It has been almost a year since the last story of wasabi stories. Wasabi stories in the past can be found by clicking “category”at the right side bar of the blog if you are interested.
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Today’s column was written by an essayist, Ms. Yoko Kishimoto. And the theme was “aspiration”.
“I have a habit to have a desire to learn at a blow. The starts can vary.”
This is how she starts her column.
One day she was watching a sports news and saw a Japanese player who moved to the Major League talk in English on the screen.
Ms. Kishimoto then became anxious and felt, “I should learn from him who has been working on his English on top of his everyday training. I just keep making excuses not to make an effort to improve my English. I should try harder.”
Or She feels the need to imporove her English as a senior member of the society when the time requires new graduates to have a good command of English to get a job.
She, aspired by those news, makes a request for documents on English teaching material but by the time they are delivered home she has lost her enthusiasm and ends up with leaving it untouched.
Ms. Kishimoto continues that this instance is not limited to English. She becomes ambitious unexpectedly in any event.
One day she went to a bookshop to search materials for her work…
When she passed in front of the shelves where she found all the materials on her major suject at the college, she thought her knowledge on the subject has stopped since her graduation and felt the need to update her knoweldge with the latest trend …
She then went on looking for books which plainly explain the latest stream, she realised…
“Our life is limited. It is no use trying to attempt to do all at once. I talk myself into trying one by one.”
Ms. Kishimoto had a severe illness when she was just over 40 and became conscious of her time left. And at the same time her priority on learning English became low by far.
She put aside those which take her time, books on humanities, or current trend studies, but she focuses on books which deal with pressing matters for her such as how you face the death.
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How about you?
Some of you are young and some others are elderly and many of you confront your own time left every day.
I myself also sometimes idly wonder about my own time left recently.
The trigger was (the Great East Japan Earthquake) on 11th March 2 years ago. I had to face the harsh reality that the death surprises us in the midst of our life.
For instance, therefore, I now pay attention to what I eat every time. (There is no guarantee that I will be alive tomorrow therefore I stopped eating in order only to fill my empty stomach).
I am thus sympathetic with her idea “to focus on what to do in your future taking it into consideration that your time left is limited”.
By Yoko Kishimoto (Essayist), 8th February 2012, The NIKKEI
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