#76 シャローナへの手紙④

Hi Sharona,

How are you doing? How did you spend your Christmas?

I am worried about you and Matt after hearing the news about the growing number of Covid-19 infections in the US. The Omicron variant is slowly increasing in Thailand as well, and it is becoming a concern for next year.

 

First of all, Matt, congratulations on your MBA graduation! I would like to send my sincere congratulations on this accomplishment. I strongly hope that you and I will be able to graduate as well without a hitch. I'm so sorry to hear about Matt's brother's foot injury (an ankle surgery). I'm sure he's feeling better soon with the delicious chocolate cake that Matt made and the bread and roast chicken that you baked and cooked.

You have only four courses left and will be graduating in May. I have five. When the advanced course started, I decided to take one course at a time because I have a busy work schedule and I want to take my time and enjoy the course. So, I will continue to do so. I'll be taking Customers & Markets at the beginning of the coming year. I hope to be able to finish all the courses within the next year.

 

The other day I mentioned that I went on a business trip to the South, and yes, I went there again to visit the same customer. She is a wealthy woman living in the South, and she liked me a lot and asked me to come back, so I visited her again. We had some business to discuss, but more than anything, I wanted to show my sincerity to the person who wanted to see me again. He prepared a very nice dinner for us that day. The next day, I visited the high school where her friend worked (he was the principal of the school) and observed the crepe making in the photo at the souvenir shop next door. To my surprise, they were making a lot of fresh crepes like this. But don't think of them as ordinary crepes. These crepes are very crispy and have a different texture. However, the taste is similar to ordinary crepes, slightly sweet and irresistible. I bought some as souvenirs to take home.

 

Also, thank you for sending me the picture of the pumpkin. I was really surprised at the size of it. That's not really CG, is it! Everything in America is so big, isn't it? I have hardly ever been to the US (except Atlanta), so speaking from my own experience, when I went to Russia I was amazed at the size of it. What I mean by big is that every building is big. The Bolshoi Theater, famous for its ballet, the famous Red Square (which is just so empty and wide), and even the gates to enter the square are bigger than they need to be. The roads in Moscow are also very wide, and when driving from Moscow to other cities, you can see vast birch forests and endless empty grasslands (which are not populated buildings), which really surprised me since I am from a small island called Japan. People certainly feel a sense of awe when they see something bigger than they expected. I realized that Moscow, the capital of the former Soviet Union, certainly built a lot of big things to symbolize that.

 

You are from Mauritius, right? Since it is an island country like Japan, I feel a sense of closeness to it. My knowledge of Mauritius is very limited, so I did some research on the Internet. Your roots are very interesting. It was written that historically, a large number of Indian peoples migrated to the country, so you may have Indian roots. However, you speak French and now live in the US and attend an American university. Is Matt an American? (I want to know his roots, too.) Then again, Mauritius is a member of the British Commonwealth, isn't it? All those elements make you very international, and I like this mix of diversity from around the world for no reason. (Please don't be offended, I just can't help but feel a vague sense of humanity's great potential and freedom, and for some reason I've always had an inexplicable fondness for this kind of thing.) As I'll dictate, my family is actually like this, too. And when I think of my sons, I feel so happy.
What kind of language is Creole? Since Japan has no experience of colonialism, I understand the theory, but I feel something strange about it. According to my little Internet research, I found out that Mauritius' language is French, but I wonder if it is very different. Since I came to Thailand, I have been using English in my work. However, since the people I talk to are all Thai, the English they speak is unique to Thailand, and my speech gradually becomes more and more like that, regardless of my intentions. And since it's easier for Thai people to understand me when I speak like that, my English gets stranger and stranger. LOL!

