Learn Japanese with JapanesePod101.com! Always a hot topic, but recently even more so, global warming and the destruction of the environment are the topics for this week’s Intermediate lesson. We’ll take a look at a junior high’s Ethics Class and see what the children are learning about the environment. Be prepared for a lot of vocabulary in this lesson. After listening, stop by JapanesePod101.com and be sure to leave us a post!
This entry was posted on Friday, July 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm and is filed under Intermediate Lessons. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
30 Responses to “Intermediate Lesson #61 - Destruction Of Nature!”
JapanesePod101.com says:
July 13th, 2007 at 7:45 pm
Mina-san, whew! 本当にお疲れ様でした！今日のレッスンはとても長いですね。
What do you think about the environment?
doraemon says:
July 13th, 2007 at 7:51 pm
Holy-moly that was difficult 
I was hoping for a surprise when I saw there was an E-book but that must have been a mistake, ne? It turned out to be the kanji!!
Happy weekend everyone 
doraemon says:
July 13th, 2007 at 8:16 pm
oops sorry I forgot to add - I actually enjoy the longer dialogue. Something to “chew” at
I hope they stay a bit longer, good practise for us all, ne?
Enrico says:
July 13th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
Thanks a lot for the long text, but I will continue my crusade for the insertion of furigana. For me It is very hard to switch among the three versions
maxiewawa says:
July 13th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
難しかった！
I agree with Sachiko先生 when she talks about the Kanji. They help a lot.
My Japanese isn’t so hot, but my Chinese is pretty good. I can read a Japanese newspaper and get a good idea of what’s going on just from the 汉字。 Read it to me though and I have no idea what’s going on.
TempleUniJP says:
July 14th, 2007 at 12:55 am
-Tender Relationship Bewtween Earth and people-
Awareness of the natural environment is what human beings potentially have.
It is Our wish that we earthman see the tender face
-One of the many great teeshirts you can buy in Japan that im proud to sport weekly in the US
Enrico says:
July 14th, 2007 at 2:57 am
The Kanji Close-Up is the one of “My Tokyo travelblog - Day 18″ 
Dave says:
July 14th, 2007 at 3:12 am
This was one of the most informative lessons I’ve ever heard.
I can’t say that my high school ever had an ethics class, but most Universities in the U.S. require at least one ethics course.
I agree with Sachiko-san in that global warming is a very hot topic these days. I’ve heard that in some areas of Japan there are roughly 30 different categories of garbage! Maybe this is a taste of what will come in the U.S.
Now I’ll be able to bring some political issues into my Japanese class thanks to all of the new vocab!
Eran says:
July 14th, 2007 at 3:45 am
Enrico-san,
Oops! Thanks for pointing this out. The correct Kanji Close-Up is now posted.
Eran
bakaneko says:
July 14th, 2007 at 4:08 am
NEWS FLASH: I just heard that Okinawa Islands have just been hit by a typhoon with wind speed up to 233 km/h and waves up to 12 meters high.
rigo says:
July 14th, 2007 at 4:25 am
wow , what a lesson ! i was like 
good topic, i learned many new words today
the first thing that came to my mind was Al Gore should see this
i heard the news about the typhoon also , i hope there are no fatalities
rigo
Alain says:
July 14th, 2007 at 6:25 am
I hope the typhoon will not be at kansai airport on monday morning !
I already landed in a typhoon one time at KaiTak at the fourth try and I don’t miss this experience.
Carlo says:
July 14th, 2007 at 3:28 pm
Definitely one of the most useful and interesting Intermediate Lesson ever!
I hope it will mark a new standard of Friday’s lessons, as I think that intermediate students can learn a lot from this kind of meterial.
頑張ってください！ 
カルロ 
Ryan says:
July 14th, 2007 at 5:19 pm
Best lesson ever!!!
More like this would be greatly appreciated!
For example, something pertaining to “Japanese Politics” with the same depth and range would be fantastic.
Many thanks, JPOD TEAM!
João Paulo says:
July 16th, 2007 at 4:12 am
Waw, that was tough.
Actually, I’ll have to go thru the dialog again, again, again (…) and again in order to get all those meanings.
I was also positively surprised when I realized the lesson lasted for almost half an hour. It was like being in class!!!
By the way, some schools here in Brazil have subjects related to ethics. I recently had something similar at the university when we went thru some law.
Anyway, it was a great and very useful lesson!
zap says:
July 16th, 2007 at 5:54 pm
Really tough lesson…
(ok… I belong to beginner group…)
I was in Fukuoka early this year. In the office, we need to separate the plastic packaging/wrapping from the bottles before throwing them into the recycle bin. The bus captain would turn off the bus engine when they stopped at the junction.
These are a few environment friendly practices I observed during my stay and was very impressed.
