Dying languages Iramkarapte, e= iwanke ya? That means “Hi, how are you?” in Ainu. But you’ve probably never heard that, or any Ainu. Fortunately, Japan is economically a big country and Japanese is still spoken by 125 million speakers, however, roughly half of the world’s 6,000 or 7,000 languages have been in danger of going extinct including Ainu at the same time. Ainu is a part of Japan, which means we are losing a tiny bit of us. What happens when a language die? Why we must save endangered languages? One of the reasons is to save ways of interpreting the world. We divide the world by languages and form our own recognition. Imagine a new born baby, he can see things around him, however, he doesn’t know what it is even if it’s his dad’s face or himself in the mirror. It is not that you put a label of language on objects, once there is a language (word), then you can recognize them, which means you’d lose your own world if the language dies. The second reason is to save the culture and history. We experience plenty of things ever since we were born, at the same time, we hear the words to describe them, understand the world and form ourselves. Also, we develop words and expressions which are not in other languages while living in the same place for a long time. For instance, we cannot talk about four seasons if we adopt the language of the people living in the desert. That can’t be worldwide since the culture, the climate and the social structure are all different. Language itself is a culture and history, that is, they die with its language. Language is the bellwether. It shapes our understanding of how world works, and it’s hard to maintain the full richness, depth and complexity of a culture without its languages. That’s why we have to save languages. The loss of language diversity leads the loss of biological diversity, and endangerment happens when people are no longer learning the language. So let’s learn languages. Different languages provide distinct pathways of thought and frameworks for thinking and solving problems. Hopefully Japanese exists forever.

Indiscriminate Terrorisms The other day I was scrolling through news when I came across an article concerning terrorisms. Recently there have been many indiscriminate terrorisms around the world. Fortunately, we haven’t got big attacks yet in Japan, however, it feels like we sometimes get involved in one while on the train. One type of terrorists is perfume women. Just imagine you are squeezing into a jammed train during rush hour, and then a woman steps in the door and stuck in just next to you. And she put way too much perfume on. You might choke and cough, and everyone on train would also be about die momentarily. What’s worse, you smell like it too. You have steeped in it, and it has become you. I consider it as an indiscriminate terrorism. Next one is leaky headphones. I guess many people have experienced this. Suddenly, loudly, from the leaky headphones of the cute girl behind me on train heavy metal. Me no happy, it ruined my fresh morning mood. Another day a guy on train was listening to an anime song 4 times in a row. He took us all into his anime world that none of us wanted, and I went to the venue of my job interview having the song stuck in my head. The third one is McDonald’s take away. There are at least three people who fill the carriage with the smell of McDonald per a year. Its french fries smell is especially very strong. Looking to my left, nothing, looking to my right, also nothing… Where on earth that McDonald smell coming from? It’s like a torture for someone who is feeling very hungry. You might have a negative image to these indiscriminate terrorisms on the train. Yes, it can be uncomfortable to encounter that kind of situations, sometimes even painful if your eyes and throat are burning due to a strong perfume. However, I guess it’s not always bad. Even if you felt tough while it’s happening, you can have a good laugh about it later. It could spice up your daily commute a little bit. If I have to commute somewhere, I’d rather it be a hilarious ride.