English is from head to toe.

I joined a new project last Tuesday. Right away, I had a three-day meeting in English. Whew... The funny thing is that there was no native English speaker in the meeting. German, Belgian, South African and Japanese.

I was tired from 3 days in English. It was hard. However a harder thing is waiting for me. I'm going to Singapore on business and stay there for about two weeks. Two weeks in English.

I have to catch up tons of new things of the project. It's hard to conduct that in English. I want to get used to this situation as soon as possible. I'm sure that this experience would prepare me for working abroad.

My bad listening comprehension #17

The sentence which I heard wrong today is:

The learning purpose pretice cheep.

Can you guess the correct sentence?
First, there isn't the word "pretice." It sounded such pronunciation to me, so I thought it was a new word for me. I guessed this sentence meant that a person had lost sight of his purpose of learning or something like that.

The correct sentence is:

The learning curve is pretty steep.

Even after knowing the correct sentence, "curve is" sounds nothing but "purpose" to me, I listened it over and over again though.

My hearing wrong of the past:
http://sandfriend.blogspot.com/2009/07/my-bad-listening-comprehension-16.html

Book: The Girl with the White Flag

(I read it in English.)

In August, 6th is the day the city of Hiroshima was atom-bombed, 9th is the day the city of Nagasaki was atom-bombed and 15th is the anniversary of the end of World War II. So when I was a kid, there were a lot of TV programs featuring wars in every August. However, there are few those kinds of programs recently. It's a pity.

I always think those programs are very welcome and everyone should watch them. I mean, everyone should know how wars were horrible.

This book was written by a Japanese woman, who survived a terrible horrible ground war in Okinawa when she was 7 years old.

Many of the people who survived the ground war in Okinawa or the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki describe, it was like nothing from this world, it was just a scene from hell, or it was inferno. Not only solders, but also many civilians had to experience such things.
In the ground war in Okinawa, about 240,000 people died. Among them, civilians were about 100,000.

Major attacks toward Japanese civilians by the US.

6th Aug. 1945, Hiroshima atomic bomb. Number of the dead --> about 260,000
9th Aug. 1945, Nagasaki atomic bomb. Number of the dead --> about 150,000
10th Mar. 1945, Great Tokyo Air Raid. Number of the dead --> about 85,000

There are still people who are suffering from the after effects of the bomb's radiation. The number of dead by atomic bombs are still increasing.

By the way, regarding 9.11 Terror Attacks which American were terribly shocked, made a big deal, and even they started the war, the number of dead was 2,973. I wonder if how many people will suffer from the after affects of the attacks 60 years later.
Compared with what I listed above, 9.11 Terror Attacks are really small, tiny things.

Atomic bombing is one of the most horrible things which human have done in history, as well as the Holocaust.
Fortunately for the US, they won the war, so they justified atomic bombing as necessity things to finish the war. And most of American people believe it, because they don't know about the real devastation of atomic bombing, even they don't intend to know it. It was hundreds of times as horrible as 9.11 Attacks. If you know the real devastation, you can never say atomic bombing was necessary.

The most horrible thing is, although the US saw the horrible situation of Hiroshima after atomic bombing, they did again in Nagasaki, only because they wanted to experiment. It's hard to believe. I think if people find the real devastation of atomic bombing and those were conducted by themselves, they would go stark raving crazy due to what they did.

My PC is acting up again.

It's been about three months since my PC stopped working and I reinstalled OS. My PC started working strangely again.
For example,

Even though I close the window of Firefox, its process is still alive. So when I try starting Firefox again, the message always appears and I have to end its process myself manually.

Characters sometimes aren't converted to correct Japanese.

When I move files, sometimes it remain "in moving", and it never finishes.

I'm using OneSeg on my PC, but recently, the TV programs I programmed recording failed to be recorded.

etc. etc...

Isn't it a problem that PCs have such lower reliability? I'm really disgusted.

Shinjuku Eisa Festival 2009

Today, I went to see a festival in my neighborhood. It's Shinjuku Eisa Festival.

It's a contest of Eisa dance. Eisa is actually Okinawa's dance. I don't know why Okinawa's dance festival is held in Tokyo, but this festival is held every year. I know the similar Eisa festival is also held at Sapporo in Hokkaido every year.
About Eisa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eisa_(dance)

Traffic was blocked over 300km of Shinjuku street, and many groups danced Eisa there.
Okinawa's traditional culture is pretty unique compared with other areas in Japan. It sometimes seems to be another country. It's interesting.

