🇺🇸 4989 American Life Home Thread

@Cathm2 I hope you’re all patched up soon and that you’re done with cold and flu for the year :tea:

My comments below (I’m on the ambiguously listening end, happy to get the general story but I certainly miss a lot of details. Although, listening and relistening that way is incredibly motivating because I notice a huge difference between now and last summer. So all I can say is keep going everyone, it really does get better over time!)

First 16 min

San Diego visit: I understood that part so much better this time. It was fun listening to her impressions of San Diego, the local breweries (she is sooo into beer), and interacting with her friends and their families. It really made me smile and remember the best parts of American culture that I miss (except beer which I never cared much for, although the craft folks are such interesting people). When she amazed herself with how much time passed since she first visited San Diego, 13 years! it was such a cute and genuine reaction.

16-21 minutes

LA segment
How fun to have a friend with an ice cream shop

21-28 minutes 英語の話のコーナー!

Her segment on names that are difficult to hear, repeat and remember is so relatable. This word comes up a lot:
復唱 (ふくしょう) repeating (to confirm it was heard correctly)

7 Likes

Break week this week!

We’ll continue with episode 11 on the 27th, as will the new podcast pick!

7 Likes

I am patched up now and really hope I’m done for the year! Especially since my next overseas trip is going to Okinawa, including some scuba diving, in a few weeks.

I’ve just properly finished episode 1. If I don’t get called into work tomo I’ll listen to episode 2. Hopefully I can catch up, though it’ll take me a few weeks,

6 Likes

this is so cool I wanna go too :pleading_face:

3 Likes

Week 11

:studio_microphone: Episode: 011
:hourglass_flowing_sand: Time Count: 29:58

Participation

Will you be listening along with us this week?

  • I’m listening along
  • I’m listening but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m listening to this episode after the club has finished
0 voters

If you’ve already listened to this podcast but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this episode.”

And we’re back! Also make sure to check out the new podcast pick that’s running now as well!

5 Likes
Episode 11

Just did passive listening this week so didn’t catch a lot but quick notes:

  • Boba
  • Using an English to English dictionary
  • She listed a lot of synonyms so I assume she might have been talking about use cases for them based on the dictionary
  • word order
5 Likes

Just relistened to this week’s episode & am posting the summary I made last year. The first section made me feel really sad for her - what happened to her is the equivalent of being asked when your baby is due & you just happen to be on the chubby side. Really sometimes people should think before they speak!

Episode 11 summary

Starts off with saying she’s feeling tired and wonders if it’s because she’s getting older (in a side comment she recognises that those listeners who are older than her might be irritated by that comment). Feels her stamina, memory, skin quality etc are getting worse. Then gets on to talking about a big shock she had recently (which in my opinion is not unrelated to her sense of having aged).
About a month before, she’d been at a big gathering of local Japanese for a farewell party. The person next to her mistakenly thought Utaco was Utaco’s husband’s MOTHER even though Utaco’s husband is a year older than her and has grey in his beard and doesn’t look particularly young - apparently the person thought he was around 20. Utaco is around 40 アラフォー so she could have a teenage child but to think that she could be thought to have a university aged child!

Moves onto talking about what she’s been into recently (最近はまってるもの/こと). Two weeks ago she tried her first avocado smoothie boba bought from the local donut shop - the result? めちゃ美味しい!すごく美味しい!大ヒット!Even though she likes to try different things, she’s planning on trying out different shops’ avocado smoothies.

In today’s rather sizeable 英語な話コーナー, she talks about the various dictionaries and similar tools she uses when she wants to check an English meaning or usage. Starting with Weblio Japanese/English online dictionary (different meanings, grammar points, example sentences, audio, phonetic symbols 発音記号clearly set out). She also recommends using an English only dictionary (Merriam-Webster Webster) when you want to understand the differences in nuance between similar words. Thesaurus too are recommended especially when you want to find another way of saying things (Thesaurus.com). If you want to look up phrases or sentences, she recommends the DMM英会話 site where you can ask bilinguals for advice. The yahoo chiebukuro site is similar but sometimes has mistakes. Also recommends the similar Hi Native site. But if you want to check if what you’ve written in English is actually standard English, you can also put it directly in double quotes into Google and see how many hits you get - lots of hits means it’s probably standard - this is a method she uses a lot.

