The "news reading" challenge 🗞

And also, a warm welcome to you both, NyappyTiramisu and @prizegaming :smiley:

4 Likes

Today I read an article on the minimum wage:


It would seem there’s been a meeting regarding the increase of Japan’s minimum wage. Very good!

Now what I wasn’t aware of is that the minimum wage can be different per prefecture, which means while it may be over thousand yen in 東京都県, it could be cheaper elsehwere. The article states that the lowest minimum wage at the moment is 800 yen.

While this may not seem like a large gap, it tends to add up in the long run.



It’s been quite a while since of done this; life tends to sneak up on ya, huh?

3 Likes

LET’S GOOOO!!! FINISHED ARTICLE #2!!!

It’s about how AI delivery trucks have become market leaders. The 要点 (cool vocab I learned today) is that Mitsubishi rolled out a truck delivery service that has been outperforming competition, and how online delivery service has increased over the years.

AIは、みちがどのくらいんでいるかや、荷物にもつろすために必要ひつよう時間じかんなどもかんがえて案内あんないします。

This quote was very confusing to me, but going off of context in the next sentence, which mentioned that

“Using the AI service, the average trip distance has decreased 15%”

I’m assuming that the above quote says

“AI is being considered as the [industry] lead, considering how full the roads are, and how it’s lowered packages for necessary time (?), among other factors”
I can’t tell if 道 means the literal road or not, and I don’t really know what 考えて is doing near the end. regardless, I’m so happy I’m at least halfway literate :sunglasses: :sunglasses: :sunglasses:

3 Likes

i didn’t know that either, that’s really interesting!

2 Likes

i also read this article (as well as this one on protestors about the olympics cos that one was quite short) and i’m not sure i got the same reading? as far as i understand it, mitsubishi have been using an american AI service which helps guide their drivers to reduce the distance they’re driving (though how this differs from some modern satnavs i have no idea). there’s also some stuff on how online shopping has increased compared to the past few years and that the company (who made the AI?) hope that more companies will use it.

for that sentence i got something along the lines of:

The AI offers guidance on how congested the roads are and the necessary time it thinks it will take to drop off the parcels.

but i think i shifted 考えて around in the sentence there :sweat_smile: as far as i can tell it goes with 案内します but i;m not sure whether it’s ‘thinks [time] AND guides [first clause]’ or ‘it guides on what it thinks [both clauses]’. (if anyone knows lemme know).

i got something similar for this bit!

still, i’m a learner just as much as you, and congrats on your second article! :tada:

i rambled so much oh no

2 Likes

Ooh that would make much more sense. I remember seeing “american company” in the beginning paragraph and it confused me as I thought Mitsubishi was Japanese?? but I think your interpretation is more correct, especially that one tricky sentence :sweat_smile: That would make a lot more sense if it was talking about guiding, as I thought that last verb for “to guide” was something more about leading the market, not drivers :cold_sweat: but every article is an improvement!!!

speaking of which…
ARTICLE 3 FINISHED !!! LET’S GOOOOO!!!

This article is about traffic regulations the police are implementing to lighten traffic into the Olympic convention in Tokyo and Chiba. One of which designates a lane for priority drivers, and those who violate it will be fined 6000 yen.

Another regulation requires those taking the Shuto Expressway to pay a 1000 yen fee, and that other roads have become congested as a result, making the Setagaya 7 (?) loop backed up with 5.5 km of traffic and Meguro avenue backed up with 5km worth.

Because there is little chance to squeeze into roads, Police have stopped using their cars to take to internet and post notices instead (not super sure about this last paragraph)

Understood this better than the last article it seems :brain: :muscle:

3 Likes

Small correction, Tokyo prefecture is just 東京都, there’s no 県

4 Likes

The way I understood that paragraph was more along the lines of “Because the roads might become congested to the point where they can’t be passed anymore, police are advising people to not use their cars and to check the newest (traffic) information online before using it”

3 Likes

I had a win today, I read the NHK easy article about the reception with the IOC chair and people from the government and the demonstration against it. Then I jumped over to the normal version of the article and I was able to understand like 95% of it without looking up any words

5 Likes

I had difficulties to understand the article about the song for the opening ceremony

is it going to be about bullying or the person who created initially the song was denied because it was about bullying?

