Going back to an earlier discussion about episode 4: Was listening to a podcast today, and in the middle of talking about what she used to do in junior high school with her friends the podcaster starts explaining about プリクラ. Here’s the link and the section where she talks about it is 12:36~16:35.
Utako struggling to say “potluck” in this episode made me feel so much better about my Japanese pronunciation 
Episode: 016
Time Count: 30:16
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Hi! I’m late but I’d like to join. I’ve been listening to a few different podcasts, but upon first listen, Utaco’s enunciation sounds very clear, so this seems like a great transition to other native materials. I’ll listen to this week’s episode on my commute tomorrow and see how it goes (:
Episode: 017
Time Count: 27:17
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welcome to the club!
yes, in comparison to most other podcasts I’ve tried, she has great recording equipment and clear speech. She definitely put thought into how she records and organises her podcast - from the very first episode. I hope you enjoy it!
Hi 
I jumped right in with episode 16 despite not having heard the other episodes yet. I really enjoyed it! Because I wasn’t driving, I was able to take some notes and look up some words. I’m gonna record them below if ur interested ~
Words I Looked Up:
Thoughts:
It was so interesting to hear her thoughts around American work-ethic/relations, especially as I work in a Japanese-American office and have to navigate varying work cultures every day. The bit about American folks not apologizing was super relatable hahah, it’s a funny situation I run into while interpreting, because communication from the Japanese side is all about apologies and awareness of your effects on others, and that is distinctly absent on the American side. Not that I think either way is particularly bad or good, it is simply different. I have a crazy time interpreting for American folks in situations where I feel the need to be apologizing like wild in Japanese, but the Americans just do not express that, so I feel rude speaking to my Japanese 上司.
Love the random banjo, what an instrument!
It was funny to me when she was describing westerners’ appearances and said ‘everyone looks like wasps’ lol. I was also wondering–honestly, what is a small face? I’ve heard it used a ~lot~ in Japanese and felt like I got the general idea, but Utaco talked about how she felt like everybody has a small face in America, so ‘small face’ is not at all a complement or known concept there. I know she’s exaggerating, it just made me think, lol, what does that even mean?
I love her openness and honesty when discussing her experiences. It made for great listening.
The English Corner section was cute and fun, I was thinking about places I find Japanese more convenient than English. I 100% agree about Google Maps though, all of the street names in katakana is literal hell to navigate.
Those are all my notes! What a nice podcast, I’d like to listen to the next ep. this week.
I jumped in around ep 8 or so and it’s never been an issue that I didn’t listen to the first few. In fact, she’s quite good at getting you up to speed if she’s talking about something that was in a previous episode.
Okay, here’s a short summary I did for this episode last year. Haven’t posted recently because I’ve been slowed down by having one arm in a half cast….
嬉しい再会
It’s summer holiday time & she’s looking forward to some unplanned time (in contrast to previous summer holidays). She catches up with a young man she first met back in Japan at her tap dancing classes - he was in junior high at the time but now has just graduated from university in America and is about to return to Japan. Out of the blue (it’s five years since they last met), he contacts her & asks if they can catch up before he returns home to Japan. He comes to where she lives and their meet up is a happy one despite their significant difference in age
My favourite:
here she talks about one of her favourite places - Big Sur which isn’t all that far from where she lives (Monterey area). She goes there for a drive with the young man who’s visiting. Enjoying the fabulous scenery, she thinks to herself that she really needs to go there more since it isn’t all that far away from where she lives. Being from Shizuoka, she is reminded that many Shizuokans have never climbed Mt Fuji even though it’s in their backyard
mとnの発音:
here she talks about how she’s only fairly recently realised that she’s been pronouncing the “n” at the end of English words like an “m”, closing her lips as opposed to keeping them open. She wonders if this is because in Japanese the ん sound often ends with closed lips. She is surprised when a native English speaking friend can so easily distinguish between the “n” and “m” sounds at the end of English words.
There’s an interesting idiom she uses at 21:29 - 目からウロコ which means “to see the light” or more literally “scale (of fish, snake, etc.) from the eyes” which is like the English idiom “scales fall from the eyes” which comes from the biblical account of Paul’s conversion to Christianity and I wonder if this isn’t a borrowing from English or another Western source.
I came across it again recently in NANA:
Hooray for minimal pairs 
It took me a while to come up with one, but clam and clan is one that I don’t even think world be that hard to hear the difference.
I could also definitely tell the difference when she saying “open” and “opem”.
Now I wonder if there are any Japanese minimal pairs I should go review… 
I think English speakers probably are not great at distinguishing つ & す - when listening and speaking. Or at least so I was told by one Japanese speaker
I can hear the differences better than I can say them, but they are probably some of the trickiest to hear the difference between.
For saying them, the trick that unlocked it for me was someone telling me that we do have the tsu sound in English, it’s just not an isolated sound, and you say it when you say “its” and “cats”.
I think I have trouble sometimes differentiating し and ひ in when I hear a new word!
Maybe in a past life you were an 江戸っ子 - the original inhabitants of Tokyo’s 下町 didn’t/don’t distinguish between し and ひ.(笑)
Episode: 018
Time Count: 29:05
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woah that’s cool, I didn’t know that!
I thought this discussion was very interesting - I had never realized that the Japanese ん is pronounced often with closed lips. I think I can hear the difference, so it’s something to pay attention from now on.
I agree. I think her podcast is full of interesting insights like this.
Episode: 019
Time Count: 30:28
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Here’s my summary for Episode 18 (last week’s episode) I’ll post a summary for #19 once I’ve had a chance to relisten to it
マルタの話 She’s feeling tired having just finished the semester. Anyway, she wants to talk about a close friend Maruta (Martha?)who was the first friend she made when she came to America around 4 years ago when they were both attending an Adult Education English class. There wasn’t a class in her town so she had to go to a neighboring one which - like her town - was mainly Hispanic and Hispanic students made up more than 90% of the class and as the only Asian student Utaco naturally felt nervous but she was welcomed by Maruta (who’s is Mexican) and soon afterwards was visiting her at her house and they’ve been friends ever since. Neither of them could speak much English but they managed to share information about themselves and their respective cultures. They are close in age but their lives are very different (Maruta got married young and has 4 children, one of whom is already a high school student. She’s a strict Catholic who doesn’t drink). Despite their differences they somehow hit it off. Utaco had her first lunch out in America with someone other than her husband with Maruta.
A year into their friendship, Utaco decides she needs to go to a ESL college to improve her English. When she tells Maruta, it turns out she’s thinking of doing the same thing and having both been accepted (different classes however) they decide to car share (saving money & for Utaco relieving some of her fears about driving the 35-40 minutes by herself on the freeway - Utaco had been worried what would she do is something happened since her English was still poor but although Maruta’s English wasn’t any better, Maruta however at least could speak Spanish which was widely spoken and understood in that region. Also, Maruta had lots of friends and relatives to help out if something happened whereas Utaco only had her husband. They spend a good hour together five days a week over a year talking in the car on the way to college & as a result their English improved amazingly. When she compares how fast they speak in English with each other now compared to that first day going to college together, Utaco is thrilled.
英語クラスの最終成績が出ました semester’s finished and she’s pleased to say she got an A. However although usually gets good marks for her essays, writing them takes her a lot of time. Her ESL teacher suggested she take an online class in writing short stories and asks her what her background in writing is. Utaco did well in literature at school back in Japan and 10 years ago used to write a blog and she’s always been a big reader. When she asked her teacher how she could improve, the teacher recommended reading books in English. Her next class will be an English with native speakers and she’s terrified
