I revisited the UK in September, as my first visit there in February was very nice. This time, I went to Folkestone, Kent, where the musical Half A Sixpence was performed, and I watched it at Kokugakuin Tochigi High School, via Brighton, Tunbridge Wells, Hastings, Rye, and New Romney.
On the third day, I checked out of the Heathfield B&B on a rainy morning. Since it was a weekday, Keighley Worth & Valley Railway was out of service. The mistress took me to the nearest bus stop on Rawdon Road and told me to wait there for the bus to Keighley.
While waiting for the bus, an old lady talked to me. She asked me where I was going. I answered that I was going to London. Another lady joined us, and they and I talked a bit until the bus was coming.
On the bus, I sit on the upper front seat, and the ladies stayed downstairs. Arriving at Keighley bus terminus, I got out of the bus. The train station was a bit distant from the terminus, so I didn’t know how to get there.
Then the lady who had talked to me first at the Rawdon Road bus stop found me standing there and told me to follow her to the train station, as she was just going shopping nearby. How kind of her! I was able to get to the Keighley train station with her help.
Inside Keighley train station.The food served on the train on my way from Leeds to London.(more…)
Breakfast served at Heathfield Bed & Breakfast was very British, with a fried egg, fried potatoes, and mushrooms; a fried tomato cut in half; two slices of bacon; two sausages; cereals; slices of bread; a glass of orange juice; and a cup of tea. I have a good appetite for breakfast in England because when it’s breakfast time in England, it’s time to have dinner in Japan, where it’s nine hours ahead.
Although it was a bit while ago, I made a private trip to the United Kingdom. It was not the British Hills, not an English village, not a British-style cottage in Tochigi Prefecture, not any other “fake Britain” in Japan. It was the real England, where I had wanted to visit before I died. I visited London and Haworth, West Yorkshire. Both of those places were introduced in the Japanese manga Emma by Kaoru Mori, which was one of my favorite comics I’d ever read.
We Japanese know that English is the world’s de facto standard language; everyone in the world needs to learn to communicate with each other in this fast-globalising society. Mastering English is, nevertheless, one of the greatest hardships for most Japanese people who were born in Japan and raised by Japanese parents there. They learn English as a mandatory subject in middle school, high school, and even college for up to eight years, but very few of them have a good command of it.
Quite a few analysts have commented on why most Japanese people are weak in English. Some say it’s because English’s structure of language is quite different from that of the language they usually speak. Others point out problems with Japan’s English education policies, which rely too heavily on teaching translation techniques from English to Japanese rather than on communicative English.
It is also said that English isn’t necessary for Japanese people’s everyday life. Even if English is taught in school, it’s what they can forget after managing to pass the entrance examination of their highest education facility at long last. Once they finish studying for exams, they can do without English for life as long as they stay within Japan. Rather, showing off English is considered in many cases as rude, affected, and disgusting behaviour by other average Japanese, especially older people who have less chance to learn English.
Why do average Japanese living in Japan hate such people who speak English fluently, though they may neither feel rude, affected nor disgusting to good painters, professional musicians, skilled karate masters, or those who are good at something other than English? Japan has been subject to America’s control in business, economy, military, culture, and everything else since WWII, and various kinds of things have been brought into Japan. People in Japan have been mesmerised by such American-style things and, because it has been noised about especially for the last 15 years that all examples in America are the global standard they should follow, they have done their best to try to incorporate them in their daily life. However, a few things are what they can’t manage to do it—English is the one. Affection to what they try to get in vain turns into hatred over time and the hatred will be expressed at those who successfully have it. Due to such nature of Japanese people, most of them don’t or pretend not to speak English well so that they won’t generate unexpected resentment among people. Because it’s considered affected to show off speaking English in public, they have less motivation to use it.
In my humble opinion, one important attitude to master English is to stop admiring America too much. English is not a language for Americans only, but a lingua franca that people around the world learn, whether or not they are native English speakers. You’ll find out that American English, mainly taught in Japan, is not dominant in the world if you travel to countries in Europe, the Middle East, or Southeast Asia, where British English is widely used in conversation and signs in public. People in the UK, India, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, and Australia use their own local English. Even within the United States, you’ll see various kinds of people from businesspersons to hotel clerks, taxi drivers, and newsstand workers who speak in various kinds of accents. Nothing is right, and nothing is wrong. Nothing is fashionable, and nothing is dowdyish. They are all in English.
We should be a master of English, not a slave of it. We should learn it not so much as one of American cultures as an interface language to get our views across to anyone in the world, regardless of their mother tongue, representing the nation we stand for. The more Japanese people who can do it, the more they can influence the world, benefiting our country.
