There are only two of us at home, but we throw out one big bag of plastic garbage every week. I would like to say goodbye to plastic because I know it is bad for the environment, but I can’t. Everything comes in plastic these days: supermarket vegetables, tofu, eggs, rice, and bread. Plastic is good because it keeps our food fresh longer, and it is much easier for stores to sell food in plastic packages. However, plastic doesn’t go away after you use it. If you burn it, the smoke is bad for your health. If it gets into the sea, birds and turtles eat it, and they die. Plastic also breaks up into microplastics and gets inside fish, animals, and plants. When we eat them, the plastic gets inside us. Plastic is both wonderfully convenient for us and terrible for the environment!   (144 words) You can send me a comment or

As you probably know, I make YouTube videos of my Jaremaga stories. I think the videos are good for learners, but I don’t really like the sound of my own voice. That’s why I was really surprised to get an email from someone at Walt Disney Studios. They saw my YouTube channel and liked my voice. Now they want me to be a voice actor in an animated movie. I can’t believe it! I went to Tokyo last Friday for a screen test, and I passed! I am starting work this morning. The name of the movie is “An April Fool.” What do you think? Am I a good liar?   (110 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

March is the end of the year for students and many workers all over Japan. Students graduate, and public school teachers have to move to other schools before April. I know that some government workers have to move to other offices at the end of March, and I think it happens at large companies, too. I didn’t think it happened to newscasters, but I was wrong. Last Friday, I was watching the local NHK evening news. At the end of the program, the two newscasters said that they were leaving the show. One of them is moving to radio, and the other is changing to the morning news. The two new newscasters have something in common. They have the same last name: Yamada.  (123 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

Spring is a wonderful season, but it has some bad points, too. One of them in the yellow dust that comes from Mongolia. The wind lifts the dust high up into the air from the desert and carries it east. The TV weather map shows a big cloud of dust moving toward Japan from China. The meteorologist, the person who reports the weather, says that it is bad for our health. We should stay inside as much as possible and wear a mask when we go outside. We should dry our clothes inside rather than outside so that they don’t get dust on them. I haven’t seen any dust, but I can see that the air isn’t clear. Although it’s sunny, the sky isn’t blue. Late in the afternoon, the dust turns the sun orange.  (135 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com

If you live in Japan, you know that the price of rice is very high now. In fact, it is twice as expensive as it was last year. I bought a 5-kilogram bag of rice on Monday, and it cost 4,280 yen! I don’t know how families with growing children can buy enough rice to feed everyone. In the U.S., eggs are very expensive now. They are sold by the dozen, and 12 eggs are about $6. That means that each egg costs 50 cents, or 75 yen! In Japan, eggs have gotten more expensive too, but they still only cost 30 yen each. You can see the difference at McDonald’s. If you want to buy an Egg McMuffin in the U.S., it costs about $5.50. It only costs 330 yen, or $1.80, in Japan.    (134 words) You can send me a comment or your own story at jaremaga@gmail.com