Love Child

The other day, we practiced the conversation,"What's your name? My name is......." in speaking class. That reminded me of a bad memory. Many years ago, I went abroad. During the trip a foreigner asked me, "What does your name mean?"I answered,"AIKO means Love Child. He laughed a meaning manner, so I felt something strange about it. When I got back home, I looked up Love Child in a dictionary. I found love child meant a child born out of wedlock.(SISEIJI) I should have said "Lovely Child."Ignorance is a awful thing.

Again, a natural calamity.

This time, in China, nearly 10,000 people were killed by the earthquake, which was the 7.9 magnitude quake. This may be an obsolete word now (maybe, young people don't know), the three biggest fears in Japan were an earthquake, a thunder, and a bald-headed man. ( children were scared of thier father, fortunately, or unfortunately not now.) To be sure, we are afraid of an earthquake. The big earthquake in Kobe is still fresh in our memories. In case of the typhoon we can usually know when it will come to Japan by the weather sysytem, but the earthquake suddenly happens. Nobody can't warn us in advance when and where it will happen.

The Cyclone.

I was surprised to see the news that the Cyclone attacked Myanmar. A friend of mine lives in Yangon.( It used to be the capital of Myanmar.) The newspaper says, the Cyclone claimed the lives of tens of thousands of people. I sent her a e-mail, she answered her house was damaged by the Cyclone. We are unfamiliar with a Cyclone, in Japan always Thphoon. Natural calamities occur when we least expect them.

The oldest memory.

What is your oldest memory in your childhood? Yukio Mishima ( a novelist ) insisted that he had remembered his first bathing after his birth. I cann't believe it. However, it is said that some child remembers the time when he or she has been in his or her mother's womb. How I rack my brain, I cann't remember, I swear. How about you?
Aiko Nishimura