General house cleaning and practicing dan sha ri (断捨離)

As one of practice of my family is general house cleaning in the end of year. Most probably all family members are required to join this event. Idea of this clean up is for preparing to welcome toshigami (God of shinto) and start new year on new note.

It was seasonal tradition in Japan. Duster and broom are used to be typical tools for this. We cover our head with scarf or towel and mouth with mask then, fling dust off from ceiling, ramp shade and walls. We do clean the rooms completely. Family members are assigned to the place to clean. Nowadays I haven't seen this family event much. One of the reasons is technological advantages. The research has been done by marketing research company Intage (2006).

However, there are many information regarding general house cleaning. How to schedule this, tips, tools, and throw. Especially, dan sha ri （断捨離）- to reduce unnecessary stuffs from our life to bring harmony to our life - became a sort of trend and it goes with general clean up. This word was introduced in the book and awarded the grand prize in the annual buzzwords-of-the-year contest in 2010.

Origin of the word came from yoga practice and it was applied to daily life. Dan (断) means to refuse unnecessary stuffs coming to us. Sha（捨）means to throw away unnecessary stuffs in our house. Sha（捨）means to leave ourselves from love of things.

I totally agreed with this because we have things more than we need. But one simple question remains. How are person who grow up highly consuming society accustomed not purchasing stuffs? My observation is easy to throw things up than to refuse to buy things.

In my experience, letting things out and refusing unnecessarily things were not so bad. After I left my hometown, I move one to another places. Technically I could not own stuffs except few selected items. Saddest moment of giving up was to sell or give away one shelf of books I have in Japan before I left there because no strange to save and not bring to abroad. But all these old book might have blocked new idea to come to me. If these things are necessaries in my life, it will come back.

Today, I did general clean up here in the temporary house and felt refreshed. I hope my new year will bring me new learning and experiences.

Why majority of Japanese can't speak English? - personal journey of learning English

Why majority of Japanese can't speak English?
My foreign friends ask me whether we have English subject in school or not. Sure, we do have it. But we still remain poor. Some claimed it in their blogs by citing comparative TOEIC(Test of English for International Communication) score data among Asian countries. It said we are 27 out of 30 countries or 30 out of 30 countries. So far, I could not find origin of these data yet. I do not believe until I read these data but I could sense we are the one of these countries of poor ability of English.

I am wondering why Japanese can't speak English even our English subject has started when we are Junior High school. Japanese people learn English for 6-9 years on average.

Based on my experience, roughly there are three major reasons behind poor English language ability of Japanese people. First reason is educational system, secondly, attitude, and the last might be our environment.

English education in my generation
"This is a pen." It was the phrase which I learned very beginning of Junior High school days. Most of my friends were excited at the learning English because it was something new to us and made them realized that they were finally becoming a Junior High School student. Excitement being Junior High School student came from that way. However, it is obviously we do not use in conversation.

Our English education might contain several challenges. These are age issue, time we learn per week and, methodology.
Learning English is at the age of 13 is quite late. 3-4 hours per week was the length of time we learned in the school. It is too little if we intend to speak in English.
Focus was grammar and reading. We listened cassette tape (not CD yet!!) and follow after non native English teacher besides never study abroad. For me, I hardly recognized my English teacher's pronunciation, dog and doll !! 

Attitude toward learning
It is easy to say that do not be shy to commit mistakes. However, most of Japanese, we are avoiding mistakes. More than shyness, actually few chances of speaking out leads few trial in their speaking practice.

When I was a junior high school student, I did not want to pronounce in front of classmates. If my sentences were grammatically incorrect,  I started to repeat these in mind. I tend to reflect these over and over again, which made me so tired. That is so-called vicious cycle.

No urgent
We live in the country where we could survive without using it daily In the job market, nowadays we often require to submit the score of English proficiency test. However, English is not commanding language in the most of work places. How we can see the situation after learning hard this. There is a question, are we motivated enough to learn this?
We have to have own sources of motivation if we want to improve it.

