pokejapan@kyoto

Business Interpreter Class

I had permission to join the Business Interpreter Class at the Interpreter School called Inter School in Osaka after receiving good results in my summer course. I am very happy to be in this course because I want to be an English interpreter someday either as volunteer or professional after my retirement.

I learned a lot in my Business Interpreter summer class. The managers and board members are always very busy, so the interpreters do their work efficiently without any needless words or sentences in order to make the translations as short as possible. Also we don’t often need to say the “Subject” in Japanese. However English speakers say some subjects in sentences such as you, I, we, he, she, etc. The proper way to say in Japanese depends on who you are talking to. This is called “Keigo”, which means polite way in Japanese. In the class, I also learned some techniques which are called “Shadowing” or “Following”, “Reproduction”, “Dictation” and those for the “Interpretation” from Japanese to English and English to Japanese.

Sometimes, I have to interpret for the purpose of volunteer activities such as showing around exchange students from our sister club inLos Angeles. This is a function of the rotary club, which I am a member of. I enjoy these activities and it gives me high motivation to learn those skills at Inter School.

English education in Japan

There are discussions about English education reform in Japan at Japanese Central Education Council. “How do we master English communication with foreigners in the Global Society” One of their solutions is to let English education start from elementary school. I don’t agree with this idea, because we have many things about teachers themselves and curriculums to reform current English education in Junior High school, High school and University. Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) has introduced the Jet program and the ALT program to assist Japanese English teachers. But it seems like still test cases because most classes are taught by Japanese teachers who don’t speak English fluently. I know they are professional for teaching of writing and reading and grammar of English. But why don’t they speak English? Because they didn’t have enough training of listening and speaking. After graduation from University, they are so busy to become teachers to pass the test. Actually, this test of public school teachers is very difficult. Most of the test is focused on reading, writing and grammar, not speaking and listening. I think current teachers should have special trainings for English communication skill and at the same time MEXT should increase native English teachers instead of Japanese English teachers urgently. Before early English study at elementary school, the quality of teachers should be better and change curriculums to focus on English communication. I know many adults in Japan are crazy about English including me, even thought they didn’t like it when they were at school. The reason is simple that we enjoyed conversation with foreigners like different language from mother tongue, not grammar writing and reading. After knowing how English communication is fun, we chose studying other skills of English.

Assignment for the class of Intelligent Speaking at Inter School

How to study English 2 (Self Study)

I decided to do two things to study English every day. One of them is to read at least three articles from an online newspaper, “The Japan Times”. I choose the articles from its top page and print them out and then read them out loud. Even if I find difficult words, I skip them and later I check them by dictionary and read them again out loud. The second thing which I do everyday is to listen to the NHK and BBC news several times by iPod Podcast. It's easier for me to listen to the NHK because Japanese announcers read the news. One year ago, when I started to listen to the BBC news by Podcast, I couldn’t understand what they said at all, but now it is getting easier to roughly understand many of them. I realized that it was one of the best ways to continue to do this for a long time. I can say some things on my English weblog. It has already been two years since I started to write them. It took a long time to write one article for the first time but now it is getting easier to write quite a lot faster with less mistakes. It is getting to be fun. It’s not only practice in writing, but also in speaking. The articles which I have written on the web log can be used in terms of my conversation and it is easy to speak because I already know how to express it.

How to study English 1 (at English school)

I was getting bored in English conversation school now I’ve been in one for many years. After I researched different schools, I decided to go to one of them in Osaka. This school is famous as being an interpreter school. They say all the students are highly motivated and classes are very strict. They use some methods for their interpreter practice. I am taking the class named “Current Affairs”. It is fun, but the atmosphere of the class is quite serious. They provide the class with three different methods. At first, it is the “Interpreter method” from English to Japanese and they use tapes from the BBC and CNN or other stations. After listening to one sentence from the tape in English, the teacher appoints someone in the class randomly to interpret from English to Japanese. She gave us some hints and let us listen to it again. If you don’t answer, the teacher will soon appoint another student. We have to answer very correctly. The second method is the “Reconstruction”. After listening to one sentence from the tape, you are required to repeat the same sentence or a similar one. Short time memory is required. The third method is the “Shadowing”. Just after a tape says a sentence, you have to repeat the sentence while listening to that tape saying the next sentence. It is the first time I have taken such a unique English lesson. The time passes so quickly in the class every time. I hope this training will improve my English a lot.

Christmas party of English School

I attend the Christmas party of an English school in Japanese restaurant near my house. I like this school parties, because the atmosphere is so relax and you can speak any languages. As many teachers can speak Japanese, we speak not only English, but Japanese and sometimes funny Kansai-Ben (Kansai direct) mix together. They are very nice guys. They’ve just started their own business in the different country, Japan as entrepreneurs. I hope they can success their business in the near feature. http://english-access.jp/index.html

Farewell party of Kawanishi Branch in Nova

We students have gotten into trouble at the biggest English conversation school in Japan named Nova. It was in the corporation reorganization law, because of credit crunch recently. I have been a member of “Voice” of this school, which is not class, but is “English conversation salon” for many years. When I have spare time, I get used to enjoy English conversation in this Voice which you can talk anything you what with one teacher and some Japanese students. Also a convenient point of this salon is that you can go to any branches and at any time in the afternoon.

