I went to the hospital to visit someone last Friday. When I got to the nurses’ station, I asked to see the patient. While I was waiting, I looked at a floor plan that was on the wall next to the elevator. Something looked strange to me, but I didn’t know what it was. Then I looked carefully at the numbers: 701, 702, 703, 705, 706, 707, 708, and 710. There were no 4s or 9s! No wonder it looked strange! Then I remembered that 4 and 9 are unlucky numbers in Japan. “Shi”, one reading of 4, can also mean “death.” “Ku,” one reading of 9, can mean “pain.” No one wants to think about death or pain, especially not in a hospital!   (124 words)

When I was riding my bicycle on a road, a driving school car passed me. I saw “Paper Driver Course” written on the rear license plate. That is totally new to me. When I got a driver’s license about 30 years ago, there was no such course. “Paper driver” is a Japanese English word. I wonder if foreigners can guess its meaning. It means a person who passed the driving test but has not been driving for a long time. This course is for people who need practice to be able to drive safely again. I wonder how many lessons they have to take. Or does it depend on the person?    (110 words)

Willie Mays, one of the greatest baseball players in history, passed away last Tuesday at the age of 93. When I was growing up, everyone knew Mays, and everyone loved to watch him play. He was fast! He was exciting! He did things that other players couldn’t do. If you look at the numbers, you can see how good he was. He hit 660 home runs, and his career batting average was over .300. He got more than 3,000 career hits, and he was a master of stealing bases. However, he is probably best known for his defense, catching and throwing the ball. One of his catches at a World Series was so good that it is still known as “the catch.”    (122 words)

“Totto-chan: The Little Girl at the Window” became the most published autobiography in the world last year, and Guinness gave Kuroyanagi Tetsuko a World Record certificate last December. “Totto-chan” is in the news again, but it isn’t the book this time. It’s the animated feature film. It won a prize at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival. Annecy is a town in southeastern France, and it has the biggest animated film festival in the world. This year’s top prize went to “Memoir of a Snail,” an Australian film. Unlike “Totto-chan,” the Australian film is made with claymation (animation that uses clay figures). I like both kinds of animation, and I’d like to see both of these films.     (117 words)

My students like to say that Japan has four seasons, but I tell them that they are wrong. Japan has five seasons. They look at me as if I am crazy. They were taught that Japan has four seasons at school, and the Japanese word “shiki” means four seasons. Then I ask them, “What about the rainy season?” In June and July, the weather gets very humid, and it rains a lot. To me, this is Japan’s fifth season. By the way, has the rainy season already started in your part of Japan? Weather forecasters say that the rainy season has started in western Japan, but I haven’t heard anyone say that it has started in central or eastern Japan.    (120 words)

Yesterday was Father’s Day. This special day was first celebrated in the U.S. in 1910, two years after the first Mother’s Day. Ms. Dodd worked very hard to create a special day for her father to thank him for raising her and her five brothers after their mother died. Now Father’s Day is celebrated on the third Sunday of June in many countries. People usually give their fathers presents and spend time with them. How did you celebrate Father’s Day? I thought about my own father who passed away a long time ago, and in the evening, my daughter came over and gave me a nice bottle of wine! My other daughter, who lives in the U.S., couldn’t be with me, so we chatted online instead.  (126 words)