Sometimes two toes plus four toes makes four toes －ときどき足の指2本＋足の指4本は、足の指５本になります－

 “You are a slow learner, Winston.”

“How can I help it?  How can I help but see what is in front of my eyes?  Two and two are four.”

“Sometimes, Winston.  Sometimes they are five.  Sometimes they are three.  Sometimes they are all of them at once.  You must try harder.  It is not easy to become sane.”

From “1984” by George Orwell

I have been trying to teach my two-year old son to count from one to ten in English.

The other day I said to him, “Let’s count Daddy’s toes!  How many toes does Daddy have?”

He grasped my foot eagerly and started counting my toes one by one.  “One, two, three, four, five!”

So far so good.  He let go of my left foot and moved onto my right foot.  “Four.”  He paused, a little confused.

I tried to help him.  “No, no, son.  It’s not four.  It’s six.  One, two, three, four, five, six!”

He became furious.  He pointed at my sixth toe angrily.  “Four!”

“Trust me.  I wouldn’t lie to you,” I said.  “It’s six.  This is Daddy’s sixth toe!”

“Four!” he screamed.

“Be reasonable!  One, two, three, four, five, four would be a very confusing way to count.  It would cause all sorts of problems.  Just trust Daddy.  It’s six.”

“Four!  Four!  Four!”

He is a very stubborn little boy.  His insistence that he was right, or at least his refusal to accept that he was wrong, reminded me of a scene from the book, ”1984”.  In order to exert complete control over the main character’s mind, a government interrogator forces him to accept that two and two do not always make four.  The main character resists for a while, but in the end accepts that two and two make five if the interrogator says so.  This gives me hope that I can one day convince my son that two and four do not make four, but six.  And that biting people is not a good way to make friends and become popular.  And that hiding food you don’t like under your t-shirt causes more problems than it solves.

Vocabulary:

sane – not mad; having a healthy mind

to grasp something – to take something quickly and hold it firmly

furious – extremely angry

an interrogator – a person who questions someone closely or forcefully 

Journeys to Luna －ルナへの旅－

This week it was announced that Japanese billionaire Yusaku Maezawa has paid “a lot of money” to be flown around the moon in the first commercial flight to the Earth’s satellite.  If all goes to plan, the trip will take place in 2023, and Mr. Maezawa plans to invite a number of artists along for the ride.

Personally, I wouldn’t pay a lot of money to fly around the moon.  I think I will wait until I can at least get out of the ship and have a walk around up there.  I hear that Australia is nice too.  But I wouldn’t pay JetStar a lot of money to fly me over the deserts of Australia, circle a few times and then come back again – no matter how good the in-flight peanuts and movies were.

But to celebrate the planning of this fantastic journey, I thought I would post a short story of another fantastic journey.  This one was also partly inspired by the moon.

Edited extract from “Diary of a Madman,” by Nikolai Gogol, written in 1835:

And so, here I am in Spain!  And it happened so quickly that I can hardly believe it.  This morning the Spanish delegates arrived and I got into a carriage with them.  The extraordinary rapidity of our journey struck me as strange.  We went at such a rate that within half an hour we had gone from Russia to the frontiers of Spain - but of course now there are railroads over Europe, and ships go very rapidly.

Spain is a strange land.  When we went into the first room I saw a number of people with shaved heads.  I guessed at once that these were nobles or soldiers because they do shave their heads.  I thought the behaviour of the High Chancellor, who led me by the hand, extremely strange.  He thrust me into a little room and said, “Sit there!  And if you persist in calling yourself King Ferdinand, I’ll beat the idea out of you!”

But knowing that he was only testing me I refused.  Then he hit me twice on the back with a stick.  And it hurt so that I almost cried out.  But I restrained myself, remembering that this is the custom of chivalry on welcoming any very important person.  For customs of chivalry persist in Spain to this day.

When I was alone I decided to occupy myself with the business of ruling the kingdom.  I discovered that Spain and China are one and the same country.  It is only through ignorance that they are considered to be different kingdoms.  I recommend anyone to try to write “Spain” on a piece of paper, and it will always turn out “China”!

But I was particularly distressed by an event which will take place tomorrow.  Tomorrow at 7 o’clock a strange phenomenon will occur: the Earth will sit on the moon.  I must confess that I experience a tremor in my heart when I reflect on the extreme softness and fragility of the moon.  You see, the moon is usually made in Hamburg – and very badly made too.  It was made by a barrel maker, and it is evident that the fool had no idea what a moon should be.  He put in lamp oil.  And that is why there is such a fearful stench everywhere all over the world that one has to stop up one’s nose.  And that’s how it is that the moon is such a soft globe that man cannot live on it, and that nothing lives there but noses.  And it is for that very reason that we cannot see our noses, because they are all in the moon!  And when I reflected that the Earth is a heavy body and when it falls may grind our noses to powder, I was overcome by such uneasiness that, putting on my shoes and stockings, I hastened to the hall of the Imperial Council to give orders to the police not to allow the Earth to sit on the moon.

