A Story From My Life ①

　これは、コミュニティカレッジで行った英語プレゼンテーションの原稿。

　現時点の私の英語力である。今に見ていろ１０年後。

「英語を学ぶ以上、アウトプットこそが最大の目的」と教えてくれたニューヨークタイムズ記者の上乃久子さん、お世辞でも beautiful presentation! とほめてくれた講師のグレッグ、私の英語を辛抱強く聞いてくれた受講生の皆さん、ありがとうございました。

Today I’d like to tell you a story from my life.

No big deal.  Just 10 minutes.

I’m now 52 years old. I’m working as a volunteer driver for people with physical challenges. Every morning I take people with wheelchairs to the hospital.

In the evening I become a volunteer teacher for disadvantaged kids. I’m also a volunteer Japanese teacher for foreigners.

 Yet most of my friends of my age are still working till midnight as company employees.

 Why can I do only volunteer work?

 It started when I was 30.　At the time I was a photojournalist working for a newspaper.

Being a journalist is a very challenging, exciting occupation. With your press ID, you can go everywhere, from inside the parliament, to the Imperial Palace, to the front row seat of the ballpark. You can see everyone, from the prime minister, to the Nobel Prize winner, to the movie star.　　

However, you have to compete with other news media every day. Your colleagues are your competitors, too. My company had published its newspaper twice daily, and each paper had 3 editions. It means you are under pressure to meet 6 deadlines a day.

Even at night I went to bed with my cellphone. If something happened, my boss told me to go somewhere in the world, even at 2am.

Then something slowly began to dawn on me. “Would I want to do this until I’m 60?”

My answer was “No”.

 At that time, I began to save some portion of my salary every month. Instead of putting into a bank account, I invested it in the stock markets.

I was lucky. The Hashimoto administration at the time begun the Deregulation of Finance.  I could buy foreign stocks instead of poor performing Japanese stocks.

 Come rain or shine, I put my money into the world stock markets. During this period, there were The Asian Financial Crisis in 1997, The Crash of IT Bubble in 2000, and the catastrophic Lehmann Shock in 2008.  Each time my assets were decreased by half.  But all of it provided me chances to buy into excellent companies at their cheapest price.

 When I was 40, I was assigned as a Bangkok correspondent. I got the freedom of decision as a journalist. I wanted to go to the site of great news.

I bought a ticket to Afghanistan.

 I flew from Dubai to Kabul by a United Nation’s flight. When it landed at Kabul airport, I found some wreckage of military planes, and some soldiers with machine guns stood on the rooftop.

 The street from the airport to downtown is so called “Suicide Bombing Street”. I hired a car with bulletproof glass. On the way, my driver never got close to US army vehicles to avoid Taliban’s suicide attack. It’s an amazing experience if you come home alive.

 The scenery of rural Afghanistan is beautiful and peaceful, but you cannot walk around the fields because there are so many land mines beneath your feet.  

One day I met a boy who lost his leg. When he hit a land mine, he was looking for unexploded bombs to exchange for money. His family’s income was just 60 dollars per month.

I took some pictures and wrote a story about him. It was published in the evening edition of the newspaper. 

                                                                 (to be continued,)