I worked late today. This morning, I went to AEON as usual. There, I read an interesting book, Se Teruhisa's "Anglicization Means Making People Stupid [施光恒『英語科は愚民化』]" while enjoying Takkyu Ishino's bangers. Indeed, the title sounded provoking/controversial, but I enjoyed this book's content because in my opinion this author's position seemed to be next to us, ordinary people (in other words, the people who aren't so-called elites).
In Japan, as this Se Teruhisa's book explains, the concept of "Anglicization" has been working as quite an obsessive ideal for people like me. Se tries to clarify that Anglicization must be based on the so-called notorious neoliberalism (the mechanism that enables making some elites and upper class richer, instead of making "us" so because that Anglicization enables us to be divided into those two types because of abilities in English).
After that, I tried to change my mood. I went to the bookstore in AEON, and found a new copy of the weekly magazine "AERA". The cover said this one featured several methods (or clues) to study English casually, so I bought it. Reading it slightly (quite interesting), I thought about several reasons I've been learning English. Indeed, by learning English I want to learn other things abroad (No... The worldwide issues containing domestic ones from any outer perspective). Also, I guess that learning activity has enriched my personality a lot enough to think several things as crisply as I can.
One of the articles in that magazine said that Japanese people's ability of English is poorer relatively than other countries, and it meant that the Japanese must keep trying to learn English to become international people who can explain their unique opinions to the world. Indeed, that must be important for us. However, I guess that the issue we must think about is that we need to "weave" each one's unique opinions within one's mind carefully/steadily, and also declare them in public to start any discussions (even in Japanese).
At 5 p.m., I had a break time. I thought about how I could build my identity as a Japanese guy sincerely within my mind, and also show it in public with a tolerant mind. For example, I don't like so-called notorious nationalism because I am so strange that I couldn't have felt that no one accepted me as "a member" in this country, even though they accepted me as "a friend". I need to think about this more.
