Speechless shock

The seven o’clock news by NHK made me really shocked. After the Tohoku earthquake, there have been a lot of things that made me angry with the government, TEPCO and the committees for nuclear power, such as the Nuclear Safety Commission and the Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, but today’s news was the worst ever for me. The news was about the Nuclear Safety Commission (NSC). In today’s committee of the House of Representatives, the chairman of the NSC revealed that when the earthquake occurred, only a few investigators for an emergency measure were assembled on that day even though they have forty investigators. That’s because the NSC tried to contact them on with emails to their mobiles but they could not contact almost all of them and some who could receive the email could not get there because of stopped transportation. So, only a few people who were able to walk could gather at the office. What were their contingency plans? 
Furthermore, the NSC is supposed to dispatch the investigators to the spot immediately, but they dispatched only one member of staff. They didn't dispatch the investigators until a month after the earthquake. I couldn't believe it. For the clumsiness of the NSC’s response, the chairman said that he thought they had failed to respond well enough, and this reflected on themselves. As I heard it, I was speechless at his statement. 
As I mentioned before, there have been a lot of problems, but I thought they had tried as hard as they could but just not in the right way. However, the NSC did nothing. I understood why many people doubted the significance of the existence of the NSC. I want them to say that they will give back their remunerations and contribute them to the people who have suffered. I heard they received over ten million yen a year. 

It was too difficult for me to write about a thing like this. I tried to write it by consulting a dictionary. I wonder how far I can say what I think.

Weight problem

Recently I’ve been getting tired easily from walking. Today, first, I walked my dog after breakfast. Then I went to Harajuku to meet my friend and walked around. After my return home, I walked my dog again. So when I got home, I was too exhausted to do anything. Why have I been so tired? I know the reason. I’ve gained weight! I reached the weight I must not reach and I'm not losing it. Oh my God! I really have to try to lose weight. And yet I ate a bag of Kappa-ebisen alone as I watched TV. What on earth did I do? The problem is that there are some snacks in my house. I try not to buy snacks but my husband buys them for a midnight snack. Yeah, my husband is overweight! He always says that he wants to lose weight, but he never stops buying snacks. Once I threw away all the snacks that he had bought, but he started to buy them again after a while. What can I do to make him stop doing it? Oh, there’s another fat guy in my family. It’s my dog. He reached over eleven kilograms even though his vet recommended that I keep him under ten kilograms. Umm, we all have a weight problem! What will I do? It will be hard but I should try to be a good example by losing weight.

Nogawa Park

After yesterday’s rain, it was crisp weather today. We, my husband, our dog and I, went to Nogawa Park which we like very much. It is a really big park and has a lot of giant trees, and the Nogawa River runs through the park. We had McDonald’s hamburgers for breakfast, walked, played with a ball and lay on the grass. Of course, we took a lot of pictures. We enjoyed ourselves very much and our dog was the most satisfied maybe. He seemed to be very tired, so, on the way home, he fell asleep on the rear seat of the car, even though he usually hangs out of the car window. We are going there again during Golden Week, and we are going to take a lot of rice balls for breakfast and lunch. 

After supper, I watched Dr. House, the sixth episode. I tried to read the English subtitles but I was too tired to read them tonight. It’s better to go to bed early. My dear dog is waiting for me to go to bed with him.

Dr. House, again

My friend bought a bread maker and invited me to lunch. When I visited her place the room was filled with a good smell of fresh bread. She had baked it for me for when I visited. She also made a salad and some soup. The bread, salad and soup were all delicious! We really enjoyed lunch.


By the way, we Japanese call “a bread maker”, “a home bakery”. “Home bakery” is Japanese English, but it is a good name, isn’t it? What do English-speaking people imagine when they hear the words “Home bakery”? 


My corrector gave me an answer. To her, it means that someone is baking cakes and bread etc, in their home and selling them, there could be a shop at the front of the house where people come to buy their home baked goods. 


As I was saying, as we had lunch, we were talking about a TV show “Dr. House” as usual. Season 6 has not started to run in Japan, so I haven’t watched it yet, but she has already watched it in English. According to her, season 6 was really interesting. The first episode was especially good as the story had a bit of a different atmosphere from other episodes. She has wanted me to watch it as soon as possible. Of course I have wanted to watch it, so I made up my mind to borrow the DVDs from her and try to watch them in English. 
That night I watched the first episode immediately, with English subtitles. Even though I had prepared for the possibility, it was so hard for me to understand, but I got the gist of the story using my imagination. It was exactly as she said. Yeah, Dr. House was intriguing, as I had expected. Now I have been tackling the second episode.

iKnow!

I’ve been learning English words by using iKow!, an online English learning service. They have a lot of courses for learners’ various goals. It had been free for about two years but they started to charge for it this April. I guess they had accumulated the users' data, such as age, purpose, skill, how and when to learn and so on, by offering their service for free. The data helped them offer better and more sophisticated services. I think iKow! is an excellent service. Since I knew about iKow!, improving my vocabulary hasn’t bothered me at all, aside from remembering the words or not. I’ve tried to do it for one hour a day. 

Now I’m mainly enjoying tackling a TOEFL course because there are many words that appear in school textbooks, for example, mammal, reptile, molecule, hydrogen, equation, gravity, current, equator, tropical rain forest, conifer etc. I forgot or didn’t know most of them, so I can’t understand even a junior high school textbook. When I tried to do an SAT course, it was too much for me! They seemed to be magic formulas. 

Anyway, now I like learning English words. I have two nieces and one nephew, and they are students, so I always show them how useful iKow! is, but they never try it out, just as I didn't take any advice when I was a student.

I had my hair cut

I had my hair cut last Friday. It was a simple short hairstyle this time and I liked it very much. I’ve been wearing my hair short recently. Once it is short, I won’t let my hair get long again because it’s really easy to set my hair, but the problem is that I need to cut my hair very often and to choose a skillful hairdresser. I think that short hairstyles need a higher skill of cutting. 
Actually, I’m not a woman who is careful about my clothes or my makeup, but I am particular about my hairstyle. So, I was cautious in choosing a beauty salon and now I make a special trip to a beauty salon in Ginza, which takes over one hour. The salon was my friend’s recommendation. There must be some good beauty salons around my area, but I don’t have any information of which salons are good and I never want to go to a hair salon that doesn’t have a skillful hairdresser. 
Anyway, from the outside, this is a trivial matter… 

Well, my husband also had his hair cut yesterday. I always ask him to have the hair on top cut shorter but he doesn't. I wish he would count on the barber for his hairstyle.

Today's Lai - He likes drinking water like this.

Presentation

When I worked, I had a hard time presenting my arguments. It is not too much to say that the reason I quit my job was my poor presentation as a manager. I recognized that I was required to have a high level of presentation skills, but I could not become a good speaker. I deeply regretted that I had not seriously improved my presentation skills. 

Now as I watch a news conference of the government, the Atomic Energy Commission and TEPCO, I can only remember my failure. Virtually everyone of them had a really bad presentation. Their presentation content was incomprehensible and pointless, and there’s nothing concrete about their content, especially about the prime minister’s interview, but the biggest problem is not to have the power to appeal to people. I can’t feel their motivation, sincerity or a firm faith. Of course everyone is now working to rebuild, but I can’t feel it. I think the reason is their poor presentation skills. Well then, why? At the root of this problem is the Japanese Education system, I guess. I heard that in the U.S. children practice speaking in public from elementary school. Training one’s speech is absolutely important for children. Japanese like to copy Western society ways, but it is to be regretted that we had a different method in the educational aspect.