Nova has been in trouble now, so all branches have been closed for a while and it might file for bankruptcy. Now they are looking for companies which can help Nova financially. The Kawanishi branch which is the one of oldest branch and my nearest one had been decided to close more than one month ago, so we had planed a farewell party. I joined that party and promised many voice members to keep in touch as much as possible.

pictures for party of Nova Kawanishi

A New Zealand soldier

    I met a guy who had experience of the PKO in New Zealand army. He was dispatched to many countries for the Peace Keeping Operation. I have hard lots of stories about the activity in the border of Korea. After joining the U.N., he went to Pakistan, some countries in Africa and Samawa in Iraq in the middle east.

    I know some information through TV about what happened in unsafe countries, but not so many time to hear the stories directly from the person who went and had experience in front of the war. I have opportunity to think about them. He said he was enjoying to stay in Japan with his wife now, because it's very safe in Japan.

How to get water

I talked with an Australian guy about water today. Before he came to Japan, he was living in the rural area inside of Australia between Sydney and Gold Coast. He had water from rain after gathering from the roof of the house and kept in the tank, when it was raining. He said that no problem at all, after water was filtered on the tap. In Japan, now we use the water from the river of lake after going through a filtration plant, but in the past, we had generally used a well in the house. My house also had the well and use the water from it for drinking and washing. In Kyoto, they made a canal to get water form Biwa Lake, which was the biggest lake in Japan. These three pictures are the canal in Kyoto.

The polyglot lady

I saw a young lady who can speak 4 languages fluently at my English school. She spoke English with us in the salon with one native speaker. I noticed she was not Japanese. Actually, I saw some foreigners came to English school in Japan from France, Korea, China, etc. But she is not like those. In a breaking time we generally talk in Japanese, but we didn't recognize she was Korean. She said she was born and growing up in China and came to Japan as scholarship for phD several years ago. She already graduated from University. and now she is teaching Korean and Chinese. There were so many questions for her at same time after she revealed, but she replied by English and Japanese evenly.

What we talk at an English school in Japan

  Today, I would like to write how people living in overseas outside of Japan think about Japan and Japanese culture. I have been to the English conversation school named 'Nova' for many years. The style of this school has been different from the other schools, so that you can talk with any topics with the other Japanese students and one native English speaker in English. In every 40 Min. teachers change and it opens 14:10 to 21:00pm about 7 hours everyday. If you like, you can stay max. 7 hours using one ticket cost about 2,000 yen per ticket. We have different agenda every time, depends on the students and teachers.

   We talk about many different things every time, such as the culture of foreign countries, Japanese culture, your recent experience, politics, economics, superstition, food, sports, life, IT technology, your hobby, your family, current news, different from life style, etc. I sometimes ask to the new teachers what was the most impressed thing when you first arrived in Japan. They say that cities of Japan were clean, everything in Japan have been organized, trains are punctual, not so many people are wearing Kimono, etc. My next question is what your image of Japan was, before you came to Japan. They are not so many, such as Kyoto, Kimono, geisha, karate, Mt.Fuji, Sony, Panasonic, Toyota, Honda, etc. Actually, I went to the school today and I introduced this weblog to everyone.

Study English and Hanami

I went to study at 'Nova Voice' which was the one of largest English school in Japan. When I talked with teachers who came from different English speaking countries, such as Canada, US, England, Australia, NewZeland, Island, etc. Today's main topics were about  cherr-blossom. Teachers visited quite many places in Kyoto this week, because they are staying one year as average in Japan, so if you miss, you could never see the beautiful cherry-blossom in Japan. Of course you can see them in the US and the other countries, but the palaces you can see them are limited and not so beautiful as much as Japanese one. That's why the most of foreigners living in Japan can not miss about two weeks to go to 'Hanami' which means going to see the cherry-blossom and occasionally, people drink alcohol there. The teachers visit philosophy pass from Nanzenji to Ginkakuji and Maruyama park in Kyoto, Himeji castle in Hyogo prefecture, Osaka castle in Osaka city for enjoy them. Of course I enjoyed them this week several times in Kyoto this year as they are written in my weblog.

   

Studying English in Japan

I have been studying at 'Voice lesson' in Nova for many years. This school is famous English school in Japan. This lesson is very unique, because this is a salon style which is composed of one teacher and some students and teachers change very 40 min. You can speak any topics which you choose in the class and will meet many different type of people there. Also price is very cheap as about 2,000JPN=$20. You can stay at this room as much as you like, max. about 7 hours a day. Would you like to try it?