Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

Congressman Mike Honda speaks on legistlation urging Japan to apologize for war-era sexual slavery.

There were once women called "Ianfu" meaning Comfort Women in Japanese. They were focibly taken to battlefield to be sex slaves for Japanese soldiers.

The congressman is trying to let our government make official apology to those women.

In fact, Japanese government did in 1993, but very grudgingly. The government at that time gave some speech of the apology and has made compensations to those women but by civil donation not by our tax.

 The textbooks barely mentioned such history. The right wingers including some ruling party's politicians deny such women were forced to do so by the army and claim the women are all liars and making accusation for money.

They are doing the same things on Nanking Massacre which Japanese army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of Chinese including POWs and civilians in Nanking, the capitol of China in 1937.

 I am afraid that I do not want such legistlation pass in US Congress because this is something our country should have done a long time ago so that no other country would claim Japan has not done enough of such matters. Unfortunately, we failed. Germans has succeeded in this and recovered relationship with former enemies, France and Britain. It is illegal to deny hollocaust in public. If you say that there was no mass-murder of Jews in Germany, you are put into jail.

Well, but I do support Mr. Honda's action. He is Japanese American. I just guess if he is doing this because he does not want to be considered that he is too gentle to his anscestral country. This should come from his childhood memory of Internment Camp. I know the tales of Japanese American during the war between Japan and the US.  

Japanese should reflect on the past whether it is comfortable or uncomfortable to look to the future and recover relationship with neighboring nations. Maybe the legistlation would give a great chance for this.  

Mr. Ibaki, the Minister of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT), has been creating a stir with his opposition to English education in elementary school.  I work as a translator, and naturally am proficient in English.  I started learning in the 4^th grade in elementary school, from a private tutor who was Japanese.  After that, I studied at English conversation schools with native speakers, and I learned not only the English necessary to pass tests in school but I also became conversationally fluent.  After I graduated from high school, I went to America to study at a university for five years, and thanks to my previous English education and current “real-life” English education, I earned my Bachelor’s degree.

 

 

Based on these experiences, I both agree and disagree with Minister Ibaki’s opinion.

 

 

First of all, with regard to why I agree with Minister Ibaki, it is because when we talk about language, language is not just about communicating information.  While we talk, we think about various things, and when we say that we are polishing up our speaking skills, we are also polishing up how we think.  The sentence construction of English and Japanese are very different.  In particular, when one becomes used to expressing the conclusion at the beginning, Japanese becomes a very difficult language in which to speak.  In addition to being able to find the right words, it is also important to have the ability to consider exactly what it is you want to say.

 

 

In translating work, this definitely becomes an obstacle.  Without completely considering the flow of the entire sentence, it is impossible to translate that sentence.  Being stuck between the two languages, left without the power to think, even understanding the main point that you want to communicate becomes difficult.  To take the example of this author, when I was in junior high school, in addition to excelling at English the other subject I excelled at was Japanese.  I believe that because I became very good at reading comprehension in Japanese, it helped my progress in learning English.

 

 

That is to say, rather than language being something that one learns, language is something that one becomes accustomed to.  From that point of view, the younger one is, the better one is able to adapt.  Setting aside the merits and demerits of English, English is becoming the common global language.  If one learns it well, it is clearly to that person’s advantage.  If one is raised in an environment in which one does not feel uncomfortable around English, then after that things will be much easier.

 

 

Particularly with pronunciation, it is much better for children to learn at an early age when they have no preconceptions.  Because the pronunciation of the Japanese language is one of the simplest in the world, it creates many difficulties.  For example, the differences between L and R, V and B, and Th and S do not exist in Japanese and are therefore hard to grasp, and by the time one is an adult the fixed habits interfere and it becomes difficult to hear the difference.

 

 

However, I do not believe that Japanese education and English education should progress simultaneously.  Before learning how to speak as if it were one’s mother tongue, one should learn the native language properly and build up reading comprehension and critical thinking.  Whether it is the native language or a foreign language, without the ability to comprehend, one can neither speak nor listen.

Written by Masagata. 

 Translated by a MIT graduate.

According to the Kyodo Press in Japan, English conversation teaching school in Kofu city of Yamanashi Prefecture posted the ad that recruits an English teacher on the bulletin board in public facility managed by Yamanashi International Association. The condition of the applicant was limited to blond hair with blue or green eyes. American Japanese person protested against the association. The facility apologized for this, saying they lacked the consideration.

 What do you think about that?  

 Well, for us typical foreigner is Blond and blue or green eyes, so that English schools like to hire people with such features. Yes, it is racist. But blond and blue eyes are what we are longing for.

I always wanted to be like Brad Pitt.

Does your First Lady, Laura Bush has a blog?

Surprisingly our First Lady does have it. Please see this if you can read Japanese.

The title of the blog is Akie Abe's Smile Talk. I am neither her fan nor one for her husband, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.

But I like her blog very much. The posts may be written by some kind of ghost writer.

But I still like this blog.

Well, you cannot believe how close you feel to your First Lady by the blog.

Last Monday she talked about her coming back home. She talked about her dog in her home.  

It seems she is a very kind lady. She visited facilities for street childeren in Phillipines and metally disables in Belguim.

First Lady should be a tough job as you can imagine how Laura Bush is. She has to smile all the time even when she is tired. You cannot believe such a busy woman is writing the blog, it is read nationwide.

 However, liking her blog and approving her husband's work are two different things. I do not support our prime minister.

In fact he may be out of the job soon. But even after he resigns, I would continue reading his wife's blog.