You seem to be interested in how I came to learn Russian, but it all started when I moved to Uzbekistan right after graduating from university in Japan. My profession at the time was a Japanese language teacher, so I went there to work at the university and teach Japanese to the students. At the time, I was only 23 years old, had no life experience, and was almost completely new to living abroad. The people in the country understood very little English, so I needed to learn the local language to live and work in the university. I lived there for a total of two years and learned two languages: Uzbek, which is used by the local ethnic group, and Russian, which is the common language among the ethnic groups. People often ask me if the two languages are similar, but they are actually quite different. Uzbek is an agglutinative language, a Turkic language, with a grammatical system that is rather similar to Mongolian and Japanese. Russian, as you know, is one of the European languages, and it is a Slavic language, which is in a different family from French. When I was staying in the Czech Republic, I studied a little Czech for daily life, and since it is also a Slavic language, it was easy for me to learn while comparing it to Russian. In fact, when I spoke Uzbek (which I have completely forgotten now), I thought like a Japanese speaker. When I spoke Russian, I was thinking of English. This was my experience when I was learning and speaking at the time. Once I could speak Russian well enough, I didn't think about English every time. I understand in Russian in my head and speak in Russian as it is. It's the same with English, isn't it? So, how many languages are there? English, Russian, Czech, Uzbek, Thai, and Japanese... In reality, however, things don't work out that conveniently. If you don't use a language, you will easily forget it. It's not like riding a bicycle or ice skating. Now I have almost forgotten the Uzbek I learned 20 years ago, and I hardly have a chance to use it outside of that country. I've been away from the Czech Republic for more than six years now, so I'm sure I can only come up with simple greetings and numbers. I think that the environment in which a language is used has a lot to do with language ability.

 

Then, continuing from last time, let's talk about literature. Matt is a fan of Russian literature, isn't he? Russian literature is also widely read in Japan, and Haruki Murakami, the Japanese writer I introduced last time, was greatly influenced by Russian literature. "War and Peace" and "The Brothers Karamazov" are very famous as classics of Russian literature. I have also read the Japanese version. I tried to read "War and Peace" in the original Russian, but I soon failed. The grammar was too complicated for me to understand it at all. I have never read "The Gulag Archipelago" and "The Red Famine." I did a little research on the Internet and found out that the Japanese version of the book could not be published in Japan because of its extreme descriptions. However, after reading the synopsis on the Internet, I thought it was very interesting. As for French literature, I have read Sagan and Camus, although this is also a Japanese-language version.

 

About my two sons. They spent about four years in the Czech Republic, from age 7 to 11 and from age 4 to 8, respectively. They both attended an international school where the language of instruction was English, so they quickly learned to speak English at that time. What surprised me the most was that my two sons were sitting together on the stairs going upstairs and talking in English, while my family was speaking Japanese to each other at home. It was English all the time at school, and I guess they didn't feel any different. My older son continued to be interested in English even after returning to Japan and seems to have maintained his interest relatively well, belonging to an English club at his junior high school, but my younger son was indeed very young and seems to have forgotten English. I'm not particularly worried about them, though, because I'm sure they'll learn English on their own when they get the chance and need it. In addition, they could not speak much Czech even then. They had a few introductory classes at school, but since they had to be picked up and dropped off at school by car every day and most of the students at the school were foreigners, they didn't have any contact with the local language. It was a very different environment from the one I was in at the time, where everyone was Czech except for me. I myself was showered with Czech every day at company meetings.

 

Also, you seem to be worried about the possibility of having children of your own in the future, which is very understandable psychology. I think it is very common for couples to have different views on child-rearing and family values, even if they are from the same state in the US or even if they are both Japanese. In addition, I can understand your point that Mauritian culture is different from American culture. You are also right about how you felt about Oren. In fact, my ex-wife, whom I divorced last year, and I had different nationalities and felt that we had different upbringings. She was from Uzbekistan (not an important factor, but there is no sea at all.) ), and I was from Japan, an island country surrounded by the sea. We spent a lot of time together as a couple, and I felt that we trusted each other, but I couldn't shake the feeling that we had different ideas about child-rearing and family. Of course, this is a story limited to my case. However, I hope you will not worry too much about it. I believe that this issue of child-rearing and family-style, as well as other issues between couples, can be overcome if we love and care for each other. In my case, looking back at myself, I think it was an earlier problem. I think the most important thing is to be able to continue to walk through life together with your partner while maintaining what is most important to you. I think we lacked that.

For me, the most important thing, looking back, was freedom and dignity. It is not a question of restricting each other, but of respecting the other person's freedom, and loving and respecting the way they live and think. In my case, I think it was the lack of this that made our marriage so painful for both of us. Of course, there are times in life, especially if you have a family when you have to put up with some pain and make an effort. However, I believe that it is not good to endure unbearable pain in life, because it is very important to take care of oneself as well as to take care of one's family. (Thank you for showing your deep sympathy for my divorce experience. You wrote in your email, "don't want to say I understand what you went through because everybody experiences are different and it's difficult to grasp the extent of heart pain and sorrow that you went through when dealing with such a life changing event," which is the most sincere encouragement to me.) Through this experience, I realized that I am my own partner (family) who is also important to me. So, I don't think it's a bad thing at all that you and Matt are heavy-handed and not very agile. You're just doing it because it's important to you both. It's just a way of taking care of yourselves. I respect that type of behavior. Hopefully, I will be able to take care of myself, be selfish, and slack off on my vacation starting today.

