今回のためになるお話は、日本語を勉強してバッチリマスターした Ms. Cindy Kakuにお話をしていただきました。 顔を見ないで話したらきっとあなたは彼女がアメリカ人なんて 信じられないでしょう！！英会話学校での元同僚ですが、 それはそれは勉強熱心で、、あのくらい勉強しないと何でも モノにならないんだなあ、とフト反省させられてしまいます。 ちなみに日本語版ニューズウィークまで読めちゃうという彼女は 日本語検定１級です!!全部英語で答えていただきましたので、 頑張って読んでみてくださいね。もしわからないことがあったら メールでご質問ください。

右端がＣｉｎｄｙです。

People often ask me why I started learning Japanese.  That's a good question.
When I began studying nearly 15 years ago, I had no idea how difficult learning
Japanese would be.  I also could not have imagined how much it would change my life.  
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 
My interest in Japan began my second year of high school, when a Japanese girl came to
my home for 2 weeks.  The next summer, I went to Nagoya to stay at her house.　
I could not speak any Japanese at all, and was very homesick, but my friend was able to
 translate for me a little.  There I learned my first　Japanese words :"miso," "o-hashi,"and "makura-nagekko"(a very useful word for a 15 year old girl!)                                                                              

When I returned to Portland, Oregon, my home town, I started Japanese class at 
my high school.
 We learned some simple Chinese characters, some basic phrases, and numbers. 
After high school, I went to the Ｕniversity of Oregon where I majored in Asian studies. 
I took many courses in Japanese language and literature, making steady but slow progress
over several years.　　                                          　　　　       
After graduation, I started working in a bank(mado-guchi).  One day, my aunt sent me 
information　about teaching English in Japan at G(某英会話学校）. 
I had always wanted to return to Japan to improve my Japanese.  So I went to Seattle
for a job interview and was accepted.   I taught English conversation for 3 years in Matsudo, 
Chiba.

 In the mornings, I attended Japanese language school and in the afternoons and evenings
I taught English.  Kiyo-sensei was one of my teachers, and she helped me a lot and answered
my many questions.  I think my Japanese was pretty strange at that time.(とんでもない!!)
I made lots of mistakes and sometimes I felt really stupid and frustrated.
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
At home　Ｉ listened to Japanese TV everyday.  At first I could not understand much of
anything I would watch the commercials very closely, however, because they would be
repeated many times.  After seeing the same commercial 10b times, I would catch some
new words and begin to understand the meaning.  It is amazing how much you can 
learn about　Japanese life and culture from TV commercials.  
As I improved I started watching dramas, sports, and eventually news programs.  On TV,
I would hear the same words I had studied at school, and suddenly they would mean something
to me.  At the end of my 3 years of teaching, I passed the Japanese Proficiency Exam Level 1
(日本語検定１級 ) and my official study of Japanese ended.

It was at G that I met my husband, Ken.  As my student, we always spoke in English during class.
As we started spending more time together, we started speaking Japanese too.  At the end of
1996 we were married in Portland and moved to Hong Kong, where he was transferred to work. 
　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　
While there, I studied business and returned to Japan and finished my MBA. 
I now work for an American company, dun and Bradstreet where I manage marketing of data
services and software. I use Japanese everyday for business communication, presentations,
documents, etc.

Learning Japanese has been a real asset to my career as well as a significant part of my personal development.  I would encourage anyone to learn a second language-it is hard and slow-going,
but it adds a whole new dimension to your life. Ganbatte!

いかがでしたか？コツコツ努力してあそこまで素晴らしい日本語が話せたり、書けるようになったんだなと

思うと本当に頭が下がります。それに私たちの国の言葉をこれほど好きになってもらえるってとってもうれしい

ですね。皆さんも(私も）毎日の努力を忘れないようにしたいものです。がんばりましょう！！

他にもあります、中身の濃いお話　ぜひどうぞ！