how to express my current situation.