You wrote that you had a bad experience with a friend you trusted in the past. Human connections are not always wonderful, but sometimes they bring about very unpleasant things. It must have been very painful for you. I've experienced it myself. And I knew then and there that I did not want to go through that again. I don't know if this answers your question, but I believe that in life, how you perceive the world is important. We may not be able to change the world itself, or human nature itself, but we can decide how we see the world through our own eyes. I believe that most people do not see things objectively, but rather subjectively. What we see is slightly distorted by the experiences we have had and the emotions we feel at the time.

However, humans are not robots or computers, so no matter how hard we try in this lifetime, we will never be able to have an ultimate objective perspective. We will always perceive and see things through our own colored glasses at any given time. So why don't you give up on being objective and decide for yourself what subjective view you want to take on things in your life? Then, hopefully, you can put on the colored glasses that will make the world look good to you and make you feel happy in your life. Even if I don't care what people around me think or say about me, I will live my life as I am, without worrying about it. I think that is the key to living this life happily.

It's easy to say, but it's hard to live like that.

I'm planning to take some of Haruki Murakami's novels with me to Phuket for my vacation. It's called "The Wind-up Bird Chronicle" and I can't tell you how many times I've read it. I have always had a tendency to read my favorite books over and over again after a long time. I still do. The story is about a man who was run away by his wife. (I myself don't think she ran away from me, though. LOL) The story is set in Tokyo in the 1990s, but it is a strange story, so please read it if you like. There are episodes from World War II, the Russian army, and so on. It may be more of a book for Matt. If you are looking for more fantasy, you may want to read "Kafka on the Shore." I like this one better because it's easier to read.

Joan Robinson? She is a British economist, right? I see you are interested in Keynesian theory and Marxian economics. I haven't read any of them yet. If you read it, please let me know what you think. I haven't actually read the Kingkiller Chronicle yet. I actually looked for the Japanese translation at a bookstore here, but unfortunately, I haven't found it yet. I think I can get the English version, but it might take me a while to read it, so I'm looking for the Japanese version if possible.

Also, Matt seems to have read the book "Musashi", which is a very famous book in Japan. Actually, some of the contents are fictional, but Musashi himself is a real person, and there are many references to Eastern philosophy and Zen in the novel. I have always been very interested in Japanese swordsmanship and Zen, and have read many books on the subject. Zen is a Japanese way of meditation and talks a lot about how to face oneself. I have heard that it is also popular in the West. Musashi, a samurai from about 400 years ago, is said to be the strongest samurai in history, having never lost a sword fight in his life. He never married, but he adopted a son and taught him swordsmanship, making him an excellent samurai with both literary and military skills, eventually rising to become a retainer of the Edo Shogunate. My eldest son's name is "Iori," which is actually the name of his adopted son, in the hope that he would grow up to be a man of talent in both academic study and physical sports. The name of his second son was "Tomiya," which means lucky bow and arrow. Both are swords and bows, the weapons of the samurai. You can see how much I love history, can't you? LOL!

Such my preference also helped me to write novels when I was young. You're asking if anyone else has read my novels, right? The answer is no. As I mentioned before, it was a very quiet and personal hobby. I was very shy and embarrassed at the time, although I wanted someone to read it. So I am very happy to have you compliment my English like that. Maybe one day I'll get on a roll and really become a writer. LOL!

I actually sent you a postcard from Thailand. I hope you received it. Your Christmas card arrived here so quickly. It is a surprise that it takes months to get to Mauritius, the world is still so big.

Now, it's time for my long-awaited vacation. I've been working too hard, and I was so tired on Saturday and Sunday that no matter what I did, I felt tired and my body was very heavy, even though it was my first two-day weekend in a long time. Today, I'm feeling a little better, but now I'm leaving for Phuket for vacation. Since it is a famous tourist destination, the city seems to be very crowded, but I would like to spend as much time as possible reading a book on the beach at the far end of the peninsula. (That's why the hotel I booked is located at the southeast end of the peninsula.) The attached photos show the cafe next to the hotel, where I would like to go every day to have a delicious breakfast and cake while looking at the sea.

Well, I hope you and Matt also have a peaceful and enjoyable vacation in Miami.

Sincerely,

Ebimiso