Asahi Weekly columns

This newsweekly is popular with English students in Japan. Each week it has a collection of news stories, reports from Japan, English study help, cultural items such as record and movie reviews and so on. I knew it was cool when they chose a Smashing Pumpkins song ("Bullet with Butterfly Wings") as their "Study English Through Music" feature one week.

The assignment given me was to explain some facet of American culture to students who are interested in

• Learning English
• Learning about America
• Preparing to study in America

The challenge given me was to explain some cultural item in an interesting way that would be understandable to an ESL reader, comprehensive in its scope, with an intriguing ending that makes the reader "think." In 220 or 230 words. Needless to say, it is not my usual style of writing. I prefer to write incinderary newsletters or friendly letters. So this was a good chance for me to try something new.

Previous American writers for this column tended to speak about cultural shocks or personal reminiscences. These topics are quite interesting to Japanese readers. However, since those topics had already been done a lot before I was instructed to write about cross-cultural items and "daily life" activities.

As a result, I wrote about things like using the toilet, going to the movies, taking Driver's Education classes, and the like.

For the few columns where American readers might need some background on daily life in Japan, I will give a short explanation. If you have any questions or comments, please drop me a line and I will add some explanatory information. I look forward to your feedback!

For the actual, printed On The Keyboard column there is a glossary of terms (definitions are in Japanese) and instructions how to call to hear a tape of the native speaker reading the piece. They wanted a natural reading, so my stuttering and stammering was no problem. The only time we had to do retakes was when I got stuck or said a word in some strange new way. Once I sniffed loudly and we had to tape it over, but I fear that they picked up stomach rumblings and shaky intakes of breath, etc.

The articles

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