2023/1/28(土)SMC

[President's remark]

Way back when he was young and hansom with black hair, he vaguely wished how wonderful it would be if he became a fluent English speaker. All through his life, there have been once or twice when he felt a jump forward in his English ability. SM Takahata once told us on a zoom meeting that she was elated about the English conversation with the parents of her daughter’ fiance who came to Japan for their son’s wedding. This is a usual experience every learner of English has. He hoped this meeting would trigger this happy experience.

Word of the Day: SM Kei Narisawa

"Paraphernalia"

The presenter chose what seemed to be a strange word but, according to him, to be a general term. That was ‘paraphernalia’, which is seemingly similar to ‘tool’ in meaning. ‘tool’ is a general term. It can be used pliers, saw and sandpaper. They are usually used for carpentry, but also can be used, say, to pull your tooth, or for forestry. On the other hand, ‘paraphernalia’ is a set of tools for a specific purpose. Naturally, they’re often used in the form of ‘～　paraphernalia’ like tennis paraphernalia, or drug paraphernalia.

Lecture: SM Noro

"Collocation"

The lecturer introduced useful practice for collocation.

Complete the sentences with the correct form of a verb from [A] and a corresponding noun from [B].

[A]: BREAK - BURST – CATCH - GET – GIVE - KEEP - LOSE – MAKE - MEET – RAISE – RUN - TAKE

[B]: BREAK - DIVORCE – EFFORT - EXPECTATIONS – GLIMPSE - LIFT - PROMISE – RECORD - RISK - TAXES – TEARS - TEMPER

1. When our daughter found out that our cat was missing, she burst into tears and couldn't be stopped.

2. Our boss is often angry and loses his temper when things go wrong.

3. If she never posts anything on her personal website, she runs the risk of alienating her fans.

4. Not everything happens on its own. Sometimes you have to make an effort to get things done.

5. Why don't you take a break? You've been working so hard recently.

6. He has been preparing for the race for months. He wants to break his own record and be the best in the world.

7. His car broke down, so I gave him a lift to the nearest garage.

8. Politicians often think we should raise taxes in order to get more money to spend.

9. The new teacher didn't meet the headmaster's expectations and was fired after only two months on the job.

10.The couple got a divorce only a few months after their wedding.

11.Dad kept his promise and took me to Disneyland in the summer holidays.

12.We caught a glimse of the famous football player as we came down the stairs.

Table Topic Speech

1) What is your most prized possesstion?

2) If you could choose one book as a mandatory read for all high school students, which book would you choose?

3) If you could instill one piece of advice in a newborn baby's mind, what advice would you give?

4) What does the "American Dream" mean to you?

5) What is the most desirable trait that another person can possess?

6) What are you most grateful for?

Prepared Speech

1) Machine Translation (MCT): SM Kakisu

The performance of machine translation software available on PCs has been improving day by day, with the ability to translate a 10,000-word sentence from English to Japanese and vice versa in just a few seconds. I use MCT because I am not good at reading and understanding long passages of English in a short time. And I was very surprised to find that MCT can translate the text not only mechanically, but also contextually. However users should be aware that MCT sometimes makes complete mistranslations. The important thing is that machine-translated text should ultimately be checked carefully by humans.

2) Rare visitors: SM Yoko Narisawa

The other day, I spotted a white heron in my neighbour’s garden when I went out of my house in order to take out the garbage. For a moment I couldn’t believe my eyes. It was a complete mystery to me why it was there. But come to think of it, the Nakatsu River flows near my house. A lot of campers come and enjoy a barbecue there throughout the year. It may be a good area for white herons to live around there because there are always a lot of leftovers. But I have never seen them near the Nakatsu River. It is said that white herons act as a group. It must have got lost for some reason. Soon it started walking along the path in front of my house and lo and behold, it went into my garden. It stayed there for a while and went into another neighbour’s garden. It was as if it were going door to door. I don’t know how many doors it visited. Its appearance was very beautiful and its movement was exceptionally graceful. It was an unexpected and rare visitor.

3) Warning to Good Deed: SM Yoshikawa

In the Middle Ages, stories were collected and compiled into books to teach Buddhism to ordinary people. They are called narratives. This is one of these stories.

Once upon a time, a Buddhist priest travelled to Kyoto. As he passed by a small fishing town, he saw some people selling shellfish. He thought that the shellfish would be cooked and die. So he bought all the shells and released them into the sea.

At midnight he had a dream. In his dream he was surrounded by many people. They were men and women, people of all ages. They were all wearing shabby clothes and crying.

He asked one of them why he was crying. He replied, "Because of the sins and misdeeds we committed in our previous lives, we are in the cycle of rebirth. Up to now we have been born and died several times. Now, when we die again, we will have a life as a human being. But someone saved us, and we have to go on. That's why we are crying. The story ends here.

As Buddhism prohibits killing, the end of the story sounded strange to me, and I had no idea why it was included in the collection.

I forgot about the story for a long time, but last year, when I heard about the hardships of children with extremely religious parents, I had an idea. This story could have been written for extremely religious people. For them, their religious faith comes before everything. They ignore other people's pain and sacrifice everything to be religiously right. They see the world from the perspective of their religion. However, the real world is different. Their religious efforts backfire and sometimes only cause problems. They were there in the Middle Ages and some of them went to extremes.

I think this story is for such people. Even if they believe they conform to teaching and they are doing the right thing, it is not always the case. I think this story warns them not to be totally dependent on their religion and not to give up thinking. It tells them to think for themselves from different perspectives.

It is true that religions give us peace of mind, but there are some religions that try to control us. I don't think I'm religious and I'm happy about it. The religious intolerance that some people have seems to do more harm than good

Meeting Schedule

In-person: 9:30 AM on Feb. 11 at Oyama Community Center

(Coordinator: SM Kei Narisawa, Word of the Day: SM Yoko Narisawa, Lecturer: SM Takahata)

Zoom: 7:30 PM on Jan. 30, Feb. 6, 13, 20 and 27