In Japan, most children go back to school on September 1st, but September is not the beginning of the school year. The Japanese school year starts in April and ends in March. There is about a five-week vacation in summer. Children are usually given some homework to do during this time. The common homework for elementary school children is "enikki (a diary with drawings)," and "dokusho kansoubun (to write an opinion or impression of a book that you read)." Also, there is often, "jiyuu kenkyuu (open research – sometimes it is hard to choose a topic)." I remember two of my "jiyuu kenkyuu" were an observation of the growth of morning glory and of the moon's waxing and waning. I always enjoyed summer vacation, but I also looked forward going back to school and seeing my friends in September. Japanese translation

When I travel to a foreign country, I like to go to local markets. It is very interesting to see what local people actually eat or use. When you go to a Japanese market, you might feel the same way. Most vegetables have Japanese names, but some use English words with slightly different pronunciations. "Serori (celery)" or "Retasu (lettuce)" are two of them. "Peeman" is probably a funny sounding vegetable for English speaking people. Can you guess what it is? It is green peppers. Red peppers are called "aka-peeman". When I didn’t know English well, I thought it came from an English word. Later I was curious what the origin of "peeman" is. It turned out to be from the French word "piment." However, French people probably won’t be able to figure out what "peeman" is either. Japanese translation

August 15th is the day that World War II ended. There are quite a few Japanese children books that talk about the war. "Kawaisouna zou," which was published in 1970, is a long selling book. It is a true story about three elephants at the Ueno Zoo in Tokyo during World War II. I read it when I was at elementary school. I remember it was very sad and I strongly hoped that war never happens again. I haven’t read it for a quite a long time, but I recently read news that a CD of this book was released with both Japanese and English on one disk. The American singer, Cindy Lauper, reads the English version of the story. I hope it will help to spread an antiwar message. Japanese translation

Are you watching the Beijing Olympics? The Japanese word for "Olympics" is "gorin," which is written with the kanji character for "five" and "ring". Japan hosted three Olympics in the past: Tokyo Summer Olympics in 1964, Sapporo Winter Olympics in 1972 and Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998. Beijing is the fifth Asian city (the other one was Seoul in 1988) to host the Olympics. I was quite excited about the Nagano Olympics and proud to be a host country. I am sure the Chinese feel the same way. By the way, Tokyo is one of the cities (Chicago, Madrid and Rio de Janeiro) that bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. Japanese translation