At the end of July, some members of the Fujimae group went to Zimbabwe with Nagoya government officials to attend an environmental conference. When they came back, one of them showed me a strange souvenir. It was an old banknote from 2008. It said “One Billion Dollars” on it. It was real! In 2008, inflation was very, very bad in Zimbabwe. Prices went up every hour! If people got Zimbabwean dollars, they had to use them right away. The government kept making banknotes in larger and larger dollar amounts. What could you buy for 1,000,000,000 dollars? I’m not sure, but I think you could only buy some bread. Inflation didn’t stop until people stopped using Zimbabwean dollars and started using foreign money like US dollars. The one billion dollar banknote is not real money now. People sell it in the street as an interesting souvenir.    (145 words) You can send me a comment

I was invited to a housewarming party last weekend. A friend built a new house, and he and his wife invited their friends over. As he said, their children don’t live with them anymore, so they designed the house for themselves. The first floor is a large open room with a kitchen. They both like to sing, so they use a home karaoke app with a projector and a large dropdown screen. No one sang at the party, but they showed us some YouTube videos. The food was delicious, and I had a good time talking with the other guests. We mostly spoke English, but I found out that my wife’s friend could speak Korean, so we had a conversation in Korean. She told me her secret to learning languages. Study hard every day for a couple of years and you will succeed.    (143 words) You can send me a comment or your

It was 39 degrees in Nagoya last weekend. My wife and I went to the mountains because we wanted to spend a night in a cool place. We went to Fujimidai. It’s on the border between Nagano Prefecture and Gifu Prefecture. It was perfect! When we arrived at 3 p.m., the temperature was a beautiful 22 degrees. We had a barbecue, and after that, the manager of the mountain hut showed us the stars. I learned how to find the North Star, and he showed me several new constellations. I even saw a shooting star. Now I want to go back to Nagoya and go to the planetarium so that I can learn more about stars.  (116 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

Today is the first day of school for most children in Japan. It has been a long, hot summer, but I hope that everybody enjoyed the vacation. Did you do anything fun? Did you go anywhere exciting? Did you see visit your grandparents? Are you happy or sad to go back to school today? Why? Japanese students have a lot of summer homework. Did you do your homework every day, or did you wait until the end of the vacation and do it all at once? Please send me your answers and I will make them into a Readers’ Corner story next Friday.  (103 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

I’ve been studying Korean for a long time, but I didn’t make my first presentation in Korean until last Saturday. Now I know how difficult it is to learn a speech in a foreign language! I needed to learn a lot of special words about the environment, and I had to work on my pronunciation so that the Korean group could understand me. I talked about Fujimae Tidal Flat. AI was a big help. I used it translate information about Fujimae into Korean. Then I wrote the speech and practiced reading it aloud with my Korean teacher. Korean grammar is not so difficult if you know Japanese grammar, but Korean pronunciation is much more difficult than Japanese. In any case, I did it! Everyone understood my Korean, and my presentation was a success!   (133 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com