Talk Past Each Other

I chatted with my English teacher and Italian friend about football. My English teacher said “City lost yesterday”, I said “Yes, I watched TV last night and Milan won.” then my Italian friend said “Yes, I was happy AC Milan won Manchester.”....

Actually my English teacher meant:
“Manchester City lost the match with Stoke.”
I watched the match “International Milan versus Chelsea”
My Italian friend mentioned:
“AC Milan won the match with Manchester United last week.”

All of us mentioned about different matches. I thought my Italian friend would be happy to hear that International Milan’s victory but she was a supporter of AC Milan so the victory of the rival team in the same area was rather bad news for her.

Surprise Prize

I won a prize and got a DVD called "Tokyo Sonata". I watched it on TV with English subtitles and thought this would be a good material for getting to know real Japanese family and society. Although Kyoko Koizumi is too pretty to be an ordinary mother, recession in recent years and fragile family bond are well described. I wanted to share this DVD with my friends who are interested in Japanese language and culture. However in the DVD I received the English subtitles are not available ... Anyway I'm happy to win a prize.

Good Luck to my Friend

One of my friends, K decided to go back her country and would take a bar exam. K is taking the first exam in February and will take the second one in June. My other Japanese friend, M is planning to go back to Japan in April. K said if she failed the first exam, she would come back to Manchester in March and see M again. M and I were wishing to see K again but also wishing her pass the exam. We were complicated situation and did not know what to say to K. Before her leaving, she sent email to us and told which airline she would get on. M and I were thinking about going to the Manchester airport to see her off however we did not want to bother her to fix time for meet up on her departing day. Eventually we decided to go to the airport without appointment. We searched website and checked her possible flight and estimated her arriving time at the airport.

On our way to the airport M asked me “By the way do you know which Terminal, K would take off?” My answer was “I’ll check it at the airport.” Although we were not sure whether we would find K at the airport or not, I was optimistic. After we checked the Terminal number and headed to the check-in counter, I found K’s husband in the crowd. I said “I can see her husband.” And M replied “I see him holding someone’s hand, it must be K.” YES, it was K! At first K did not understand what we were doing at the airport. After she knew we came for her, she looked so happy. At the moment I was sure that I will see her again somewhere someday in the future.

Ponyo

At last Ponyo, 崖の上のポニョarrived in UK. I’ve been waiting it since April last year. According to Wikipedia, it was on a show in Europe on April 2009. My friends told me they watched it in Paris last year with French subtitles however the film didn’t come to UK. I was wondering for a while and recently almost forgetting then suddenly it was on the show last weekend. I checked three cinemas in Manchester city centre and knew that all shows are English-dubbed version. My Japanese friend complained why do we have to watch a Japanese anime in English? Anyway I’ve been waiting for long so I went to watch the film. As it was said, it was a nice but not as good as the other Miyazaki’s works like “Spirited Away”. Although he drew the characters not fine on purpose, I expected something more. Some scenes and characters were described very fine but some were not, so I felt they could create better work but they just didn’t.
I should mention about songs. Even it was an English-dubbed version, opening tune was the original one and I heard Japanese lyrics. On the other hand, the title tune was dubbed. A girl who sang the original title tune was actually out of tune however she was pretty and popular in Japan. I assume this kind of cutie wouldn’t be accepted by Hollywood. The actors and actresses for voice over were Matt Damon, Liam Neeson and Cate Blanchett so I actually enjoyed watching English dubbed one very much.

Chinese New Year!

I went to China town for celebrating Chinese New Year -- which this year coincides with Valentine's Day.
To tell the truth, I went there to have some food sampling. I didn't get free foods there but I enjoyed fire works and the atmosphere. I thought China town would be packed with Asian people but there were many non-Asian people as well.



Some rides for kids were also available.

The Olympics

I caught the Olympics Opening ceremony on the TV and athletes from Georgia, Ghana and India came into the stadium. I thought Japan would come soon so I kept watching however after Ireland, Norway came in! Wasn’t this alphabetical order? After a while I noticed this TV program was a digest version and it was a shock for me that BBC skipped Japan. I hope they will broadcast Japanese figure skaters’ performance.

An Effective Blog (?)

I posted about a Japanese hairdresser in October 2007 and still I’ve received some requests for reaching her. In the beginning I hesitated to tell my hairdresser’s contact to someone who just read my blog however she told me it was no problem so I kept sharing the contact email address. I didn’t ask any feedback from anyone so I wasn’t sure whether any of them actually got hair cut or not.
Yesterday I got my hair cut and talked with my hairdresser and she told me, “Thank you for introducing good people who came and said that they read Eriko’s blog.” Is my blog effective?

SENTO-kun

When I saw SENTO-kun which is a character for the honor the 1,300th anniversary of the transfer of the national capital to Nara, I gasped because in general characters are pretty or cool. However I'm getting used to this and nowadays I feel this is very nice.