I'm kind of excited: if you know me at all, you know that I almost never post stuff that could be thought of as promotional. But, my little company (with huge help from my Tokyo4Dean/FightingLiberals family and excellent media production team here in Tokyo) just launched a site called eigobama.com* and I want to tell my Kossack family about it.
more beneath the fold.
*'eigo' is the way to say 'English language' here in Japan. pronounced like 'heygo' without the 'h'
to quote myself, from the About page:
I wanted to create a site that opens the door to America’s politics with President Obama, in a way that my friends in Japan can understand. We will subtitle his Weekly Address for you, as well as other speeches. You can look for the category that interests you and see what he is doing about it. And, I’ll write on the site too, to give you a regular American’s perspective on those changes.
The site is meant for the vast amount of people who are intermediate level English learners, so I write my English posts in beginner-intermediate mode.
You'd be surprised, maybe, at how much the Obama phenomenon permeates a country that still has a lot of trouble with conversational English. There are books published with his major speeches, DVDs, CDS, and there are English language sites that have translations of the major speeches - either community-sourced or, site-provided, as we do it...it's quite remarkable.
But, there's something to keep in mind about many folks here in Japan, as illustrated by this Sept. 'o8 article in the Japan Times:
An overwhelming number of Japanese believe Barack Obama will win the United States presidential election in November and 90 percent are dissatisfied with Japanese politics, according to a survey released Thursday by the nonprofit Nippon Foundation.
I think their interest goes beyond the unique aspect of his presidency and into a hunger for their own brand of...something.
I'm hoping that this site will open a window on what change looks like from American eyes: good, bad, and those ever-important grey areas...
If you have a minute to take a look, I'd very much appreciate your feedback.
domo arigato gozaimasu! (thank you ever so much!)