Dear People of the World (formerly Dear Americans)

A man who has been known as "Deep Throat" exposed himself to the public.

Deep Throat was Mr. Mark Felt who was No.2 ranking officer of FBI at the time Nixon was accused of Watergate scandal.

Some say this exposion changed the watergate from journalism justice to inner politics quarrel because now we found Deep Throat was No.2 of FBI. FBI at that time was threatened by Nixon because of the organizational reform plan the president was trying to implement. FBI wanted to prevent that, then they used the Washington Post to turn the president down.

However, Watergate proved how American journalism was healthy at that time. Japanese media is in fact pets for the government. Our constitution insures freedom of speech but the media is so attached to politicians in order to protect their exclusive press club.

But American media today is becoming like Japanese. Media became conglomarit for big corporation. One example is NBC is owned by GE which has been providing products to US army, so they are not against war in Iraq. Media put the business ahead of seeking the truth.
Conglomarit is not the only aspect that changed American journalism. Public opinion became so conservative. Since 911, patriotism became the most important thing for Americans. People do not want to hear anything that sounds unfavourable to their government. Fox news is the symbol of this phenomenon.

Even the US government admits Iraq has no link with 911 attack and doesn't have WMD, FOX news watchers don't know such facts.

Our nation went through the same path in the past. In 1930's when Great Depression agonized the country's economy, the imperial army started invasion of China. Although the invasion started with fake incident that Chinese army bombed Japan owned railway and Japanese media knew it, they did not report it to the public but they rather supported the army's action which led to Rape of Nanking in 1937 and Pearl Harbor attack.

What should we learn from that?

That's me 16 years ago. I was on the Hollywood billboard near the famous Chinese Theatre.

I went to the Southern California on vacation by the homestay program. I stayed with one American family for 2 weeks. It was wonderful experience. I remember they took me to a shooting range. It was my first experience of shooting. I was a teenager at that time. Then after I graduated from high school, I went to the university in Northern California.

I've heard the news that President Bush opposes ES cell research because human embryos are destroyed in the process of harvesting the cells.

Then how come he permitted the bombing of Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqi civilians?

For those who supported Bush, Iraqi lives are less important than ES cells?

What is the definition of "human lives" for Americans?

For native speaker of Japanese like me, L and R are hard to pronounce. Foreigners say Japanese use inbetween of L and R. Not only we have difficulty to pronounce, we can't hear them correctly. The following is the list of pairs of the words which we can't distinguish.

1. light, right
2. life, rife
3. lice, rice
4. lip, rip (See the movie "Lost in Translation." There was a funny incident related to these words.)

The most difficult thing of learning foreign language is to master the pronunciation. It is what only children are good at. If I had started to learn English, I would be able to hear the difference between L and R.

I can sometimes hear the difference only when somebody speaks slowly and clearly. To me, L is clearer than R. R is more romantic than L. But when someone speaks at normal speed or faster, I can never hear the difference.

Japanese is one of the easiest language in terms of pronunciation. We have only 5 vowel sounds compared with 12 vowels in English and 16 in French. As for consonants, we have k,s,t,n,h,m,y,(l/r),w,g,z,d,b, and n. Surprisingly, our neighbor Chinese has 21 consonants. Chinese can hear the difference between L and R. Koreans can, too.

We also have difficulty in distinguishing s and th, and v and b. Like "faith or face," and "vase or base." But they are easier than L and R. Th and V sounds don't exist in our language, so it is easy to notice. But as for L and R, we use mixed pronunciation.

We also have problems in some of vowel sounds like the difference between color and collar.

Chinese language which I started learn recently has much more complexed vowel sounds system. It is called 4 tones. 1st tone is like stretching high voice, 2nd tone is raising tone, 3rd tone is down and up, and 4th tone is downing tone. If you mistone, even if the pronunciation is correct, it is regarded different meaning.

For example, "ma" of 3rd tone means horse but "ma" of 4th tone means to insult. Even if a person speaks fast, Chinese can hear the tone of every character as you hear the difference between L and R.

I wish I could hear the difference between L and R and Chinese 4 tones of the vowels perfectly as those of native speakers do.