7 Likes

I listened to this episode (in the car, no pausing or looking up vocab) but missed a lot, especially during the first section. Thank you @Lisaveeta for the helpful summary, I’ll try relistening with this context.

6 Likes
episode 11

0-7
Poor Utako, that story was gutting and understandably really hit her hard.

7-10
Avocado smoothie - wow she’s so excited I want to try one now even though I have never seen something like that here :sweat_smile:

10- end
Interesting choice to go through these resources in such detail, but I’m guessing they were hard won lessons/ resources to find, and then she’s probably excited to share

I still have the paper Merriam-Webster dictionary my dad got me in high school, so her mention of M-W made me smile.

類義語 (るいぎご) was a new word for me. Maybe in English as well? I don’t think I’ve heard people talking about quasi-synonyms before

4 Likes

Hadn’t listened to this podcast in a while so I just listened to episode 4!

あるある corner

Ok, I can tell I was zoning out by the end of the episode because this whole section went over my head :joy: I was like something something wife something something young people… okay the episode’s over now!

5 Likes

Week 12

:studio_microphone: Episode: 012
:hourglass_flowing_sand: Time Count: 36:22

Participation

Will you be listening along with us this week?

  • I’m listening along
  • I’m listening but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m listening to this episode after the club has finished
0 voters

If you’ve already listened to this podcast but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this episode.”

3 Likes

Just relistened to this episode and am posting my summary from last year

Episode #12 モヤモヤ悩む日々

悩み事を語る: she talks about how since coming to America, she’s been consumed by doubts and worries about the course of her life. At the ESL classes she takes, she is among the minority who are studying English only - the others are all studying other subjects - and this makes her feel different and she wonders whether she should also be studying something other than English. She comments too that she thinks that American society is obsessed with academic achievements and that her unremarkable Japanese junior college credentials are kind of meaningless. She feels the pressure to be doing something - work is unavailable to her because of visa restrictions and she doesn’t have any children so study seems an obvious choice but she doesn’t know what she wants to study. Her husband tries to reassure her, listing this podcast as one of her achievements and how prescient he is as this is only episode 12 of what will become an ongoing podcast with hundreds of episodes and thousands of listeners from all over the world!

アメリカあるある 駐車の向きについて: in this section, she vents her frustration with American parking habits. Apparently, in contrast with Japan, Americans park forward-facing (which means they just drive into the parking space & so have to back out when leaving). She thinks this is more dangerous as when you’re backing out, you can’t easily see around you and backing out is made even more difficult if you’re unlucky enough to be be parked next to someone who hasn’t parked straight. Americans also all seem want to park as close to the shop entrance as possible and to avoid walking any distance, preferring to waste time driving around and around or wait in line to get that “perfect” parking place. She also talks about her nervousness about driving in America when she first arrived - reasons: driving on a different side of the road; driving wheel on the opposite side; a style of car she’s not particularly fond of; lack of recent driving experience when she lived in Tokyo. She says she’s finally got used to everyday driving conditions but still fears American highways.

日によって英語の調子って違う?: She talks about how frustrating it is that her level of English unpredictably fluctuates on a daily basis and wonders if other people have also experienced this (ピンポン!I have) - she thinks it might be something to do with how the brain functions but it doesn’t seem to be related to how much sleep she’s had or whether she’s well or not. She talks about interactions with an unfriendly American who - because she doesn’t like Utaco or doesn’t have any interest in Utaco? - makes little effort to understand Utaco, responding to Utaco’s questions with a “huh?”.
Utaco also notices that this fluctuating fluency applies to writing as well as speaking - she has days when she stuck at her desk trying to complete her English homework (あるある!For me, writing in English as well as trying to write in Japanese takes hours - 完璧主義のせいかな?)

6 Likes

@Lisaveeta Thank you so much for posting this! Your summaries are brilliant.

3 Likes

Thank you! I’m going to run out of them eventually…

5 Likes

@Lisaveeta this week I waited for your summary before listening, since I get so much more out of the episode after reading the summary! I know they’re going to end, but please keep posting the summaries you have :blush:

6 Likes

Thanks! I will.