The nobles whom I found with shaved heads in the Imperial Council were very intelligent people.  And when I said, “Gentlemen!  Let us save the moon, for the Earth is trying to sit upon it!” they all rushed to carry out my wishes, and several of them climbed up the walls to try and get at the moon.  But at that moment the High Chancellor walked in.  To my amazement the Chancellor struck me with his stick, and drove me back to my room.  How great is the power of national tradition in Spain! 

*

So the journey to Spain was only the crazy fantasy of a lunatic.  Let us hope that Mr. Maezawa’s journey to the moon is not.

Vocabulary:

Luna – the Earth’s moon – the word “lunatic”, or madman also comes from the word Luna

to go to plan – to happen as one planned it or intended it

a delegate – a representative

rapidity – great speed

the frontier – the border or edge

a noble – a person born into a high class; a Lord, etc.

to thrust – to push with sudden force

chivalry – an old-fashioned code of polite behaviour

ignorance – lack of knowledge

fragility – the state of being easily broken or damaged

stench – strong and horrible smell

Four bellies and a funeral －4つの太っ腹と1つの葬式－

“In order to prepare this speech [for his funeral], I rang a few people to get a general picture of how Gareth was regarded by those who met him: Fat seems to have been a word most people connected with him.”

From 1994 film, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”

How did Britain get so fat?

When I was going to school in the mid-1990s, there weren’t many fat kids around.  We had an image of America as a land of fat people, not the UK.  A popular film of the time was, “Four Weddings and a Funeral”.  The British characters were slim and witty, and they poked fun at the one fat character, who had an early funeral.  But since the 1990s, rates of obesity have almost doubled in the UK.  27 per cent of British people are now classified as obese.  This compares to just 4 per cent of Japanese people.  63 per cent of Britons are classified as overweight.  We are now the fattest country in Western Europe.

Japanese people are quick to say, “You should lose weight.”  People are much slower to say that in the UK.  I met my Japanese wife when she was living in Britain.  When I introduced her to my parents, my mum said that she was very thin and encouraged her to eat more.  But as soon as my wife went back to Japan, her friends said, “My God, you’re so fat!”  And I’m glad that they did, since she went on a diet!  Living in Britain on a diet of late-night kebabs, pints of beer and Cadbury’s chocolate bars from vending machines is not good for your weight, or long-term health.

Maybe Britons are fattening themselves up in preparation for The Apocalypse.  Every day the news is full of gloomy predictions about how much poorer we will be after Brexit, or stories of Russian spies running around poisoning people, or the worsening effects of global warming.  Perhaps people are building up their stores of fat in case the food supply runs out.  In that case, we need some more positivity.  Sit down and relax.  Society is not going to collapse any time soon.  Have a carrot.

Vocabulary:

obesity – Excessive fatness – According to British official statistics, people are obese if their body mass index is over 30

overweight – fat - According to official British statistics, people are overweight if their body mass index is over 25

to fatten (something) up – Usually of animals, to deliberately overfeed in order to make something fatter

The Apocalypse – A worldwide disaster triggering the end of the world

gloomy – dark; depressing

It’s nice to have teeth ―歯があるのがいい－

A friend of mine recently mentioned that his young children sometimes cry so hard that they vomit.  When I asked him what made the kids cry so much, he said that it was generally because they wanted candy.

In order to avoid having similar problems with our own two-year old son, my wife and I have never given him any chocolate or sugary sweets.  So the foods he gets most excited about eating are raisins and plain yoghurt with a little honey.  Nobody could cry hard enough to vomit just for a raisin.

I would also like my son to avoid having the same problems with his teeth that I had when I was growing up.  I grew up eating as many sweets and snacks as I liked, and drinking fizzy cola.  And I had to get fillings for many of my teeth when I was still a child.

Although my son doesn’t eat much sugar, he hates to have his teeth brushed.  He screams and squirms like he is undergoing torture.

I was the same as a small boy until one day I heard my grandmother talking to my brother about her teeth.  She had a pair of false teeth.  She told him that because she hadn’t brushed her teeth as a youngster, they had gone bad.  One day she had had all of her teeth pulled out.  The image was so terrifying that I never failed to brush my teeth again.

It’s nice to have teeth.

Vocabulary:

to vomit – to throw up; to expel food from your stomach, out of your throat

a fizzy drink – a carbonated drink, especially sugary drinks such as cola or lemonade

to squirm – to wriggle or twist one’s body, especially from discomfort