Marriage has many pains, but celibacy has no pleasures

An interesting topic came out during discussion with friends recently was the right age for marriage. The discussion on this topic was particularly useful as it added more Japanese vocabularies that are associated with the culture and daily life. The first word learned was Tekireiki written in Hiragana as てきれいきand in Kanji as適齢期.

The old concepts of marriage and the right age for marriage might have changed or deviated in Japanese society. The concept of appropriate marriage age differs from country to country and even within the country intself. In India for example, where multiple races, multiple religions and multiple customs are being practiced, the concept of marriage age is not uniform. While it may be difficult or practically impossible to find an average age for marriage age in any country, it is possible to find the average trend in any society.

Ganbare Nippon!

The immigration officer at Chennai Airport asked me whether it is safe to go to Tokyo now. I told the situation is getting improved. That might be what anybody could have said on 26^th March. Things were uncertain when started to Tokyo. Uncertainty prevails even now to a ceratin extent. Today’s live radiation levels in Tokyo showed a higher value, but still well below the permitted safety levels.

More than three weeks from now, the disaster had shaken the world’s second strongest economy. The fear of nuclear radiation has not gone and an uncertainty prevails all over. The Japanese televisions presents the actual facts on a daily basis. There is bilingual service available in NHK that helps foreigners to understand the situations in Japan.

Looking back three weeks, it is a  pure coincidence that we planned our vacation on 11^th March to leave to India to perform my father’s 10^th annual death anniversary rituals. With kids we left Tokyo at 11:00 AM on 11^th March. We heard the news after landing at Chennai Airport and by seeing the scenes at the hotel television we were literally terrified. With teary eyes, we went to bed. Next day, while traveling on domestic flight to Kochi, we could read the headlines on a leading Malayalam daily about the earth quake and tsunami in Eastern Japan. The heading conveyed the magnitude of the tragedy happened in Japan, the country we left hours before. We could read the heading as ‘Japan was swallowed by tsunami’.

A unique way of teaching Japanese language to foreigners

It seems as if the thermometers in Japan recently are reluctant to rise more than 10deg C. Yesterday the iGoogle weather gadget was showing -1 deg C at midnight and as per the reports on Sunday a cold air wave is supposed to hit Japan that will lead to low temperatures. It has been snowing at the surrounding prefectures of Tokyo. Tokyo remained at low temperatures with cold wind at times.

Recently, I used to watch the weather reports in NHK after I learned the basic words and phrases being used in a weather report from Mana Suzuki-Sensei. Ever since there were reports of cold air wave thwarted the life in Europe and Northern America , Japan was also expecting similar climatic pattern this year. Japan Meteorological Agency had warned of strong winds and heavy snow and high waves, specially along the coast of the Sea of Japan that will continue through Monday. As per the weather reports a strong cold air mass and freezing cold pattern continues to stay around Japan.

From the third week of December and after the Japanese language proficiency test, Mana Suzuki-Sensei changed the style of teaching Japanese language from the conventional way of following a book. I experience her way of teaching Japanese very useful when students get many chances to hear and practice daily life conversations. It is almost impossible for fresh foreigners to follow announcements at public places and also words used at public places in day to day life in Japan.