投稿

4月, 2014の投稿を表示しています

Foreigners in Japan

Discussion at Kobe Japan German Society Theme: Foreigners in Japan Five women and five men participated in the meeting. To begin with, the discussion leader, Ms. Ikawa, who graduated from Heidelberg University, gave an overview of foreigners living in Japan. The number of foreigners in Japan is about 2,500,000. They account for 2 percent of the whole popluation, whereas in Germany staggering 10 percent of the population is foreigners. In Japan most of the foreigners are Koreans and Chinese. They account for 2,000,000. The rest: Americans 50,000. The French 8,000 Germans 5,000. Where did the Germans go? They went back home, because they were afraid of earthquakes and radio-activity exposure. Chicken! So much for the jokes. Getting back on track on the topic, everyone wondered what's the cause of so few foreigners in Japan? Japan consists of archipelagoes. Japan Island is cut off from the Eurasian Continent by Sea of Japan. The neighboring contry is USA. But America is 8000 mil

Consumption Tax Increase

In March I visited my favorite dentist for a routine-checkup. Looks like I am not good at brushing and flossing teeth. When they rendered cleaning, the gum started to bleed. Then a young cute tooth-  hygiene -assistant suggested that I use a special tooth brush like this one in a photo to prevent the gum disease. It's 17 cm long and about the size of the normal tooth brush. But the head part of the dense brush is round and 0.5 cm in diameter. The handle is made of semi-transparent plastic. The advantage of using this brush is that you can pinpoint the gap between the root of your teeth and the gum underneath. That enables you to remove any food particles left in the mouth. As a matter of fact the cutie demonstrated how to use this special brush and a hand mirror to me. In the meantime my favorite beautiful dentist showed up and checked my teeth. She smiled at me and said, "I use this special brush, too. That's my favorite one." That was a clincher. I found it irres

Samurai's Wife

Today I'm very happy to introduce to you a play entitled "Samurai's Wife" which will be performed at Art Culture Theater between the 21st of February and 23rd of Februrary. Actually "Samurai's Wife" is Yone Suzuki who ran Suzuki & Company in the late 19th century. The company's headquarters was located in Kobe. Yone presided over Suzuki & Compnay wheresas my grandfather, Naokichi Kaneko, reported to her as an exceutive director. Naokichi's family was a rich merchant in the 17th century. But generation after generation they had been putting down the poor. As punishment, in the era of Naokichi the family reduced to being only an a garbage collector. Fortunately he was adopted by Suzuki & Company as apprentice. He was a genious when it comes to business. Taking an advantage of the Japanese victory in the  first World War, he made a incredible amount of profit and contributed to the company. So he ran up the corporate ladder overnight.

How I learn German in daily life

Today I'd like to introduce Deutsche Welle(DW) to you and how I learn German in my daily life. DW ist a German internet newspaper whose headquarters is located in Bonn. It provides Learning German program on Facebook. In this program I can practice various prepositions, conjunctions and colloquial phrases. The greatest advantage of taking part in this program is that you can compare your answers to other participants around the world. In other words, you're not learning alone. On top o that it is very nice of DW to correct my grammatical mistakes. It's unbelievable that I can learn German at free of charge. The Germans are the kindest people of the world! The number of people who put in "Likes" on this program is approximately 290,000. Recently DW asked each participant a question: "Show us how you learn German in your daily life. And write your German Learning Method within five sentences and add a photo and send them to us." It's like a winning

Learn to Live with Tinnitus

1.Intorduction Thank you, Tanaka-san, for that gracious introduction and good evening, everyone. In a few seconds I'm going to talk to you about my experiences with tinnitus. I have three points to cover. 1) How I have gotten tinnitus? 2) Its treatment 3) How it changed my life But first let me read out the definition of tinnitus. "Tinnitus is the sensation of hearing noise in your ears and head when there are no sounds present in the environment. The sounds you hear may be loud or soft and can be steadily or intermittent. The noise is often described as a ringing, tinkling, roaring, whistling, hissing or buzzing." Well, in my case I always have sounds "Bang", "Bang" in my head. 2. Body (Onset) About three years ago I left a pharmceutical company out of my own volition and moved to a high-rise-condo in Osaka where I live with my wife and daughter. My colleagues were still working. So I was an early pensioner. But I had plans. I flew to Chica