A little Island

今朝もまた大きな地震が熊本であった。しかも14日のよりも大きいとのことでこっちが本震なのだとか。あんなにたくさんの大きな地震があるなんてどれだけ怖いだろうか。

1)   Nine people are dead and more than 1,000 others were injured in the earthquake that struck Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan on Thursday.

The magnitude 6.5 earthquake registered the highest level of intensity on the Japanese seismic scale.

Many buildings have been destroyed or damaged by the jolt and the numerous aftershocks that followed.

2)   A wild deer wandered into a residential district in central Japan, causing a chase for the animal.

Police in Shizuoka City received a report that the deer had been seen near a highway on Wednesday morning.

Police and others attempted to throw a net over the animal after it ran into a parking lot beside the road.

The animal was eventually caught in a forest next to a park when members of a local hunting group shot it with a tranquilizer gun.

The chase lasted more than 4 hours.

3)   Japan and Russia have agreed to hold talks between high-ranking officials on signing a peace treaty at the earliest timing possible, after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s summit with President Vladimir Putin next month.

Japanese Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida and his Russian counterpart Sergei Lavrov met in Tokyo on Friday.

The peace treaty talks are aimed at finding a mutually acceptable solution for the issue of the Northern Territories. Russia controls the 4 islands. Japan claims them.
4)   Japanese police have issued a crackdown on a new criminal gang that has split from the country’s largest yakuza mob.

The National Police Agency told officers across Japan to get tougher with Funashii Yamaguchi-gumi members. The group last year split from the Yamaguchi-gumi.

The move follows Friday’s news that public safety officials in Hyogo Prefecture, where the new group is based, had designated it an organized crime syndicate.
5)   Struggling electronics maker Sharp will start selling a robot smartphone next month.

The product, RoBoHoN, is a smartphone in the form of a biped robot, about 20 centimeters tall and 400 grams in weight. It can walk and talk. It can be operated with a touch screen located on its back as well as by voice commands. A newly developed built-in laser projector can also project pictures and videos.

The smartphone will be priced at 198,000 yen, or about 1,800 dollars. Users have to pay monthly communication charges. Sharp plans to sell 5,000 robotic smartphones every month.

6)   Finance ministers and central bank governors from the Group of 20 economies are soon to begin 2 days of talks in Washington on Thursday. Their agenda is expected to include shoring up the global economy and preventing tax avoidance.
7)   A New York Times editorial has encouraged President Barack Obama to put Hiroshima on his itinerary when he visits Japan next month.

週中くらいにスカイプで送ってくれたリンクの着物猫が可愛いかったのでありがとうと伝えたら、友達から教えてもらってすぐこれはMasagoが好きだろう！と思って送ってくれたそう。

今日のレッスンの最後に「仮定の話だけど」と言うので何だろうと思ったら、僕の隣人がなぜかすごく怒ってるんだよ。「俺はお前を殺してやる」と毎日言ってくるんだよ。あんまり毎日言われるからこっちも怖くなって「じゃあ、殺される前に殺してやる」と思い始めてるんだけどこれどう思うか？と聞かれた。仮定ってことはそれってアメリカは北朝鮮に今そう思っているって話？と聞くと「いや、ただ僕がそう思ってるだけなんだけどね」と言ってたけど、アメリカが北朝鮮そういうムードになりつつあるのはありうるなーと。

1)   Chubu Electric Power Company has shown to media a 22-meter-high tsunami defense barrier at its Hamaoka nuclear power station in central Japan.

2)   Researchers in Japan have detected relatively high levels of radioactive substances in sediment in multiple rivers running through Fukushima Prefecture.

3)   The Tokyo Metropolitan Government has compiled a plan to turn the village for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Paralympics into an eco-friendly residential and commercial area after the games.

4)   Japan’s governing coalition has drafted a bill calling for greater government efforts to raise public awareness of hate speech.

The Liberal Democratic Party and Komeito adopted the first draft on Thursday at a meeting of a taskforce on the problem in Japan. The team was set up by the parties.

The draft defines hate speech as inflammatory speech intended to incite hatred against people from certain ethnic groups, to exclude them from society.

It says hate speech often involves blatant language that threatens the lives, property or freedom of such minorities. It also says the government must take measures to end hate speech in Japan.

5)   Work has finally begun to freeze the soil around four damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. Engineers are trying to reduce the buildup of contaminated water at the site.

Tokyo Electric Power Company, or TEPCO, the owner of the plant, started the work on Thursday, after the Nuclear Regulation Authority gave the go-ahead. It took TEPCO about two years to install the system.