4 Likes

i read this one on the ceremony they did outside the elementary school that lost 84 students and staff during the tsunami and, while a very sad read, i think it’s definitely a poignant reminder to the destructive power of a tsunami.

lots of ために and こと phrases in this one, if that’s anything anyone needs to go over/have exposure to

3 Likes

having a quick scan through and googling to make sure i was right, i think it’s that he did some bullying of children with learning difficulties while he was at school. i think they decided not to use his song, too.

edit - this is the most relevant sentence as proof of that i think:

小山田さんは20年ねん以上前に雑誌のインタビューで、中学校などで障害がある生徒などをいじめたと話ていました

which to my reading means something along the lines of:

Oyamada-san revealed in an interview that more than 20 years ago, in middle school he bullied students that had disabilities.

4 Likes

Today I read an article about an app designed for foreign students:


This article was a bit hard to understand, but I believe the app can translate words into different languages and can provide up-to-date information on the weather and natural disasters in a student’s native language.

If true, it seems incredibly useful, no doubt.

3 Likes

went with this article on rock carved to look like sushi and one, that’s impressive (they made 50!), two, i think it takes a very particular kind of person to look at a piece of granite and go yes, i want to make that look like maguro, but props to that person.

my only trouble with it wasn’t really trouble exactly, but what a natural sounding translation of おもしろさ would be in the context of this quote. curiosity? curiousness? interestingness? i have no idea :joy: would ‘unusual nature’ work here?

この作品を見て、石のおもしろさを知ってほしいです

3 Likes

For my first article of the week I chose this one about the requirement for female beach handball and track and field athletes to wear bikini shorts to competitions:

I chose this one because I had a conversation with my flatmate the other day about how these tiny shorts only seem to be the standard in women’s sports but neither of us knew enough about professional sports to know if there’s an actual athletics-related reason behind this design choice. According to this article, in beach handball men are allowed to wear longer shorts, and I hope that female athletes will eventually be given the option to choose as well.

This article was definitely more difficult for me than the last one, it felt like there was lots of language in there that’s more formal than what I’m used to. And I think I spent most of my time on this one sentence in particular:

一方、男性選手は短パンの着用が求められており「膝上10センチ以上で、たるみすぎていなければ長くても構わない」というルールになっている

Three grammar points I wasn’t too familiar with in one sentence was quite a lot for me :sweat_smile:

3 Likes

Hey, I happened to read this article too!

I honestly thought they just meant the stone seems both intriguing and delicious. Intriguing deliciousness?

This article wasn’t too bad to understand with the right context, though I still had to look up a few words.

Apparently, the salmon sashimi was carved from red granite. I think this food item might just be bad for my teeth, but I would definitely be willing to try it.

Watching the video, it would seem they made other carvings as well, including a set of eyes, a tongue, lips, two detached fingers and what appears to be a slice of grey matter.

2 Likes

It’s aaaaaall fanservice, though I’m honestly quite surprised that the European Handball Federation were so bare-facedly blatant about it in this instance. “Wear less clothes, or we’re gonna fine you!” I’ve never heard of the European Beach Handball Championship before yesterday, but boy are they making the headlines now.

(No, the real reason is that women’s brains will overheat if they wear too much clothing. They might even develop hysteria.)

4 Likes

I also read this one!!!

Cool and easy article, and same, only had to look up words like museum and carved and polished. Very cool and fun to hear !!! I would love to see one of these with opal (however I don’t know any fish that looks THAT cool)

I also have another to read since I missed yesterday, but I’ll get caught up later. Busy evening for me :open_mouth:

3 Likes

i love that we all individually looked at the articles on the olympics and covid and went ‘no, today, sushi rock’ :joy:

3 Likes

I found this huffpost very difficult to understand most of words :pensive:

3 Likes