Kae Minami, 32, is a bilingual language teacher. For the past seven years, she has had an outstanding record as a top Japanese juku sensei (prep school teacher). Her foreign students start out with virtually no knowledge of Japanese and almost all of them pass their Japanese university entrance exams, usually within one year of studying. And they are going places: In 2010, one-third of them got into ichi-ryu (top-tier) universities, such as the Tokyo Institute of Technology and Keio University, and all others have made it to very respectable second-tier universities. Minami loves learning as much as she does teaching. Since getting her master's degree in comparative culture from Sophia University, she's been on a roll, collecting certificates in education. But her real strength is time management: Not only does she teach Japanese during the day and English at night, but on the weekends she helps bring breaking news to Japanese audiences as the coordinator of a TVT Japan KK simultaneous interpreters' newsroom, which covers the BBC World News. Oh, and she's a translator, too.
The tea ceremony is a lesson in life. It's spiritual and very educational. You learn to be a good hostess and a nice guest, too. And the sweets you get are my favorite part of the ceremony!
Language is culture. The presidents of the popular online shopping store Rakuten and the clothing chain Uniqlo have a great opportunity to spread Japanese culture around the world using their native language. But instead, they insist that their Japanese employees use English, even among themselves. This seems so inefficient, against business sense and very sad from a cultural viewpoint. I'm bilingual, but I feel weird speaking English to a Japanese person. Do French people speak English among themselves if all members of the group are French? I doubt it.