Today is the thirty-sixth day of the spring semester 2024. I have one class before noon. That is for the first-year students. I made them “chorus repeat” before the pair activity of the day. Their voice in Japanese sounded good, but I thought that good students speak loudly, and no-so-good students speak in small voice. When they said an I-adjective predicate in past-negative, I could hear that some voices saying “Oishiikunakkata”. It must be “Oishikunakatta”. It may seem to be a small difference in written alphabet, but for the ears of native speaker, it is very different. “Oishiiku” has two possibilities; the one is that a student doesn’t understand conjugation of I-adjectives, the other is that a student has tendency to elongate vowels.
Usually, I cannot do anything in Tuesday afternoon because I keep working through the weekend. Today, too, I didn’t want to do anything, But, before taking nap, I handwashed two white shirts. There is a washing machine in my room. The university provides the machines to foreign teachers. The machine has the major German company’s name on top. And it amazingly uses less water comparing to washing machines of Japanese companies. Probably the design philosophy must be quite different between German and Japanese electric appliances manufactures. But one thing is common to both; washing machines cannot get rid of dirt on the collar of white shirts. I mean the inside of collar that neck touches. That is the part that can be most dirty on a white shirt, and the second is inside of cuff.
If I wash white shirts only by washing machine, collar and cuffs continue to be dirty. There is a good way; handwashing. I brought a soap from Japan, which is exclusively for handwashing. Its name is “Utamaro” having green color and nice fragrance. In this afternoon, I washed white shirts by my hands using “Utamaro”. I’d say it’s fun because I can do what a washing machine can’t. Of course I couldn’t make it perfectly white, but dirty collar and cuffs did amazingly become white.
Not only white shirts, I handwashed a cotton hat recently. “Utamaro” made a little old and dirty hat clean. The hat is light and has bright color suitable to the spring season. Walking outside with that hat on my head makes me feel good. So, if I had time to do so,,,,,,
Agony or Fun?! Second Language Learning 