I've never been to Okinawa and I've always wanted to go there. I hope I can go there October this year. (I say it every year though. ^^;)

Performers waiting for their turn

Performing to the Okinawa-style music

My bad listening comprehension #16

I heard the following sentence from a dialogue which I studied today.

There's a load of technical manuals tree.

I wondered what "manuals tree" was.
I imagined that it refers to the manuals which are gotten lined up systematically.

I checked the text book and it actually wasn't "tree", but "to read." Gah!

By the way, although "manuals" is plural, I wonder why it's "there's", not "there are." OK, I'll try asking it on Lang-8.

My hearing wrong of the past:
http://sandfriend.blogspot.com/2009/04/my-bad-listening-comprehension-15.html

Rain, rain, rain

Although the finishing the rainy season has been announced, it has been raining this week.
Today is also rainy day, but the sun came up a little while ago, so I decided to go out by bicycle.
When I thought of going home, it started raining again, then it is raining heavily now!
I have an umbrella but bicycle... so I'm waiting for the rain to let up.

Oh!! While I'm writing this article through my cell phone, the rain is letting up! Goody!
I'm going home.

But the saddle of my bicycle must be very wet...

I dumbed down my English material.

I had used "Advanced Business English" material, but I changed to "Introductory Business English." I dumbed down a notch.

In the Advanced material, although the conversation of each episode was conducted among co-workers and their boss at work, its topics were always away from business itself, and I often felt that the idioms or expressions which were introduced in were not commonly used.
When I browsed the Introductory material, I thought that it was really useful for actual English conversations at work. So I decided to change to it.

The dialogues became a bit easy. It's easy to distinguish words, and there are not so many new idioms and words. On those points, changing the material doesn't seem to be good. However, I can learn many common expressions in business. It has been two weeks since I started using it. I think that it was good decision.

A new cell phone charm

I bought a new custom-made cell phone charm today.

I had it make with power stones. "Power stones" seems to be a Japanese-English word, but I don't know what they are called in English, so I'm using this Japanese-English word here.

First, I want stones which are good for job-related things. There are some, and I chose Chrysocolla. (Green ones.) I also chose Chrystal (transparent ones) and my favorite stones Rhodochrosite (Small pink ones). Then I ordered making a charm with those stones.

A shop staff designed and added one more stone, Madagascar Rose Quartz. (A big pink one.)

I'm really satisfied and happy. And I'm expecting those stones will show their power maximally!

Movie: Empire of the Sun

This is a Spielberg's move and it's the story of a 13-yaer British boy during World War II.

The boy, Jamie, grew up in a rich family in Shanghai. Japan invaded China and he was separated from his parents. Then he was sent to a camp. The movie describes the growth of the boy in the terrible situation.

The child actor was great. He played Jamie very well. So I wondered he is still active in the front lines. I checked the child actor and I was very surprised. He is Christian Bale who plays the role of Batman and John Connor in Terminator 4. I didn't know he has been an actor since he was a kid. In Japan, it's often said that child actors can't achieve great success though.

John Malkovich also appeared in the movie as an important role. Although the movie was made about 20 years ago, he was not different from the current him at all. Haha.

John Malkovich and young Christian Bale in the movie

Meeting my friend of Lang-8

One of my friends on Lang-8 came to Japan and I met him yesterday.

We had lunch and I enjoyed conversation with him.
Although he rarely has opportunity to speak Japanese in his country, his Japanese was very good. On the other hand, my English was... very bad as usual.

His good Japanese conversation proves that people can improve their language skill they learn even though they are not surrounded by the language.

I have to do my best.

New job opportunities

Last week, a recruiting agent contacted me to introduce job opportunities. I have been contacted by several recruiting agents before, but he was the first person (and I think he would be the last person) to contact me through LinkedIn. So I was surprised. I don't input much information of mine on LinkedIn. I just input my job summary. There is no information about my job history, education etc.

I met him this week at a coffee shop. He introduced me two job opportunities. Each situation is different, but both are very interesting. I hope I get good feedbacks from the companies.
I think both of the positions require high level English. Again... What I worry about the most is English.
The agent is from the US, but he has lived in Japan over 10 years. So I think he can speak Japanese fluently, we spoke in English though. Whenever I meet someone who speaks a foreign language well, I'm a bit depressed because of my poor English.

I checked the photo of the agent on LinkedIn before meeting him, but I bet he didn't know what I looked. In spite of that, he found me before I noticed him in the coffee shop. I wonder why???

The rainy season has finished.

There was the announcement of the end of the rainy season in Tokyo today. It's very earlier than average year. Terrible horrible humid summer has finally come. Gah---!

I have to have patience for about two months. Although the summer has just come, I'm already inpatient for autumn.