It was the after the University I started studying English in serious manner. Soon after my graduation, I experienced 3 weeks abroad for volunteering. Then, I was totally stressed out not expressing myself well. My promise after the event was to reach my English upto the level I express myself freely. Well, I am still on the progress.

No remedy for improvement? 
Yeah, there is no remedy for it unless we are totally motivated doing so, more chances to speak and drastic change of English education methodology. How long does it take to come all these together? I have no idea however, Whether true or not, I heard nowadays elementary school is going to have English subject from grade 4. It might be starting point of changes.

What I thought I need to do several things in order to get better my English are Improving Japanese language. It seems like long way around however, if we are not good at commanding our native tongue, how we will be a good speaker of other languages.
Having friends from different nationalities is one of these resolutions. It creates necessity of speaking. If we want to get close to that person we might be motivated to practice more to have nice conversation with her or him.
After reaching certain level, we can have a field of expertise. Then we can dig in that field to talk and discuss it in English.

I hope 10-20 years from now there is no admiration just speaking in English. If people go through 12 years educational system, people at least express even simple stuff in English. And hopefully, we will have more chance to learn languages of neighboring countries.

Japanese Finance Drama HANZAWA NAOKI is trailblazing.

HANZAWA NAOKI is the main character of ongoing popular Japanese drama about a banker. Its audience rate has reached 32.9%, with the highest rate reaching 37.5% at one point in Kanto area. Recently, only few TV dramas have reached over 30% audience rate because of a declining trend of television viewing in Japan. The record shows people's strong interest towards this kind of drama. Even the drama director was surprised at this enthusiasm and interest.

Admittedly, I am one of these audience. This dram doesn't follow popular drama which contains several factors such as, few female characters, less prominence of love story, and lacking of easy tunes and impressive music. In general, this kind of drama is not one of those that can gain such a high audience rate every week. Nonetheless it continues to buck the trend and surprise the TV reviewers.

This drama is based on Jun Ikeido's series of novels. The story is about a banker who joined a Japanese major bank in the late bubble economy period in the 1990s. The main character, Naoki Hanzawa stands up to and overcome adversities. This story strikes a chord in Japanese hearts and memories of not so long time ago and a shared past.

I argue that there are several reasons in this drama that allow us to get hooked.

So, what grabs the audience's heart and attention?

Structure and story itself
It is a financial drama which brings out masculinity in the audience - the element of being in control. It is an entertaining story which contains moral, similar to what we find in samurai drama. However, not simple as samurai drama, it includes desire and struggle. It may be fictitious but anyone human can relate with it.

Technicality
It is a financial drama, therefore it shows somehow banking business or presents the financial world to the audience. Little do we know about banker's real life. By the way, the author used to work in bank, that is why the characters and story are vividly described. But since it is a drama, an element of exaggeration cannot be ruled out. Thus often, we hear some technical jargons, which make us somehow learn the work of a banker. We are drawn to his world.

Refreshing
It is piquant. There is a figure of justice and evil. Then, of course Hanzawa plays on the justice side. He has never compromised his values to achieve his goal, even against those in top management. His words exude powerful and challenging tone. It seems that there is Hanzawa in each one of us who strive to say and stand up for what we believe in even against those with power in the office. We find Hanzawa living what we ought to be in the office.

Comic-like camera work
It is like Japanese anime's framing. Especially, I feel it when camera zoomed in Hanzawa's eyes. The familiarity of an comic book framing can be one of its strong point that drives its popularity.

In the drama, Hanzawa describes the nature and work of banking. Banks can lend us umbrella when it is even sunny; then they get rid of it when it rains. I say it is true based on my experience. That's why I am sometimes infuriated at the government's policy toward the so called mega bank. At the same time, some of my relatives are working in financial sectors. I am quite interested in how they see this drama.