I'm a fan of "Doraemon," the long-running children's television show about a blue robot cat from the future, who lives with an average family on the outskirts of Tokyo. The Japanese is relatively easy to understand, and I love Doraemon's magic pocket, from which he pulls amazing tools like the dokodemo door, which leads to wherever you want to go, and honyaku konnyaku -- have someone who doesn't know Japanese eat this and he will immediately speak it fluently! So I got a little excited when I heard that the woman who does one of the voices on the show would be visiting the Japanese elementary school my younger son attends.

Noriko Ohara has been the voice of Nobita, the luckless, lazy fourth-grade boy in Doraemon's family, since the show's inception over 30 years ago. Her second appearance at our school coincided with a gakko kokaibi (open-school day), so there was a big turnout of parents who, like me, were probably curious to see the face behind the famous voice.

But Ohara was there to share her love of reading out loud, and gave a lesson in rodoku (dramatic reading) to a group of third-graders. She ran the group through some simple elocution exercises to loosen their lips and encourage clear diction. She talked about breathing from the belly and projecting one's voice. Then, she read aloud from a story in their textbook about an old man who thinks he's cursed because he took a tumble while going over the "Three-Year" mountain pass. Legend has it that if you fall there you'll only live another three years.