イギリス英会話ブログ

I haven’t posted anything here for a while - too busy with the real world to spend much time in cyberspace - but this time I would like to take this chance to write a post on the topic of ‘Various Ways to say してもらう’ in English. (Continued)

This is a topic that really gets me - I find it so bizaare that so many young Japanese couples choose to hold a christian wedding ceremony. (Continued)

I have just written a post in the 中級編 entitled ‘What do you want to say?’ - and I have been thinking about how important it is to learn a language with some purpose in mind. That is to say, it is important, even while you are still a beginner, to think deeply about what you want to say to people in a foreign land. (Continued)

Travelling on the train to and from work every day, I have to find ways to keep myself happy. I usually find myself reading the adverts posted up on the walls of the carriage and hanging from the ceiling. These last ones are particularly difficult for me to avoid as, standing at my 194cm., they hang down at the level of my face. (Continued)

My mouth slowly fell open as I read this article on the BBC today. It seems that Justice Minister Kunio Hatoyama attempted to justify the introduction of compulsory finger-printing, from this Summer, of all foreigners entering Japan by claiming that he knew of an Al-Qaeda member who had entered Japan several times in the last few years. (Continued)

It is said that everyone has “a skeleton in their closet” - that everyone has something in their past that they are ashamed of. (Continued)

The BBC reports today on the largest demonstration to take place in Okinawa since the island was returned to Japan by the US in 1972. And the reason for the protests is the government’s meddling in the content of history textbooks to be used in schools in Japan. (Continued)

I like this title because the whole meaning can change depending on your intonation - you could understand it as teaching at a School while being under the influence of some mind-warping chemical. (Continued)

There are apparently many more non-native speakers of English in the world than there are native speakers, and as a consequence of this the traditional rules of the language-learning game are under pressure to change. (Continued)

Recently a friend drew my attention to a documentary available on YouTube about the 9-11 terrorist attacks in America. The documentary is called ‘Loose Change’ and seems to have been put together by a group of young Americans who were not happy with the official explanations of the events of September 11th 2001.

Basically, the documentary proposes that the 9-11 terrorist attacks were actually organized by the Bush administration (& CIA, FBI, etc) in order to create a pretext for invading Afghanistan and Iraq. Outlandish as such an idea may sound to some people, there are a number of interesting facts reported in the documentary which make it worth watching even if one is not happy to swallow the story whole.

Although derided by more ‘official’ organizations as a mere ‘conspiracy theory’ , the ‘Loose Change’ documentary became a bit of an internet phenomenon when it was first posted up on the internet and the makers appeared quite frequently on TV media in America to put their arguments and questions to a variety of experts. Certainly, watching the video one does get a feeling that maybe these guys are actually onto something. True experts seem to have little time for their ideas though.

Perhaps the high profile that the ‘Loose Change’ documentary achieved after its release is more due to the lack of credibility of the Bush administration - people were, and still are, hungry for any revelations that will damn the Neo-Liberal project.

It would be interesting to hear what people think about this.

And here’s another, perhaps more believable, conspiracy theory from an article in the Japan Times.

I have been following a very interesting discussion on an e-mail mailing list I subscribe to. The thread started off by discussing native English speakers tendency to use the pronoun ‘my’ more than Japanese speakers - as in ‘my company’, ‘my neighbours’, ‘my school’. I think it is basically true that pronouns are used much more frequently in English than in Japanese; but this was not the really interesting part of the discussion. (Continued)

Prime Minister Abe has made it clear he intends to push through with his plans for constitutional reform. (Continued)

It was only in my third year living in Japan that I decided to take on the fearsome task of mastering Japanese kanji. My main motivation was that I wanted to be able to read a Japanese newspaper and understand firsthand what is going on in Japanese society. (Continued)

This week a little cultural note for readers with an interest in British cuisine. (Continued)

The Nova chain of English schools has been in the news recently. (Continued)