Book: Norwegian Wood

(I read it in English.)

About a month ago, I heard Norwegian Wood written by Haruki Murakami will be made into a movie, though he had refused it for a long time.
When I heard this news, I somehow realized I have never read any of his books, they are Very popular not only in Japan but also in other countries though.

So I decided to read Norwegian Wood, and even in English.

Whenever I read books in English, I feel stress because I can't read in English as fast as in Japanese. I can hardly go ahead. I need to be patient.

While I was reading it, I was wondering why this book became a bestseller around the world. Nothing special. And there are too many people who died in the story. Besides, most of them killed themselves. Suicide tends to become a shocking and surprising matter in a story, but because of too many suicide, when I found third suicide person, I thought "Ah, again."

Reading what the characters in the book said, I guessed those must have expressed much more subtle nuance in Japanese. English tends to be simple.
And I found that my guess was correct. After reading it, I checked Japanese people's impression about the book on the Internet. They said, for example, "the choice of words is extremely great!", "I felt that it was good for me to be born as a Japanese because I can read it as my mother language." and so on. Ah---! I should have read it in Japanese. I seemed to miss the greatest part of this book. So I will try reading it in Japanese.

During reading it, I didn't think the book was so good, but after finishing it, I thought it was quite good. But I still can't understand why it became a bestseller around the world.

The Tanabata Star Festival

Today is the Tanabata festival in Japan.
People write their wishes on strips of colorful paper and hang them on bamboo branches.

One Tanabata event is been held in a high rise commercial building in my neighborhood, and tree bamboo branches and strips of colorful papers are prepared.

I wrote my wishes on the papers and hang them on the branch. Of course my wishes include the two which I wrote on the previous entry.

The papers are a bit too much for the branch. haha. There are my papers in that.

They are going to be burned in a shrine near there to hope people's wishes come true.

Declaration

I declare two things which I am achieving.

To join an up and coming company and conduct business internationally as a Human Resource Development/Talent Management expert, then help the company to grow.

To internationally play a role in activities that help children all over the world receive educatioin.

I really want to improve my conversation skills!

On the comment of the article on 24th, Herm was kind enough to offer me to talk on Skype.

I finished talking with him just now.
We talked for 30 minutes in English and for 30 minutes in Japanese. I enjoyed chatting with him. Thank you very much, Herm.
However, my English was terrible as usual.

Ah---, I hope I can speak and hear English much better!! Practice, practice!

Movie: The Reader

As I wrote, I have read the book "The Reader" a couple months ago, and I had been looking forward to watching the movie.

I think it's a great movie. Although I didn't cry when reading the book, the movie caused eyes to water.
However, I'd prefer the book to the movie. Because, in the movie, I thought the early years of the leading character was described a bit flimsily.

The leading character is Michael. The story consists of two parts, his young age and adult age. As long As I read the book, I thought the main part of this story was his young age and the leading character was obviously a young Michael, not an adult Michael. He had many kind of complicated feeling toward a woman whose name was Hanna. Hanna did, too. The book described them very well.

On the other hand, the filmmaker described the movie with another approach. They put the adult Michael on a leading character, and described the story of young Michael as just a page of his youth. It's a pity.

Whenever I watch movies after readng original books, I'm a bit disappointed. It can't be helped. It's hard to condense a story into an only two hours movie, especially if the book is a masterpiece.

All actors were great, especially Kate Winslet who acted Hanna. She won the Oscar for best actress in a leading role.
I heard that the filmmaker pushed her to the best supporting actress nomination, but the Academy recommends the best actress nomination. She was great in the movie.

I'm not feeling very good.

I'm not feeling very good today. I wonder what is a cause.
I went to watch the movie "The Reader" today, but I'll write about it tomorrow.
I'm going to bed.

Talking on Skype

I talked with one of my friends on Lang-8 on Skype yesterday. It's the first time for me to talk on Skype fully.

At first, we communicated on IM, then we talked. He spoke Japanese very well with good pronunciation. I wish I were you!
In contrast, my English conversation skill is terrible as usual. My weakness has been conversation, especially listening, since a long time ago. It hasn't been changed.

I have been using English almost at work, but in a new project I'm joining next month, I don't need to speak English. It means I wouldn't have any opportunity to speak English. It's a critical situation for me to improve my English, isn't it?
So, I think I should have more opportunities to speak English outside of work, like talking on Skype. I wonder if I should look for more people I can get together with on Skype to improve each language.

We tried to do video call on Skype. I could see his video, but he couldn't see mine. I changed the setting of video, but it didn't work. I wonder why. I should get used to using Skype as well as speaking English. haha.