I hope (foreign) people don’t make a racket too much on the Yamanote Line trains….
Category: American Lifestyle 米国ライフスタイル
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satellite dish
今日はこの英語がキーワードです。意味がわかっている方にはアホみたいな話かもしれませんが、私は知らず、恥をかいて覚えた単語です。
今日はキャンプ座間でミュージック・フェスティバルがありました。去年は相模デポだったのですが、今年は場所が座間に変わったようです。まあ、超感じ悪かった相模デポではなく座間になったのはラッキーでしたね。座間ならバーガーキングとかの建物にも入れるし、アメリカの切手を貼った手紙もポストに出せるし、ATMで金も下ろせるし、そして何より、相模デポとは違って入場無料ですから。
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SHOW BOAT
去年で最後にしようとか言っときながら、結局また今年も國學院栃木高校の文化祭に行ってしまいました。
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Kelso Heartland Homestay Program 2008
In addition to the musical SHOW BOAT by the Musical Club, one of the Cultural Festival's attractive displays I wanted to visit was the reports of "Kelso Heartland Homestay Program" by some students who visited the United States. Devin Kelso, born in Mount Vernon, Iowa, working for Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School as a communicative English teacher, hosted the home stay program with his family.They arranged the host families in Mount Vernon to encourage them to accept each of the participants.
About a dozen of high school and junior high students took part in this program. They spent about two weeks with the host families, learning English, and taken to cities around Mount Vernon for shopping, camping, barbecuing, and sightseeing. Every picture displayed on the boards showed that the students had been very excited to experience unknown new culture.
They brought back plenty of American items as well as American mind. They are really nice.
According to an article of a local newspaper, Devin Kelso began this program to encourage Japanese youths to have such experiences that he did when he was 15. He visited Mexico with his father and learned many things there. He found out that his Spanish he had learned at school worked well, and that the people were getting along well without English.
I thought the students were very happy to see the world of different culture when they were very young. I hope I could participate in this program some day 😉
Extra: the pictures of trains from Tochigi to Tokyo.
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SHOW BOAT
Today I went to Kokugakuin Tochigi University High School to see the musical SHOW BOAT that the students of the Musical Club of this high school performed. Every year I go to Tochigi to watch Musical Club’s performance because they play very well like professional actors, although they are just high school students, and you can see such wonderful shows for free.
I used to drive to Tochigi by car but this year I have no longer my own car so I got there by trains (Subway and Tobu Isesaki and Nikko lines). I arrived at Tochigi station at 8:30 am.
It took about ten minutes from Tochigi station to the high school.
This was the musical SHOW BOAT, the story by a troupe on a boat sailing the Mississippi river.
For those of you who don’t know what the story is, here’s the synopsis.
Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.
The show boat Cotton Blossom is a pleasure boat sailing the Mississippi river. There is a troupe who gives performances on the boat. Magnolia Hawks, a daughter of the owner of the boat, dreaming to be a superstar, is now just a staff member occupied with trivial routine duties. When the show boat is anchoring at Natchez, Mississippi, she happens to meet a gambler, Gaylord Ravenal, and falls in love with him. Her mother, Parthy Ann Hawks, is against for her to meet him, but her father, Cap’n Andy, allows him to get on the boat.
One day the leading actress of the troupe, Julie La Verne, who is a daughter with a black parent and white one, is arrested for being married with a white man, because it is illegal in this state that a non-white person marries a white one. Losing the leading lady of the company, Cap’n Andy makes Magnolia the leading actress instead of Julie and at the same time hires Gaylord, who is experienced of playing on stage. The show business results in a big success with them.
Magnolia and Gaylord love each other more and more deeply, and eventually they marry. They retire from actors and get off the boat to live their new life.
However, the new life by a steady-minded woman and a gambler doesn’t last long. Gaylord does nothing but gambling instead of working, and they manage to live in a cheap apartment. Depressed and shamed by his inability to support his family, Gaylord leaves her. Magnolia has a baby, and gives birth to a daughter Kim. She gets back to the show boat and begins an actress job again.
The troupe of the show boat is doing a show with another troupe at Trocadero Theatre, where Julie is a leading lady of this company. Julie meets Magnolia again, and suddenly leaves Trocadero so that Magnolia can fill her position. Magnolia passes the audition and is hired. She becomes a great musical star on the Trocadero stage.
Julie, disappearing from Trocadero, joins a different musical troupe and happens to meet Gaylord, who is a member of the company. She tells him how Magnolia is doing, and encourages him to see her again. He is uncertain whether he has the right to ask Magnolia to take him back, but she does. They becomes happy again with their daughter.Cultural Festival 2006 at Kokugakuin Tochigh University High School 1 (Oliver!)
Cultural Festival 2006 at Kokugakuin Tochigh University High School 2 (Write what you hear) -
亜米利加さんに逝ってきました 2008 in Camp Zama
今日はキャンプ座間の桜祭りに行ってきました。座間は昨年の盆踊り以来ですが、春に来たのは2年ぶりになります。
ちょうど散りかけの、見ごろの桜でした。桜吹雪が時折舞い散り、美しい風景でした。
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Virginia Tech, Nebraska and Sasebo gunshootings
Today’s news is repeatedly reporting that a man broke into a sports club building in Sasebo, Nagasaki, Japan, firing a shotgun at random and resulted in killing a man and a woman and injuring six people. It was said that the Japanese shooter shot himself to death. A victim happened to be there for waiting a friend.
In Japan or in any other place, slaughters by persons touched in the head can occur everywhere. It might be fresh in mind that a Korean guy fired a shotgun and killed 33 persons in Virginia Tech. In this month, eight people were shot to death by Robert Hawkins who shot at random at a shopping mall in Omaha, Nebraska. It is not true that you think “Japan is safe and foreign countries aren’t.” Anywhere you are, there are no safe places these days.
We should keep in mind that life and death of us is just destiny and we can’t expect when we die. Death suddenly comes to us—maybe today. When you walk on the street, you may be hit by a drunk driver’s car, a hard block a mad guy throw from the building by you, or a people himself who attempts suicide by diving from the top of the building. When you are waiting for a train on the platform, a mentally-unstable woman may suddenly push you off the platform on the rails in front of a train rushing into the station. When you are riding on the train, the train may crash. When you are driving, an oncoming car may come to you to collide. When you even are in your house, an earthquake may happen and the ceiling may fall down on you. It’s unpredictable if you may suddenly lose your life.
What we can do to live our lives with no regrets is “not to put off till tomorrow what we can do today.” If you have something you want to do, do it right away. You may want to leave anything unfinished when you go to bed at night, not to regret even if you can’t wake up forever.
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もしも日本の中にアメリカ特区があったら……
在日米軍基地は確かに中に入るとアメリカそのものですが、ミリタリーIDを持っている人じゃないと買い物もできませんし、スポンサーがついていないとどこにも行けず、そもそもゲートの中にも入れません。オープンゲートの日には一般人も中に入れますが、軍事施設なので、不用意にあちこち歩き回ると先日の相模デポの拘束事件のようなことが起こってしまいますし、だいたい入口で持ち物ひっかき回されて卑屈になってるのも愉快なものじゃありません。
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