TEPCO says it will freeze soil in phases, first, on the downstream side of the reactors, using 1,000 of the 1,700 underground pipes. TEPCO says it will take about 45 days for the ice wall to generate effects.

6)   Japanese consumers can choose their electricity supplier from Friday as full deregulation of the power-retail market comes into effect.

Consumers had previously only been able to buy electricity from power companies in the regions where they live. The full deregulation ends the monopoly of the major utilities that continued for about 60 years.
7)   The Bank of Japan’s quarterly Tankan survey shows that business sentiment among Japanese major manufacturers worsened for the first time in two quarters.

The central bank surveyed roughly 11,000 companies across Japan from late February to March 31, and released the latest survey results on Friday.

土曜日の朝英語のクラスを取っているのだけど、今朝は予約するのをすっかり忘れていたので、マイケル先生にSorry,I forgot to book your class today, see you next week.としたらNo!Wait!I can talk. I forgot too.ということでまた別の時間を振替で予約して無事週一の英語をサボらず済んだ。私の前の生徒さんT君が今週のレッスンの日を金曜日に移したそうで、それで今日は日曜日だとすっかり勘違いしたので今日は事前にテキストを用意してなかったよということで、スカイプに下記の内容をPasteしてくれたのでそれにてレッスンした。

A Japanese man who was questioned by Turkish authorities on suspicion of trying to join the Islamic State militant group has returned home after being deported.
Child abuse reports in Japan have hit a record high. The National Police Agency says officers reported 37,020 children under 18 to child welfare centers last year on suspicion of being abused.
The figure was up 28 percent from the previous year and the highest since the agency began taking data in 2004.

A northeastern Japanese city has been ordered by a court to pay compensation to the family of a primary school student who died in the March 2011 tsunami.

The defendant, Higashi-Matsushima City in Miyagi Prefecture, has jurisdiction over the school the girl student attended, Nobiru Elementary School.

Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe says he will not repeal the national security laws that are set to take effect next week.

Chinese Premier Li Keqiang says that it would be a major risk if the nation’s economy grows at a slower pace than the government’s target.
Officials are aiming for growth of between 6.5 and 7 percent this year

トランプ氏がフロリダで勝ったので嬉しそうだった。^^ 　あとは日本でストーカー犯罪が増えているのはなんでだろうという話で、日本の男の子はSNSとかで女の子と話すのはできるけど、実際にFacetoFaceでコミニュケーションを取ることができないんじゃないの？と言っていた

1)   St. Patrick’s Day or the Feast of St. Patrick is observed on March 17 as a religious and cultural celebration. It honors Ireland’s patron St. Patrick. The date marks the traditional death of the saint. In the early 17th century, it was made an official Christian feast day observed by the Church of Ireland, the Catholic Church, the Eastern Orthodox Church, and Lutheran Church.

2)   Donald Trump boasted at his victory party on Tuesday night in Florida that he had won the Sunshine State despite a multi-million dollar negative ad blitz attacking him.

3)   South Korea has lodged a protest with Japan over its newly authorized high school textbooks that devote more pages than before to territorial issues.

The textbooks refer to Japan’s claims to the Takeshima islands in the Sea of Japan. South Korea controls them.
4)   The United States has urged North Korea to release an American university student who has been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor for crimes against the state.

Otto Warmbier was detained in Pyongyang in January while visiting the country as a tourist.

North Korea’s Supreme Court convicted him of committing a hostile act, in line with what it called the US government’s hostile policy toward the country.
5)   Japanese police received over 20,000 reports of stalking in 2015. It’s the 3rd straight year the reports topped this figure.

Police identified suspects and took action in 2,415 cases.
Suspects were accused of violating the anti-stalking law in 677 cases. There were also 362 cases of blackmail, 315 of housebreaking, and 11 of attempted murder.

6)   Japan’s Chief Cabinet Secretary Yoshihide Suga says the government will continue to make every effort to resolve the case of a missing Japanese freelance journalist, Jumpei Yasuda .

Suga told reporters on Thursday that the government has been dealing with the case in line with instructions from Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
7)   The remains of 393 Japanese war dead have been returned from the Bismarck Archipelago in the South Pacific Ocean.

Remains of more than 1.1 million Japanese are still on former battlefields 71 years since the end of World War Two.

Takayoshi Sumita, the deputy chief of an association of veterans and relatives of war dead, says he wants the government to do its best to locate all the remains.