We have so call “Moral Education” in Malaysia from primary to secondary. No topic on being nice to the environment though. Not sure if that had change now… But surely there’s no such awareness yet in the country generally…. living habits are hard to change and need to cultivate from childhood.
Bob1 says:
July 17th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
「自然破壊を守るために」
“In order to preserve the destruction of nature . . .” ? ? ? ?
It sounds to me as if somebody has strung together one glittering generality too many. Did she mean to say
「自然破壊を防ぐために」or 「自然環境を守るために」,
or is the teacher a closet member of the Society for the Promotion of
Environmental Destruction?
Bob1 says:
July 18th, 2007 at 11:30 am
Sorry, “glittering generality” wasn’t quite the right term in my post above. “Buzzword” or “catch phrase” were the terms I was looking for. Anyway, please either confirm or refute my claim that the teacher’s statement was in logical error.
Sachiko Nakagome says:
July 18th, 2007 at 2:57 pm
Hey everyone,
Thanks for the feedback.
We’ll try to continue providing these in-depth lessons.
And maxiewawa-san,
interesting. I have a similar experience from
when I studied Chinese.
I can understand half of what is written in Chinese
but cannot pronounce them to save my life!
Sachiko
mikuji says:
July 18th, 2007 at 10:51 pm
I’ll like to put in my pennyworth towards the idea of a furigana/ruby version.
I would not replace the kanji version with it, but rather print it instead of the hiragana one, because it will help a lot those people who do not know of or are afraid of kanji . They will subliminally start to associate each kanji to its sound whilst not loosing the facility of kana reading if they do not know the meaning of the kanji already.
After all, is it not this how Japanese people do it ?
I appreciate this is may be technically involved but should not be impossible with computers available in Japan….
Please give it some serious thought Jpod101!
Thanking you always.
mikuji
eugene says:
July 19th, 2007 at 3:48 pm
We also have ethic classes at prim and high schools here in Taiwan called “生活与倫理” and “公民与道徳”. This Topic kind of reminds me of these good all days when I was in school.
Dylan says:
July 24th, 2007 at 5:33 pm
Finally catching up after missing a few weeks of lessons. I agree with the above posters that said this was the best lesson yet. I have been hoping JPOD would start an ‘advanced’ section, but this lesson included a lot of useful, higher-level vocabulary. Please do keep them coming!
JohnDewey says:
July 25th, 2007 at 3:47 am
I agree with the above post. I haven’t joined yet because of the level of the lessons. If there were more like this one, I would join immediately.
NeilB says:
July 28th, 2007 at 8:15 am
I am an environmental scientist working for a state environmental agency. Thank very much for this lesson that gives me much of the tango that applies in my job.
A greatly useful lesson.
John C. Briggs says:
August 1st, 2007 at 12:18 am
Please don’t go six sentences in Japanese and then six sentence in English. It is very difficult to connect the English and Japanese together in your mind like this.
Just do one sentence in Japanese and then one sentence in English. We will get more out of it that way.
Thanks
John C. Briggs
DaveW says:
August 21st, 2007 at 9:24 am
Hey,
I don’t know if anyone will read this post since it is kind of late but here goes anyway… The lesson was really great, a nice challenge! I also found the introduction very interesting. It’s from a Japanese tv show called 水戸黄門 (みとこうもん). My friend also found a video on youtube which contains parts of the dialogue in the introduction to this lesson:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0dhxz3CnXQ
On our lesson it said:
Suke san Kaku san
Shizumare, shizumare, hikae, hikae. hikae orou!
Kono Japanesepoddo ga me ni hairanu ka??
In the show:
ひかえ、ひかえ、ひかえおろう！ この紋所（もんどころ）が目に入らぬか。 この方を誰（だれ）と心得（こころえ）る。 ここにおわす（＝いる）お方こそ、前の副将軍・水戸光圀公（みと みつくに こう＝みとこうもん）にあらせられるぞ（＝いらっしゃるぞ）！
Translated as roughly:
“Break it up/quiet down! Can’t you recognize this seal of the Shogun family? Who do you think this gentleman is? With all due respect, he is the former Vice Shogun, Sir Mitsukuni Mito. Get down on your knees!”
(Many thanks to my friend Takuya for finding the show and translating this bit into english)
This is interesting to me since I really enjoy jidai geki and samurai no kotoba.
JapanesePod101.com says:
August 21st, 2007 at 3:10 pm
DaveWさん、
you just scored BIG points with me! good job spotting the 水戸黄門 reference!
marky
holly says:
August 24th, 2007 at 6:59 am
Great lesson - we’re studing the environment in Japanese class at school, and that was really useful. Thanks Jpod. 
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Category: Intermediate Lessons |
Function: discussing the environment | Topic: acid rain, global warming, the environment | Politeness Level: Polite
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