5 Likes

Week 13

:studio_microphone: Episode: 013
:hourglass_flowing_sand: Time Count: 29:38

Participation

Will you be listening along with us this week?

  • I’m listening along
  • I’m listening but haven’t reached this part yet
  • I have finished this part
  • I’m listening to this episode after the club has finished
0 voters

If you’ve already listened to this podcast but are still going to join the discussion, please select “I have finished this episode.”

4 Likes

Had another listen to this week’s episode - enjoyed again her account of complaining about Americans not using their indicators properly to her ESL classmates only to find they all think Americans are safe drivers (笑)

Episode #13 summary

大きな挑戦: It’s already May and summer is approaching. She wonders if any of her Japanese listeners who live overseas have plans of returning to Japan for the holidays. - she’d like to but can’t afford it. Instead she’s thinking of visiting friends and doing some camping.

The topic for today is her new job working at the community college she attends. She holds a h4 spouse visa which would usually mean that while her husband has permission to work, she doesn’t. However, there is a special scholarship system enabling students without working visas to work within their institution - aimed at immigrant students (many of whom are not legal) from South America, it is meant to help finance their studies and get them necessary work experience. Utaco manages to negotiate with the college director to get accepted into the program! She works a few hours 3 days a week. On Mondays and Wednesdays she works in the campus gym helping people with physical disabilities with their training, and on Fridays she helps out in a special computer room set up for people with physical disabilities (身体障害) and learning disabilities (学習障害)

At first she was incredibly tense because she had to use English - she especially finds the gym work hard, having difficulty understanding what people are saying to her. The program runs only for a term so she’ll finish up at the end of May.

今週のmy favorite: She’s finally found a mascara she likes - Maybelleine New York Sensational curvature(can’t understand word here???) waterproof mascara. She imagines her listeners thinking - what? A forty year old using a pharmacy mascara brand? To which she replies that she doesn’t buy expensive make up.
In Japan she always used a Fasio mascara but because it was hard to get hold of in America, she’d taken to buying pharmacy brand mascaras with the result that her lashes lost their curl after she applied the mascara - at first she thought this might be due to age but when the mascara she’s been using ran out, she spied the Maybelleine counter with products promising curl at the pharmacy and bought a mascara which worked, and as a result for the first time in a while has got excited about putting on makeup

方向指示器あるある: Too many people in America don’t use indicators 方向指示器 - despite them (as she and her husband often note) requiring little effort to use (a flick of the finger) and being essential for road safety. She gives the example of people not using them even on crowded freeways when they lane change 車線変更, saying how dangerous this is and how terrified she is never knowing when people are going to cut into the lane in front of her. And when you drive in town, because people don’t indicate, you don’t know if they are going to turn or continue on straight.

And then there are the people who use indicators but forget to turn them off! - on the freeways and in town, mile after mile with the lights flashing. She wonders why they can’t hear the sound? Maybe, they’re listening to loud music but surely they can see the lights on their dashboard? Nobody’s indicators in America are to be trusted! Although it’s been a while since she’s driven in Japan, she believes that while there might be some people who don’t use indicators, there are very few who would forget and leave them on. Amusingly, when she talks to other non-Americans about this, not only are they not bothered by the situation in America, they actually think that compared to their own countries, driving in America is pretty safe. Hearing that she decides there’s no way she’s driving in other countries. To wrap up, she says that in Japan, the word ウインカー is often used (from British English) whereas in America it’s “blinker” or “turn signal”.

曜日の伝え方に注意: Here she warns about the confusion in English between “this Friday” and “next Friday” & suggests using more explicit terms (like using a date) so there are no misunderstandings like what happened when an ESL classmate organised an outing for “next Friday” meaning “this Friday” which they all attended except the one whose English was more proficient (they’d thought the outing was the following week).

5 Likes

NB I believe that ‘curvitude’ is just a made-up word for the name of this product.
As @Lisaveeta points out, the closest English word is ‘curvature’.

6 Likes

Yes, it’s these kind of commercial made-up words that make listening even more of a comprehension challenge.

6 Likes